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sweeethinny · 3 years

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Decisions

@raypotter asked me for a story where Harry got hurt and Ginny and the kids were relieved that he was alive.

It got very sentimental, a lot more than I expected, it has some descriptions of blood, so be warned

AO3 or bellow the cut :)

There was a lot of blood. On his hands, on his face, on his neck, near his ear.

Ginny took a deep breath when she saw it, as the healer ran to the closet looking for something she didn't know what it was, while another seemed to do something to keep Harry breathing.

She wanted to vomit.

It was a normal day like any other, the kids sent their letters, James was fine and had done well on the Transfiguration exam, Albus was recovering from a knee injury caused by some animal in Hagrid's class, and Lily was glad that she was going to start taking Divination classes. It was a normal day.

Teddy stopped by Ginny's office for them to talk, as they did almost every week, and he told her he was planning to travel to Spain to study about some rare animal that had appeared there, and Ginny made him leave only after her promotion party, because she wanted him there.

Harry had gone out on a field mission last night in order to pick up Jonas, who had been injured, and Ginny was having lunch with Luna at a muggle mall they liked.

It was a normal day, until Ginny received an owl with an urgent call to St. Mungo's.

First she thought of the children, Teddy could have been poisoned by some animal, or one of the children could have been seriously injured at Hogwarts and it had been preferable to send them to St. Mungo's. Then, she thought of her parents, Molly had been complaining of a pain in her hip, and Arthur didn't look so good on the last visit, did he? Or it could be her brothers.

Ginny didn't expect to see Harry there. It had been so long since he'd last needed to visit the hospital, maybe since James was born, which was when he'd been twice as careful, always afraid something bad would happen and he'd die. And after he had become Chief Auror, Harry had gone on to do far fewer field missions, so hospital visits were rare.

Her heart sped up, that dread that came whenever she saw someone in her family hurt, a gift the war had given her.

The healer opened the door for her when he saw her standing there, a gentle smile on her face. "He'll be fine, it's a deep bruise, but we've got everything under control."

Control? Ginny didn't think that could exist when there was that much blood coming out of a person.

"Is he breathing?" Ginny muttered, terrified.

'Yes, with a little difficulty, but it's just because of the pain, we'll stabilize him.' She smiled at her. “I'll ask you to wait outside until we've got everything settled.” The woman didn't wait for an answer, closing the door and running to do as some other healer asked.

What was she supposed to do? Should she call the kids? Should she call her mother? She couldn't stand there alone, because if something happened… No, nothing would, Ginny thought, Harry will be fine, he'll get out of this one, it's probably more dirt than actually hurt.

They will laugh about it later.

[...]

"Ginny!" Teddy called, startled, barely seeming to blink when he found her in the waiting room. He didn't look like that smiling boy from earlier now, his brown eyes glaring at her as if he expected to hear the worst news at any moment, his shoulders stiff. ‘Where is he? He is fine?'

'I'm waiting, the healers said they need another half an hour, apparently the spell was stronger than they thought, and-' Her eyes filled with tears, her hands trembling desperately again, the image of a bloodied Harry kept flashing in her mind, along with his being buried. 'The kids are coming, I know he'll be fine, but…'

"I know, I know, you did it right." Teddy hugged her, but as much as he looked like he wanted to keep her calm, he looked even more nervous. ‘Do you already know what hit him?

'They don't want to say until they're sure, but one of the Aurors who was with him said it's dark magic.' Ginny sniffled, running her hands through her hair as if to keep from starting to cry again, her heart pounding desperately in her chest. . 'I said he's starting to get too old to take that risk, Teddy, I said before he can save the world he needs to be a father, be a husband, but he doesn't listen!' .

'Nothing will happen to him, Gin, nothing, he'll be fine, you'll see, he hasn't even started to get into trouble with Albus yet!' Teddy pulled his own hair, pacing the empty room they had arranged for her to wait.

It was bad enough in that situation without a bunch of onlookers on top.

"I mean, he hasn't even seen me marry yet, he—" Teddy clapped a hand over his mouth, trembling as if just the thought of it destroyed him. It destroyed Ginny too. ‘Will the kids be long?‘

'Probably not, I spoke to McGonagall and informed her how serious the situation was and that I wanted the kids here with me, and she told me she would send them as soon as possible… Lily was doing some work with Hagrid, I don't know, but they shouldn't be long.” Ginny took a deep breath, trying to focus on the situation now and not the memories of war, the dead bodies, the destruction.

They weren't in a war anymore, everything would be fine.

‘Have you warned anyone else?

'No, I didn't want to make a big fuss, if not, we wouldn't have peace in the next few hours of so many journalists who would come here to find out what happened to Harry, and I'm not exposing him like that.'

"Not at all." Teddy nodded, looking out the window that faced a square, seeming to calm down after watching the people walking around below. It had soothed her, at least. "He told me he was thinking about retiring."

"He told me too." Ginny sat back in that uncomfortable chair, looking at the door and wanting someone to come over and say it was okay. 'He's getting tired, he's not 20 anymore, he's already 40… I mean, he's still in shape, Harry probably still lifts more weight than me, but the stress with the younger Aurors isn't paying off . They probably stress him out more than the kids themselves.'

"These days I went to lunch with him, and it was like he was running a daycare center." Teddy chuckled, taking a seat next to Ginny, and she was glad he was there with her. "And he gets along well with kids, but I don't think it can be easy to manage more than 20 of them."

‘And he’s having problems with some laws, and with all the bureaucracy, and I think that this is making him completely unhappy. A few days ago I thought he was going to have a heart attack after having to solve the same problem a third time.” She sighed.

Before Teddy could say anything, the fireplace glowed and three loud, fluttering voices filled the room, one Lily jumped out first, looking desperate, her glasses askew on her face and her jacket smeared with dust, running towards Ginny. 'Mum! What happened? Where is Daddy?'

Albus, who didn't look at all like that calm boy he always did, pushed James off the fireplace and jumped too, barely giving Ginny time to think. He had rosy cheeks, green eyes staring at her and Teddy, as if he was trying to read the expressions on their faces to hear the news. 'Is he going to die?'

"Don't be an idiot!" James interjected, stepping closer and keeping his eyes steady on Ginny, as if he wanted to make sure his dad would be okay. If she knew her son well, James was the one who was holding back the most to keep from showing that he was scared. 'He is fine?'

"He's fine, and he'll be fine," Ginny assured, hugging Lily sideways, because she didn't seem to want to leave her side. ‘I called you because…’ Because if he dies and you're not here I'll never forgive myself. Because Harry will enjoy seeing his kids one last time if he can't get the strength to survive. Because I need you here to keep me strong and not think about all those years of war, and not think about all those dead bodies. On Fred's dead body… 'Because it's the best thing to do, and your father will be very happy to see you when he wakes up. ‘

"Have you two been here long?" Albus asked, pulling out one of the chairs to sit next to Teddy, while James continued to stand by the window. Ginny didn't miss that Albus was shaking his leg nonstop, not even seeming to notice.

"No, I just arrived," Teddy assured him.

"I've been here for over an hour." Her lips trembled. "Jamie, sit down, there's no need to stand up."

"I don't want to." He tousled his hair. ‘How was he injured?

"I don't know, they didn't want to tell me." Ginny omitted, because she didn't think she should give that kind of detail to her kids. She continued to stare at him, watching as her son turned quickly to the window, as if he wanted to avoid being seen.

"Why don't you go buy us something to eat with me, Jamie?" Teddy stood up, looking like he noticed too. 'Are you hungry?'

"I've already eaten," Albus said, jumping into the chair beside his mother as the other stood up, letting Ginny hug him too.

"I want anything," she said, just because she knew the last meal had been breakfast, and she couldn't survive on just that in her stomach, especially if she wanted to support her kids. "Lils?" She looked at the girl still hugging her, sitting in the chair with her eyes downcast, her head resting on her mother.

"No thanks," Lily muttered, her voice lower than normal. Ginny had to swallow the cry that threatened to break her.

"Come on, mate?" Teddy pulled James close, his arm going over his shoulders like the big brother he was. "I hear there's a great cafeteria in here." The two of them left the room, James still looked sheepish and crestfallen, but Ginny blindly trusted Teddy to take care of him so she turned back to Lily.

"He'll be fine, it's just part of the job," she assured her, kissing her head.

"Have you seen him?" Albus asked, his voice shaking like his leg, which seemed to have accelerated now.

"I saw him when I arrived, the healers were cleaning him up and making sure everything was done as good as possible." Ginny chose the best words. She was grateful that Albus didn't ask her to detail how he was

But none of them asked, they kept quiet holding her, every time looking at the door when footsteps were heard, and she wondered how much longer they would wait to see Harry, to hear from him. When James arrived with Teddy, they brought chocolates, five salads, and some fried things that she assumed were fish and potatoes. They had taken longer than she thought it required, but James had red eyes and Teddy had wet spots on his dark blue shirt.

They started to eat, and even Albus, who had said he wasn't hungry, accepted the salad Teddy handed him, and some of James' fries. No one said anything else, the noise of the city outside and the birds being the only thing that rang in Ginny's ears, along with her heightened attention to any conversation and noise of people in the hallway.

She thought of the times she had told Harry that saving the world was no more important than being a father to his children, that surely those four would prefer him alive, than being a dead hero. Harry would never cease to be their hero, no matter what he did or didn't do, Ginny knew that.

They hadn't even been grandparents yet, Harry couldn't die.

And he wouldn't, Ginny scolded herself for thinking that. Harry would be fine, and they would grow old together, enjoying life, remembering what idiots they were as teenagers, watching their kids grow up and leave their house… Harry would be fine.

He had already gone through so much, so much tragedy, it would not be now that the trajectory would end.

"Do you guys remember when Harry said he could build that tree house all by himself?" Teddy recalled, a smile on his face, seeming to be carried away by the memory. 'He said he could do it and he didn't need help, but the hammer fell on his foot and he couldn't walk properly for almost a week.'

"Oh, and when did he say he was going to make pizza and the first one took almost an hour because he switched the time and temperature button?" Albus chuckled, shaking his head and filling his mouth with potato chips. "He looked so frustrated, and then the next one he burned because he set the temperature too high."

"Or when we convinced him to take Sir to the beach with us, and when we got there Sir threw up in the car seat," Teddy said.

"And he even pissed on the couch!" Lily said, looking more excited now that the memory of that vacation hit her. "He surfed with us that time."

"Wow, daddy surfing was the most shameful thing," James said, looking down at the salad in his lap and then shaking his head, a smirk on his face. "Will he want to surf with us again this year?" He looked at Ginny, as if he expected her to falter in her answer and admit that something bad could happen.

She smiled, an image of Harry trying to balance on the surfboard popping into her mind. ‘I'm sure he will. We can try to convince you to rappel with us, Al.'

'Oh yeah! I think he'll like the feeling of going down beside that waterfall.” Albus ran a hand through his hair, as if he too was trying to imagine his father tied to a rope as he descended a cliff. 'Can we go there on this vacation?'

"But Dad promised we were going to Egypt!" Lily cried, taking the chocolate from Teddy's hands and dividing it so everyone could get a piece.

"It's an amazing trip, we really should take it." Ginny remembered the one she'd taken years ago, not being able to not remember how happy Fred was with the trip, and how happy he'd been when they saw the pyramids. A ball of tears formed in her throat. ‘I'm sure there's some rappelling there, Al.’

"Dad told me he really wanted to visit Iceland one day and see an Aurora Borealis." James shrugged, stirring his salad uninterestedly. ‘They are rare and hard to find. He said that the times he was around, he never saw anything.’

"I think it would be a great experience too, but maybe Christmas is more attractive than summer there." Teddy ruffled James' hair, as if to cheer him up. ‘We should go to Amsterdam, because I've been asking for it for years now, and we never do. When Harry leaves here I will convince him that our next trip will be there.' He spoke, optimistic as ever, and suddenly the children seemed to remember where they were and why, and Ginny noticed when Albus' shoulders slumped a little, or when Lily cleared her throat and went back to looking at her chocolate.

"He said he's going to teach me how to cast a Patronus," Albus said, looking at Ginny. She smiled.

"I'm sure you can do it, Al." She ran a hand through his hair, thinking of all the promises Harry had made to the kids.

Traveling, skiing, horseback riding, learning spells, building things, going to shows… The list was huge, and it never stopped growing, as Harry was such a huge supporter of all the ideas the kids had.

Teddy wants to learn to play guitar? Harry will put him in a class, even if it takes their peace away. James wants to learn to ride a horse? Okay, he'd find a way to make that happen, no matter how much James fell in first class and twisted his fist. Albus wants a treehouse? Harry will build it, even if he doesn't know how. Lily wants to go to a muggle pop band concert but she can't go alone? Harry will take them and still arrange for them to stay very close to the stage, even if it means six hours in a queue, with several other hysterical teenagers in colorful shirts and posters declaring their love for one of the girls in the band.

Harry spoiled them sometimes, Ginny knew that, but it wasn't ruining them. They became creative people, they had a lot of skills to explore, as well as a lot of fun memories of those moments. They trusted them, in her and Harry's opinion, they talked to them about everything, or at least almost everything, and she knew this was much more than she, and obviously Harry, had.

‘Do you remember Teddy, when we went to Disney?' Ginny asked because she didn't want them to be sad, she wanted them to remember the good times and want them to live more of it, she wanted them to understand that the good times weren't over.

Harry would be fine. Then they would go to Amsterdam, ride horses, learn to ski, go looking for the Aurora, and even to Egypt. They still had many years to fill with activities.

‘It was fun, I remember! You let me eat at McDonald's.' He laughed. ‘We have to go there again. Do you remember Lils when we went with you? Gin-Gin can't go to some attractions because you were too scared and you were too small.”

"I think I'm tall enough now!" She smoothed her glasses back on her face, her chin lifting as if she challenged Teddy to deny it.

"Absolutely." He nodded, not thinking twice.

"But she's still a crybaby," Albus snapped, just to tease his sister, as usual. "She almost cried when-"

"I didn't cry!" Lily cut him off, her cheeks as red as her hair. ‘And I'm not scared. Mom!'

"Al, enough," Ginny warned, even though she was smiling. She was missing a bit of all this mess, their house was pretty quiet with just her and Harry there. "Should we-" She was interrupted by a healer who opened the door to the room, he had a gentle smile on his face but he looked tired. Ginny braced herself to hear the news, good or not.

‘He's fine, we took care of his injuries and he's already awake. He's asking to see his family, I informed him you were here.' The man had barely finished speaking when Albus jumped out of his chair and started to leave the room, as did James and Lily, looking eager to see Harry. ‘Sorry for the delay, it was a big injury.’

"It's okay," Ginny and Teddy stood, and she smiled at the man. 'Leaving my husband alive, you could take your time.' She walked out of the room, already seeing the children opening a door almost at the end of the hall, and the three voices saying 'Dad!' much higher than would be advisable in a hospital.

When she entered the room, the three of them were sitting on the bed with Harry, who looked tired but happy to see them there. His head was bandaged, as was a shoulder and ribs on his right side, his left eye was a little swollen, but she thought it was just because he had injured his head.

"I'm glad to see you here." His voice was low, husky, and Ginny thought he should be resting instead of straining like that, but she knew Harry wouldn't rest until he saw his family. "Daddy is fine, just the occasional wound."

"You scared the shit out of us!" Teddy walked over, sitting next to James, who was wide-eyed and looking a little scared. Lily nodded, sitting next to his knee.

"When Professor Johann called me, I thought I was in trouble," Albus said, moving his hands anxiously as he spoke. ‘I would prefer it to be that, I must say.

"Don't ever do that Mr Potter, my heart isn't so young anymore." Ginny sat down in the chair beside his bed, swallowing the sob of relief that wanted to break her chest when Harry looked at her and smiled. She ran a hand over his face, as if she just wanted to get reassurance that he was okay.

"I guess I'm not that young anymore either." He sighed. "Won't you talk to me, James?" Didn't you miss your old man?” Harry looked at the boy, sitting at the far end of the bed, who seemed to be making as much effort as Ginny not to cry.

'You scared me. I was the first one called, and… It was horrible, don't ever do that again.” James shook his head vehemently, as if he wanted to put some image out of his mind. 'If you died, I would never forgive you.' Ginny didn't think that was the kindest way to say he was afraid of losing his father, but it seemed to hit Harry in the right way, who smiled sadly and nodded slightly, before sighing.

[...]

"I think it's time to retire," he said, after the kids had left to sleep in the Burrow, Ginny stayed behind to spend the night with Harry.

"I think so too." She squeezed his hand, letting the tears finally flow. ‘What would these children do without their father? What was I going to do without you? I'm too young to be a widow.” Ginny tried to make a joke, but it only made her cry harder. ‘You already saved the world once, now enough.’

"Yeah, I realized that when I felt Noel carry me and start screaming for help." Harry looked sad too, wiping Ginny's tears away. ‘I still don't know what I'm going to do, where to go, but… I can't take it anymore Gin, I'm getting tired, they're stressing me out, it's not as cool as it was when I was 19 and I had nothing to lose. Now I do, and now I understand why Robards left too. Every time I go out into the field, I think about you guys, and when I'm at the office, I think about how tired I am… I don't know what to be but a savior, though.”

“You can start making pottery.” She laughed, making him laugh too. "You'll find something to do, I'm sure you have other skills besides being a hero," Ginny said, kissing him carefully, wanting him to understand that she was there with him, and that she was glad he was there. "We'll find something together, I promise."

#hinny #harry x ginny #next gen harry potter #harry and ginny #teddy lupin #james sirius potter #albus severus potter #lily luna potter #angst with comfort

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deathvalleyusa · 3 years

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day’s eye

Summary: In the eyes of a child named Daisy, Alfie Solomons is a thing of adventure books and mythical tales. As she grows he seems to morph to even more mythical proportions. That is, until Margate shows Daisy just how mortal and human Alfie is. ONE SHOT.

Characters: Alfie Solomons, Child OFC, OFC

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Language, S5 spoilers

A/N: Wrote this a while ago but only recently picked it up again. I had plans to write a fic about Nora (Daisy’s mom) and Alfie but this ended up happening instead lol. x-posted from AO3.

When one grows up without a father, people assume a terrible fate befell him. The War. An accident. Perhaps he had found himself in trouble with one of the many gangs that ran the streets of every city on British soil. His absence could be explained away.

When one grows up without a mother, death is often called upon as the excuse as well. Childbirth. Influenza. Beatings no one saved her from.

But in certain cases, the father is simply gone and the mother still lives and breathes. Daisy was one such case.

Her mother, a lovely woman named Nora, had dreams. Visions of a house, a garden, and a job to keep her steady. Daisy was a part of the vision, but not a part of the journey thus far. So at her grandparents cottage she stayed. Six years old, knowing her mum was somewhere else, trying her hardest.

The day Nora came for Daisy was one of excitement. Tears. Good-byes from her Papa and Gran, hugs that melted into her skin. A buzzing ecstatic feeling as they boarded the train, heading to a place called London.

"It's all new there for us, Daisy," Nora had said. Pretty in her makeup and burgundy cloche hat. "A life for us, eh? Me and my girl?"

Daisy was not expecting to meet a man that week.

At six, she'd met her fair share of men from her grandparents' village. Her mum had never brought around anyone other than her uncle Harry. So this man was something new entirely.

Daisy had thought he maybe had been a bear before he was a man. Towering and scruffily bearded, he was an odd one.

"This is little Daisy, then?" He had asked. Voice low, accent unlike the Liverpool one she had lived with all her life. He spoke with a curiosity and a kindness, deep blue eyes twinkling.

"That's her," Nora answered, beaming. "Daisy, this is my lovely friend Alfie."

He offered a hand. Daisy stared, then gave a glance to her mum. A supportive nod, and her tiny hand met his.

It was not unlike her grandfather's, or Uncle Harry's. Worn and slightly rough on the pads, work showed it's time through calluses and small light scars. It was warm though, gentle as he shook hers before enveloping it in another large hand. Daisy couldn't help but admire his rings and the small crown tattooed into his skin.

Like a man from the pictures, she thought to herself, giving a pleased smile. Like a pirate. Or a king.

One thing Daisy learned, as she spent more time with her mother and Alfie, was how much he spoke and how rapt her mother's attention was to his words. He spun stories, rambled about the folk about town. Posed hypotheticals at Nora who would answer after a long pause. Alfie would always include Daisy, posing the same questions or asking about life in a quiet village.

Years passed. Daisy, in her infinite child wisdom, came to understand some of the nature of Alfie besides his sweetness. That he was just as she had suspected, a pirate and a king. He terrified others, kept the men in the bakery in reverence of him.

She came to understand her mother as well. A woman with muted glamor, someone with quiet dreams that slowly seemed to materialize. She was not the princesses or damsels in the films or books Daisy consumed. No, she was something of a beautiful warrior.

Daisy thought of herself as an adventurer. No one feared a child of her age, and she had no one who needed her protection quite yet. Instead, she was a wily spirit, content with exploration during the day and a cozy home with her mother, and quite often Alfie, at night.

It came as no surprise at the age of nine when Alfie sat her down and explained he had asked her mother to marry him. Truly, it felt like a long put off event, and Daisy had just wanted it over and done with.

Alfie's laugh filled the sitting room when she told him.

"It's not always that simple, Daisy Bell," he said. "But I'm pleased, your mum expected you to take the news hard. Not sure why, but you are full of surprises, yeah?"

And so, on one afternoon that had gifted pockets of sun, Daisy watched as Alfie made her mother his pirate queen. Daisy, in turn, became a pirate as well. And with her new place as the daughter of a pirate and a king came new lodgings.

Not a ship, but a house with many rooms. A place for her toys and baubles, and a new wardrobe to hang the pretty things her mother liked to dress her in. Daisy quite liked to sneak into Alfie's study, staring at the little collections that lined shelves. On the occasions she snuck in while he sat at his desk, he'd call her over with a wave of his big hand. A sweet would appear, followed by a kiss to the head.

"Don't tell your mum," he'd whisper in gruff tones, "or she'll 'ave both of our heads for spoiling your dinner."

It was those moments she liked best, when the two of them would hold a small secret. Daisy knew Alfie and her mother had their own secrets, whispered under their breaths as if Daisy would pay it no mind. Talk of bread, of a man named Shelby. Nothing that ever reached her in her fortress.

And in that fortress protected by men led by Alfie, who as Daisy neared eleven, seemed more pirate than king, she thrived. Played with the other children, took pockets of Yiddish they taught her home to practice with her mother. Spent hours feeding treats to Cyril behind her parents’ backs. Tormented Alfie's men with silly games and questions they usually had no answer to. Ollie was her favorite. He had taught her to play cribbage in the moments where his time wasn't completely occupied with Alfie's commands.

There were long stretches where Alfie did not return home, only giving a phone call to calm Nora's nerves. Her mother would get whispered conversations; Daisy was given sweet words and a gentle good night or morning. Daisy contented herself with this, until one day Alfie did not return.

