#and i physically could not stop myself from spending an hour sketching it

[romeoisalesbian]

the birth of gabriel

this is the season two trailer, right?

[pick-me-up-im-scared]

So Called Revenge (Hiccup x Reader) (Angst)

Author's Note: I felt like doing a one-shot where the reader gets treated shitty, but then gets revenge. I've read stories where the gang (minus Hiccup) treats the reader bad, and I've always thought "but where's the revenge?". So, now I've taken matters in my own hands and wrote the ultimate badass respond. I'm clearly going through something, haha. I'm sorry Astrid for taking it out on you...

Short Summary: You’re getting abused by the dragon riders, both mentally and physically. Ever since you were a kid they seem to have something against you. Though there’s one person who’s not mean to you. Hiccup. You’ve been friends with him for a while now and your getting along very well. Matter of fact, you have a crush on him.

⚠️Warning!⚠️: This story includes swearing and gore and a brief suicide scene.

And if you're very prude, you might consider that this story including smut. There's no sexual acts, just some light "describing".

(y/n/n) = your nickname

Words: 4489

(I don't own any of the GIFs)

Your pov:

Another day in the beloved village called Berk. Notice my sarcasm. Well let's be clear, it's not necessarily the village that's the problem. Rather the people living in it. Even more specifically, a group of dragon riders. My life hasn't been the best, but it could be worse. That's until I hit my teenage years and the dragon riders decided to make my life a living hell. Don't get me wrong, they've had a thing against me all my life. But it's been more physical in the later years. Don't ask me why. Though there's one exception. Hiccup. He´s never said anything rude to me nor laid a hand on me. I think it's cause he feels pity for me. He knows how it feels to be nagged down. Also, the boy doesn't have a bad bone in his body, so he would never even consider doing such an act. And he'd definitely stop them if it wasn't for the fact they never do anything when he's around. They're smart. They know what consequences their actions could lead to if the Chief saw this type of behavior.

But Hiccup and I have more "history" then this. Well, history and history. He tried to interact with me back when we were 15, cause..... well, we were in the same boat. Though I would love to be friends with him, I couldn't even look at him for more then five seconds. Okay, I'll admit it, I have had a crush on Hiccup ever since we were 15. Why not confess your feelings for him? Hum? Well, he's already taken. And Astrid doesn't seem to like me that much to begin with, and I don´t think she would be more found of me if she finds out I've fallen for her boyfriend. Even though I regret not socializing with Hiccup straight from the beginning I've made up for it over the few years. We've grown pretty close, actually. We soon found out we shared an interest in sketching. He loved to watch as my talented hands worked their magic in my sketchbook. I still remember the day he asked me to make a portrait of him. Let me tell you, if I hadn't fallen in love with him already spending 1,5 hours, looking at his gorgeous, freckled face sure would. If you look past the sweating, butterflies in the stomach, and the shaking due to my nerves, I really like to spend time with Hiccup.

I dragged my limping body towards my dresser, changing into my regular outfit. I got down the stairs to make myself some breakfast. Me and my brother barely see each other throughout the day. Just a quick 'hello' or a simple wave whenever we saw each other around the village. It isn't until he comes home at the evening we could properly interact. But he's usually too exhausted by the day's hard work so we just eat dinner then he's off to bed. Due to our 'situation' he has to work harder in order to provide for the both of us. Both our parents has, unfortunately, passed away. Mother died from pestilence, three years ago. No chance of survival, just counting the days she had left. Our whole family got affected by our mother's death, though our father took it the worse. He fell into a deep depression which lead to him taking his life two years later. He hang himself from the wooden beam in their, well his, bedroom. Leaving me and Christopher to take care of our selfs. Remember the part where Hiccup felt bad for me? Yeah, I think this has some reasons for that too.

I did my part, but my payment wasn't in much help in the long run. So I'd stand for the cooking and taking care of the household to try to make it up for him. Especially the long nights. You see, the gang doesn't "just" call me name or tell me what a disappointment I am to my family. There's been a couple of times where they've hurt me physically, too. Punches against the face, kicks in the stomach, even cuts at various body parts. And who has to patch me up again? Christopher. I get mad at myself for not fitting in. Making my brother lack in sleep because I can't stop being seen as a burden. I see Hiccup as my best, well my only, friend and trust him with all of my problems. But how could I tell him his girlfriend and his friends mentally and physically abuse me? He wouldn't believe me. So I try ti stay away from them, but more importantly don´t be around them on my own.

Once the dry slice of bread was washed down by a glass of lukewarm water I was ready to start my day. I opened up the door to be met by grey clouds. This would actually be considered as nice weather for Berk, since we're used to pouring rain or hail. I walked down the village. Noticing my brother at his second shift at the blacksmith. I gave him a wave once we had eye contact. He gave me a warm smile, since his hands were too busy to answer me with a wave back. I chuckled for myself until my eyes fell onto another familiar face. Hiccup. I stopped in my tracks. He was chatting with the rest of the gang, just outside The Great Hall. I got a bellyache just looking at them. Of course Hiccup isn't the reason to my abrupt stop. If it would have been just him and Toothless I would have ran up and hugged him, chatting about something random like we always do. But his company prevent that from happening. Constant flashback of the last solo "meeting" with the rest of the gang went through my head.

I shield my face with my right hand as I quicken the pace, hoping to get away from them as fast as possible. Without getting noticed. "Hey (y/n/n)!" I cringed before looking up to see Hiccup waving me over. Damn it! He saw me. I walked over to the gang, trying not to look too suspicious where Hiccup would notice. It took every nerve in my body to walk over there, being terrified to find out what they'll do if Hiccup leaves. As I reached them Hiccup wrapped his arm around my shoulder while looking down at me, smiling warmly "How are you today, (y/n/n)?". I could tell Astrid's starting to get pissed by the way he approached me. I removed his arm while laughing nervously "I'm great, Hiccup. Thanks for asking". He nodded, giving me another smile. They went back to their own conversations, not really giving me the opportunity to flick in. I began feeling really awkward, just standing there. Seeing this as my opportunity to avoid getting beaten up, I tried to sneak away. As I turned my back to run off, thinking I successfully left without anyone noticing, I felt a pair of arms around my waist. Damn it!

I got dragged back to the group, my hopes of getting back to my house went further and further away. Getting back to the exact position I was in just a few seconds ago Hiccup held his arm around me to prevent me from leaving again. "Where were you going?" he asked as he tried to study my face. I sighed "Nowhere". He looked suspiciously at me, but didn't ask any further. "So (y/n), we were wondering if you wanted come fly with us?" Hiccup asked with his adorable smile. "Uhm, I don't have a dragon, so... very sorry Hiccup but unfortunat-" "You can fly with me and Toothless" he interrupted before I could finish my excuse as to why I 'unfortunately' couldn't join them. I glanced at Astrid before looking back at him "You don't have to. I'll be fine right here". Hiccup chuckled "Stop it, I know how much you like to fly when we're alone" Astrid's eyes widened. "You're coming. That's a Chief's order" he joked.

"I'm just going to do... some manly businesses, then we're ready to go!" Hiccup informed before starting to walked off. I looked at the group who already smirked at me, giving me an idea of what's to come. Answering with a worried look I quickly grabbed Hiccup's upper arm, making him stop. "I-I'll go with you" I said, trying to cover up how terrified I actually am. He looked at me for a while before saying "Uhm.... I'm going to pee, (y/n/n)". I began to panic even more "I know, but you know, it's always better to do things together" I laughed nervously again "I..... I c-can keep you company!". He looked at me confused "It's just around the corner, I'll be quick". "Oh, babe. Could you get me my spare sweatshirt? I seem to have forgotten it at home" Astrid asked, knowing all too well what she's doing. "Yeah, sure! (y/n) it'll take a bit longer including that, but I'll be back as soon as possible" I listen as my last bit of hope blew away. I'm screwed! I watched as Hiccup left.

"He's nice, isn't he?", I snapped my head towards a smirking Astrid. "Huh?" I asked rather confused. Was she genuinely asking or was this some sort of trick? My question was soon answered as Astrid punched me straight in the face, making me fall to the ground. As I dragged my hand under my nose I saw blood. I tried to swipe it up with the sleeve of my tunic. Hiccup can't see this! I looked up at Astrid as she continued "I've seen the way you look at him. But he's mine, and I don't like other girls looking at my boyfriend". "Why? You're afraid he'll leave you for me?" I snapped back, but immediately regret giving such a cocky comeback. Her eyes widened before she punched me again, this time focusing on my eye. My head fell back with the sudden dizziness.

Astrid grabbed me by the hair to keep my head up while she spoke to me "I don't need to worry about you. Sluts isn’t his favorite anyway". She lets go off my hair and instead grabbed my wrist, pressing it against the ground while she strangled me. I grabbed her face with my other hand, trying to make her get off me. "Hey, Snotlout! Grab her other wrist!" she ordered, and soon both my wrists were against the muddy ground. Astrid brought out her dagger. She motioned to Snotlout who lifted up my navy tunic to my neck, exposing my bare chest to the rest of the gang who were circling us. Both to get a better look at what was happening and to cover up the ongoing situation from the people walking by. They laugh at the sight, which made me fight even harder to get out of their grip. I need to get out of here. Come on (y/n)! Come on!

"Let's see what the guys think when your breasts are butchered" Astrid said when she slide the knife over my exposed chest. I bit my lip at first to prevent myself from screaming, knowing they'll punish me hard if I do. But as she continued to slice my flesh I screamed out in pain. Snotlout was quick to cover my mouth until the damage was done. Astrid smirked devilish at her work as I panted heavily. Snotlout let's go of my wrist, figuring I wouldn't have the energy to do anything anyway. "From what I've heard your bed's pretty busy. At least that's what Calvin said", my eyes widened at the mentioning of his name. Calvin were my ex boyfriend, who I've spent 2 years of my life with. Based on his personality, I wasn't surprised he talked to the gang behind my back. What I'm nervous about is what he told them. You'd think I'm over a relationship that ended 2 years ago, but how can I when it's constantly brought up?

"He would brag about taking your virginity before you were wed" Astrid continued. "No he didn't" I said unsurely, looking up at the rest of the gang that still surrounded me. "Yeah he did. What type of things you were willing to do. The slutty behavior you would take on. I still remember Hiccup's disgusted face when he told us" Astrid continued. He told Hiccup, too? "Stop it!" I screamed, tears steaming down my cheeks. "I know Hiccup well enough to know he doesn't like girls with slutty behaviors like yours. He like his girls virgin and pure. Not someone who's willing to spread her legs at any guy that gives her a little attention. Not that you had a chance with him to begin with" she laughed while looking down at me. My blood was pumping with anger as she continued to lie. Even though all I felt was anger, my words just came out as whispering "Please stop" why wouldn't she stop? "What? I'm just telling you the truth. You're sad now that your imaginary fairytale wouldn't come true, cause Hiccup wouldn't even touch you with a stick?" my blood was boiling more and more with every word Astrid feed me "Come on, (y/n)! Don't aim at guys that's out of your league. It's only pathetic. You know they only want you for what's in your pant-". Astrid was cut off as I pushed her off me and slammed her against a house. I wrapped my fingers around her neck and began to choke her.

"I said stop it!" I yelled straight in her face, not being able to handle the anger that was built up inside of me. "Why won't you listen for once and shut the fuck up?" I said through gritted teeth as I squeeze my hands harder around her neck. "(y/n) stop! She can't breathe!" Snotlout yelled as he approached us. "Don't you dare fucking touch me again!" I snapped back, not taking my eyes off Astrid. A satisfaction filled my body as I saw Astrid chip for air. All the anger I've kept inside from all the things she'd said and all the gestures was being thrown into this moment. I heard Snotlout's steps behind me again. Not wanting to risk this opportunity being disturb I pulled Astrid away from the house wall and put her in a chokehold instead. We turned around quickly to face the rest of the group "I said stay away!" I yelled. Thank gods Astrid wasn't able to fight back due to her unconsciousness, otherwise she'd easily take me down. Snotlout was still walking towards us, making me sigh.

I grabbed Astrid's dagger and threw it at Snotlout's thigh. He screamed out in pain before dropping to the ground. I grabbed my own dagger and pointed it towards the rest of the gang who slowly backed away. The pain of Astrid pressed against my opened wounds was nothing compared to the satisfaction. The satisfaction of finally getting my revenge. "(y/n)!", I snapped out off my focus at the yelling of my name by a familiar voice. Tuffnut took this opportunity to unwrap my arm around Astrid's neck while shoving me to the ground. As I looked up I saw Hiccup rubbing Astrid's back as she was coughing like crazy. He looked at Snotlout who's moaning in pain while laying on the ground, before he turned to me. "(y/n)! What did you do this for?" Hiccup asked with an angry tone. He was clearly pissed off, but why? If he had heard just one of the things she was saying we wouldn't have this discussion now.

"She started it!" I said while pointing to Astrid. Hiccup rolled his eyes, clearly not believing me, "Oh come on, (y/n)! Stop act so childish! You could have killed her!" he raised his voice again, especially at that last part. "Too bad you pushed me away, or I could have killed that bitch" I mumbled. Hiccup snapped his head, staring daggers into me "What did you just say?". I'm not back out of this. I stand for what I think, I'm not going lower myself to that pest's level. "I said, too bad you pushed me away, or I could have killed that bitch!" I repeated while standing up with grace, ignoring the pain. Hiccup couldn't believe what I had just said, even though he heard me the first time. He didn't know what to say. His eyes just looked at me with disgust. I brushed off my pants before making my way back to my hut. As I walked past Astrid I quickly went up to her and kicked her in the stomach. I smirked as I walked off, fulfilling my goal of making her feel at least a tenth of the pain she'd caused me. I ignore Hiccup's upset calls for me, and the rest of the gang's insults that was being thrown.

Hiccup's pov:

"You're so delusional, Hiccup" Christopher, (y/n)'s bother, said while I tried my best to comfort Astrid. She didn't coughing anymore, but she was still holding on tight to my shoulders. I sighed and turned to Christopher "What? Your sister were about kill my girlfriend. If there's one thing I'm not it's delusional". "You can't be this stupid, right?", I felt Astrid stiffing in my arms but played it off as fear. "If Tuffnut wouldn't have pushed (y/n) away she would have kept going until Astrid stopped breathing. Or did I get that part wrong?" I asked sarcastically. "Yeah, she probably would, but she had her reasons". I let go of Astrid to stand up and walk over to Christopher. "Oh, please tell me what reasons she had that would make it sain to kill someone!" I yelled. My gods, what's up with this family? "Because Astrid would do the same to her!" I got a bit taken away by the tone of his voice.

"You all would" Christopher gestured to the whole gang, who looked down in shame. What are they doing? Is this true? "They would never do such a thing" I defending the gang, praying to the gods this isn't true. Christopher huffed "You haven't seen what they've done to her, Hiccup. The deep wounds I've had to clean up. The painful screams and sleepless nights. The old wounds barely having a chance to heal until they're met by one ones. Words a 13 year old girl shouldn't even know exist, non the less being called. All the death threats and names being thrown at her. How would you like it to be called 'a useless whore who's the reason her father killed himself'?". I flinched at the harsh words. My eyes began to get glossy as the information gets feed into my head. What have I done?

"And for you to call yourself Chief and don't know anything about it" he said while poked his finger at my chest before walking away. I look around at the gang while asking "Is this true?". My expression showed the guilty I was feeling. "Is what true?" Snotlout asked, playing dumb. "Have you told (y/n) those awful things and abused her behind my back?" I spat, already knowing the answer based on Snotlout's unnecessary question. I cringed as the words came out of my mouth. I can't believe someone would say and do those things to (y/n). The sweet and beautiful girl I´m happy to even call my friend. For people to say that is fucked up, but these people also being the people I refer to as friends. And my fucking girlfriend being the worse? After some time they all nodded, making me feel like throwing up. Everyone expect Astrid. I walked up to her, not even bothering to hunch down to her level. I looked down at her and asked "Have you been apart of any of these actions, Astrid?" She looked at me nervously, not being able to have eye contact with me for more than a second. "No, I would never do such horrible things, Hic. Not to our beloved (y/n/n)". I knew she would lie. "Why are you lying to me?" I ask with a sturdy tone. Her face dropped "I'm not, Hi-". I cut her off by turning my back to her, walking away.

The information Christopher told me clouded my mind. He's right, I am a useless Chief, even more a friend. If I were a good friend I would have noticed this way before. This explains why she never wanted to come down to the lake to swim. Why she'd stay home for days at the time once she'd been felt with the gang by herself. Gods, I'm an idiot for not connecting the dots! I could feel the tears forming in my eyes, but I quickly blinked them away. I can be the one crying when I'm the asshole. I walked up the porch till I was right in front of the familiar door. I knock. I heard Christopher's voice from inside "(y/n), I told you to sit down and rest! I can answer the door!". I heard uneven steps getting closer and closer.

As the door opened I could see (y/n) limping as she took another step towards the doorway. She supported herself against the handle which allowed me to see the bandage that covered most of her upper body though her opened shirt. What have they done to her? My poor (y/n). She widened her eyes when she saw me. I could tell she immediately tried to hide any signs of her injury, straighten her back. "Are you here to continue yelling at me?" she asked bluntly. I shook my head. "If you're here to receive an apology, you can fuck off! I'm not sorry for finally putting that pathetic bitch in her place" I tensed up a bit at her harsh words, but then remembered the things they've done to her. Now the guilt came back "Yeah, about that, I'm so sorry (y/n). I should have listened to yo-" "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Bye" she cut me off and slammed the door right in my face. Okay, I deserved that. I decided there's no need to knock again. She wouldn't answer it anyway.

I was actually quite surprised to see her at The Great Hall at lunch time. She had a plate of food in front of her, but by the looks of it she hadn't touched it. I grabbed my own plate and made my way over to her table. "Is this seat taken?" I asked, pointing at the spot in front of her. She look at me for a while before shaking her head. I sat down and she immediately turned her head, not wanting to look at me. "Chicken isn't your favorite?" I asked jokingly. "There's other things that makes me lose my apatite" she answered brutally, still looking at the floor beside her. I sighed "Look (y/n/n) I-" "Don't call me that!" she snapped. I jumped at her sudden outburst "Okay, sorry.... (y/n), I'm so sorry, I truly am. I should have trusted you. It's just- I never thought Astrid or any of the others would ever do anything like this to you. Not in my wildest, darkest imagination".

"Well they did" she bite back. "I know, and I don't know what to do to make it up to you. I truly care for you (y/n), and I can't forgive myself for letting you go through this for so long" I caressed her shoulder while pouring out my feelings. She look at me shocked "I-I love you, Hiccup". Now it's my turn to be shocked. S-she l-loves me? "I-I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked, wanting to make sure I heard her correct. "I love you, Hiccup. I have ever since we were 15. I wouldn't socialize with you because I got so nervous whenever you were around. I know we'll never be anything, so I've tried to hide my feelings for you. But I guess Astrid noticed it anyway. Half of the things she told me was surrounding that. Me having a crush on you". Okay, Christopher definitely didn't tell me that. She took a deep breath before she continued "I know you're with Astrid, and I don't mean to ruin anything. I just felt the need to confess and now seemed like a good time". She lowered her gaze in order to avoid eye contact.

I sat with my mouth wide open. I can't believe what she just confessed. She love me? She has loved me for six years and she hasn't told me? "Y-you love me?" I asked, still not sure if this was a dream or not. She nodded. "You can go back to your gang now. I won't bother you anymore, don't worry" she informed before standing up and leave. Due to my shock my reactions were a bit delayed. But as soon as my mind was coping the situation I raised up and ran towards her "(y/n) wait!". Once I caught up with her I noticed the tears running down her cheeks "Hiccup, please don't make this harder then it already is" she cried out "Try to forget about me and go to your girlfriend". As she finished her sentence I grabbed her cheeks and kissed her. I could tell she was shocked but soon gave in. As we pulled away she looked at me confused. "She's right here... in front of me" I said while smiling at her. She smiled back before pulling me into another kiss.

_____________________________________________________________

Author's Note: Not how I planned to end this story, but it's cute. Though I would like to know your opinion on endings. Do you like having them being sad (if it's allowed), or do you like this cutesy 'live happily ever after'- type of endings?

[gobstoppr]

a ramble about . having hand and wrist pain that all started hitting me at once .theres no real thesis i just have been thinking about shit . happy disability awareness month .

god for what, over 4months now , ive had chronic hand/wrist pain thats made it fucking frustrating as all hell to do . the things i want to do . i cant play games for hours at a time . i can barely draw for over 30 minutes at a time without a break (oftentimes i have to take breaks long before that point) . i cant scroll on my dash forever since even with the keyboard shortcuts it strains over time (sidenote but CHRIST can i just . but a bookmark on a point on my dash. i want to come back there later and scroll from there . iwant the site to stop lagging ). everything i do i have to consider how bad my bones will hurt from it and if i can do it, if its something i can adjust to make easier on my hands, if its something worth 'wasting' what i call my 'hand stamina' for the afternoon. like oh if i play video game then i wont be able to draw or do shit for like at least 30min .

ive gone to the doctors. ive gone to the tests . its not carpel tunnel they say ! thank you for clearing that option after 3.5 months of pain. now i get to do more trial and error tests to see what i have . ive finally gotten at least like. the orders to let me get physical therapy so hopefully that can help . just side note i fucking HATE decentralized medical care holy SHIT why cant this info just be fucking shared between u guys . i wait 2 weeks between getting to go into the doctor and say 'yea mate it still fucking hurts' so they can give me a different appointment 2 weeks later and so on . its so much fucking treading water . weve been over this bullshit . why do i have to wait 2 weeks to see the dr for 10 minutes and then figure out an appointment . i just fucking . god .

i have to go to college in a month . im not going to be better in a month . im definetly never reaching what was once 'normal' condition for a long time . its . its hard to think about that shit . i feel like ive been trapped ykno.

i remember . for about 3 months. starting in late september 2021. i was having an absolute fucking blast . i had spamton brainrot . i could pump out several small doodles a day, sometimes multiple cleaned up/colored sketches, every couple weeks i might make a fully finished piece . i could spend hours upon hours just. doing what i loved . drawing silly guy who i liked . seeing what the other people in my community were doing . art, creativity is a conversation to me. i see peoples works, i get inspired, i want to create, even if i don't have anything in particular to say at that moment . it doesnt matter i have no ideas for posing or anything . i wanted to create . and i created .

i could be in my element . have this conversation . this feedback loop of inspiration . a constant improvement to my own skills as i just enjoyed art how i enjoy art . i'm mad at myself for not taking more breaks. im mad at myself for not fucking stretching all these years . but i will never regret my time . it was worth every second . and even if im not always interacting with everyone i met thru that time, im forever thankful for getting to meet all of them .

this is sounding a bit mopey huh . ok some quick advice then for this sorta shit in general.

for one . yes i know its fucking hard . but please just stretch a lil sometimes . even just learning one or two u can do pretty consistently can help u get going . this page has alot of good ones.

two . get yourself a good dumbass friend to watch stupid cartoons with you . yes im serious . if it were not for having my sister this summer to watch anime for children i would have gone insane with boredom whenever my hands hurty so i cant do shit . find yourself some bullshit to binge and laugh at . highly recommend the yokai watch dub of seasons 1+2 . good head empty but very entertaining shit . incredible for passing the time

three . find shortcuts for doing smaller straining tasks udont really think about . for example, theres the more prominant things like using keyboard shortcuts to navigate ur dash, but then theres stuff like realizing . oh trying to cut my sandwich with a knife is a kinda weird strain and because the bread is so soft its hard to cut super easily . so now i just . tear my pb+j up with my hands to cut it . jsut rip it . its not fucking worth the nonsense

yeah ok i think im out of things to say for now but yea. fucking hands huh . take care of yourselves gamers . i apologize if this is a bit gloomy

[herprincenamjoon]

Chapter 5

Her Prince

✏️Prince Namjoon x OC

✏️ Romance

⚠️ Warning Fic includes: Fighting (sword and physical), blood, kidnapping, injury fighting additional warnings in tags⚠️

<<Previous Chapter

"Ugh, I'm so full," Kaira said as she laid her head on Yeona's back.

