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yehet-me-up · 4 years

Text

Fractions of Tomorrow

Pairing: Zitao/Reader (female)

Word Count: 10,249

Rating/Warnings: PG13

Summary: They always say opposites attract but you and Tao are putting that theory to the test. He works nights at Flanagan’s, you work the crack of dawn shift at Starbucks. He wears leather jackets, sings in a rock band, and drives a motorcycle. You prefer Keds to Chucks, study poetry at UW, and ride a pastel purple bike across town. Luckily, he’s not someone who’s afraid of a challenge.

When Baekhyun dares you and Tao to test the idea that two people can fall in love in one night you don’t expect to care so much, so fast. And when the sun rises all you can hope is that he feels the same.

Part seven of the Exodus Mall series (Can be read independently, but you’ll get some extra backstory if you read the other parts first!)

February 28, 1997

His head aches, body still reeling from the alcohol he drank far too much of the night before. The line at Starbucks is endlessly long and he groans. If he was responsible he’d go to the grocery across the street and get a decent breakfast. But his brain needs a substitute for the gin he was coerced into last night by his friends and it will only accept caffeine as an offering.

A saccharine song pours in from the speakers and people around him clear their throats or rustle in their pockets and the sheer noise of the morning grates against him. He’s a creature of the night; he finds other humans far more tolerable without the sun beating down on him. Only desperation pulled him from his hangover to acquire the nectar of the gods. He taps his foot and shrugs his jacket further up his body, hoping the collar will keep the bright light pouring in from the tall windows from reaching him.

A sweet voice breaks through the din and he turns to watch you, drawn by the warmth of the sound. It’s not his first time here, but it’s his first time paying attention. In the thriving ecosystem of the Exodus Mall everyone’s a friend of a friend of a cousin of someone and he distantly remembers you’re related to one of Baekhyun’s friends.

Maybe it’s the way early mornings after late nights distort the world, making everything feel hazy like a dream. Maybe it’s the fact that he went home alone last night, yet again. Maybe it’s the bright, energetic shine in your eyes, astounding for the pre-eight-am time. Or maybe it’s the dimple in your cheek when you smile at the customer, writing his name on the cup and passing it to your co-workers.

When the man moves aside and you turn your focus on Tao, for whatever reason, his intuition tells him to notice. Maybe it’s an illusion, but today feels different. You feel different.

‘Hi, welcome to Starbucks. What can I get you?’

He opens his mouth, unsure what to say. For a long beat he simply observes you. The little hearts drawn around your name on your name tag. He rolls it around in his mind, matching your face with the word, almost saying it aloud. A dangerous proposition. A door he should leave shut.

Someone coughs behind him and he shakes his head, stepping forward. ‘Just a big Americano please. As big as possible.’ His voice is thick and his throat dry. One day he’ll remember to drink a glass of water before bed after getting drunk.

You nod, reaching to the stack of cups. ‘A grande?’

He swallows to wet his throat. ‘Sure.’

‘Name?’

With a deep inhale he smells last night’s cologne still clinging to his skin. God he needs to get his shit together, he thinks with a sigh. His general state of dishevelment is even more noticeable next to you. He wonders if you ironed the collar of your shirt to be that precise or if you simply move through the world without acquiring any wrinkles.

‘Zitao,’ he says finally.

‘Cute.’ You say it under your breath but he still hears. His eyes go wide, his sluggish mind coming awake. After handing the cup to your co-worker you say the total. ‘That’ll be four oh two please.’

Automatically he reaches into his pocket for his wallet and pulls out the five dollar bill. He knows he’s staring like an idiot but he can’t help it. You hand him his change and on reflex he drops it into the tip jar. Service industry solidarity, he thinks with a half-smile.

The smile on your face blossoms; tentative at first, it grows when his eyes meet yours again. ‘Thank you!’ You pull a small coffee can out from beside the register and hold it out to him. ‘Anyone who tips gets a poem.’

He stares at the can and the slips of paper neatly folded within. Amusement fills him and he reaches for one at random, his fingers brushing yours as he pulls back. The sensation makes him want to linger. How long has it been since he touched someone, in the daylight? Since he wanted to hold and be held? Tao tells himself it doesn’t matter. It can’t. He’s got plans to leave Seattle and he doesn’t need anything tethering him here.

Before he embarasses himself he slides the paper into his pocket with a nod and moves on down the line. As he waits for his drink he keeps his focus on you. The efficiency of your motions and the genuine happiness on your face as you take order after order on the busy Friday morning. People come and go around him but he leans against the wall, waiting, thinking.

Finally his drink is done and the cup spreads heat along his chilled palms. The world is too sharp and demanding and the thought of a day full of errands on too little sleep followed by a full shift at the bar drags at him. But the smell of coffee and your smile and the mystery poem in his pocket are life preservers thrown to him today. He clings to them with both hands to keep himself afloat.

On his way out he finally reads the poem you’ve gifted to him. The writing is done with small, neat lettering and he knows it’s yours.

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.

You feel it, don’t you?

- Rumi

With a groan he pushes out the door with his shoulder, blinking on the too-bright sidewalk. It’s too early to feel so raw and exposed, he decides.

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

Friday July 18, 1997

You trail into Flanagan’s Pub after Baekhyun and your sister, Hitchcock. It’s not her real name, but she’s had the nickname so long it might as well be. As always, they argue about movies. As always, you’re the third wheel. Not that they’re actually dating. But everyone agrees they should.

‘Come on, it was brilliant.’ Baekhyun waves his hands dramatically as you wind your way around the crowded bar after them.

‘I’m not saying it wasn’t,’ she responds. They slide into a booth opposite each other and you follow after your sister. ‘All I’m saying is it’s unrealistic, that’s all.’

Baekhyun scoffs, offended. ‘As if realism was the point here.’ You unfold the drink menu while he carries on, undeterred. ‘I know you’re not a hopeless romantic like myself, but are you honestly telling me that you don’t think it’s possible?’

Tonight’s Friday-movie-night tradition was your first viewing of The Fifth Element and Korben and Leeloo’s instant connection has revived their years-long argument about love at first sight. You roll your eyes when your sister shakes her head, leaning forward to tease him. She’s told you about her crush on Baekhyun, her best friend. For someone who’s been in love for as long as you can remember she fights awfully hard against Baekhyun’s romantic nature. Methinks the lady doth protest too much…

‘Look at Before Sunrise,’ Baekhyun says with a click of his tongue. ‘One night and they fell in love.’

She hums and scans the menu. ‘So what? It’s just one night. Show me what happens ten years later. After they see each other with messy morning hair and when he leaves dishes in the sink or, I don’t know, when she bites her nails.’ Baekhyun huffs and she smothers a laugh. ‘Let’s see how that instant love does after it’s put to the test. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, I’m just saying one night doesn’t mean it will stand the test of time, that’s all.’ She folds her menu and rests her elbows on the table, looking incredibly smug.

Baekhyun opens his mouth to argue but the server arrives and interrupts his tirade. ‘What can I get for you?’

The gravelly voice is familiar and your eyes widen in surprise when you see Tao towering over the table. Quickly you look away, back to the dark wood table.

You’ve noticed him before - at Starbucks, at parties at Baek’s from a distance, at Moe’s ages ago - but tonight he’s so cleaned up you hardly recognize him. Gone are the bags under his eyes and the nervous, jittery, curmudgeon energy that seemed to hang over him like a dark cloud. Tonight his eyes are alert and crinkle at the corner when he smiles broadly and you can’t help but notice. A very bad idea.

‘Hey man, how’s it going?’ Baekhyun reaches out and does a complex handshake with the man before you.

‘Oh, you know. Just working at the salt mines,’ Tao says with a laugh. ‘Are you coming to Chan and Soo’s party tomorrow night?’

‘You know it. I wouldn’t miss your big send off. My man here is taking off on a national tour on Sunday. Local boy making it big!’ Baekhyun gives Tao a friendly punch on the arm before drumming his fingers on the table and raising a brow. ‘Since you’re here, maybe you can settle an argument for us.’

Tao darts a look to you and clears his throat. ‘Sure thing. Lay it on me.’

‘Do you believe you can fall in love with someone in one night?’ Baekhyun waggles his brows at your sister and she groans. ‘Like, soulmates burning-down-the world you’re the person I’ve waited for always Blockbuster kind of love.’

He tilts his head to the side, considering. After a moment he shrugs. ‘I’m not sure.’ For a flash Tao’s eyes linger on you once more. ‘I think it would depend on the person.’ And then the bastard goes and winks at you.

Baekhyun snorts and lounges back in the booth, resting his arm on the back of the seat. 'Good luck, buddy. You'd have better luck charming a brick wall. She only reads about love these days, Double Shot here is a bit gun-shy at putting it into practice again.’

You glare at Baekhyun, body going rigid at being called out. For as long as he's been your sister's best friend he's acted like a surrogate older brother to you. He vacillates between telling you it’s good you’re so focused on your studies and telling you that you're too serious, too focused on school and work. Since you got broken up with Baekhyun seems focused on the latter, always needling you to go out and have fun. But, as they say, once burned twice shy.

You focus intently on your hands resting on the table and absolutely avoid looking at Tao. From the first time you rang him up at Starbucks you knew his gaze would see more than you'd like. He's the type to see through every bullshit line you give about how you’re fine being alone, fine with how things ended, fine fine fine.

If life was kind the three of you would order and Tao would leave and that would be the end of it. You could safely stay in your cocoon and hide. But of course, life doesn't play fair.

Tao sticks the pen behind his ear and folds his arms. ‘Is that a bet?’

Your cheeks warm and your heart races. Finally, you look up to him fully. 'Excuse me?'

He shrugs and gives you a lopsided smile. 'If you're game, of course. What do you say, shall we put this to the test?'

'You want to see if we'd fall in love in a night?' You're certain you look like a terrified animal. In a vain attempt to fold yourself back into someone confident you lean against the booth, pressing your feet to the ground and making your spine tall and straight. 'What makes you think you're even my type?'

‘Sweetheart, I’m everyone’s type.’

God knows he probably is. Tall, handsome bad boy who sings like an angel, drives a stupidly hot motorcycle, and looks like he knows the fastest way to make you come undone with just a look. But charming is only skin deep and in return you want to see if there’s anything underneath it that would keep your interest.

‘Fine, then.’ You hold out your hand. ‘I’ll take your bet.’ Stubborn, always so stubborn. Baekhyun giggles and claps excitedly as you grip Tao’s rough, much larger hand.

Your sister leans across you to stare Tao down. 'Hang on. I'm not about to let her go off with some random dude. How do we know you're trustworthy?' Hitchcock has turned her interrogation mode on. ‘I’ve seen you around, but I don’t know you from Bruce Willis.’

He must have other tables to attend to, other things to do, but he rests his palms on the table and leans down to meet her glare. 'I'm an open book. Ask me anything.' The move brings him inches from you. He smells like whisky, the kind that burns, and you swallow instinctively in response.

She narrows her eyes and hums. 'How old are you?'

'Twenty three.'

'Did you go to school?'

He chuckles. 'High school. No need for college.'

'Why not?' You speak up, preparing for an argument. He looks like he could actually keep up with you and a spark of excitement grows low in your body.

'Between singing and bartending I make plenty of money.’ He answers you, not your sister. ‘Don't get me wrong, I respect an education. But I get far more inspiration from living life than from just reading about it.'

You bristle. As a poetry major this feels like a personal attack. ‘Are you telling me you’ve never read anything that made you feel - I don’t know - inspired. Magical. Exposed?' You press your lips together, wishing you could gather the words back.

Tao looks at you through his lashes, bending close enough that you can feel his breath on your lips when he speaks. ‘Words are just the appetizer, darling. I prefer to have an entire feast.’

His dancing eyes dart down to your lips. But then he straightens, pulling the pen out and readying it on the pad. You grip the table to avoid swaying towards him and almost hate him for how much of a magnetic pull he seems to have over you. 'Any other questions or can I grab your orders?'

Baekhyun orders a Smirnoff Ice, delight pouring off him. Your sister narrows her eyes at Tao for a moment. Finally, she relents and orders a sex on the beach. You stare at the red plaid shirt tied around Tao’s hips and order something. An Appletini maybe? Your mind seems to have abandoned you but thankfully Tao nods and winds his way back through the crowd to the bar. In his absence you can breathe fully and look up to see Baekhyun smirking.

‘What?’ you practically groan at him.

‘Oh, nothing.’ He looks like the cat that caught the canary. ‘I just love being right.’

Hitchcock kicks him under the table and he winces, reaching for his shin. They resume their discussion, transitioning to talking about their opening shifts at the theater tomorrow and how much they can reasonably drink tonight and still be functional in the morning. You drum your nails on the lacquered wood table and wonder if your heart is racing from the heat of the packed bar or from the prospect of Tao holding you to your bargain.

The man himself comes back with drinks a moment later. When he slides the light green concoction across the table to you he tilts his head in question. ‘So, how about tonight?’

You choke on your sip and fight the burn in your throat. ‘Are you serious? So soon?’

He grins. ‘Why, did you want time to get ready? I think if we’re going to put it to the test it would have to be tonight. Also, I leave on Sunday morning, so the clock is ticking so to speak.’

‘But I work tomorrow at Starbucks. At the crack of dawn.’ You sputter, waving your hand in front of you. ‘I didn’t think you-’

‘Guess we should get started soon, then.' He winks again and you're tempted to throw your drink at him, just to get the upper hand. ‘I get off at nine.’ Without another word he puts the serving tray under his arm and leaves.

Your sister rolls her eyes. ‘You’re such a bad influence, Baek.’

He throws his arms out wide. ‘I can’t help it baby, I’m a lover. What can I say?’

She snorts and pats you on the back sympathetically. You down your drink in two swallows and absolutely refuse to look at Tao, Baekhyun, or your sister. Instead you pull some bills from your purse and push your way out of the bar before anyone can suggest anything else insane.

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

It takes you several tries to find a presentable outfit. It's been more than six months since that last fateful date and in the time between you’ve built a literal barrier around yourself, bundling up in sweaters and blankets at home, only emerging for work and class and Friday movie nights.

Baekhyun's words come back to you as you frown and throw yet another outfit on the bed. Are you really a brick wall, impenetrable and cold? You weren't always, surely. Byron's 'and thus, the heart will break, yet brokenly live on' swims in your mind, still fresh from the finals you took just a few weeks ago.

You don't feel broken, just stuck. Numb. Waiting. You hold a dress up to your body and wonder if your ex feels the same or if he, as the one who did the dumping, moved on instantly, and it's just the broken-up-with half that flails around trying to find new footing.

With an defiant press of your lips you sigh and settle on your favorite black and white checkered dress and white Keds. It’s a declaration of intent in a peter pan collar. Your ex always hated your clothes, what you chose to study, your music; everything about you screamed soft and he tried so hard to bend and form you into someone he wanted.

But you are as you are - romantic and idealistic and sweet. You roll your eyes. It’s the truth, and you remind yourself that just because you didn’t match him doesn’t mean you have to change just to make someone else happy. The outfit screams innocence it dares Tao to judge you tonight. As if you care what he thinks. Which you definitely do not.

You barely make it back in time to Flanagan’s. When you rush up Tao is pushing out of the bar onto the street. A thrill runs down your spine at his smile when he sees you. Your ex doesn't control you anymore, you remind yourself. You get to decide when you move on; when you stop mourning something that's dead and over and find something new. Even if it's not with Tao, tonight is an experiment. To see if you can handle a fresh start.

‘Hi,’ you start, breathless from your hurrying.

'Hi yourself. You still game?' he asks, mischief in his eyes and hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. 'If you want an out I won't hold it against you.' He looks you up and down and smirks, but doesn’t comment on your appearance.

In return you scan him as well. His hair is mussed just-so and his earrings match too well to be an accident. He’s trying too, even if his devil-may-care attitude would make others think he’s not. Everyone has an image they present to the world, tonight you’ll find if there’s substance behind Tao’s.

You press your tongue between your teeth and tilt your head at him. 'I'm ready to be surprised.'

He barks out a laugh. ‘Fair enough. I’ll see what I can do’

Tao starts to move towards you across the sidewalk, but you hold out a hand at the level of his chest, stopping his movement. 'So, love, huh? There's not some girlfriend or boyfriend of yours waiting for you at home?'

‘I belong only to myself. For now, at least.' He smiles and holds his arms out wide. His brows tug together suddenly. For a moment he looks unsure. Vulnerable. But the look is gone so fast you wonder if you imagined it. ‘What about you?’

You want to fold in on yourself and turn away, hiding. As if the stain of failure is written across your face. The words that were thrown your way like scarlet letters on your skin for him to see. Prude. Uptight. Tease. Your stomach churns and you’re glad you only had the one drink tonight.

‘Single.’ You suck in a breath after you get the word out, like it stole all the air from your lungs in speaking it.

He nods, holding your gaze for a moment. Those eyes of his drink you in and you’re sure he can see it - the hesitation and the fear. But once more he simply stands tall and gives you space to think. ‘Shall we head towards the waterfront?’

A public place, lively and full of people on a Friday night. Safe, reassuring. He didn’t suggest a club or somewhere heavy with expectation and you like him better for it. Tao waves an arm out in front of you, inviting you to go first and you start walking, clutching your purse under your arm.

He falls into step beside you. 'So I guess if we're going big or going home, shall we start with our dating history?'

You should have expected this level of inquisition, especially from someone who is friends with Baekhyun. ‘Jesus, you don’t pull any punches.’ But against your will you let out a laugh.

There’s something refreshing about someone who seems like, for all his mystery, he doesn’t hold any secrets. Everything out in the cool night air and you wonder if it would be freeing, to let it all go. To not question the words you say. To trust that the person you’re speaking them to will hold them without judgement.

‘Never have, never will,’ he reassures you. The cat-like grin on his lips is teasing. ‘That I can guarantee you. I’m happy to go first, if you’d like?’

You nod, and he sighs, looking through the clouds to the moon that peeks through. The streets are dry for once, a brief respite after the wet Seattle spring. Everyone around you takes in the night with gleeful laughter, on the search for music and connection and entertainment. But even with the full sidewalks around you all you feel compelled to do, inexplicably, is lean in closer to hear Tao.

A group of women brush by you, giggling, forcing you into Tao to avoid them. On instinct he reaches out an arm to keep you both from being overrun. You turn into him and end up meeting his eyes. In the night they’re so dark they look almost black, with flashes of light from passing cars.

The moment stretches around you and irrationally you want to stop him before he says anything else. No stories of the people he’s been with or kissed or loved or wrote songs about. Maybe that’s the appeal of one night love stories, you think. The beginning of love is always a lightning bolt. If that’s all it ever is you never have to deal with being knocked on your ass by the resulting thunderstorm.

The women pass and Tao respectfully brings his hand back to his pocket and time carries on. But the look on his face remains as you both start walking towards the Market again.

‘I should say up front, I uhh - I guess that I’ve never been in a relationship. Actually.’ He runs a hand through his hair and winces like he’s ashamed of it. ‘I came close a few times. But it’s just never worked out.’

You open your mouth but aren’t sure what to say. Do you make fun of him for clearly being a playboy, not wanting to be tied down, fitting the stereotype of the rockstar he’s on a path to becoming? Do you play coy, asking him if you might fit the bill? Or do you reassure him?

The latter feels the most natural. ‘You’re young. It’s the nineties. I don’t think it’s unusual to be playing the field right now.’ You lift a shoulder and shrug, the edge of your black denim jacket slipping down your back a bit with the motion. It exposes the skin of your collarbone above the strap of your dress, where your neck meets your chest.

Tao licks his lips and drags his eyes away from your shoulder to meet yours with a nod. ‘That’s true. I guess most of my friends are single. Sehun is. Jongin is. Baekhyun is, for sure. Even if he is in love with your sister.’ Your jaw drops and Tao bites his lip. ‘Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything. Please don’t tell her I -’

He looks genuinely panicked and you laugh, waving a hand. ‘Trust me, she’s in love with him too. They’re both too stubborn to admit it though. So your secret is safe with me.’

Tao sighs, relaxing, and gives you a half smile. ‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’ The neon lights from the bars and clubs along Pike street pass over his face, painting him dozens of bright colors. ‘So, that’s my story. Too busy working and writing lyrics and singing to be tied down. What’s yours?’

‘That’s hardly a story,’ you challenge, raising a brow. ‘More like the cover of a book.’

‘It’s plenty!’ he laughs. ‘I’ve exposed myself as a perpetually single man. I think that tells you tons about me.’ At your pursed lips he continues. ‘Fine. I’ve been chasing music for so long that I have avoided getting serious with anyone, lest it keep me from my dreams of stardom. I crave that intensity between me and an audience when I sing, but I’m afraid to let myself have something real. Something intimate, that expects more of me past one performance. I’m afraid that off-stage I’m more disappointing than on et cetera et cetera.’

He cuts off his rambling monologue, his eyes widening as he stops in his tracks for a moment, like he can’t believe he just said so much. But you stand next to him without judgement. Something about his disarming honesty and expressiveness makes you want to tell him the truth, ugly that it might be.

While you stand on the corner and wait for the light to change you look at the zipper of his leather jacket to avoid his eyes and spit it out. ‘I got dumped six months ago.’ You lift your hands and drop them uselessly to your side.

He tilts his head back in appraisal. Blessedly the teasing is gone from his face. He doesn’t offer sympathy, cloying and patronizing words about how you’ll find someone else. He doesn’t flirt with you, even though that seems to be his nature.

‘I don’t know the circumstances, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but all I can say is - it’s his loss.’ He gives you a slight smile, not moving even when the light changes, and you can’t help but return it.