************

"He's gone to Margate," Nora explained, rubbing at her tired eyes. They seemed to grow more tired with each passing year. "I haven't heard from him yet, Daisy. Perhaps tomorrow we'll get a ring."

The call did not come. Daisy thought of terrible fates that befell kings and pirates. How easily it could happen to a man whose business kept him in hushed conversations. How her pa, dear Alfie, could be struck down in crossfire with the polished guns he kept locked in his study.

When a letter came, and with it a terrible wail from the beautiful mouth of her mother, Daisy knew she was right. Wished it not to be so; that there had been a terrible mistake and the news written was wrong. But sneaking a look at the letter when her mother had finally let it out of her grasp, Daisy found her worst thoughts had not been bad enough.

Alfie's wonderful handwriting lay before her. Asking forgiveness of Nora, then of her. A betrayal to the Shelby man detailed Alfie's demise. A desire to end a painful, cancerous existence that he had never spoke of to Daisy.

Another letter detailed his condition. Alive, but for how long would be up to him. Where he could be found in the winding streets of Margate.

With no noise, she returned the letter to it's envelope. Daisy took care to walk quietly, letting herself hang at the entry of her mother's room. For the first time in many years, she crawled beside her in the vast bed, letting a desperate hug melt into her skin.

On the eve of her twelfth birthday, the house with many rooms lay barren. Everything had been packed and sent to Margate, which Nora explained would become their new home. Daisy had seen her mother hold back tears as they locked the doors for a final time. Her house and her garden that had materialized out of her dreams since Daisy was very small was no more.

Camden Town had too much risk lying to the north to bring Alfie back even in secret. He was no longer a king, but a ghost of one. They were to follow the ghost, live in a haunted home by the sea.

In that haunted home, Daisy helped place Alfie's collections and her baubles on shelves. She ignored the moans from the guest room, which had become a makeshift hospital ward. Instead she practiced her piano and read on the balcony to avoid the noise. Wished that Cyril, wherever he had gone off to, was by her side to help her ward off the ghost that lived here.

Alfie haunted her, night and day. He haunted her mother more, once he became more coherent and spoke his rambling nonsense to her. More than once she had heard Nora's voice raised behind the oak door, and no reply from Alfie. Her mother was not an angry woman, but Margate in those early months had sparked like a flint and filled Nora’s glamorous face with a rage-fueled fire.

As time passed, Daisy returned to her schooling. New friends were found, and so was a sense of normal. Her mother’s anger had become smoldering coals, and she started to leave the house. Sometimes for pleasure, other times for business still left from Camden Town. Daisy wondered often if Alfie, who remained behind the closed door, envied their comings and goings. She wondered more if he missed her, months separating the moment she had seen him in a gauze mask till now.

***********

On an unremarkable Sunday afternoon, her mother had gone out for some air. Daisy had been left to her own devices, plunking out a song on the piano in the sitting room. A voice, one she hadn't heard in more than a gruff whisper in weeks, sang out:

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do!”

He was awake. Calling to her, it seemed, with a silly song he'd sing to tease since she was small.

"I'm 'alf crazy, all the love for you!”

Daisy rose from the piano bench, wood upon wood scraping quietly before feet plodded to the guest room she avoided. Now, though, the call from within was irresistible.

The door groaned silent as she peeked in, black curls slipping around her shoulders. There in bed lay the man she called father. A man in a pitiful state, but lucid.

"Daisy Bell, sweetie." he managed to crack a smile. "I'll cover up this nasty face of mine if you like, yeah, I just need to see that cherub one of yours."

She stepped in, trod closer.

"It's all right," Daisy remitted. "Will it always look like that?"

Alfie took consideration. "It won't always be as red, yeah, but it'll still look like a gnarled fucking tree. Maybe it'll smooth one day, but it's stuck, love."

"Then don't cover it," she said quietly. "If it's forever, I need to get used to it."

"Wise words from the mouth of babes."

"I'm nearly thirteen." A slight bristle shook through her voice, reminding herself of her mother. "I'm no baby."

"Is that right?" Alfie shut his eyes, heaving a grumbly sigh. A few beats passed, and he opened his good eye. Deep blue, like the ocean at night. Daisy sometimes sat on the balcony of their townhome and watched the waves roll in and out. Alfie's eye held no waves, just stillness.

"Well, if you're such a grown woman now, with wisdom and maturity beyond all our years, right, you'll fetch your dad a thimble of whatever Mum's got in that fancy bar cart she had to have, yeah? A secret between us grown ones, so I can partake of the earthly pleasures again."

Daisy's face hardened. "Mum says you can't."

"A biscuit then. With a strong cuppa." Noting her doubtful looks, he gestured to his face. "The tea to soften the biscuit so this old man can chew softly."

Daisy gave him a doubtful look, but obliged. Wondered how many times he'd asked for small tokens from the nurse or her mother and was promptly shut down. She returned, biscuits and tea in hand.

"You have my undying gratitude, Daisy Bell," he said.

He seemed quite happy, but Daisy couldn't tell if the biscuits or her presence was more the cause. As he dipped a corner of the biscuit into his tea, she thought how silly it was for a ghost to enjoy afternoon tea. She couldn't help an amused smile.

"What's that you're giggling about?" Alfie asked. His own mouth drew into a devilish grin. "You do something funny to these biscuits, ey?"

"No," Daisy replied, smiling wider. "It's a silly thought is all."

"I haven't heard silly thoughts in some time, just a nurse droning on and on about health and tablets. Indulge me."

For the first time in many months, Daisy felt heard again. Hands grabbed the wooden chair next to the wardrobe, scooting close to Alfie. She even let her forearms rest on the side of his bed, close enough to feel warmth not usually becoming of a ghost.

"Well you see," she started, "when we met when I was very little, I saw your rings and tattoo and thought of the men in the books my Gran would read to me. All while we lived in London, I thought of you as a pirate king."

"Is that so?" he chuckled, taking a sip. "Reckon you were a pirate princess then, weren't you?"

"Something like that." Daisy grinned before looking away at the wall. "After Mum got the letter and we couldn't bring you home… Well, I felt like you were a ghost. Like I've been living with a ghost this whole time in Margate."

Alfie didn't respond. Daisy had known he wouldn't; the wound on the soul was still as raw as the scar on his eye.

"But just now, seeing you eat,” she continued, “I found it quite funny to see a ghost eat a biscuit and enjoy a cuppa. All ghosts should be that funny, I think."

"Do you?" Alfie heaved a great sigh, then chuckled. "Better to be a ghost with a sense of humor and an appetite for sweets than a man who's lost both, yeah?”

Daisy nodded. The more she let what he had said rattle about in her mind, the more she came to understand the thankful truth of it. Though she mourned her pirate king, Cyril, and the house with many rooms, Margate and its ghost with his biscuit and tea had their own comfort.

She once again was a child who had a father with a terrible fate that had befallen him. A dozen excuses could be made for his absence but Daisy knew this time, at least, that in secret he still existed. The little secrets they shared had grown to one of great magnitude, like ones of novels and myths.

“I’ve missed you.”

Alfie, who had finished one of his biscuits, eyed her up with that twinkle she loved so dearly in the still dark blue iris. The cup clinked against the saucer as he set it on his lap covered by a blanket. Daisy felt the familiar roughness of his hand as it grasped hers.

“So have I, Daisy.” He gave her hand a squeeze, the feeling less ghostly than she had imagined. “Someday, I promise you, I’ll be out of this terrible fuckin’ bed and you and I can do whatever pleases your sweet heart.”

“That could be a very long time,” Daisy answered. “Is it okay for me to come back in? Will Mum be upset?”

Alfie took a pause.

“I don’t think so,” he decided. “And if she does get upset, it won’t last. The rotation of faces will do me good, yeah? That nurse sometimes makes me feel more ill by her presence alone, she’s got a particularly sour smell to match her face. The sooner I’m out of this room, the better I’ll be, I think. The sea air’ll do me some good, don’t you think?”

Daisy nodded again, vigorously. If Alfie thought the sea and the wisping salt against his face would help him be less a ghost and more a man, she would believe it too.

“We can go walking together,” Daisy suggested. “In the afternoons when I come home from school. And all day on weekends. Mum said she’d buy me a swimming costume for the summer, maybe we could swim—”

Alfie interrupted with his distinctive laugh, a near giggle unexpected from such a large man. The first time Daisy had heard it she had been taken aback, only to laugh along. Hearing it now was like a balm slathered on a skinned knee.

“We’ll start with a short walk, sweetie, then think about swimming in the next distant summer when these limbs can carry this old man easier. If I try to swim now, right, I might be swept away into the sea and some fantastical creature may happen upon me and drag me to its home in the depths. You believe in mermaids, love?”

“No.” Daisy sat back in the chair. “Not anymore.”

“Pity,” Alfie answered. “I saw one once at a carnival; pretty thing with a tail blowing bubbles under the water. If anything were to drag me out to sea, I’d choose her.”

“Stay on land, then!”

Alfie looked at her, quieted by her outburst. Daisy hadn’t meant for the words to leave her mouth so loudly. But all the talk of leaving once more sent her deep into a place of fear.

“I don’t want you to leave again,” Daisy tried once more in a softer voice. “I don’t want you to even try.”

“Then I won’t,” Alfie replied simply. “I’ll ignore all those siren calls I hear from the beach and stay right here, on your orders. You’re the boss, then.”

“Mum said she’s the boss now.” She shifted in her seat, wondered how cold the tea sitting on Alfie’s lap had gone. “Her and Ollie, she says.”

“Right then, you’ll just have to be my boss, won’t you?” Alfie shut his eyes. Daisy inspected his face, riddled with red scars and the patches of scaly rashes around his scalp he had explained as an affliction called psoriasis when she questioned it. He opened his good eye, giving her a quick smile. “Keep me in line and give me my orders to follow. First order is no following mermaids, got that love, what else should I heed from you?”

Daisy had never had that kind of power before, giving orders to an adult. The men at the bakery heeded her silly requests before, yes, but Alfie had always been the one to bark orders. As a child on the cusp of thirteen, it was an immense responsibility. She racked her brain, lips pursed as she ignored Alfie’s amused face, before settling on one.

“Get well fast,” Daisy finally said. “And don’t make Mum cross again, I’ll know if you do.”

“A tall order, that last one, but I’ll do my best,” Alfie grunted, tapping her hand before saluting her. “Yes ma’am.”

#alfie solomons fanfic #alfie solomons #peaky blinder fanfic #i love soft alfie fics ok bye

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littlemisslipbalm · 4 years

Text

harry and reader have a pet, but they break up and pet finds reader’s old shirt

Anon request - harry and reader had a pet together, but broke up. The dog finds one of y/n’s forgotten shirts and brings it to Harry (full request here)

This is FLUFF but also ANGST (i guess) oh my god WHAT DID I DO! i am so sorry, but i did a bad thing with this request, the ending is...well it’s kinda happy. i love happy stories but for some reason when i got down a hole, i just keep digging it deeper - i hope i sorta gave you what you wanted tho anon

Listening: “I Will” and “And I Love Her” by the Beatles

Warnings: break up angst, mentions of dog death (im truly so sorry what is wrong with me - i promise it’s still kinda happy)

Harry and you had been broken up for about a month now. You two loved each other very much, but you had reached a breaking point. You weren’t a fan of show business and held a regular job. Harry’s constant travel, touring, and press - everything that came with his fame from his passion - became too much for you. One night, after Harry had missed a date you had made weeks prior due to an interview taking longer than expected, the two of you had it out. By the end of the entire fight, both you and Harry were crying.

The worst part of the break up besides you moving out was that you and Harry had a big old English sheep dog together. Harry loved Paul McCartney and insisted you and him adopt a dog of the same breed as Paul’s dog, Martha. You and he had named yours George to keep with the Beatles theme. When you broke up and moved out, Harry and you had a long conversation about who should keep the dog. Despite Harry’s busy schedule, he pleaded to keep George and eventually you relented, not having the heart to take George away from Harry when you were already leaving him, much to his dismay.

Harry sat at the little coffee table in his now half empty home. It was far quieter now, since you had left he didn’t bother playing music really. He loved to find new music and show it to you when you were home together, playing it by himself wasn’t as fun. He heard George padding around the house as he reminisced on how you used to rub George’s belly till you were a giggling mess at how cute he was. Harry smiled sadly at the memory. He’s brought out of his reverie when he feels a wet nose nudging his hand resting on his thigh. He looks down to see George at his side with something creamy and linen looking in his mouth.

“Whatcha got there, Bud?” Harry says, first brushing George’s hair out of his eyes and then reaching to take the piece of clothing he had gathered from the dog’s mouth. George let go easily, obviously intending to show Harry it. It was one of your t-shirts. Harry looked at George and gave him another loving pet, he missed you just as much as Harry did. You must have forgotten it when you had rushed out all those days ago. He loved this shirt of yours, a sweet simple cream top with a lemon and an orange on it. It looked gorgeous on you, and Harry was so happy to see it, the only thing that remained of you in this home you once had shared. As much as he wanted to keep it, cherish it and use it to reminisce the times when you ran around your home together in the top, he knew you would be missing it dearly. He knew the right thing was to return it to you. The best thing would be to have a mutual friend return it to you for him, but Harry didn’t care about doing the best thing. He wanted to see you.

He texted a simple, “I have something of yours, are you home?” to you. He felt strange using the word home, when he knew that your home should be with him. When you responded a quick ‘yes’ he grabbed a coat, his keys, slipped on his shoes, and put George on a leash. “Wanna go for a little ride, Georgie?” Harry asked sweetly to the dog. George only wagged his tail in response. The two headed out the door to where you now lived.

Harry and George arrived at your new apartment a little ways further into the city, closer to your job, and Harry rang the bell when he reached your door. You sighed at the sound, not ready to face Harry since you had moved out. When he had texted that he was coming over you tried to tidy yourself up. As much as you hated to admit it, you missed Harry so much and you missed the life the two of you had made together even if it was far from perfect.

You opened the door to not only Harry, but your former joint pet, George. When George saw you he jumped up and began to lick kisses onto your face. Your grimace had quickly transformed into an overjoyed grin, open with laughter and slight disgust. “Down, Georgie!” you attempted to say while the dog loved on you. When you managed him down, you bent down to his level and gave him a good face rub and kissed his nose. Then, you turned your eyes to Harry, who had watched you with a sparkle in his eye. Your grin turned to a soft, sad smile. You exchanged somber ‘Hi’s and you let him come inside, against your best judgement.

“George, here, he found your shirt somewhere, brought it to me. Thought you’d want it back…” Harry trailed off once the two of you had sat down on your couch and let George off his leash to roam the place. “Thank you…” you didn’t know what else to say, but the air around you and Harry was painfully tense. “Y/N, listen, I miss you so much and I know it’s not fair for me to say this because you had your reasons, but, would you ever give us another chance? I won’t be this busy for the rest of my life...and, and I still love you, I don’t think there’s anyone else for me out there.”

You were speechless, watching Harry look at you so earnestly, being so vulnerable despite him knowing that things might not change. His jaw was clenched, but he stared straight at you, his large hands soft and open in his lap as he faced you. You noticed how he was rather unshaved and how his shoulders were slumped in more than usual. He looked rough, probably just about how you looked right now as well. You didn’t know what to do, saying that didn’t change how you felt.

“I don’t know, H, uh Harry,” you stuttered with your use of your old nickname for him. “I don’t want you to wait forever on me and I can’t wait on you forever either. I never stopped loving you and I probably never will, but we can’t go on living these sad, lonely lives - miserable because we didn’t work out.” You looked him in the eye now, pleading with your eyes for him to understand what you meant. You wanted him to know that you loved him, you really did, but with where the two of you were in your lives - it wasn’t going to work out.

Harry nodded, somber and sad. He knew you were right, that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. He got up after telling you he understood. You walked him and George to the door, giving George one last belly rub at the door. Just as you were about to shut the door, Harry turned with some final words, “You don’t have to wait for the right timing for us, but it’s my choice if I want to wait for that time. So, I will. I’ll wait for you, Y/N, and our right time.”

Eight years later

Y/N hadn’t seen Harry in a long time, maybe a few times at mutual friend events, but you were never able to be friends with him, it was too hard. You kept your love for him close to your heart, but you had had relationships since then. None had ever compared to yours and Harry’s, no matter how many lonely nights you had during your two’s relationship, no one else ever came close to that spark, that magic you two shared. You had seen and heard from friends that Harry had dated around in the past eight years as well. Various women of high celebrity status. Everyone of them perfect in their own way, but everyone of them always disappeared from Harry’s life after awhile. No matter who they were, Harry always saw something in them that reminded him of you at first, that’s what got him interested, but then when he realized they were their own person, he had trouble staying committed, being attentive. Whatever they needed from him as a partner, he couldn’t give it to them. Maybe Harry got tired of them, maybe they had real problems, or maybe they simply weren’t you.

Then, one night, you heard a heavy knock on your door. It was not too late, but you weren’t expecting anyone so you cautiously went to check what they wanted. You couldn’t suppress the look of shock on your face when you saw Harry standing before you. He was a mess, his clothes and hair were disheveled, his cheeks were painted with tears and his entire face was red. “It’s George...darling, our boy, he-he’s dying. I took him in for his 13 year old check up and they said his heart’s not working the way it used to,” he choked out.

All you could say was ‘Oh my God’ and quickly wrapped your arms around Harry’s shaking mess of a body. The fact that he called George ‘our boy’ when you hadn’t lived with them in eight years fluttered your heart, but had to be pushed to the back of your brain right then. He usually loomed large above you, but now he practically had to rise up to meet your shoulder. “Said we should put him down soon, so that he doesn’t have to suffer anymore,” he continued to ramble into your shoulder through his sobs. His emotions spilled over into you as you guided the pair of you to your couch, far more worn in since the last time Harry had been here. Tears welled into your own eyes thinking about the five years you had spent with Harry and George, raising him from a puppy with Harry. It had been so hard to leave him with Harry and almost never see him, Harry always offered to bring George around, but it was too hard for both of you. It was best that you let George live with Harry and Harry only.

“We’ll figure this out, H,” you whispered as you rubbed Harry’s back. “Where’s George right now?” you asked staying quiet as you tried to comfort Harry as much as possible. He looked up from your shoulder, his tears leaving a wet spot on your t-shirt. The tear tracks on his cheeks only growing more prominent the longer he sat before you. “‘S in the car, couldn’t leave him home alone, but I didn’t want to bring him up in case you didn’t answer.” “Alright,” you nodded, “You wanna go get him, together, and bring him up here? You two can stay here tonight, don’t think any of us should be alone right now.” You tried to smile through the pain, it probably came off as more of a grimace, but Harry’s eyes were so blurred he probably couldn’t tell. He whispered his thanks and the two of you journey out to his car, where George sat. Despite what the doctors had told Harry, George seemed just as happy as he always was, maybe just a little more docile.

“Can’t jump anymore,” Harry mumbled as the three of you walked back into your apartment. “It’s okay, H, I’ll make him a makeshift doggy bed out of extra blankets, feel right at home,” you reassured Harry and then went to the kitchen to put on a pot of tea. This was going to be a long night. You got the kettle situated and then went into a back room for your extra bedding you usually used for guests staying on your couch. Harry helped you to set up George’s bed in your bedroom. It was a silent understanding, since you were using the guest sheets for George, that meant Harry either had to sleep without anything on the couch or in your bed. Since George was going to be in your room, you figured Harry would opt for the real bed.

The kettle whistled and you left Harry to finish making the dog bed. His tears had dried, but he hadn’t spoke much except to answer your questions. The night went on, you drank your tea, cried some more, cuddled with George, and then got ready for bed. “You can sleep in my bed, it’s fine, H,” you said immediately when you saw Harry look questioningly at the uninviting couch. For the first time that night, he gave you a small smile and headed to your backroom. George padded behind him, ever the diligent mate. After closing up your apartment, you followed the other two into your bedroom.

Harry sat slightly stiffly on your bed and George panted happily at you from his big sheet bed on the floor. It felt like old times, yet also completely new at the same time. You climbed onto your side of the bed, Harry still remembering which side you preferred even after eight years. You handed him a glass of water and placed your own on the side table, “Crying...takes a lot out of you. We’ve got a big day ahead of us, gotta take George out to his favorite places tomorrow. Drink up.” Again you witnessed Harry’s soft smile grace his perfect, yet sad face. Your strong facade you had tried to keep up all night for Harry was slipping away the sleepier you got. A single tear started to run down your face and Harry noticed. “Hey,” he said and instinctively scooted closer to you, wrapping his bare arms around your soft shoulders. “S’okay, Darling,” he cooed into your hair. You softly weeped in his arms feeling so confused right now. However, a sense of safety also settled over you with the familiarity of Harry’s sweet nothings in you ear and his strong arms cradling you close to his warm chest.

The next morning, you and Harry got ready and took George out to his favorite places, a gourmet dog biscuit shop, the dog wash place, and a little park by the river you and Harry both lived near. It was a beautiful day out. Sun shined and George had so much fun. Harry and you talked about your lives now. Harry’s career had begun to wind down, he’d chosen to stop touring for at least five years a couple months ago. He still wrote music, but he was doing other things and also was trying to live a more peaceful life. You had switched your job a couple years back and had moved up faster at this new one. You worked much less, but were paid more - meaning you had more free time and you didn’t have to worry about money. It seemed both your’s and Harry’s lives had slowed down and gotten to places where you were ready for a relationship as serious as the one you previously had together.

When you two had arrived at the park in the afternoon, you had realized no one had stopped and asked for a picture with Harry all day. Maybe the stars were aligning, albeit in a slightly tragic way. As you sat next to Harry and lovingly watched George prance among the tall grass near the river, you watched Harry’s hand creep itself onto yours. You turned your palm and intertwined your fingers. Then you looked up and met Harry’s gaze immediately. You both smiled, knowing a secret no one else need to know. A love like yours could never go away. It hadn’t left either of you over the past eight years. Even after being parted for so long and having minimal contact over those years, the two of you so easily picked up in a better place than you were when you were in the prime of your first time together. You had both grown so much and your lives had changed. It had come. As Harry had said eight years ago, you just had to wait for “Our time.”

#harry styles #harry styles blurb #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #yikes #my writings #take this away from me #this is a sin #im sorry #hopefully you can still enjoy

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idhrenniel · 4 years

Text

Anytime Soon | Sirius Black

➴ Summary: He had a chance to change. why did he discard it?

➴ Pairing: Sirius Black / fem!reader (3rd POV).

➴ Warnings: Angst, cheating, underage smoking.

➴ Wordcount: 1.2K

➴ Tagged: @angelaiswriting @jj-maybnk

➴ Author Note: No, I’m not in a Harry Potter phase. I am simply posting unposted fics while I manage to finish new ones. You may call it lazy, I call it genius.

Out of all the times Sirius could’ve chosen to cheat he had to do it first week of school. As if walking in on Sirius and Marlene making out in the Common Room hadn’t been humiliating enough, now she had to put up with the gossip, gazes and laughs for ten months. Fantastic.