"I told you not to pack so much food," Yeona said, turning to a new page to draw.

"I can't help it that mom bought so many good snacks while we were gone." Kaira adjusted herself so that she could watch the people hanging out by the stream.

"Don't blame mom for your lack of control," Yeona laughed.

"What do you think their story is?" Kaira asked, changing the subject. Yeona didn't have to turn her head to see who her friend was talking about. She had seen the seven men at the bottom of the hill when they arrived a couple of hours ago. She and Kaira watched them and everyone else near the stream as they ate and chatted.

"Robbers, who have come to rob the village for all its money and take us, single women, as their wives," Yeona said as she started placing the finishing touches on her final design.

"I don't get bad vibes from them, though, and I know you don't either. Or else you wouldn't have let Namjon walk you home last night," Kaira said, sitting up.

"He didn't really give me a choice," Yeona mumbled.

"You know as well as I do, Yeo that if you would have gotten any bad feelings from them you would have run," Kaira said as she stood up. "I'll be back in a bit. I need to go talk to someone."

"Ok," Yeona replied as she watched her friend brush off her shirt and make her way down the hill.

Yeona sat up and stretched before going back over each sketch. She was pretty happy about how they looked. She was also thankful that the guys had been at the stream today. She was able to observe them and get a feeling for what she thought they might like. She had decided to do as her father did with her sword. Each of theirs had a different colored cord that matched the small drawing at the bottom of the case. Nothing too fancy but still unique. It also put less pressure on the men at the shop. They'd be able to get them done quicker and move on to other jobs.

"Please help yourselves. We brought so much food, and we don't want it to go to waste.” Yeona looked up at the sound of her friend's voice. She had returned to their spot with the seven men.

"Good evening Noona," Jungkook said as he sat beside her. "What are you drawing?" He asked with a mouth full of food.

"A surprise," Yeona said as she quickly closed her sketchbook.

"Is it our swords? Can I see them?" He asked, reaching for her book.

"It wouldn't be a surprise if I showed you then now, would it?" Yeona quipped, smacking his hand.

"Can I draw something?" Yeona looked at Jungkook, who was looking at her with puppy dog eyes. "Please?"

"I don't usually let people draw in my books." Jungkook gave her a pout.

"Let him draw Yeo. It's not like mom didn't buy you ten before we left last month.” Kaira said as she poured the guys something to drink.

"I was going to say yes," Yeona said, handing Jungkook her sketchbook. "How can you look at that face and say no?" She pouted. "Just draw in the back, please." Jungkook smiled at her and opened the back of the book.

"How many of them do you have left anyway?" Kaira asked.

"That's the last one." Yeona mumbled.

"Did you say that was the last one? I know you didn't go through them that fast." Kaira raised an eyebrow at her. "You gave them away, didn't you? Yeona, you have to stop giving all your things away. My mom buys you things because she..."

"I know that I am too stubborn to spend it on myself." She said, cutting her off. "And your mom knows that if I see someone who needs the stuff more than me, I will give it to them. Why do you think she buys me so much at once?"

"So, where are you guys from?" Kaira asked, breaking the staring contest that she was having with her friend. She knew that Yeona would be upset as soon as she had said it. But she couldn't figure out why her friend was so set on helping other people all the time, while she did without the finer things in life. Her mom would buy Yeona clothes, and she'd give away her old ones or sometimes even the new ones without a second thought. She'd even spend money on food for the beggars in the street before she bought herself any.

"Emelle." The sound of Namjoon's deep voice beside Yeona made her jump. She didn't realize he had sat beside her.

"Oh, that's on the other side of the capitol, right?" Kaira asked.

"Yes," Namjoon answered without looking up from his book.

"That explains the proper way you talk and your expensive clothes." The five men sitting near her looked down at their clothes.

"I don't think our clothes are costly," Hoseok said.

"They are. You won't find anyone this far out wearing something like that. Well, unless they have a lot of money and visit the capitol often like my family. Why didn't you guys bring horses or weapons if you came this far? And why would you pick a little village like Hwen?"

"Kaira, did you bring them here to interrogate them?" Yeona asked, irritated at her friend's never-ending questions.

"I was just trying to get to know them," Kaira replied.

"There are less intrusive ways to get to know them," Yeona said as she looked over at what Jungkook was drawing. She had no idea what Kaira's mission was, but it was upsetting her. First, it was her and now the guys.

"No peeking, Noona," Jungkook said as he turned his back to her. Revenge for her closing the book on him earlier.

"I just wanted to see what you were drawing." She pulled her knees to her chest and watched the six people in front of her chat.

"It's a surprise. And you looking would spoil the surprise." She couldn't help but laugh at that.

"What are you reading?" Yeona asked, looking over at Namjoon, who had his head in his hand as he read.

"A book." He spoke softly out the side of his mouth that wasn't covered by his hand.

"It's about art?" Yeona asked as she started to read what was on the pages.

"Yes." She moved her head a little closer so that she could see more of the page. "Are you still upset with your friend?" Namjoon asked softly as he moved his arm out of her way.

"A little, yes." She said softly enough so only he and Jungkook could hear it, "You didn't have to move your arm.

"You can't read the next page if my arm is on it." He pointed out. "And you need the distraction of reading as much as I do right now."

Next Chapter>>

[geniusgub]

north//chapter fourteen

genre: angst

pairing: season twelve spencer reid x female oc

warnings: description of physical assault, prison, just all of the bad prison arc stuff

word count: 4.7k

summary: spencer and amelia feel the effects of being forcibly separated and it impacts them in similar ways.

honestly, spencer’s pov in this chapter is one of my favorite things i’ve ever written so i hope everyone enjoys it <3

AMELIA

"Come on! You don't even have to do anything! Just go and clean up. We'll go with you and help!" Yaz pokes my shoulder incessantly, trying to get a reaction out of me. But I just keep my eyes on the tv in front of me, bundled up under a blanket.

"Lia," Michael sighs and slings his arm over my shoulder. I want nothing more than to shove it off. “It's been like, three months since-"

I'm quick to speak up to correct him. "Two and a half."

Michael and Quinn exchange a tense look. "Okay," Quinn nods, "two and a half months. It's been two and a half months since you've drawn, or painted, or sketched, or done anything even related to art. We know you're upset about Spencer but you can't let yourself be so upset. You need to find something that's gonna bring you happiness, and art has always done that."

"I don't wanna," I answer like a stubborn child, an answer that any of my siblings would have given me about things like going to bed early or eating vegetables. I pull the blanket up to my chin and stroke my thumb across my newest tattoo, tucked away and out of the sights of my nosy, annoying friends.

Frankie turns and shushes Quinn. "Like I said, Lia, why don't we go and just clean up your studio? We can drive over and just clean up? That's it. You don't have to do a photoshoot or create anything new. Just clean. Sound good? An hour tops."

I look around the faces of my expecting friends and tighten my jaw. I try to steal Spencer's skills and profile what their ulterior motives could be. They all hated Spencer before meeting him, and even after they met him, they weren't completely fond of him. So why are they trying so hard to get me to feel better? Why does it feel like they’re trying to get me to forget about my boyfriend in prison? I should be worrying about him every second of my day instead of prancing around town, cleaning up my studio, and going about my life as if Spencer isn’t suffering. But I’m sure they mean well. And I’m absolutely positive that my legs are sore from sleeping on the couch and from being in that same position all day.

"Fine," I concede, and they all silently cheer. "But I'm driving myself."

The drive to my studio is nearly insufferable. It’s silent and overwhelmed with a tension that I created but can’t seem to let go. The sights around me are familiar but blurry, like I can’t even tell which stores are which without someone in my passenger seat spitting out fact after fact after fact as I drive. I can’t drive down the street and try to recall all the good times and all the dates and all the drunken stumbles back home with the love of my life on my arm. It’s far too painful to constantly remember that I can’t go home and see Spencer and I can’t spend hours on the phone with him like I do when he is away on a case. I can’t see him. 

When I arrive at my studio, I realize why they were so insistent that I come out to clean up. I can't remember the last time I was actually in here to work but it's an absolute mess. There are canvases everywhere, bottles and tubes of paint on the floor, splashes and splatters of paint on the walls, brushes everywhere, crumbled up sketches in the trash, and way more. The studio needs much love and I guess now is the time to give it.

Michael immediately turns on music and everyone gets to work, but I don't. I pick up an empty tube of yellow paint and squeeze it in my palm. My head is starting to pound and I can't even stop it as tears start to fall down my cheeks. Who knew that one person could produce so many tears? 

Spencer loved when I wore yellow. I have this one short, backless dress that he loved. He especially loved that he had easy access to my skin, always tracing shapes on my back and murmuring about how soft my skin is. He always said that he loved the way the yellow complimented my blonde hair and how it contrasted against my colorful tattoos. He even went as far as to buy me another yellow dress for my birthday last year. 

And he loved when I used yellow in my paintings too. One time, I sent him a picture of a piece I was working on and he emailed back a book about how the use of yellow paint expressed the happiness of the piece or something like that. He raved about a painting I did of the sun and how my use of yellow wasn’t scientifically accurate, but it was beautiful nonetheless. 

"Amelia?" Quinn speaks but I don't look at her. My cheeks are wet with tears that I barely noticed and my hands are clutching the tube of paint so tightly that it would burst if it were full. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean to upset you. If we-"

"I'm gonna go," I say hastily, clutching the empty tube in my hand as I breeze out of the studio, leaving my bewildered friends to either clean or leave. They know the way out and they know where the keys are. They don’t need me.

I'm wandering into the bullpen like it's second nature because, at this point, it basically is. Nobody on the team bothers to say anything to me. They never do. They're too worried I'll blow up at them or start crying. I don't blame them.

I rap my knuckles against Dave's door and wait for him to shout for me to come in, and when he does, I enter slowly. He gives me a small, pitiful smile as I move in front of his desk. I set the empty yellow paint tube in front of him and then sit down, bringing my knees to my chest.

Dave looks down at the tube, his eyebrows furrowing. "Paint? What's this?"

I blink and it forces tears out of my eyes. "I don't know how to live without Spencer."

Dave leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over my chest. He studies me, profiles me. I hate when Spencer did that. He always got this look on his face when he profiled me, but Dave has a better poker face. "And paint has something to do with that?"

"I just went to my studio with my friends and I finished off all this paint and there were brushes all over the floor and-" tears start pouring down my cheeks again, wetting my neck and the neckline of my sweater. "I came home the other day and I'd left the balcony door open. How stupid. I'm forgetting to lock my doors just because my boyfriend is in p-" I gulp, having to force out the disgusting word, "prison. How fucking stupid. How stupid am I that I can't function without him?"

"You're not stupid," Dave shakes his head. Nothing about his tone or his body language is helpful in the slightest. Nothing and nobody will help. "You two are reliant on each other and that's not a bad thing. I'm sure Boy Genius is always on you about locking your doors and I'm sure he's always giving you statistics on break ins and-"

"He doesn't," I cut him off sharply. "If Spencer's telling me statistics then it's about stars in the sky and how to properly care for my plants so they stay alive longer or just- it's never about things you guys talk about here. It always about things that I'd like. He does it to protect me. He doesn't tell me about serial killers unless I ask, and I only ask when I can see that he had a really hard day at work. It's just me, Dave," I put my forehead to my knees, shoulder shaking as sobs take over my whole body. "I just don't know how to live without him. I don't know how to function without him holding my hand and him calling me to promise he's okay and-- I just can't. I can't do it."

"You did it before you met him," Dave stands from his desk and moves in front of me. He puts his cold hand on my shoulder and it sends a chill down my spine. "You lived a long life before you met him, and you're living now while he's temporarily gone. It's hard, I know, but it's only for a short time."

"I just want him to be okay. That's all I really care about."

///

SPENCER

///

My whole job is about helping people and I've spent my whole life caring for others, mostly my mother. In my professional life, I'm always keeping an eye on my teammates to make sure they aren't in danger. I consider it to be part of my responsibility to look after every single one of my teammates. They're my family and I rely on them to help me too.

I never thought my helpful nature would come back to hurt me. I never thought that trying to help out a friend would come back to hurt me so badly. All I wanted to do was help Delgado. That's it. Calvin is protecting me and the other men in here wouldn't dare to cross him. They know how miserable he could make their experience here and they'd rather beat up someone else than get on Calvin's bad side.

All I did was speak to a correctional officer at chow. That's literally all I did. Yes, I did rat out the gang to the officer for beating up Delgado, but they don't know that. They aren't going to be disciplined for it. I ask the guard for water first as a cover, but clearly, it wasn't enough.

And I've been through a lot in the field. I've been tackled, and punched, and shot, but getting beaten up in a prison is completely different. The guards couldn't care less about the inmates. No matter how much I screamed and pleaded for help, no one came. And even still, there was another inmate outside my cell keeping watch so my attackers could run and not get caught.

I’ve gotten beaten up a lot in my line of work and I can confidently say that this one, in a dirty prison cell, is the worst I’ve received. They held me down against my bed and used a rag to muffle me, but it covered my mouth and nose and it almost suffocated me. They beat me to a pulp, drawing blood on my forehead and almost cracking a rib or two.

It was an unrelenting beating and I eventually succumbed to the pain because I convinced myself that they were going to kill me. I snitched and death would be the consequence. I stopped fighting and just let them take their turns at swiping my face and my chest and my stomach because what could I do? Nothing. As Calvin loves to remind me, the rules are different in here. I don't have a badge and a gun to make the torture stop. I have to endure it or find my own ways to make it stop, and this is a moment to endure it. I'm rendered useless.

The beating only ended when the inmate outside whistled, probably a preplanned signal, because the two others immediately jumped off of me and ran out of my cell. As soon as the towel was pulled away from my face, I gasped in a breath and clutched my aching chest, wincing in pain.

Wilkins came strolling over, peering into my cell. I knew he knew exactly what had just happened by the smirk on his face, but he chose to do nothing. He chose to stroll over instead of running and he didn't yell at the other inmates. He just stared at me and smirked, shaking his head.

"That'll teach you to keep your mouth shut, Snitch."

And those are the words that echoed in my nightmare that night.

I'd rolled over and coughed up a generous amount of blood, grimacing at the taste in my mouth. My body trembled and shook when Wilkins left, even more than when he was silently mocking and watching me. Wilkins doesn’t care to do his job but at least with him standing at my cell door, I had the tiniest bit of protection. But with him gone, the other inmates could come back and finish the job. I shook and stayed rolled over on my side for twenty minutes, staring at the floor and waiting for my cell to close.

When it finally did close, I didn't even let myself sigh of relief. I just fell onto my back again with a groan. I could barely move. It hurt too bad. Everything always hurts nowadays. Things didn't hurt on the outside. Living didn't hurt before I got arrested.

Getting visitors the next morning is not what the ideal situation is. Rising from bed is more of a challenge than it normally is. My body is sore and aching and all I want to do is curl up in my obnoxiously uncomfortable bed, if this slab of metal and a blanket could be considered a bed, and go back to sleep. But I know I'll get in trouble if I don't get up for role call, so I ignore the pain.

I don't dare to look around at anyone on my block as the officer shouts our names, checking to see that we're all here. I just keep my head held high and my hands at my sides and try to show that I couldn't care less about the beating that is causing me so much unrelenting pain.

But then they call our names for a visitor’s session and, of course, my name gets called. I'm usually grateful to get to see anyone from my team, but now? Today? After last night? I'd prefer if they didn't come back until after these bruises were gone. But there's nothing I can do so I allow the guards to put cuffs on me and lead me to the visitor’s room.

As soon as Penelope sees me, she gasps and drops her jaw. She starts to rise to her feet, but I sharpen my glare at her and when she sees my expression, she stays in her seat. When I sit down at the little table and put my cuffed hands in view, like I'm required to, I watch her eyes fill with tears.

"You-" she whispers, "you're hurt. What happened?"

"It's not a big deal," I answer nonchalantly. "It could've been worse." She's not convinced, her jaw dropped as a few tears drip down her cheeks. I keep my jaw tight and as much as I want to comfort her and hug her and promise that as badly as this hurts and as horrible as I'm sure I look, I'll be fine. But there are a million eyes on me right now, including my assailants, and if I show any kind of weakness, a beating like last nights will surely be in store for me again.

Penelope not-so-subtly glances around at the other prisoners around us. "Reid," she leans towards me and tries to lower her voice, "I am going to march right down to the warden’s office and I'm going to-"

"No, you're not," I snap, and my sharp tone of voice makes her jump back, her eyes widening. But for some reason, the look on her face doesn't even make me regret the way I've spoken to her. The look on her face just bothers me more. Why doesn't she get it? Clearly, I have to spell it out for her. "It'll just make worse things. I've got it handled, Garcia."

"Are you sure?" She practically whimpers. "I could-"

"How's everyone else? How's the team? How's my mom?" I deflect from the obvious issue at hand and instead turn the focus to my loved ones. All but the one I wanna hear about.

Penelope starts to nod slowly and she moves her glasses to wipe her cheeks free of tears. "We really miss you. And in our free time, we're working really hard on your-"

"Shh," I try to hold my hands out but the handcuffs rattle, and my eyes dart over to a guard who is alerted by my movement. He gives me a pointed look as if telling me not to do anything stupid. I put my hands back down and look over at a stunned Penelope, leaning in closer. "Don't talk about my case, Garcia. People don’t do that in here. It’s not right and it’s not safe. Just don't talk about it."

She gulps harshly, another single tear dripping down her cheek. "Okay," she nods again, and it's obvious that she's confused. But I don't have the time or the energy to explain why I'm acting like this and I don't even have it in me to care. I didn't even want to be at this visitor’s meeting. I'm only here because I have to be. "Um," she taps her fingers against the table, "we just really miss you, Spencer. Your mom is doing really well with Cassie."

"Good, I'm glad everyone is okay," I nod and I sit back, glancing around for a clock. When is this thing over? I'd rather be in my cell than here. I never thought I'd think that.

Penelope raises her eyebrows and her eyes soften. "A-Amelia? Do you wanna hear about her?"

As soon as I hear her name, my heart starts beating faster. My mind flashes with all the most beautiful images of Amelia that I can recall. I can practically see her in front of me. I can almost feel her under my fingertips. I swear I can taste her chapstick on my lips as she kisses me. I rub my fingers together as if I can feel the fabric of her denim skirt. As if I could unbuckle her belt and take her right on my bed right now. I shake the thought from my head. Don't go there, Spencer. Nothing good ever comes of when your mind goes there.

But I can't get her out of my head. I can stop seeing her lying on my lap, peering up at me as she mulls over which record to put on. Etta James or Taylor Swift? That's always the question of the day, isn't it? It always seems to take her hours to decide on an answer, and she usually doesn't. She'll usually work up an appetite with her thoughts, and when she's gone to get a snack or a glass of wine, I decide for her. Always the same. Always Taylor Swift.

But her smile is always so beautiful when she comes back into the room. When the music finally flows through her ears, the smile that comes to her face is one that could end wars, cure cancer, solve world hunger. I didn't think I could ever understand how bubblegum pop music could make a person so happy. I didn’t think I could ever understand how bubblegum pop music could make Amelia want to drag me off the couch or out of bed and force me to dance with her, whether it be in the middle of the night or just as the sun is peeking through the always-open blinds of her apartment.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to bring myself back to reality. I try to forget about the girl that's waiting for me in the free world. I try to ignore that she's probably shed tear after tear and I haven't been there to wipe them away. My brain produces images of her gasping for air with her head between her knees and I ball my hands into fists.

I'm angry. I'm fucking furious. I want to be there to hold her and whisper in her ear and tell her that her panic attacks are short-lived, that I'm right there. I need to be there to hold her and kiss her and love her. I need her because I can't do this without her. I don't know what to do if I'm not spending my time protecting her. Everything I do is to protect her. I don't know how to function if I'm not holding her hand, or if I'm not pushing myself through every day just so I can call her at midnight to promise that I'm okay. I've become so reliant on Amelia, and maybe that's wrong, but I don't care. I don't care about anything anymore. I just want my life back. I want my life, I want my job, and I want my girlfriend.

I want my girlfriend. I want to move in with her like we planned to and I want to propose to her and I want to marry her. I want to have a whole house full of kids who are loud and messy and loving and adorable and a crusty dog who slobbers all over the couch and chews my shoes. It's not fair. None of this is fair. Amelia doesn't deserve this. She deserves someone better than me.

But I can still see her. I can still see her fucking smile, and I can still hear her goddamn laugh, and I can still feel the fabric of her dumb hair scarves. She's engulfing me in her. She's not even here and yet I feel like I could reach out and she would be in my arms, kissing my neck and telling me that I'm safe and that we can just sit on the balcony and talk. We don't have to go to bed if you don't want to, we can just talk.

What I would give to hear her voice again. I'd give everything I have, and right now, it's not much. I'd give everything plus the clothes on my back to just hear her tell me I'm safe, or to tell me about a new painting she's thinking about starting, or to ask me to tell her a random fact about a food item she is about to buy at the store.

The last thing I want right now is to hear about Amelia. I want it all, or I want nothing. I don't want to hear that Amelia misses me, or that she's crying and having panic attacks in the middle of the BAU, or that she's sleeping in my clothes (or worse, not sleeping at all), or that she's lashing out at everyone. No, if I'm not having her in front of me, kissing me, hugging me, I don't want to hear about her.

"No."