It’s strange that it could be so simple. Perhaps if you do carry on something with Tao you’ll tell him more. But for tonight it can be that easy. The pain and doubt and shame can fade into a pinprick of light heading off into the distance and get swallowed up by the night. Like you can just wipe the slate clean and start over. You inhale a deep breath of cool, salty air and look up at Tao, your smile growing, becoming more genuine and whole.

A lightness fills you and you wind your arm through his, pulling him into the crosswalk just as the last few seconds show on the countdown. He lets you guide him easily and you come to rest on the concrete looking down at the Pike Place Market. The bright neon red sign reflects against the dark night and the inky blue waters of the Bay beyond it. In the twilight ships move back and forth through the port, full of tiny lights of their own.

He drops his hand a little, running over the clothed skin of your arm until he reaches your palm. The contact of his hand on yours makes you jolt. ‘Is this okay?’

Without thinking you nod, twining your fingers with his, savoring the heat as he presses against you. Your ex hated holding hands in public, hated any kind of PDA, calling it childish. But Tao stands by your side, hand in hand, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.

People mill about you, heading to the endless restaurants and food stands that line the Market. In summer it’s in full bloom, crowded every night, and after a long winter and spring holed up in your apartment it’s disorienting to be out in the world again.

You start walking together, without a plan. It’s far more comfortable than you’d expected, the companionable silence with him. Everyone in your life talks a mile a minute - Baekhyun and your sister, your co-workers at the busy coffee shop, your classmates, hungry for discussion - but Tao seems content to just hold your hand and admire the rows of vendors you pass. The lack of pressure from him eases something that had drawn tight and anxious in your chest over the last few months.

Before you is a maze of stalls. Tables full of tulips in bright yellows and pinks, bouquets wrapped in brown paper, that you stop to smell. Screen printed tee shirts with the Sonics logo or photos of the Space Needle or trendy political puns that Tao points out with a laugh. People sell everything from watercolor paintings to homemade honey to snow globes. As a recent college grad, you’re saving all your money, but everything is still fascinating to look at.

The two of you settle on a kebab place for dinner after a long debate about the merits of the taco cart and the hole-in-the-wall seafood stop. The steam brings the rich smell of meat and vegetables to you. Against your protests to split the bill, Tao insists on buying dinner.

‘If this is an official date I have to follow the guidelines,’ he winks.

You roll your eyes and defiantly go to the next stall to order two Jones sodas from the seller. When you hold them up he laughs and inclines his head. ‘Alright, that’s fair.’

When you’re settled on the narrow rock wall beyond the far edge of the market, balancing Jones sodas on the uneven stones with a warm kebab resting on your knees, he carries on.

'So, poetry. What made you choose that?' He asks around a bite.

After a sip of soda you tilt your head at him. ‘You can't laugh, okay?'

'Why would I laugh?’ His brows furrow like it’s the furthest thing from his mind. ‘I'm a singer, sweetheart. I don't take the arts lightly and anyone who does is an asshole.' He narrows his eyes at you in mock seriousness but the way his mouth fights a smile is endearing.

You snort, liking him yet again without planning on it. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always loved it and sometimes I try to write it. I’ve had some job or another since high school, so I’m confident I can always get a job if I need it but - there’s something so - so delicious about poetry.’ You swallow another drink of your soda and Tao’s eyes flick to the motion of your throat. ‘If I was going to go to college, and our parents kind of insisted on it, I wanted to study something I loved.’

Tao lifts his own soda and clinks it to yours in solidarity. ‘I can respect that. What’s your favorite poem?’

Suddenly shy you turn to set your soda down on the stone beside you, letting your hair fall over your face while you think. It’s not that you don’t know, but that it feels too close, too personal to tell him just yet. ‘That’s very private.’

When you look back to him he holds your gaze for a moment. ‘Hmm. Okay I can respect that. Favorite songs are pretty personal too so I’ll let you hold onto it, for now.’ With a movement as casual as breathing he tucks your hair behind your ear, as though he does it twenty times day, and resumes his eating.

Poems run through your head as you chew, heart racing. You’d thought this was an experiment that would quickly go south. A quick walk to prove that you’re not compatible. A smug ‘I told you so’ to Baekhyun. And then a return to the comfort of your bed to read for the night. You didn’t expect to want him. Words, endless remembered words filter across your consciousness, ones of love and lust and death and the exhilaration of life.

Normally your own creative voice is quiet, too afraid to give permanence to the ideas, the words, that live inside you. But as you watch the gentle night breeze ruffle his dark hair you think you could write some tonight, if you had pen and paper. Instead you shove an enormous bite in your mouth and chew, afraid of the attraction you have to him.

When you’re both done eating he holds his hand out for your trash and you wad up the wrapper and hand it to him along with the empty bottle. He walks over to the trash and dutifully puts the bottles in the recycle, like any good Seattle boy. Dusting off his hands he turns back towards you, approaching slowly and holding out his hands.

After a moment’s hesitation you reach for him, allowing him to help you stand. Continuing the night’s adventure. When you’re on your feet he releases one of your hands, keeping the other one tucked in his as the two of you wind your way back through the crowds. Both of you stop to pat the bronze pig at the crux of the Market for good luck.

He leads the way down the narrow stairs to Post Alley and the line outside the comedy club at its base winds around in a long chain. It’s funny, normally you’d want to know The Plan. Baekhyun calls you anal retentive, but you just consider yourself organized. You like knowing what’s coming. But tonight you consent to following him without knowing the destination. You bite back a smile - it’s exciting and terrifying all at once.

A group of people tries to come up the stairs as you’re going down and you are pressed against the rail, trying not to slip. It definitely isn’t meant to be wide enough for both directions of people at the same time. As if sensing your predicament Tao presses his broad back into the rowdy man behind you, ignoring his grumbles of annoyance, making space so you can descend the last few steps onto the courtyard.

Out front of the Market Theater you thank him and wonder what exactly his plan is. Is he taking you to an improv show? A concert? Drinks? With your hand still in his he gently moves to the left, under the archway and in front of the long gum wall. You raise a brow at him but he merely smiles and shrugs.

‘I didn’t peg you for someone who likes tourist attractions.’

His eyes dance with amusement. ‘Oh yeah? What kind of person did you imagine me to be?’

You purse your lips and try to figure out how to answer him. ‘I’m not sure, actually. Normally I can read people pretty easily, but I can’t pin you down.’

‘Me?’ He presses his hand that holds yours to his chest. ‘Baby, I’m an open book.’

The gum wall around you smells sickly sweet and you can almost taste it on your tongue. Everyone around you is taking polaroids in front of the wall or chewing their own gum in preparation to add to it.

You wonder what the two of you look like from an outsider’s perspective. Tao, tall and imposing with his thick motorcycle boots. You with your white Keds and sweet, checkered dress and headband. It might seem like you’re an odd couple, but the heartbeat in his chest against your hand is strong and underneath it all perhaps you’re not so different.

With a breathy laugh and a roll of your eyes you grip his hand and pull him further along the alley beside the gum walls, towards the water. Nearby one of the many buskers permitted to perform along Pike Place starts signing a loud and heartfelt, if slightly off-key, rendition of ‘Sweet Caroline,’ drawing the cheers of the onlookers.

Away from the crowd in Post Alley you emerge onto a side street a block or so from the water. Tilting your head back you watch as everyone sings along. Tao’s free arm suddenly comes around your waist and dramatically he starts swaying you back and forth, crooning along to the Neil Diamond song far better than the busker. A few other people on the street around you smile or laugh, making their way to the pier up ahead.

Instead of asking him what on earth he’s doing or feeling embarrassed about dancing in the middle of the sidewalk you just cling to him and try to keep up. His voice is rich and soothing, his hand holding you against him is sturdy and comforting. You can’t help but giggle and roll with it, holding onto his jacket and watching his jaw move as he sings.

All too soon the performance back at the Market behind you ends and the last lyrics are drowned out by applause. Tao takes a step back and the night is cold without his warm embrace. You long to step forward and close the distance once more. Instead you brush your hair back and compose yourself.

‘What kind of music do you like to sing?’ you ask as the two of you resume your progress towards the pier.

‘All kinds.’ He shrugs. ‘But mostly love songs.’

‘Really?’ The light before you changes and ahead the aquarium looms in the night. To your left is the Kingdome waits, past the long stretch of the boardwalk. Without waiting for Tao you head that direction, the briny ocean air filling your lungs.

He easily comes to your side. ‘Of course. Everything’s about love I think, when you get down to it.’

‘You weren’t singing love songs when I saw you perform.’

You answer without thinking, remembering the concert a few months ago that you and your sister went to. Baekhyun had invited you both to see Chanyeol’s band - Yeol and the Salty Wolves - and Tao was performing with the opening group.

‘You’ve seen me on stage?’ His proud grin is teasing and playful and damned if you don’t want to kiss him.

‘Yeah. It - my sister dragged me out of the house. She thought getting outside would do me some good.’ You focus on picking off a section of your pink nail polish that’s started to chip. ‘You guys were great. But you were definitely yelling about anarchy, not love.’

The imagine of him in his tank top, wide slits cut under the arms revealing a broad swath of his tanned skin, singing passionately, makes you suddenly very aware of him. Tonight he’s composed, a rebel in street clothes. But that night his face was slicked with sweat from his intensity, red in the cheeks and headbanging along with the crowd and the rest of the band. Even that night, so close after your recent break up, you wanted him. It was a dangerous idea then and it’s a dangerous idea now.

He hums and veers to the right, heading down one of the longer piers. ‘I could argue that anarchy still is love. Love of your beliefs and love of a person or a place or a thing so much that you’re willing to fight for it, to go to war for what you care about.’

To that you don’t argue. ‘That’s true. I guess anything could be love when you get down to it. There’s so many poems about sadness - missing love or rejected love. Anger. Bitterness.’

The wooden boards of the pier below you give a gentle thunk with each heavy step of Tao’s huge boots. Below you the water sloshes against the planks. Now at the end you lean forward, resting your elbows on the railing, before turning back to Tao.

‘I guess this is a day to be debating love,’ you smirk, thinking back to the conversation that got you into this. In the wind off the Bay you shiver.

Like a reflex Tao shrugs out of his jacket and holds it out to you. But you lean over and wave your hand at him. ‘No it’s okay, I’m fine. Please, you don’t have to -’

But he drops it over you anyways, the warm weight of his jacket settling on your shoulders and insulating you from the wind. In his black, long-sleeve shirt he doesn’t even seem cold. With a sigh you pull it more fully onto you and bend upright again, inches from him.

‘Debating love indeed. See I think love and intimacy is made far too complex by a lot of people.’ He slowly rubs his hands together, forearms resting on the railing as he leans over, looking at the waves. ‘I think it comes from knowing someone. Really knowing them. Hopes and fears and memories and all of that. and choosing to be with them. Simple and complicated as that.’

‘Simple as that?’ you gape at him, holding your wind-tousled hair out of the way with one hand so you can look at him. ‘There's no way to truly know someone in one night, though. There's too much nuance for love in such a short time.’ The beating of your heart in your palms when you look at him would argue otherwise and you inhale deeply, trying to keep your center.

‘Hence why I also said complicated. But now we’re debating what love itself means.’ His gaze darts down to your lips before he meets your eyes. ‘I know plenty about you.’

You open your mouth to argue but he carries on. ‘I know you’re stubborn, given the soda earlier and the coat just now. I know you’re practical and competent - I’ve seen you at your job. I know you’re a romantic at heart, you have to be to study poetry, and even if some asshole temporarily doused that fire you look for evidence that love is real everywhere.’

Feeling raw and exposed you try to find anything to say to brush off the way his statements cut to the heart of you. ‘That doesn’t mean you - uhm - that you know me.’

The word you almost said in your haste was love and the thought makes your palms sweat. Irrational. Impossible. Everyone always says your emotions are easy to read, that they’re written all over your face, and you wonder what he sees as he watches you. The moment you said it you could see the slow smile start on his lips. At the very least he knows you’re not arguing with him as much as arguing with yourself, against what you feel.

He leans in closer so that his forehead touches yours, low voice almost a murmur. ‘But I want to know you more. I want to do a lot of things. Does that count?’

‘Count?’ If you wanted to you could press up on your toes and kiss him. The thought is intoxicating and you close your eyes, heaving a breath into your lungs.

After a long moment of thinking and waiting and wondering you finally open them again. Tao looks just as conflicted as you are - his brows tug together and the casual flirtation is gone. He holds himself still before you and something far more serious crosses his face. Though he doesn’t answer with words the look in his eyes telegraphs his feelings for you.

With a sigh he pulls back, reaching to the railing with both hands to steady himself, and you sway in his absence. He looks up at the night sky, at the moon through the clouds, and smiles. The stars peek through here and there. It’s not a cold night, just a breeze across the water to relieve the heat from the long summer day. Distantly a line of poetry comes to you, about being thirsty, parched almost, and wanting to drink him in to quench it.

Rather than indulge the dangerous impulse to touch him again you take off back down the boardwalk. Back to the city and the lights and far away from the closeness of being with him in the dark. The pressure of his thick jacket will have to be enough, for now.

‘So, where do you want to go next?’ You’re impressed you manage to sound steady.

He sticks his hands in his pockets once more and ambles after you, a small smile gracing his lips. ‘I know a place.’

As you make your way along the waterfront he turns the conversation to safer territory. You fill each other in on your jobs - how they started and what you like and don’t like. Co-workers who are dating, friends you have in common at the mall. Notorious customers. Tao has dozens of stories and his laugh is easy, his eyes bright with flirtation now that you’re both on safer ground.

Through the night you meander around the city in a vague Northward direction. Past the Science Center, it’s great white sculptures lit up. Around the Space Needle and the fountain. Another city and the streets would be deserted this late. But here there’s groups of people, laughing and splashing each other at the base of the enormous bowl that forms the center of it. You pass the occasional jogger or couple holding hands, walking home.

The two of you stop to use the restroom and get a drink of water at a 24 hour grocery store. Tao also insists on buying some snacks, chocolate and a bag of chips that you keep in the large pockets of his jacket as you progress to the edges of Lake Union.

It’s easy, being with him. His energy is calm, reassuring. He’s got a wicked and witty sense of humor you wouldn’t have expected and you easily spend half an hour looking out at the boats, making up other, naughtier names for them.

It turns out he likes X-Files just as much as you and your sister do. As you stroll along the Fremont bridge you end up taking his hand once more. The snacks are gone and you can’t resist touching him again. It must be well after midnight, but he doesn’t mention going home. Strangely, you don’t want to either. For someone who’s life has become so habitual you’re surprized you’ve not even spared a thought for your nightly routine of reading in bed with a glass of wine and a candle burning on the windowsill.

There will be other nights for that, but for tonight you let the momentum of the evening carry you along with him. You both decide to skip a visit to the Troll, not wanting to tempt any disasters. The Keds on your feet hold up well and you give a thanks to your past self for not wearing heels or sandals.

Eventually his destination becomes clear. The gates to the park are closed for the night. ‘Gas Works? This is your plan - breaking and entering?’

He nods, biting his lip. ‘Yep. I know a way in. The nighttime view is unbeatable.’

You hold out your hands, gesturing to the enormous PARK HOURS: DAWN TIL DUSK sign.

‘Afraid of being caught?’

You roll your eyes. ‘Yes, actually. I don’t think getting arrested for trespassing would be a great thing for my resume.’

Tao considers before backing towards the edge of the fence with a smirk. ‘Come on. How about a little mischief here ‘upon the honey’d middle of the night’?’

‘You know Keats?’ It leaves you breathless, rooted to the ground. It’s not from your favorite poem, but he is your favorite poet. A good guess or has he been doing his research?

‘Of course. Don’t you?’ Tao teases, folding back a corner of the fence and easing himself through.

You scoff and charge after him. The smug bastard can’t just quote Keats and then run away from you. Once again you want to kiss the proud look off his face, to rattle him the way he seems so capable of rattling you, getting underneath your surface. With a last thought to your reputation you step through after him and a thrill runs down your spine.

The rusted red containers and machines that form the center of the park are tall ghosts in the night, rising from the grass and casting long shadows around you in the distant light from the city. He holds out his hand and you easily catch it, both of you winding your way carefully around the gentle hills to make your way to the view.

You find a suitable spot and sit down on the grass. ‘You’re right,’ you tell him reluctantly.

‘About what?’ Tao sits beside you, linking his hands over his knees. He sits near enough you can feel his thigh pressing against yours. Close, always so close, but not as close as you want him.

‘About this.’ You gesture to the Seattle skyline in front of you.

Sure you’ve been in the daytime, watching the boats sail on Lake Union and the groups of yoga practitioners and families with young kids fill the grassy slopes down to the water. But by night the lights of the city look like a painting. Skyscrapers touching the clouds as the first hints of sun are lightening the horizon.

‘I thought you’d enjoy it.’ He nudges you with his shoulder and smiles at you.

The gentle sounds of the water below is relaxing. Even as you lift your hand to cover a yawn you don’t truly feel tired, like the night and closeness to him could keep you awake forever, if you let them. But even so, dawn is coming and you think back to the reason that you’re both here.

‘So. About that bet?’ Your words are a sigh and somewhere between the late hours and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles you don’t second guess the question.

He side eyes you and can’t smother the grin on his face. ‘You mean the one about if we can fall in love in one night?’

‘Yes, that.’ It must be the lack of sleep causing the giddiness you feel, you tell yourself, as you lean back against the grass and cover your face with your hands.

His own hands find yours and you turn to see him on his side next to you. Gently he pulls them down, holding them to his chest, so he can look you in the eyes. ‘Hmm, I don’t know about love, but I feel a whole hell of a lot right now. We never came up with an objective definition of it, anyways.’

You snort. ‘Did you honestly just say ‘objective definition?’’

‘Yes, I think if we’re going to agree here, we need to be on the same page.’ With his intense focus on yours he brushes a kiss against the backs of your hands. ‘If we say love is a feeling, who’s to say that we aren’t in love? If we decide it’s an action then which one is it? A kiss or a commitment or - maybe it’s nothing more complicated than putting words to the way I feel when you look at me?’

The smile blooms across your face and right then you’re tempted to say it’s all of them. How much you want his mouth on yours and his hands all over you. How you’re not quite sure you know how to have a relationship with a man anymore, after your ex, but that you want to try with him. How wild and free you feel being next to him.

‘I don’t know about -’ you whisper. You let the truth fall out, not bothering to think about what it might mean. ‘Long term or after tonight. But I’d say, much that I hate to admit Baekhyun could be right, I’d say… uhm, he could be right.’

You avoid Tao’s eyes, focusing on his jaw or the fabric of his shirt or the way his hands hold yours. But still you see how he smiles, almost glowing in the light of the moon and the barest reflection of the sun coloring the skyline to your left.

He clears his throat, pressing another kiss to your hand. ‘Well, I'd look at it this way. Let's say we do get together. Maybe we last a month or maybe we last for the rest of our lives. Another fifty or sixty years. In either of those cases tonight would be just a fraction of the relationship. A small sliver. Important when looking at the broad view of a life together, but not crucial by itself.’

With a nod you look at him and the heat in his eyes makes you gasp. He moves over you, releasing your hands to brace himself on the ground behind your head. The sturdy press of his body reminds you this isn’t a movie or a dream, it’s something real that’s happening to you. The cool grass sinks into your dress at your back and brushes against your thighs.

'Or.' His hot breath cascades across your lips. 'If all we have is tonight.' Moving himself to the side he runs his nose along your jaw, mouth teasing the skin of your neck with barely there kisses. 'One night would be everything. For all the marbles, as they say.' He pulls back and looks at you with a lopsided grin.

You huff out a breath, blowing your bangs out of your eyes, absently running your hands across his shoulders, along his chest. 'I don't know. I like knowing there's always time for more. Like - what if I was tired tonight or hungry or cranky and I messed it up? The thought of just one night still makes me nervous.’

He kisses your forehead and the words come faster, as if hurried along by the morning. ‘If we're a forever thing, then it's okay, because there will be a thousand more chances to get it right. But just once? How can it be perfect if it's so brief?'

'Well, even if we do get together we'd still only have one first kiss.' He rests on one elbow and uses his free hand to cup your jaw, clearing his throat around the roughness of his voice. 'Do you want to wait or shall we attempt perfection tonight?'

The thought of waiting any longer makes you far sadder and you nod. ‘Screw it - kiss me. Please?’

Instead of answering he simply drops his head, closing the distance and sealing his mouth over yours. He groans at the contact, the sound vibrating in his chest where it rests against yours. You grip his neck, winding your fingers through the strands of his hair and hold on, to ground yourself, between him and the grass as he slowly, hungrily, kisses you.

Your eyes flutter for a moment as he sucks on your lower lip. Behind him the sky is bright, the rays of light spilling through the clouds and rendering him art himself. The arch of his brows, full of emotion. You squeeze your eyes closed and hold him tight, grazing his neck with your nails and sighing into his open mouth. Before you can kiss him again he pulls back, his cheeks flushed and his eyes full of delight.

‘That was pretty damn good.’ He huffs out a laugh, running his tongue along his lower lip like he’s trying to keep the taste of you close. ‘Are you sure you want to risk another one? It could be -’

‘Yes,’ you answer immediately. ‘Again.’

He grins and buries his face in your neck, his hot breath falling on your sensitive skin. ‘I think we’ve found the crucial difference between us.’ At your hum he carries on. ‘I can take one moment and hold onto it forever, perpetually living off the way it felt. You want to have it over and over again. And here I thought you were the poet.’

Rolling onto his back he pulls you on top of him with a squeal as you right yourself, bracing hands on his shoulders for balance. His hand rests against your cheek. ‘But if it helps. I - feel the same way.’