She scoffed, drawing a long breath of the cigarette between her lips and breathing out the smoke short after, watching it disappear into the wind and fixing her gaze on the moon. Most of her friends warned her about Sirius Black, but she didn’t listen. She thought his intentions were honest, that he had changed and was worth fighting for; in that moment she realized she had been an idiot, a puppet he had used to have some fun and prove himself irresistible. But that wasn’t the worst part, no. She could get over a heartbreak; most people did through their lifetimes. No, the worst part was that Marlene had been her best friend - hell, she even considered her a sister. Somewhere deep in the back of her mind, she had been expecting Sirius to pull something, hell she even had been surprised it took him so long, but Marlene?

Was she supposed to expect her best friend to betray her like that, even after been friends for ten years? She didn’t know where she went wrong with them, if she had been so horrible to deserve such pain. But one thing was clear, it hurt like hell.

“Enough,” she said out loud, hoping if she did so she’d follow her advice and let it pass. She couldn’t keep thinking about it. She wouldn’t find an answer because there wasn’t a question. Sirius must had been tired of being in a relationship and Marlene must had been a liar all along but she hadn’t noticed. Letting herself fall back against the grass, she finished her cigarette and killed it, throwing it to the side. She had pitied herself enough, now it was time for people to do it - which, she was sure had begun.

It wasn’t as if those two treacherous bastards had thought about backstabbing her in secret to spare her from the public humiliation. She had been one of the last students to go into the Common Room after classes, she was well aware she hadn’t been the first one to see them.

It would be fine, she told herself. Ten months wasn’t that long of a time and before she knew, it would’ve passed. She’d graduate and she would leave Sirius, Marlene and the pain behind as if it never happened in the first place. Yes, it was going to be hard and she would have to put up with a lot of shit and it was going to come from friends, other students and even some of the professors (she was sure Minerva would give Sirius detention twice as much as a form of revenge for hurting her), but there was nothing she could about it. Even if it was going to be fine in the end - and she knew it would, the path there was going to be painful.

She heard footsteps coming from her side, but she didn’t bother to look up to see who it was. It was stupid, weird even, she knew he didn’t care about her feelings - that much had been proved, but she also knew he would look for her to apologize because he couldn’t fathom the idea of someone thinking he was a horrible person for the wrong reasons.

He sat down next to her, looking forward. He seemed tense, nervous even. She couldn’t bother herself to hide the pleasure his discomfort brought her and allowed a humourless laugh to escape her lips. He sighed next to her, forcing his gaze up to avoid looking at her.

She didn’t know when the tears had started to fall, she just knew she didn’t had the strength to wipe them off her face and so, she let them run hoping that he wouldn’t notice.

“I,” he started but stopped right after, the words getting caught in his throat. She couldn’t look at him even if she wanted. He took a deep breath that came out ragged right after. “I came to apologize, and if I have the chance, to explain what happened.”

“You were gonna shag Marlene when I walked in. That’s what happened,” she explained for him. It came out as harsh as she felt the words and he winced. “You can apologize now.”

Sirius turned around, the moonlight was right behind him and so it was difficult to distinguish his features, but even in that moment, from her position on her back she could see the storm that were his eyes, and the redness around them; as if he had been crying too.

He took a breath before speaking, clearing his throat to get rid of the soreness. “I don’t know how it happened and I didn’t want it to happen. It was a mistake and I am, believe it or not, sorry. Marlene had been flirting with me since school started again and then this morning I was in the Common Room waiting for James and Remus and she started talking about how she loved me first and it wasn’t fair that we weren’t together; next thing I know she’s all over me. I know the damage is done but, that is the truth and you had to know.”

His voice came out ragged, sore. He had wasted his throat out prior the conversation. It was for a moment she doubted, until she heard him sniff; that and how he pursed his lips together told her all she had to know. Indeed, he had been weeping as well. She cried for a lost love, for a friendship that had meant nothing, but what did he wept for? What had he lost?

No, she thought. It couldn’t be, even if the thought made her skin tingle. Sirius Black didn’t, and had never loved her. If he had done so, then he wouldn’t have done her like that.

“Now I know,” she said while nodding, breaking apart from her thoughts. Her own mind driving her insane. Her voice cracked and it made Sirius aware that she was sobbing. He tried to touch her but she stopped him, slapping his hand away. “Just leave.”

It was a simple request. Leave. He had broken her, it was painful enough to know she had to see him in the halls, in class, in the Common Room, the last thing she needed was for him to pester her until she forgave him. She couldn’t, not in that moment. The wound was fresh, her heart was ripping apart and she had trouble breathing.

She wanted him to leave, but he didn’t. She sobbed out loud, shaking. It was in that moment she knew, she had reached bottom. It was one thing he knew about her sadness, another to show him how her hopes and dreams for them had died.

Sirius wrapped his arms around her waist, bringing her closer to him. He buried his head in the crook of her neck, kissing the exposed skin.

He wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

#idhrenniel: my writing #sirius black #sirius black fic #sirius black imagine #sirius black one shot #sirius black x you #sirius black x reader #harry potter #harry potter fic #harry potter imagine #the maraduers #marauders era #marauders imagine #marauders fic

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ravenbrenna09 · 4 years

Text

Jij Verliest - Chapter Seven: Clip 5&6

master list

...

note: I’m sorry, I’ve given up on actually making the texts. Also I didn’t italicize the texts because everytime I do, Tumblr doesn’t always get them all for whatever reason.

...

Maandag 11:52

Chat: Broerrrs + Luc

13 July, 11:52

Jens: ROBBE. IJZERMANS. What part of ‘text us about it’ did you not understand?

Robbe: Lucas. You could’ve warned me at least.

Lucas: Sorry.

Aaron: What happened to ‘Chill Jens’?

Moyo: Caps lock must’ve been on.

Jens: Caps lock was on. Didn’t feel like changing it though. It served a purpose.

Moyo: What’s going on?

Aaron: Yeah, what do VDS know that we don’t?

Lucas: Um, do you want me to tell them?

Robbe: I can’t have one blissful Monday afternoon, can I?

Aaron: Of course not, it’s Monday.

Lucas: Robbe had a *visitor* this weekend. Someone who showed up on Friday night. And didn’t leave until this morning 👀 Should my sources be correct…

Robbe: Zoë or Milan?

Lucas: My sources are confidential.

Moyo: Please tell me it was Sander.

Robbe: Yes, it was Sander.

Moyo: Thank god. Wait, are you being serious?

Jens: Yes! And *someone* forgot to tell us.

Robbe: I’m sorry, I was busy.

Aaron: Yeah, we know what you were doing all weekend.

Robbe: Cuddling and watching Harry Potter?

Moyo: You’re boring.

Robbe: Haha 🖕🏻 Sander didn’t think so. Also, who else would it be, Moyo?

Moyo: Worst case scenario? Thomas. Best case scenario? A random one nightstand.

Jens: Thomas? As if.

Moyo: That’s why it was the worst-case scenario.

Lucas: If it was Thomas, none of us would be able to stop Jens. And I’m thankful it’s not because I’m sick of his face. And my boyfriend isn’t in jail.

Aaron: Seconded.

Moyo: Third.

Jens: You guys know I almost always agree with Lucas. But I am also sick of Thomas’s face. And I would need bail money.

Robbe: Yes, I know. I have a rotten ex-boyfriend. Luckily, I have a new one that’s ten times better.

Jens: Yes. Did he explain why he was distant?

Robbe: Yes, he did and I forgive him. I would’ve forgiven him anyway, but he did explain. And we’re together now.

Jens: Good. That’s all that matters.

Robbe: So, since we all know what *I* was doing this weekend: how were all of your weekends?

Lucas: the Netherlands was fun. Got to see Isa and the girls again. Plus, Mom kept trying to force-feed Jens. She told him he was too skinny.

Jens: She said the same thing to you. Why are you singling me out?

Aaron: Amber and I went out to lunch with her mom on Sunday.

Moyo: My girlfriend’s roommates were out on Saturday night. So we ended up cooking together. The first try was a bit of a disaster, but we managed to make something good the second time.

Robbe: That’s great. I’m glad everyone had fun.

Lucas: When are we going to meet this mystery girl, Moyo? You seem smitten.

Jens: Yeah, you do. And you call me whipped. You should see you.

Robbe: But you are whipped.

Jens: I’m not denying it. But he’s also whipped.

Lucas: You are.

Moyo: When are we going to meet Sander? As your friends, he’s just as important as you are.

Robbe: I don’t know. Probably about the same time that you introduce us to Noor.

Jens: Wait, Noor is your mystery girl?

Moyo: Aaron!

Aaron: I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING. I haven’t even told Amber!

Jens: Wait, Aaron knew about this and not me? I’m offended, bro.

Lucas: I’d like to know how Robbe knew. Because if Aaron didn’t tell Amber, he didn’t tell Robbe.

Robbe: My source is confidential.

Moyo: Robbe, I hate you.

Robbe: Don’t hate me. She’s a great girl. Plus, it’s not like you two are sly. At our movie night, you two were far more comfortable than you should’ve been.

Moyo: Yeah, you’re right.

Jens: I feel like my entire world has changed.

…

Dinsdag 17:45

When Robbe had stepped into the tattoo parlor a little before 17:00, Alicia had leapt over the edge of the counter and bounced across the empty lobby. She had tackled him, nearly causing both of them to crash onto the floor, and her electric blue ponytail smacked him in the face. Robbe recoiled slightly from the accidental slap before sinking into her embrace. Once she pulled away, she bounced on her feet, looking like she might explode from excitement.

“I’m so happy to see you here again!” she said, grinning. “I was starting to worry that I would have to deal with grumpy Sander for the rest of my life.” Robbe chuckled and Alicia smiled proudly. “But I’m glad to see that you two have made up—you did make up, right? He has just seemed happier today and yesterday and I’m assuming it’s because of you.”

Robbe laughed. “Yes, we did.”

Alicia bounced again, still grinning. “That’s great! His shift is over in a few minutes…” She trailed off, eyeing him suspiciously. “But I have a feeling that you already knew that.” While Alicia continued to eye him with playful suspicion, Robbe shrugged and grinned. “Sorry, my mom always tells me that I seem strange to people who don’t know me. It’s just I’ve heard so much about you from Sander and he’s practically family so I’m pretty protective of—”

“No, it’s okay, I understand—”

As if on cue, Sander stepped out of the hallway. Even after a long day of work, his bleach-blond hair was still immaculate and pristine. Today, he was wearing another black shirt but this one had Emilie’s Tattoo Parlor printed across his chest. He looked tired, but Robbe wasn’t surprised. He had worked the early shift.

Stopping at the desk, he placed down a binder and adjusted the strap of his bag a little higher on his shoulder. Glancing up, his eyes caught Robbe talking with Alicia. As soon as he spotted them, he grinned brightly over at them, all tiredness fading from his face, and said, “Alicia, leave my boyfriend alone.” His tone was light and teasing as he crossed the room. Sander wrapped Robbe in a hug before moving towards the parlor door. “I only have him for an hour before he has to go to work.”

“Oh right,” Alicia said, smacking her head like she forgot. She grinned at Robbe, waving goodbye at the two of them. “Have a good dinner!”

“Tell Britt hi!”

Leaving the tattoo parlor, Robbe collected his bike before following Sander down a well-tuned series of turns to their destination. With one arm around Sander’s waist and the other steering his bike, Robbe felt like he was right where he was meant to. Robbe didn’t know where they were going—just to some restaurant that Robbe had to try—but he followed Sander’s gentle tugs and guidance with ease. Once they arrived at the hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Robbe locked his bike up and let Sander drag him inside.

Robbe didn’t know what he had been expecting from the small restaurant, but it was one of the best pizzas that he’d ever had. As soon as they walked in, the cashier recognized Sander and proceeded to tease him about taking too long to bring his boyfriend around. When the cashier brought them their pizzas, moving before Sander could get up to get them, they were hot to the touch and fresh from the oven.

As they ate their food, Sander would reach out to feed Robbe a bite of his or brush a hand on his thigh beneath the table. Every time Sander did something, paid attention to him, his heart grew three sizes. Even so early into their relationship, he felt so cared for. Robbe tried to do the same. He would reach out to hold his knee or hold Sander’s hand beneath the table. And Sander never shied away from Robbe’s touch. In fact, he seemed to blossom with it.

As they left the restaurant, hand in hand and laughing, the cashier tried to say it was on the house for their favorite customer and his boyfriend. Robbe blushed profusely at their comment and Sander merely chuckled, thanking them. As soon as the cook called the cashier’s name, Sander quickly dropped the money to cover the order (and more) into the tip jar before dragging Robbe from the restaurant.

Even though it wasn’t that long of a ride, Sander insisted on driving Robbe back to the flatshare. Their only trouble was getting Robbe’s bike in the car, but they managed to make it work by tilting it a little. The ride itself was short and relaxing. Sander drove with one hand on the wheel and the other was wrapped gently with Robbe’s hand. As he weaved through the traffic, Sander talked in vivid detail about a tattoo that he did earlier this afternoon as Robbe listened intently.

As they pulled into a stop outside the building, Robbe got curious. “Hey, Sander.”

“Yeah?” Sander asked.

“What were you thinking about, that night at the bar?” Robbe asked.

It had been a question on Robbe’s mind for a while. His thoughts of the night were abundantly clear—okay, maybe slightly buzzed—that the random stranger with an armful of tattoos who sat down next to him and offered him a smoke and gave him an impromptu therapy session was hot. As he nursed his hangover the next morning, Robbe had briefly entertained the thought of meeting him again but Robbe had thought it was an impossible feat. Seeing Sander walk in that bar less than a week later… it had felt like a sign.

One that Robbe had been simultaneously curious and terrified of.

When Sander was quiet, simply staring at the steering wheel with a small smile on his face, Robbe added, “I’m sure that it must’ve been one hell of a crappy impression.”

Sander glanced up at him with a small look of disbelief and a scoff. “What makes you think that?” Sander teased.

Robbe turned in his seat, facing Sander with a mischievous smile on his face. He placed their joined hands in his lap, running his finger over the back of his hand. “I don’t know, but if I saw a guy sitting quite dramatically on the floor—I think that was your wording,” Robbe said and Sander laughed, “and lamenting his ex-boyfriend, it wouldn’t have been the best first impression I’ve ever made.”

“I don’t know,” Sander said. He put the car in park before turning to Robbe, who was waiting impatiently beside him. Sander tugged their joined hands back into his lap before turning Robbe’s over so the palm was facing upward. Sander trailed a finger along the lines of his palm, leaving Robbe squirming in his seat. “I think you made quite the first impression.”

This time, it was Robbe’s turn to scoff. He leaned against the leather of the car, relishing in the feeling of Sander’s doodles on his palm. “You know as well as I do, I could’ve done a lot better than bitching about my ex with someone—”

“No,” Sander said, interrupting him lightly. His voice was quiet like he was having a private conversation with himself and Robbe watched on, biting down on his lip. “That wasn’t the time I meant.”

Robbe’s eyebrows pulled tight, staring at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Sander’s eyes darted up to meet Robbe. He could see the panicked expression in his eyes, like he didn’t expect Robbe to hear his secret confession. Quickly, his expression shifted to nervous. A small lopsided grin formed on his lips as he tilted his head to the side. Sander’s hand fidgeted around his and Robbe twisted his hand around to grasp at Sander’s fingers.

“Sander,” Robbe said. “What is it?”

“Um,” Sander said, biting down on his lip. “Last August, I went to the bar with my roommates after a long day at work. While I was waiting for them to show up, I spotted this beautiful man standing at the bar talking with the owner like he did it every day.”

Sander’s eyes raised, catching his brown ones in an instant, and Robbe was certain his heart stopped in his chest. Him, Robbe realized. Sander had seen him before.

“Before I could work up the nerve to talk to him, to get the name of this beautiful man who turned my world upside down in an instant, his boyfriend showed up and whisked him away from me. I thought that was the end of it—that I missed my chance until…” Sander trailed off.

Robbe felt his stomach flip, nervous and excited. Bringing Sander’s hand to his mouth, Robbe placed a kiss against his knuckles. Sander followed him with a heavy gaze in his eyes and the corners of his lips quirked up nervously. “Until?” Robbe asked, his lips brushing against Sander’s knuckles.

“Until…” Sander continued. Robbe scooted closer to him—or as much as he could in the small confine of the car. He was practically leaning over the console, trying to get as close to Sander as he could. Sander glanced at Robbe nervously. “Until last month. It had been a rough few months, but I was starting to come out of it. It was my first time out of the apartment other than for work for a month and I looked over and saw the beautiful man in the bar again.”

Robbe giggled.

“As soon as I saw him, I knew that he was the one. My mother used to tell me that there was no such thing as a coincidence,” Sander said, reaching up to wipe a thumb across Robbe’s flushed cheeks. “She used to go on and on about how ‘what is meant for you won’t pass you by’—”

“Is that what the quote on your side is?” Robbe asked, quietly. Sander paused, staring at him. “I saw it on Saturday but your arm was covering most of it.”

Sander grinned. “Yes, it is. Now, back to the story—”

Robbe mumbled out a quiet ‘sorry’ and Sander gave him a stern look.

“When I saw that beautiful man for the second time, I knew that the universe was trying to give me a sign and I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. When I saw him head outside to get some air, I followed. But I only managed to learn his name before the universe ripped him away from me again.” He let out a heavy sigh and slumped his shoulders. “But, lucky for me, I managed to find him again, not even a week later, and I knew that I couldn’t let him get away from me again.”

“Wow,” Robbe said, breathless. Sander looked up at him with nervous eyes, staring at Robbe intensely. He let out a breath, reaching up to take Sander’s face in his hands. “You really saw me that long ago?”

“Yes,” Sander whispered. “Since the moment I saw you, I’ve wanted you, Robbe IJzermans… even before I knew what your name was.” His eyes scanned Robbe’s face. “Are you mad?”

Staring at Sander for a few seconds, Robbe hastily undid the seatbelt around him. He could see the worried look on Sander’s face, like Robbe was going to climb out and never look back, but Robbe simply climbed on the seat. His knees dug into the leather as Robbe leaned across the center to press a deep kiss against Sander’s lips. He clung to the strands of Sander’s icy blond hair, holding on for dear life, as Sander let out a grunt.

Since the beginning, Sander had always seen him. Whether it was last month outside the bar or last year inside the bar, Sander had seen him. He had seen Robbe in the comfort of his bed, in the disarray of a friendly gathering, desperate in a tattoo parlor, and so many moments in between. Robbe wanted Sander to see him in all of his moments and moods, just like he wanted to see all of Sander’s faces and facades. He wanted all of Sander, everything he could get them.

Sander’s words from last Friday came rushing back: Robbe IJzermans, since the moment that I first saw you, I have wanted you.

“So you’re not mad?” Sander asked, breaking their kiss.

Robbe shook his head, practically panting against Sander’s mouth. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Good,” Sander said, quietly. “I was worried you might be.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

Robbe moved to kiss Sander again. Robbe wanted to kiss him a little harder. Robbe wanted to pour every single emotion bursting out of his chest into the kiss for Sander—for Sander to taste—at the same intensity Robbe was experiencing from him. But, at the last second, Sander pulled away a mischievous smile on his lips and Robbe couldn’t help the whine. “What were you thinking the night that you first saw me outside the bar?”

Robbe chuckled. “I could only think of one thing—” Pausing, Robbe leaned forward. His knees were strained from this position, but he didn’t care. Stopping a hair away from connecting their lips fully, Sander glanced up at Robbe with a mischievous look in his eye as Robbe grinned. “—Fuuucccckkk, he’s so hot.”

Sander laughed but his laugh was muffled by Robbe’s lips pressing against his.

#wtfock #robbe ijzermans #sander driesen #jij verliest #chapter seven #sobbe #rosander #jij verliest fic #brenna writes #wtfock fanfiction #twitch streamer!robbe #tattoo artist!sander

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writingsfromhome · 4 years

Text

Hot Waters (2)

Part 1

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

I clock in as the lunch rush dwindles, checking in on guests to make sure they were doing alright and on staff if there was anything I needed to address.

My eyes burn, I could still sleep another five hours—after coming home last night I kept getting distracted by what happened last night. I almost kissed a customer! And someone famous at that. We pride ourselves on discretion and minding our own business when it came to our famous guests. Yesterday’s slip up was serious, and the further I got from that cursed room, the more clarity I got.

“Y/N,” the morning manager grips my hand as she drags me into our office. “You were here when they signed in...’James Smith’?”

“Yes?” My heart races, did she know? How did she know? This was it-

“Oh my god! Everyone talks about what a sweetheart he is. He. Is. The devil!”

“What are you talking about?” I sit her down and she just swears.

“Staff gets a call this morning, he woke up with a bad hangover wanted to know if we can send up aspirin. They go up, he says he thought the manager was going to bring it up. So they come down to me and I have to fucking go up there while I’m dealing with this other shitty guest wanting me to change their room-remind me to tell you about that later. Basically I go up to this asshole’s room and he just stares at me. I’m like I’m the bloody manager-“

“I think he thought I would be there since I helped him...I helped him out-“

“Yeah so I’m like we have two managers. Is there a reason you asked me to come all the way up here to hand you aspirin? He says he forgot! Thought the manager should bring it. How do you-ugh! And then he starts asking me about us, what our names were and how long we’ve worked here—when our shifts ended! Meanwhile a whole line was forming downstairs and by the time I come down they’ve chewed out the new girl and-“

I let her trail on, where I kept a cool head about most things, my co-manager was very scatterbrained. I guess thirty years working with our clientelle could do that to you. I calm her down and tell her I’d deal with “Mr. Smith”. Maybe I had to give him a piece of my mind, just because he could get what he wanted didn’t mean he had to!

I’m pumped with a whole speech prepared for him but when I get to his room someone else answers. I see him in the back on a call, I make an excuse about an earlier request and receive a dirty look. I go back down the complete opposite of pumped. What was I thinking, Harry was busy. He had a life of his own. He probably only wanted to see me this morning to clear up last night. Good thing I wasn't here, I really wanted to clear up one thing. Yesterday's almost slip-up was a complete mistake. I wasn't that kind of person.

I get into the swing of things, the rest of the day goes by without too much drama. At around 7pm, I’m sorting through some paperwork at the front desk, when I spot Harry leaving the hotel. He’s flanked by the person who checked him in, talking to him and Harry laughs. I watch them leave, maybe I could avoid him today after all.

But at 9:05pm one of my staff finds me to say the person staying in 1203 had a noise complaint and wanted to speak to the manager. I roll my eyes but there’s nothing I could do but go. I had a feeling not going would just make things worse.

I ride up, the elevator mirrors showing a tired and overworked woman with a small tomato soup stain near her third button. I try to button the blazer to cover it but it's no use. I take my hair out of it’s bun, it was barely in one at this point. Then I put it back in one—why was I trying to look good. But my hair is too slicked back and I take it out again to do a messy bun. And just as I twist the elastic a third time it snaps and the doors open. Great. Hair down it would be.

I knock and Harry shouts it’s open again. I use my key to get in because of course it’s not.