For what seems like the millionth time, Penelope's eyes widen. "No? You don't wanna hear about-"

"No, I don't," there's a pit in my stomach that I try to hold down. I try to not let it take control of me. "I don't wanna hear about how horrible she's doing, okay? So just tell her that I lo-"

I can feel a million eyes burning into every bone in my body and so I stop myself. My lips freeze mid-sentence and I release the steel grip my hands hold around my cuffs. Penelope's are just another pair of eyes that bore into my frame, and I usually love her concerned and mothering nature, but now, it irks me to no end.

"Whatever," it pains me to cut off the sentence I crave so intensely to say, but I can't let my guard down. I can't be vulnerable and I can't show weakness.

"Whatever," Penelope repeats, almost mockingly, her voice cracking. "So you-"

"Could you not say anything to, um," I gulp, "her about this?" I gesture to my face where I can feel the pulsing and throbbing bruises tormenting me. I drop my shoulders and start to fiddle with the way-too-tight handcuffs around my wrists, but then I decide that that's a horrible idea, and probably a good way to get harassed by the correctional officers. "I just don't want her to worry about this. I'm sure she's worried enough. I don't want to give her another reason to, you know, panic."

"Times up! Inmates, get back to your cells."

Without so much as another glance at Penelope, I stand and turn my back to her. I lift my chin as I'm pushed and shoved into the lineup and then pushed and shoved back to my lonely, isolated cell. I'd rather have it this way, behind bars where the other inmates can't get me.

I drop down to the floor, pressing my forehead against the rusty bars, staring out at the drab, bland, boring beige walls. The paint is peeling and the bars, honestly, look like they could be broken with a hard enough kick. And, of course, the colors of the walls do nothing to brighten up the dead environment. The colors aren't anything like those that adorn Amelia's body on the regular.

A frustrated groan escapes my lips as I bang my hand against the bars. Why did I have to think about her again? Why did I have to let her infiltrate my thoughts?

But the colors of her. The colors swirl around in my head but as hard as I try, I can't get her colors to fill this horrible cell I'm confined to. I try to imagine her denim skirts, knit sweaters, and pea coats strewn out on the bed as she chooses what to wear in the morning. I try to remember the feeling of accidentally stepping on one of Amelia's millions of piercings when they fall on the floor after she takes them out before bed. I try to see her laying down on my bed, her sketchbook in her lap, and her colored pencils beside her as she rambles on and on and on, talking more than me, about what she's drawing and how she's planning on achieving her vision.

But no matter how hard I try, I can't get her into the cell with me. She doesn't belong here. Her art doesn't belong on these chipped walls, and her clothes don't belong on this poor excuse for a bed, and her absurdly positive attitude doesn't deserve to be squashed in here.

I rub my eyes and try to forget. I try to forget all about her and I try to erase her from my mind completely. I push myself away from the bars and stand, but standing does the opposite of what I want to do. Standing gives me a perfect view of the tiny window across from my cell, but more specifically, the sky.

I stare up at the clouds, my hands gripping the bars as tight as I possibly can. My eyes well up with tears and my knees start to buckle under my weight, and as my tears start to drip, they sting the cuts that I didn't even realize I had on my face. It’s not like I have a mirror to examine my injuries. 

They are just blobs. There are no dragons, or hands, or tables, or staircases, or cars, or Christmas trees. They're just clouds. There's nothing fancy about them. I'll never be able to see it. I couldn't see shapes when I was with Amelia. What makes me think I would be able to see shapes without her?

I push myself away from the bars and throw myself onto the bed, covering my face with my hands. This is useless. I'm useless. There are echoes of chatter from men on my cell block and it makes my head hurt. If Amelia were here, she would cradle my head in her lap and brush her fingers through my hair, and she would trail her fingertips over my forehead and over the bridge of my nose, all while whispering sweet nothings to me. I groan with frustration, rolling onto my stomach and burying my face under my flat pillow.

"Hey, Reid," Calvin's voice joins the echoes from the cells around mine. "How's it going over there?"

 TAGLIST

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[hardsquare]

Every wave of the storm

In the beginning, Steve had no one — the world around him was his own, quiet, barbaric nightmare. And then, Steve had Bucky. And things started to change; Steve learned to blossom.

wc ~ 3k.

[READ ON AO3]

4th July 2019 - 2:33 am

Steve is not good with sleeping. He doesn't really know what time it is exactly, but he knows that the night is pitch black and that the moon is high in the sky. He knows that, because he never closes his curtains. Not completely, at least. Not that Steve is afraid of the dark, not anymore. He just loves to stare at the empty nothing during his sleepless nights. And he’s okay with that, really. He made peace with his incapability to have a healthy sleep schedule a long time ago.

When he can’t sleep, like tonight - and a lot of other nights, let’s be honest -, he takes time to analyze everything that’s around him. The bed, the soft comforter around him, the paintings  - his paintings- on the walls. The bottle of water on his nightstand, the record player on the corner of the room with the Led Zeppelin vinyl still on it - he can’t help himself, he physically has to listen to ‘ I can’t quit you baby’ at least 4 times a day or he’s not in his right state of mind.

Anyway, the room is still the same in the middle of the night than it is at 3pm, or even 9pm for that matter. There is still something  different about the darkness of his apartment. The shapes on the wall in front of the bed, more like shadows actually. Steve used to be so afraid of them. Especially at night, just like this. Now he just embraces it. He tells himself entire stories about the strange silhouettes in the obscurity, as if it’s now his own little garden of Eden.

While observing this weird dance in front of him, Steve allows himself to drift into his memories, when he was still afraid of the dark.

4th July, 2002

It’s a sunny and beautiful day, and most of all: it’s Steve’s 8th birthday. He’s just finished eating his lunch with his mother; she made a chocolate cake for him and Steve just feels happy, because he knows his mom doesn’t have much money for this. Yet, every year she never fails to cook a homemade chocolate birthday cake. Steve loves his mom so much.

“Don’t forget to make a wish, honey,” Sarah says, just after humming the happy birthday song to his son. Steve closes his eyes, and thinks about what he could wish for. Maybe more money so his Ma could be home with him more? Maybe a shiny new bike? What about a healthy year, for a change? He squints his eyes even more and wishes, he wishes so hard that this year, maybe, he won’t feel as lonely as the previous ones. With that thought in mind, he blows his eight candles in one go.

When Steve arrives at the playground, his fingers are wrapped tight around the cake’s leftovers he brought with him. He originally wanted to share it with the kids here. They are children from his apartment building and they are all about his age.  His mom always asks why he’s not hanging out more with them, and he never wants to say that he tried , they just don’t want him . But Steve thinks maybe today is the day. So he walks, confident, and introduces himself again. “Hey guys, it’s my birthday today! Do y’all want some cake? It’s chocolate !”

There’s a big blank as the kids just turn over to Steve and look at him from head to toes, like he’s some kind of alien or such. Steve can actually see them laugh at him, talking among themselves and pointing fingers. But all Steve can hear is a mess of confusion. “Hah, guys, Rogers is at it again with his stupid cake, like we’re gonna want to hang out with you, you stupid freak.”

And they all laugh, again. Steve turns around, holding his tears, dropping the cake on the ground. He runs back to his house and goes straight to his bedroom to unload the tears. Steve has always been an unhealthy child, as you could say. He has asthma, arrhythmia, and weak muscles. He always has clutches or a cast on any of his limbs.

And he can’t hear. Not well at least. And Steve can’t remember a time when he was able to listen, really listen , to a conversation between him and more than two people at once.

People never try to help him with that. Not the other kids, not the doctors, not even the teachers. Beside his mom, he has always been alone. He knew from the beginning he needed to be fixed, he just didn’t know how . Sarah has the decency to give him some time before she’s knocking softly at his door.

“Honey, baby. What’s wrong ?”

She helps herself in the little boy’s bedroom and sits carefully on the edge of the bed.

“They all think I’m a freak” Steve sniffs, his face still in his pillow, holding his eeyore’s plushie close to his heart. Sarah looks at her son, putting her hand on the nape of his neck. After a little while, he turns around to watch her.

“And why would they think that?” “I don’t know, maybe I am.”

Steve is still crying, but the touch of her mom and her simple presence makes him feel a little bit better. “Honey, you can tell me what happened. I’m not going to be mad at you, I promise.”

Steve knows her mom is telling the truth, she always does. He sits himself on the bed, not looking at his mom’s eyes, ashamed.

“I could not hear them, mom. I can never really hear them. It’s wrong, everything is wrong with me.” He can feel the sad sigh his mother makes.

“Baby, I need you to listen to me very carefully. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are. Those children don’t know how special you are, and the fact that you can’t really hear the right way does not mean you’re broken. I wish that someday you’ll be able to understand that.”

And with those words, she’s taking her son into her arms and holding him tightly against her chest.

Deep down, Steve might know his Ma is right. That he should not care about what some random stupid kids think of him.

But it still hurts. And in his little boy’s heart, he can’t stop thinking about how shattered he is.

28th August, 2005

Steve has always loved summer. He can’t really get sick, and he can spend hours under the sun drawing everything he sees around him.

He’s eleven years old now and he’s learnt to spend his time alone. Not that he wants to, it’s just easiest this way, is all. Today is a particularly gorgeous day. He is sitting on a bench in the garden attached to his block. He’s alone, except for the old lady feeding the birds, but it’s okay, Steve likes the old lady.

He can sometimes see his mom watching him from their balcony three floors above. He knows she wants to be discreet so he just smirks to himself and dives into his sketchbook a little more. Today he feels like drawing his mother. Of course there’s a lot of her in his sketches, but he adores her and he doesn’t have many more models, anyway. He decides to draw her with a big smile on her face, holding the birthday cake she always makes for him on July 4th.

Not so strangely, this memory brings a lot of mixed feelings to Steve. Happiness, sorrow, all the things Steve does not want to think about at the moment.

He is focusing on his mother’s eyes when he feels a little tap on his shoulder.

He turns around, abruptly. “What?!” “Hum, hey? I’m sorry, I called you but I’m not sure you heard me so I, hum..”

A dark haired boy about his age is standing in front of him. Steve has never seen him here and by the look on the boy’s face, he truly has no intention of mocking him. “S’okay… Do you want something?”

Steve really, really , tries to be nice with the stranger. He’s just not used to having conversations with kids his age, that’s all. The boys seem confused at first but still smile widely at Steve.

“Not really, I just wanted to introduce myself. Me and my family just moved to this building,” he points at the block Steve and his Ma lives. “My name is Bucky!”

He extends his hand to Steve, watching him like he’s the goddamn sun- or maybe he’s just facing the actual sun, that’s why. Steve shakes his hand and attempts a smile, “Nice to meet you, I’m Steve.” And with the years passing, Steve actually learns that Bucky wasn’t trying to mock him on this brightful day. And it might just have been the best day of his entire life.

18th September, 2009

It’s the third time since the beginning of the school year. Somehow, Steve always finds himself stuck in an alley with assholes insulting him, shouting at him, as if he could hear them. So he does the only thing he can think of: he fucking punches them in the face.

Unfortunately for Steve, he’s still very much skinny, he still very much can’t breathe correctly; and when the dude hits back he hits hard, and Steve falls on his ass and against the wall. “Hey Rogers, it’s just us now, can you hear me or are you just pretending like you always do?”

Ah, yes. When he was a child, the other kids were laughing at him because he could not hear them correctly. Now, they’d think he was just lying to them, like it was funny for him to constantly ask people to repeat, please; and like it’s hilarious to be hit in some random alley by the same jackass every week.

“Fuck you, shithead,” Steve mutters under his breath. He is not about to bend down in front of this prick. Yes, even if he is indeed ass on the ground right now. As he waits for the next punch to come, he closes his eyes and feels absolutely nothing .

He cocks an eyebrow and opens only one of his eyes.

And he sees Bucky, actually pulling one of the guys by the collar, looking considerably pissed . Steve doesn’t know if it’s at him, but he’s glad his friend is here, - once again. The next few minutes are a mess of words shouted that Steve doesn’t understand, punches and name callings. When the guys finally leave, Bucky is all over Steve; who is still sitting on his butt on the floor, thank you very much.

“Damn Stevie, did they hurt you ?”

So, Steve can guess that Bucky is not mad at him, and that’s good.

“Why did you have to punch them? Can’t you walk away and let them talk like the stupid fuckheads they are?!”

Okay, so maybe Bucky is a little bit pissed, actually. Steve suddenly loses it and pushes Bucky away from him, before he gets up.

“Because, Bucky. I’m tired of being insulted and treated like I’m a freak or something. I know I am, they don’t need to remind me everytime they see me. But nothing, absolutely nothing can fix this. Can fix me .”

The look on Bucky’s face stiffens. “You’re not a freak, stop saying that.”

Steve can actually see that he’s trying. He’s trying so much to make him feel better. But he can’t and Steve knows that. The struggle he feels, and the loneliness he experiences every damn seconds of his damned life, Bucky can’t do anything about this.

With tears and a heavy heart, Steve turns around and begins to walk.

“Whatever, let’s go home.”

And it kills him to turn away from Bucky, because he knows that someday, perhaps he’ll leave too.

And he’s not sure his heart can handle a life without Bucky.

23rd November, 2012.

Bucky didn’t leave. Quite the opposite, actually.

Bucky stayed and was here for every step of Steve’s difficult life.

Surgeries, medical treatment gone bad, relapses, aftermaths... Bucky was always here, taking him to the hospital, at his bedside when he woke up from anesthesias. And it honestly makes Steve’s heart fly like a freaking butterfly. He cannot really understand that already, but he likes it. Maybe more than that. But what Steve is about to do, he needs to do it alone. Without Bucky, without his mom. On his own. And with all the confidence he has in his gut, he steps inside the store for his appointment.

When they put the device onto his ears, it first feels strange. Weird. He’s so used to not being able to hear, it’s almost too much. The person in charge assures him that it’ll feel better with time, he just needs to get used to it.

As soon as Steve gets out of the store, he feels like a train is rolling towards him at full speed. What the fuck is happenning, and why is everything so damn loud, and why the hell are those people even talking about on this damn tv program, and oh god why is this woman’s voice so acute and - oh, God.

Steve has to find Bucky. He has to find him right now, because the only thing he can think of is how much he aches for Bucky’s voice. Running full speed is not a problem anymore for Steve. After his heart surgery, his stamina is almost back to normal. But it’s enough for him to run to Bucky today.

He finds him sitting on their bench, the one where they met all those years ago, the one where they always hang out when they have free time. Bucky is wrapped in his big coat and scarf, scrolling on his phone, like nothing has changed.

He sees him running to him so he puts his phone in his pocket and genuinely smiles at him.

“Hey Steve, what’s up ?”

And Steve…  Steve can’t answer.

Because Steve is now crying his heart out and sobbing like it’s his eighth birthday all over again. Because he can finally, after all this time, hear his best friend’s voice. His raspy yet chocolate coated voice that he somehow already loves with his whole being. “What? Steve? Is everything okay? I swear to God if those punks are messing with you again Imma throw hands.”

Steve can see that Bucky is, honest to god, freaking out, holding him close. But he can’t help himself and cries and cries. And when he can finally compose himself a bit, he looks at Bucky in his beautiful grey eyes, and just kisses him.

Bucky pauses for a moment, then he deepens the kiss and it’s the most perfect, messy, and actually the only kiss of Steve’s entire life. It’s short and chaste but when their lips parts, Bucky still seems confused.

“Sorry,” Steve whispers, actually not sorry at all.

“Oh God, no, don’t be,” Bucky pauses. “But I still gotta ask, what happened, Stevie?”

Steve is looking at him in the eyes, instead of at his lips like he always had to do since they met, because he had to lipread. But now, now he doesn’t have to.

And something must click in Bucky’s big brain because his eyes widens and his mouth opens like he just saw a giant bee in the middle of Steve’s forehead. “Steve, are you...?” And gently, he tucks one of Steve’s long locks behind his ear and sees. “Oh my god Steve! When?” “Today, I ran as fast as I could, I wanted to hear your voice.”

And Bucky smiles, smiles. And he never stops smiling at Steve, like he’s the goddamn sun. But this time, it’s a gloomy November greyish day and there’s no ray of sunshine in Bucky’s eyes. Just Steve.

And it might actually be the second best day of his life, he thinks.

4th July 2019 - 3:02am

Steve is back in his bedroom, watching the shadows from the outside still dancing on his wall. He’s smiling. He is now 25- it’s been roughly 3 hours, he just saw the clock -, and he’s more happy than he ever was.

He’s feeling better now. The heart surgery changed everything and he now has a very normal stamina. He can breathe, he’s not as sick as he used to be, which is great. He’s going to the gym at least four times a week and ah, he can hear his Ma’s voice from here, “Stop growing like this Steven Grant Rogers, we got it, you’re taller than all of us!” He chuckles at the fond memory.

But what’s made Steve the man he is today is everything he understood those past few years.

It’s not the physical part. That, everyone can do. He learned that he never needed the validation of other people. He only needed to find out his true self, be gentle with himself and allow himself some time to grow.

But mostly, he realized that he didn’t need to be fixed, like he thought his entire life before that, like others wanted to make him think. No matter how much people still wanted to take him down, even now.

Steve was perfect the way he was, the way he was born, and it’ll always be the case. Weak heart, or not, loose stamina, or not.

Hearing impaired, or not.

Steve feels the quilt move a little and rearranges himself on the bed, feeling a little bit tired again - it is still 3am, after all. He gazes at the other side of the bed fondly as Bucky seems deeply asleep against the pillows, drooling a little.

Steve knows he’s snoring, not that he can hear it, but he just knows it. And that’s all that matters to him.

With all those thoughts- the good, the bad, everything that makes Steve the man he is today, he wraps himself around his boyfriend’s back tightly. And it doesn’t take long for him to join Bucky in his sleep, dreaming of friendly shadowy shapes in a starry, black sky.

[juliandev0rak]

Education & Occupation 🏛📚

Four: Education – did they go to a private school, were taught at home, or taught themselves? Did they have a favorite subject?

combined with 

Seven: Occupation – did they work/have a job or trade of any kind? Did they have a mentor figure there?

echoes of the past event

@arcana-echoes​

Freya Viano, she/ her

Bérault University, Port Tremaire

14 years before the events of The Arcana, Freya is 16, ends at age 22

Words: 2240

Warnings: young naive blonde becomes vengeful blonde on a mission of destruction 

read about freya’s arrival in the city here

Note: I have no idea if this educational system has any basis in history, but at this fantasy school a professor can offer to sponsor a student, agreeing to take them on as a student for no cost. These students have higher expectations placed on them because their success at the school is seen as a reflection of their sponsor professor. It’s a rudimentary scholarship system that’s based entirely on either merit or recognizable family name. 

When Freya arrived at Bérault University in Port Tremaire she thought it would be easy to convince them to let her in. She'd basically run away from home for a chance to study in a big city and make something of herself, but she soon found herself alone, penniless, and in over her head. 

She’d heard from passing merchants that the school admitted students even when they couldn’t pay the tuition, but it turns out they only did that for students who already had a faculty sponsor. She had knocked on every professor’s office door, trying to find someone who would take a chance on her. It always went the same way, they asked her “Who is your family?” and “What are your talents?” and as Freya has neither, she has no hope of admittance.

During her third week in Port Tremaire she’s nearly given up. Just as she had begun to fear that she’d have to return to Vesuvia empty handed due to a lack of funds she’d accepted a job at the Inn she’s been staying at. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s enough to let her stay while she tries to find someone to sponsor her. 

She’s been through every department; mathematics, philosophy, literature, and so on, but none of the professors are willing to vouch for someone with no background and no prospects. The only professor she’s yet to ask specializes in architecture, and although she hasn’t thought much about studying architecture before, Freya doesn’t have much of a choice. If this professor won’t vouch for her, she’ll have to find another university or somehow raise enough money to afford the tuition. 

Freya’s walk to the university is fraught with tension as she tries to remind herself why she’s doing this. Despite every door that closes in her face, she is determined to get in to this school. The connections and reputation she would be able to gain at Bérault University are her only chance to make a name for herself as a young person alone in the world. She might not have a fancy family name or a coveted apprenticeship, but she can work her way up if she only gets the chance.

She stands outside the office door for a minute as she tries to collect her thoughts. Finally, she tells herself to stop delaying, steels herself, and knocks. She hopes that this professor will at least politely decline instead of laughing in her face like others had done. 

“Come in!” A voice calls, so she does. Sitting behind a large wooden desk is a regal looking middle aged woman with greying dark hair and jewel rimmed glasses. She looks intimidating, put together, and like everything Freya wants to be someday. 

“Hello M’am.” Freya says politely as she walks in, unsure whether she should sit or stand. “My name is Freya Viano.”

“Well, Freya Viano, my name is Madame Gérard. Would you like to take a seat and tell me why you’ve come to see me?” The woman says, gesturing to the comfortable looking chair in front of her. Freya tentatively sits down, smoothing her dress down and trying to seem more confident than she is. 

“I’m trying to find a professor to sponsor me, you see. I really want to attend this school but it seems all of the other teachers are… already occupied.” Freya says, trying to put her situation into the most tactful words as possible. 

“I see.” Madame Gérard clasps her hands together. “Do you have an interest in architecture, Freya? You do understand, I’m sure, that if a professor is to sponsor you, you are then expected to follow their course of study?” 

“Yes, I understand that Madame. I do have an interest in architecture. Though, I must confess, little practical knowledge.” She replies, forcing herself to meet Madame Gérard’s steady eye contact. Her facial expression is inscrutable and Freya tries not to hold her breath as she waits for some sort of response.

“May I ask why you want to study at this University? Surely a girl your age would be better suited by a home education.” Gérard asks, eyes shrewdly watching Freya struggle to come up with a response. 

“I want to succeed in life, and I need an education to do that.” Freya smiles, it’s a bit wobbly, but she thinks her answer will suffice.

“Hmm, and you think attending a university will automatically make you successful?” Gérard frowns. “What do you intend to do after your studies?” Suddenly Freya is unsure, she hasn’t really thought that far ahead.

“Well I suppose if I study architecture, I’ll become an architect.” She responds, trying not to fidget under Gérard’s stare.

“Perhaps, but what if you have no talent for it? What if you’re unable to find clients? Do you have any other talents to fall back on?” Gérard questions. Her tone is not unkind, but it’s a dose of reality Freya’s been trying to avoid since leaving home.

“Well.. what if I do have talent for it?” Freya counters, she’s not giving up this easily. 

“It is quite a risk to take on a student who only might have talent.” Madame Gérard says and Freya’s heart drops, it seems another rejection is imminent. “However, we were all unmolded clay once, and I believe myself to be an expert potter, if you’ll forgive the use of metaphor.” 

“Does this mean-” Freya says excitedly, but is stilled by the raise of Madame Gérard’s hand. 

“It means that I am willing to give you a chance.” She states firmly. “You’ll need to prove that you are up to the task.” 