‘Oh.’ To keep your surprise and delight from exploding all over your face you bite your lip. ‘Alright then.’ You trace patterns in the fabric covering his chest.

It’s as simple and as complicated as that, just like he said, hours ago.

As the day rises full and bright with the heat of the sun you do indeed kiss again. Several more times. When you’re both red lipped and thirsty and covered in wrinkled clothes you head back to your apartment by UW. He gives you a piggy back ride when your feet start to hurt and helps you make breakfast with a sleepy smile and runs his fingers over the covers of the numerous books stacked on every surface of your apartment and all the while the feeling in your chest grows, not diminishes.

You hurry through a shower and getting dressed for work while he patiently waits on the couch. His eyes are closed when you emerge, putting your hair back in a ponytail. Leaning against the door frame you watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest. You stifle a yawn and think of how not twelve hours ago you didn’t know what his skin felt like beneath your palms or what he’d be like to kiss or how perfectly your bodies seem to line up.

Tomorrow, or perhaps later tonight, you’ll have to report back to Baekhyun and your sister. Though you still have no idea what you’ll say when he asks if the two of you fell in love in one night, you know that, at the very least, it was the start of something.

You leave Tao a note with instructions to sleep as long as he wants and a spare copy of your keys. He works his own shift tonight at Flanagan’s at two, his last one before he leaves on tour. Reassured that at least you’ll see him once more tonight at the party, before he’s gone for - well, you suppose you didn’t ask the specifics yet. You laugh at the thought and quietly shut the door and sprint down the steps to work.

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

It’s hardly after nine in the morning when Tao arrives. Far earlier than you were expecting, but you’ve learned that he likes to surprise you. When you see him standing in line you bite your lip, tilting your head and giving him a sleepy smile.

‘A bit early for you, isn’t it?’ You ask, friendly and professional. ‘You look like you had a long night.’

He laughs, shaking his head and resting his palms on the counter. ‘I did indeed. But it’s been over two hours since I last saw you.’

‘Oh yeah? Is that a long time, then?’ you tease him.

He whistles and leans in to whisper so only you can hear. ‘Far too long for someone in love.’

‘Love?’ The word thunders in your chest.

‘Maybe it’s too soon to know,’ he says, not backing up at all. ‘Maybe love is confirmed by time. But what I feel, whatever this is the start of, I’m greatly looking forward to.’

‘Are you sure you want to start this? You’re leaving, like, tomorrow.’ Suddenly in the light of day the reality of the situation makes your stomach flip.

He clutches his chest dramatically. ‘Don’t sound so sad, love. Please. You say that like I won’t come back.’ He reaches for your hand across the counter. ‘At least we'll have tonight. Tonight or forever, right?’

‘Exactly.’ Unable to resist you lift your hand to hold his cheek and kiss him. It was killing you not to and why not? He’s right. If it’s just one more night, you’re going to make it count.

You pull back and fill out his cup, insisting it’s your treat. Before he leaves you hold out the jar of poems. When he reads the line he laughs, holding it out to you.

“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”

― Pablo Neruda

#exowritersnet #tao x reader #zitao x reader #tao scenario #tao fanfic #exo x reader #exo au #exo fanfic #exo scenario #exo imagine #exodus mall

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vercopaanir · 4 years

Text

Who You Are

The Lovely Moons, Chapter 5

Masterlist for this series

Pairing: The Mandalorian x Blind!Reader

Summary: Just when things begin to settle, a dogfight between the Mandalorian and another bounty hunter leaves you injured, stranded on Tatooine, and in need of money.

Rating, Warnings: None. I honestly don’t think I’ve needed to warn for anything so far, but if I miss something, please let me know!

Notes: This chapter contains some Mando’a that I found via the internet. Translations are at the bottom, and inspired by @themandjalorian’s “i imagine how your name would sound.” It was the first story I read from this universe, so I dedicate this part to her! Go read her things! This is also on AO3. Also, I did write in a part directly from the show. I’ll try not to do this too much in the future, but let me know what you think!

Ever since your argument on Quanera, you and the Mandalorian fall into a comfortable, if not an easy rhythm.

It goes something like this.

In the mornings, you take the baby outside and let him run through the grass, which is almost too tall for him to see over. He often chases insects and climbs on top of small rocks. One afternoon, just before it started to rain, he picks every blue flower he can find, and when you both return to the Razor Crest as the heavens open up, he waddles up to the Mandalorian to present the drooping bouquet.

The bounty hunter kneels on the floor of the hull, using a soldering iron to fix the wiring of one of the ship’s consoles, but he sets it carefully aside to take the wilting flowers from the child. “Thank you,” he whispers, resting his gloved hand on the baby’s head with gentle affection. You see, later that evening before you retire to bed, the pale blue flowers resting in a clay cup of water on the control panel of the cockpit.

After a little exercise, you feed the baby mashed fruit, and he tends to try to feed his stuffed bantha toy some, too. You have already washed it more times than you thought possible, sure it will fall apart any day, now.

Then, in the afternoons as the child sleeps, you find things to keep yourself occupied. One day, you walk up behind the Mandalorian while he cleans one of his many weapons. The noises of scrubbing and tinkering draw you over, but you cannot tell what weapon he’s disassembled. The small table is absolutely littered with different parts, gears, and oiled cloths. It would look the same to you whether you were blind or not. But it’s the bit of light shining through the holes of his cloak that cause you to frown.

“This isn’t the one you lent me,” you say, picking up the hem. You feel with your fingers the holes and tatters. One portion of fabric is nearly worn away entirely.

He turns his helmet towards you, pausing his ministrations of scrubbing off the carbon of the barrel of a gun. “No.”

“Why don’t you wear the other?”

There is a heavy pause where he grows very still, and you have the distinct impression he isn’t actually looking at you.

“Because you’re wearing it.”

A blush blooms in both your cheeks, and you flex your fingers over the fabric that you still hold between your hands. You have taken to wearing the cloak whenever you go outside, since Quanera’s air is still cooler than what you were accustomed to. It does not seem to phase the Mandalorian at all, and he hasn’t asked for his cloak back. You use it as a lap blanket when you join him in the cockpit, either perched in the pilot’s chair to practice your landing and take-off, or nodding off in the co-pilot’s seat. You prefer it to the hull, since there’s more light, and the three of you are together.

“That’s ridiculous,” you finally insist, ignoring how weak your voice sounds. With a frown, you step closer behind him, and you rest both hands on his pauldrons. “Here, take it off.”

Immediately, he grows so tense you can taste it in the air. You tilt your head, trying to gauge what the problem is. “I have a needle and thread,” you say after a moment, fingering the fabric where his shoulder and neck meet. “I may be blind, but I can sew a hole or two.”

You see the moment his shoulders drop by inches, and for a moment, he continues to remain still. You don’t think he is actually going to acquiesce from how long he hesitates, but then he turns back to the gun he is cleaning and mutters, “Suit yourself.”

With a short sigh, you begin removing the pauldrons that secure the cloak beneath, your fingers working beneath the beskar to locate the leather straps that keep them secure. The armor itself draws your attention as you lift one shoulder guard between your hands, and you form an idea. He appears distracted enough, so you remove the other before taking the cloak and both pieces of beskar with you.

The Mandalorian finds you that evening sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, one leg crossed over the other as you feel with your fingers every stitch you made, careful not to prick yourself and bleed all over it. In the pilot’s chair, his pauldrons shone like beacons, freshly polished and his thicker cloak you’d been borrowing folded nicely underneath.

“I gave this one to you,” he had said, sounding tired and petulant. His voice was thick with another emotion you can’t put your finger on, and you lift your chin up and set your sewing in your lap, the well-worn cloak resembling a black banner against your legs.

“And now I’m giving it back. It’s terribly heavy,” you insist with a wave of your hand, looking back down at the seams you’ve created on the thinner one you were mending.

“Then-then I’ll get you another one,” the Mandalorian huffs, sounding endearingly irritated. He begins to put the armor back on, thorough and precise with every movement. “That thing isn’t worth the thread you’re using on it.”

“You were wearing it.” It’s an accusation, and you mean it that way. His armor is beautiful, but what should keep him warm is so thin even you can see through it. “Besides, I don’t intend to wear it.”

And you don’t. What you do is reline the child’s cradle, using the older, thinner blankets as padding and attaching the newly mended cloak on top. You notice the little one burrow under the blankets more than once, and one evening when you pick him up, his ears feel near to freezing off. This project takes you several days to complete, your penchant for a well-done job motivating you to perfect the cushion of the cradle and securing the lining in neat, hemmed rows.

When the baby finally crawls in, he practically bounces from the soft stuffing, cooing in wonder. You cannot keep from beaming with pride at your work, your fingers a bit more stiff and sore than before, but it is worth it to see the child fall asleep so quickly. You wonder if he is comforted by the scent of his father.

The Mandalorian says nothing of it. He finds some work collecting a renegade mechanic who had stolen a ship from Cantonica, and when he returns-wearing the cloak you’d forced back onto him-he seems too tired to even hold a conversation. You manage to take off without needing his supervision, and you assure him you would let him know if you needed help.

Returning to your own bunk that night, you find bolts of fabric that have your mouth falling open. The different textures feel as silky as water against your fingers, softer than anything you’ve ever worn before, in shades of the sea. Blues, greens, greys, darker but rich in a quality you could never afford. Your eyes sting at the kind gesture, unsure what to make of such a gift.

You stay up that night until the sun appears on the horizon, sewing and hemming until your fingers are too raw to even pick the child up, but you know the Mandalorian sees the midnight blue dress that replaces the old threadbare clothing you wore before. He even helps secure the cloak you’ve sewn for yourself, his leather gloves whispering over the pewter material when he fastens it at your shoulders before going out with the child.

That was this morning, before you took off. Now, you’ve set course to a planet called Nevarro, where the Mandalorian says he needs to speak with a business associate from the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. You have plenty of curiosity for the venture, but now you are distracted.

There are few sounds in the world that make you as happy as listening to the child laugh. The burbling squeal, thick with joy, makes your face crease with a helpless grin as you lounge in the pilot’s seat in the Razor Crest’s cockpit. The ship is currently cruising on autopilot, and you are facing the co-pilot seats where the child is propped up in his cradle in one, flailing his arms and hiccupping with laughter as the Mandalorian sits across from him, attempting to speak sternly in Mando’a.

“Ori’skraan,” the Mandalorian is saying, holding out a small bite of a herb encrusted bread to the child. When the child simply giggles so hard his ears fluttered up, you can’t keep from laughing either, covering your mouth. The Mandalorian chokes on his own chuckle, dropping his helmet forward and shaking his head side to side. “Epar, verd’ika!” he insists, wagging the bit of food at the small green creature.

The baby falls back into his cradle, giggling and kicking his little feet in joy at the Mandalorian’s fruitless language lesson, and you throw your own head back with laughter.

“He’ll starve at this rate,” the bounty hunter snorts, dropping the small slice of bread onto the plate he’d brought for the child.

“Oh, I doubt that,” you snicker, missing the way the gleaming helmet with it’s sharpened visor tilts towards you. “And I have a feeling that he’s taking in every single thing you’re saying. One day he’ll just simply start speaking full sentences.”

The Mandalorian glances from you to the child, then back again, radiating skepticism. The baby still wobbles from his laughter, toddling back upwards to grin with all his teeth. When the bounty hunter looks down at him, the child tilts his head as if daring the armored warrior to continue.

“Duraani, burc’ya?”

Immediately, the child squeals laughing, and you have the rare pleasure of listening to a true belly laugh modulate from the Mandalorian’s helmet, his armor nearly shaking with laughter. He leans forward in the co-pilot’s seat and lifts the baby out of the makeshift cradle, setting him in his lap. Your eyes slip closed as you savor the sweet sounds of receding laughter echoing off the metal walls of the ship, a small smile on your face.

When the Mandalorian speaks again, his voice is soft, almost too quiet for even the modulator to pick up. “Ni kyr’tayl gai sa’ad,” he murmurs to the child, and you open your eyes in time to see him do something you find incredibly strange. He bows his head and taps the smooth beskar crown of his helmet to the child’s little wrinkled forehead. The tiny three fingered hands reach up to pat just beneath the visor, and the baby coos in response.

It is one of the most tender sights you’ve ever witnessed, and you’re compelled to turn your eyes away.

“Mesh’la,” whispers the Mandalorian, and when you turn back, you find that both the bounty hunter and the child are gazing at you. The child coos in his arms, looking up at the armored guardian before blinking back at you. If you didn’t know better, he seemed to understand.

“What are you telling him?” you ask with a soft smile, raising your eyebrows when the beskar helmet looks away from you. Amused suspicion lingers in your voice, not trusting the conspiratorial tone of the hunter or the curious ear perk of the little one he holds.

“I am telling him who you are.”

The quiet, reverent way he says the simple words stirs something in your heart, and your mouth goes dry as bones. You certainly do not speak Mando’a, which he’s certainly exploiting in the moment, but you suddenly desire fluency from the gentle, beautiful language from the way he speaks it alone.

And then, everything falls apart.

A thundering explosion throws everyone and everything in the cockpit forward, the Razor Crest lurching from the hit of enemy fire. You’re thrown to the side right out of the chair and land half sprawled across the control panel. A sudden impact to your side from a gear shift radiates pain all the way from your hip to your shoulder, and you can’t muffle the painful cry that bursts from your mouth.

The Mandalorian hits the wall of the cockpit, turning his body just in time so he absorbs the fall and the child in his arms doesn’t smash into the metal siding. You shove yourself up, scrabbling for the controls, and you pull the ship up, every instruction and piece of advice the Mandalorian had instilled in you falling into place. The whole right side of your body is burning with discomfort, and when the bounty hunter grabs your shoulders and pulls you out of the seat, you can’t help the dry sob that tumbles from your throat.

“Move!”

You change places, stumbling quickly to the co-pilot’s chair and struggle with the buckles. They click in place not a moment too soon, because all of the sudden the ship is crashing into a high speed, and you shut your eyes from dizziness.

A voice breaks the silence over the communications link. “Gotcha, Mando!”

The vocoder is all static when the Mandalorian growls with annoyance, gloved hands conducting a symphony over the controls to push the Razor Crest into flying maneuvers that leave your stomach somewhere down in the hull of the ship. With the thrusters fully engaged, the ship is flying faster than you’ve ever experienced, and it seems the child feels the same terrifying tension you do.

You reach over as best you can, lifting him from his cradle and wrapping your arms around him, focusing on how he nuzzles beneath your neck and coos at the attention rather than the pain radiating in your side.

“Hand over the child, Mando,” a voice hums over the communications link, and you realize belatedly what’s actually happening. He had told you the Empire was after the little one, that there was danger hanging over his head wherever he went. Your heart begins to pound in your breast, and you know the child can feel it, because he whimpers and clutches at your clothing.

Instinctively, you hold the baby closer to your body, feeling the Razor Crest dip before tilting back and up to gain speed. Another hit on the back of the ship causes it to lurch forward, and you and the child would’ve gone careening into the floor had you not been buckled in.

“I might let you live,” comes the voice again, half a threat and half a taunt.

More impact from enemy fire sends the ship shuddering, and alarms begin to go off, blaring in the cockpit. Something off to the left side of the ship implodes, and the crackling of fire on metal resounds in the walls. The baby whimpers and begins to fuss against you, and you’re only dimly aware that the Mandalorian responds to the threat by flipping several switches all the while ignoring the blaring alarms.

“Hold on.”

You slip your arms tighter around the baby, pressing your face between his ears, and you feel the ship turn quickly in a move that dodges excess fire. The red glow of the alarms distorts the cockpit, and all you can see is the gleam of the beskar helmet as he leans forward over the controls. It occurs to you in that moment that there is a certain thrill in something like this, a horrifying adrenaline rush that dangles you between safety and risk.

“Come on,” the Mandalorian mutters, angling the ship back and forth to avoid the shots.

“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold,” the pilot says over the radio, and those words sink into your stomach like a stone.

You don’t have time to consider the ramifications of the threat because the Mandalorian suddenly grabs the controls and rips them back, causing the ship to thrust backward in space. The starfighter flies past, directly overhead, and you suck in a breath when the ship clips one of the Razor Crest’s engines.

“That’s my line.”

The starfighter is in view one moment, and the next it’s a brilliant shower of sparkling vermillion clouds. The communications link dies, and the engines are shut off, allowing the Razor Crest to list in space silently.

For a long, horrible moment, the alarms going off feel like they’ll never stop, and you’re afraid you’ve forgotten how to breathe in the midst of the chaos. The Mandalorian tests a few gauges, flicking a switch or two before saying, “Losing fuel.”

With a few more quiet clicks and punches, the alarms are swallowed by the quiet and darkness of the engines powering down. The child giggles in the dark, his ears perking up and down curiously, and you’re glad he’s having fun, at least. When the Mandalorian turns in the pilot’s chair, he seems to remember the both of you and leans forward, putting his gloved hand on the baby’s head. “Are you alright?”

Your eyes are closed, head bowed to try and breathe. The panic from such jeopardy would have been one thing to deal with, but the hot pain spreading up your side from landing on the control panel is becoming harder to ignore. You bite your lip and jerk your head side to side, and there’s a shift of fabric in the darkness, followed by a quiet clink of metal on metal when the Mandalorian kneels in front of you. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I think I hurt myself when...earlier,” you frowned, trying to remember how it even happened. Everything was a blur, both mentally and physically, and it seemed like years ago now when the two of you were laughing at the child’s giggle fit. You shifted and swallowed a painful groan building in your throat. It came out as a muffled noise. “It’s hard to breathe.”

Without missing a beat, the bounty hunter takes the child from your arms and places him in the cradle in the opposite co-pilot’s chair. Turning back to you, he places a hand on your shoulder, and you suppose he must see how you’re favoring one side, holding your right arm across your abdomen.

His hand gently squeezes your shoulder, and he rumbles from behind the helmet before nodding.

He’s got a stubborn urgency about him now, leaning over you and pressing several controls. A switch clicks, and the engines power back up. He retakes his seat in the pilot’s chair, and you let out a shaky breath, the pain growing from your side like a hug-around your back and up to your chest. You listen to the beeps of the console and the radio static that hums back to life.

“This is Mos Eisley Tower. We are tracking you. Head for bay three-five, over.”

“Copy that. Locked in for three-five.”

You lean your head back against the headrest and try to ignore your heart palpitations when the engines sputter and pop, closing your eyes. When the Razor Crest lands, you are surprised at how gentle of a landing it is considering all the damage it’s taken. When you open your eyes again, it’s just as the Mandalorian is turning in his seat to look at you, and you wonder what he must see. You certainly don’t feel your best, and you think you must look it because he murmurs, “Stay here.”

The child fell asleep once the ship entered the landing program, and the bounty hunter gathers him in a blanket before disappearing down the ladder and into the hull. When he returns, you feel your throat begin to tighten at the worry of being able to breathe. It’s hurting worse now, and the pain is sharper. He says your name, but when you don’t respond, his hands are unbuckling you from the seat. Gloved fingers ghost over your temple, and your eyes lift open.

“Can you walk?”

You consider it, and the very idea of anyone lifting you up makes your entire body viscerally react with dread. You nod but add, “I need help standing-and going down the ladder.”

He nods and gives you his hand, his other resting behind your shoulder. You bite your lip on a noise building from your chest, feeling weak and useless. Surely he’s nearly come close to dying, and here you are, hardly unable to stand all because you fell. Hot tears of shame prick your eyes, and you hold onto his offered hand as he helps you down the ladder. When you start to walk the length of the hull, your head drops to the side until it’s propped up against his shoulder. His arm naturally curves around your back, but you hiss when he touches your side.

You adjust his fingers and shift them up beneath your arm, muttering a quiet thanks as he helps you walk down the ramp.

The sun is hot and the air is dry on Tatooine, and you shut your eyes against the bright light when you both step out from the shadow of the Razor Crest. So when three pit droids begin chittering and ambling toward the ship, you nearly jump out of your skin when the Mandalorian unholsters his blaster pistol and shoots with smooth fluency.

“Hey!” a shriek from within the bay makes you wince. “ Hey! ”

“You won’t make friends with warning shots,” you whisper under your breath, leaning into him as he walks with you off the ramp, still tucked under his arm. He ignores you.

“You damage one of my droids, you’ll pay for it!” A woman strides out from the operating booth, and her fiery, direct attitude is a refreshing change from the quiet and stoic atmosphere of the ship. If you had full possession of yourself, you would appreciate it more, you think.

“Just keep them away from my ship,” the Mandalorian warns, adjusting his arm behind you so that you lean more of your weight on him. Though his tone is usually the same reserved, level baritone, you notice his voice takes on a more unflinching edge when he mentions the droids.

“Yeah? You think that’s a good idea, do ya?” the woman asks, her own unflappable and direct voice a match for the bounty hunter’s. She puts one hand on her utility belt before gesturing with the other. “What’s wrong with her?”

You’ve closed your eyes again, sweat beginning to prickle your brow in the heat, or perhaps it’s from the strain of keeping yourself upright. The beskar helmet tilts down towards you before regarding the mechanic again. With no answer, and you are almost thankful for it, the mechanic gives a short sigh. “Needs a doctor? There’s one down the road.”

When both of you hesitate-, it’s easier to hear your pained breathing. The woman shifts uncomfortably, glancing between both of you before huffing. “Well why are you just standing here? Get her to the doctor!”

“But the ship-”

“Oh, it’ll be here when you get back,” she says with another huff. “And don’t think I’m not charging you every minute for it!”

The two of you set off down the sand trekked street, and you feel the Mandalorian take a deep breath. “I could carry you, and we would be there faster.” It might have been a complaint, you think, if his voice wasn’t suddenly so tender and quiet.