“You know your door isn’t actually open ever?” I say as I walk in. The room is dark except for the bedside lamp. I turn on the light so I can see.

“So how do you get in?” Harry’s voice comes from the bathroom.

“My own key?” I say, leaning against the door. Maybe if I stay here and don’t go all the way in I can make this quick.

Harry walks out of the bathroom, he looks like he’d showered and shaved and tidied up. He was more handsome than before, if that was posssible. Aaand that was not what I should be thinking about!

“I ended up getting drunk by myself last night,” Harry says as if it were my fault.

"I told you not to drink whatever you made," I say.

"I was lonely."

“I heard you were a nightmare this morning.”

“I thought you would be in! I was only going to be a nightmare to you. I sort of feel bad for yanking the other manager around.”

“I’m flattered,” I roll my eyes. “And you should be. You nearly gave her a panic attack.”

“Really?” Harry moves away from his dresser and closer to me. I press further into the door as if I could slip through the wood.

“I think she thinks you’re an A-list celeb, the A stands for asshole in the biz.”

"The biz?" Harry's mouth lifts in a smile. As he advances, I start to forget my promise to myself from earlier.

"Sooo you had a noise complaint?" I don't even sound like I care to my own ears. I just sound panicked. I couldn't let anything happen. But Harry is now a foot from me and I forget why I would ever say no.

"Yes," Harry pushes the strands of my hair behind my ear. "Your hair looks nice down."

"Harry," I warn. "If you don't need anything I should go. I really shouldn't be here."

"That's what you keep saying," his eyes undress me. Oh god, now they were looking right at me.

"It's true-" I realise then how stupid it was to trap myself against the door. There was no escaping here and he was too close to be able to open the door. And now he rests his hand above my head. There was no way this door was going to open. "This is the worst thing I could do..."

Harry brushes his thumb over my lips and I immediately stop talking. “Are you going to ever stop talking?”

My breath comes out heavy but I try, “Harry I really shouldn’t-"

“You’re not on the clock are you?”

I look into his eyes, damnit. I wasn’t, and All I can do is nod. I was a fool to think I could come up here and resist him.

“Good.”

As soon as his lips are on mine I’ve thrown away any ounce of sensibility. I yank my arms out from behind me and pull him closer; I don’t think I can pull him close enough.

His hand trails down my body, lifting my thigh to wrap around him, pushing deeper into me.

“Bed,” I manage to gasp. He turns and walks me backwards to the bed, never taking his mouth off of me. He's intense but careful, making sure I'm comfortable. I finally get to see all his tattoos, and his hand (amongst other things) finally touches my own.

Part of me is in shock, how was this happening? Why did Harry even want me?

But the other part, doesn't care. We were attracted to each other and this is what happened. What I wanted right now.

"Y/N," he sighs into my neck and hearing my name on his lips sends me over the edge. We're an island together on the bed and I find shelter between his arms. Damn the consequences.

***

"Hey," a gentle whisper wakes me from my sleep. I keep my eyes closed, I was so tired and this was the deepest I've slept in months. But the voice comes again, "Y/N hey."

My name makes me open my eyes, the sun has somehow come up and I'm laying mostly naked in Harry's bed while he hovers above me, shirtless and with a bed head. There's a pit in my stomach, realising the sun did rise again and today I would have to face the reality that I slept with a...customer.

I feel a kiss on my forehead, it snaps me back to him. The bed, his arms, he wasn't just a customer. This was wrong but also just right.

"Time?" I ask.

"7, I had to wake you. I have a meeting in an hour or so, there’ll be people in my room and I don't want you to get in trouble."

I sit up and pull the covers around me, spotting my shirt on the floor. The tomato stain is irrelevant with the million wrinkles from being thrown on the floor. Last night was amazing.

"I'll freshen up," I mumble. I feel him move closer to me, kiss my shoulder. I close my eyes, why couldn't I stay in this moment forever? Freeze the clock at 7am.

I look as happy as I feel in the mirror, except for the anxiety brewing under the surface of being found out, I'm happy. This was what I needed.

When I get back, Harry still loafs in bed on his phone. But when he sees me, he pulls me onto him and cuddles me against him.

"So are you free tonight?" He asks. I turn to look him in the face, I thought last night was a one-time thing. Guys like Harry didn't want girls like me more than once. "What?" He asks when I just stare at him.

"You want to see me again?" I ask.

"Yeah?" He still looks confused. "I was thinking I can sneak out to your place, bring you dinner."

"Why?" The question is out of my mouth before I could think. "Sorry-I just meant...I thought it was a one night thing."

"Oh," he moves back, "I didn't know you didn't want-"

"No no," I move back closer to him. I missed his warmth. "I thought you wouldn't want to...do anything more with me. This was a one-off.”

"Y/N," he says so gently. He kisses me, "I don't usually convince random women to sleep with me after their shift is over. Never actually. You're....I like you."

"You barely know me," I whisper. This was Harry Styles saying this to me.

"I know. But isn’t it always like that at the beginning? You do know I could've figured out the hot water by myself yesterday but I wanted you to come up, to see you and talk to-"

I flick his ear, "I knew it! I knew you couldn't be that much of an idiot."

He laughs, "I felt something with us, I want to see if it leads to anything."

"You'll be leaving soon," I remind him. "You're staying at a hotel-“

"While my manager looks for a rental. Our original one fell through at the last minute. I'm in the city for a few months, working on my album. Let's just have fun, see where this goes. You're funny and beautiful and patient and-I like you Y/N."

I stare at his lips, forming the words. He meant it. Maybe I wasn’t goin to be so single anymore. He was here for months, and once he's checked out technically he's no longer a customer...

"One condition," I say. I didn't want to put my job at risk again. "We can't do this here. Again. We wait for you to leave or-"

"Deal," Harry kisses me to seal it. His phone vibrating scares us apart. He picks up, "Hi...yeah I'm up...okay bye."

"They're on their way! Around the corner, You have to go!" Harry jumps up and starts picking up the mess of last night. I only had my uniform that was very wrinkled. I panic.

I manage to get on my uniform, close my blazer over the shirt and cover it with a tray leftover in Harry's room. I get my hair in a bun with one of Harry's elastics and pray my puffy face isn't a dead giveaway just as there's a knock at the door. I move towards it and open it, making sure Harry was seated in his chair first.

"Sorry again about the noise complaint, we'll make sure that doesn't happen again sir," I smile at the incoming guests, and sneak a look at Harry who's biting back a laugh. My heart is pounding too loud to laugh.

"I hope not," Harry finishes before he gets up to greet his guests. His manager looks suspicious but I slip out and choose the stairwell down a few floors before getting onto the elevator. Luckily, I don't run into anybody and take the kitchen doors out. It was a close call, but breaking the rules was kind of exhilerating and totally worth it. Harry was into me, we had another date tonight. And he was coming to my place...shit. He was coming to my place.

I find my car and head home to clean for tonight--both myself and my house. I can't wipe the smile off my face the whole ride home though. This was really happening.

#harry styles x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #fic #celeb harry #im not a fan of this one #but I just wanted to finish up loose ends from the first #just extra content I guess

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goldeneyedgirl · 4 years

Text

jaliceweek20 day 1: human/vampire

Title: Against A Wall (Part 1)

Prompt 1: Human/Vampire

Word Count: 3,851

Note: I’m going into hospital tomorrow, and I’ve run out of time to get this finished (so, so close but I need sleep). So I cut it in half in the most logical place.

As long as the JaliceWeek Mods don’t have an issue, I’ll finish off Part 2 and upload the whole fic to the AO3 collection around Tuesday when I’m feeling human and have a decent Wifi connection.

Fifteen.

He crouches behind Dewey’s Bar, spitting blood onto the pavement, and trying to pretend that whatever is seeping into his jeans is just water, and not runoff from the reeking dumpster beside him.

It’s Tuesday night, and Tuesdays are always the worst. Tuesdays are his mom’s night shifts at the VA hospital. Tuesdays are pay-day. Tuesdays are the only day his father doesn’t pull his punches.

His left cheek and eye are swollen and split, like overripe fruit. He can’t see real well, and the taste of aluminium foil in the back of his mouth makes him suspect another fracture around his eye.

But was it really a Tuesday night if cerebral fluid wasn’t leaking into his mouth?

He feels bad that his mother is going to walk in at five the next morning, exhausted, to find… well, to find Hettie and Flo asleep in Ava’s bed, as Ava studies and worries. To find Jasper’s bed empty, and Lydia’s too. To find the study door locked, no matter how long she knocks.

In fact, the only thing that Louise Whitlock won’t find when she gets home from work is the god-damned strength of will to leave her fucking husband.

Last time he said that to her face, she started to cry, and that made things worse.

It’s still early, which sucks. There are hours to go until it is safe to move, to drag himself to school, to shower in the locker rooms and get some food out of the vending machine and savour the fact that another Tuesday is behind him. Sheldon isn’t big enough for the other students and the teachers not to notice the bruises on his face, but it is small enough that everyone knows Jeremiah Whitlock, and no one is going to say anything to get him in trouble.

He could go find Lydia, hide in the tree-house, tell someone who wasn’t family or a local. But he always ends up behind Dewey’s. When he was a kid, it hadn’t just been a bar; it had been been Dewey’s Bar and Grill, and his grandfather used to take him there for fried chicken and ice cream. Dewey had been his Grandpa Jed’s best friend, but even in those halcyon days it hadn’t exactly been family-friendly.

It had become a dive bar sometime around the time Jasper finished middle-school, but it didn’t matter - by then, Dewey and Grandpa were dead, and he was too busy trying to protect himself and his sisters to eat ice cream.

He spits blood again, and rests back against the brickwork. Nothing for it; Tuesdays were always hell.

—

He tries to sleep, amongst the noise of passersby, and remain unnoticed - Jasper’s learnt the hard way that his uncles still frequent Dewey’s, and they will march him straight back home for round two, no matter what he says. Even when he came up with the strength to tell them, about Lydia and Jerry and Tuesday nights, his uncles just tell him to shut up, man up, and maybe Jerry wouldn’t have to whoop his ass.

He thinks of Lydia and hopes she’s somewhere warm and clean tonight. Lydia’s smart enough to stay away on Tuesday nights. Home is never Lydia’s first port of call any night of the week, but never, ever on Tuesdays.

He remembers the last Tuesday night she was home, two summers ago, when Lydia stormed upstairs, a twelve-year-old hurricane with fire in her eyes, and called their father a coward for beating the shit out of Jasper.

Jeremiah Whitlock hadn’t liked being called a coward. Not at all.

Now she is transient, a ghost sister who vanishes at day break; one who bunks down on couches and in treehouses before coming back to her own bed. Their mom and Ava worry about where Lydia gets her money, cigar-sized rolls of dollar bills that she keeps in a tampon box, but he knows.

He knows that his sharp and pointy little sister never let anything stop her, least of all hard work, and that a lot of people in town know that Jerry Whitlock has a lot of anger and a lot of disappointment that he tries to drown in cheap beer and cheaper whiskey. It just makes him angrier. If the only thing they can do is give Lydia Whitlock some work, well, that kid’ll cut the grass, paint the garage, and walk the dog for a few bucks and a drink from a spigot.

It’s easy to say that Lydia is the best of them, making it clear that she doesn’t need their shitty father or their tired mother, but they are all strong in different ways. Ava, who smiles and simpers at their father, waiting for that day when she can buckle Hettie and Flo into her car and take them with her to college in Houston with a middle finger raised in the air. Flo stays quiet, stays alert, darting and hiding when the moment comes, but whose slight of hand belongs to a survivalist magician. And sweet little Hettie, who never lived on the ranch and knew their parents when they were happy, is sunshine and laughter and innocence. The one that reminds them why they stick together.

He’s the boy, so his role is obvious and unquestioned: he takes the punches and slaps and kicks that were meant for their mom, for Lydia, for Flo. He mutters things under his breath so that Jerry doesn’t hear what his sisters are saying, forgets that Hettie is sniffling or that Lydia hasn’t been home in ten days or that their mother has burnt dinner.

He knows his place.

—-

If you asked anyone with the surname ‘Whitlock’, they’d tell you that the family was cursed.

Had been since the Civil War; the youngest son had run off and joined up. Tried to desert two months in, crying for his momma, and ran afoul of someone - or something. He was dead a month later, but no one was exactly sure if he’d been executed for desertion, or if he’d just got in the way of a Yankee bullet. Either way, his last letter was rambling and terrified of something he never named, and his cowardice was rewarded with his bloodline’s constant suffering.

Within the Whitlock family lore, the curse was held accountable for numerous failings - from great-great grandmother Edith running off with one of the Wilkerson boys, to little Brian dropping dead as a doornail one summer day after seven years of perfect health. It was the Whitlock Curse to blame the day the bank took the ranch away from Jasper’s own father.

It was the curse that had four and a half strapping brothers (Uncle Wyatt only counted as half since he went to the war in the Middle East and got himself blown up before he was even old enough to drink, and left behind a high school sweetheart with a bouncing baby girl they all called ‘Puddin’) father fifteen girls, and only one lousy boy.

Make no mistake about it, Jasper was a lousy heir to the Whitlock name. All three of his uncles reminded him of this every holiday season. Whitlock men were supposed to live and breathe the ranch, were supposed to be football players and champions. They were meant to knock up the head cheerleader and serve eight years in the army, like their brothers, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers before them.

Not snivelling little momma’s boys, who cried themselves to sleep when Sirius Black died, and could charm the birds from the trees. Not boys who helped their sisters catch rabbits, and keep them as secret pets, or name the house cat Socrates. Not boys who sat up all night when their horse had colic, and sit in the stable with her, begging and praying for her to be okay.

He tried, goddamnit. So hard. He was the best shot in the family (something that Uncle Bo had nearly hit him over, that one Thanksgiving. But everyone knew that Bo had the worst temper in the family.) Before things went to shit, he’d been a good student. He’d been able to convince the animals on the ranch to do anything. He was popular, without having any particular friends or putting much effort into it. He took care of his sisters.

But none of it was ever good enough.

Nothing ever was.

—

It’s Roy Lester that chases him off, before six the next morning. Roy runs the grocer next to Dewey’s, and went to school with his father and uncles - still had beers with them ever so often. The way he threatened Jasper and chased him off home whenever he caught him in the alley made Jasper think that they talked about him, and none of it flattering.

So he has to slink home because he stinks and he’s starving. The security at school won’t let anyone in before seven; he’s tried before; it’s not like he has much choice.

In a town like Sheldon, everyone knew everyone. You started kindergarten with maybe twenty other five year olds - most you probably already knew - and spent the next thirteen years with those same kids. You watched Maude Montgomery transform from the aesthetic-equivalent of Danny Devito to Jennifer Lawrence in a single summer, thanks to a late brush with puberty; you were right there when Casey Atkinson was put in a wheelchair and spent seventh grade learning to walk again. You knew that Ariel Turner was diabetic, Marley Harris was asthmatic, and you’d seen thirteen years of peanut-free lunches and birthday parties because Joey Thompson was highly allergic.

The joy of small towns.

Everyone knew that Jerry Whitlock hit his kids and his wife, but no one talked about it - not to their faces, at least. The adults tended to march Jasper home, to face his father’s wrath. The kids tended to get uncomfortable, and look through him. The few people who tried to reach out were from out of town, and were usually passing through - the odd teacher, a new neighbour, a concerned face on the bus.

Better to go home until school opened up.

Louise is in the kitchen, her face pinched and pale, clutching a cup of coffee. She looks hopeful when he walks in, but seems to crumple in on herself when she sees his bloody, swollen face. She looks old as she puts down her mug, and moves to pull him into a hug. He pretends not to notice her shuddering, as she cries onto his shoulder, before pulling away.

“I’ll make breakfast,” she manages, sniffling. “Okay? You must be hungry.”

He grunts and nods, as he heads upstairs. As if scrambled eggs and burnt toast can fix another Tuesday night.

But Wednesdays are good - the longest possible time until another Tuesday night.

He just has to keep telling himself that.

—

Seventeen.

Another Tuesday behind Dewey’s, but this time he’s puking up the few mouthfuls of food he managed before his father hauled him out the back - only because it was his mom’s week off and they were having a big family dinner. Louise resented those mid-week dinners; after a long day at work, having to make dinner for twenty-three people, and somehow find enough plates and chairs was the last thing she wanted to do. It was the only time Lydia would cross their father’s sight line, skinny and defiant.

If it had been a normal dinner, Jerry wouldn’t have dragged him out of the house. He would have beat him in the kitchen, yelling over Hettie’s sobs and Flo’s screams, and Louise’s pleading. He’s had a serving platter smashed over his head before, as well as a beer bottle, and a ceramic pitcher - one that had been made by Grandma Lillian, and Louise had sobbed over those broken shards.

His head is spinning, and he can’t remember exactly what he said to incite his father’s rage, though he remembers Uncle Bo’s jeers when he tried to stand up. The previous week’s wounds have reopened, and are bleeding onto his last decent t shirt. There’s vomit and alley-juice all over his jeans, and he wonders if he should drag himself to the hospital because his world is still spinning.

He wonders what will happen if he dies tonight; if Roy Lester finds him here in the morning, cold and dead. Most of the cops in town are from old families, and they’ve taken Lydia and Jasper back home enough times to know what goes on. It’s easier to picture the cover-up, that they’ll blame him and a make-believe schoolyard fight. Just a tragic accident.

Maybe then someone will help Lydia, help all of his sisters. Maybe it’ll be the thing that makes his mom leave.

He falls asleep facedown in the alley, and wants to cry when he wakes up the next morning to the bellow of school kids heading to the bus stop.

He was so goddamned close to it all being over.

So close.

—

“Do you need some help?”

It’s another Tuesday night, one that has come with busted ribs and possibly a dislocated shoulder. He missed lunch because of an English project, and his father had been drinking early, so he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. It’s making him feel sick, and wondering if anyone will notice if he sneaks in the back door of Dewey’s and grab some food.

And then someone is there and talking to him.

Her voice is high and sweet, and he expects a high school girl, maybe a sorority sister.

She is neither.

She’s only as tall as Flo, with uneven black hair curling around her cheeks. She’s one of the prettiest girls he has ever seen, with huge amber-coloured eyes that remind him of Hettie’s dolls and Lydia’s manga. She’s wearing a ragged button-up over a ruffled mini-skirt and leggings, with boots that look a size too big, a heavy man’s watch that hangs from her tiny wrist, and an ancient looking cadet’s cap - the entire effect makes him think of Oliver Twist as a female circus performer.

She walks over to him, and crouches in front of him, her head cocked to the side like a bird’s. He can only stare; other than the dark smudges under her eyes that speak of many sleepless nights, she is beautiful.

“Are you okay?” she asks, looking worried.

“Yeah,” he croaks, and winches as he jars his ribs. He doubles over, and cries out. She reaches out towards him but backs off just as suddenly.

“You’re hurt,” she says, looking bewildered and frightened. “Where?”

“I-It’s okay,” he manages, trying to reclaim his dignity in front of the prettiest girl. “I’ll be fine.”

The girl huffs. “Ugh, boys,” she mutters. “Hold on a second.” She gets up and slips out of the alley before he can beg her not to get help. In reality, going to the hospital is the last thing he should do - they can’t afford the bill, and they’ll call home and… no. Just no.

His head is spinning, so he finds it hard to tell how much time has passed, but eventually she returns. She’s clutching two bags, and marches right up to him and crouches back down.

“This will help,” she says, holding out painkillers and a bottle of water. He fumbles with the lids of both, but eventually swallows the pillows down. She watches him carefully. “Don’t drink too fast,” she advises. “Now, I can put your shoulder back in now, or we can wait. It’s up to you.”

He blinks at her slowly. “Now,” he decides.

“Okay,” she looks nervous, but moves forward. It’s all blurry in his mind, but there is something cold, then hot, angry pain, and then he’s blinking up at her again. “Sorry. But trust me, the worst is over now. At least I didn’t break it worse. Hungry?”

He blinks as she reaches for the other bag - a bag of Skittles, a packaged sandwich, two oranges, and a bag of potato chips. He’s not sure if he has a concussion or it’s an odd selection, but he’s also hungry enough that he doesn’t care.

“I nearly had to call Bella, to ask what to get - Edward never let me buy her food after the chicken incident - which was entirely Emmett’s fault - but I think I figured it out okay,” the girl jabbers, taking a seat beside him, and smiles at him. “Better no one knows where I am, anyway.”

“I… thanks,” he croaked, as he reached for the sandwich. She beams at him again, and then frowns.

“Eat, then we’ll finish patching you up. I’ve come too far to watch you die in this disgusting place,” she stretches her legs out in front of her.

The sandwich is dry, but he wolfs it down - an orange too, before he takes a breath - that hurts - and takes another look at the tiny girl beside him.

“Who are you?” he finally asks, and she looks up from her watch.

“Oh! I’m Alice,” she says. “Sorry, I forgot you didn’t know. Do you want your ribs taped now, or are you going to open those?” She points to the Skittles.

“Um, I…” he looks at the bag of candy. “Do you want some?” This feels like a fever dream; maybe he’s passed out and this is just what his banged-up brain has provided him with.

“No,” she shakes her head, and the cadet’s cap tilts a little on her head. “I can’t. They just looked nice. Happy.”

“Happy,” he echoes, looking at the red package.

“I hear that sometimes little things can help,” Alice says. “Come on, cowboy, take that shirt off and let me see those ribs.”

His side is mottled black and blue and purple, and moving in basically any direction is a new adventure in pain. Alice gasps at the sight, and then coos at him in a way that is oddly comforting as her fingers trace his ribs - the coldness of her fingers is actually wonderful against the pain. Then comes the painful stage - as she, not entirely gently enough, begins layering tape over the pain, his head is spinning.

“All done,” Alice says, and her voice is soft, and when he slumps against her shoulder, she doesn’t move away. She smells like old fashioned things, like roses and linen. It reminds him of the old family homestead. He finds his eyes closing, and his side aches in time with his heart, and then Alice’s gentle fingers are running through his hair.

“Sleep, Jasper,” she murmurs, “I’ll keep watch.”

He’s asleep before he realises he never told her his name.

—

She’s gone when he wakes up, and the Skittles are in his pocket - along with the painkillers. Happy.

It’s Wednesday morning, and it’s not exactly ‘happy’ he’s feeling, but he’s got candy in his pocket and time to go home for a shower and more food, so Alice was right - the little things do help.

—

She never turns up two Tuesdays in a row, but he does see her again. She’s always more prepared than the first time, with a bag that always seems to contain exactly what they need - in his less lucid states, he is reminded of Mary Poppins’ magic carpet bag as she produces snacks and first aid kits, and even clothing.

Her attempts at first aid are, at best, rough and she accidentally breaks two of his fingers and nearly ends up in tears when he yells in pain, and hugs him so tight, weeping into his neck, that he ends up trying to comfort her.

Sometimes he sleeps. She’s so thin and tiny that her shoulder isn’t a good pillow, and he feels like a shit man, letting such a tiny girl keep watch behind a bar. It wouldn’t take much to break her, and he can’t defend anyone in this state.