“Of course, Madame. I promise you won’t regret this!” Freya grins, nearly rising from her chair in excitement. 

“That is a very presumptuous promise to make, Miss Viano. Do not make promises you cannot know that you will keep.” Gérard says, turning around to search through a drawer of files. “We shall see what you are capable of in time.” 

Freya leaves ecstatic, she’s finally gotten her chance. She’s been so certain that if she can only manage to get a formal education she’ll be a success. However, she soon finds it’s much harder work than she had assumed. 

She has daily classes to attend, usually small seminars with Madame Gérard and the five other architecture students, as well as her job at the Inn to attend to. While she doesn’t have school expenses, she still needs to be able to afford food and shelter. The long hours at the Inn coupled with the sheer amount of coursework she’s been assigned leaves her little time to sleep. 

She had expected architecture to be easy, it’s just buildings, how hard could it be? The reality is that instead of simply looking at silly buildings all day, she’s studying mathematics, physics, history, art and technical skills, ancient languages, and developing a trained eye for aesthetics. She spends every night after classes and work studying to keep up. She’s behind the rest of her class by far, and the rest of the students come from more privileged backgrounds and clearly have more time to focus on their studies.

Freya always arrives at her morning classes late, tired, and usually quite behind on her work, but she’s still determined to succeed. Gérard isn’t a harsh teacher, but she isn’t afraid to warn Freya that every missed drafting assignment or slip up in verb conjugation could lead to her expulsion if she doesn’t show an improvement. She won’t let herself lose this chance. 

In the beginning, she hates architecture, the harder it gets to remember column types and drafting techniques the more she curses herself for ever moving to Port Tremaire. A few months in, her attitude changes. She finds herself taking the long way home so she can pass by the ornate city hall building, or spending her lunch breaks sketching roof designs. Soon enough she does begin to improve, she still shows up tired and late but she can understand her lectures and discussions with her classmates, she begins to develop her own opinions and taste.

The work never gets easier, but Freya starts to enjoy it more and that makes all the difference. By the end of her first year of studies she passes her course review and Madame Gérard agrees to allow her to advance to the next year. It’s the sort of achievement Freya wishes she could write home about.

She’d vowed not to need her family anymore and she can’t bring herself to start a letter, as much as she knows that her younger sister (and possibly her mother) are worried sick. Aside from the occasional letter to her aunt, Freya doesn’t talk to her family back in Vesuvia, and she tries not to think about them if she can help it.

It’s not long before she gets her first big break. Madame Gérard is commissioned to redesign a home in the wealthy area of town and she chooses Freya as her assistant. Gérard offers to let Freya submit a design and the homeowners end up selecting it. Word of mouth spreads and before she’s even finished her formal course of study Freya’s architectural designs are in demand. 

Her style is modern, opulent, and personalized. She seems to have an eye for what a person will like without needing to ask, and her charming confidence (however feigned) makes business deals easy. Freya is able to quit her job at the Inn and move into a place of her own, she finally feels like she’s succeeding.

When she finishes her studies four years later Madame Gérard offers her a full time place in her architecture firm and Freya accepts.  Her life in the city is great, and things seem to be going her way. She begins to live more lavishly, buying fancy new clothes and moving into a large home in the nicest city district. 

She even starts dating someone, a man named Enzo who she’d had a few classes with during university. She doesn’t give him a second thought at first, but he’s persistent, sending flowers to her house, inviting her to operas and horse races and lavish parties. He’s handsome, charming, and from a wealthy family, it’s the kind of attention she’s always dreamed of having. 

Rather than being a distraction from her work, Enzo seems to support her,  even occasionally traveling with her when she takes on commissions in other cities. He seems perfect and Freya begins to expect a marriage proposal any day. He’s never invited her to meet his family, but she assumes it’s because he’s simply a private person. It only takes a few months for him to show his true colors. She opens the newspaper one morning to find his name in the headlines, announcing his engagement to a woman from the nobility.

When she confronts him about it he explains that he’d always been planning to marry this woman, he’d never viewed Freya as anything more than a fling. After all, Freya has no family name, no reputation aside from her work, he couldn’t possibly marry her. She leaves his house heartbroken. but it’s not the only bad news she receives that day.

Freya arrives at the architecture firm a few hours later, eyes still red from crying but determined to work through the pain. Madame Gérard calls her in for a meeting and Freya is blindsided when she’s asked to leave the firm for “stealing clients”. She’s accused of doing too much under her own name rather than the firm’s. 

She later finds out that Gérard had grown jealous of her student’s success, which was the real reason for her dismissal. It feels like she’s been fired for being too successful, which doesn’t make any sense to her. She’d had everything she wanted and had it taken away in the course of one day. 

After these revelations she’s forced to reevaluate. The people she’d trusted had only wanted her until they’d gotten what they needed, then thrown her away like garbage. It’s a hard reality for her to cope with, and when she finally returns home at the end of the day she’s nearly ready to stop trying, maybe she should just give up and move back home.

Her house feels so empty, the rooms echoing as she walks. The marble floors she’d admired just this morning seem like nothing but cold, useless stone. She lets herself feel sad for a few hours, but eventually her sense of self preservation kicks in and before she knows it, she starts thinking of revenge.

The next morning she gets a letter in the mail from her sister, it says that her aunt is sick and Freya needs to return to Vesuvia as soon as possible. It’s an alarming letter, especially after not hearing from her sister for six years. Though Freya has successfully distanced herself from her family over the last few years she still feels a sense of obligation.

She tells herself she’ll be on the first carriage over, as soon as she finishes her business in Port Tremaire. If Enzo doesn’t want her, she’ll make sure that no one will ever want him. If Madame Gérard feels threatened by her success, Freya will have to get rid of the competition to prove just how successful she can be.

They might not want her, but she’ll make sure that everyone else does.

[zacc-attacc]

Kissing In The Snow: A Javid Fic

This fic is lowkey shit and I might literally post a new one to apologize for this, but have it anyway!

Final Word Count: 3.2k

Triggers: There’s a bit of an anxiety attack, and a reference to self-harm. I put an * before the attack and bolded the self-harm reference so you stay safe! Love you nerds!

The plan was originally to drive through the night. After all, it was a long-term trip, and we both had a pretty uncanny ability to stay awake. Since we had two drivers, we could switch roles every now and again. But we only made it until a few hours after dark. 

I knew there would be snow. After all, especially around New York, there was always snow during late December. But that… That was the type of storm that we hadn’t seen in years. The only time I think I had ever seen that much snow was when my family had traveled to Canada and they were hit with a snow storm. It was magical as a kid in a warm, safe cabin. But now, as an adult, driving on a dark road with the life of my best friend in my hands, it was downright terrifying. 

Jack wasn’t fully asleep when I started to consider pulling over. After all, it was only around 10 PM, meaning he was in the dozing part of the night. It was just dark enough that he couldn’t sketch in his physical notebook, and he had put in his earbuds to try and drift off. He had offered to drive, since he was sure I was sleepy from waking up at 5 AM to pack, but I assured him that I was wide awake. And I really was. Slamming three Bang Energy drinks in the span of two hours would do that to a guy. 

Snowflakes had started to fall about an hour ago. They were small ones, barely making a dent in our view. But the longer I drove, the bigger they got. Bigger, thicker, and falling faster. I knew that if I was outside, I would be soaked within three seconds. 

The wind howled, not for the first time, whistling around the car and nudging it slightly across the icy road in an attempt to push us off. I could feel my anxiety rising as I frantically tried to keep the car on the road while staying calm, but something must have tipped Jack off, because he sat up from where he was curled by the window, stared at the weather, and looked at me with shock on his face. 

“Jesus, Dave, it’s crazy out there!” 

I felt my hands that I hadn’t even realized were clenching the wheel loosen at the sound of his voice. Despite the fact that I had just been talking on and off with him for seven hours, his voice still had a strange habit of making the world seem less terrible. Especially when paired with his eyes, wide, hazel-y green, and worried. 

“Yeah,” I said, hearing that my voice was significantly higher than it usually was. 

“Should we… Pull over? Find somewhere to stay for the night? We can’t sleep in the car, you’ll freeze-”

“I’ll freeze? Last I checked I’m not the only one who can contract hypothermia,” I cut him off, smiling internally at the ‘Mama bird’ side that was revealing itself (a side that normally only showed in dire situations or when one of their friends were injured).

“Yeah, but you’re a string bean. Nothing to you,” Jack pointed out. This was true, but only when compared to him. As the linebacker for Northwestern University’s football team, he had enough muscle on him to pass for a professional bodybuilder. It was funny that he was a football player while also majoring in art, while compared to the other players with their business and accounting majors. I knew he secretly hated the team, but he was playing football for the scholarship to put him through school, so it was either play or starve. Obviously, he chose to play.

I tried to take a left turn, starting to slope softly almost 50 feet away in order to be able to make the turn. It was still almost too much for the car, causing me to need to break completely to avoid hitting a sign that read Joanna’s Nightly Cabins and Bunks, 10 mi. 

I felt my entire body tighten as I tried to steer  without adding any additional momentum to our car careening across the ice. The tires were locked in place, and still sliding like the world’s most dangerous hockey puck. Jack had stopped talking, and was holding his breath right along with me as we continued to slide. Once we finally stopped, I put my head down on the steering wheel and tried not to cry from a simultaneous feeling of adrenaline and relief. 

*********

I was shaking, harder than I had in a long time. I felt Jack’s strong, warm hand on my back, an anchor. He knew how my attacks worked, since he had seen me through middle and high school. They happened a lot less now, but that didn’t make them any better when they did hit, like a freight train of emotion and a loss of control. Where my lungs decided to say “I can’t do this anymore,” and stopped wanting to work. Where my face felt like it was set on fire, and my eyes were watering and I tired to keep everything under control but it all felt so hard and my thoughts were rushing and my heart was pounding in my ears and-

“It’s okay, Davey,” his low voice muttered. 

Davey. 

That damn nickname. The one only he had ever called me. 

He was leaning over the gear stick now to hug me, pinning my arms to my side (I had… Old habits) He was rocking, his hand on my heart as he counted the beats with me, whispering into my ear. 

“Five, six, seven, eight…”

**********

Once we got to sixty, I had calmed down a bit. I could breathe now, at least, and I had stopped crying. 

“I think I’ll drive us the rest of the way. Is that okay, Dave?” Jack murmured. He was still holding onto me tightly, as if I could break at any moment. 

“Yeah,” I said, my voice sounding worn like it always did after an attack. 

The moment I felt him pull away, I missed him. After all, he really was quite warm, and there was a winter storm outside. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. 

I opened the car door, and heard Jack do the same behind me. The road was icy, icier than we should have been driving on. Then again, I guess that was kind of the whole reason we were dipping out rather than driving through the night. 

As we were walking, I could feel my Timberlands beginning to lose the battle between gravity and friction. I looked up in an attempt to keep my balance, and saw Jack begin to topple. I instinctively reached out my arm to catch him, and we both spun in some strange, ice dance to keep our balance. Finally, Jack slapped the hood of the car to tether us both, hard enough that the alarm started to beep, shattering the night with its high tones.

Jack looked at me, and down at my arm, which I just noticed had somehow snaked around his waist in the struggle. I dropped it quickly, feeling my face heat up despite the snow, smiling awkwardly. Jack just patted my shoulder, and began to chuckle. A soft, not full-blown laugh at the situation. I found myself laughing right along with him. 

His laughter had always been contagious. 

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

“This is delux,” Jack grinned, unrolling his travel blanket onto the singular bunk bed. Joanna’s Nightly Cabins and Bunks turned out to be a dingy collection of cabins owned by an old woman looking to make a buck and offer hospitality to travelers. 

“I’m glad you pulled over, you’ll catch your death in that type of storm,” Joanna said from the doorway, making sure we had enough blankets and brain cells to survive the night. The cabin was small, with a few bunks lining the walls. There was a hot plate on top of a little fridge, but the electricity had been kicked out from the storm, meaning those were both rendered useless. There was an oak door leading to what I guessed was a bathroom, and a light rattling sounding above us for what I assumed was the heating.

“Thank you for having us for free, ma’am,” Jack said for the eight billionth time that night. Joanna just tossed her head back in a light laugh. 

“A sweet couple like you, and three days before Christmas no less? It’s no problem, really. I’m all for holiday cheer. Have a good night, you two,” Joanna said, turning and winking behind her shoulder as she walked away. I made eye contact with Jack, and noticed that he was blushing just as much as I was. We waited a few minutes to make sure Joanna was completely gone to continue unpacking. 

“How many times has that happened now?” I asked, hanging Jack’s scarf over a vent so it could dry overnight. 

“What?” Jack said, turning from making his bunk to look at me, his brow furrowed in confusion. 

“We had a list of all the times… People thought we were dating. Back in high school, remember?” I smiled slightly at the memory, thinking back to all the time we used to spend with each other in high school. 

No one was surprised when we went to the same college, since we had spent so much of high school half joint at the hip. Even our mutual friends were convinced we were secretly dating. It happened enough times that one day, Jack whipped out a notebook and wrote down all the times we could think of being asked. We just kept adding, until college happened and… I honestly don’t know what happened to the notebook. 

“Oh, yeah, that! I think Medda tossed it out on accident… But we have our memories, right?” Jack said, regret flashing in his eyes. I just smiled at him sadly.

“Yeah. So, what time should we get going in the morning?”

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was probably midnight when I heard a loud, metallic bang. 

I sat up sharply, scrambling out of the sheets to make sure that Jack hadn’t hit his head and died from the top bunk. 

“Dave, you okay?” Jack asked, glancing at me from his mattress. 

“Did you hear that?” I questioned, gesturing to the ceiling where I had heard the bang. 

“What?” 

“Some sort of bang… I think the heater went out,” I said, suddenly realizing I couldn’t hear the rattle of the heating anymore. 

“...Shit. Should we get Joanna?” Jack asked. There was a beat of silence as we made eye contact, and it dawned on me that neither of us wanted to wake up this poor old woman to tell her.

This is the height of being gen z. I thought, realizing how screwed we were. 

“It… It’ll probably be fine,” I stammered, sitting back on my bunk. The air was already getting colder, and the wind howled against the cabin. 

“...Get over here. You ain’t getting hypothermia on my watch,” Jack said, rolling his eyes and gesturing to himself. I felt my face heat up for what seemed like the umpteenth time that night. 

“A- are you sure that you’re-”

“Oh, can it Jacobs. I don’t need your sister sicced on me because I didn’t do what I could to make sure you survived the night,” Jack pointed out, sounding mildly annoyed. I would’ve been more convinced if I didn’t see that he was also blushing, and had that look… That weird look he got when he was looking at a pretty girl or guy.

This is totally platonic. I reminded myself, climbing the ladder while holding my blankets. Jack nodded at me, tossing all of our blankets over the two of us. 

I didn’t think I would be able to sleep with him right there, but something about his body heat and the crashing energy drinks was enough to lull me to sleep…

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

“Davey, you still sleeping?” Jack whispered. My eyes snapped open, and the events of the previous night hit me like a truck. I turned to look at Jack, who was still laying down beside me. 

“Yeah,” I croaked. Jack nodded, and I felt him draw away from me. 

Wait, away? 

It was only then that I realized how close we are. 

And that my head had been practically laying on his chest. 

“Sorry,” I muttered, shifting away from him. 

“It’s okay. Warmth, y’know,” Jack said gruffly, sitting up. I scooched away from him  and climbed down the ladder, the cold air piercing my skin. 

“We should get going soon… I’m sure Medda is ready to have my head for having you out on a night like that,” I pointed out, dashing to the assorted vents that had our assorted winter wear, half-dried. 

“She could never, Dave, you know she prefers you,” Jack grinned, rolling his eyes.

“Well, she adopted you,” I pointed out. “She must’ve liked you enough to want you in her life forever.” 

“She once threatened to take away my dessert privileges if we ever stopped talking,” Jack said, deadpan.

“Those brownies are no joke. I’m glad you were able to put up with me,” I chuckled. 

“I don’t put up with you, Jacobs,” Jack said, self-deprecation seeping into his words. I stopped re-packing, and crossed the room to talk to him, being sure to drive my point home.

“Neither of us put up with one another, kay?” 

“I- damn, Dave, makin’ us have a moment here,” Jack said, red creeping up his face. I stepped back, apologizing under my breath. 

“No, no, it’s fine. You always had more of an emotional range then I did,” Jack shrugged, regret tainting his words. 

A few minutes later, we were packed. Jack and I both had our jackets, scarves, mittens and hats on. 

“I got it,” I said, grabbing the doorknob and pushing. 

It didn’t budge. Not even a centimeter. I shook the door, throwing my weight onto it to the best of my ability. 

“Let me try,” Jack said, grabbing my hand around the knob. I felt a sharp shock, and felt my heart kick into overdrive, pounding in my ears. 

His hands were soft. 

Jack was still struggling with the door, jiggling it aggressively.

“Its just a bit… Frozen,” Jack grunted, slamming the door with all of his linebacker strength. The door flew open, a few healthily sized pieces of ice spaying onto the fine bed of snow.

Jack had opened a door to a winter wonderland. Due to its remote location, Joanna’s Nightly Cabins and Bunks was peak stock photo winter. 

The trees were frosted with white, like they were some sort of cake, or one of Jack’s drawings. There was a big, sprawling field with a few snow dusted cabins. The main house Joanna lived in was mostly cleared (we assumed she had cleared it herself… somehow), but by far the most shocking part was-

“Oh shit, my car,” Jack said, attempting to run across the lawn to the snow-covered lump that was his vehicle. This didn’t work well, since there was almost several feet of snow covering the ground. He had only made it about 10 feet when he collapsed into the drift, his legs having been unable to fight the snow. 

I found myself half-laughing, despite being mildly worried as I helped him up. 

“We are so screwed, Davey,” Jack said, his brow furrowing as his Manhattan twang set into his words. That’s how I knew he was really worried- his accent only set in when he was drunk, sick, angry, or stressed.

“It’ll be fine, I’ll call a plow, or a tow… We’ll find some way out of here,” I assured him, holding him by the waist so he wouldn’t fall. He leaned into me, obviously not against me touching him. Well, really it was his coat, but it still felt nice. 

“How long do you think it’ll take?” Jack asked. I could feel my phone vibrating in my coat pocket, probably the boys and our families asking where we are. 

“I dunno… I might as well call now,” I shrugged, pulling out my phone and tapping on Google to find the number. 

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

“Thank you… Goodbye,” I said, just about to hang up when a powdery, cold something hit my back. I swiveled around to see none other than Jack, a small arsenal of snowballs beside him.

“Oh, you did not just-” 

“I did, Jacobs,” he grinned maniacally. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“You’re on!” I shouted, frantically grabbing snow and packing it into a solid ball. The snow was perfect for snowball fights, just the right texture. And I was wearing gloves, so it wouldn’t stick to any yarn on my mittens. 

Jack pelted me with a snowball, hitting my shoulder with a solid thwack! I pretended to fall from the shock of the hit, then rolled towards him, tossing a ball at his neck. It hit him slightly above his collar bone, and I heard him laugh evilly as he ran towards me. 

“YOU’VE MADE A MISTAKE FROM CHALLENGING ME, DAVEY JACOBS!” He yelled, attempting to grab me. I rolled away, standing above him with my superior five inches, and began to dodge snowballs, left and right while making my own. 

“JOKES ON YOU, I LEARNED FROM THE MASTER-- SARAH JACOBS!” I screeched, hitting him in the head with a snowball. 

“BUT I WENT AGAINST THE GREAT RACETRACK HIGGINS!” he objected, hitting my left arm.

“WHO LEARNED FROM SARAH JACOBS!” I shot back, hitting his lower thigh.

“AH, BUT YOU ARE NOT HER!” he pointed out, dashing away again in an attempt to confuse me.

“YES, BUT I AM HER BROTHER!” I said, dodging a ball from my right.

“THE MORE WATERED-DOWN VERSION, I SEE!” he shouted, attempting to dodge a ball coming for his torso and failing.

“OHO, YOU ARE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT!” I yelled, smiling like a fool and running towards him to the best of my ability. He grinned darkly, and I realized my mistake. 

I was attempting to tackle a college football player. First string. 

Before I could even comprehend how terrible of an idea it was to try and tackle a football player as an English major with limited athletics experience, I was on the ground and- 

His lips were on mine. 

Too passionately to be accidental. 

His hand had somehow made its way to my back, and he was holding me like he had in the night. And… It felt right. More real and right and perfect then I thought it would.

I grabbed his face so I could feel him closer. Though I think a part of me knew it would never feel close enough. 

He was doing this thing, I think to keep us warm, where he was rubbing up and down my back to keep the heat. And he kept letting me pull him closer while we just laid there, kissing in the snow.

Kissing in the snow. A romantic concept, one that lovesick teens would only dream of doing. Kissing two days before Christmas. Kissing like it wasn’t the end of the world, like we had all the time in the world. Kissing my best friend. Kissing the man who knew how to get me back when I was drifting. 

Kissing in the snow. Because sometimes, snow and too much time wasted away from each other was enough to make a teenage dream come true. 

And maybe I was okay with a winter teenage dream. 

I was okay with kissing in the snow.

[just-dreaming-marvel]

FIFTY EIGHT - TRYING

LEGACY: A Tony Stark Daughter Story

MASTERLIST

< previous

Word Count: 1,800ish

Summary: Tony begins to try to put the broken pieces of Bailey’s world back into place.

Outside my door, Tony slid down the wall. He was not willing to leave just in case I would call for him. He ran his hand through his hair and let out a long, painful sigh. 

“FRIDAY, tell me what’s going on in there,” Tony commanded.

“Miss Stark is currently curled up under her blankets, crying. Her breathing has steadied and the sweating has stopped, but she is still shaking.”

“You’re still running brain scans like I asked, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tony pulled out his phone. “Show me the brain scans from the last week.” The brain scans quickly popped up and he began looking through them. “Where’s Banner when you need him?” He mumbled as he swiped through them. He paused when he noticed that a few looked different than the rest. Tony selected them before speaking. “FRIDAY, when did you take these?”

“The first one was taken the day she and Miss Maximoff spared before you both left for Vienna.”

“When she stopped Wanda’s powers.”

“Correct. The second one was taken after she returned to the facility. She slept most of it.”

“And the third?”

“It was taken during the hour of sleep she got while sitting at Colonel Rhodes’ bedside.”

“What was I doing when the second and third ones were taken?”

“You were on your way here after the incident at the airport when the second one was taken. The third one is interesting do to it being taken while you were in Siberia, at the same time you were fighting Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes.”

Tony compared the scans to tonights. “She just had a nightmare tonight… Okay… FRIDAY I need you to organize her brain scans. Put these two under a file named ‘visions’, tonights and ones similar under a file named ‘nightmares’, and the rest under a filed named ‘normal’. Oh, and the one from her and Wanda’s sparring in a separate one.”