“If you even try, I think I’ll pass out,” you whisper, unable to fathom your body bending with the pain in your side. Underneath the armor, you wonder if he’s rolling his eyes. Surely he didn’t prepare for this contingency, and you bite your lip on the feeling of guilt remembering the baby is alone on the ship. “If I can get to the medic, you can go back. The child shouldn’t be alone.”

“I can’t just leave you,” the Mandalorian shoots quickly, his tone full of surprise.

“I’ve survived without you this long,” you murmur with a small smile, and he’s quiet at that until you reach the medical service center. The name itself is a bit too grand for the small dusty building with sand on the floor and aged equipment. You suppose your face must be washed pale from the pain, because there are several on staff who rush forward to help you when the Mandalorian shoulders you through the doors. They all ask questions and begin to escort you to the back, but the bounty hunter speaks up before they get too far.

“Wait.” Everyone freezes, and you squeeze your eyes shut. Standing and breathing are becoming two things you aren’t sure you can handle at the same time, swaying between two physicians who keep you propped up. “Be careful with her. Please.”

You don’t turn your head to look back at him, but you wonder if he remains until you’re out of sight.

Mando’a Translations:

Ori’skraan - a delicacy, a real treat in terms of food

Epar - eat

Verd’ika - “little soldier”

Duraani, burc'ya? - You looking funny at me, pal?

Ni kyr’tayl gai sa’ad - an adoption vow, literally translated “I know your name as my child.”

Mesh’la - beautiful

Taglist: @lavenderl3mons, @itzagoodthing @letaliabane @yodaswrinkles @rzrcrst @kateb013

#the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #Din Djarin has a lot on his plate #my writing #The Lovely Moons

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puppy-prose · 4 years

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How about jaskier is a dragon and determines that Geralt is very much his mate. He wants to make it official by fucking on the summer solstice, as dragons do to get married/bond. Geralt, not knowing that he's Jaskier's mate, is v. Confused when the bard starts pawing at his clothes and whining for his cock and that talk about "make me yours Geralt" but is Very Into It once he realizes just what's going on

ahh my first request!! thank you so, so much!! i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it!!

Geralt was a witcher—a very good witcher. He could sniff out a bruxae from a mile away; he could track down a wyvern from only a few drops of blood. He knew the differences between rotfiends and ghouls and alghouls, he knew how many spikes were on a manticore’s tail, he knew how to identify and defeat hundreds of monsters, creatures, and beasts of myth.

So, logically, Geralt knew he was a dragon. Jaskier was sure of it. Right?

He didn’t do a very good job of hiding it. How anyone thought he was human baffled him. He hoarded songs and scents, with his precious lite at the center of it all. Notebooks filled to the brim with lyrics and lines—not all of them his. Bags, once he had settled in with Geralt enough to trust him with it, that were always packed with oils, bath salts, and ointments. His temper, too, easy to flare, but easy to forgive. His affinity for shiny, pretty things. And perhaps the most damning of it all, the way he didn’t always act human. The half-raw meat that he never had a problem devouring; the way he always managed to find his way back to Geralt every spring without fail, no matter where on the Continent the witcher was. His unchanged youthful looks, years and years after they met.

So, Jaskier was reasonably certain, Geralt knew what he was. He’d simply not said anything because it was easier—because Geralt disliked honest and open conversations like that. So Jaskier didn’t bother to bring it up either, content in his companion’s silent acceptance.

But truth be told, Jaskier wanted more.

So he asked for it. Subtly, of course. Geralt wasn’t an emotional man—going to him and declaring his love wasn’t exactly an option. So Jaskier started slow, poking and prodding, testing his interests through his kind’s courting traditions. And when his first gift—a pair of gloves made from his own scales, the proud jeweled red dulled and dyed purposefully to keep Geralt safe when he was out stalking beasties—was accepted with a huff, a tiny smile, a roll of the eyes, and Geralt taking awfully good care of them, Jaskier knew his affections were accepted. Perhaps even returned.

More gifts, more rituals followed. Ointments of his favorite scents, carefully diluted for a witcher’s nose, to sooth his dry hands. Intricate braids done during baths, telling stories in his hair; Dutch braids for devotion, crown braids for loyalty, fishtail braids for patience, lace braids for fidelity, with all of them begrudgingly left alone until the next time he desperately needed a bath. The vernal equinox celebrated together by getting awfully drunk on honey wine, procured from the fae themselves.

And lastly, a final gift that could be an equivalent to a human’s engagement ring, he offered to Geralt a plaited bracelet made up of his lute strings, worn and representative of himself, a piece of his prized treasure and a piece of himself practically along with it. And Geralt? Well, Geralt accepted. He wore that bracelet every day, even if he pretended, quite transparently, to be only humoring Jaskier and nothing else. And that was that.

They were mates.

And today was the summer solstice.

Jaskier was antsy. Then again, Geralt was of a mind that Jaskier was always antsy. Fidgety and twitchy, always moving. Like a hummingbird, he thought. It was as if Jaskier expected himself to die if he fell still for even a single minute. But no. This was a different kind of antsy. He’d been extra energetic all day. It was as endearing as it was annoying--though he’d never admit to it.

He’d been whining about leaving the city all day, too. The little bird, always ready to fly away when bored. Gods, Geralt had a hard time hiding his small smiles as Jaskier went on about the boring foods, as he tried to bother him into heading out to the next town as soon as possible. But he’d had to hunt, unfortunately; the city had been plagued with a manticore on its outer regions, and Geralt needed the coin. So he’d had the bard wait for him at the tavern, taken care of the issue, and came back in need of a bath. Jaskier, never one to turn down a bit of pampering whether it was for himself or other people, was happy enough to do so, and they left the city on Jaskier’s insistence in the late afternoon, Geralt’s hair pulled back into a dragon’s braid.

While he’d expected Jaskier to calm as they got further away from the city, the opposite quickly proved itself true. He became more agitated, more twitchy. It prickled at the sense of amusement and content that generally followed him when Jaskier was involved, and as the sun was setting, Geralt finally pulled to a stop, leading them off into a copse of trees. “Go get wood for a fire,” he told Jaskier, hoping getting the man to sleep early that night would fix the issue. “I’ll find us something to eat.”

Together, they set up camp. Geralt had a rabbit caught quickly enough, roasted it over the open fire, and the two of them ate. All throughout the meal, Jaskier jabbered as usual--but his foot kept tapping, his fingers kept rubbing together, his words kept stumbling over themselves. And as the sun disappeared beneath the trees, Geralt caught a whiff of burnt rosemary and sweat. For whatever reason, Jaskier was getting himself worked up.

With a frown, concern marring his brow, Geralt used the tip of his boot to push into the meat of Jaskier’s thigh. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, leaving no room for argument. He wasn’t going to allow the bard to wriggle out of this--not when he’d been acting strangely all day.

Cornflower blue eyes turned up to his. “What? Oh--s’nothing.” Jaskier smiled. “Just a bit nervous, I suppose.”

The witcher’s brow arched. “Nervous?” he repeated. Yes, he could smell that. But he hadn’t expected Jaskier to give that feeling up so easily. “What about?”

“Oh, you know.” Jaskier waved his hand at the sky, his eyes catching--glinting--in the rising moon’s light. “Today was the summer solstice.”

Geralt wasn’t following. He blinked. They’d spent many solstices together. Not winter ones; not yet. One day… But plenty of summer ones. “Why?”

Whether it was the right or the wrong thing to say, Geralt couldn’t tell. It drew a laugh from his bard, slightly hysterical though, and he suddenly found himself with Jaskier’s full attention. He didn’t have that very often. The little bird flitted about here and there; he paid attention to Geralt, all the time, but to put all of his focus on him? To see those blue eyes turn focused and determined, to feel Jaskier staring into his very soul? Yeah, that was a bit intimidating.

“Silly witcher,” Jaskier replied. “This is why, of course.”

In the next moment, too quick for even Geralt’s senses to catch it--though that was likely due to surprise more than anything else--Jaskier was right before him. His breath got stuck in his throat--and then they were kissing.

Gods, Geralt had dreamed of Jaskier’s mouth on his for years. He’d wondered what it tasted like--sweet like the wine he was so fond of? Fruity and full from his dietary preferences? Deep and heady as the forest that Jaskier continued to force himself into with dogged determination? But no. He’d been wrong. It was, somehow, all of those things, and more.

He drew back a little for breath at one point, hardly registering that he’d lifted his hand to cup the nape of Jaskier’s neck, that his precocious little bird had pushed his way between his legs, on his knees before the log Geralt was sitting on. But Jaskier didn’t let him go for even long enough to open his eyes, dragging him back into another kiss. It was searing and hot, really hot, and he gave a soft, involuntary groan.

Finally, though, Jaskier moved back. It was only so he could tug and pull at the leather of Geralt’s armor, swearing under his breath as he pulled at the stubborn closures, swaying close to him and interrupting his own progress. But even with Geralt’s head still reeling from the sudden makeout session, even with him bemused by Jaskier’s usually smooth seducing capabilities turned into him fumbling with a jerkin, he didn’t miss the fact that Jaskier did not look like Jaskier.

Two horns, ivory, ridged in a spiral growing pattern, protruded from Jaskier’s head. They curved back and downwards towards his skull, before turning back up towards the night sky, the tips deadly sharp. Red scales were slowly emerging from his skin to smatter over his cheeks like rouge, like a glamor being revealed bit by bit, Geralt’s medallion not so much as twitching--ancient magic, powerful magic that slipped by even his detection. And he was fumbling, the witcher realized, because his nails had sharpened, those same jewel-toned scaled stretching up the backs of his hands, disappearing up the pale blue of his doublet.

“Dammit,” Jaskier whined, impatience thick on him, the nervous scent already beginning to fade away. “Just want you to fuck me, and this stupid--this--fuck!” He turned his eyes up to Geralt, cat-slit pupils just like the witcher’s own blown in the dark of the night, wide with his desire. “Geralt, please,” he begged, leaning in for another kiss--a kiss that Geralt didn’t refuse. And not just because he was caught off-guard by the novel sensation of being kissed with a newly forked tongue. “Please,” he continued when they broke apart, rubbing his cheek against his like a cat, like he was scenting him, the scratch of the scales not at all painful, instead kind of… Nice? “C’mon, help me, please, need you in me so bad…”

A lot of things clicked together in that moment.

Jaskier’s quick loyalty. His ability to walk hours and hours every day, nonstop. His music, the notebooks that he filled and then sent back to Oxenfurt to be kept safe. The bag of oils and creams that Geralt had not been allowed to so much as touch until two years ago, while they’d been traveling together for over a decade.

The gloves. The vernal equinox. The braids.

Fuck, the bracelet.

Jaskier saw him as his mate. And he’d been courting him, quietly, without drawing attention to it, for months now. And here they were--Jaskier believing him to have accepted his claim, Jaskier looking to seal their relationship by bonding on the night of the summer solstice, tying them together by the ancient magics of the earth for many, many centuries to come. No wonder the poor bard had been nervous.

Geralt was sort of glad he only realized now what was going on, because he knew he would have been nervous, too.

The revelation settled under his skin with surprising ease. Vesemir, should he ever catch word of how long it took him to identify a dragon that had been living side by side with him for years, would tan his hide. But all Geralt could feel was relief. His little hummingbird--or, he supposed, his little dragon, now--wasn’t going to suffer a mortal’s tragically short life. He’d live for hundreds of years more, thousands even, if he didn’t get himself killed first. And Geralt? Geralt could have every single one of those years if he accepted this. If he chose to become Jaskier’s mate.

It wasn’t really a choice at all.

Geralt’s calloused hand took Jaskier’s chin between his fingers. He dragged him up into another kiss, swallowing down the keen that fell between them, and nipped at Jaskier’s bottom lip as they pulled away. “Needy,” he huffed, a smile twitching at his mouth. He dropped his own hands to his armor; it got tossed to the forest floor quickly, Jaskier’s hands immediately setting upon the pale, scarred skin of his soon-to-be mate.

Feeling a bit vindictive for the years that Jaskier had never outright told him what he was, Geralt got hold of the bard’s doublet. He jerked the edges of it, eyes twinkling in satisfaction as the buttons popped off, no chance against his strength. “Hey,” Jaskier reprimanded, the seriousness he intended to put in his voice severely undercut by the breathy way it came out. “I liked this doublet.”

“I’ll get you a new one,” the witcher replied.

It brought a smile to his wicked, wicked mouth, and Geralt dove in for yet another bruising kiss. He pushed the doublet off Jaskier’s shoulders, the satin dropping into the dirt with as much care as his armor had gotten, and he managed to wrestle his chemise off between wet kisses. His mouth was red and wet when he pulled back; Geralt didn’t resist the urge to cup his cheek, to drag his thumb over the abused bottom lip. Jaskier, eyes dark, quickly sucked his thumb into his mouth. He had fangs now, Geralt noted absently, pressing the pad down onto his tongue until Jaskier was forced to open his mouth wide. He rubbed a small arc over the muscle, the dragon obediently still. It didn’t stop him from whimpering when drool pooled and dripped from the sides of his mouth, though.

His thumb was soaked when he pulled it from Jaskier’s tongue. He looked gorgeous--pupils dilated and wanting, chin glistening from the spit, the red of his scales seeming to bleed into the rest of his face for the way his skin was flushed with lust.

“Geralt,” Jaskier begged. “Please.”

So Geralt went.

He wrapped an arm around Jaskier’s middle and pushed him back, back, supporting his weight to keep him from slamming into the ground, but none too gentle otherwise. The roughness seemed to excite Jaskier; he moaned and wrapped his legs around the witcher’s waist, those clawed hands finding purchase behind his shoulders. Geralt didn’t mind the sting. He licked his way into Jaskier’s mouth yet again, and then let his mouth trail down, exploring the other parts of him. His scales were rough against his tongue and he had to be mindful of the direction he went to avoid getting scratched; his jaw and throat were velvety soft and tasted of sweet orange and a deep earthy musk. Jaskier’s pulse fluttered under his lips, and he paid special attention to the edges of the scales that had appeared along his collarbone as well, the dragon shivering with delight.

“Fuck me,” Jaskier pleaded. Geralt reached down between them; his hand was hot over top of Jaskier’s trousers, palming his cock underneath, making the bard’s babbling turn into high pitched whining, hips rocking up.

“Be patient,” he scolded, biting into his throat, watching a bruise blossom there. What was the use in having a dragon as a mate if he didn’t indulge in his own more animalistic urges? Yes, by the end of tonight, he’d have Jaskier claimed just as thoroughly as Jaskier had claimed him.

The bard stammered, bereft, when Geralt moved his hand. He forewent telling him to be patient again, instead hooking his fingers into Jaskier’s trousers and yanking them down, shifting until he could get them and his boots and his smallclothes off all in one go. More ruby scales wrapped around the outside of his thighs, dipped into the hollows of his hips--and his dick was definitely part of pieces of him that hadn’t quite stayed human.

Thick, red, ridged, and with a pointed tip, Geralt couldn’t help but smirk as he drew it into his hand. His little dragon cried out and he watched, fascinated, as a pearly few drops of precum beaded at the slit. It wasn’t anything like he’d fantasized about, when he’d taken himself in hand in his weaker moments when the bard was asleep, imagining what Jaskier’s cock might look like. But it was good, better than good, better than anything he could have dreamed of. Smearing his thumb into the wetness, he spread it down Jaskier’s cock, dragging his hand up and down the shaft. A few more drops appeared from the attention, and he did the same with those as well, slicking him up nicely.

He dropped his hand away, then, to get rid of the rest of his own clothes. Most people didn’t like to see him without clothes. Certainly, they enjoyed his figure, but the scars--the crisscrossing of monsters’ marks, the hunts that had gone wrong, the people that had hunted him instead painting a gruesome picture across his skin. But with Jaskier, it had never been like that. He’d never been bothered. And, considering he was about to fuck a man with scales all over, horns, and a dragon dick, Geralt supposed he wasn’t bothered, either.

Bare at last, Geralt dragged Jaskier’s hips up close. He wrapped his hand around them both, only just managing it really, and the both of them groaned at the sensation. Heat flourished between them and he jerked them off, stretching out over him to bite his stomach, his chest, his shoulders, his neck. Yes, Jaskier would be a patchwork of bruises come tomorrow morning, and by the way he jerked into each one of them, Geralt had no doubt that he was just as enthusiastic about that prospect as he was.

But as good as this was, it certainly wasn’t what either of them wanted. So he let go soon, smirking again as he wiped the sticky precum on his hand onto Jaskier’s thigh. “Knees,” he commanded, leaning back onto his own so he could reach for Jaskier’s bag. Might as well use what he had there, after all. Being his mate meant being privy to his hoard.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Jaskier listened to him. He keened but turned over, propping his hips up onto his knees. His shoulders pressed low, nearly to the dirt, and he rested his forehead on his wrists, the upturn of his horns just barely above the ground.

Geralt came back to him with a vial of lilac oil. It was one of the ones he’d begun to create for Geralt--that was to say, the scent was heavily diluted, only just strong enough for a hint of smell in consideration of his nose, and perfect for their purposes. He uncorked the vial and used his knees to open Jaskier’s legs wider; his free hand pulled one side of his ass away, leaving him free to get at his puckered hole, where he then dripped the oil down onto. Jaskier gasped and lurched, the liquid no doubt cold, but the witcher held him firm. He lathered up his own fingers, set the glass to the side, and leaned over top of him, licking and kissing the dragon’s scaled shoulder blades as he slowly, slowly sank a finger inside him.

“Geraaaalt!” Jaskier cried. Gods, if he was already this desperate, panting into the dirt and shivering with a single digit, Geralt couldn’t imagine how he’d be once he actually had his cock inside him.

“Lucky this is what it is,” he huffed, dragging Jaskier’s ear into his mouth and relishing the cry that came from it. “Otherwise I’d gag you and tie you down, make you learn some patience.” The dragon’s response was to moan wetly, shoulders shuddering, his tapered cock twitching.

Geralt pressed in a second finger, then. He kept his attention with those bites, scissoring him open, loosening him up. A third joined swiftly after; gods, they were mating, not just fucking. He was going to make sure this was good for Jaskier.

Finally, finally Jaskier was loose enough. He pulled his fingers out and grabbed the vial again, using the rest of it to slick up his cock, the subtle scent sweet between them. His hands found Jaskier’s hips; the dragon’s stomach dropped down further, ass staying in the air. “Breathe,” he said kindly. He waited until Jaskier drew a shaky breath in, out, and then in again before lining up his cock and pushing inside.

The cry of Geralt’s name was more broken syllables than anything, too loud and desperate to pronounce much of it correctly. “Fuck,” Geralt himself said, bending over the dragon. “Fuckin’ tight, Jask. Godsdammit.” He was so fucking tight, so hot around him, his body giving way each inch to the witcher’s intrusion. Jaskier could only mewl in return, his nails clawing into the rich earth, his sides heaving with each panting breath.

He bottomed out, and stayed there for a moment. Being inside Jaskier was dizzying, wonderful; he swore he could feel the air turn lighter around them, easier to breath, sparks flickering underneath his skin. Was this the ancient magic, readying to bind them? Or was this just Jaskier, was it just the fact that finally, he could give in to the feelings he’d ignored for so long, the urges he’d repressed, now that he knew not only did Jaskier feel the same way in return, but that he wouldn’t have to face his demise in what would be, for him a blink of the eye? He wasn’t sure. And, well. Quite frankly, in this moment, Geralt didn’t really give a shit.

“Fuck me,” Jaskier finally managed to say. “Geralt, my mate, please, please! Breed me, fill me up, wanna be yours!”

The words shot through him and what little patience he had left quickly fled. “You want to be bred, little dragon?” he asked, fingers tightening, bruising Jaskier’s hips. “Fine.”

A single kiss to his throat, and then Geralt pulled out to just the head of his cock. In one smooth, brutal motion, he slammed back into Jaskier. It sent the dragon rocking forward a few inches--it sent him roaring, the mighty sound seeming to shake the very trees around them. It was fucking hot, Geralt had to admit, and he groaned before he did it again, and again, setting a merciless pace. He’d never been much of a talker during sex, but he found himself rambling now, bearing his weight down on Jaskier, driving into that tight, wet heat.

“Like it, don’t you, Jask?” he asked, breathing too hard himself to properly bite for the moment, little strands of hair come loose from his braid and before his face, making him look wild, animalistic. “Wanna be bred like the bitch that you are. Fucked in the dirt. Look at you. Such a noble, proud beast. Taking every inch of a beast-slayer’s cock.” Jaskier sobbed, the sound wet, but he kept rocking his hips back into every thrust. They’d traveled together far too long; after the nights Geralt had been forced to listen to through thin inn doors, he knew better than anyone how rough, cruel words could reduce the bard to putty in any man’s hand. The best part? Now they were his hands. And there would never be anyone else.

The thrill of the thought shot through him. Geralt wrapped his arm tight around his middle; his other hand reached up, grabbing onto the base of one of Jaskier’s horns. He used the leverage to haul him up, going back on his own haunches and making the dragon sit on his lap, his cock driving in deeper, brushing against the bundle of nerves so far inside him. Jaskier thrashed, his nails digging into Geralt’s arm, drawing blood; the witcher didn’t mind, holding him through it, keeping his head still even as he fucked up into him, unforgiving and fast. “You’re mine,” he growled. “All mine.”

Jaskier nodded quickly, gasping for breath, only just getting enough air each time to expel it in some noise or another. The tingling under his skin got stronger--definitely the ancient magic, then. Especially considering he watched as sparks of golden light glittering below Jaskier’s skin, barely noticeable, like the chaos was struggling to burst free at any moment. Geralt suspected he looked much the same.