But some Tuesdays, he falls asleep anyway, breathing in that scent of fresh roses and linen, and listening to her chatter away about people he doesn’t know, about places he’s never visited, about books he’s never read.

Alice sounds like she’s living a really nice life. One week, she quizzes him on his Spanish before his examine the next day, and her accent is flawless. When her phone buzzes and buzzes and buzzes, and she ignores it, she usually swears - he doesn’t know in what language, one of the Eastern Asian ones he thinks - but it’s definitely a swear.

He wishes he could see her, talk to her, out in the real world and prove to her that he’s not just a beat-up kid. But she’s always gone on Wednesday mornings, and he doesn’t even know how to contact her anyway.

All in all, he met Alice in the reeking alley behind Dewey’s with a concussion, broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder, and now she’s the best friend he’s ever had in the world.

He’s getting closer to that ‘happy’ concept that she mentioned the first time they met.

—

The last time he sees her, he’s bleeding and he’s pretty sure his eye socket is fractured. He’s pissed with himself because he wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, to stop his father from going after Flo. So he’d thrown a punch at his old man for the first time because Flo is his baby sister and all haunted eyes and he’ll never forget the sounds of her wailing after the belt struck her, but hitting the bastard back just fuelled him and … fuck.

Then Alice is there, in jeans with stars on the knees and a billowy purple top that is just opaque enough to obscure the skin underneath. She looks angry and frustrated, and doesn’t just sit next to him and open her bag like she usually does.

“It’s a stupid fucking decision you’re about to make,” she stamps her foot, “and I am so mad at you right now, but Carlisle and Edward have made me promise not to interfere. Carlisle says that everything I’m doing now is enough. And I’m already in enough trouble, honestly.”

He can taste foil again - definitely a fractured eye socket.

“What?” he manages, snappish and tired. He doesn’t need this. He wants sweet Alice, who helps him patch himself back together, and gets him food, and talks him to sleep. The one who makes him laugh, even when it hurts, and seems to be light-years ahead of him but that’s okay because she’s always so happy about whatever she’s telling him.

“I’m going to say this once,” she enunciates carefully, still glaring. “I will be here every Tuesday. Don’t make a dumb decision. There is always another choice.”

“You’re making less sense than normal,” he retorts. “Either help me, or go away - I’m not in the mood.”

“Happy freakin’ birthday,” she snaps, unbuckling her giant watch, and throws it at him before she storms back the way she came, leaving him behind.

#jaliceweek20 #alice cullen #jasper hale #jasper whitlock #vampire alice human jasper #my fic: against a wall #my writing: against a wall #alice is so unhelpfully helpful

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luluwquidprocrow · 4 years

Text

and i’ve written pages upon pages trying to rid you from my bones

originally posted: august 25th, 2019

word count: 13,060 words

rated: not rated

beatrice/bertrand/lemony

heavy angst, canon compliant, with enough canon divergence that makes the canon compliance worse, epistolary

summary:

and if you don’t love me, let me go.

[a much less than 200 pages break up letter.]

opening notes:

title from the engine driver by the decemberists

By the time you read this

I guess an at least interesting description of us could be like ships passing in the night

I think now is

I think now might be the time for us to

First of all, I have canceled my subscription to the Daily Punctilio, which was just a good move on my part to begin with, and second of all, I couldn’t believe all that anyway, but third of all, do you know, Lemony

You’ll think me such a damn hypocrite, won’t you.

Why now? Why would I

Why would you do this now?

My Heart and I

ENOUGH ! we're tired, my heart and I.

We sit beside the headstone thus,

And wish that name were carved for us.

The moss reprints more tenderly

The hard types of the mason's knife,

As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life

With which we're tired, my heart and I.

II.

You see we're tired, my heart and I.

We dealt with books, we trusted men,

And in our own blood drenched the pen,

As if such colours could not fly.

We walked too straight for fortune's end,

We loved too true to keep a friend ;

At last we're tired, my heart and I.

III.

How tired we feel, my heart and I !

We seem of no use in the world ;

Our fancies hang grey and uncurled

About men's eyes indifferently ;

Our voice which thrilled you so, will let

You sleep; our tears are only wet :

What do we here, my heart and I ?

IV.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I !

It was not thus in that old time

When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime

To watch the sunset from the sky.

Dear love, you're looking tired,' he said;

I, smiling at him, shook my head :

'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I !

Though now none takes me on his arm

To fold me close and kiss me warm

Till each quick breath end in a sigh

Of happy languor. Now, alone,

We lean upon this graveyard stone,

Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

VI.

Tired out we are, my heart and I.

Suppose the world brought diadems

To tempt us, crusted with loose gems

Of powers and pleasures ? Let it try.

We scarcely care to look at even

A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,

We feel so tired, my heart and I.

VII.

Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?

In this abundant earth no doubt

Is little room for things worn out :

Disdain them, break them, throw them by

And if before the days grew rough

We once were loved, used, — well enough,

I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who knew what she was talking about

My Dearest Darling,

You call me a lot of things but, to be perfectly frank (not Ernest), Lemony, I think I’ve always liked that one the least. There was that summer where, among other things, Bertrand was trying to come up with nicknames for us in that charming way of his, and he came up with a real mess of awful nicknames and then I came up with the list we could Never Repeat In Public (capitals necessary) and then you said something very sweet to both of us, and anyway, we know what happened there, but the point of this is that you held us close and said, very seriously, that you would never ever ever ever ever (for the span of what I’d figure would be maybe two pages, short but evenly-spaced), no matter what happened, call Bertrand ‘Bert’ and that was damn good of you because Bertrand is not a Bert and never will be. We were right to veto Bertie, as well. He is a Bertrand, through and through. The other point was that you wound up calling us nicknames too but dearest darling was maybe the worst of all of them. Bea was my favorite. I liked the way you said it and I liked the way it sounded and I felt noble perfect unstoppable invincible worried fragile good when you said it. And that was good.

Speaking of, right now, Bertrand is with Kit, and don’t worry, they’re not talking about you (I know how you worry). They’re talking about boats and maps and cooking spices and Widdershins will probably come by later to give them both his version of A Stern Talking To (capitals debatable) about open water expeditions, which will probably be something like, ‘Fire this harpoon at anything suspicious! Aye! Shoot first and ask questions later! Aye!’ and it’s a real miracle that man doesn’t have a whole boatload of albatrosses hanging around somewhere. (Unless he does, and I just haven’t seen it.)

Bertrand and I—well, we’ve kept the house up. Even though he has that thing for natural light, you know what I mean. But we’ve managed to decorate it nicely. I got the Gothic Furniture (capitals required), he got his large windows, there is a last unopened root beer bottle in the fridge because every time we look at it both of us think about how you said it’s impolite to take the last one, and I thought, maybe I’d save it for when you came back but I don’t

The last thing I want is to

Bertrand and I, we’re going out to dinner tonight, because we’re still not all that comfortable with the kitchen yet. I mean, why did we get such a fancy kitchen? I’m sure one of these days I’ll come around to it and it’ll be fine but right now it’s, it seems a hassle, I guess. So we’re going out and I’ve already decided that I’m going to order this truly egregious amount of pasta and no one will stop me!

We don’t really have any plans for tomorrow. As it stands right now. We’ve both been sort of taking things as they come lately. Bertrand, Bertrand’s been very busy. Both of us have been busy, but I think he’s been trying to keep his mind occupied. A lot of us have. Even Hector looks more concerned than he usually does. I saw him the other day—not here, in town—and I didn’t think it was possible for Hector to look that harried. So much has been happening lately, I feel like even I haven’t had time to catch my breath, even in this part of the city. It’s like everything’s been going a mile a minute, taking me with it, and the moments where it stops, the moments where I have the time to think, are unbearably, agonizingly slow. But most of my life has been like that, you know.

And I know, I know you are too. Busy. And concerned.

I know.

When you

Did you

The last performance of our play was three days ago. Since the Daily Punctilio doesn’t have a theater section anymore, Bertrand and I haven’t been reading any rave reviews but we were rereading but, what can you do. Geraldine’s moved on to some other column now too, something about, I don’t even know, tax evasion? Shoes? I can never understand a single thing she writes. Even that ‘Secret Organizations You Should Know About’ thing didn’t even pan out, can you believe that? All she did was write about Esmé! All that trouble for

It looks like it’ll be the last play for a while. I know they wanted us to go on longer, but, well, that’s how it has to be. Don’t know what I’m going to do with myself without a script to lug around, but I’ll probably memorize something for kicks. Gilda Farrell’s lines, maybe, that’d be fun.

But it’d be better if you

This is really the first time I’ve had one of those unbearably slow moments in a while, and of course the first thing I think of is you. You and Bertrand have always filled those gaps for me, but now it’s different. It’s just

I saw Jacques the other day and he

Ramona’s the only one who hasn’t been so

I want to see you so much, Lemony. With everything I have, I want you with me, and I keep hoping that if I close my eyes, when I open them again, there you’ll be, alive and well and next to me and real. Or I’ll walk away from my desk and this letter and when I look back it’ll all have been a bad dream, the worst nightmare I keep stopping and hoping and when you’re not there and I’m still here I

I don’t know how to do this. I can’t

I didn’t want to do it like this.

I don’t want you to I’m, burying the lede, or doing any of this on purpose or anything, because by now you’ve definitely noticed how long this is (although, personally, I’m only at the beginning, but I have a feeling this is going to get long—I know I’ve said I could run laps around the city in the time it takes you to finish a single metaphor but between the two of us we both know I could go on for much longer and will), and you have a vague idea, or a concrete idea, or an idea you don’t want to think about, of where I’m going to go with this. If it was something simple it wouldn’t be like this. If I was just, telling you the news, I wouldn’t need so much time, and I need so much of it. I’m setting the stage trying to making sure I wanted to I can’t just

I am a weak woman, Lemony Snicket. And that is a complete lie, you and I know, but I am a weak woman and I don’t want to be but my hands are shaking.

You and I. You and I know so many things.

So why should we

We both know how to make Ramona laugh, and the right amount of sugar for Olivia’s tea, and where Jacques will be on Tuesdays even though he pretends he doesn’t keep a regular schedule, and where Monty has his keys stashed in his garden, and everything possible about Bertrand, including what book he’s reading right now even though you haven’t been home in two months (it’s still that cat book because he says he wants to see the look on your face when he reads it out loud after dinner) (it’s still that cat book), and what kind of records Kit wants for her birthday even though she never has the time to play them, and even what Esmé is going to eat tomorrow because would you believe that herring is still in, to her continued consternation. She can talk all she wants about how good herring is but I still see that look on her face when she eats it! Every meal, Lemony! I’m giggling as we speak and I wish you could see her because it is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my LIFE

Maybe those things are superficial, but they’re things we know about people, about ourselves, and that counts, doesn’t it? And—and I know what you look like when you wake up and I know what you look like when you’re fixing your typewriter and I have to help and I know what you look like when you think I’m not looking at you, and there was a time where that meant you didn’t look like everyone you knew had just died. You know what I look like at my worst, the worst I ever let you see. You knew it anyway. You It was enough.

And Bertrand. I know I’ve said it before but, you and I were so lucky. Lots of good things came from of this, right? The three of us, you and me and Bertrand. Our apartment and that wallpaper we took down in Bertrand’s when he moved out of his, with those horrendous yellow stripes. The cat we pretended to have and the elaborate medical history we made for it so we’d all have an excuse to go home early. (That poor cat, though. I don’t think it would’ve been possible for it to really survive like that. We should be better to our imaginary pets next time in the future.) Watching Bertrand dance to my records, which was terrible because we hadn’t taught him to dance yet. Trying out those new recipes. Keeping the windows open in the summer. The diner down the street, the ice cream shop on the corner, that night it rained and we all stayed outside and got soaking wet because why not? Bertrand making that excessive amount of soup the next day. You telling us we were the only things that mattered. Bertrand would push your hair out of your face when you were sleeping and I wanted to watch that for the rest of my life. I wanted it to be the last thing I ever saw.

Those moments, every moment. Reading in the dark, losing my glasses, you stopped dead the first time we were out with Bertrand and he was under a streetlamp and you both looked so beautiful and you kissed him for the first time and you didn’t even remember to be nervous.

And those million citations Jacques didn’t give us for public indecency during that spring he was disguised as a police officer. (He was definitely kidding when he brought it up. There was no way he could’ve seen us.)

It makes me so happy, to think about all that. I love you and Bertrand so much. I

Oh Lemony. I don’t think I can do any of this.

-------

In other better happier general news, Gustav let Bertrand and me see the pictures from the wedding, and then he archived them, because we agreed that was for the best, and Bertrand figured you’d probably say the same. I look absolutely stunning, and Bertrand looks incredibly handsome even though he finally admitted he agrees with you, that hat was not his style, and you, Lemony, in that white suit that matched Bertrand’s with those peach-colored flowers because peach is a better color than I ever gave it credit for and it looked so good in the spring because it was the color the wall in the living room turned when the afternoon sun hit, you look

It was such a beautiful day. Still spring, and right after Bertrand’s birthday. Us, Kit, Jacques, Ramona, Olivia, Dewey, Hector. Jerome was invited—or he was supposed to be, who knows what happened there. We barely saw Gustav the whole time too, since he kept climbing up into trees for better angles. The smallest place we could find that would hold all of us and be so out of the way. The cake Kit made, against everyone’s expectations. Ramona cried, because of course she did. All those flowers, no one could move the whole time for walking into at least six bees, but no one minded. So much love. It was palpable, and my whole body was alive with it, with such a soft warmth I could barely breathe. I don’t think I ever stopped smiling, not while dancing or singing or kicking my shoes off because such mortal trappings cannot contain me, or when you and Bertrand danced and you cried, or when a crow flew overhead and we all stopped, just for a single second, before every one of us decided not to care. For a few hours one glorious afternoon.

You look happier than I’ve ever seen you before and now I don’t know if I’ll ever see you like that again or forever and I’m sorry, I was right, I can’t do this, I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this

-------

I’ve taken a few deep breaths and I’m ready to

Oh who am I KIDDING

Lemony I love you so much and I need you so much my heart is going to break with it

justice does not need eyes to see,

but truth built himself eyes

in the porcelain patterns of his world

and let them do the talking

in the skies he

so kindly

let them see,

with the eyes he gave them,

one after another

after another

i was something else

but i lived so close beside

that they could not accuse me

of being blind

but i could’ve seen everything

if i could see with every eye,

one after another

after another

after another,

every eye

a certainty,

every eye

the truth,

every eye

mine alone.

You told me when we were younger that I should give rhyming verse a try and, well, Lemony, not everything you said was good advice.

-------

I do, though. I love you a great deal. I think it confuses people. Besides the fact that some of them never understood our relationship with Bertrand (cowards), I get the impression some of our associates don’t know why I love you. Which is just stupid of them, and I don’t owe them anything, none of them are going to read this. It’s not their business why I love you, it’s ours. And I love you because

How can you explain why you love someone? Someone can say ‘they make me laugh’ as much as they want and sure it’s true but is that really why? Can you ever really say why? Isn’t it enough to love somebody, with everything you have? To say, that’s the one I want, for the rest of my life? Who could I possibly need to defend myself to?

I love you because I love you, because I look at you and think I love you, because I inhale and exhale that I love you, because every part of me only feels right with you.

I love you because you embarrassed me but I thought you were kind. I love you because I didn’t ever have to explain anything. I love you because you always came back to me. I love you because you made me happy. I love you because you didn’t let anything stop you from loving me. I love you because you loved me. I love you because when you took my hand I thought I could do anything with that love.

I love you because you were mine. I love you because you looked at me. And I love you because it was more than that, it always was.

I love you because of the records you played. I love you because of the time we taught Bertrand to make root beer floats. I love you because you’d rehearse our lines with us even though you can’t act. I love you because of the way you would stand in the kitchen and wonder what you should make for dinner. I love you because you said you’d plant strawberry bushes in the backyard. I love you because you could never stand Geraldine Julienne. I love you because we would all sit around the table in my apartment and critique the newspaper articles together. I love you because you’d never take the train. I love you because Bertrand and I found every shortcut in the city for you. I love you because you and Bertrand would knit me the ugliest sweaters on purpose. I love you because you would take care of the bats for me and you were terrible at it.

I love you because you were wonderful where it counted. I love you because we’d stay up late and watch movies. I love you because you would hold Bertrand like it was the most important thing in the world. I love you because you would furrow your brow when you read something you didn’t like. I love you because you’d take me to the beach when it was cold. I love you because we went on picnics in the summer. I love you because when I walked into our apartment and then when I walked into our house it always felt like home. I love you because we made up that cat. I love you because you’d sing with me. I love you because Bertrand would take us bird-watching and name the birds with us. I love you because you bought me flowers.

I love you because you told me what happened. I love you because we went back there with you. I love you because I went into the lighthouse. I love you because I wasn’t going to not go. I love you because no one else would’ve gone. I love you because we let you walk out the door there and I knew you would come back.

I love you because we used to make out in the back of the movie theater and we’d take turns with Bertrand and then try to piece together what even happened in the movie when we got home. I love you because you used to sit in dark rooms with me and pretend we were ghosts and scare the other volunteers. I love you because we could just read for hours and not say a word. I love you because you let me cry in the bathroom. I love you because you would make up songs on the accordion when I was upset. I love you because I would whistle along when you did songs I knew. I love you because you would go out of your way to buy crackers. I love you because you would say things like “when we first met, you were pretty, and I was lonely” and you let me laugh. I love you because you would write me notes during class. I love you because you looked the same way I did the first time we saw Bertrand—shocked, and then a little impressed, and then irritated, because who did he think he was? I love you because who did any of us think we were, really. I love you because we grew to not care. I love you because we became people I was proud of.

I love you because you would feed that cat in the back alley on your way home and I would watch you from the window. I love you because that cat followed us to our house and then we had a real live legitimate cat until someone across the street put out better cat food. I love you because of the way you would read out loud, because you couldn’t act but when you read it was like seeing the sunrise for the first time. I love you because the one thing you did that was better than Bertrand was make tea. I love you because you taught me all your cookie recipes. I love you because we got you to sleep in the middle so we could protect you. I love you because they couldn’t take that away from me.

I love you because I’m here in an otherwise empty house, some boxes still unpacked, letting the dust settle, pouring my heart out when I don’t want to, because I do love you with everything I have, every part of me, every bone and every sigh and every drop of blood, and that’s the end of that. That’s all there is, I love you. That’s what it comes down to, I love you. That’s the only thing I want to say, I love you.

I do, I do love you. Lemony, please believe me.

-------

I know Bertrand has his own thoughts, his own opinions. He doesn’t want to admit that he does, but he gets this, look, on his face. Like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, like he’s lost something special but it was there a moment ago, wasn’t it. He thinks I haven’t noticed. After all this time, he thinks he’s not supposed to be here, and you it hurts, is all.

And as much as Bertrand is a part of us, indelibly, forever, just as you are, both of you so a part of me that I ache with it, this letter is between you and me. Not because it was the two of us first. But because you know, for as much as I don’t want to, I’ll say the things Bertrand won’t.

That’s how this has to be.

-------

So.

Olaf’s started talking to me again, which I didn’t think would happen in a million years. Although maybe I shouldn’t call it talking? More like, he sort of shows up if he knows I’m at headquarters (which is far and few between anyway so, really, what the hell?) and lounges in doorways with these big smiles and says these dramatic things at me instead of to me, which he can’t possibly expect me to believe. How stupid does he think I am? Because I’m not. He keeps going, hey Beatrice, have you read the Daily Punctilio? And I don’t say anything to him, even though yes, I’ve read the Daily Punctilio, dammit.

You and I both know what’s in the Daily Punctilio, and for a while I thought, maybe you were writing those articles yourself, part of another fragmentary plot, and that you’d tell me about it later, and you’d explain it to me, even though I wouldn’t need it to be explained, not really. But you didn’t. Not that you didn’t explain, you just, you just didn’t tell me anything. And you were gone and I couldn’t even see you anyway and that was what really made it hard? It wasn’t like I doubted you. I didn’t. I didn’t doubt you. I knew you wouldn’t do any of those things.

But everyone looked at me and they looked so damn pitying, like, oh it happens to the best of us, only he’s not the best of us. Maybe you should’ve seen it coming, well you know what he’s like, as if nothing had ever happened? As if we hadn’t grown up together? As if we wouldn’t have followed you to the ends of the earth because we believed in you? It’s not everyone, but it’s enough. Like some of them don’t owe you their lives.

Bertrand says that people deal with things in different ways, and saying those things about you is probably just another way they’re dealing with everything. Don’t you think it’s harder, it’s gotten harder, as we’ve gotten older? But they don’t have to throw you under the bus to do it. They don’t have to vilify you to make themselves feel better. They don’t have to look me in the eye like that, like I’m some, some poor miserable thing, or like I have to be protected, or like I don’t know what I’m doing, or like they can’t even trust me.

But what does that make me?

And Olaf would grin at me and I would hold my head high and look him back and spit in his face. I wasn’t going to let it get to me. It had only been a month. How long is a month, in the grand scheme of things? What does a month matter, against the beginning of a lifetime? And when a month became two, what did that matter?

-------

I wouldn’t say that Hector and I were ever particularly close, but I’ve actually seen a lot of him lately. We meet up for tea because he keeps saying there’s something he wants to talk to me about but mostly he sits there and looks at his tea and I pretend I’m not super uncomfortable. And then he insists on paying the check, in exact change.

When I see Hector, I think about Haruki. I know how close they were. And Haruki respected you so much, more than anyone else. As in, he respected you more than he respected any of our other friends, but also more than maybe anyone else respected you, because that was how Haruki was. Loyal, the best of the best, and so fierce about it. I wanted him there at our wedding.

Haruki was really the first person we lost, I guess. And I hate how we’re never going to know how it happened, because they say no one else was there, and the one person we do know was there, he’s never going to say a damn thing about it, and we all know that for sure. But I remember everyone gathering around to write Haruki’s obituary and how little we had to say. Not because we didn’t know him. But because, what were we going to say? What did we have left to say, who did Haruki have left, besides us? And what were we?

Hector looks at me and I don’t know what to say to him. He doesn’t know what to say to me. I’m terrified he’s going to tell me I should’ve known better too because then I won’t be able to stand it. But he just looks at me and I try not to cry and I’m trying not to cry now because he’s feeling it too, this awful business of feeling like things are starting to break. Sometimes I feel Hector is going to disappear, too.

--------

I guess the question I started to think was, how long was I going to wait. Bertrand and I had waited for longer, and then there were times where we never waited, and hadn’t we reached a point where we weren’t supposed to, anymore? But then, when you’re married, aren’t you supposed to do whatever you have to?

But doesn’t it go both ways? One half can do their part but doesn’t the other half have to do something too and how much is it before you’re asking too much but how long is it before you’re not doing enough and when you’re married aren’t you supposed to know the answers to all the questions, the right and the wrong ones, you’re not supposed to care and you’re supposed to be there and it’s all is supposed to be okay, and

We never did do anything traditionally, though, did we?