“What would you like me to call it?”

“Call it, ‘new power’ with a question mark… I need you to organize them that way from now on and inform me when you add any to the ‘visions’ file.”

“Of course boss.”

Tony leaned his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night, waiting for me to need him. And I did, I was just too stubborn to admit it. I laid curled up under my blankets, not sleeping, for the rest of the night. I was too scared to close my eyes. I didn’t want to have another nightmare or to see what was going one with everyone else. When morning came, I carefully went to my door. But before I opened it, I heard some voices outside. It was Tony, he was on the phone with Happy.

“Boss,” I heard Happy say, “I know you want me to be patient with the spider kid. But he is driving me bonkers!” Spider kid? I quickly grabbed my tablet, went back to the door, and got into FRIDAY’s main server. I typed in spider kid and continued to listen in.

“Aren’t you on the plane on your way back from Germany?” Tony asked. I could hear how tired he was and how he really didn’t want to deal with this right now.

“Yeah.”

“Well just don’t sit by him. There’s plenty of room on the plane.”

“I’ve tried, he’s just been following me around the plane.”

Tony chuckled. “Well let me know when you’re almost to New York and I’ll be there to help you get him home.”

I couldn’t hear anything else as a file popped up on my tablet. Peter Benjamin Parker. It also had a picture of him. He was the teenage boy that I had seen with Tony. He was also there, fighting, at the airport. 15 years old. Resides in Queens with his aunt, May Parker. Currently goes to Midtown School of Science and Technology. I flipped through the file to find suit sketches. Tony had made him his suit and given it to him. Why did Tony care so much about this kid? I sent the file over to SARAH’s server and set the tablet down. I needed to get some food in me and I’d have to face Tony sooner or later. I took a deep breath and quietly opened the door. I peaked around the door frame to see Tony on the ground with my sketches of Rhodey’s braces and what looked to actually be them. He was screwing something into place when I walked out and caught him off guard.

“Bailey!” He quickly stood up and tried his best not to run over and hold onto me. “Good morning. How are you?”

I leaned against the wall and folded my arms. “Have you been out here all night Tony?”

He nodded. “I was just worried.”

“Are those…” I pointed down and the braces he had been working on.

“Oh, yeah!” He picked them up. “You’re sketches were really good and very detailed. I only changed a few things.”

“Thanks.” I pushed myself off the wall. I opened my mouth to speak but FRIDAY did before I could.

“Boss,” the AI said, “The doctors want to talk to you about Colonel Rhodes.”

“I’ll be right there.” Tony quickly picked up all his stuff and then looked at me. “I’ll be back, please don’t go far. We need to talk.”

“I agree. I’ll most likely be in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” He nodded and rushed off to the Med-Bay.

I walked to the kitchen and saw Vision staring out at the compound grounds. I slowly walked up beside him. I’d been meaning to talk to him, but I was too busy worrying about myself. I knew it was him who put my room back together after I had completely trashed it and who had been bringing me food while I was waiting at Rhodey’s bedside. 

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“For what?” Vision asked, slightly turning his head my way. 

“For taking care of me. I know you were the one who put my room back together and who has been bring me food. So thank you.”

“Anything to make it up to you, Bailey.”

“What exactly are you making up to me?”

“I hit Colonel Rhodes. I was aiming for Mr. Wilson and the quinjet that Captain Rogers was on. Wilson moved and I hit the Colonel. I fought at the airport. I chose a side that… that I shouldn’t have. Wanda… I should have chosen her side. I should have protected her.”

I gently set my hand on his arm. “This is not all your fault, Vis. It’s everyone’s. We all had a part in this, a stake in this.” 

“You and Captain Rogers…?”

“I love him, Vision. But he chose his friend over me and now, because of it, I may never see him again. He didn’t let me go with him… He broke the promises he made… I find myself blaming Tony though, for everything that’s happened.”

“You have the right to be angry. You lost more than the rest of us.” I looked up at Vision. “But don’t blame Mr. Stark for all of it. Everyone involved weighed out their options and made a decision.”

I looked back over the compound grounds. “Steve… He thought it out… He didn’t choose me…” Everything began to come crashing down on me, emotionally. 

“Bailey!” Tony shouted, stopping Vision from saying anything and me from crying. 

I looked at where Tony was hurrying down the hall and then turned back to Vision. But he was gone. When I had touched his arm, I felt that he was feeling so guilty about what happened to Rhodey that he couldn’t be around Tony. It was weird, feeling such strong emotions from Vision. He’s an android, I didn’t even think that was possible. But it was amazing, whatever it was.

“Bailey?” Tony said when he reached me.

“Yes, Tony?” I turned to face him.

“I have to go to New York for a few days and wanted to know if you wanted to come with?”

I had to think about it. Did I want to go to the city? Yes. Was it to spend time with Tony? No. Did I want to go to spy on the spider kid and figure out why Tony took an interest in him? Maybe.

“Umm.. yeah, yeah I’ll go,” I answered.

“Great! The physical therapist is going to work with Rhodey while we’re gone and hopefully get him using those braces. So go pack a few things and met me at the jet in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

Tony went down to the lab and I began to make it up to my room. When I reached it, I grabbed a duffle bag and looked in my closest. I had some clothes still at the Avengers Tower but I didn’t remember what. I grabbed some underwear, pjs, work out clothes, t-shirts, and pants. I saw my suits out of the corner of my eye. I grabbed two white blouses, my gray pant suit, and my black pant suit. 

“Just in case,” I whispered to myself as I put them in my duffle. “SARAH?”

“Yes, Bailey?” SARAH responded.

“Where’s my suit?”

“It’s in the lab.”

“Is Tony still in the lab?”

“No, he is currently waiting for you in the plane.”

“Great.” 

I grabbed a backpack and quickly stuffed my laptop, cell phone, headphones, pencils, and a sketchbook in it. I swung it over my back and grabbed the duffle. I ran down the stairs to the lab.

“SARAH, where’s my suit?” I asked. A hidden door in the wall popped open and I looked in it. There is was. “How am I suppose to take this with me?”

“I can send it to you when you need it,” SARAH suggested. “If that works for you?”

“Perfect. Have it ready and waiting. Who knows when I’ll need it next.” I shut the door and ran back up the stairs and out to the plane.

“Took you long enough,” Tony joked.

“I had to make sure I had everything.” 

I chose a row opposite Tony. Like opposite of the plane. I glanced at Tony as I set my things down. I could tell he was disappointed that I didn’t choose to sit by him. But I wasn’t ready to forgive him just yet. I decided that I would use the plane ride to take a nap. I sat down, got my headset and cellphone out, and fell asleep.

next >

[bellakitse]

Of cute beagles and decidedly cuter owners

For @gra-sonas who had this excellent post and let me use it. I hope this is fluffy enough for you, hon!

Michael, Rosa, Kyle, and Jenna just moved into a new place that doesn't allow pets, luckily across the street is the cutest beagle ever. Rosa is ready to plan a dog-nap, Michael suggests writing a note to the owner instead.

All Rosa wants is to play with Buffy, while all Michael wants is Buffy's owner.

Michael arrives home sometime after six p.m., the hallway of the modest townhouse he and his roommates moved into, still has boxes lying around. They've been in the two-story home for three weeks now. But with work and school, no one has found the time to finish unpacking. Michael has his new teaching post at the university while he works on his doctorate. Kyle has medical school. Jenna, a rookie cop, works crazy hours, and Rosa, their resident artist, has been using all her waking hours to work on a set of pieces she hopes will end up in the city’s next art exhibit. None of them have been particularly motivated to put boxes away, but Michael is starting to think he’s going to have to say something soon, or there’s a chance the boxes will become part of the décor.

“Guerin!” Jenna greets from the kitchen as he makes it into the living room. “Thai or Chinese for dinner?”

“Whatever Valenti doesn’t want,” he calls back out to her, smirking when he hears the man in question curse at him from the kitchen. He hears a chuckle and turns to find Rosa in her favorite spot of the house, the big bay windows. It was the selling point for Rosa when they decided to rent the place together.

“You have to start getting along with him eventually, Michael,” she says, not looking up from her sketching pad.

“Do I have to?” Michael questions as he drops his bag on the couch and walks over to her, lifting her legs to sit down. He leans over to sneak a peek at what she’s working on to find the drawing of a beagle.

“It would help,” Rosa says, a smirk on her face. “We did sign a one-year lease, you’re stuck until then.”

“Cute dog,” he points at her work, instead of acknowledging her comment.

“It belongs to the neighbor across the street, I saw them this morning,” she explains with a smile that turns into a frown moments later. “It sucks that we can’t have a pet here.”

Michael nods; he’s heard all three of his roommates complain about it. Their landlord had killed their hopes for a pet before they signed on the dotted line of their lease.

“I love that expression,” Michael points at the drawing, the beagle has an impressive resting bitch face.

Rosa laughs, nodding in agreement. “I only saw them for a second, but that face is memorable. I had to stop myself from running across the street to beg the owner to let me play with his dog, probably would have freaked the guy out.”

Michael chuckles at the comment, Rosa is the more impulsive one of them all, he could totally picture her on a puppy-high scaring some poor guy into thinking that he was going to get robbed for his dog.

“We just moved in, Rosa, can we maybe wait a few weeks before scaring off the neighbors?” he teases, laughing when she gives him an unimpressed look.

“You’re supposed to be the fun one, Michael,” Rosa pouts. “Kyle and Jenna are the strict, boring ones. You should be helping me plan a dog-nap.”

Michael opens his mouth, only to be interrupted by Kyle and Jenna walking into the living room.

“What’s this about a dog-napping?” Kyle questions, coming to sit down on the couch. Jenna sits next to him, leaning into his space. Her hair is messed up, and her lipstick smudged off, some of it transferred to Kyle’s white polo.

Michael and Rosa look at them, and then at each other, wrinkling their noses in distaste. This is what they get for moving in with a couple who can’t keep their hands off each other.

“Whatever you did in our kitchen, I hope you disinfected it,” Rosa comments still making a face. Michael nods in agreement, a part of him a little jealous of what Kyle and Jenna have. He wants someone to make out with in the kitchen, someone to smile at him the way Jenna and Kyle smile at each other. Something real, like what they have.

Kyle blushes under Rosa’s judging look, but Jenna just rolls her eyes, running her hand through Kyle's hair to settle him.

“Dog-napping, Rosa?” she questions, getting back on track.

“Oh!” Rosa lightens up at the mention, and Michael is starting to worry about just how serious she is. “The beagle across the street, it’s precious.”

“I saw it the other day,” Kyle says with a smile of his own. “Very cute dog.”

“Very cute owner, too,” Jenna comments, tugging on Kyle’s hair when he pouts, it says more than Michael needs to know about their relationship.

“True,” Rosa agrees after a moment, thinking about it. “But not so cute that I’m not totally willing to steal his dog.”

“We haven’t even been here a month,” Michael speaks before Rosa can really get going. “Let’s not commit a crime just yet.”

Rosa exhales loudly like she thinks he’s the biggest party-pooper ever, for not encouraging the stealing of an animal. “What do you suggest then? Because I need to cuddle that dog, bad.”

Michael thinks for a moment before his eyes light up with an idea. He pulls Rosa’s sketch pad and pencil out of her lap. “We can write the owner a note asking if we can meet his dog,” Michael suggests, quickly composing the letter when no one says no. “Dog people understand crazy dog love.”

“Tell them they have the best dog,” Rosa instructs him.

“Ask what treats it likes,” Kyle chips in, getting into it.

“We can take it for a walk if they’re too busy,” Jenna adds, just as excited.

He finishes the note, signing it with all their names and adding Rosa’s drawing. “There. I’ll drop it off in the morning,” he says satisfied, the others nod seemingly pleased themselves. “Now, about dinner…”

*

Michael doesn’t think about it the next day, he tapes the note to their neighbor’s front door and goes to the university where he spends the day teaching freshmen in his Engineering Physics class. It’s only when he gets back home and finds Rosa practically vibrating with excitement that he even remembers about their neighbor and their dog.

“They wrote back, Michael!” she shouts as soon as he walks through the door, waving a piece of paper in the air.

“Who?”

“Buffy Manes!” Rosa exclaims, rolling her eyes at him when he doesn’t answer. “That’s the beagle’s name, look they left a note.”

Michael takes the piece of paper, instantly charmed by the paw print on the back.

It starts:

‘To my new friends, Michael, Rosa, Kyle and Jenna’

Thank you for your nice letter! It made my tail wag all night. The drawing was so good, whoever drew it is very talented, a perfect likeness.

My name is Buffy Manes, and I’m 4-years-old. I love treats of any kind. I love playing catch, -tennis balls are my favorite- and digging holes.

I am the bestest girl! Thank you for noticing, my dad tells me that every day.

I would very much like to meet my new friends, so I’m giving you my dad’s number, call any time.

Sincerely,

Buffy and Alex Manes

505-718-2035

 “Okay,” Michael starts, a smile tugging at his face. “This is seriously fucking cute.”

“She liked my drawing,” Rosa says happily, which Michael finds hilarious. “And her name is Buffy, how adorable is that? If it’s for Buffy, the vampire slayer, this Alex guy is my new best friend. He has the cutest dog and good taste in 90’s tv shows, we need to call them, now.”

“What about Kyle and Jenna?”

Rosa waves his question away. “They went on a date,” she says, tugging at his shirt impatiently. “Let’s call.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs as he pulls out his phone and dials the number, ringing a few times before someone picks up.

“Manes,” greets a deep voice that makes Michael stand up straighter as it sends a shiver up his spine. That is a very nice voice.

“Um, hi, Alex?” he starts, suddenly nervous. “This is Michael, your neighbor from across the street, my roommates and I left you a note about your dog, Buffy?”

“Right,” Alex says, letting out a soft chuckle. “With the drawing, it was really good.”

“Thanks,” Michael says, grunting when Rosa pokes him. “That was Rosa, she’s the artist, and she’s in love with your dog.”

“You’re not?” Alex questions, sounding a little offended.

“I’m actually the only one of my roommates that hasn’t seen Buffy,” he admits, as Alex makes an amused noise. “But I’m sure she’s great, her letter was perfect. Did it take long to teach her how to write?”

Alex laughs, making Michael feel pleased and oddly proud. “No, she’s a genius, it took no time at all.”

“Well you should be very proud,” he jokes getting another laugh out of Alex. “So anyway, we were hoping that we could arrange that meet-up with Buffy, and you, of course, any time you want,” he rushes to say, ignoring the way Rosa is looking at him.

“We’re home now,” Alex starts, a little hesitant. “If you want to come over.”

“Now?” Michael questions to which Rosa starts nodding vigorously. “It would just be Rosa and me, Kyle and Jenna are out, is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex breathes, sounding more at ease. “That’s probably better actually, I don’t do great with a lot of people. We’ll meet you two outside in 10?”

“Okay,” Michael says quickly. “See you guys in a few, thanks.”

“Not a problem, Michael,” Alex says before hanging up. He decides then and there that he likes the way Alex says his name.

“Were you really flirting with a stranger over the phone?” Rosa questions incredulously.

“No!” Michael denies, blushing when Rosa raises an eyebrow at him. “Maybe?”

Rosa shakes her head at him, amused more than anything else. “Keep your head in the game Guerin, we are in it for the dog. Let’s go.”

Michael follows Rosa out of their home, she’s practically shaking by the time they cross the street and open Alex’s gate.

“Don’t freak them out,” he warns. “Alex said he’s not the best with people.”

“I’ll behave,” she promises just as their neighbor’s door opens.

A robust beagle comes out first, followed by what has to be the most beautiful man Michael has ever seen. He has tousled dark hair, big deep brown eyes, cheekbones that could cut glass, and full pink lips quirked up into a hesitant smile. The rest of him is perfect too, strong shoulders and arms, wrapped in a soft-looking grey Henley, and he’s in a pair of black jeans that hug his legs nicely. As he takes a step forward, Michael notices the crutch in his left hand.

“Michael, Rosa?” he questions as he comes down two short steps, standing before them.

“Hi,” Michael breathes, if possible, Alex is even more gorgeous up close, especially when he smiles at Michael.

“Hi,” he greets back at him, before looking at Rosa to give her a smile of her own. “Well, you didn’t come to see me,” he says, looking down at his dog, who is standing faithfully at his side, waiting. “This is Buffy.”

Buffy looks up at him at her name.

“They’re here for you, baby girl,” he speaks to her. “Greet.”

The moment Alex says the command, Buffy leaves his side, making her way toward Rosa as she gets down to her knees to pet her. Buffy’s tail starts wagging excitedly the second Rosa starts to pet her.

“Who’s a good girl,” Rosa coos at Buffy. “You are, you’re such a good girl, so sweet.”

“She’s a therapy dog,” Alex tells them with a proud look on his face as he watches his dog. Michael bends down too, letting Buffy sniff his hand first, chuckling when she starts to lick it.

“She’s very friendly,” Michael comments, looking up at Alex, his breath catching when he finds Alex’s eyes on him.

Alex nods, his expression soft. “She likes to make friends.”

“We can be her friends,” Rosa says quickly, as she rubs the top of Buffy’s head, looking back at Alex. “Her name? Is it because of the show?”

“Yeah, when my friend Maria and I picked her at the shelter, she said that Buffy would slay my demons,” Alex says with a slight laugh. “It stuck, so I named her Buffy.”

Michael bites down on his lip as he stands up, he does it to keep from asking what Alex’s demons are, wanting to know everything about him.

The rest of the visit, they’re on Alex’s porch. Rosa plays with Buffy, while Michael stares at Alex like an idiot as he tells them cute anecdotes about his dog. He shares a little bit about himself with them, each tidbit Michael stores away for later. He learns that Alex was in the Air Force until he got hurt. Alex knocks on his leg, which Buffy responds by leaving the belly rubs Rosa is giving her to press her small head against her owner’s leg. The gesture obviously meant to comfort him, which going by the smile on Alex’s face it does. He still does military work but as a private contractor and mostly from home and has had Buffy since his enlistment ended, and he hasn’t been in town too long, only a few months.

“I don’t really know much around here,” he comments with a shrug. “The base, the market, and the dog park, but that’s pretty much it.”

“I can show you around,” Michael blurts out before he can stop himself, he feels himself go hot as he feels Rosa’s eyes burn into the side of his face. He knows the second they’re alone; she’s going to mock the hell out of him.

Alex starts to smile only to look over at Rosa. “Umm,” Alex begins nervously, and Michael realizes with surprising clarity that Alex thinks they’re together.

Luckily Rosa seems to notice too, jumping in before he can make a fool of himself. “You guys should go,” she says with a grin. “This loser barely goes out himself, it’s just home and the university for him. Sad, really.”

“You’re just as bad as me,” he argues, trying to defend himself. “When’s the last time you went out?”

“Last week,” Rosa says smugly. “I met up with that hot blonde who modeled for me a few weeks ago, she showed me her portfolio,” she continues, waggling her eyebrows which makes Alex laugh. “You guys could go get a bite, and I can stay and hang with Buffy.”

Alex smirks at her, his eyes dancing with amusement. “That’s really what you’re after, isn’t it?”

“I’ll be honest, you can turn out to be Dahmer and eat Guerin,” Rosa says bluntly, ignoring him when he makes a noise of protest. “I’m cool as long as I get to keep playing with your dog.”

Alex looks at her, letting out a low whistle.

“As you can see, I need better friends,” Michael says, shooting Rosa a glare. “Do you want to go get something to eat?”

Alex bites down on his bottom lip, and it takes everything in Michael not to lean in and do it for him. “Now?”

Michael nods. “No time like the present.”

Alex smiles softly at him, there is a slight rosy color on his cheeks that makes Michael’s heart skip a beat. “Okay, let me get my wallet.”

“And I get to watch Buffy?” Rosa asks hopefully, as he stands. “I’ll take real good care of her, give you picture updates and everything.”

Alex looks at Rosa for a moment before nodding, his amusement obvious. “Sure, she’s really mellow, so I don’t see it being a problem if you really want to watch her.”

“Alex, you’re my new best friend,” Rosa says with a serious expression on her face.

“I’m sure that would mean more to him if you hadn’t just offered your current best friend up to be eaten,” Michael grumbles at her.

Alex laughs as he heads inside.

“This is where you say thank you,” Rosa whispers at him.

Michael frowns at her.”You did nothing,” he answers, getting a snort back.

“I just wing-womaned the shit out of this,” Rosa gripes. “You were just staring at him like a smitten idiot.”

Michael hates that he can’t argue with the truth, and in a fit of childishness, sticks his tongue out at her.

“Mature,” Rosa laughs as Alex comes back.

He gives them a curious look as he closes his door, leash in hand. “We usually go for a walk at seven,” he says, handing Rosa the leash after attaching it to Buffy. “She likes the park two blocks away.”

Rosa nods as she starts walking towards the gate with Buffy. He and Alex follow behind them, crossing the street back to their place where his truck is parked.

“We’ll go for a lovely walk, don’t worry,” Rosa promises.

Alex kneels down to rub Buffy under her chin, getting a lick for his troubles.

“Be good Buffy, I’ll be back soon,” he says tenderly before pressing a kiss on the top of her head, it makes something inside Michael flutter behind his ribcage.

Standing back to his feet, he walks over to Michael, giving him a charmed look when Michael opens the door of his truck for him.

“Have fun you two,” Rosa tells them as Michael puts the car in drive. She picks up Buffy and heads inside.

“You just made her night,” he tells Alex as he starts to drive downtown.

“I’m glad,” Alex answers, flashing him a smile. “You said in your note that you guys can’t have pets?”

“Grumpy landlord,” Michael explains.

Alex makes a face. “That really sucks. I got lucky, my landlady didn’t seem big on pets either, I wasn’t even going to interview for the place, but I brought Buffy with me and explained that she’s my therapy dog and I guess Buffy won her over. It’s hard resisting her face.”

“Probably hard resisting yours too,” Michael blurts out, already cringing before the words are completely out of his mouth. He keeps his eyes on the road to avoid looking at Alex, but after a moment of silence, he can’t help but sneak a peek at him. There’s a shy smile on Alex’s face, and his eyes are welcoming as he looks back at Michael, making him feel more confident to continue. “It’s a very nice face.”

Alex’s smile grows until he’s laughing softly, shaking his head at Michael's boldness. “You have a very nice face too, Michael.”

Michael grins to himself, his heart beating faster with excitement. He parks the car outside his favorite Mexican restaurant. “Hope you like tacos,” he says as he gets out, going around the car to Alex’s door.

“Are you even allowed to live in New Mexico if you don’t like tacos?” he questions, passing Michael his crutch. He gets out, and Michael reaches out his hand at his waist to steady him, his body responding instantly when Alex lets out a small gasp at his touch.