“Gonna breed you,” he promised, tightening his arm around him. “Mate you. Make you mine forever.”

Without warning, he shoved them both to the ground once again. His cock drove into Jaskier and the dragon roared again; Geralt’s hands moved to grab his wrists, push them into the dirt. He used his weight, every inch of their bodies flush together, to keep Jaskier down. And, with the both of them getting closer and closer, he gave in to the beast side of himself. His teeth, sharp and pointed, sliced into the back of Jaskier’s neck. Blood welled up in his mouth immediately, copper and sharp, but he didn’t let go, Jaskier’s pained moan doing little but encouraging him, pinning him against the earth.

It was too much. Jaskier’s sounds got louder, more desperate, more unhinged, before he screamed, his whole body quivering with the force of his climax. His cock pulsed as he came, streaks of white painting the dirt below and flecking onto his stomach above, too. It made his walls tighten around Geralt--and that was it. He was done for. The witcher growled and bit down tighter, his thrusts growing erratic, wild.

With a snarl, he came. He rocked his hips down into Jaskier as he filled him, splashing hot cum inside him, the dragon whimpering. The tingling grew in intensity for just a moment--and then it faded away, leaving him feeling whole in a place in his very soul he hadn’t realized he’d been empty beforehand.

A few more little thrusts and then, with care, he slid his teeth from his neck and pulled his softening cock from Jaskier’s tired body. He grabbed a rag from one of the bags and wiped them both down, pausing for a moment to watch his own cum leak out of Jaskier’s red, loose hole and down his thighs, before getting them clean and, with effort, transporting them both into one of the sleeping rolls.

Face to face with Jaskier, the poor bard blinking slowly, languidly, he couldn’t help but smile and lift his hand. His fingers brushed over the scales on his cheeks, utterly gorgeous.

“Mm,” the dragon hummed, forcing his eyes to flutter open. “My mate.” Nothing could change that now. Not a mage, not a spell, not even destiny herself. Geralt was his, and he was Geralt’s. End of story.

The smile Geralt gave in return was soft, genuine. His golden gaze was gentle, and he gave a tiny nod. “Yes,” he confirmed, barely a rumble in the night air. “Sleep, now. You deserve the rest.” He let his hand fall to Jaskier’s side instead, holding him close. Jaskier gave a gentle hum, shifted a little bit closer, closed his eyes--and slept.

#geraskier #devilkin-kink #my writing //#filled requests //#lemons //

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wangxiangiftexchange · 3 years

Text

Winter Solstice Gift for sjcatenacci

For @sjcatenacci <3

Read on AO3

*****

Last Love Song

He stands in the middle of a forest. The mist is so heavy that he can barely see the trees in front of him. It curls around him, icy fingers slipping along his ankles. His legs tremble with the need to run, to find his way back home. Turning his head reveals only more dark gnarled winter woods. The sun is lost to him, leaving him in a black and white world.

“A’Zhan!”

A voice calls to him, echoing through the trees. He spins around, his head snapping right, left. He wants to call back, ask for help, tell the voice how lost he is. As soon as he opens his mouth the mist swirls up his chest over his lips. His voice is trapped in his throat. He feels as if he is choking on it.

“A’Zhan, hurry! Let's play,” the voice tinkles merrily.

A musical laugh fills the woods, chasing the cold around his heart. A shadow moves at the corner of his eye. He is slow to turn. Too slow. By the time he looks, it’s only a hint of red weaving through the trees. He wants to follow. Somehow he knows that he has nothing to fear from the laughing shadow.

“A’Zhan, hurry up and find me, so we can play again.”

He closes his eyes and searches for the strength that gets him through each day. The strength to move, to call out, to find the playful voice in the woods. He takes a deep breath, pulling in the frozen air until it burns his lungs. He pushes out fire.

“A’Ying!”

Lan Wangji's eyes snapped open. His throat was raw and the notes of a name lost to the past filled the Jingshi. He’d had the same dream for as long as he could remember. At first it was once in a while— normally after a long day of studies. The closer he came to his auspicious day, the more the dream haunted him. He brushed a hand over his damp face, wiping away the tear tracks. No matter what his subconscious and heart wanted, his mind knew that Wei Ying was gone.

His memories of Wei Ying were clouded by the long years. The last time he saw Wei Ying, he had watched him descend the stairs of Cloud Recesses with his parents. His small body half-turned, arm waving wildly with a promise to return soon. The grief of losing his mother, so soon after Wei Ying left, had further clouded his memories.

For a while he received pictures and letters in messy handwriting from Wei Ying. Until one day when Lan Wangji was eight the letters stopped. He begged Uncle and Brother to find Wei Ying and his parents. Sent letters to the last inn they had called home. But no matter how many letters he sent, no one had seen the Wei family. When he was ten, his Uncle informed him that Wei Ying's parents had died years ago and there was no sign of Wei Ying. Lan Wangji secluded himself from his family and the world. When he emerged he was an emotionless jade statue.

Lan Wangji focused on his studies and training. He wanted to make his mind and body stronger so that he could start his own search for Wei Ying.

On the day he turned seventeen, his Uncle and elders sat him down and told him he was to be married to the Jiang sect’s head disciple. He was told he would be happy with his match. It was for the good of the sect, the good of his family. It was his duty. He refused. It took months of silent arguments, of his Uncle’s anger, and a cold trail in Yilling for Lan Wangji to consent. He would do his duty.

As the years passed he refused to know anything about his betrothed. When his brother or Uncle invited the Jiang Sect to Cloud Recesses, Lan Wangji would disappear into the back mountains until they were gone. While he had agreed to the marriage: he had no intention to court or familiarize himself with the stranger about to invade his life.

The closer the wedding grew the more Wei Ying was on his mind. The dreams haunted him in his sleep and Wei Ying’s shadow followed him along during the day. He heard laughter in the trees. His name on the wind. He awoke day after day in tears calling out to his lost friend. He was so exhausted that he was unable to eat.

The Jiang sect would arrive the next day and the final wedding preparations were to commence the day after. He was out of time.

Lan Wangji would be married in two days' time and his heart and soul were screaming for him to stop it. To get away. His brother was busy and Uncle was caught up in preparation. If he was going to sneak away, it needed to be today.

It was easier than he expected to climb over the wall and get down the mountain without being seen. He wore a hooded cloak that covered his headband when he purchased a horse in town and rode south as fast and far as he could go until the horse needed to stop. The sun was setting by the time he reached the next town. He found an inn large enough to offer a stable for his horse. The tables inside were mostly full of locals. Lan Wangi found a small table toward the back, passing a man who held the attention of half the room telling stories and causing the room to explode with laughter.

“Hello, young master. Can I bring you a bottle of our house wine and a warm bowl of soup?” the server asked when he sat down.

The refusal was on the tip of his tongue; he’d never drank before. He had never understood the need to impair his mind. He had also never run away from his responsibilities before, so tonight was a time for firsts. He gave the server his consent and imagined what his family was doing at this time. Had they discovered his disappearance? Had they started to search? Was he far enough away that he could enjoy one last night with his memories before he gave in? Lan Wangji knew that he would return, but tonight he would finally say goodbye to his friend.

He quietly watched the room, blocking out the noise and watching the faces around him. The young man holding court in the middle of the room wore black robes, hair up in a ponytail wrapped with a red ribbon. Lan Wangji could only see the side of his face. When it seemed like he would turn in his direction, Lan Wangji’s server returned with his order.

The soup was a warm broth with fresh vegetables. It settled the unease in his stomach. He poured himself a cup of wine and held it in his hand. He was not sure if he was supposed to sip the drink or throw it back into his mouth as he saw the man in black do. Deciding on somewhere in the middle he lifted the drink to his mouth and tilted it back. Sweet fire burned down his throat. His lips tingled and the breath he’d unconsciously been holding escaped with an audible whoosh. It was sweeter than he preferred, but it wasn’t bad.

His fingers brushed the bottle when he reached out to pour another round. He closed and opened his eyes, trying to concentrate on the bottle in front of him. The vision in front of him blurred and doubled. Lan Wangji shook his head and tried to reach out again. The second time he knocked the bottle to the side off the table; he followed it down. The hood covered him and blocked out the firelight creating a warm place to settle into. He decided the table was a perfect place to rest his head.

Lan Wangji didn’t not know how long he rested his eyes. When his arm was grasped and a warm voice was by his ear he rolled his head to the side, looking up. A hand lifted the corner of the hood. Silver eyes pulled him back to the moment. A wide smile across a beautiful face. Lan Wangji felt his heart skip and he blinked.

“Oh. There you are, Sleeping Beauty. Are you okay now?” The man’s voice was full of suppressed laughter.

The room shifted and his breath caught. Everything around him blurred and took on a hazy edge. All but the man in front of him. His features were sharp, the curve of his full lips upturned, the dark hair caressing his cheek. His dreams had never shown him Wei Ying as more than a blur. He could never have imagined the soft crinkle around his silver eyes. He never thought how his face would change through the years. Somehow on this last night he was able to see the possibility of Wei Ying.

Reaching out to the dream in front of him Lan Wangji hesitated. If he touched the man, would he be gone? Would Lan Wangji be left alone in a room too warm and heart empty? Could he take that risk? His hand hovered inches from the apparition's face; he even could feel the breath on his fingers.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji’s words were a whisper, the sounds slurring together.

Dream Wei Ying’s brows gathered with a look of confusion. He tilted his head and looked over Lan Wangji's face. Eyes drifted up his forehead and understanding dawned over his features.

“Ah, you are a Lan? You are a little far from home, little Lan.”

Lan Wangji pulled his hood down over his forehead and he couldn't fight the need to pout.

“Oh, no, don’t pout, I won’t tell. But maybe you should head on back to your room and sleep there.”

He watched in awed fascination as emotions played over Dream Wei Ying's face. Amusement, happiness, and a hint of sadness underneath it all. When his dream took his arm and broke him out of the clouded feeling Lan Wangji launched to his feet and stumbled back knocking into a solid mass of stench and sweaty flesh. He heard a shout behind him and felt a hand land on his shoulder. Without thinking, he grabbed the hand and twisted it away, his eyes never leaving the man he mistook for Wei Ying.

This man, so similar to his lost friend, was not a dream; he was a stranger and the first person to touch him in years. His lungs burned trying to catch the breath stolen from him. His heart raced and clutched painfully in his chest. Ice crawled up his fingers and the room darkened. Lan Wangji needed air and he needed away from the stranger with silver eyes. He pushed his way out of reaching hands and walked toward the door. He missed the tussle behind him, the arms swung in anger and the man protecting his retreating back.

He stood in the middle of the street waiting for the earth to stop moving before choosing his next move. It would be unwise to ride his horse with ground so unsteady. He’d hidden Bichen in his pouch, his sword so well known his identity would be instantly recognized. Also he remembered hearing sword riding under the influence was unadvised. He did not want to be impaled by a tree limb.

Lan Wangji decided to go left back toward Gusu but his feet went right and it took a moment for his upper body to follow. Resigned to a long walk he leaned forward determined to make Yilling before sunrise.

“Little Lan, hold on. Where are you going?” The stranger ran from the inn. “How did you get so far from the inn?”

Ignoring the man, Lan Wangji kept moving forward. The man jumped in front of him, his arms out wide.

“Hold on, you can’t just head out into the night like this. Come back to the inn, sleep a little, and I will make sure you get to where you are going.”

“No,” Lan Wangji snapped before he stepped around the man.

“Wait, come on. I know your people and they’d hate it if I left you alone. Just come back with me, drink some water, and rest. Once the wine wears off I’ll leave you alone. There's no need to get yourself killed walking off a cliff in the dark.”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Wangji huffed. He blinked slowly, considering the other man’s words.

The man bent over in laughter. It filled the night and bounced off the quiet buildings. Lan Wangji closed his eyes and let the sound fill him up. He thought of a wild boy running through the woods of Cloud Recesses. Encouraging young Lan Zhan to break the rules, to play games, to enjoy life.

Wei Ying and his parents had spent a whole year at Cloud Recesses. His mother was a guest lecturer and during the day his father taught the young boys how to fish, to fight with swords and fists. For the first time in Lan Zhan’s life he was a child and each day seemed brighter than the last. He’d tell his mom of his latest adventure with Wei Ying by his side. He loved to see the way her eyes sparkled and how proud she was of his antics. He’d begged his Uncle to let Wei Ying come with him to meet his mother but he never allowed it.

As the year came to the end the boys begged to stay together with promises of future summers, future adventures. Wei Ying left with the summer and then his mother left him for good, freezing his world in a permanent winter. He set aside the boy he had been and became the perfect disciple.

He swayed to the sound of laughter, stumbled to the right. The stranger grabbed his arm but there was too much momentum to Lan Wangji’s movements. The two of them spun around. Lan Wangji enjoyed the way the stars danced so much that he tilted his head back and spun again. He remembered the way he and Wei Ying would spin around and around until they fell to the ground in a fit of giggles.

“I think there is a rule about dancing in the streets, little Lan. Maybe we should stop before you get sick.” His voice was rich with wonder.

Lan Wangji stopped spinning so he could look at the stranger. His eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Lan Wangji did not mind when the stranger reached out and brushed the stray hair on Lan Wangji’s face. This stranger might not be his Wei Ying, but he still liked the feeling of warmth that spread up his hands where he held him. The man tugged his hand and Lan Wangji let go of his restraint. He wanted to hold onto this feeling.

They stumbled back toward the inn; if Lan Wangji did most of the stumbling and the other man held him up, he wouldn’t bring it up. Walking through the crowded room, Lan Wangji felt heated glares aimed toward him. The man spoke quickly to the innkeeper and guided Lan Wangji through the room and up the stairs. Somewhere in his mind he knew he shouldn’t follow this stranger. Maybe it was the way his face reminded him of Wei Ying, maybe it was the laugh, or maybe the alcohol had allowed his mind to see what he wanted to see. The only thing Lan Wangji knew was he didn’t want the evening to end.

The room was nothing special: two beds, a table, and a privacy screen hiding the tub. Lan Wangji stumbled forward, pulled off his hood and cloak, tossed it onto the bed. He sat at the table with a plop and stared at the other man, who brought over a water jug and poured him a cup. Lan Wangji stared at the cup and waited for it to drink. When the cup didn’t move he attempted to lift his arm which also seemed to not want to listen.

“Oh, no need to be sad, little Lan. Let me help you,” the man offered with a chuckle.

He lifted the cup to his lips, and the cool drink spilled into his mouth and down his chin. The other man patted his neck with his robe and cooed at him.

“I thought Lans were forbidden from drinking? It was one of the rules that I couldn’t understand. But now that I’ve seen a Lan disciple drunk, maybe it’s not such a bad rule. Why are you so far from Gusu and breaking the rules?”

Could he tell him the truth? Tell him about the boy who was his sun and last piece of happiness. Where would he start? How would he explain the nightmares? Would he tell him how alone he has felt over the years? How his family failed him? Where would he start? Would his voice even carry over the walls he’d built around himself?

“The perfect Lan disciple does what he is told no matter what he wants. I tried something I wanted before doing what I must.” They were the most words he had spoken in years.

“Ah, and what is the Lan sect going to make you do?”

“Forced marriage.” Lan Wangji said the words in revulsion.

The man gasped and fell back away from him with wide eyes. Lan Wangji tilted his head and watched him. The man tried to speak but only a shuddered breath came out.

“Do-does that make you Lan Wangji the second young master of the Gusu Lan Clan?”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji gave a decisive nod.

“I take it the marriage was not your idea.”

Lan Wangji shook his head. It was the first time someone had asked what he wanted. His brother tried to talk to him about the wedding. He told him he’d be pleased with his betrothed. But as soon as talk of the wedding started he’d walk out of the room. He knew he disappointed his brother and disappointed his uncle but it didn’t matter.

“Why did you agree if you didn’t want it?” the other man asked in a hollow voice.

“Lan’s do their duty. This is mine.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad?” He sounded hopeful.

“No,” Lan Wangji slapped a hand down the half empty cup on the table teetering dangerously under the force.

“What would you want instead, Young Master Lan? Do you have another? Some beautiful perfect woman that will give you a perfect life. Someone you truly want to marry, someone you love?”

Lan Wangji didn’t understand why the man was angry. Why he snapped out each question.

“Never wanted to marry. Never wanted any of this. I wanted to Night Hunt, travel the world, protect the innocent. Not this, not with my betrothed.”

“What does your betrothed want? Have you asked them?”

“No reason.”

There was no reason to ask his betrothed questions when they had nothing to offer him. Only Wei Ying could read him, could know him. Wei Ying and the man beside him. Could he leave his betrothed on the altar and run off with a stranger into the night? Never return to Gusu, never see his family. Lan Wangj shook his head, he could never do it. The man was nothing more than a whisper of the person he wished to spend his life beside. His friend, his soulmate, was gone.

“Why are you so sad, Young Master? Is it the wedding? Even your forehead ribbon is crooked.”

Long slender fingers reach up Lan Wangj smacked the hand aside before he can reach it.

“No one can touch.”

“I’m sorry. Of course, only your parents, and cultivation partner. Forgive me. How about you go lay down and I'll leave you alone?”

“Don't want.” Lan Wangji glowered.

“How would your betrothed feel about you spending the night with another person? Is this what they have to look forward to? A cranky child sneaking off to sleep with others?”

Lan Wangji brows drew together. “Doesn't matter.”

“Of course. Well, it matters to me. Go sleep.”

“Bad dream, don't want to sleep.”

“What, do you want me to sing you a lullaby?” the man said with a cynical laugh.

“Mm.”

Before the man could say anything further Lan Wangji got to his feet. He pulled off his outer robe, crawled on to the bed and waited. The man muttered and threw up his arms. He moved forward, and sat on the floor beside the bed.

“Close your eyes, Lan Wangji. I’ll sing you one last love song.”

Lan Wangji’e eyes were already closed, the lids heavy. He wanted to protest the other man’s familiarity. He couldn’t move. He felt a weight settle around him and pull him down into the mattress. The man hummed a soft tune, it filled Lan Wangji with mournful longing. He knew this song, had heard it before, but his mind was cloudy and he couldn’t place where he heard it before.

He kneels in front of his mother's house, snow falls around him. But he only feels numb and yet he still waits. He waits for the door to open, for his mother to welcome him in. He waits for Wei Ying.

“A’Zhan, A’Zhan, I’m here. It’s so cold. We need to go inside.”

Tiny fingers slip into his cold hand. Lan Zhan turns to the side, pulled against a thin chest. For the first time since the moment he was told his mother was gone he starts to cry. Wei Ying is here and he doesn’t have to hide anymore. Wei Ying holds him and starts to sing.

Morning came with a blurry memory and pounding headache. Lan Wangji groaned and his hand went to his forehead. He tried to piece together his night. He remembered the inn, remembered taking a drink of wine but that's when things became unfocused. A confusing vision of silver eyes and wide smiles. Spinning in the street. A song almost remembered.

Lan Wangji sat up and looked around. On the table was a warm bowl of congee and fresh pot of tea. The room was empty. He ate breakfast, drank the tea, and felt better. Taking time for the bath and meditation, he felt more rested than he had for a long time. He brushed his hair, tied on his ribbon, and pulled on his robes. The main room was empty but for one man in black by the door. Lan Wangji pulled his hood down and made his way to the innkeeper. He placed a few pieces of silver on the counter, but before he could turn away, the man covered his hand and pushed the pieces back toward him.

“Everything has been covered, young master,” the innkeeper informed him.

“By who?” Lan Wangji was sure his money was all accounted for.

“By the young master by the door.”

Lan Wangji turned toward the door and took in the slouching man. His head was down, his feet crossed on the chair in front of him. A purple bruise on the corner of his mouth and a Jiang sect clarity bell tied to his waist. This man was a Jiang disciple and he must know his betrothed. Did he know who Lan Wangji was?

He moved closer to the man and stood over him. The man slowly lifted his head and his eyes wandered up Lan Wangji’s tall form.

"You look better this morning. Was the food and tea helpful?"

"Mn."

"Good, good. I am sure your family is looking for you, so we should part here."

"How shall I address you so that I may repay you?"

The man looked away, his nose scrunched up.

"There is no need to repay me, but you may call me Wei Wuxian, head disciple of Jiang Sect. I am nothing but a servant to my sect and a burden to my betrothed. I offer you freedom and a chance to live the life you want. Please tell my Shijie, I will write."

Wei Wuxian bowed and left the inn turning south before Lan Wangji processed what he said. That man had been a Wei and his betrothed. Was he related to Wei Ying? He walked out and in the opposite direction of Gusu. Did that mean he was breaking the arrangement? Was the wedding off?

Lan Wangji pulled his cloak tight around his chest. He felt a cold wind blowing from the north and pictured his uncle’s rage. He slipped a hand in his pocket to fight the chill and found two pieces of paper.

One was a drawing of two boys' arms slung over each other and the other was a letter. He stared at the picture and his hands started to shake. His stomach rolled as he turned to the letter.

Lan Wangji,

Forgive me for causing you so much grief and suffering over the years. I knew you were resistant, no matter what your uncle and brother told me. I thought once we talked we'd be able to come to an understanding. Develop a friendship again. I never would have demanded your love, only wanted to live beside you once again. I am sorry it took so long for me to come home to you and our friendship has suffered.

I can not abide being the cause of your suffering and I wish to end our betrothal. I wish for you to find the life you want, without the pain of duty. Don't forget to look up and watch the stars spin.

Your Friend,

Wei Ying

Lan Wangji crushed the letter in his hands and started to run. Wei Ying couldn't have gone far unless he took off by sword. He'd been so close, been inches away and he let him go.

Lan Wangji had been a fool.