-------

I saved the article. I didn’t save all of them, but I saved this one.

-------

UNIDENTIFIED BODY IDENTIFIED

The unidentified body recently pulled from the downtown river has been identified as local ex-theater critic and renowned person of interest, Lemony Snicket, who was last seen surveying the river and saying, “How deep do you think it really is?”

“For the record,” said the local police, who preferred to remain nameless and sent in their response by postcard from three towns over, “it was three feet.”

Mr. Snicket was identified by a source who was also unidentified, but proved their credentials by singing a variety of showtunes for the newspaper staff, to great applause.

“Yes, I suppose that’s him,” said the source, when asked to identify the photo of the river, which was presented to them while they were drinking a glass of water, because they were parched after the showtunes. When the glass of water spilled on the photograph, the source went on to say, “Oh, that’s definitely him.”

The body in question disappeared as soon as it was found, but the police have no reason to suspect foul play, as no livestock was found at the scene, the morgue, or the local bakery, and neither does our source.

“Can I leave now?” asked the source. “I need to go pick up my glasses.”

Mr. Snicket has recently been the suspect in a number of crimes, including arson, lockpicking, theft, and jaywalking without a license. He has been described as “that’s not what I would call a grey suit, it leaned closer to charcoal.” There is no planned funeral service at this time.

-------

Bertrand and I laughed a lot, because it was the most outrageous article we’d ever read, and we kept talking about what sort of bakery would even allow livestock inside, and of course we knew it was about you, but of course it wasn’t you, because we didn’t know where you were but we knew you were alive. You were alive, so no matter what we read or what anyone told us, no matter who wanted to believe what, we knew the truth.

And, again, Lemony, it wasn’t that I needed you to explain. It was that I wanted you to tell me. I wanted you to let me in on it. I wanted you to call or come by and tell us, your husband and your wife, hey no big deal but I’m gonna fake my death for the foreseeable future, is that okay? And instead I have to find out from Olaf waving it in my face? I have to find out from some absurd article I shouldn’t have even looked twice at? I have to find out from people I thought were my friends telling me I should have known better?

I sure don’t need to tell you, but, we just got married, Lemony! And we had a house and a life and plans and no matter what happened, no matter what else we had to do, because there was no way we were ever going to give this up and we knew that, we were going to stay together, we were going to do this, what we promised, not to other people but to ourselves, and each other, and

Sometimes I want to think that you planned it like that, that you sat down and thought to yourself about the best worst way to do it and you thought, leaving us alone like this and faking your death and not saying a single word was the greatest way to break our hearts, especially after marrying us, that would hurt the most, you wanted to do it so you did it and you got away from us for good like you always wanted because you were never going to stay and you knew it, because then I can hate you like I’m supposed to and stop thinking of the way you smile at me

I hate that you aren’t a cruel person, I hate that you didn’t do it on purpose, I hate that the real true human tradition is that people are human and nothing else

How am I supposed to do this?

a bird up in her chamber

eats love for breakfast lunch and dinner

and steadily gets thinner

sings songs she won’t forget,

in the darkness by the lamps

says the shapes of lonely words

said by lonely people

in lonely rooms

to feel better about

being

what is a life with this alone

what is a life

like this?

“when we grab you by the ankle, where your life is ours to take

you’ll soon be doing wicked things, they’ll keep you long awake

when your whole life is a secret then you’ll be a volunteer

and you’ll scream a long time later, for

the world was never quiet here.”

-------

Bertrand has been making lists. You know his tendency to organize, but the funny thing is he just keeps leaving them places. I’m sitting on like, three of them.

To Do

-Check maps

-Apologize to D

-Extra key

-Secure boat

-Study family trees

To Buy

-Thick, sturdy rope

-Do they make portable record players?

-Paintbrushes (for then and now, so get extra)

-White curtains? Will they match? Check ‘To Think’

-Extra wires, no candles!

To Think

-Ask Kit about Bernadette

-Examine garden for hiding spots

-Turtles or foxes?

-What if it turns out to be true?

-Or birds??

Definitely not birds.

-------

You know, I haven’t seen Jerome in a while. Maybe it’s also been two months, I’m not sure. I feel like, even before the wedding, we weren’t seeing much of him—although it wasn’t like Jacques paraded him around or anything in the first place—but since then, I don’t think Jacques has even talked about him.

This means Jacques’s Tuesdays are open now, although you’d never know it. He still only shows up when he wants to. And if he doesn’t want to, then you have as much luck finding him as finding a grammar rule Jo doesn’t know. It must run in the family. I hate to

I had Kit get ahold of him for me. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what to say to Kit anymore, which is unsettling, but Kit acts like she always does. She comes over and makes herself at home and talks to both of us like this is average everyday Kit business for her. I don’t know if I admire her tenacity or if it’s going to be something else I can’t stand down the line. I don’t know yet. She hugged me when she left, though. That’s just how Kit is. And I don’t really want to lose that.

I wasn’t sure if Kit would know, the thing I wanted to ask Jacques. I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if she did, but when I saw her I thought, maybe she didn’t know. She didn’t talk about you at all. And it wasn’t the ‘I’m Kit Snicket and I’m Being Purposefully Vague For Reasons, Now Deal With It’ sort of silence, it was the ‘I’m Kit Snicket and I Refuse to Admit I Don’t Know This Piece of Information, So I’m Going to Rearrange Your Bookshelves’ sort of silence. Still don’t know where she put T.S. Eliot. I think she took it with her.

Jacques didn’t want to talk to me. He’s too polite to say it, but I could tell. He kept making excuses, and by the time we finally got him to come here, he was uncomfortable and I was on edge. He came right out and said he couldn’t stay long. He knew why I wanted to talk to him and he told me straightforward that he couldn’t tell me.

I’m not proud of what I said to him.

-------

If it was the last day, but it probably was but Lemony, I don’t I sure didn’t know.

I will remember every second until the day I die.

We waited until after the wedding to move into the house, especially because the only honeymoon we wanted was for the three of us to be there together, alone, for a little while. It was on the outskirts of the city, away from everything else, and we barely told anyone. We didn’t even tell everyone from the wedding.

I watched the sunrise, the soft shadows sliding along the sheets on the bed, catching on the suitcases we still hadn’t unpacked all the way, you and Bertrand warm beside me, and I didn’t want to get up. We put the best bed in the whole world in our room, and rightly so. High bed posts but no canopy because Bertrand was worried about dust. Crisp white sheets and I was so excited to look when we finally got up and see the wrinkles mashed down in them from where we slept because that meant it was ours for real. That rich wine comforter that it was too hot to use the first night so we still had it folded up at the foot of the bed, but you had this look in your eyes when we spread it out like you couldn’t wait for winter and when we’d be squished up against each other underneath it for warmth.

That morning, I just wanted to lay there and savor it. It wasn’t like we’d never been in the same bed before, or that we even needed to be married, but! To know I could hold it in my hands, that’s what it was.

And then Bertrand rolled over and got an elbow into my side somehow and you mumbled something about Wedding Pancakes (capitals implied) and then we had to eat breakfast.

I checked. The wrinkles were all there.

-------

Bertrand and I.

We haven’t

We’ve been

We’ve been angry at each other.

And you know Bertrand, he doesn’t get angry, really, he gets, more disappointed than anything, but he’s. He’s been angry. At me. I know.

I get scared, because I don’t know what to do, so I, I can’t hold a conversation without yelling at somebody, and it’s usually Bertrand, and I hate yelling at him and sometimes he starts to yell back.

We’re not. Okay. Right now.

We weren’t supposed to do this without you and I don’t want to find out that we can’t, Lemony. And I know we can but I know it’s also not a matter of doing it with or without you, because that’s awful, I just keep wondering what if you were what held us all together and if you’re not here how are Bertrand and I supposed to go on like this. Saying the wrong things, avoiding each other, not coming home. I guess that’s how we’re ‘dealing’ with it but that’s sure some sick way to do it.

I don’t want to lose anybody and fighting for them means that I want to keep screaming until everything stops.

-------

Jacques said you’d be back soon enough.

I told him I needed to know how soon was soon.

He said soon enough.

I said that wasn’t enough.

I never though of Jacques as one to yell. And he didn’t really yell, he mostly raised his voice, like I couldn’t hear him. I mean I was definitely talking over him but it was because I could hear him and I didn’t want to.

No one can tell me anything I don’t know. I know they think I haven’t felt the same worries as everyone else but that’s because I never wanted them to think that I did. And I did too good a job, apparently. I know we live hard lives, Jacques. I know it requires sacrifices, Jacques. I know there’s no guarantee, Jacques. I know there’s things you have to give up. I know you can’t be childish or selfish in this business. I know we knew what would happen. I know sometimes no matter how hard you try, you’re just going to fail.

He told me to wait for you.

-------

After breakfast, we organized the library, because we still had so many things in boxes but we agreed we had to get that done. We put everything in, every repeat copy and every notebook because we actually had room for everything instead of trying to cram it all into smaller bookshelves. The library was the biggest room in the house and had that beautiful windowseat. (It still does. We’re still in this house, after all, but this moment, this day, just isn’t right now.) I’ll admit I spent more time lounging on it than I did organizing books, but, you sat on that windowseat with me, you knew how comfortable it was. I loved those windows and how bright the sun was (really.) and how good I knew it was going to look when it was raining. And you agreed, and Bertrand rolled his eyes at us, and I told him, he got his natural light, what more did he want?

For two people to stop lazing around and figure out if we were going in alphabetical order or by genre or by which ones most recently made us cry over lunch, Bertrand said.

It was alphabetical, of course.

We forgot about lunch, because we put the record player in the library until we could find another place for it and started playing our favorites. Bertrand could dance by then, obviously, we wouldn’t have married him if he couldn’t. We were very good at dancing together, after practicing for so long. No one was ever going to do a better three-way tango and we all knew it.

We picked through the fridge and some of the wedding gifts, once we got hungry and tired of dancing. We found out Jerome somehow still sent us at least thirty coasters, and learned that he apparently wildly overestimates our social life, because there was no way we were going to be inviting thirty people at a time over anymore, or at least, not for a while. You and Bertrand stacked them in the dining room in a cabinet, and those you organized by color. Then we stood at the window there and looked out into the garden (the best view of it was from the dining room) and talked about the flowers we were going to plant, and how Ramona was going to send us (express) a clipping from one of the rosebushes in her garden, the ones we’d look at during her family’s masked balls.

We went to the corner store down the street and you and Bertrand pretended to fuss over tomatoes while I was looking at loaves of bread and when I turned around you were buying flowers for me, red and bright and beautiful. We put them in the kitchen while we all made dinner (salmon, with cherry tomatoes). Somehow I found the time to make sorbet for dessert and it was only then we realized how late it was and we laughed a lot that day and laughed a lot then because we didn’t need to care about things like that. Our house was barely put together and we tried to find a way to use every single coaster from Jerome and we hadn’t had words with the city about the electricity yet because there was so much we’d had to do beforehand that we had to use candles. We all had matches, and we weren’t naive enough to think we wouldn’t have them.

I can’t tell you how powerful I felt, lighting those candles, because I know you and Bertrand felt it too. This was our doing and ours alone. This space was ours. We looked at each other over the candles, the shadows on our faces, and we’d never looked clearer.

We could’ve lived forever, in that moment.

-------

I called your brother a coward and I told him that whatever happened to Jerome now that he wouldn’t protect him was his fault and his alone and if he could live with himself that’s fine but I couldn’t if I didn’t try to do this and if he didn’t tell me where you were I was going to kill him where he stood and he shouldn’t even think for one second that I wasn’t capable of doing what had to be done and if that meant I had to kill for what I wanted then I would.

-------

You kissed us in the morning. You smiled. You walked out the door and then came back because you forgot your hat and Bertrand and I were still laughing even as the door shut behind you.

And then you were gone.

-------

Kit came by again, after.

We sat in that silence.

She told me that it was the one thing they hadn’t told her. She hadn’t known, until I asked Jacques. We don’t have anywhere else to go, she said, in a moment of unprecedented candidness. So we always come back.

“I underestimated him,” she said.

I told her she could keep The Wasteland, since it was practically hers because it had been yours. Kit smiled. She didn’t say much else.

-------

Bertrand and I aren’t the only ones losing someone here and I forgot that.

Jacques and I looked at each other for a long time. I tried to apologize and he kept shaking his head. He told me where you were. He told me he didn’t know when you’d be back—or if you would at all. He told me he was the one writing the articles in the Daily Punctilio. He turned away from me. Then he gave me his handkerchief, and put his hand on mine, and got up and left.

-------

What it feels like, Lemony, is like you

It feels like you picked

It feels like we didn’t matter and

And it’s not like we could ever choose or have one or the other I know I know I know but

We’re never going to be without it but I thought that

WE GOT MARRIED, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, LEMONY SNICKET

You picked an idea of nobility that you spent the past ten years struggling with and denouncing and promising you’d never

It wasn’t like we ever set out to save you anyway I

At the end of the day, that’s it. You picked the organization over us. And I didn’t think we were going to have to draw lines like that. At least not now. At least not right now. Because that means I have to make a decision. Because it means I can’t only think about me. Because it means I can’t keep waiting. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.

-------

I found out the other day.

I had a feeling, though. You just, you either have the feeling or you don’t, right? And I did. And I keep thinking about what your reaction would be. What you’d say. I keep thinking about your eyes, bluer than blue. I keep thinking about the world we said we were going to make when we were kids, the people we said we’d be. We were tiny and young and idealistic and you’re really only that way once in your whole life and when you’re not anymore, you can’t go back.

-------

We can’t go on like this.

stripped off my dress like a skin,

peeled

so you could see everything

not only then,

but always.

didn’t know i was doing it,

guess i never really ran out of clothes.

you took off you shirt

and I was jealous.

you only needed to do it once and there you were.

I thought.

but now I keep finding shirts

in the places where I found you

and I can’t

find anything

that was mine

to put back on

I really can’t do anything

-------

Enclosed you’ll find the ring. I know it’s not just the ring I married you with, but the ring I married Bertrand with, but whenever we look at it we think of you and I’m the one who has to wear it all the time and I can’t.

But I don’t want to give it back because what if it’s the only thing I get to keep of you? But it wasn’t ever mine anyway, or yours, and who knows, maybe Ramona will marry Olivia with it someday, and maybe you’ll be there, only you wouldn’t be if you got the ring back, you’d never show your face again.

And that’s not what I want, I don’t want you out of my life, Lemony, but if I give it back then maybe I do. Maybe that is what I want. Maybe I never want to see you again like this.

-------

Okay, I have to ask. I have to, because Jacques kept his mouth shut about this.

The last time you saw us. Not the day, but the morning, walking out the front door. Did you know you weren’t coming back? You just left like you always did, to go to the newspaper, before Bertrand and I went to the theater, and as far as leaving someone for good goes that’s so

Did you meet up with Jacques, or Hector, or Jo, or even Kit, and did they tell you? Did headquarters address you personally? Did you take an assignment from someone else? Did someone corner you and were you trying to protect us? Was that the only way you could do it, going into hiding and faking your death? Who else was involved, besides Jacques? How long was it going to go on for? Did they expect you to do it by yourself? Did you have a plan, did any of them have a plan? What fragmentary plot was it even a part of? Did you know you weren’t coming back? Could you even come back? Did it even happen right away? Did it start out as some mediocre assignment you were going to tell us about later and then what happened so that I was reading the paper and there you were being accused of things I knew you’d never do? Why didn’t they ask me? Why didn’t they ask Bertrand? Why didn’t they ask us? You knew we’d do it together, we swore we’d do it together, why didn’t you tell us? What made it so that you couldn’t?

Or did you really decide for yourself that that was it?

I don’t want to believe that. I don’t, Lemony. I want to believe that it was one thing and then another but do you know why I can’t, why I keep asking? Do you understand why I need to know the truth? Why I need to be able to put it together? Why waiting and trusting isn’t enough anymore?

--------

No one could ever extinguish my love, Lemony, no one, nothing, not a single solitary thing ever, nothing could do it, but my trust is a different matter. Loving someone and trusting someone are two different things and I know you know that as much as I do. You. Knew. All. Of. This.

-------

You know. If it had ended at the article. I might’ve been okay with it. I might have. Not making any promises, because we both know better than that. But I might’ve. I could’ve.

It didn’t end with the article.

Olivia had a short-lived assignment working the telegrams recently. She gave Ramona a very specific telegram. Olivia was honestly surprised it had come through at all. That something like that would be sent over such an insecure line. And of course she showed Ramona. They didn’t show it to anyone else. Which was lucky, because you know Olivia. She wanted to do whatever she could.

Ramona sent it to me. Right away. I got it yesterday. She said she’d never felt worse in her entire life. She said she was sorry. She’s the only one who didn’t sound patronizing about it.

J.S.,

AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED STOP GOING ON FULL STOP

M.K.

I never liked Monty Kensicle all that much as a name either.

-------

Lemony I can’t help but think that you’re sick of me, sick with me

It wasn’t like I ever—like I did it to be similar, I would NEVER, because both of us had our reasons for why we did what we did, you on that train, me and Bertrand at the opera. We knew what we were doing. Did we regret it? Enough for it to hurt, on the wrong days. Not enough for it to matter, in the long run. But enough for it to stop me every once in a while, in the way I know it stopped you.

But, but did you think, you couldn’t love someone who

Which would be, extraordinarily hypocritical of you, not to mention

I know you still think about it and I know how much it

I paid my price for what I did, Lemony, and so did you, and I didn’t

Is that how it works? Is that what happens? Is this what else I have to give up, for some shred of nobility, is my life going to be one mistake after another because I followed an order and I though they were right enough? Not even right, right enough, how stupid—is everything that happens to me going to be because of that? Am I losing you because it’s what I deserve?

Don’t I deserve good things? Don’t I still deserve happiness, and stability, and love, and a family, and all those things I worked so hard for? Because nobility wasn’t the end of it for me, this was what we wanted, something better, something for us, something we deserved, and this can’t be it, this can’t be the only thing we get for all of that, there has to be something else! And if I lose everyone close to me because of this organization Lemony I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do I feel like I’m going to lose my mind like this

--------

I think of you out there, alone, and probably cold because you never bring a damn jacket with you anywhere. It’s summer but I’m imagining you as being cold, but I think that’s just because it’s sort of what you do when anyone thinks of someone as being anywhere alone.

Or, I’m just—I’m thinking of you out there, alone, for sure. I’m doing that. I’m thinking. About you. Alone.

I’m

thinking.

I think of you. Out there. Letting Jacques know, letting Olivia know, because you had to know who was working the telegram, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent it, I think of you going out of your way to tell your brother and not me and Bertrand and maybe you thought they’d tell me anyway but I had to pull teeth to get it from Jacques and if it had been anyone else! No one but Olivia would have said! You got lucky! But not enough! Because you still didn’t tell us! You went out of your way to not!! You! I think of you! Doing that instead of having the nerve! The decency! To tell us first! You!

How could you

-------

I think of you, out there—hiding in the middle of nowhere with only the occasional newspaper for company, which, let me tell you, Lemony, is a very frustrating existence. You know what? I keep wanting to hope that you are dead because somehow that would make this easier, I can be angry at a dead man. But I can be angry at anyone, can’t I. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. I can be angry.

I want to hope that you never sleep comfortably again. I want to hope that every sea is too uneven and every desert is too hot and every mountain is too cold and everywhere you go it’s too much. I want to hope that you try and come back and see how good and happy Bertrand and I are without you and you have to realize, you really did mess up. I want to hope that your boat goes down in the middle of the ocean and I know for sure! I want to think that you’ll be so miserable without us and it’ll never have been worth it!!

You’re out there, without us. Without me.

I hope it was worth it.

-------

What am I going to do?

I’m not picking. It’s not—I’m not capable of that, picking between you two, and I know you both had this ridiculous fear that I was going to, but I wasn’t, and I’m still not. I am selfish and clingy and I know what I want and I love what I have, and I love both of you and Bertrand loves both of us and I was ready to stake my life on the fact that you loved both of us too.

And I hate that I have to say it! Because I do! Apparently I do have to, Lemony! If it comes down to, who would I rather do this with, who would I raise a family with, who would I trust more than anything, and you made me make this choice, I’m sorry it can’t be the man who ran away from me! And part of me keeps thinking I’m not even me for saying that, I’m not, I’m not the Beatrice that was going to tear a room apart with her bare hands to get what she wanted, who would scale walls and climb buildings and shoot a gun and could ski and fence by fourteen, I’m not, taking risks, I’m not doing whatever I have to, and that everyone who told me Bertrand was boring (because there were people!!!) and safe and uncomplicated was right and that I’m betraying some fundamental aspect of myself by not even trying, and that I’m hurting Bertrand especially for making him a damn pawn in what I think my life is

But it’s not like I never did! It’s not like I didn’t spend years and years of my life trying to be a good person, trying to create the life I wanted, all of this is me, every ugly thought and every bad decision and every unfinished book and every theater script I keep leaving around places and every single page of this as I try to figure out where I want to go from here! And it just comes back to one thing, Lemony, just one thing! That we can’t do this! That I can’t have you in my life like this! That I didn’t believe it would happen but here it is, it’s happening!! I can’t avoid it! You walked away from me and expected me to be okay with it! You expected me to wait! You expected me to do it! You expected EVERYTHING from me and I only have so much to give, I’m only so much, I CAN’T DO EVERYTHING

And do you know what I am? Do you know what I am, really, when I get right down to it?? I am this, this awful woman with blood on my hands asking you for something that even I could never give anybody, not you or Bertrand or myself and I’m so sick of everything, I’m so sick of myself, I hate everyone and myself most of all, for being like this, for turning into this person, I hate hate hate hate hate all of this and how we were raised and what our future is going to be and what I’ve done and what is it going to take, for things to be better, for me to be better, for—what is it going to take, Lemony, for you to walk back through that door again and not do it over and over and over and I can’t keep letting you do this, I can’t, not to me or to Bertrand, I can’t keep hoping you’ll be there when I wake up and I can’t keep dreaming we’re going to die and I can’t keep pretending that anything about us has ever been okay or ever will be okay! Nothing about this is okay and how am I only realizing it now? How long have we been fooling ourselves into thinking that we could do this? How long do I have to be kind about this? How long do I have to play nice about you and this?

I’m UPSET and I’m ALLOWED TO BE and I

don’t

know

can

forgive

you

I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if I can look at you anymore.

I don’t know.

Do you know how it was, Lemony? It was us first. You and me. From the second we saw each other in that green-walled room, it was you and me. Lemony and Beatrice. Root beer floats and being purposely mysterious to each other when we talked and being too clever. And I thought that meant we could do anything. We could die and I’d be happy because I was with you. As long as I had you.

And then there was Bertrand. And life felt different. Bertrand made it different, Bertrand made life different, he made it worth something else. And the bond that you and I had? Irreplaceable. And what we created with him only made it better. We had room in what we had for something so good. It really was Bertrand. I don’t know what would’ve become of us if it hadn’t been for him. And I saw that in you, too. You thought it too.