Michael lifts his eyes to Alex’s face, finding his gaze already on him, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, and Mickael knows Alex just felt the same spark he did at their touch. He steps in closer, crowding Alex in the door, his pulse spiking when Alex’s eyes drift down to his mouth.

“Proposal,” he starts, his voice low.

Alex hums softly, his body seemed to sway, brushing against his, his eyes half-closed.

“We turn this into a date,” Michael suggests, smiling at the surprised but happy look Alex gives him.

“How does it differ?” Alex questions with a teasing glint in his eyes.

Michael squeezes the side of Alex, where his hand still rests. “I get to kiss you at the end of the night,” he answers, inhaling sharply when Alex closes the small space between them, brushing his lips against Michael’s.

Alex takes his crutch and Michael’s hand leading him into the restaurant.

“You should text Rosa,” he throws over his shoulder, giving Michael’s hand a squeeze.

“Why?” Michael asks, still a little dazed from the touch of Alex’s lips.

A couple of hours is too fast to fall in love, right?

Alex turns back to him, a beautiful smile on his even more beautiful face, and Michael decides that, no, a couple of hours is more than enough time to fall in love with Alex Manes.

“To tell her that starting tonight, she’s going to have plenty of opportunities to borrow Buffy if I get to borrow her roommate.”

Michael grins, pulling out his phone even as he pulls Alex back into another kiss, this one deeper and longer as he takes his time, enjoying the taste and the sounds Alex makes. Rosa will be pleased with the arrangement, and he’s good with it too.

[hedwigstalons]

High Expectations - Ch12

Just a little sketch to see if I could tackle proportions and pose, no references used.  Yes I know I have made absolutely no attempt to make the brothers look like anyone, particularly Scott, I’m very much still learning (and struggling).

I’m normally very clean with my fics but one or two swears crept in this time, blame Scott.  It’s not littered with profanity though.

This chapter (and the next one) were really saved by @willow-salix​ who stopped me from deleting the whole thing in a crisis of confidence.  She is lovely.

Earlier parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven

AO3 chapter link

Chapter 12

Virgil ran his fingers through his hair and wondered what the hell to do for the best, he was completely out of his depth and floundering.  He had made it his personal duty to keep an eye on Gordon ever since that fated visit to Denver but now the red flags were flashing and he was feeling ill equipped to deal with it.  His cheerful brother, normally so driven and bursting with barely contained energy, was wilting before his eyes.  

With each passing call Gordon had become more listless, less talkative, dropping into the stupor of the repressed.  He should have been worried when Gordon switched from video calls to voice only but he had been too busy with his own course to pay much heed to the change of routine until today.  He was pretty sure that Gordon had activated the video screen by accident; the face that greeted him was sallow, the eyes red rimmed and framed by heavy black bags.  It hadn’t taken long but Gordon’s lean and athletic form displayed change quickly, his little brother was a mess and looked visibly ill.  

Of course he had heard all about the Marineville incident and their father’s ultimatum so he knew the cause but not the solution.  He couldn’t even have Gordon up to stay with him again because Jeff’s total control over Gordon’s life had extended to him refusing even this escape for the teenager.  He had already tried that route but their father had held firm that Gordon had not yet earned the right to freedom.

With his father holding on to the unshakable belief that Gordon needed tough love and firm handling Virgil turned to the only other person he thought could make a difference.  After a quick check of the time he picked up his phone again and called Scott.

“Hi Virg, what’s up?”  Scott took in his brother’s agitated demeanor causing his usually cheerful tone to change to one of concern.  “Hey, are you ok?”

“Not really.  I think I need your help.”

“Everything ok with your project?  Or have you finally got girlfriend trouble?”

“This is serious Scott” Virgil admonished, not impressed at his brother’s attempt to lighten the mood.  He ran  his fingers through his hair again, it was a sure tell of his barely contained worry and a gesture that made Scott sit up and take notice.  “I’m fine but I’m worried about Gordon.”

“Gordon?  What has he done now?” With Gordon pretty much confined to quarters since Marineville Scott wondered how much trouble could his brother could get into really?  Surely if he had run off again it would be Dad on the phone to him, not Virgil.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell.  But I spoke to him tonight and I’m worried about him, he seemed so low and upset.”

“Are we talking ‘Alan breaking his octopus model’ upset, or ‘losing the state final and nearly being booted from the national squad’ upset.”

“I mean looking like he hasn’t eaten or slept for a week levels of upset.”

“Shit.  That bad?”  To Gordon the body was a tool and a temple, the words ‘optimal nutrition regime’ had been bandied about from an age when most kids would still happily eat candy for breakfast if given half the chance.  Gordon had never not taken care of himself.

“Yes, that bad.  I’ve never seen him like this before, it’s like all the spark has gone out of him.  He’s got nothing to aim at and nothing to live for.  Dad is adamant that he needs to go to college but that has never been part of his life plan and he has got absolutely no confidence in his own abilities even if he wanted to go on to further studies.  Do you think you can go back and check on him?  I know it’s a big ask but I’m tied here for the next few weeks otherwise I’d go myself.”

Scott knew that Virgil wouldn’t make this request lightly.  They had spent so long looking after the kids together back in Kansas, each supporting the other while their father focussed on his business or his grief, that he trusted Virgil’s judgement to be sound.  If direct intervention was requested then that was what was needed.

“I’ll see what I can do.  I’ve got some leave due at the end of the month, I might be able to get it brought forward.”  He made a mental note to cancel his airfield slot in New York, whether his leave got moved or not it looked like he was going to be spending it in LA rather than the Big Apple.

“Thanks.  You know I wouldn’t ask this if I wasn’t sure it was necessary.” 

“I know.  Look, it’s fine.  I’ll get down there as soon as I can and report back to you.  Now go get some sleep, you look done in and it must be gone midnight for you.”

“Okay.  Night Scott.” A wave of relief washed over Virgil as he closed the call.  If Scott hadn’t been available the next step would have been to head back himself; he would have been on a flight already if his project wasn’t at a time-critical stage.  Scott would soon get to the heart of the matter and everything would be fine.  He hoped.

Several states away Scott ran his fingers through his own hair in a gesture that mirrored his brother’s earlier action.  He hadn’t seen Virgil this rattled about a brother’s health since John’s suspected appendicitis eight years ago.  That had been for a scary time for them all with Jeff away on a business trip and Scott left in charge of the kids, ably backed up by Virgil as his reliable second in command; a role his little brother had assumed without asking ever since their mother had died.  Now Virgil was asking him to step up again and it was time to answer the call.  They had worked as a team then and they would work as a team now.   

xoxoxox

In less than a week Scott found himself outside the apartment door.  He hoped Virgil was wrong and that this was a wasted journey but his brother had an uncanny skill at being able to see beneath the surface.  It was his trust in Virgil’s opinion that had him citing ‘family emergency’ and ‘compassionate leave’ at his own commanding officer before making the trip south.  

He entered the cool darkness of the hallway and was hit by the wall of sound spilling out from the cracked doorway of Gordon’s room; a telltale sign that his brother was there but noone else was.  There was no way Jeff would have put up with that sort of racket as the beat of the music thudded through his bones.  He wasn’t particularly keen himself but at least it meant he could make his entry undetected.  It also meant that he was guaranteed some time alone with Gordon; Alan should be out at school for at least the next few hours which would give him the opportunity to try and get Gordon to open up without the pressure of an audience.

Pausing only to deposit his kit bag in the room that had never really felt like his, Scott made his way to the kitchen and started digging through cupboards until he found the cocoa.  It was a comforter, a treat reserved for those times when someone was particularly upset or recovering from illness.  The dark playlist that was still reverberating around the apartment suggested it was going to be necessary. 

Bearing two steaming mugs Scott nudged the door to Gordon’s room wide open and stepped in.  The curtains were still closed despite it being the middle of the day and the room smelt stale.  The figure on the bed sat up with a start at the sudden intrusion and confusion crossed Gordon’s features at the unexpected visitor.  For Scott the shock was different in nature, even in the darkened room the physical change in his brother was profound.  Gone was the tanned skin and glossy hair, instead Gordon’ locks sat limp and flat, framing a face that was several shades too pale making the dark eyes look like wells into oblivion.  The haunted look that greeted him caused Scott to curse himself for for not realising that things had gotten this bad, for not being there and for leaving Virgil to be the one that kept a check on everyone’s wellbeing.

He put the mugs down and hit the off switch on the stereo, causing a deep silence to fall over the room, before throwing open the curtains.  The sudden change in light levels made Gordon wince and the natural light he was now bathed in only served to enhance how pale he had got.   Scooching Gordon’s legs out of the way so he could perch on the end he joined his brother on the bed.

“I couldn’t find any of that caramel syrup you like, sorry.” 

“S’ok.  Coach doesn’t like us having too much refined sugar.  Didn’t like.  Don't suppose it matters any more.”  The reminder that he no longer had a coach was like a punch to the gut and his shoulders slumped just that little bit lower. 

Picking up the mug Gordon took a deep pull at his cocoa.  The warm sweetness hit the back of his throat invoking memories of Kansas; recovering from a cold or mourning a lost race, Scott’s cocoa was a band-aid for the soul.  Even without the syrup the hit of sugar that came with the drink gave his thought processes a jump start.  He blinked, then looked at Scott as if properly seeing him for the first time.  Yes, big brother really was in his room. 

“Why are you here?” Suspicion crept into his voice.  The last time he’d seen Scott it was Marineville; he wondered if this was another visitation orchestrated by their father, have big brother there during the day as another layer of control.

“Had some annual leave to use” Scott shrugged.  “Didn’t have any plans so I thought I would stop here for a few days.”  

“You’re a terrible liar.” Gordon rolled his eyes at the blatant falsehood.  “Try again.”

“Okay.  Virgil was worried about you and asked me to look in, call him if you don’t believe me.  It’s true I had some leave to use up though.” 

“Does Dad know you’re here?”

“Not yet.  I wanted to see how you were for myself first and frankly Gordon, you're a mess.  When did you last swim?  When did you last even shower?” With the curtains now open and the sun streaming in the room was warming up, amplifying the odour of unwashed body. 

“Was at the pool maybe 2 weeks ago.  Don’t really know any more.  Not much point now I’m off the squad.”

“C’mon Squid, you’re better than this.  Finish your drink and get your running shoes on, you need some sunshine and you need it now.”  

“Can’t.  Gotta get my personal statement finished before Dad gets home.”  The half-empty mug was set down with thud, the cocoa suddenly seeming bitter.  Storm clouds brewed behind his eyes at the reminder of their father and the rules he imposed.

“And how’s that going?”  Scott raised an accusatory eyebrow at the rumpled bed sheets.  There were some jotted notes on the desk but it didn’t look like Gordon had made much progress.  “I’ll give you a hand with it later but I need a run and you are coming with me, it’ll make you feel better.”

Gordon knew better than to argue.  The Scott of Kansas, the one that provided cocoa, was also the Scott that had spent night after night getting him to complete his homework or making him tidy his room.  He’d had a counter to every single one of Gordon’s tricks or arguments then and the look on his face showed he wasn’t going to take no for an answer now.  He hauled himself up and hunted for his running shoes in the closet while Scott disappeared off to his own room to get changed.  The very fact that he couldn’t lay his hands on his running kit straight away just showed that Scott was probably right, he had been shut away and static for too long and needed to move. 

The pair set off at an easy pace, their feet thudding against the sidewalk as they headed towards the nearest green space.  For Gordon, who had been neglecting his fitness regime of late, it took a while to shake the stiffness out of his limbs.  The sun felt dazzling as it reflected back up from the flagstones after shutting it out of his room for so long. 

Scott made sure to stay a couple of steps behind to start off with, supposedly so that Gordon could direct the route, but really so that his younger sibling could dictate the speed without being pressured.  He had always been the faster runner, his long limbs easily able to outstrip his brother’s stockier build, but the pace as they set off felt particularly sluggish.  There was no attempt at competition either.  Despite their differing talents the Gordon of old would always put up fight, trying to achieve the impossible and beat him to the finish but there was no fight today.  Staying a few steps behind also gave him a chance to take a proper look at his brother.  Scott noted with worry that the muscle definition in his arms and legs was softer, his steps heavy and less springy and the tee-shirt hung limply off a form that seemed thinner than before; the family athlete was a long way off peak condition and far from his usual energetic self.  Compared to the powerful figure he had watched sprinting to the finish of the assault course at Marineville Gordon was practically unrecognisable.

They ran in silence along shaded boulevards and down wooded paths, the sounds of the city muted by the greenery of the park.  The path looped and twisted and you could almost forget the world that existed on the far side of the railings.  As they approached the gates that would release them back into the city Scott turned onto the grass and slowed to a halt leaving Gordon to follow him with a puzzled look.

“Stretches” Scott answered in response to the unasked question in Gordon’s eyes, “or have you forgotten how to do those too?”

Gordon didn’t grace that with a response, just rolled his eyes and started running though his post-workout routine.  It really had been too long since he had given his body a proper challenge and his limbs were protesting.  He was still fit by average standards but he knew that if he hit the pool now he would be miles off gold medal pace.

Stretches complete Scott flopped down on the grass and patted the ground next to him in a gesture that was more command than invitation.  Gordon’s legs complied, gratefully collapsing to the floor, and he was soon sprawled beside his brother on the warm turf gazing up at a sky criss-crossed by contrails.

“So Gordon, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Gordon’s head snapped round at the blunt outburst.  “Don’t you start too, I’ve already had all the lectures I can handle.”

“I’m not here to lecture.  Seriously though, what the hell has been going on?  First you’re storming your way to a world record, then you’re putting yourself through one of the toughest military selections in the world and now you look like you couldn’t do either.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need to be able to do either, do I.  Dad has made it perfectly clear I’ve got to go to college.  I’m not allowed to compete any more and you hauling my ass out of Marineville kinda blew any chance I had with WASP.”  

A look of anger flashed across Gordon’s eyes as he threw out that barb.  He was pissed at himself for how hard he had found the run and cursing his lapse of discipline, Scott was an easy target for his frustrations.  For Scott it was the first spark of real emotion he had witnessed since arriving. 

“Yeah, sorry about that, I didn’t really have a lot of choice.  I must admit I was surprised though, you’ve never shown any interest in the military before.” 

“Never really had the time.  I’d spent so long throwing everything I had at my swimming I really thought that was going to be my life.  I honestly thought I could make him proud.  Turns out in Dad’s eyes though it could never be more than a hobby.  Now Coach won’t have me back on the team even with Dad’s permission; he said he needs commitment and can’t risk putting in the work only to have me pulled again.”  

The pain in his brother’s voice was clearly evident and Scott couldn’t blame him.  Gordon has spent years devoting himself to his sport, making significant sacrifices along the way.  Their father had always told them to give whole heart to a cause, that half measures would only lead to failure, and when it came to swimming Gordon had followed that advice to the letter.  To have all that dedication and commitment wiped out in the eyes of his Coach by the actions of that same father must have been a bitter blow.  

“Ok, forget Dad for a minute, tell me what you want.  I don’t care about what Dad thinks or what your Coach says.  If you could do whatever you wanted with your life what would it be?”

If Scott was expecting to be left waiting for an answer he was in for a surprise.  There was no hesitation in Gordon’s response, a small part of him might still doubt Scott’s intentions but it felt good to actually be listened to and to get his frustrations off his chest.

“WASP.  It...it felt good there.  I felt good.  I felt like I belonged and I could actually see myself having a decent life.  I honestly thought I could make it but I guess now I’ll never know, I’m probably permanently blacklisted.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.  Ok, faking the forms really wasn’t the smartest of moves but you won’t be under age for much longer.”

“I still couldn’t get it past Dad though.” The thought of his Dad had Gordon curling his fists in rage.  A handful of grass stems ended up decapitated with a satisfying ripping sound as they were torn up by the roots.  “I can’t just fly up there and try again, Dad would never arrange the ticket and my allowance has been cut off completely.”  Another handful of grass lost its grip on the ground.  “I can’t even call a cab without needing to run it by him to get some funds released.  Hitting 18 isn’t going to buy me any more freedom.”

Scott winced inwardly as the pile of broken stems beside his brother grew with each angry tear at the ground.  The restrictions being placed on Gordon’s life were draconian to say the least.  The stupid thing was they were doing more harm than good but evidently their father was too certain of his own righteousness and was blind to the damage he was doing.  He knew that if this carried on much longer Gordon could end up both mentally and physically broken, cowed into submission with all his spark gone.  

Just recently Scott had begun to have some appreciation of what it felt like to be under the controlling shadow of his father.  Every phone call between them came with the reminder that he was expected to become pilot in his father’s rescue organisation idea.  He hadn’t been asked, just presented with the future as if it were a foregone conclusion.   The difference between him and Gordon was that he had already stepped away from his father’s control.  Jeff couldn’t tender his resignation for him, much as he might like to, and so he still had a say in his own future.  Gordon had no such power .  His resolve to help his brother hardened.

“You leave Dad to me.  If you’re sure WASP is what you want…”

“Yeah, it is.” The response was strong, showing some of the old confidence Scott was more used to associating with his brother.

“...then I’ll do what I can to see you get your chance.  Of course, actually getting through selection will be up to you but from what I saw before you seemed to have that sorted.  Now come on, up with you.” Scott hauled himself up off the grass and extended a hand to his brother, pulling Gordon up and then into a hug.  He stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around the shorter form, feeling the head buried into his shoulder in silent thanks, before reluctantly breaking the contact that his brother obviously needed so desperately.  “We ought to be heading back, it’s getting late.  And you seriously need to hit the shower.”

[noodlecupcakeswritings]

Undercover - Chapter 11 (A LokixRaven AU)

Loki won the battle of New York and now rules over Earth after eliminating Thor and Hawkeye. The remaining Avengers have gone into hiding, waiting for a chance to take back their planet. Raven (OC) is their key to doing so.

This fic is pretty much porn and with this AU Raven and Loki have no previous history. 

Please leave comments, kudos and reblogs if you like it. It really helps me out as a writer, lemme know if you wanna be on the taglist as well :)

Warnings: Language, Romance, Fluff, Feels, Discussion of self harm/scars, Discussion of abuse, Implied murder.

Ravens dress reference

Chapter 11

Raven’s P.O.V

Loki had done nothing but shower me in gifts and affection since I’d ‘accepted’ his apology. It was almost sickening how sweet he was being. Of course I would never actually forgive him for what he had done to me, but I would take full advantage of him making it up to me. It was one of my nights tonight and perhaps I’d do something nice for him. Perhaps it was time to stop acting like an ice queen, after all I still had a job to do. Speaking of job to do, Collins and I were in the library trying to get through to Fury. Collins had managed to sneak a phone in here when he’d arrived. “Agent Harper, report,” came Fury’s voice through on the loudspeaker. What did I actually have to report? What information did I have? What progress had I made? I couldn’t say nothing but honestly there wasn’t much to report. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t taking this seriously or that I wasn’t trying hard enough.

“Well, he seems to be trusting me so far,” I explained. “How so?” “There was an…incident. He wanted to make it up to me so now I’m spending two nights a week with him instead of one.” “Incident?” He sounded concerned. “Forgive me sir but it’s not something I really want to go into great detail with you.” “Right. So long as you’re okay, Harper.” “I’m fine, thank you, sir.” “So long as your making progress that’s the main thing.” “Of course. I’ve memorized the layout of the palace and drawn maps. However, theres a network of secret passageways that I need to explore further.” “Just be careful-“ “I know the risks director.”

If I got caught, this mission would be over and so would my life. Loki wouldn’t hesitate to kill a spy. But I needed to explore those passageways, it might lead to a secret entrance. It could be the way in that the remaining Avengers needed. It would make more sense for Collins to explore the tunnels, he wasent under as much scrutiny as I was. If I went missing for hours, Loki would know about it and look for me. Collins, not so much. Besides, Collins’ role required him to be in the library and Loki happened to have a secret doorway in the library. The door to the library opened and Collins quickly ended the call before shoving the phone in a desk drawer.

I grabbed a book, pretending to study the back cover as Loki stepped further into the room. My heart rate had picked up, panic slowly starting to creep in. That had been a little too close. And even now we could still be caught. Glancing up from my book, I forced a soft smile at Loki. It was odd to see him outside of the hours we were scheduled to spend together. “There you are, I've been looking all over for you,” Loki spoke, a hint of relief in his voice. “I wanted some new reading material,” I explained. Loki glanced at the book in my hands, studying the title before a soft smirk grew across his face. “You didn’t strike me as the type to enjoy romance novels,” he remarked.

For the first time since picking up the book, my brain finally registered just what I had actually picked up. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Definitely not my taste. “It’s a classic,” I explained. “So I've been told.” Stepping closer, he took the book from my hands only to discard it on the desk behind me. I felt a little cornered by him, my fight or flight mode was going to start kicking in if he wasn’t careful. Leaning down, Loki pressed soft kisses to my neck. My body relaxed under his touch but my mind was still on high alert. Thankfully Collins had busied himself a little deeper into the masses of books to avoid the slight public display of affection. “Would you join me for dinner tonight?” Loki asked.

Dinner? This struck me as odd. The other slaves dined alone, as did Loki. Almost as if it were an unofficial rule of sorts. I suppose there would be no harm in it, perhaps it would allow us to ‘get closer’. “Sure,” I answered. “Shall we say seven pm? Outside in the palace gardens?” “Sounds good to me.” It didn’t, it meant I had to spend more time with him tonight. I had to sit across from him and listen to him drone on about god knows what. The thought almost made me roll my eyes, but I refrained from showing my distaste. Loki leaned down, kissing me softly and running his fingers through my hair. He exited the library mentioning that he would start making preparations. The second I heard the door close behind I relaxed physically, almost as if I had been holding my breath. I could make it through an extra two hours with him. I had too.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The dress I settled on was black and simple. Long sleeved with a floral pattern and backless. The dress started at the length of my neck and ended below my knees. A bra wouldn’t be necessary with this dress. My hair was loosely curled, and I went for a more neutral makeup look. It felt odd not picking out some kind of purse, that was a must have accessory for any woman. But I didn’t exactly have a phone, cash or makeup to carry around with me, so it wasn’t a necessity. Glancing at myself in the mirror, I adjusted my dress and put a lock of hair in place before leaving my room. It felt odd not having him come and collect me or meet me, yet it was giving me more freedom. Meaning he must be trusting me more. His mistake.

I reached the gardens finding candles arranged like a pathway, leading me further into the greenery. After turning a corner it became obvious that the candles led to the beautiful, vintage styled gazebo. The gazebo had been decorated with more candles and all sorts of flowers. Roses were intertwined together in the walls of the gazebo. It was quite the sight and gesture. Perhaps if things had been different between us, I would have gotten a bit flustered over the sight. It was beautiful, it was like something out of a fairy tale. I climbed the three steps to find a table fully decorated with more candles and flowers. Loki really had been paying attention when I’d shown him my sketch book, all the flowers I’d sketched had been brought into the gazebo. All different types and all different colours. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had paid this much attention to me or had done something so thoughtful. Perhaps I could…no, no I couldn’t forgive him for him.