More of the night played through his head as he ran through the town. He watched Wei Ying smile at him, chase after him, care for him, and sing him to sleep. He should have known he had been Wei Ying; no one had ever treated him the way Wei Ying did. No one cared for him the way Wei Ying did.

Why did he not realize sooner? Was he too late?

The trees around him blurred and morning mist curled around him. No, it couldn't be. He couldn't be dreaming—the mist was warm and his body was on fire. Did he dare call out?

A flash of red had Lan Wangji turning in time to see Wei Ying watching him from a tree.

"Wei Ying," his voice caught on a sob.

"Why did you follow me?"

"I finally found you."

"We've been betrothed since we were seventeen. It's been three years since your uncle pulled me aside at my first discussion conference. He told me you've been waiting for me to return. Said the best way to get me back to the Cloud Recesses was marriage." Wei Ying looked away from him.

Lan Wangji walked slowly through the trees, afraid he would disappear in front of him.

"I came back but you were always gone. I figured it would take time but we would figure it out together. But last night I finally understood what you were going through. The dark circles under your eyes, the gaunt face. I once thought you were my soulmate.” Wei Ying cut himself off as emotions clouded his face.

"I still am," Lan Wangji answered with hope. "I thought you were dead. That you were a dream sent to haunt me, punish me. I wasn't sure about half of what I said or did, but maybe I knew it was you. Knew that you wouldn't leave me again."

"Oh, I didn't know you knew so many words. Even as a kid you were quiet. My father used to tell me I had enough words for both of us."

His knees threatened to buckle and his hand clenched. This really was his Wei Ying, his friend and his soulmate. Only he knew of what his father teased them about.

"Wei Ying, how?"

How is he here? How are they betrothed? How did he get that bruise on his face? It didn't matter; as long as he was here they could figure out the rest.

"I never asked, never cared until now. I've been looking for you since I was first allowed out of Cloud Recesses. I never stopped looking."

Wei Ying leaned closer, "A'Zhan?"

Lan Wangi closed his eyes and felt the sun burst over him. Warmth and summer blossoms blooming in the air. This was the key to his heart. This was the missing piece.

"Wei Ying, will you still marry me? We can figure it out later but if we marry no one can separate us again."

"You said you didn't want to marry."

"I didn't want to marry a stranger, but you are Wei Ying. I will night hunt with Wei Ying, travel with Wei Ying, and stay by Wei Ying’s side. As long as Wei Ying will have me."

His ears burned and his mouth was dry. He could have been courting him for years. Could have spent years learning how he came to Jiang Sect. Learning everything about this man. He vowed to spend the rest of his life making up for it.

"There is nobody but you. I want to do that with Lan Zhan." Wei Ying reached out and took his hand.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji sighed. "Nobody but you."

Wei Ying's hand brushed over his hair and he started to hum a familiar song. A happier version unlike the dream. Or was it a memory?

"Wei Ying, were you there when my mother died?"

"Of course. I was by your side by the second day. I was so angry at you Uncle for leaving you outside, allowing you to catch a cold. So I kicked him and ran off. He was so surprised he didn't even punish me later. But I sang to you until you fell asleep every night for a week."

The worst moment of his life and Wei Ying had held him together, had stayed until the smile returned to his face. By the time Lan Wangji’s emerged from his sick bed, over a week was lost and Wei Ying was still gone.

"I had no idea you were there."

"I wanted to stay longer but my parents were called to Yiling and then they were gone and I had no idea where to find you. Uncle Jiang found me a few years later and took me in. I trained every day to get stronger. But then your Uncle found me."

His family knew, his brother and Uncle had tried to tell him. But he shut them out. Shut out the information. He’d had no faith and he lost years due to his childish behavior.

"I am sorry I did not court you."

"No, ha, imagine that. It is unnecessary. I do not need gifts or presents. I only want to get to know you again."

"Mm, I have one more question. What happened to your face?"

"Oh, this. Last night on my way to Gusu I stopped into an inn for a drink. When a beautiful man entered the room. He tried to hide but he stood out. For some reason he drank and fell asleep. I graciously checked on him and when he startled he knocked wine onto the biggest guy in the room. So to protect the young Lan disciple in honor of my betrothed, I defended him and got caught in the jaw for my troubles. You should take responsibility and kiss it better."

Lan Wangji ears burned. "Mm."

"Lan Zhan, you are too cute."

Lan Wangji stepped forward and pressed a kiss to Wei Ying’s soft cheek, sending him a little bit of spiritual energy for healing.

"Lan Zhan, so shameless."

"Mm, I will take responsibility. We must hurry to Gusu—the wedding is tomorrow."

Wei Ying yelped as Lan Zhan grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the tree. He pulled his sword from his pouch, climbed on board, and tugged on his hand.

"Will you ride with me?

Wei Ying stepped on the blade and wrapped his arms around Lan Zhan. They smiled softly at each other. They had a wedding to get to and a life to start living.

Lan Zhan hummed a new song and watched as summer returned to Gusu-Lan and his heart.

#sjcatenacci #wangxiansolstice20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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its-max-okay · 4 years

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TWIST MY ARM || plot drop .o3

Thursday 22 October 2020; Afternoon. You are halfway through your shift when an emergency patient shows up at the Triage Center. His left arm from the elbow down is missing and the stump is bleeding heavily. He is also missing several of the fingers on his right hand. He has avoided answering any and all questions about how he received these injuries but after looking them over you’re fairly certain they were blown off by an explosive device, possibly one he was working on.

This patient is a Club Strongarm and has already paid the non-Spade fee for healing.

Partway through an exhaustive anatomy study with a couple of the lower-ranked Emitters, Max might’ve been lowkey praying for something more exciting to happen. Even a sprained wrist from the training grounds could’ve spiced things up; she would’ve settled for a Command Sergeant Major with a papercut, quite frankly, but what she was ultimately delivered was much more of a handful than that.

There were two things Max was positive she should not be taking this much delight in: one, that her source of excitement was the fact that someone was horribly hurt; and two, that this was going to be her first real shot at attempting to regrow a patient’s limb. It was funny how reluctant people were to chop off so much as a finger for the sake of her practice. She couldn’t even talk Kev into it, and there was a lot he was willing to do for her.

Granted, she’d really have preferred her first go at this not be with the likes of a Strongarm, and a really fucking shifty one at that -- but beggars couldn’t be choosers, obviously, and Max wasn’t about to look a gift amputation in the mouth.

“Back right-hand room,” Max ordered, leaving little room for argument as she stepped to the side and pointed with conviction. The two propping the injured man up followed her lead without argument. A third Emitter started to fall into step, but Max caught her by the elbow to lean in and murmur, “I need you to sedate him. Put him all the way under. I don’t want him to move while I’m working, but I also don’t want him to wake up for a good while after I’m done.” Max raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Understand?”

The woman’s eyes widened for a moment before she nodded, and quickly. “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

“You’re going to help him?” Kev murmured dubiously from where he hovered at her elbow, and Max hesitated only briefly before nodding.

“We’re obviously gonna need to get more information out of him, and I’m hoping nothing can guilt trip into answering questions like, hey, you ungrateful bitch, I grew your whole arm back; throw me a bone.” Kev only looked more dubious. Max shrugged, undeterred. “Anyway, come on. You’re gonna watch.”

Kev paled.

By the time Max brushed between the curtains to assess her newest patient, the man was already heavily sedated and his shirt cut back, the wound hastily cleaned but still bleeding. Kev made an uncomfortable noise in the back of his throat that Max ignored, dragging a chair loudly from the corner to plant at the man’s side before cracking her knuckles.

This was liable to take a while.

‘Thick skin,’ she thought absently to herself, Anton’s words coming to mind as a slow sweep of her hand worked to stem the flow of blood, pinching together muscle fiber and flesh until she had a neater foundation to work on. The man’s skin didn’t look any thicker than it ought to -- and gods knew they all had a pretty clear view of that -- but as Max let her eyes unfocus and started to build on what was lost, she could feel a soft, stubborn resistance.

This was going to take a while.

The rest of the Triage center fell away. Max hadn’t even noticed if any of the other students had snuck in to watch, nor was she likely to notice if any additional emergencies felt like taking place beyond the sanctuary of their drawn curtain. She had one focus and one focus only, and that was unspooling thread after silvery thread from her core through her fingertips to fortify and pull together flesh and relentless bone. As before and as always he worked layer by layer, inside-out, taking breaks from the exhaustive thickness of his bones to fold softer layers of muscle and skin around them.

The longer she worked the heavier and heavier Max’s elbows leaned at the edge of the bed, shoulders sagging and breaths growing shallow. She’d made it so far as the wrist, and while reworking the twin radius and ulna was a whole task in and of itself, the wrist was going to be a particular bitch. There were so many individual bones in such careful alignment -- and maybe this guy didn’t deserve full range of motion in his joints for whatever dumbass thing he’d done to land himself on their doorstep, but Max was going to give it to him, anyway. Maybe she’d leave it with a weird little click when it moved a certain way; something to remember her by.

‘Asclepius, give me strength.’ The thought -- the prayer -- was intrusive, unbidden, but the sentiment stood: if the Old God was watching, if he really cared enough about one foul-mouthed Emitter and the crystal core nestled deep inside her, he could spare half a minute’s attention.

Whether or not her god heard her, apparently Kev did. Maybe she’d accidentally murmured her prayer aloud or maybe she just looked especially rough; either way, she felt the young Healer’s hands settle gently, almost reluctantly, at her shoulders. Max drew a shaky breath through a ghost of a smile and dug her heels in.

She visualized the carefully penned anatomical structures in her father’s journals, ones she’s painstakingly copied and re-copied and committed to memory. Scaphoid. Lunate. Trapezium--

Max flinched even as her thumb formed and sculpted the next delicate piece of bone, feeling the edges of even her expanded core start to fray. She wanted a chance to push her new limits, and she was getting it -- she only hoped she wouldn’t find them before she was finished.

“Trapezoid. Capitate. Hamate. Triquetrum…” Max sucked in a breath, briefly interrupting the recitation she knew by heart, knew in her sleep. Kev’s fingers gave her shoulders a reluctant but fortifying squeeze. She continued. “Pisiform. Fuck.”

Nineteen delicate bones to go. ‘Could just make it five,’ she thought to herself with a wry, borderline delirious amusement as she continued. ‘Five weird finger-sticks…’ Max cut the thought off before she made herself laugh. The metacarpals and phalanges, at least, were relatively uniform and didn’t need to slot together so particularly and delicately as the carpals.

Max could feel her esophagus tightening as she smoothed new skin over more delicate knots of muscle. ‘That’s new,’ she noted distractedly, feeling as though the rough, fuzzy edges of her expanded core were starting to bleed into and lash out at what was closest in protest of its prolonged use. It was stronger, obviously, but more petulant -- much like its owner.

By the time Max had finished the left arm down to the fingertips and neat pink fingernails, her entire insides felt like they were sandpapered raw and rebelling against her. The problem was, she wasn’t quite done. They weren’t quite done.

“Other hand.”

“Max--” Kev started reluctantly, ever the last to attempt to school her on her limits.

“Other hand.”

Kev left her only long enough to step in and reach over the man’s body to grab his opposite hand, and Max took a measure of pride both in how quickly he moved and how little he balked at the charred stumps of fingers.

With the practice from the first under her belt and the better general shape it was in, Max made comparatively quick work of the Strongarm’s other hand and the remaining few fingers even as her breaths grew ragged and thin. She didn’t even have the energy to swear when she finished, which was telling -- her head simply bowed, eyes squeezed shut and prickling, before she pushed the man’s hand off of his stomach to flop back to the other side of the table.

Kev was saying something, either to her or those nearby, and while she couldn’t hear exactly what Max still felt the briefest, most exhausted surge of pride. He’d stuck it out, and better yet, he hadn’t puked over her shoulder.

She could feel his gawkish arms trying to guide her out of the chair, and Max moved with the touch and without complaint. “Alert the General,” she insisted blearily, leaning her weight into Kev as they made their way towards the opposite far corner where he could help her onto an empty cot. “I know he’s busy… but…” The Emitter struggled to focus as she stretched out, head sinking into the pillow with a prolonged exhale, feeling her muscles and organs shifting around the shrapnel edges of her depleted core. Her face twisted into a grimace, one that only relaxed with the weight of Kev’s hand on her shoulder again. “He doesn’t have to come, but someone’s gotta… tell him what happened… and who we got…”

The high Emitter fell quiet for a moment, eyes shut and apparently relaxed. Kev shifted uncomfortably at the side of the bed, and would’ve stepped away if she hadn’t suddenly grabbed the front of his uniform.

“And get me a goddamn sandwich.” A pause. “Please.”

#solo: twist my arm #alt working title: pull my finger #zhang maxine the glorified 3D printer

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tcho-san · 4 years

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After years of writing Murdoc doing it, I decided to put all my thoughts about Muds and sex and how his personality affects his intimate relationships into a post if anyone was interested.

So here's some unsolicited ramblings under the cut for sensitive eyes.

TW: mentions of Murdoc's experiences with childhood physical and sexual abuse

Muds definitely expresses a lot of who he is via sex.

"Overeager" is the best way to describe him. He's LOUD, not just in volume, but he will not stop talking, just saying whatever comes into his mind or making strange sounds, which might be off-putting to some. For him, sex is just like kissing or holding hands; if he's going to show you affection, he's going to do it the most direct way possible. If Murdoc doesn't want to have sex when approached, something is really, really wrong.

Sex is a team sport to him, and if you're not having fun, neither is he. Nothing is off the table, he's seen and done it all, and he'll pretty much do whatever it takes to get you there, even to his own detriment. Getting someone off makes Muds feel genuinely good about himself, and it's one of the few ways he allows himself to be open, intimate, and emotionally raw with someone else.

He's not exactly what you'd call romantic. Carnal, sure, but don't expect a bed of roses or a bottle of champagne or sweet kisses. But he will absolutely bang the shit out of you in the backseat of his car till he throws his back out, showering you with (maybe strange) compliments as he does it. If you're picky about locale or privacy, Muds might not the be the ideal partner for you, as he doesn't see a problem in doing it almost anywhere at any time with little to no warning. He's the type to take what he can get when he can.

But what he lacks in the romance department, he makes up for in effort. Whatever it is you're into, he's 100% behind it and he will bend over backwards (literally) to make sure you have a good time. And he's in surprisingly good working order for being an older man.

If he's done something wrong, he's going to try to make up for it with sex rather than a straightforward apology, which is not always received well, but for him, it's a physical way of saying he's sorry (because he can't bring himself to verbally admit when he's wrong). But to a lot of partners, this comes off as disrespectful or him ignoring their feelings, which he doesn't understand. If you get into a heated argument with him, there's a 50/50 chance of the fight ending with his tongue down your throat.

He definitely sees sex as a way to prove himself, and his worth. It's something he knows he's good at and he jumps into sex with people quickly because in his mind, he's putting his best foot forward. He's not good at pretty much anything else in a relationship, he thinks, though that's not necessarily true in reality. Which is part of why when he fucks up, his first instinct (after getting angry) is to fuck the problem away because he doesn't think he can deal with another person's emotions without making them worse (and if he can't do that, he'll probably run from the problem).

He's more intense than maybe some would expect for his aloof attitude, and might be more than what you bargained for if you were just looking for a quick one-nighter. He can actually get very attached very quickly if he feels a connection with someone, so he tends to back away from that immediately for fear of it going sideways. When he's cold and distant, he's trying to distance himself to protect his own feelings, which makes a lot of partners break it off, which encourages him to behave that way since he expects people to leave. It's a vicious cycle.

Consent is extremely important to him, being the victim of sexual assault from a young age himself. He's going to be constantly asking if you want him to do something before he does it (though definitely in a cocky, teasing way), and as much of an asshole as he can be, that's one thing he's not going to push. He'll be rough if you want him to, and careful if you don't. And he honestly doesn't have a preference (though he's got a weak spot for being dominated). He's got his limits, but you'd have to push pretty hard to find them.

He's easily hurt, not physically, but emotionally during sex. Whatever you do to him is fine, but he does not take well to being ridiculed or put down. Having been bullied and abused for years, doing that to him when he's being open is extremely upsetting. Good-intentioned teasing, on the other hand, he absolutely loves, and definitely will give it as good as he gets.

There is a 20% chance he might have an emotional breakdown during or after, as it's one of the few times he'll let his guard down, and sometimes that has unintended consequences. So you'd probably, at one point or another, see him go from over-confident lover to absolute blubbering mess for seemingly no reason, and it might be about something that happened decades ago.

Committed, long-term relationships aren't usual for him, and he's not the type to get married, settle down, or have a family, even with the right person. He's extremely chaotic and he knows it. He's got Peter Pan syndrome, and doesn't like the idea of being legally tied to another person, especially when he's always expecting them to leave anyway. And after years of abuse from his father, he knows he doesn't want to be one. In my opinion, the way he is, I'm almost certain he's had himself sterilized just to make sure that doesn't happen.

That doesn't mean he's incapable of a lasting relationship, but it might be more distant than traditional. You might not see him for a few months, but when you finally do again, he's going to be tripping over himself to get you on your back to make it up to you. He might not even get out a "hello" first.

Definitely a wild ride, but maybe not the one you bargained for.

#murdoc #gorillaz #ive been writing muds having sex since 2008 im fucking old #take this all with a grain of salt its not all cannon but i think having a baseline for characters makes them easier to write #thoughts? comments? im always up for talking about this horrid man #a bunch of thoughts nobody asked for #long post

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thetimelesscycle · 3 years

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Tales of Arcadia Wizards Fanfiction: Hope Dies Last - Chapter 4

A common goal fails to foster cooperation, and questions without answers continue to perplex.

A/N: In which I am forced to try and include some actual plot and civil conversations are in short supply.

Chapter 4

A Puzzle Incomplete

To say that Merlin was furious would have been as wild an understatement as the claim that Arthur was not especially fond of magic. He was not certain there was a word for the incandescent rage boiling just beneath his skin, threatening to dissolve carefully constructed walls that had not crumbled in decades. It took a conscious effort to keep a lid on that fury as he guided his exhausted apprentice to lie down once again, the boy having spent what little strength he’d regained in a few scant minutes. Shivers still wracked his slender frame, his body reacting to the invisible wound festering beneath the surface, though at this point Merlin was more worried about his state of mind.

He had never seen Hisirdoux display such raw terror before, not even at the sword point of Arthur’s knights. Then again, Galahad had only threatened to execute him, not tear his soul to shreds and leave him with the tattered remains.

The worst part was he did not think there were meant to be any remains. Whoever had attacked his apprentice had done so with the intention of destroying him completely. They had come dangerously close to succeeding, thwarted by the boy’s own magic, which raised more questions than it answered. If Hisirdoux had encountered a creature powerful enough to wound him in this way, how was he still alive? How had a child whose own enchantments still flummoxed him fended off that sort of danger?

He wasn’t going to get any answers from Hisirdoux right now, that much was clear. His apprentice was mumbling restlessly in his sleep again, nonsensical words, the delusional arguments of an overstressed mind.

“Tell me you know how to fix this.” Archie had settled himself behind his familiar’s shoulders, one paw draped over the boy’s arm, but his eyes were fixed on Merlin, plea and demand both in that gaze. “Tell me you can help him.”

“I intend to do everything in my power, Archibald.” It wasn’t quite the same lie he’d told his apprentice, trying to soothe the boy’s panic before he did himself further injury, but it wasn’t the whole truth either; He was already doing everything in his power, it simply wasn’t enough.

“That’s not a ‘yes’.” The tiny dragon gave him a look that could almost have been called threatening. “He thinks you’re capable of anything, you know. Maybe it’s time you lived up to the legend.”

Not gracing that barbed statement with a response, he tucked the blanket back about Hisirdoux’s shoulders, pausing just long enough to rest a hand on the boy’s clammy forehead as he renewed his stasis spell for the umpteenth time. That done, he took his leave, refusing to acknowledge Archie’s lingering stare as he slipped out of the room.

Morgana was waiting for him when he reentered the workshop, pacing back and forth with long, sweeping strides, a book held open in her hands. She whirled as soon as the door opened.

“How is he?”

Straight to the point. Her and Arthur were very alike in that way. He didn’t answer at once, drifting across the room to the cluttered workbench by the stained glass windows. There was a fine layer of dust there that had gathered over the past two days, the designs he had been pouring over what seemed a lifetime ago now sitting discarded and forgotten. He sensed Morgana’s impatience as he lifted the page of sketches and idly examined its contents, dropping the weighted truth into the tense silence.

“Slipping away.” It was an inadequate description for what would happen if he didn’t find a way to stop the dark magic from finishing its work. What was confusion and spontaneous panic now would devolve into raving madness as Hisirdoux’s very essence continued to crumble. The boy was already losing memories, the spell he had cast only slowing the process, not preventing it. “I have no doubt this was an attempt to kill him.”

“Why?” Her outrage echoed his own. Where his bubbled beneath a thin veneer of self-control, hers revealed itself in a flash of righteous fury, the room rattling briefly as she paced closer. “He’s a child, Merlin!”

“That I cannot say.” His suspicions, founded on his knowledge of the type of magic it took to cause this kind of injury, seemed ludicrous. Hisirdoux was not trained enough to be a threat to anyone yet — besides himself — and certainly not enough of a danger to warrant such wanton cruelty. The being who had attacked his apprentice under Arthur’s very nose had done so with purely malicious intent. To hurt someone in that way, to threaten not only their life but their existence beyond the mortal plane as well... that was an act of pure hatred. More perturbing still, Hisirdoux appeared to have been the only target. Not even Archie had been wounded, despite the fact the pair of them shared the same bed. “Though I intend to find out.”