That was when I worried. When I started dreaming about terrible things happening to us. To you. I kept running from it because I didn’t know what else to do. I just didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to lose.

I’m scared to do anything. I’m scared to be wrong. I’m scared to know anything else.

I’m scared to die.

I don’t think you are.

I’m not sorry.

-------

Here are some questions. Here are some facts. Here are some things.

1 – I’m tired.

2 – I can’t even wonder if we should have done things differently anymore, right after that moment we met. In that room, I never imagined any of this.

3 – Sometimes I do think you lied all along. And that’s not a reflection on our associates or anything but just, see question/statement 1.

4 – You had to have thought about what would happen.

5 – How could we have a family like this?

6 – Did you think you could run all your life? Did you think that would work out? That Bertrand and I would be satisfied with that?

7 – Did you want me like that?

8 – What am I supposed to do?

9 – How long did you think we could keep this up?

10 – Was I wrong?

11 – What did you want?

12 – I know you’d thought about what a family with us would look like and I didn’t think you’d let anything stand in the way of that and maybe that was where I was naive.

13 – What would you say if I asked you this in person?

-------

After all this, I—

Bertrand has asked me if I have any spare pens.

-------

Lemony—

A long time ago, I sat in the diner near your apartment. We’d all known each other for a while, and you and Bea were very much together, and I didn’t quite feel like a third wheel anymore but I also didn’t feel like I was a part of everything yet. We were still dancing around each other, and I was doing it truly, incredibly badly.

I was in the habit of meeting Jo on weekends, when we would go over our reports together because we worked in similar places. We’d meet in the diner. I would arrive early and take a seat near the door. It had the best view of your window. You never turned the lights on, but I would look at it and think about you and—I’m completely serious—write the worst poetry ever to exist. You and Bea have always been much better at it. Jo would take it upon herself to help and suddenly they were these grammar-specific poems, which meant I definitely was not going to send them. Jo is many things; Jo is just not particularly a writer of romance.

I never told you or Bea, because it didn’t seem noteworthy, once we were together. But, things happen in your life and you wish you’d been able to say so much more than you did. I wanted to tell you about the face Bea makes when you aren’t there. She bites her lip and frowns around the kitchen when there’s a lull in the conversation in the spots you would usually say something clever. I wanted to tell you how the bed doesn’t feel the same when you aren’t in it. Bea says the wrinkles don’t set the same, and I feel like it’s emptier without you. I wanted to tell you that the hottest summer days—and I feel like there have been an endless amount of them so far this summer, humid and muggy and not the least bit sultry—even they feel cold when we can’t see you. I wanted to tell you that every time I do the laundry, I remember how you can’t fold socks. I wanted to tell you that I’ve stopped folding socks altogether, which has become quite the problem. Bea and I have stacks of socks in the bedroom now, which is just silly. I wanted to tell you that I love watching you put your hat by the door when you come home, resting it on the table as gently as possible, giving such a small gesture has such a big importance.

I took those things for granted. So much of my life, I’ve thought that loving things so fiercely and so determinedly could be enough, and I’ve relied on that love to get me through what we had to do. Even when the three of us weren’t together, I think I would’ve been happy to stay that way, because I could still love both of you regardless, and just that would’ve been enough. Just to be able to love you, and have your companionship. I would have cherished that always.

I’m the one who’s been so lucky, Lemony. When we all got together, I felt like my life began. I felt like you and Bea pulled me along into something beautiful and breathtaking and nothing would ever compare. I felt like it would always be there, for the rest of my life.

And I’m—

I don’t hate you. I could never. You need to know, that no matter what happens, I will never hate you. I can’t promise to not be upset with you, because I am, and a little angry, and a little disappointed, and a lot sad. But I don’t hate you.

You and Bea have such beautiful ways to say things, and I’ve always been so jealous of the way you two write. You told me that both of you were jealous of my tendency to be a little more forthright, at least when I got down to it, because let’s not forget, I did spend two months coming up with nicknames for all of us instead of just telling you how much you meant to me. But I don’t have lengthy or passionate ways to say certain things, is what it is. Actions, definitely. But when I have to say it, it comes out.

I love you.

And I wish you were here.

I never wanted to think about it, I guess. I’ve done a very good job of not thinking of things I didn’t want to think about. We do difficult things and live difficult lives. It takes its toll, and I’ve watched it happen. I thought if I held on tight enough—to you, to Bea, to myself—that we could escape some of it, no matter what we’ve done. And we’ve done a lot. We’ve been kept up in turn by sleepless nights and bad dreams and wondering too much. We’re not going to leave—not for good, and each of us know that—but it could be more manageable, together. We would figure it out, when we needed to. Perhaps I was a bit too optimistic about how well I could do it.

I hate to think it was something we did, or something we didn’t see. I hate to think that you gave up on yourself or on us. I hate to think I didn’t do enough. I know it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. I know Bea keeps telling me I’m too kind for my own good, and I think it’s because I’m afraid to really feel anything. Feeling it makes it too real, something I have to actually contend with, and I don’t want to. I really don’t.

I want to say—I don’t want to tell you, I just want to say it—that I’m more hurt than I’ve ever been, and I don’t feel like I belong here without you, and that I think, you didn’t want to do it, but you knew what you were doing, and you did it because some things just sound easier, or hurt more but hurt less than others, and that I despise the people that we’ve become. I despise the things that we’ve been made into, and I don’t know how much of it we did to ourselves. I don’t know how much I can change.

I won’t lie, Lemony, because I’ve never been much of a liar. It’s been hard without you. Bea and I haven’t been talking very much, and we get into arguments when we do. We’ve been avoiding each other. It’s hard to avoid someone you live with, for a lot of reasons. But we’ve been managing to do it. I’ve been hiding at the Denouement. Absolutely, definitely hiding. Dewey’s not pleased but he doesn’t say no to the help organizing the archives. Bea’s been going to the theater, even though she’s technically off-duty for the next seven months (it was self-imposed off-duty, which I’ll admit was surprising). When we do talk to each other, Bea has a tendency to raise her voice, which I don’t mind, necessarily, because I understand why she keeps doing it. I have a tendency of late to do the same, which I’m not proud of. Taking it out on each other isn’t good or responsible of us, but it’s where we are right now. It is a miserable place to be.

Bea assumes I’m upset with her, but I’m not. I’m upset with myself, mostly. I keep thinking that none of this would have happened if I wasn’t here, that I made things worse. If you and Bea had just gone on by yourselves, maybe there would be so much less unhappiness. Maybe I was what made it hard for you to stay. Maybe I pressured you, maybe I pressured myself. Maybe this is my lot in life. They’re awful things to think, but I’m thinking them. That’s what people do, when upsetting things happen. We try to figure out where we went wrong. We don’t come up with any answers, but it’s better than sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves, which we do enough of too. I know eventually we’ll stop hurting each other, Bea and I. It just feels a long way away right now. A lot of things feel that way. You, myself, my friends, anything I thought I knew or had.

I’m being very unkind, to myself. That’s not your fault. It’s just something I’m realizing now. I’ve spent a lot of my life being unkind to myself. I don’t know how not to be. There are many things I don’t believe that I deserve, a sentiment I know you understand. It’s hard to feel like we deserve anything, even what we love. The more I think about it, the more I think, maybe that was why. And that breaks my heart and scares me so much, Lemony, that we—you—are capable of feeling such sadness.

Honestly, part of me wants to keep waiting. The part of me that is a fairly patient person is probably willing to do so. But the other part of me that is less patient and a husband to both of you is the part that hurts, and the part that reminds me that I am allowed to say that there is only so much I can take. I want you here more than anything, but I know for sure none of this is ever going to be that simple again.

But going forward from this, I want to feel like I deserve things. There’s only so much time I can spend regretting, or hating myself, or wishing that I had done something different. It’s easy to get caught up in all of that, and I think I still will be, for a while. I think I’m going to keep thinking miserable things for some time to come. But on the other side of that is something else. Not necessarily a happiness, or a satisfaction, but a certain kind of existence. Or, I guess, a kindness.

I love you very much, Lemony, and I can’t imagine doing this without you. I still don’t want to.

But if you have to—Bea and I aren’t going anywhere. We’ll still be here. I can’t promise in what way, but we’ll be here, if or when or anything at all. I hope you can meet us in that something else one day.

Until then, with all my love,

I wish you bluebirds in the spring,

to give your heart a song to sing,

and then a kiss, but more than this,

I wish you love.

And in July, a lemonade

to cool you in some leafy glade,

I wish you health,

and more than wealth,

I wish you love.

My breaking heart and I agree

that you and I could never be,

so with my best,

my very best,

I set you free.

I wish you shelter from the storm,

a cozy fire to keep you warm,

but most of all,

when snowflakes fall,

I wish you love.

Bertrand

face the sun

in the night,

find it in the night

in the pieces,

dig for it,

dig it out with my hands alone.

yes.

what I left –

fragments,

every last eye,

unwelcome.

piling it back in.

new sunlight.

-------

So—the sad truth is that the truth is sad. The real truth is that I never wanted to believe you were right about that. I thought I could get by on good looks and sheer force and well-hidden optimism and believing I was right. I was wrong. We were all wrong, some of us more wrong than others.

Where you went wrong is thinking that we—that I—would be okay with this. And that was where I went wrong too, I admit. The blame could be with all of us.

What I do know is that we can’t be together like this. Not like this. This is where it ends.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. I don’t know what Bertrand and I will do. And the two of us—Bertrand and I—can figure that out. In whatever way that is. Whatever you’re doing, I leave you to it.

You will—always, always, always—be (somewhere) in my mind, and (deep) in my heart, and wherever (wherever.) (parenthetical required.) you are. Be it a boat, or a cave, or the city, or a grave, true or false. That’s the way you want it. That’s the way I will accept it. Good luck.

Beatrice

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events

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atruththatyoudeny · 4 years

Text

Monthly Reads | July 2020

Happy 28th! As always, my undying love goes out to all the amazing authors this fandom still has. You are all incredible! Thank you for sharing your work with us ♥ Here are all the 21 fics I read and enjoyed this month:

⋙ The Murmur of Yearning | MediaWhore | historical - no smut - arranged marriage past rape/non-con - implied/referenced dubious consent - minor character death - slow burn - 93k Four years ago, Harry Styles was forced into a marriage of convenience to enrich and ally both his and his promised's families. The sudden, and slightly suspicious, death of the Marquess of Haxshire, however, brings great disturbance to Crescentfield Hall and, as his late's husband's closest male relative, Harry unexpectedly finds himself the head of a family he never felt he belonged to. Between a meddling distant cousin hellbent on inserting himself in Harry’s life, his wicked and mistrustful mother-in-law and his late husband’s advisors refusing to help or take him seriously, Harry struggles in the fight to keep what he’s earned and make the Estate finally feel like home. Luckily he doesn’t stand completely alone and finds himself an unlikely ally in Mr Tomlinson, the elusive Land Stewart who has been taking care of the property in the shadows for years. Louis Tomlinson is caring, patient, and unlike everyone else, he doesn’t seem to think Harry committed a murder.

⋙ Donor-Conceived | jaerie | a/b/o - omega/omega - friends to lovers - intersex omegas - pregnancy kink - unplanned pregnancy - fertility issues - miscarriage mentioned - male lactation - lactation kink - 31k When Harry receives the worst news of his life, it's now or never if he wants to carry a child of his own. Without an alpha, it's a daunting idea. But after it's a go, he finds another omega having a child from the same donor and become fast friends. It is only logical that they raise the boys as half brothers, making sure their sons keep up the relationship with the only connection to their anonymous father. It seems like the perfect plan but life doesn't always work out that way.

⋙ Just a touch of your love | anonymous | a/b/o - touch-starved - past abuse - past rape/non-con - miscommunication - anxiety attacks - 12k “What if something happened to you? What would I say to Niall?” “Nothing, he would have to wait to see my corpse on the news like everyone else.” Deadpanned Harry. Louis’ gasp was all the answer he got. Ok, so that might have been a bit too much. With a calmer voice, he said, “It’s really fine. I’ve walked to the tube countless times, I can handle myself. Just go home and tell Niall to stop mothering me.” Louis was finally walking by his side and gave him a sideways glance before talking. “He doesn’t know, does he? Of your, uh, condition.” Harry tensed and his breath became erratic, but he didn’t say a word. Louis continued. “His nose probably hasn’t picked it up, and you’re lucky Liam’s also a beta, but it took me a minute to confirm it. Your scent is gettin’ so…” He seemed to struggle to find a word. He didn’t finish the sentence, but the emotion in his voice made Harry’s tummy churn. -- Or, Harry is a touch starved omega trying to get through it on his own. Louis happens to be the only alpha around to realize it and offers to help.

⋙ We're Not Who We Used To Be | jaerie | trans female character - trans Harry - childhood friends - friends with benefits - transitioning - gender dysphoria - body disphoria gender identity - first time - self-medicating - reference to depression - 7k Louis comes back to his childhood home and sees an old friend who has changed quite a lot since the last time they saw each other.

⋙ Sincerely, Yours | anon | strangers to lovers - military - 25k Prompt:Historical AU where Louis is a soldier on his way to first deployment and Harry is working at a diner. They meet there when Louis is waiting for the bus, Harry tries to cheer Louis up and agrees to write to him while he's deployed because Louis doesn't have anyone else to write to. People kinda make fun of Harry for writing to (and falling for) a virtual stranger but otherwise everything is great until Louis stops writing. AKA travelin' soldier by the Dixie Chicks but gay and with a happy ending.

⋙ Ever Since I Tried Your Way | anon | historical - 1940s - 1950s - farm/ranch - internalized homophobia - hurt/comfort - emotional hurt/comfort - fluff - smut - gender exploration - body worship - 26k Harry had been kissed before, but never like this. He’d shared sweet, curious kisses behind bleachers and in soda shop booths, one or two more daring ones in cars parked on dark suburban streets, but the girls he’d kissed had never filled him with the desperation that erupted from Louis’ touch. He parted his lips and pulled him closer, as though he could breathe Louis straight into his lungs, as if he could swallow him. He wanted to consume Louis the way he consumed the body and blood of Christ. He wanted to place Louis on his tongue and feel him dissolve into a frothy mess of starch and saliva. He wanted to gulp him down until his teeth were stained purple and he was drunk on him. He wanted him in some violent holy way that made his hands shake where they were twisted in Louis’ shirt. In 1949 Harry left his bride at the altar, running away from the only life he'd known. When a kindhearted farmer offers him a ride in his truck and a place to sleep the two find themselves inexplicably drawn together. Isolated on Louis' farm with nobody but a field of dairy cows to intrude, the men are finally able to explore the parts of themselves they've spent their lives hiding away.

⋙ sleeping on our problems | falsegoodnight | a/b/o - college/university - mpreg - friends with benefits - angst - slow burn - hurt/comfort - 67k I’m in love with you, Louis thinks. He feels empty, weighed down by his sadness and the loss of Harry inside him just moments ago before his knot finally went down. There’s moments where he’s sure Harry feels the same. Like now, when he’s gazing down at Louis with so much adoration and tenderness. It’s like they’re both on the cusp of something more, but neither of them ever say a word. His confession is on the tip of his tongue ready to slide out like honey, and yet he remains silent. They both do, looking at each other and recognizing the reluctance mirrored in each other’s eyes. It’s then that Louis realizes they’re both scared. - Or Louis sleeps with Harry and they have more than just catching feelings to worry about.

⋙ in a world alone | falsegoodnight | a/b/o - Swan Lake AU - historical - royalty - magic - curses - friends to lovers - slow burn - mpreg - 51k Harry’s breath catches as the glow grows bigger and bigger until he’s squinting his eyes and blinking at the sudden intense brightness. He closes his eyes, rubbing at them helplessly. When his eyes open again- he gasps, grip loosening on his bow as he gawks at the sight before him. Because the swan is gone. And in its place is the prettiest omega Harry has ever seen. - A Swan Lake AU

⋙ The Baby Whisperer | jacaranda_bloom | strangers to lovers - prior mpreg - neighbours - fluff - smut - kid fic - 19k Harry’s newborn baby is having trouble sleeping and nothing he does seems to work. Tired and alone and at his wits end, Harry is at a loss until a new neighbour arrives to turn his world upside down. OR the one where being neighbourly takes on a whole new meaning.

⋙ was in no hurry, had no worries | defencelouis | strangers to lovers - car accidents - smut - daddy kink - 21k The year is 1999 and Harry can’t stop dedicating songs to Louis on the radio. Or the one where Harry hits Louis with his car.

⋙ Strong Enough | jacaranda_bloom | enemies to lovers - exes to lovers - angst - smut - divorce - 21k “So…” Liam starts, and Louis instantly knows where this is going. He’s actually glad it’s Liam that's dragging the subject out from the shadows and into the light. Louis turns to face him, mirroring his position on the couch and nods, ready for him to continue. Liam takes a deep breath. “Have you spoken to Harry recently?” Five years after Vertigo goes on hiatus, the band comes back together for a benefit concert. Can Louis and Harry work through their complicated past, or are some wounds too deep to be healed?

⋙ What's It Gonna Be? | zeldasayre | high school - 37k Louis looked thoughtful for a moment. “When are you meeting with Clare again?” “Thursday,” Bebe said, looking over at him, the ice clinking in her glass as she stirred it with a long spoon. “Why?” He grinned, narrowing his eyes. He took a long, dramatic pause, sipping his lemonade, and then said, “Scheming.” aka I've watched Shura's "What's It Gonna Be?" music video one too many times. ((Or, Louis and Bebe, best friends since childhood, have crushes on two of the most popular kids in school, and in an attempt to increase their respective chances, Louis befriends Harry Styles, quarterback of the football team, while Bebe befriends Clare Uchima, head cheerleader. Only... the plan... doesn't go exactly as planned.))

⋙ There Goes My Life | anonymous | older larry - colleagues with benefits - mpreg - unplanned pregnancy - smut - lactation kink - 8k Metallic taste in the mouth, check. Aversions to favourite foods, check. Nausea without throwing up, check. A heightened sense of smell, check. Sore and sensitive nipples, check. It had felt as though Harry had been ticking off boxes from his own mental checklist and every new addition brought him closer to an existential crisis. Pregnant. Everything over the last few weeks began to make sense; thoughts he pushed from his mind because he was too busy, and to be honest too scared, to think about. Getting knocked up from a few-night’s-stand was something that happened to teenagers and/or uni students, but certainly not to a forty-year-old Member of Parliament such as himself. *** Or, the one where Harry is single, a Member of Parliament, gets knocked up and has to deal with navigating motherhood in his forties. And Louis? Well, his life is about to change forever as well. This is a tale about colleagues with benefits and the consequences that can come with that.

⋙ Mother I'd Like to * | anonymous | implied mpreg - MILF Harry - 4k “What’s up, dad?” Oliver asks Louis, standing in front of Harry in a way that hides his friends from the view. “Is there something wrong with your mom? Your friends are staring a lot.” Oliver goes beet red at that. He groans and hides his face on his hands. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” --------------------- Written for the prompt: Harry’s and Louis’ son is like 16, so he is hanging out with his friends and his friends are teasing him about how hot his mother (aka harry) is, just like the 1D boys always did with Harry about Anne. The son feels super uncomfortable and Louis is super confused why these little teenagers boys always stare at Harry’s body when he is cooking for them whenever they visit until he finds out they think of Harry as the hottest milf in town (more humor than actual sexual references pls, this is supposed to be more funny than awkwardly sexual :D)

⋙ An Invincible Summer | Brooklyn_Babylon | farm/ranch - historical - 1940s - period-typical homophobia - adoption - minor character death - epilepsy - homophobic language - smut - 44k Never content to stay in one place for long, a few months down south researching for his novel seemed like an idyllic, slow-paced summer to Louis. He wasn't ready for the blistering heat, the backbreaking work of watermelon picking, or how stifling the attitudes in rural Georgia would feel. And he definitely hadn’t anticipated falling in love with the farmer’s son. The summer of 1946 would turn out to be everything worth writing about.

⋙ a trail of honey through it all | faeriestyles | strangers to friends to lovers - mild violence - D/s undertones - 27k The boy in front of him, well really, the man in front of him, was like something out of a confusing wet dream. Built, tall, tan and muscular, his skin glistened with sweat after a long day of working outdoors with his hands. He was wearing a cut up old American football shirt, the bottom hem was torn and the sleeves were cut off to the point where the t-shirt was really just a loose tank top. The shorts he had on had clearly been full length jeans at one point, and were now just crudely cut off above the knee. His white socks were pulled up too high on his calves, and the brown work boots he had on were old as fuck, the leather peeling along the edges of the soles. Curly brown hair stuck out from the edges of his backwards snapback, and there was a smudge of grease wiped along his brow bone. The smattering of hair along his jaw proved that he hadn’t shaved in a week or two, the hair growing in thicker across his upper lip and around his chin. His sinfully bowed mouth was pink and plump, and Louis was suddenly hyper-focused on the way that he chewed at the toothpick stuck between his lips. He looked like he needed a shower. Louis wanted to lick him. Or, the TPH fic we’ve all been waiting for.

⋙ The Recklessness in Water | LarryOn | light angst - smut - 50k Louis Tomlinson is miserable. He's stuck on a family vacation at a lake cabin in New Hampshire when all he wants to do is bemoan his sorry existence and wallow in his sweatpants. As if the humidity and mosquitos weren't bad enough, he becomes the singular target of an obnoxious lifeguard named Harry.

⋙ baby blue | soldouthaz | cowboy AU - famous/not famous - angst - hate to love - enemies to lovers - smut - hurt/comfort - minor violence - 39k Harry Styles takes his time coming out to greet them. Louis only knows what he’s seen on file and what he’s heard them talking about, but he fully lives up to the image he had inside of his head. He saunters down the front steps of the farmhouse in his Levi’s, brown snakeskin boots curving out from underneath the denim Louis’ sure he had specially made. He’s got on a plaid button-down tucked into the jeans because of course he does, curls spilling out from either side of his cowboy hat around his sunglasses and country-tan skin. “Harry Styles,” he drawls, extending a hand to Louis’ manager, “Pleased to meet ya’ll.”

⋙ with no way out and a long way down | we_are_the_same | royalty - soulmates - strangers to lovers - fluff - angst - no smut - emotional hurt/comfort arranged marriage - 31k Prince Harry is ten when he receives his soulmark.

⋙ adjudication | bottomlinsons | royalty - historical - enemies to friends to lovers - enemies to friends - love letters - betrayal - slow burn - light angst - arranged marriage - 75k Harry's been engaged to Princess Charlotte of Ryde for as long as he can remember. He's come to know her, to love her, through the letters she's sent him over the past three years. But when the wedding finally arrives, Harry quickly learns that nothing is as it seems. With his crown and country at stake, Harry must decide who to trust in this strange new land. And the sly Crown Prince of Ryde doesn't seem inclined to make things easy.