Loki was dressed in another black three-piece suit, one that fitted him perfectly. The only speck of colour from him was the emerald green of his eyes which were currently taking in every inch of my outfit. He looked almost dazed or perhaps entranced. “You look beautiful,” Loki complimented. He didn’t stop there though as he took my hand in his and pressed his lips to the back of it. Someone was really turning up the gentleman charm tonight. I wanted to give into it, I wanted to revel in his attention and affection, but it would be wrong. We took our places at the table, the first course already laid out. Cheese souffle with a little salad. Whilst I didn’t mind the fancy food there were times, I missed takeout food, like burgers or pizza. Conversation felt awkward, perhaps it was due to the intimacy of this situation. Normally it was just sex, nothing else.

I couldn’t help but notice how Loki kept glancing at my bare hands. I suppose it would be odd seeing me without gloves for a change, but with the long sleeves of the dress, gloves wouldn’t be necessary. When he’d seen them, he hadn't asked about them like most people would have. Even after that he still hadn't asked. I could tell he wanted too, curiosity was natural to people and scars tend to have a story behind them. My scars did indeed have a story behind them, a long, tragic story. One I didn’t like to revisit often. Yet if I showed my vulnerable side maybe it would help speed along the mission. Or, he’d be disgusted with me and kick me out. It was a gamble. But tonight I was feeling a little lucky. “You can ask about them if you want,” I spoke. Loki raised a brow at me, acting dumb, acting like I hadn't caught him staring. It wasn’t a good look for him.

“My arms. I know you saw them down in that room. And you haven’t stopped staring at my hands tonight because I’m not wearing gloves,” I explained. “Is it something you would be comfortable sharing?” “I wouldn’t have mentioned them if it wasn’t.” “Raven, I understand its likely a sensitive subject, otherwise you wouldn’t have worked so hard to cover them all the time. I also understand that our relationship isn't…normal. I would understand if I wasn’t someone you felt comfortable to confide in.” Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. I hadn't expected him to treat this so delicately, so respectfully. This night really was taking an unexpected turn. Finishing off my souffle I considered that maybe Loki had made an honest mistake that day, maybe he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Maybe I should start being nicer to him, maybe I should accept his apology finally. Not just for the mission but for myself. My old therapist had once told me it would do me no good to hold grudges. “The ones on my arms were mostly self-inflicted. It was my form of a coping mechanism when I needed to feel something or when the pain just got too much. I know you’ve probably seen the other ones across my thighs.” I started. Loki hung on every single word, listening intently and without an ounce of judgement. I paused as our plates were taken from us and replaced with the main course. Beef brisket with new potatoes and vegetables. Loki didn’t make a start on his meal, instead all his attention was still on me. Now came the hard part, inhaling deeply I internally prepared myself. “The ones across my back…my father made those. He used to beat me as a kid, he’d beat my mother too. One night I guess maybe he’d drank more than usual, had a worse day at work than usual but he beat my mother to death,” I continued.

Reaching across the table Loki took my hand in his, his touch tender and comforting. His thumb rubbed across my knuckles as if offering comfort, as if he wanted to soothe my pain. I welcomed the comfort; a lump having formed in my throat making it difficult to continue. But he had to know, he had to know why I was like this. “You have to understand what I did was in self-defence. If I hadn't…” I trailed off, my voice cracking as I fought off tears. Something snapped in Loki, I saw it in his eyes as he rose from the table. He came around to me, taking my hands in his. “I promise you that nobody will ever harm you ever again. So long as you are in my care nobody will lay a finger on you,” Loki vowed. In that moment, I believed him. In that moment, I was able to forgive him.

Taglist: @sweetfictionalworld​​​​​, @therealityhelix​​​​​, @darkprincessloki92​​​​​, @skulliebythesea​​​​​, @fizzyxcustard​​​​​, @myownviperroom​​​​​​, @jana-banana-fana​​​, 

[ao3porcelainstorm]

poison ivy & stinging nettles 14

On Ao3

Pairing: Sherlock/OFC

Rated: M

Warnings: eventual violence, torture, swears, adult themes (no explicit smut)

Chapter 13 - Chapter 15

Chapter 14- Asphodel

~~~

They’re both idiots. Emotionally stunted idiots with only concern for the world and never for themselves.

~~~

The viewing had gone as well as could be expected. Sherlock had to admit, whoever patched the hole in the back of Maxwell’s head had done a spectacular job.

Amelia hung back, chatting politely with family, and Sherlock noticed that she never went up to the casket before it was sealed up and the memorial was moved to the gravesite outside.

Hugging her cousin as the family moved, she whispered something in Ruth’s ear that made the other chuckle quietly.

She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, and when Sherlock arrived at the graveyard, Amelia was gone.

He realized that in all the fuss and bustle, she must have slipped away before the actual memorial began.

She hadn’t been missed, the focus falling on Ruthie and her family, occasionally Lydia. Once the body was in the ground, and people began lingering around for condolences, he went for the gardens. He was positive this time he would find his friend there, as the house was being prepped for a large dinner.

Sure enough, Amelia was sat up under a tree, bundled in her winter jacket, with a sketchbook propped in her lap. She didn’t notice him approach, and barely reacted when he sat down next to her,’ glancing at the picture she was drawing.

“Asphodel,” she explained without looking up. She shaded in the stems, pausing with the end of her pencil between her lips. “A bundle means ‘my regrets follow you into the grave’.”

“Seems appropriate,” he commented.

“Burials freak me out,” she admitted. “And I couldn’t listen to the priest talk about what a great guy he was. I mean, maybe he was for a while, but he did nearly kill John.”

“And you,” Sherlock reminded her. She made a noise under her breath, dismissing his commentary.

“It’s so permanent,” she continued, her sketching a little more intense as she spoke. “Buried in the ground.”

“Flowers sprout from the ground,” Sherlock reminded her quietly. She didn’t react immediately, considering his words before she furrowed her brow in thought.

“Exactly, they spout and grow and become beautiful things,” she lowered her sketchbook to look at him directly. “A coffin just sits there. The body bloats and decays, contributing nothing and warping and bleh.”

“I’ll be sure to plant some nice roses over your body when the time comes,” he smirked.

“But that’s more productive,” she pointed at him with her pencil. “Roses thrive with bonemeal and blood. They love it.”

“I can assure you comfortably,” his smirk grew wider. “You’ll be very much unaware of your surroundings when your time comes. Dead people tend not to complain about their accommodations in my experience.”

“I’m holding you to that,” she poked his arm with her pencil. “Otherwise I’ll haunt you.”

“Ghosts aren’t real, but I’d be willing to see you try and prove otherwise.”

She snorted a laugh under her breath, folding her sketchbook shut.

“Did you see my great-aunt Marge?” she asked in a low voice.

“Is she the one who threw herself over the body?” he questioned in amusement.

“Yep,” she nodded. “She’s been complaining about not getting a cent in my grandpa’s will for decades now. Seems to think Ruthie’s gonna cut her a check today. Her son’s been playing boo-hoo all day too.”

“He called Tommy, ‘Johnny’,” Sherlock supplied, earning a fit of giggles from her. It was far more peaceful in the gardens, even if the plants were mostly bare in anticipation of the upcoming winter weather. There were certainly fewer fake criers.

“Should we even stay for dinner?” she asked, cringing at the thought. “I think I heard Mycroft and my mother are leaving soon.”

“Thank God,” Sherlock muttered, visibly relieved. He was not looking forward to holding his tongue around these people for a few more hours. Aunt Marge alone was enough to provide him snide comments for the next few weeks. “I can be packed in ten minutes.”

Amelia hopped up eagerly, offering a gloved hand and pulling Sherlock to his feet.

“Make it five and we can stop for Indian on the way back.”

~~~

Returning home was uneventful. Both Amelia and Sherlock agreed that it was a bit of a relief not to be staring danger in the face the whole time. It’d been a long few hours, but immediately upon passing the threshold of Baker Street, they were energized again.

Home was home, after all.

John and Mrs. Hudson greeted them with homemade chicken soup, the pair dropping into the kitchen chairs and devouring the meal.

“How has Ruthie held up?” Mrs. Hudson inquired, pouring tea for everyone once they’d finished eating, and moved to the living room.

“As well as you did during your husband's trial,” Sherlock replied briskly. “Favouring the grape, so to speak.”

“To be fair,” Amelia cut in, scowling at Sherlock. “She’s had a chaotic few weeks. I’d be drunk too.”

“But you haven’t been,” Sherlock pointed out. “Comparably, you’ve had a chaotic few months.”

“I have some old whiskey in the pantry. Is that your blessing, Sherlock? Or shall I start spending the nights in the pub with Jessica Reynolds?”

“You two are always at each other,” Mrs. Hudson tutted. “After what John told me, I thought you’d be like honeymooners when you got back.”

Amelia immediately turned her focus to John, who was doing his best to avoid the Auburn-haired woman’s gaze.

“Oh? And what did John tell you?” she squeaked out, face red.

Sherlock even had to admit, it was an amusing response.

“I’m not getting in the middle of this,” Mrs. Hudson stood up and retreated for the stairs. “Forget I said anything. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“Clever girl,” Amelia muttered after the landlady had closed the door to her flat. She kept her eyes on John, waiting for him to break. It was bound to happen. He always broke with that look.

“Really?” he set his tea down, looking between Sherlock and Amelia impatiently. “Nothing happened?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question, John,” Sherlock crossed his legs, taking a slow sip of his tea. “Would you please expand on what you mean?”

Scoffing, he turned to Amelia.

Smart, Sherlock relented. Her every expression read like a book. Perhaps they’d all gotten too familiar with one another, each roommate reading the other so easily.

“Mia?” he asked.

Amelia shrugged, mumbling something non-committal about there only being one bed.

“We didn’t bang!” she finally snapped under John's scrutinizing look. “Stop being childish John. Honestly.”

“Just shared a bed,” Sherlock hummed. “Pressed against one another the entirety of the night.”

“Fully clothed,” Amelia supplied with a huff. “You’re both enjoying getting a rise out of me and I won’t have it.”

“I think, you wouldn’t be worked up if there wasn’t something you were concerned about being taken out of context,” John reasoned, leaning into his chair smugly.

“Yeah, you thinking I’d sleep with Sherlock,” she scoffed.

“And what’s so bad about that?” Sherlock poked the bear a little further, his face stretched in feign outrage.

Between embarrassment, frustration, and panic, Amelia looked like she short-circuited at the question.

“I’m going to bed,” she stood up, grabbing her blanket, and hobbled down the stairs to her room.

“You’re enjoying this?” John asked with a chuckle.

“Immensely,” Sherlock admitted, smirking to himself.

“And how did you feel about sharing such an intimate space with her?” John quizzed, brow arched expectantly.

How on Earth did he turn it on him?

Narrowing his eyes, Sherlock scanned John over. What was his goal here?

Personal satisfaction? No, John wasn’t vindictive like that. He wouldn’t cause trouble for the sake of trouble, he was trying to figure something out.

“Don’t be a busy-body, John, it’s unbecoming,” he rolled his eyes, pulling his phone out and pretending to browse the web.

“Mhm,” John tapped a finger to his chin. “And how did it feel to be ‘pressed against one another the entirety of the night’?”

“I was just teasing Amelia,” he countered.

“You’re not a robot, right?” John sighed.

“I don’t understand what you’re implying?” Sherlock huffed. “What a waste of time.”

He went to retreat for his room when John finally spoke up.

“Amelia,” he caught his friend by the wrist before he passed him. “Do you have feelings for her?”

What?

“What?” Sherlock gaped at him. “Are you mad?”

“What’s her favourite colour?” John waited.

“Marigold yellow,” he replied quickly. “I know yours too, an embarrassingly boring shade of taupe.”

“Favourite book?”

“Anything by Ernest Hemingway.”

“My favourite?”

“John, you’re not proving your point by quizzing me on basic facts about the people I surround myself with,” he pulled his hand free. “She’s a friend.”

“Would you spoon me tonight, then?” John challenged to Sherlock's back.

“Sod off!”

And so John had his answer.

Now to help Amelia and Sherlock to figure it out. He was a good friend after all, and they were a pair of emotionally stunted idiots.

~~~

Sherlock, for his part, truly didn’t believe he had feelings for Amelia Brenner.

For starters, he didn’t know her middle name. Only that it started with “O”. He could have easily gotten her birth certificate but remained convinced that would be cheating.

So how could he have feelings for someone he didn’t fully know?

Of course, John was the one pressing it. The guy who falls in love after one date, clearly confused by two close friends. Just because they were of opposite genders did not mean they automatically were attracted to one another.

And while Sherlock was attracted, a little bit, to Amelia, that didn’t change his stance. That was physical attraction, not anything deeper or meaningful and he was too much of a gentleman to lure her down that road.

He knew Amelia got flustered when it came to romantic entanglements. He didn’t actually believe she had any real feelings for him. It would have been obvious. Most people were obvious, and she’d slept with him, hugged him, touched him, without any hesitation or second thought. That’s just how she was, and that’s why it was so easy for him to tease her.

None of it was genuine.

Grabbing a book off his nightstand, Sherlock was disappointed to find it was a novel he’d finished before leaving for Sirenshore. Not willing to sulk back into the living room to grab something new, he started flipping through the pages until he found a section he’d enjoyed.

He wasn’t entirely sure how long it’d been, but at some point, John went to his bedroom upstairs and the flat was silent.

Aside from the thud of Amelia’s boot and a string of curse words in what Sherlock imagined was her attempt at being quiet.

Setting his book aside, Sherlock crept toward the kitchen, watching from the hall while Amelia made peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She’s changed to her pajamas but clearly hadn’t been sleeping, as her fingers and arms were covered with paint.

She leaned against the countertop, biting into her sandwich and reading the ingredients on the peanut butter container.

He knew she had to have been exhausted after the long trip back and the funeral. Why hadn’t she fallen asleep yet?

He glanced at the kitchen clock. It’d been nearly three hours, and it was considerably late in the night.

Then he remembered.

The basement flat. She didn’t like it down there alone, not recently.

But, with John home, she couldn’t very well sleep on the sofa as she had been. Amelia likes pretending things were fine, even when it was obvious she was on the verge of a breakdown.

“Is the bread stale?” he asked, announcing himself before stepping into the light.

“What?” she chewed a bit, confused at the question. “I mean, no? It doesn’t taste like it.”

“Right,” he nodded, moving to the same countertop and mimicking her lean. Lots of paint on her arms. More than usual. She was being sloppy, which confirmed his theory she was tired.

“What time did you wake up today?” he asked, trying to stay casual.

“Around six-thirty... you were there...” she lowered her sandwich. “Why are you being weird?”

“You’ve been up painting,” he commented, lifting her arm toward the light. “Can’t sleep?”

She tugged her arm free and took another bite of her sandwich.

“Inspiration struck,” she answered. “It’s not very good, but I needed to get it out of my system. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“I never sleep,” he replied. “If you’d like, I was going to do some reading by the fire. It’s warmer than in my bedroom. You’re welcome to come back, John shouldn’t be up until morning.”

She ate the final piece of the sandwich, watching him suspiciously.

“Is this about what John was going on about earlier?” she asked. “Because I know I got weird but seriously, intimacy and whatever freaks me out and he’s totally reading into things.”

“I know,” he stood up. “He’s John. He’ll get over it soon enough. The injury probably is making him bored so he’s coming up with fantastical ways to entertain himself.”

It made sense and Amelia seemed content with the answer.

“That’s...” she laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Let me grab an extra blanket and something to do. I’ll be back.”

When she returned for the evening, she had a sketchbook under her arm and a blanket was thrown over her shoulders. Settling in, they both worked quietly until Sherlock no longer heard the scratch of her pencils against the paper.

Sure enough, she’d passed out, the sketchbook set aside and the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She looked relaxed, the same peaceful expression on her face as she’d had at Sirenshore.

Sherlock tossed another log into the fire. He wasn’t planning on sleeping any time soon, his mind still reeling over everything from the last weekend. He needed to find Moriarty before he enacted whatever it was he was planning.

He needed to keep his friends safe.

Chapter 15

[patchwork-panda]

If A Moment Is All We Are (3/?)

TW (3): This chapter contains a mention of:

1) intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation (Dazai dialogue). 2) fair amount of blood and physical violence in the form of guns, explosions and slashing injuries, as a "fight" chapter. 3) some descriptions of physical injury including broken bones and slash wounds. I tried not to let it be too graphic. Please proceed with caution.

For those who prefer AO3 format: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121633/chapters/58072957

“Excuse me!”

The woman who now sat at the table, the one the old balding cop had vacated, looked up at me with a friendly, questioning gaze.

“Yes?”

I slammed my hands down on the counter, startling her into dropping her pen, and pushed my sketch of the green snake tattoo towards her.

“I need to make a report!”

“W-what sort of report?” she asked unsteadily, looking me up and down.

I could tell she was already evaluating my credibility but I had to listen to Detective Dazai. It was my only shot at saving Mrs. Yamazaki. I sat down in the same chair I had been in earlier and looked her right in the eye, my voice barely shaking as I gave her a slightly less nonsensical version of the story I had told her colleague earlier. When I finished, I got to my feet and bowed as low as I could.

“I’m not making any of this up and this is not a prank!” I exclaimed, head still bowed. “I, as a concerned citizen, am asking you, a member of the Yokohama Military Police for help. I’m begging you, ma’am: please, listen to me!”

“Okay, okay!” she exclaimed, waving her hands in the air as her colleagues turned to look at us. “I’ll listen to you! Please, sit down.”

Relieved, I sat. My legs were still shaking as I watched her get out a pen and a piece of paper and only when she started asking me for more details and slowly filling out her form was I finally able to breathe freely again.

It worked. I couldn’t believe it. That crazy detective’s advice had worked.

I was elated. I half-thought I was going to start crying with relief when the officer suddenly looked up and shot an anxious look out the window. Curious, I turned behind me and to my surprise, I saw Detectives Dazai (looking miraculously unhurt) and Kunikida passing by the station and going back across the street from whence they came. Seeing the recognition on my face, she turned to me with an odd look in her eye.

“Kusunoki-san,” she said, reading off her form. “Do you... know those two men? I thought I saw you talking to them earlier when I started my shift.”

“Not really?” I said, thinking back. “I mean, kind of? Armed Detective Agency, right? I actually talked to them about this earlier. Oh, but don’t worry! They insisted I talk to the police first before they got involved. They said that would be best.”

The officer looked contemplative.

“Yes, I would have to agree.” She frowned. “If they manage to solve your case before we do, again, my whole department would be completely humiliated. No, we can’t have that...”

She tapped her pen on the table as she thought to herself.

“Honestly, I have a few more questions I’d like to ask you, but I can’t ask them here.”

Once again, she looked behind her before motioning me forward, her expression grim. I scooted towards her in my chair, feeling slightly unsettled by the look on her face.

“W-why not?” I asked quietly.

“I know the man you’re looking for,” she whispered. “I believe he is a member of the Port Mafia.”

Not knowing who the Port Mafia was, I shrugged and her jaw hit the floor.

“You don’t know who the Port Mafia is?” I shook my head and she started laughing. “Wait, are you serious? What are you, some kind of shut-in? You don’t read the news?!”

As she sat there, laughing uproariously at her own joke, I twitched, trying to force a smile on my face as I waited for her to settle down.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” she sighed, wiping a tear from her eye. “Alright, let me tell you something about them since you don’t seem to know. The Port Mafia has been operating in Yokohama for decades. Decades. They have eyes and ears everywhere, perhaps even in this very police station. I want to ask you more but it’s not safe to do it here.”

She scribbled something down on a piece of paper and pushed it towards me.

“Meet me on the top floor of the South Pier Art Gallery in two hours. We’ll talk then.”

***

The rest had been a blur. I’d gone home, celebrated my win with a steaming hot bowl of ramen (topped with some of the veggies Mrs. Yamazaki had foisted on me) and watched some new seasonal shoujo anime titles to pass the time. Then, I took the train to the edge of town, found the gallery and blithely took the spiral staircase up to the top floor where they housed the stained glass window collection, not knowing what lay ahead. Not five minutes after I’d arrived, the young man named Akutagawa had appeared, killed the two curators lying on the far side of the room and blocked the way into the main entrance. When I ran for the fire escape instead, I found myself face-to-face with none other than Detective Dazai, who pointed a gun at me and instructed me to turn back around to face Akutagawa.

As I stood with my hands in the air, cold sweat running down my neck and my pathetic life hanging in the balance, I heard Dazai say something to me in a low, hushed voice.

“Sorry... this isn’t what I meant when I asked if you were doing anything later.”

As the memory of our encounter on the street floated back to me, something stirred to life deep inside my chest, something stronger than the panic that had been choking me since the start of this whole thing... It felt like anger.

“Is that right?” I asked. My voice was shaking but the words kept coming out. “You mean dates with you don’t usually end with somebody getting shot? What exactly did you have in mind then?”

“Oh? Are you interested after all?”

His tone was still light-hearted and flirtatious but I could sense his hesitancy; the gun against my skull pulled back just a fraction and for a second, there was hope. What if the gun fell away from my head entirely? Would I be able to make a run for it, make it back to my apartment in one piece? Akutagawa might try to rip my limbs off and I might still get shot at but what if I tried...?

Dazai didn’t say anything else; he was clearly waiting for my answer. I should tell him yes, maybe then he would feel less tempted to shoot me (why hadn’t he done so already?). However, something about the idea of spending more time in the company of this madman (that is, if I did manage to leave the gallery alive) was more nauseating than the smell of blood permeating the room.

“Not at all,” I replied coolly, “I don’t date guys who are two seconds away from blowing my head off.”

This time, it was Dazai’s turn to laugh.

“Well then,” Dazai mused, “Would it make you feel better to know I’d be joining you right after?”

I actually scoffed.

“What are you proposing, a double suicide?!”

“If you’d like.”

“You have a terrible sense of humor, Detective.”

I wasn’t sure if he could hear me over the deep growls coming from across the room. The monster coming out of Akutagawa’s cloak swayed slowly from side to side, clearly looking for an opening. Akutagawa hadn’t moved a muscle in some time but somehow this didn’t make me feel more comfortable. The sun was starting to set, the colors of the stained glass windows around us gradually darkening, making that cold, calculating gaze and quiet anger coming from the entrance more menacing than ever. Fruitlessly, I weighed my options again, looking around to see if there were any routes, any at all, that I could take to leave the gallery with my life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find even one. I sighed, my shoulders dropping, that spark of hope fading with the last light of the sun.