“I will help in any way I can,” she asserted, coming to stand on the opposite side of the work table. “What about Douxie? Is there anything he needs? Anything we can do?”

“He needs a proper healer.” Morgana scowled, and Merlin’s own glare deepened out of habit. It was a tall order. Neither of them had a gift for healing magic, formidable wizards though they might be, and those of Camelot’s dwindling magical community who were proficient in the healing arts had been some of the first victims in Arthur’s war against magic. Such individuals were typically well-known and notoriously bad at keeping themselves hidden, driven as they were to put their skills to good use. Hisirdoux had shown some aptitude for minor healing charms using his runic bracelet, but not to the level required to mend someone’s shredded spirit; Certainly not when he was the victim.

“Did he tell you what happened?” Morgana was on the hunt. He’d seen that look enough times to recognise it. “A name? A face?”

“No, not yet.” He could have pushed. It was clear Hisirdoux remembered something, and was deeply disturbed by it. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen not to force the matter. Further stress right now would only make things worse. He also had the image of his apprentice reeling away from him in abject terror ingrained in his mind, and wasn’t in any great hurry to repeat that experience. “We’ll have a chance to ask some more pertinent questions when next he wakes. In the meantime, we should continue our efforts to keep the castle secure.”

“You’re worried about Arthur.”

“He is a rather more likely candidate for assassination than my very green apprentice.”

“You haven’t even considered the possibility that you were the target, have you?” He came up short, casting her a piercing look. Morgana rolled her eyes. “Of course you haven’t. He is your apprentice, Merlin. If anyone wanted to draw you out, Douxie is by far the easiest way to reach you.”

It made a disturbing amount of sense, much as he would prefer to deny it. Anyone with even an inkling of familiarity with the royal court would be aware that he would go to Arthur’s aid as required, but the king had an enchanted blade and dozens of trained knights at his beck and call. He would not fall without a fight. Hisirdoux, on the other hand, couldn’t even fend off an enchanted broom. It was entirely possible, even probable, that anyone trying to strike down the Master Wizard would see his apprentice as the weak link in the chain.

Except, that would suggest that the person responsible believed he would set everything else aside to assure the welfare of his student. That assumption was to his advantage; Or, it would have been, had he not spent the last two days doing exactly that. Without the constant renewal of his stasis spell, Hisirdoux might not have survived long enough to regain consciousness. Putting aside his other duties had seemed the right thing to do at the time, weighed against the unnerving thought of no longer having apprentice and dragon constantly underfoot. Morgana was forcing him to face the fact his enemies may have depended upon him making that exact decision, and consider the very real possibility his eyes had deliberately been drawn away from some greater danger.

He wasn’t in the mood to entertain that thought, or to acknowledge the stark fear nipping gently at his heels, so he deliberately set them both aside. There had been no further attacks; It seemed reasonable to assume Hisirdoux was the only target for the time being, as perplexing as that was.

“There is no point speculating until we know more,” he said aloud, knowing the silence had stretched a beat too long. “Better to concentrate on securing our defenses and finding someone to help Hisirdoux.”

“You won’t find anyone in Camelot. You know that.”

That she was right didn’t make him any less aggravated by the observation. “What do you suggest, then?”

“I could try.”

He had not been expecting it, which was the only reason it took him more than a second to formulate his reply. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“I think enough damage has already been done without bringing Shadow Magic into the mix, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to hurt him!”

“No, because you will not be using your dark arts anywhere near him. I forbid it.”

She clenched her fists around the volume in her hands, the room rattling again as she stared him down in muted fury. “You know you are part of the problem, don’t you? If you didn’t spend so much time dismissing and demonising that which you don’t understand perhaps Arthur would not feel so justified in destroying every form of magic that does not serve him.”

“Rubbish.” He waved the words away. “We both know where Arthur’s hatred of magic stems from. It has nothing to do with me.”

“You are blind if you truly believe that.”

“And you are wasting my time with pointless arguments in the midst of a crisis. I have better things to do right now than have this discussion with you again.”

He turned towards the door, only to have it come aglow with magic as it slammed shut.

“I am not Hisirdoux to be dismissed whenever you don’t feel like listening.”

“More’s the pity.” He swung back around to face her with his condemnation. “I did at least think you had enough regard for the boy not to delay my work.”

The glare she fixed on him could have quelled Gunmar himself. Merlin simply glared right back, raising an imperious eyebrow in that way he knew she hated.

“Waiting and hoping you’ll think of something is not the answer, Merlin, as you well know. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“What I refuse to admit is that diving headfirst into the Shadow Realm is a viable solution to the problem at hand. Because it isn’t.”

“You don’t know that.” She gestured with the book in her hands. Not one of his library; He had never encouraged this exploration of dark magic. He didn’t even know where she had happened across it, only that he deeply regretted not having snatched it away to cast into the fire years ago. “You don’t know Shadow Magic. How can you be so certain it won’t work?”

“Common sense, girl.” She glowered at the title, a humbling she had earned with her adamance. “Double the poison does not make a cure.”

“There is nothing there to cure.” She slammed her hand palm down on the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Merlin marked Archie emerging from the bedchamber, though whether he intended to intervene or simply wanted to be closer to the unfolding argument was debatable. “Whatever magic did this to him destroyed parts of his soul. They’re not there to be mended, they’re gone. He’s not a torn cloak, Merlin. You can’t just tie the pieces that remain together and hope it’s enough to cover what is missing. Even if you get him back on his feet you will stretch him so thin you’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill himself the first time he tries to cast a spell!”

“And how would you know that, hmm? What extensive well of experience are you drawing your theories from?”

“This.” She lifted up the spell book, shoving it at his chest. He seized it on instinct, and she took the opportunity to pluck several more volumes off the table and toss them in his direction as well. He caught those with magic, which was preferable to his face, and watched her storm closer whilst struggling to contain his own rising ire. “You are so convinced that your way is the only way that it has never even occurred to you that I chose to study Shadow Magic for this very reason. For when other means are not enough. You have no idea how it works because you think it is beneath you. I do know. I can use it. And I know that if we have any hope of restoring Douxie’s soul the Shadow Realm is our best chance. Somebody tore that boy to pieces, Merlin, what’s missing doesn’t exist in this world anymore, but that sort of dark magic leaves a trail. I can save him if you will just trust me.”

“And when what you save is not Hisirdoux? When you patch him back together with dark magic and corrupt him entirely? What then, Morgana?”

“I know the difference.”

“No, you think you know the difference, and I will not wager my apprentice’s life on your arrogance.”

“My arrogance? You are the old fool who can’t see past your own self-importance to what your inaction has cost us all! You could have stopped Arthur years ago if you so chose, but you needed him to keep you safe so you could continue your all important work, at the cost of the hundreds of innocents you abandoned. The only reason your apprentice ever needed saving was because you were too much of a coward to stand up to your king!”

“How dare you—!”

“Stop it, both of you!” The outburst was such a surprise that Merlin was actually struck to silence, turning in tandem with Morgana to stare at the small dragon glaring at them both with a baleful expression. “What you seem to be forgetting is that this isn’t your decision to make, it’s Douxie’s. He is the one who has been hurt here, and you deciding what is best for him without bothering to even ask what he thinks is not going to help matters at all. When he wakes up we will all have a civilised discussion on what the best thing to do is. Until then, perhaps you two Master Wizards can put your heads together and properly figure out who was responsible for this. Before they do the same thing to someone else.”

The ensuing hush was awkward, to say the least. Archie refused to back down, standing with wings flared and lips curled back in a faint snarl as he tried to look as intimidating as a dragon that didn’t come up to one’s knees could. Merlin was the first to turn away, stalking back to the table to set down the books Morgana had flung at him in her fury. Unfortunately for him, years spent as his student had taught her to read his silences better than anyone else, and there was disbelief in her eyes when he turned back to face the pair of them.

“You already know, don’t you?” she accused.

“I suspect,” he defended himself. “That is not the same thing as knowing.”

“Yes, yes, it’s completely different,” Archie pressed impatiently. “Who do you suspect is responsible then?”

He had not been ready to disclose this much to anyone just yet. Sadly, he could not see a way out of it without inciting another argument. It was a small miracle they hadn’t already woken Hisirdoux with all the shouting that had been going on, and he didn’t want to subject himself to Archie’s righteous anger should it start up again. Instead, he adopted the stance of a teacher once more, marching back and forth as he spoke, “The ability to injure someone in this way is not common. Shadow Magic might allow you to tether a soul to a traumatic memory, hold it in place, twist it until it bends to your will, or rip it from its mortal flesh entirely, but it does not allow you to cause irreparable harm. This is something older, darker. This is the Arcane Order.”

Morgana exchanged a glance with the familiar, then asked the expected question, “What is the Arcane Order?”

“You mean who,” he held up a finger to emphasise his point. “They are a trio of ancient wizards who protect the balance between the magic and the mortal worlds by rendering destruction on those they perceive to be a threat. If you want to blame anyone for the world’s growing mistrust of magic, Morgana, the Order should be at the top of your list. To say that they are responsible for the deaths of hundreds would likely be understating the bloody mark they have left on history. Part of the reason I aided Arthur in uniting Camelot was because it was becoming abundantly clear I could not continue to fight them on my own, and the divisions amongst the mortal kingdoms made them easy prey. The Order has been quiet since Arthur came to power; I might have known they were planning something.”

“Why Douxie, though?” Archie wondered aloud. “Why not Arthur? Why not you?”

“I do not know.” It grated to admit that much. Morgana’s theory might hold some merit, but he still didn’t understand why the Order would not have come for him directly. He was not an easy mark, but he was not unreachable either. “If it was the Arcane Order, then I do not even know how Hisirdoux survived. These are beings older than nearly any other that walks the earth. Hisirdoux is a child. It doesn’t make sense.”

“We are missing something,” Morgana agreed, leaning across the table to emphasise her next point. “So let me look for it.”

He folded his arms, making his disapproval known. “We are going in circles, Morgana. The answer is still no.”

“But—!”

“Enough!” He called his staff to his hand from across the room just to add the force of slamming it on the ground to his words. “I need to go make sure our king is kept informed of this potential threat. If you want to make yourself useful, try searching my library for a solution that won’t simply kill the boy faster.”

“Kill?” Archie’s head shot up, eyes wide behind his glasses. “He’s dying?”

Merlin took that as his cue to leave the room. Let Morgana be the one to break the bad news. If she was doing that perhaps she wouldn’t feel tempted to go rooting through every scrap of forbidden knowledge Arthur had not yet managed to destroy.

A doubtful outcome, but a wizard could hope.

Right now, that seemed like all he could do.

Story Canon Notes:

"Hisirdoux had shown some aptitude for minor healing charms using his runic bracelet..." - Not strictly canon, but Douxie's role in the Trollhunters game is team healer, which at lease loosely implies he has some sort of remedial spell in his arsenal. His (minor) injuries also disappear between scenes in Episode 8, and I assume he was going to attempt to use some sort of healing spell on Merlin before Merlin stopped him.

#hisirdoux casperan #tales of arcadia #toa wizards #toa merlin #toa morgana #Hurt/Comfort #Angst #Fanfiction #toa archie

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justalittlelitnerd · 5 years

Text

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men

Also: Felicity Montague, you are a cactus.

This book is the feminist anthem you didn’t know you needed. Actually, no, scratch that it’s the human rights (and sometime even animal rights) anthem you didn’t know you needed. It tackles race, religion, sexuality, gender, and probably any other slightly controversial topic under the sun.

It is unabashed and recognizes flaws within arguments and defenses and it doesn’t try to say one way of life or being is better than another but they all simply deserve to exist.

If that isn’t enough to compel you maybe the fact that it is set in England (actually all over Europe really) back in the olden days (honest to God can’t remember what time period but the aforementioned petticoats probably gives you a clue) with pirates and sea dragons (it’s not as mystical as it sounds but still slightly magical) will be enough to compel you to pick up this book. Because you should. Like right now.

It’s hard to be raised in a world where you’re taught to always believe what men say without doubting yourself at every step.

So I loved the first book in this series (The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue) and was super excited when I heard there would be one focusing on Felicity because I wanted more from her character. However, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t apprehensive because all too often the sequel is not as good as the original.

I’m pleased to report that, in my opinion, is not the case here. The Lady’s Guide is every bit as funny and poignant and socially relevant as The Gentleman’s Guide, in fact, it felt even more relevant to me as a woman who could identify strongly with Felicity’s character. But don’t worry there’s still plenty of Monty and Percy present in the story.

I have learned that men respond best to nonthreatening women whose presence and space in the world does not somehow imperil their manhood, and so, as much as it pains me, I put on a smile so big it hurts my face and try to think like Monty, which is infuriating.

My favorite part of this novel is that Lee resists the urge to submit Felicity to the standard YA Romance storyline. That may have been what gave me the most apprehensive since the first novel implied that she was asexual, or at the very least more interested in her career than a marriage, and I was worried that having a story strictly about her would make Lee feel pressured to give her a romance. I will admit at times it felt like it was going to fall into that trap, but then it would turn around to show how it was just Felicity feeling the pressures of society.

When stripped of the illegalities and the Biblical condemnation, their [Monty and Percy’s] attraction is no stranger to me than anyone’s attraction to anyone.

The Lady’s Guide picks up about a year after the end of The Gentleman’s Guide with Felicity in Edinburgh working at a bakery trying to appeal to various hospitals and school to allow her entrance to no avail.

A year of men telling me I am incapable of this work only gives my pride a more savage edge, and I feel, for the first time in so many long, cold, discouraging months, that I am as clever and capable and fit for the medical profession as any of the men who have denied me a place in it.

The tipping point is when the man at the bakery who has helped her for the last year decides it is time to propose. This sends Felicity into a sort of tailspin because she’s not willing to give up on her dream yet but everyone around her is telling her she should settle down and be married and she’s starting to wonder if they are right.

Which gave him the idea that men often get in their heads when a woman pays some kind of attention to them: that it was a sign I want him to smash his mouth -- and possibly other body parts -- against mine. Which I do not.

She makes the impulsive decision to travel to London to see Monty and Percy and appeal to medical boards there to grant her admission. However, once again she is denied and practically laughed out of the room for her ideas of becoming a doctor.

“You’re so determined to become a lady doctor then,” he says. “No, sir,” I reply, “I’m determined to become a doctor. The matter of my sex I would prefer to be incidental rather than an amendment.”

Their exclusionary policies rest entirely on the fragility of their own masculinity, but it doesn’t matter because they’re men and I’m a woman so it’s not even going to be a fight and it was never going to be a fight.

But this time one of the doctors recommends she reach out to Doctor Alexander Platt for mentorship which through a series of events leads her to befriending a Black Muslim Hijabi pirate named Sim and going off on a new adventure. Along the way, she encounters an old friend which brings to the forefront the intricacies of feminism. Because really that is what this book is all about in the end. Three women all fighting for their place in this world of men who try to tell them their only place is in the household.

He has me apologizing for asking for the minimum that is granted to most men.

It turns out that Platt is set to wed Felicity’s childhood friend, Johanna, which she decides to use to get a meeting with him. However, it’s revealed that Felicity and Johanna had a falling out over their differing views on femininity and what it means to be a strong woman.

You stopped taking me seriously when I stopped being the kind of woman you thought I had to be to be considered intelligent and strong. All those things you say make men take women less seriously -- I don’t think it’s men; it’s you. You’re not better than any other woman because you like philosophy better than parties and don’t give a fig about the company of gentlemen, or because you wear boots instead of heels and don’t set your hair in curls.

Johanna is still strong and intelligent and independent and she likes wearing dresses and makeup and heels and flirting with boys and those things are not incompatible, but a lot of times it’s a sticking point in feminism. Somewhere along the way there became this belief (which Felicity believes) that to be a feminist, to be strong woman standing up to men, you couldn’t also be traditionally feminine. It takes almost the whole novel for Felicity to realize that Johanna is not any less strong and intelligent because she subscribes to traditional gender roles/beauty standards and it takes her even longer to be willing to admit she is wrong.

I have spent so long building up my fortress and learning to tend it alone, because if I didn’t feel I needed anyone, then I wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there. I couldn’t be neglected if I was everything to myself. But now, those fortifications suddenly feel like prison walls, high and barbed and impossible to cross.

To be honest the relationships formed between and the battles waged by Sim, Felicity, and Johanna are more than enough reason to read this novel. But Lee decides to make it even better by throwing in scientific discoveries, men stealing women’s credit, danger, and a fight on the open seas reminiscent of any pirate movie.

It’s not hopelessness, it’s just pure stubbornness. Not even so much a will to live as a refusal to die. Not yet, not now, not here, not when we have so much left to do. There isn’t a goddamned chance I’m dying on this rig.

It turns out that before she died, Johanna’s mom discovered a new species with Platt that honestly sound like sea monsters, something half dragon half snake like? And that the scales of these sea dragons can be used as drugs (both medicinally and recreationally). Platt wants to exploit the dragons while Sim’s family has sworn to protect them at all costs. The women band together to plot against both Platt’s exploitations and Sim’s father’s stubbornness against progression.

Everyone has heard stories of women like us -- cautionary tales, morality plays, warnings of what will befall you if you are a girl too wild for the world, a girl who asks too many questions or wants too much. If you set off into the world alone. Everyone has heard stories of women like us, and now we will make more of them.

Of course, they succeed in both tasks and along the way decide maybe they should get their own ship and go on their own research voyages including exploring more about the sea dragons.

I am filled suddenly by that wanting, to know things, to understand the world, to feel myself in it.

In the company of women like this -- sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything -- I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains -- or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself.

I know this was a long review filled with an overabundance of quotes, but I hope that just shows how good this book is. I read it a month ago and am just now writing this and still find myself remembering it vividly despite the fact that I’ve read maybe 5 books since then. So do me, and yourself, a favor and go out to read this book (I’m even okay if you skip the first one though I promise you’ll regret it if you do).

You are Felicity Montague, I tell myself, and the darkness, and my heartbeat, in an attempt to rein it in. You have climbed through catacombs darker than this, you escaped from a second-story window with only your bedsheets, and you should not be frightened of the darkness, but instead be sure that the most frightening thing in it is you.

Bonus:

- The chairman tosses his cloak over his shoulders and gives me a smile that he likely thinks is kind, but is, in fact the smirk of a man about to explain something to a woman that she already knows.

- Humans have instincts specifically for situations like this. Everything in me is saying there is danger lurking in this forest, eyes bright and hungry through the dark.

- Below is an unhelpful drop to the street -- no footholds, ledges, or loose bricks promised by every fiction book I have ever read. Not even a convenient hedge to drop into.

- Charming is not a word I’d use -- or ever want used -- to describe me, but the way she says it prickles me. It’s the sort of thing I feel entitled to say disparagingly about myself, but from someone else, it feels blunt and unkind.

- Zounds, does this fool actually think he’s saving me? Another storybook hero to swoop in and rescue a girl from a dragon or a monster or herself -- they’re all the same. A woman must be protected, must be sheltered, must be kept from the winds that would batter her into the earth.

- I can do more than memorize maps of vessels and arteries and bones; I can solve the puzzle of what to do when those pieces come apart. I can write my own treaties. I am a girl of steady hands, stout heart, and every book I have ever read.

#read Jan 24 2019 #the lady's guide to petticoats and piracy #mackenzi lee #the gentleman's guide to vice and virtue #books #booklr #book blog #book quotes #monty and percy #felicity montague #feminism #strong female leads #strong female characters #fight against the patriarchy #then and now #felicity montague you are a cactus

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roaminginspiration · 6 years

Text

The Drawing

Author’s note: thank you to James Cameron, Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt-Bukater who inspired me this glorious story!

I have a more “mature” version available. DM me if you would like to read it.

“I didn’t know you liked drawing,” she said the first time she found out about his hidden hobby. They were in his apartment in New York a few months after Steve had officially joined S.H.I.E.L.D, having beers he drank mechanically more for its socializing part than any physical effect. He had got up to get two new bottles in the fridge when she reached out for the leather sketchbook on the coffee table. She asked permission to look at it with a flicker in his direction; he agreed with a shrug.

“You’re not half bad,” Natasha commented musingly, flicking through the pages as he came back to sit in the couch next to her.

“This is probably the strongest compliment I’ve ever received,” he answered, making the corner of her mouth rise slightly.

Buildings, objects, streets, his most hazardous sketches were landscapes. “Not bad at all,” she mumbled, barely audible.

Steve watched her from the corner of his eye. He’d never considered he had any talent but it certainly was a peaceful way of spending time the nights he could hardly find sleep.

“So where are your French girls?” she exclaimed swiftly going through all the pages. He shot her a quizzical look. She stared back blankly.

“Titanic?” she ventured with an arched eyebrow. He shook his head apologetically. “You have some serious catching up to do.”

“I’m nearly through the list. I’ve just finished Star Wars,” he said after taking a sip of his beer and reclining on the back of the couch.

“Shame. I was kind of proud of my joke.” She paused when she saw some of his portraits: an elderly man sitting on a bench, feeding the birds; a mother and her child walking along the street and holding hands; a young lover looking at his girlfriend while she’s reading a book in the park.

Her fingers brushed over the features of their faces, her pupils dove into their frozen looks and expressions. For a brief second, she looked impressed — one recognizable expression he had never seen cross her face before. He could have drawn it — her— had she agreed to it, had they been in that kind of close relationship. But she was just his teammate —a colleague— he’d happen to have a few beers with some Friday evenings.

“Are you thinking about drawing me, Captain Rogers?” she interrupted his musing as if she had read his thoughts like an open book. She did that a lot.

A smirk was playing on her lips. She watched him intently and silence seemed to settle in between for longer than ever before. She raised her index finger and slowly waved right and left before his face. “Never,” she warned.

He chuckled. “Why not?” he said.

“Because you’re clearly good at it,” she answered matter-of-factly like it was the most incontestable argument and reached for her beer.

He frowned, quite perplexed. She looked at him closely and her jovial expression seemed to have dropped a little.

“You can look into souls, Steve.” Her voice was deep, yet serene. “And I’m a spy. I couldn’t possibly grant you access to mine.”

Her answer — and the brutal honesty of it — took him by surprise. Her features looked noticeably tense as it was quite an unusual sight. It hit him that Natasha Romanoff would not allow herself to be vulnerable with anyone.

“At least not without a fight,” she added with humor again as she nonchalantly dropped the sketchbook back on the table.

She didn’t know — or maybe she did — but she had just sparked in him a whole new curiosity, raw and inextinguishable.

Natasha was a steady constant in his life, more than he could count. She was present when he needed help for taking down HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.; she stood by him, watching the sky, when it looked impossible to save all the Sokovians trapped on the flying city; she walked by his side when it came to training the new Avengers; she was here to comfort him when he lost Peggy; she jeopardized her freedom when she let him and Bucky escape the US government. And now she was running along after they became international fugitives.

She traded a long-deserved steady life for one of a runaway. They never stayed in the same motel — often slummy, although she preferred the word quaint— more than three nights. Steve borrowed more cars than he could remember. They traveled light, and Sam was often the one bringing them a new bag of clothes and toiletries for their timely spaced secret rendezvous.

One morning, Nat casually dropped she would dye her freshly trimmed hair blonde. “Your growing stubbles inspired me,” she teased.

One night in New Orleans on Mardis Gras, they silently partook in the city celebrations across the French Quarter. There was no better place than a busy, festive and heavily boozed crowd to disappear completely. They had “discreetly” taken up residence in the uninhabited house of a sketchy entrepreneur who was often gone to South America for long periods of time for business.

Leaning on the railing of the balcony, Natasha pensively watched the chariot parade down the streets congested with the people partying. It was her idea to come down and join them.

“You can’t say away from the world forever,” she said. Stepping out of the main door, she took his hand and pulled him into the crowd to blend in.

They strolled down the streets amid the party people who were dancing along the spellbinding percussions of the drums and upbeat melodies of the saxophones. Petals and confetti were flying in the air in a unique outburst of colors and glitters. For that one night, quietness was banned from the city.

She slid her fingers between his and he let himself be pulled him further down into the crowd as she grabbed a pint of the beer off the silver tray hovering nearby and gulped it down with an unquenchable thirst born from the hectic crowd surrounding them.

She slowly let herself be immersed, lured into the general trance. She began to trot along the rhythm of the drums.

She spun around to face him. They could barely keep steady amid the force of the moving parade. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and she was breathing loudly as a fine layer of sweat was beginning to glint on her neck and down her bosom. She pressed herself against him and wrapped an arm around his neck, gently pulling him down to her.

He could feel the heavy pounding of her heart reverberate across his chest. Her velvety lips grazed against the lobe of his ear and her warm breath tickled his skin — he shut his eyelids and bit his bottom lip to make himself switch off his aroused senses.

“Let yourself go,” she whispered into his ear, the tip of her fingers lightly brushing the back of his neck, right below his hairline. “I can help you.”

She pulled away and gazed into his eyes, begging him with an adorable smile mixed with a slightly malicious leer. He took a deep breath in: they had been on the run for nearly two months and so far they had been doing it well, surely he could allow themselves a night off the constant worry and paranoia. She had given up everything for him; he owed her a night of freedom, no matter how short and illusory it was — as they were both bitterly aware.

He gave her a nod and her smile grew wider. The jazz band was now walking up to their level and she grabbed his other hand as an invitation to dance.

The compelling motion of her hair rippling in the air — a few locks messily falling over half her face—, the way her body captivatingly moved so close to him were all a temptation he found more and more difficult to resist. He dropped his hands to her waist and with a faint grin, she gently slid her hands up his bare forearms up to his elbows, closing the gap between their two bodies.

They had never been physically so close for so long, and it was more delectable than it had been in the many wild dreams he had had of her.

She slowly swayed her hips under his palms as they seemed to the ones controlling her and pressed herself against him again, breathing in his scent with her eyes closed, swiftly running the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip before biting lip.

She ran her fingers into the long, blond locks of his hair and his forehead dropped into her neck. He could smell her natural scent coming through the vanilla balm of her perfume. The maroon, cotton top she was wearing was slightly moist, just as his shirt.

Some locks of her hair were stuck on her temples with the sweat. His hands wandered onto parts of her body he had never dared to imagine to explore one day. Natasha was laughing ecstatically into the crook of his neck — her state of exhilaration was contagious.

Nobody paid attention to them, and for the first time in the past months of running, he felt like they were truly alone.

Still dancing, she nearly tripped, lost her balance and fell backward but he caught her with a strong arm wrapped around her back. She let her head drop backward, her lips almost brushing his mouth in the motion and looked up at the starry sky with the same excitement as a moment before. He frowned a little, getting a little concerned. Her pupils dropped back to look at him.

“I need air,” she gasped with the same euphoric smile across her face. “Let’s go.”

He nodded and she stood upright before making her way out of the crowd.

The walked along the deserted streets back to their improvised, super luxurious AirBnB.

She stepped into the house without a word and went into the bathroom. A few seconds later, he heard the water running.

Steve went out to the balcony again, watching the crowd far in the distance as the music began to die down. The air had become more bearable and a pleasant cool wind brushed against him while the sky still smelled of the ongoing festivities. He lost himself on the beauty of this new stillness for long minutes.

“Steve?” he eventually heard a soft voice coming from inside the room. He stepped back inside and found her standing in a silky robe, her hair damp. She looked fresh and soberer than an hour before.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. She ignored his question and her eyes flicker to his travel bag.

“You haven’t drawn in a while,” she remarked pensively. “Why?”

The random question surprised him. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been able to see the beauty in the world lately.”

His words linger on in the quiet room. The answer seemed to dissatisfy her.

“But can you see it in me?” she asked barely audibly, staring at the book.

He watched her as she stood before him. “You…you’re perfection,” he murmured.

Her green eyes looked up at him, boldly hopeful.

She had a faint, sad smile. “I’m hardly perfect. I’ve done so many wrongs.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he cut her in.

They looked into each other’s eyes and that was enough for her to understand what he meant.

She walked to pick up the sketchbook then over to him. “I want you to draw me, Steve,” she said, handing him the book. She dove her eyes into his. “Please.”

He furrowed his brows. “I thought you —”

“I know,” she said. She shook her head then looked at him again. “I changed my mind. I want you to see me…” Her pupils darkened. “All of me.”

Her fingers ventured down and his eyes followed along as they gently took hold of the silk belt. She untied it then, putting her hands on each side of the robe, gently took it off. The silky fabric slid off her shoulders to her feet, revealing her splendid naked figure.

She raised her chin and plunged her green eyes into his. He swallowed the lump and cleared his throat.

Part of him wanted to protest, or at least warned her his drawing might not be so good due to months of lack of practice, but he realized Natasha wasn’t just asking for a portrait. She was offering her soul up to him. She was letting herself be vulnerable in every way possible because she trusted him, and he simply couldn’t deny her that. Truth be told, he had been waiting for the moment she would lay herself bare to him for years now (not that he had ever imagined it would happen so literally).

He nodded bashfully and pulled a chair up to him while she went to lie down in the antique sofa in the middle room.

She lay on her side, draping one arm along her body, the hand gently pressed on her hip. Steve revelled in the sight before him and the perfection of her silhouette. She was, truly, exquisite to behold.

“Draw me like one of your French girls,” she said and they both chuckled at the movie reference (he had had time to catch up with).

With a pounding heart, he opened his sketchbook, firmly held his pencil and finally let his eyes fall on her. The glimmer coming from the wall lights sheened on her fair, smooth skin. His eyes traveled across her body like his hands were aching to do. He traced the curves of her hip, the arc of her small waist, the fullness of her bosoms, the sharpness of her collarbone. He noticed how her chest rose and dropped heavily for each breath she took, and the pink on her cheeks that was not due to shyness but to the thrill of the moment. Perhaps had she seen he had it, too.

The curves of her body were calling for his running fingers, her velvety skin was calling for his soft palm, her slightly trembling lips were calling for his mouth. He chased those thoughts away with a new brush of the lead onto the paper.

He, who hadn’t been inspired to sketch anything for the past moments, somehow couldn’t stop drawing who he had found to be a bottomless source of inspiration. After the first portrait, he drew her again, and again, in different positions.

She next lay on her stomach, prepped the upper part of her body onto her elbows and crossed her ankles up in the air, looking at him, half of her voluminous, wavy hair falling across half of her face, with a smile on.

Delightfully aware of the effect she had on him, their roles reversed, and he found himself trapped in the scope of her eyes. She watched him with a satisfied smirk on lips as he was contemplating her figure all the way across the room. She couldn’t resist nibbling her little finger to hold back her giggles.

Scoping each other in an endless loop, the drawing continued long into the night, even after the last drumming sounds died in the dark.

When his fingers couldn’t hold the pencil anymore until it dropped onto the carpet, Natasha fell backward into the cushions, looking up at the ceiling. One of her arms fell off the sofa and her fingertips brushed the fabric on the floor into small circles. She tilted her head and looked at him.

“I never would have thought that a drawing session would be so thrilling,” she breathed out before biting her lip.

She allowed him to come closer by waving her index finger. Steve got up and made his way to her. He halted and stooped to pick up her robe. Reaching the sofa, he stood above her and relished the sight one last time. He held the robe open. Defying him with a suggestive look, she raised her arm, daring him to retract on his offer. Her fingers clutched the fabric and she yanked it down strongly, making him come down to his knees before her. His face was only a few inches away from her.

Her expression turned serious. “Didn’t what you found scare you?” she asked, her pupils searching into his.

He shook his head. If he could indeed look into souls like she believed then what he had found was far more beautiful than the heavenly sight of her figure. “Like I said, you’re perfection.”

She snorted lightly, seeming to hold herself back as she briefly glanced away. When she looked at him again, her eyes were faintly gleaming with tears.

“Touch me, Steve.”

His pupils tremble. She reached for his hand down the sofa and lifted it up. “I want you to touch me.”

His lips were dry, as was his throat. His heart, which had finally accustomed to the thrill of the past hours, raced again.

“I don’t know if I could stop,” he confessed with a murmur.

She smiled. “I don’t want you to stop.”

He moved his hand closer, hovering above her body. The tip of his fingers carefully brushed against her side, slowly going down her shoulder, along her waist, to the border of her trunk leaving a trail of goosebumps; his thumb brushed over her hipbone.

He paused and frowned when his fingers brushed over the scar on her stomach. He crouched over and laid a kiss, gentle and loving, on it as her tummy rose up and down at a panting pace.

“Perfection,” he repeated to himself.

He made love to her like the exalted artist to his muse.

#romanogers #Steve Rogers #Natasha Romanoff #Black Widow #Captain America #writing #the drawing #inneedofinspiration #fanfic #capwidow #stevenat #steve x natasha

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thecloserkin · 6 years

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fic rec: in fire, in ice by moirariordan

fandom: Wizards of Waverly Palace

pairing: Justin Russo/Alex Russo

word count: 25k

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Like fire

It’s an on-the-run story! Where they get fake married! For real this fic is #sibcestgoals. It’s justifiably the most widely read and influential fic in the fandom, whose influence transcends the fandom itself: the tagline ought to be “come to the dark side, we have incest-flavored cookies.” Say you had a friend who had never read a word of fanfiction in their life. For a starter pack you would hand them something like The Shoebox Project, right? Something accessible, for a pairing that’s ludicrously shippable, something that would rip their heart out and leave them aching for more. That’s what this story is. I would have no qualms recc’ing it to anyone on the street. Just look at the testimonials on Fanlore or on the TVTropes rec page —these people can’t all be incest shippers right?

Wizards of Waverly Place was a teen sitcom that aired from 2007-2012 on the Disney Channel, starring Selena Gomez and David Henrie as the titular brother-and-sister wizards. They have parents and a younger brother too but for shipping purposes Justin/Alex is the six-ton orca whale in the room. Justin is two years older, boring and responsible; Alex is the wild child. There’s a lot of banter and a lot of snark and it’s that dynamic where the older male does everything by the book and the younger female character categorically refuses to even crack open the spine of a book. There was a made-for-TV movie in 2009, and 87% of people who caught it while channel-surfing came away under the impression that the male lead was Selena Gomez’s boyfriend. I know this because I conducted a highly scientific poll, obviously.

Let me say upfront that I love this story but every time I read it it’s like I just watched Schindler’s List. It’s literally a story about a wizard Holocaust.

It starts with an old man who accidentally torpedoes the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (or the in-universe equilavent). It’s important to emphasize how he gives the game away, which is by conjuring a specter of his dead wife, one that unfortunately winds up outliving him; when the police broke his door down they found her weeping over his corpse. He loved her so much he preferred a flimsy facsimile over the lack of her. Or is it that he loved her so little he would settle for a cheap echo? Either way, love is the downfall of the wizarding community. The tension between love and magic is at the heart of this fic, for love is about sacrifice and at its root, so is magic.

The muggles’ initial reaction is consternation. The dead old man was unfortunately in possession of an extensive and illegal magical library, and pretty soon “every New Age hippie who ever read a deck of tarot cards” descends on New York City to pore over it. Consternation turns to fear turns to anger/mistrust turns to outright persecution of wizardkind.

Alex keeps waiting and waiting for someone to do something, to stop it, to make it go away, but nothing happens.

Alex is still in high school. There are people out there every day braying for her blood and calling for her family’s heads on spikes. Plot happens.

“Is this a good thing?” she asks, because Justin always knows what’s good and right and what’s not, and she really needs to know. He’s silent for a very long moment. “I don’t know,” he says, and for some reason this is more terrifying than anything.

She’s relied on Justin all these years to be her moral compass and when he admits he’s at a loss her whole world crumbles. They’re not canonically codependent, I think, but Alex does a lot of shit she wouldn’t otherwise if she wasn’t relying on Justin to bail her out. Likewise Justin resents how Alex’s raw gumption allows her to brazenly bluff her way through stuff he has to work his tail off for. I think Justin gives himself less credit than he deserves because Alex is right, he is insanely smart and talented. There’s an actual no-word-of-a-lie witchhunt going on and Justin still manages to graduate valedictorian.

There’s an underground railroad of sorts that smuggles wizards out, endowing them with new identities and new memories. The Russos grow desperate after Justin and Alex’s mom falls pregnant, but for plot reasons they can’t all be relocated so Justin and Alex stay behind. There are tearful farewells. The plan is to wait until Alex finishes high school, then rejoin the rest of the family. Things get even darker, but Justin “makes her smile like it’s his job.” LIKE IT’S HIS JOB. My friends, this is the good shit right here.

They eat in his room, most of the time, and do homework. Alex knows that he finds it soothing.

It’s a ritual, don’t you see? Other people meditate; Justin does homework. Alex does it too to keep him company. In fact Alex spends a lot of time in Justin’s bed. She’s always falling asleep there or waking up there and it’s not sexual but it gives you an idea of where her head’s at. Once, she slams out of the living room during an argument, and after a disorienting moment realizes it’s not her room she’s retreated into, it’s Justin’s. Her subconscious has obviously decided Justin’s room is the safest sanctuary there is.

Justin takes her out to dinner to celebrate her grades

IT’S A DAAAAATE only neither of them know it yet haha!

When Alex’s lifelong BFF announces she’s joining the Youth Nazi and invites Alex to join up with her, Alex runs away to a bench in Central Park. Justin shows up in short order:

“How’d you find me?”

“Are you kidding? You always come here when you’re upset.” He sits next to her. “Remember the time you ran away when Mom and Dad wouldn’t let you get a ferret?”

Nobody is conflating the pain of being denied a potential pet ferret to the pain of being deemed subhuman by one’s best friend, but the point of this scene is (1) that Justin gets her, in all her melodramatic over-the-top pettiness, and (2) Justin notices and remembers which bench she prefers — it’s a big gorram park after all. Eventually the political situation comes to a head and Justin and Alex decide it’s not safe to stay in New York City any longer, and they gather up their cash and bounce. Once they leave they have no way of getting back in touch with their parents but they have no choice; it’s too dangerous to stay:

They sleep in cheap motels and pay in cash under fake names, staying under the radar as much as possible because they’re not sure what else to do. They run out of cash in Maryland and get a decent hotel room under the fake account name.

They stop in Indianapolis to celebrate Justin’s twentieth birthday. Alex scores some champagne with one of the fake IDs she’d snagged before leaving New York and they drink it in a hotel room, the TV off and knees touching on the bed

They make it to Denver and get a small apartment and tell everyone they’re newlyweds and Alex dyes her hair red

OMG THEY’RE FAKE MARRIED I AM DECEASED

p sure there was also blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bedsharing in the hotel room

Alex’s hair color is a solid proxy for her state of mind

They save half their money each month in case they have to run again, and for a little bit, things are kind of nice. After her shifts, Alex will walk to the library where Justin works and sit at a table behind the corner with him, reading history books and novels.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you Alex Russo, the girl who a few months ago wouldn’t know which end of a book was up. She learns to love BOOKS and LIBRARIES on JUSTIN’S account and that is everything. Well, this is a nice respite but it doesn’t last and they have to keep running because Alex is assaulted at her waitressing job by a creepy customer who won’t take no for an answer. It’s a highly unrealistic stranger-in-a-dark-alley attempted assault situation but I will let that slide because the point is she instinctively spews magic in self-defense, which of course will bring the authorities down on them in no time. She’s scared shitless and she runs straight into Justin’s arms, the only place she feels safe:

Justin nearly freaks when he sees her, dragging her into the back office and touching her face, her arms, over and over as if to reassure himself that she’s okay. He sees the scrapes on her back and frowns, pulling off his soft cotton jacket and wrapping it around her as she explains what happened in a monotone voice. “We have to go,” she says, “tonight.” He nods and kisses her nose. “You did what you had to do,” he says, and something tight unravels because he’s not mad.

There is so much tenderness in that nose kiss. I feel like they’ve been partners for a long time but this is where it really clicks that Justin’s not “in charge” anymore, he’s not the older brother who knows best, they’re just two teenagers clinging to each other on a life raft because they are everything the other has left.

“The baby must be three years old now,” Alex muses. The champagne they’re drinking isn’t nearly enough to get them wasted, and she suddenly wishes that they were the type of people who get drunk. “Max is fifteen. In high school.”

This made me so sad, how they used to be a five-person family unit and now Alex and Justin are cut adrift and they’ve formed a unit of their own but they’ll never stop missing the others.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you with straight hair since New York,” he says when she emerges from the bathroom. He flicks her bangs away from her face. “You usually look like a street urchin.”

All the hairstyle changes for disguise purposes but she’s still his sister underneath. He’d know her anywhere. Here’s the scene where they first kiss — they’re standing on their own doorstep, having gone out to celebrate his birthday, and Alex (as you would expect) initiates it:

He narrows his eyes at her and she looks, looks, because she can’t have read this wrong – no, she didn’t. There is nothing in the world that she knows better than Justin – his face, his body, his head, his mind, his heart.

Yesssss I need it like air. Later:

(They don’t talk about what happened on his birthday, but they’ve started asking for single rooms.)

Eventually they settle in rural Italy, which I guess doesn’t have the same 24-hour surveillance panopticon that we have here in the USA so it’s easier for wizards to slip through the cracks. I like to imagine them in in the Tuscan hills. Justin is a schoolteacher and Alex a graphic designer. They remain for many years below the radar, until Alex is recruited into the Resistance to help smuggle other wizards out through the Underground Railroad the same way she and Justin were smuggled out. She feels a moral obligation to do it, even if it kills Justin to watch her diving repeatedly into danger and him unable to follow.

She’s never been that great at protecting people, she knows. When she was seven and Justin was nine, there’d been a bully that lived in the apartment building across the street who used to try and steal her lunch money every day, and every day she would offer Justin’s in return for her own relief. When she was twelve and he was fourteen, they broke Theresa’s glass statuette from Barcelona during a fight and she blamed him without a second thought, and when she was seventeen and he was nineteen, she let him pass up freedom in order to protect her and she will never forget all that he gave up the day he made that decision.

Alex’s great grief is that Justin has given up an assuredly brilliant future, in which he would have shone as a superstar and had his pick of careers, in exchange for being hers.

“You’re so smart, and grown up and good and – and handsome, and I’m irresponsible and immature and –“

She sees his being with her as a sacrifice. She doesn’t know anything about sacrifice yet. She finds her parents living in the same apartment in New York they fled so many lives ago. They’re waiting for Justin and Alex to come back, or send word, or something. It exposes them to an acute degree of risk, of course. Alex orchestrates the Resistance mission to evacuate/relocate her parents, but she does not reveal herself nor reconnect with them. She lets them go. It’s unclear why, although I suspect it would be tough to have a relationship with them without dealing with the elephant in the room, the fact that she and Justin are now together. Yet I think it was important for her to see her parents one last time, because it gave her closure. After she returns to Italy she and Justin welcome their first child. The baby is a mini-dynamo and a nexus of magical potential, sending up trails of rainbow sparks even in utero, so Alex makes the painful decision to give up her powers for good. This means she will be mortal, and so will the child, and any future children or grandchildren. It also means she and Justin will be allowed to stay under the radar and hang onto the life they have painstakingly built. Remember how I said that the root of both love and magic is sacrifice? This is the sacrifice that defines Alex Russo, that she was willing to give up magic -- the thing that has shaped her identity for twenty-odd years -- in order to be with Justin.

#wizards of waverly place #wowp #fic rec #jalex

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