“It was Dazai-san, right? Can I ask you a question?”

He didn’t answer, so I continued anyway.

“You talk about suicide so casually... You’re not afraid of dying?”

“Not really. It’s pain and suffering I’m afraid of, but dying?”

Dazai was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, he sounded peaceful, hopeful even.

“No. I think about Death so often that it’s as familiar as an old friend to me now. Finally getting to die... It would be comforting, almost like coming home.”

“Huh...”

Flashes of my previous life appeared before my eyes, from more recent to further back... Mrs. Yamazaki bleeding out, alone in her own darkened living room room. A young man’s body flying high into the air after an untimely collision with a speeding black car. The shadow of a burning building on the water’s edge, down by the pier, windows shattering as it was rocked by a sudden explosion...

And finally, an image of a ghoul, staring back at me from just outside my own darkened windows, with long, black hair cut in the same style as my own, drops of blood instead of tears falling down her cheeks, staining the fingertips she touched to them, the blackness of her pupils deep like bottomless wells... As I stared into my own haunted reflection that night, the night before I stopped going to class, I heard it—the darkness within calling out to me, the intrusive thoughts that tempted me to jump when I looked out through the windows of tall buildings...

I heard a distant roar. The shadow monster commanded by Akutagawa surged forward, jaws stretched wide and at the last moment, I turned my head to look Detective Dazai in the face. I smiled.

“I understand.”

Dazai stared at me.

“You do...?”

Without warning, an explosive force shook the gallery, enveloping me in clouds of thick, acrid smoke. I heard a crack and coughing violently, I looked down just in time to see the patterned floor below me give way, the cheap carpeting disintegrating beneath my very feet. There was no time for me to scream or think. I fell into the void below, my watering eyes catching one final glimpse of Akutagawa’s pale face, twisted in anger, as the darkness claimed me.

Wind rushed past my ears. I could feel myself picking up speed and I covered my head, wondering if tucking myself into a ball might mean less broken bones when I finally hit the bottom floor.

But I had stopped falling.

I was caught on something sturdy, with long, dense, wiry limbs. A tree? No, trees weren’t this warm... and they didn’t smell like gun smoke, books and ink...

“Got you,” someone grunted from just above me and I realized I’d fallen not onto a tree, but right into a man’s arms. I pushed my tangled bangs out of my face and looked up.

“Kunikida-san?!”

“I’ll explain later,” he gruffly, crouching down and setting my feet on the ground as the lights around us snapped back on. “We have to go, now! Can you run?”

No sooner had I nodded than he grabbed my wrist, his fingers closing over the fabric of my jacket, and tugged me after him, wasting no time in tearing off down the nearest corridor as soon as he was sure I could stand. Paintings whizzed by as we ran, abstract portraits blurring into colorful landscapes as we raced down the hall, my wrist locked in the detective’s iron grip. I could hear gunfire and yells, occasionally an otherworldly roar echoing from the top floor and I shuddered and pushed myself to run faster, to put more distance between myself and the beast making those horrible shrieks. As we ran past the spiral staircase to the corner of the central gallery, I abruptly realized the explosion had taken me from the top floor to the second—that much closer to safety...

Just when I thought my legs were going to give out, Kunikida abruptly stopped at the end of the corridor and I almost crashed right into him. His head jerked up and I caught a flash of green from the exit sign reflected on his glasses as he barked his next command.

“This way!”

I was brusquely yanked forward again, Kunikida’s long ponytail nearly smacking me in the face as he dragged me into a stairwell, the walls and steps narrow and lined with cement.

“We’re going down. Hurry!” he ordered, finally letting go of my aching wrist.

Ignoring the burning in my legs, I bolted down the stairs as quickly as I could, the tall detective hot on my heels as a crack echoed above us, like fireworks exploding in our confined chamber. Instinct took over and I ducked, throwing a hand over my head as I felt projectiles whiz past my shoulder.

“Get up!” Kunikida shouted and I obeyed, the sight of freshly gouged bullet holes on the wall ahead of me spurring me on. I was almost at the ground floor when I heard gunshots from very close behind. At once, I realized Kunikida was not with me and I whirled to see him several meters away at the turn, firing a small handgun up the stairs.

“Kunikida-san?” I called up, dashing back to him.

“Don’t come any closer!” he cried.

A sharp pain ripped into my cheek, tearing off bits of my hair and splattering my clothes with hot blood. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck in rivulets as I squeezed myself back into the corner and out of the way, a fresh hail of bullets raining down on us from above. I heard excited shouting; someone had followed us, their heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs—

“It’s the Port Mafia. You have to go!” Kunikida hollered, the echo of his voice nearly overwhelmed by the cacophony of more bullets firing into the stairwell. The impact scattered rubble everywhere and forcing me to guard my eyes.

“What about you?!” I cried.

“I’ll be fine!” he shouted. “Just get to the lobby, now!”

Red bloomed in the shoulder of his beige vest. He stumbled and pushed himself further back into the corner of the alcove, his bloodied hand reaching into his shirt vest and pulling out a small, lightly-bound olive green notebook. There was a determined look in his eye.

“What are you waiting for? Go!”

He ripped a page out of the notebook and I was suddenly blinded by a flash of green light. An enormous explosion rocked the stairwell and I stumbled to the ground as smoke flooded the air.

“Kunikida-san?!”

There was no answer. I pushed myself to my feet, staring in horror at the spot where he’d been.

“Kunikida-san...”

Was he dead? Had he died defending me?!

Frozen, I stood there, utter shock pulsing through me as my cheek continued to drip blood onto my blouse. But all too soon, the sound of footsteps began to pound down the stairs, snapping me out of my daze and I uprooted my feet, following Kunikida’s last order and made for the door to the lobby.

I had to live. If Kunikida was really dead, living was the only way to make sure his sacrifice was not in vain. Living meant I was saved.

Throwing my shoulder against the heavy door, I burst into the lobby. To my relief, a quick glance around the ground floor assured me that the lobby was deserted, with no security guards and no trench-coat-clad figures with guns anywhere in sight. Taking one last, regretful look behind me at the stairs, I immediately sprinted for the front doors.

“Hold it, Prophet.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a ribbon of black and red streak towards me. Before I knew what had hit me, something slashed deeply into my left leg and I hit the floor with a sharp cry of pain, the back of my thigh burning like it was on fire. I could feel the warmth of my own blood pouring out of the wound, pooling on the ground and soaking wetly into my ripped jeans. As I struggled to get up, I heard Akutagawa’s voice again.

“Surrender.”

Somehow, he’d gotten past Dazai and Kunikida. Or maybe the Port Mafia had already finished both of them off, giving Akutagawa a clear path to me... Gritting my teeth, I got up, staggering a little as I stood, my eyes meeting with Akutagawa’s cold gray ones. My legs felt weak. I could tell that I’d been cut very deeply but I continued running for the doors, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I made a bee-line for the dim light of the setting sun outside.

“Don’t ignore me.”

There was an unearthly roar and something hit the ground where my right foot had been barely a millisecond before, sending small chunks of flooring flying into the air as I dodged Akutagawa’s attacks. For one brilliant, shining second, I thought I was going to make it—my fingers brushed against the glass and metal front doors—

“Rashoumon! Higanzakura!”

Black and red wires tightened around my throat, wrenching me away from the exit before I could push open the doors and lifting me high into the air. I could barely breathe and I scrabbled against my bonds in vain, the skin of my palms and fingers stinging and bleeding with every attempt to pry the coils off of me.

What was this thing made of?!

Through watering and narrowed eyes, I watched as Akutagawa approached in measured steps, his hands in his pockets, that cold, impassive face coming closer with every passing moment.

“You run pretty fast for an injured girl, I’ll admit. Unfortunately for you, I was ordered to capture you. And I don’t intend to fail.”

The weight around my throat suddenly became crushing. Spots appeared before my eyes and I fought to stay conscious as the last gasp of air was squeezed out of me. Akutagawa’s ragged, darkened form faded in and out of sight.

No! I can’t die here...!

I clawed harder at the thing holding me, desperation setting in. I’d escaped him once before, I had to do it again...! Kunikida might have died for me and if I died now, Mrs. Yamazaki didn’t have a prayer. I needed to make sure she was really saved...! I needed to live!

I watched helplessly, my arms losing strength as another tendril of darkness grew out of Akutagawa’s black coat. Crackling with energy, its shape twisted to become flat and angular until I realized I was staring at an enormous scythe.

“Dazai-san guessed correctly. My orders were to capture you alive. However, whether or not you need to be completely whole was not discussed. I don’t think the boss will care if I cut off your legs. If I do that, you’ll never be able to run away from us ever again.”

“No...”

My voice came out as nothing more than a weak gasp. Unable to hear me, he drew the scythe back in preparation.

“Don’t!”

There were several loud bangs and the vise around my neck abruptly loosened. I felt a rush of wind above me as I fell through the air, shuddering as I landed on my injured leg, which buckled sickeningly beneath me, leaving me in a bloody heap on the floor. Rubbing my throat as I coughed, trying to bring fresh air back into my lungs, I looked up to see Kunikida, bloodied but alive and well, firing a small handgun from behind a large metal sculpture at Akutagawa. He had been forced to retract the demon and was instead raising it as a shield to defend himself against the blonde detective’s onslaught. His pale hand was spattered with red as he clutched at his shoulder, blood coursing down the back of his black robe and dripping at his feet.

I could barely believe it; Kunikida had saved me once again.

I watched him dive out of the way as Akutagawa sliced up the sculpture with his black sickle and duck behind another statue, firing constantly out of his small hand gun. Sparks flew as he traded blows with Akutagawa and he shot at Akutagawa until I heard the hollow clicking of his gun; he was out of bullets. Gritting his teeth, he flung it out of the way. There was another flash of green light and within moments, he was firing at Akutagawa again.

As they fought, I scanned my surroundings again, trying not to think about the amount of blood I was losing, wondering if any backup was coming. Kunikida was holding his own but with no one on the way, he couldn’t last long. I tried to pull myself to my feet and almost immediately slipped back down.

There on the floor, amidst the splatters of blood, was a soft layer of long black hair. It was all over the faux-marble tiles and as I brought my hand to my head, I realized that it was my hair—Akutagawa must’ve clipped most of it from my head when he tried to cut me in half. Looking back up to the main doors, I tried to stand on my injured leg and immediately regretted it.

“Shit.”

My leg was in bad shape; I could barely feel it and everything from the knee down was soaked in blood. Even worse than that, my breaths felt shallow and my head was spinning from anemia; I had to be close to going into shock and judging from the small pinpricks of pain, there were probably micro fractures in my bones. In spite of Kunikida’s best efforts to keep me alive, I had no clue how I was going to make it out of the gallery.

And then a flash of a different shade of red caught my eye.

Rolling towards me from the far side of the room, where the battle raged, was a bright red fire extinguisher. Parts of it looked damaged, and as I stared at it, I was struck by a dangerous idea. If I had no chance of survival, I could at least use my last moments well.

I scooped up the fire extinguisher into my arms and headed back into the fray.

“Kunikida-san!”

They turned to me just as I flung the pressurized device at Akutagawa.

“Heads up!”

All eyes in the lobby lifted towards the extinguisher as it flew through the air, seemingly moving in slow motion as it arced towards Akutagawa. Wordlessly, Kunikida raised his gun and fired once.

The atrium shook. Glass shattered and plumes of white powder filled the air, blanketing the statues in the lobby like snow. My ears rang; something was dripping out of them. The force of the blast must have knocked out my eardrums and I could feel myself flying backwards through the air. Without warning, I was propelled through the doors of the gallery entrance and I was awarded one glorious view of the outside, of the building bathed in a twilight glow, the very streets illuminated in flashing red and blue lights. I saw uniformed police officers swarming out of their vehicles, towards me, towards the wrecked building behind me...

And then I hit the sidewalk with a horrible crunch.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was a woman in black and white racing towards me where I fell, a golden butterfly glinting brightly in her hair.

[identityexcavationstation]

The High Fidelity Remake is Good and my Identity is Irreversibly Linked to Music Consumption

Hi! So, I’m kinda insane about playlists.

This year I’ve made a lot of them. They’ve been short and snappy on index cards, scanned and pasted in a book and uploaded to the internet. (I’ve really fallen in love with index card playlists and they’re my thing now and I think everyone should do them always and forever.) They were easy to churn out as a retrospective exercise because the music I listened to as a teenager really defined my high school experience. Also, I have most of my favorite songs from that period in a very dramatic playlist I started in 2014 so it was really a game of copy-and-paste. 

Making these smol boys in batches has been a really peculiar experience because for years now, I’ve only made one playlist at a time. In my second semester of college, I’d officially burned myself out listening to only CHVRCHES for three months and began venturing elsewhere. (Don’t get me wrong, CHVRCHES absolutely bangs, but you can only listen to “Never Ending Circles” so many times before getting seasick.) All of the random songs I was listening to made me feel kinda hazy and purple, like I’d done all of this before. So I made a playlist full of them and called it “Deja Vu.”

I added to it all semester, and then suddenly it was summer and I didn’t feel purple and hazy anymore⁠—everything was blue and crisp on the way to South Haven as my friend blasted “Settle Down” by Kimbra in her beat-up Honda. So I started a new playlist and named it the first word that popped into my head: “Roots.”

Using Deja Vu as a rubric, I developed some ground rules for the playlists I would go on to create. They are pretty nonsensical but also exceedingly firm because if I don’t make rules for every area of my life I feel like I’m falling into a deep and limitless void. Health! Anyway, the rules are:

The playlist’s title has to be a short noun (seven letters maximum).

This has since transformed into a noun that is also a verb.

To generate a title, I ask myself what short word I would use to describe the phase of life I’m currently in. The answer comes quickly and reflexively, and I choose the very first word I think of.

One song per artist, no repeats!

Exceptions are made for artists who are featured on a track.

There have been times when I’ve obsessively listened to a whole album or an artist’s entire discography, so I have to choose just one song that represents the very best of that album or artist.

Tracks are added chronologically, based on when I first hear them and/or start listening to them compulsively.

The playlist has to contain an amount of tracks that is divisible by five.

If a song in a playlist is deleted from Spotify, I have to find a replacement asap that is accurate to what I was listening to when that playlist was being created.

and, most importantly, 

I can’t make a new playlist until I feel I’m finished with the current one.

These playlists represent seasons of my life, cycles in which I change and evolve and stagnate and fuck up and try again. The only rule I have for beginning a new playlist is that I feel done with the current one—those songs are a little stale and don’t represent me anymore. These “seasons” don’t have any set length, and I can never predict when I’ll feel like a new being who needs new songs to define her. So far, my life has looked like this:

Deja Vu - 176 days (12.03.16 - 05.28.17) Most common lyrics: now, love, time, need, take

snow that covers ivy that covers bricks, towers made from dining hall dishes, smiling at the bus stop without knowing, sheet masks in the dorm bathroom at 2am, pink string lights and pink crocheted blankets and pink shag carpeting, cheap beer behind tarps and walking everyone home

Roots - 111 days (05.28.17 - 09.16.17)  Most common lyrics: love, one, give, wanna, know

t-shirt tan lines, mozzarella and tomato and basil and singed spaghetti, sunset walks around abandoned high schools, green leaves outlined in watercolor, the smell of mildew and old paper in banker’s boxes, sweat-soaked french braids, the knife twist of eye contact, tarot readings under lamplight

Walls - 110 days (09.16.17 - 01.04.18)   Most common lyrics: wanna, know, baby, take, feel

crying in the gender-neutral restroom, pretty boys holding guitars or rolling rock, photos in the forest, blue carpeting and lofted bedframes, pitch-black bonfires, sitting in the dining hall to just watch the people pass, snow on eyelashes in large wet clumps, laughing at lies

Bite - 78 days (01.04.18 - 03.23.18)    Most common lyrics: know, love, stay, come, need

impatience at the airport, texting on the laundry room floor, nervous night drives, five grilled cheese sandwiches, acne like freckles, ceiling photos taken in secret, watercolor lines and paper houses, broken glass on the sidewalk, ink-stained forearms, notebook paper comics, writing small on basement walls

Windows - 131 days (03.23.18 - 08.01.18)   Most common lyrics: love, now, know, baby, fall

books piled up by the bed, rum and coke and orange juice and vodka and cheap white wine, rainy day night walks, streetlights turning the leaves orange, echoes from the party upstairs, solo trips to the grocery store, always leaving the blinds open, aperol and chai lattes and smørrebrød, never coming home

Grip - 136 days (08.01.18 - 12.15.18)    Most common lyrics: know, boy, lost, girl, night

read receipts, the creaking of an empty house, sand and bricks and traffic cones, sitting on the curb and shaking, applause at dinner, bubble tea, bike rides in torn jeans, mr brightside blasting at 10am, doodles during lectures, embroidery at the kitchen table, blue bus panic attacks, half an apple for lunch

Wait - 117 days (12.15.18 - 04.11.19)  Most common lyrics: heart, want, one, back, know

crying in the lobby, measuring oats by the quarter cup, drunken voice memos, shoes on power lines, another bowl of granola, reading all the lyrics, photos taken with the flash on, sleeping on strange couches, shoeboxes full of photographs, wire catching the sunlight, fifteen minutes of windchill

Wave - 108 days (04.11.19 - 07.28.19)  Most common lyrics: wanna, know, now, love, come

dancing on the porch, reading on the roof, tipsy trips to the corner store, silent heavy parlor air, chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, barred windows and string lights and exit signs, highlighting the important parts, nails tapping on wooden tables, wet wind before the storm, biking straight into the smoke

Home - 178 days (07.28.19 - 01.22.20)   Most common lyrics: down, know, now, wanna, think

steep downhill walks, fingertips covered in graphite and lead, blank faces on green walls, forest walkways, hands gripping thighs too tightly, light leaks in darkrooms, the handwriting of strangers, chains trapped between teeth, white words left unread, twirling at the tennis court, yellow becoming blue

Hand - 63 days (01.22.20 - 03.25.20)   Most common lyrics: know, time, love, die, back

masking tape messages, laughing four shots in, BiC .07mm HB mechanical pencils slipped into coat cuffs, cheeks blushed with red ink, green floodlights and kissed knuckles, windows fogged from the inside, falling asleep with earbuds in, finger guns and everything in boxes, wedging open locked doors

_______________________________________________________________________

It’s interesting to look back at these playlists altogether, see them as self-contained units, little stories I tell about myself, about the people I used to be. Adding a song to one of these playlists was like making a vow, entering a relationship with a collection of sounds. It’s like I was saying “this song is now a part of me.” I constructed this little world for myself in the space between my ears, and it, in turn, created me.

I really mean it when I say that the first word that floats to the front of my mind becomes the title of whatever playlist I’m making. I never question what the word means, and its meaning always ends up describing that season of my life. 

“Roots” became a period of reconnecting with essential pieces of myself I thought I had abandoned. 

During “Grip,” I was holding on so tightly to things that had left me ages ago, and I think I knew that, even if I was unable to admit it to myself. 

“Wait” revealed itself in two ways: it was a time in which 1.) I felt stagnant and restless, unable to be patient, and 2.) I was forced to grasp with a physical and emotional weight that had been bearing down on me. 

The mind is a magical thing—it processes what we refuse to recognize. 

Speaking of which, these playlist covers have been driving me up the wall for ages. They’re like nails on a freaking chalkboard for my synesthesia. Is “Bite” a heavily blue playlist? Sure. But is “Home” purple? Is “Grip” pink??? I think the fuck not! 

(I could do a whole goddamn blog post on synesthesia, and I might.)

Now that I know how to switch out playlist cover art (can you believe it’s taken me this long to figure out how to do that?), I have decided to issue myself a challenge/project/way to procrastinate actual work I have to do. 

I’d like to make a piece of cover art for all of the above playlists. And because I am, to reiterate, insane, I’m setting up some Rules For Creation:

All works must be the same size, on the same type of paper using similar materials (tbd but probably graphite, colored pencil, watercolor, fineliners, and/or collage).

The preliminary sketch for each cover must be created while listening to the playlist.

Each piece can (must?) incorporate the five most common lyrics as listed above because goddammit I did not spend four hours compiling lyrics in a web-based word cloud generator for nothing.

If I’m not having fun, I won’t make myself do it because this is literally just for laffs. 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to creating some fun weird art! I know nobody is gonna read this and nobody is gonna comment but if, by some miracle, you feel like it, comment a playlist you’ve made that you’re really proud of! Or comment if you have some weird playlist rules! Or cyberbully me! Anything’s fair game. 

TL;DR playlists are fun and I’m a maniac :)

[zdlski]

There are some days I break my rules.

Last night I got barely any sleep as my body ricocheted around all the different things it could possibly do. Feeling feverish then freezing then clammy then parched then sleepy then wired then starving then nauseous. I kind of curled up and rode it out. Today I feel translucent somehow. Like all the sensations I can perceive have been pressed out of my body, and only an opacity of 20% remains.

Despite getting little sleep, I still rested for 10 hours and woke up refreshed(?)(I don’t ask questions anymore) I made some major progress in planning a big, stressful upcoming life change and the relief of having some kind of PLAN, a rough sketch with different anchor points and rest time and equipment shopping lists and questions answered soothes my soul. Everything is a chaotic mess but dammit, I’m ready to get through it like one of those ninja warrior athletes.

There’s sometimes when my mental health absolutely trashes my physical health, and yesterday was definitely a good example of that. Anxiety is a BEAST and stress is a monster. I’m grateful and a little sad that I can identify roughly how much of my flares are the physical aspects of having wayyyyy too much adrenaline flooding my already overwhelmed autonomic system. Was it a panic attack? Nope. Im just approaching two enormous trauma-versaries and that means I’m on edge. The add a big transition. It has a physical toll.

So today I broke my own rule about exercise. I got my bike out and hopped on and had a goal of a BIG ride (for me thats 6-10 mi round trip. Slow. With breaks. And water. Lots.), with multiple bail out points and alternate routes. oh god it felt so good to move. I think I’ll end up doing 4 total, which is the most I’ve done since March.

There’s sometimes trade offs I have to make between my physical and mental health symptoms. My fight or flight chemicals are CRANKED and rather than spend another afternoon physically ill from the adrenaline and another night of inadequate sleep, I risked a relapse to burn it off with some controlled “flight.” I do feel better now.

Maybe it’s more of bending the rule than breaking it. I didn’t push too hard, but I did push. my heart rate was above where I like it to be and it’s really hot today. I definitely didn’t eat enough today for this level of exertion. Whatever. I can figure it out. I can rely on myself and how I feel to guide my actions. My body, my dearest, we can do this.

Right now there is shade and a breeze and a blue sky and a rose garden and a dream deferred that’s about to come true and I can’t stop smiling and crying.

I can’t stop feeling everything all at once. ❤️