⋙ Something to Prove | trysomecats | a/b/o - enemies to lovers - mpreg - smut - 9k Louis is the first and only omega to work at Red Valley Medical Center. Despite being more than qualified, he still faces prejudice for his career choice everyday. From patients refusing his treatment to condescending alpha doctors intervening with his work, practicing medicine in Boston is more challenging than Louis had ever thought it would be.

#fic rec #28th appreciation #monthly reads #monthly fic rec #my reads #larry fics #completed fics

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twoidiotwriters1 · 5 years

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Written In The Stars IX (Harry Potter xFem!Oc)

A/N: Ron, Harry, and Mel share one braincell when they’re left alone and that’s valid.

Words: 3,684

Warnings: None!

Series’ Masterlist

Previous chapter // Next chapter

Chapter Nine: The Duel.

"Don't you get tired of listening to his voice?" Mel pushed her empty plate away, "Every. Bloody. Morning."

"Don't listen to him," Hermione replied distractedly, her attention on the book in front of her, "only idiots believe him"

The second week started with a notice saying that the flying lessons would start on Thursday, and Gryffindor would share their lessons... with Slytherin.

So obviously, Malfoy had been telling stories non-stop about his flying abilities, and Mel was sick of it.

Hermione was nervous as well, Mel soon learned to divide her time between the boys and her:

She shared her desk with Hermione, Mel paid more attention during class if they were sitting together. During her free time, she would stay with the boys, since Hermione had a -quite unhealthy- habit of studying after class, and she didn't like to be disturb.

She was a nice friend overall, offering her help in subjects that were making Mel's life difficult, and even had a functional sense of humor. The only problem was that she was too demanding.

Mel tried to make her see that she needed to calm down, it wasn't fun to be surrounded by books all the time, but Hermione didn't listen.

Hermione was on edge, she closed her book and rambled about Quidditch techniques that didn't actually sound useful unless you were a professional, Mel could sense the rest of the kids getting tired of her friend's chat, but luckily, she didn't have to interrupt, because the mail arrived at that moment.

Neville's grandmother sent him a remembrall: it turned red as soon as he touched it. Malfoy was passing by and decided he wanted to cause trouble.

Harry and Ron jumped to their feet, ready to fight. Professor McGonagall appeared soon and calmed their nerves, once the boys sat back Mel leaned in to whisper:

"You complain about me trying to fight older students but you're always trying to find excuses to punch Malfoy"

"Well, he deserves it," Ron replied, "Malfoy's a little-"

"If you could get close enough to touch one of his hairs, Crabbe and Goyle would turn you into pulp without using magic, so don't even think about it," Mel warned him, "let's focus on the important task at hand: not die on our first flying lesson."

Everyone was reasonably afraid of what could happen, however, once the class started, as most of her other lessons, it wasn't that much of a trouble. Her broom obliged in the first try, and she listened to the proper ways to mount it and how to keep a steady grip on it with full interest.

'Baby steps', she thought in relief.

But baby steps weren't enough with someone like Neville, who somehow managed to break his wrist.

"Did you see his face, the great lump?" Malfoy asked loudly once Madam Hooch, the teacher, was out of sight.

"Shut up, Malfoy," Parvati Patil scowled at him.

"Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?" said Pansy Parkinson, a girl just as unlikeable as Malfoy. "Never thought you'd like fat little cry babies, Parvati."

"What about you, Pansy?" Mel pushed some kids away so she could see her, "Do you relish on laughing stupidly at everything that passes through Malfoy's bird-brain? Or is your brain as small as his?"

Before Pansy could reply, Malfoy picked up something from the floor.

"It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."

"Give that here, Malfoy," said Harry quietly, standing next to Mel.

"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to collect – how about – up a tree?" Malfoy smiled.

"Give it here!"

Malfoy mounted his broomstick and took off.

"Come and get it, Potter!"

Harry listened, grabbing his broom with spite.

"No!" shouted Hermione, "Madam Hooch told us not to move – you'll get us all into trouble."

"Hermione's right, Harry," Mel added, "forget about the rest, you can't afford getting expelled!"

Harry, impulsive as ever, ignored both. Mel knew that Harry was a proud boy, that also meant he could get in trouble as much as her, if not more.

The next few minutes were something next to impressive: Harry seemed to finally have found his place; the broom and the boy united by an invisible bond.

Something grew in her chest as she watched him fly, something similar to joy, she couldn't quite pin-point what was it. She just knew she liked the way he looked while flying. Mel also knew that it didn't mean she was happy about what was going on.

She walked over to Ron and slapped his arm.

"Ouch!" He glared at her, "Why did you do that?"

"You didn't stop him! You should've helped us to change his mind!"

"For what?" He frowned, "Malfoy's an idiot and Harry's making him look like a fool, watch!"

Mel didn't want to, but she forced herself to watch. At that very moment, Draco was throwing the ball far up in the air, descending rapidly as Harry quickly followed the remembrall'strayectory. She held her breath and watched her friend plummeting to a practically unstoppable, awful crash.

He caught the ball, and a foot before colliding against the grass he expertly readjusted his broom in a matter of seconds. Safe again, he landed softly.

Mel's stomach did an odd flip as she watched, amazed by her best friend's skills. She had the impression that the feeling on her chest was something not so normal, but she forgot about it a second later.

"HARRY POTTER!"

The girl gulped at hearing the voice, blood draining from her face.

"Never – in all my time at Hogwarts– how dare you... might have broken your neck –"

McGonagall could hardly form a sentence, she was pissed.

"It wasn't his fault, Professor –"

"Be quiet, Miss Patil –"

"But Malfoy –"

"That's enough, Mr Weasley. Potter, follow me, now."

'He's expelled', Mel thought, panicking as she watched McGonagall take Harry away, 'this is it, Harry's not coming back.'

"This is YOUR FAULT!" She yelled at Malfoy.

"Mel!" Ron followed his friend, who was sprinting towards the Slytherin student.

"It's not my fault he wasn't fast enough," Malfoy sneered, "he deserves it-"

She grabbed him by the collar of his robes.

"The only person that deserves something it's you, and it's a kick in the-!"

"What's going on?" Madam Hooch had returned, "Why are you screaming like that, Dumbledore? Let go of Malfoy! And where's Potter?"

"McGonagall took him away, Madam Hooch," Lavender replied, "he got in trouble."

"I see," She gave them all the same stern look, "well, let's continue the class, shall we? Potter and Longbottom can catch up later..."

But Mel was having a hard time focusing. How could she, when her best friend was about to get expelled? Everything was over, and it was all fault of his stupid impulsiveness!

The worst part was that she couldn't even scowl him properly because he would be terribly sad, and she didn't want to make it worse.

She left the grounds with teary eyes, Ron walking quietly beside her. It looked like he wanted to say something, maybe he couldn't find the right words or he wasn't familiar with how to make girls feel better.

Hermione found the right words, though. She managed to not mention what she obviously thought about Harry so Mel wouldn't get more upset.

"You won't be alone, you know? You still have me and Ron Weasley, although I don't know why you enjoy spending time with him. Neville's also here, and he's much more interested in school than the other boys. You don't have to cry, Mel. You'll be fine."

"Harry won't be," She pouted, "you don't know the way his relatives treat him, it's an absolute nightmare! And... And now I won't be there to help!"

She didn't know why she felt so guilty, maybe it was because she hadn't insisted enough, maybe she just cared a lot about him. Either way, she found herself completely powerless, again.

When Harry met them for dinner, he was anything but sad. She examined his attitude for a second before saying, in a very confused tone:

"You weren't expelled."

Harry blinked in surprise.

"How did you know?"

"Your eyes are really shiny," She pointed out.

"Oh?" Harry tilted his head, "Thank you?"

"I mean," Mel blushed, "you look happy"

"I am," Harry smiled, "you won't guess what happened..."

Harry told them that McGonagall introduced him to Oliver Wood, the captain of the Quidditch team. Now, Harry was:

"Seeker?" Ron repeated, "But first-years never – you must be the youngest house player in about –"

"– a century," said Harry, eating happily, "Wood told me. I start training next week. Only don't tell anyone, Wood wants to keep it a secret."

Mel was beaming, but she still was mad. Considering that her friend had had several good news for a day, she allowed herself a bit of relief and punched Harry's shoulder.

Harry groaned with his mouth full.

"Wha' was that fo'?"

"You fool! You absolute idiot!" She exclaimed, "I hope this is the last time you do something so stupid, it won't help my anxiety if you keep throwing yourself into this kind of problems!"

"What are you saying? You're no different!" Ron replied in disbelief, "You should've seen her when you left, Harry. She was ready to kill Malfoy-"

"Not true!"

"It is! I saw Malfoy's face, he thought you were going to rip his head off!"

"He's a coward, of course he got scared..."

She looked away to avoid Harry's little smirk and noticed Fred and George Weasley walking up to them, she grumbled under her breath.

"Not them..."

"Well done," said George as they arrived, "Wood told us. We're on the team too – Beaters."

"I tell you, we're going to win that Quidditch Cup for sure this year," said Fred. "We haven't won since Charlie left, but this year's team is going to be brilliant. You must be good, Harry, Wood was almost skipping when he told us."

"By the way, now that we're here..." George added, leaning to catch Mel's eye, "we wanted to ask you something"

"What thing?"

"Exactly how many liberties do you have as the Headmaster's grand-daughter and would you be interested in helping with a few-"

"I don't have any liberties," She said coldly, "I won't help you with your silly pranks now or never. I promised my mum I would stay away from trouble, and you two are always causing it. Also, I'm her niece, not grand-daughter"

"Are you saying you don't like us?" Fred raised a brow.

"I didn't say that. I just prefer to ignore you exist, that way I stay out of all the mischief."

"Unless someone is messing with you," Ron whispered to Harry, who smiled in complicity as a reply.

"Shut up, Ronald," Mel scowled.

"Anyway, we've got to go, Lee Jordan reckons he's found a new secret passageway out of the school."

"Bet it's that one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy that we found in our first week. See you."

"And Mel," George smirked, "have fun staying out of trouble"

She turned to face Ron.

"What a way to support me, Weasley"

"I was just being honest!"

"Well, keep your honesty away in times like this, alright?" She crossed her arms, "Your brothers annoy me..."

"What did they ever do to you?" Ron asked.

"They just... I don't know," Mel replied, "they're too problematic"

"I think you like them," Harry teased.

"I don't!" She exclaimed, knowing that she was blushing, "they're..."

Before she could say what they were, Malfoy walked up to their table, a smug smile on his face.

"Having a last meal, Potter? When are you getting the train back to the Muggles?"

"You're a lot braver now you're back on the ground and you've got your little friends with you," said Harry coolly.

"I'd take you on any time on my own. Tonight, if you want. Wizard's duel. Wands only – no contact. What's the matter? Never heard of a wizard's duel before, I suppose?"

"Of course he has," said Ron, wheeling round. "I'm his second, who's yours?"

"Crabbe," he said, "Midnight all right? We'll meet you in the trophy room, that's always unlocked."

They left, Mel was upset again.

"What is a wizard's duel? And what do you mean, you're my second?"

"It means you're both stupid," She said, "you just saved yourself from getting expelled and now you're accepting a duel?"

"A second's there to take over if you die," said Ron casually, ignoring Mel's comment, "but people only die in proper duels, you know, with real wizards. The most you and Malfoy'll be able to do is send sparks at each other. Neither of you knows enough magic to do any real damage. I bet he expected you to refuse, anyway."

"What if I wave my wand and nothing happens?"

"Throw it away and punch him on the nose," Ron suggested.

"I'll go with you."

"Mel, you can't-"

"I wasn't asking"

"Excuse me," Hermione talked to them for the first time in the whole hour.

"Can't a person eat in peace in this place?" said Ron, Mel lightly pinched his arm.

Hermione continued.

"I couldn't help overhearing what you and Malfoy were saying –"

"Bet you could..."

"–and you mustn't go wandering around the school at night, think of the points you'll lose Gryffindor if you're caught, and you're bound to be. It's really very selfish of you."

"And it's really none of your business," said Harry.

"Goodbye," said Ron.

"Don't be rude!" She complained as the three of them got up from the table, "She's trying to help our house win the cup. I should follow her steps from time to time..."

"Well, you should start by controlling your own temper," Ron offered under his breath.

She had a hard time trying to make Hermione leave her alone. She spent the afternoon hearing her ramble about how Dumbledore would be disappointed if she got caught doing such atrocities. In the end, it was useless to try and convince her to go to bed, even if she was already wearing her dressing gown. She angrily followed her downstairs and dramatically waited for the boys in one of the sofas while Mel waited as far as she could from her, standing next to a chair.

"You're ready?" Ron whispered, "Remember, you can't help Harry, so I hope you're not bringing your wand."

"I'm not," She replied upset, "she wouldn't let me"

"Who?" Asked Harry.

"I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry."

A lamp flickered on.

"You!" said Ron furiously. "Go back to bed!"

"I almost told your brother," Hermione snapped. "Percy – he's a Prefect, he'd put a stop to this."

Both of them turned to look at Mel, expecting her to control the situation.

"I tried to send her away," She sighed, "Hermione wouldn't stop insisting, so I let her stay here until we had to leave."

"Come on," Harry pushed both of his friends towards the door.

However, Hermione decided she wanted to keep arguing.

"Don't you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves, I don't want Slytherin to win the House Cup and you'll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells."

"I'll help you get them back tomorrow 'Mione, I promise," Mel whispered, urging her to go back.

"Go away."

"All right, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you're on the train home tomorrow, you're so –"

Mel noticed grimly, that the Fat Lady was gone. She came into a halt, watching with worry.

"Now what am I going to do?" Hermione asked.

"That's your problem," said Ron, going back only to grab Mel's arm and drag her along, "We've got to go, we're going to be late."

"I'm coming with you," she said, rushing over to them once they were reaching the end of the corridor.

"You are not."

"D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all four of us I'll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you and you can back me up."

"Hermione, what we're doing is wrong, but that's just an awful idea," Mel retorted.

"You've got some nerve –'

"Shut up!" said Harry. "I heard something."

That something was Neville, he forgot the password and now he was sleeping outside. He wanted to join them because he was, as usual, afraid. Ron was angry.

In spite of the complications, they hoped for the duel to end well.

In the trophy room, they waited and waited. Minutes passed by and there was no sight of Malfoy and Crabbe.

"He's late, maybe he's chickened out," Ron whispered.

"Or maybe he wasn't coming at all," Mel offered.

"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner."

A hand closed tightly around her wrist and pulled her back. It was Harry, and he was silently urging them to run to the opposite side. She moved, guiding her friends away from Filch's voice.

"They're in here somewhere..."

She walked as fast as she could while also being quiet. Unfortunately, Neville panicked and ran into Ron, the two boys crashing against a whole line of armors.

"RUN!" Harry yelled.

It wasn't the first time Mel and Harry had to run away from something, but it was certainly the fastest. Until their legs were hurting and their lungs weren't properly working anymore, that's when they decided to stop.

"This... is the last time... you believe anyt... anything that rat... says!" Mel concluded, breathless.

"Malfoy tricked you," Hermione said to Harry. "You realise that, don't you? He was never going to meet you – Filch knew someone was going to be in the trophy room, Malfoy must have tipped him off."

"We have to go back to the Gryffindor Common room," Ron said.

"Let's go," Harry walked forward.

The door in front of them opened with a bang and Peeves came out of it swiftly, delighted to see students out of bed.

"Wandering around at midnight, ickle firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty."

"Not if you don't give us away, Peeves, please..."

"Should tell Filch, I should," said Peeves, then his eyes shone wickedly when they landed on Mel, "It's for your own good, you know. You, the dumb-dumby, you're in big big trouble."

"Get out of the way," Snapped Ron, pushing Peeves away.

Mel felt her blood run cold.

"STUDENTS OUT OF BED! STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR!"

They ran, crashing against the nearest door, which was -as their terrible luck would have it- locked.

"This is it!" Ron exclaimed, in a nervous fit, "We're done for! This is the end!"

Mel looked around and locked eyes with Hermione.

"Just this once?" Mel begged her.

Hermione rolled her eyes but stepped forward.

"Move over," Hermione hissed as Mel grabbed Ron by the collar of his dressing-gown and pulled him away from the door.

Hermione grabbed Harry's wand, tapped the lock and whispered:

"Alohomora!"

Mel pushed everyone inside and then got in herself, closing the door behind her and turning around.

She was living a nightmare.

In front of her, there was a three-headed dog, black and enormous.

"What the..."

"He thinks this door is locked," Harry whispered, he obviously hadn't turned around, "I think we'll be OK – get off, Neville! What?"

It was the third floor, they were inside the forbidden corridor.

"Out," Mel whispered with a broken voice.

She felt Harry turning around and opening the door, they went back outside in a rush and fell on top of each other as Harry quickly closed the door behind them. He helped her stand up so they could go back to running. And so they ran, they didn't even care about Filch, they just wanted to leave that dog as far away as possible.

Almost as a miracle, they reached the seventh floor and the portrait without any complications.

"Where on earth have you all been?" The Fat lady gasped.

"Never mind that – pig snout, pig snout," Harry urged her.

They rushed into the common room, falling heavily onto the armchairs. They were so big, that Mel and Harry even managed to fit into one.

"What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school? If any dog needs exercise, that one does." Ron complained.

"You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?" Hermione snapped. "Didn't you see what it was standing on?"

"The floor?" Harry suggested. "I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads."

"It was standing on a trapdoor," Mel recalled easily, but she shrugged it off, "I don't see how that's important?"

"It's obviously guarding something," Hermione stood up, glaring at them, "I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed – or worse, expelled. Don't expect me to help you again with any of your stupid expeditions in the middle of the night, Mel. Actually, don't even try to start a conversation with me for the rest of the term. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

"No, we don't mind," Ron grumbled, "You'd think we dragged her along, wouldn't you?"

"Merlin's beard," Mel leaned against her chair.

Hermione could be bossy sometimes, she could be too much for other people, but Mel genuinely liked her and now she was gone, she didn't want to be friends with her anymore.

"Mel?" Harry nudged her arm softly, "Is everything alright?"

"I'm going to bed," She answered, not even daring to look at his eyes.

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@vampiregirl1797 @tiphareth2018 @siriuslysirius1107

#twoidiots writing #Harry Potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter xoc #harry potter x y/n #harry potter x reader #hermione granger #ron weasley #fred weasley #george weasley #draco malfoy #severus snape #albus dumbledore #minerva mcgonagall #WITT fic

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared. https://nyti.ms/37h2SjG

Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared.

For decades, with little public notice, Native women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered. The disappearance of Selena Not Afraid is showing how much things are changing.

By Jack Healy, Photographs by Cristina Baussan | Published Jan. 20, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 20, 2020 |

BIG HORN COUNTY, Mont. — Jackie Big Hair slept in her car again, waking every few hours to fire up the engine and gaze at the frozen highway rest stop where her 16-year-old daughter had been reported missing.

“I just have to be here,” Ms. Big Hair, 50, said, watching semis lumber across the plains. “I don’t know where else to go.”

This was her vigil now, along with searches in Billings about 30 miles away, three weeks after her youngest child, Selena Not Afraid, was reported missing from a barren stretch of Interstate 90 in a southern Montana county where 65 percent of the population is Native American. Law enforcement officials said a van carrying Selena home the day after a New Year’s party in Billings had pulled into the rest stop after breaking down, and then reportedly started up again and driven away without her. Nobody had heard from her since.

A national outcry over the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women has reached a boiling point here in Big Horn County, a rural stretch of rolling mountains and ranch lands that contains the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations and has the highest rate of missing and murdered Native Americans in Montana, and among the highest nationwide.

Local activists had an incomplete count of 27 Native women who had gone missing in recent memory in Big Horn County alone. Now, there are 28. The difference here and in many parts of the West is that for decades the disappearance of mothers and children, cousins and friends almost invariably played out in utter obscurity, with modest law enforcement investigations that almost invariably languished unsolved.

Activists and researchers say the crisis burned unheeded for generations until a few years ago, when families’ stories of how their loved ones were sex trafficked, murdered with impunity or dismissed as chronic runaways gained traction through grass-roots organizing and social media, forcing politicians and law enforcement to take notice.

Last year, 5,590 Indigenous women were reported missing to the F.B.I.’s National Crime Information Center, but advocates say the staggeringly high rates of violence suffered by Indigenous people is still not fully reflected in official accounting. Some of the victims are misclassified as Asian or Hispanic, or are overlooked if they live in urban areas instead of reservations, or their cases are lost in a jurisdictional maze over which state, federal or tribal law enforcement agency bears responsibility for investigating.

Law enforcement officials said these can be extremely difficult cases to investigate, sometimes ranging over vast expanses of territory, but that they are committed to solving them. The families say the problem is more a matter of will and resources than of difficulty.

“Native women have been dehumanized from the very beginning,” said Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, a demographer who grew up in Big Horn County and is on the board of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, which has created its own database of cases. “The law has failed us time and time again. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of our people dying, of our kids going to jail.”

Now, families like Selena’s are taking an urgent public stand to pressure politicians and law enforcement to provide more aggressive responses to these cases. They are raising alarms through social media and even bracing themselves against Montana blizzards to keep their loved ones from being forgotten. They are organizing candlelit vigils, rallying at courthouses and sheriff’s offices and marching for days along prairie highways, reservation roads and to the steps of state capitols.

“We’re here demanding it,” Selena’s aunt Cheryl Horn said one afternoon, warming her hands with a bowl of chili as volunteers returned from another fruitless search of the nearby hills. “We’re not being quiet. We’re not leaving.”

In recent months, a flurry of federal and state agencies across the country and here in Montana have raced to respond with task forces and law-enforcement resources, including a new Justice Department effort to coordinate federal and local responses to disappearances and murders in Indian Country.

Law-enforcement authorities say that Selena, a member of the Crow tribe, went missing at about 2 p.m. on New Year’s Day. A New Year’s Eve party in Billings had spilled over into the following afternoon, and she was riding back toward her home in Hardin, about 50 miles east.

According to local and federal law-enforcement alerts, the van broke down and pulled over at the rest stop, where Selena was last seen walking into a field. Her family believes she was taken, possibly by a passing car.

When her relatives heard the news, they began pouring into the rest stop, circling their cars and campers and horse trailers into a makeshift windbreak and transforming a frozen spit of asphalt and concrete into a scene of prayer and protest.

They lit a campfire, searched through ranchers’ fields and garlanded the fences and sign poles with red ribbons and posters of Selena. They saturated social media with calls for help. “Internet warriors,” one of Selena’s aunts called the response.

At 16, Selena already knew the toll of violence too well.

She had buried three siblings — a brother who had been fatally shot by Billings police officers; a sister who was struck and killed by a car; and her twin sister, who died by suicide when she was just 11 years old.

“I’ve always felt like there’s a bad presence against us,” Selena’s older brother, R.J., said. “I’ve expected the worst.”

After Selena was reported missing, police officers from South Dakota and Wyoming joined Big Horn County sheriff’s deputies, Bureau of Indian Affairs officers and volunteers to search the nearby hills. Federal and local law-enforcement officers set up a command center in the basement of the county courthouse. Thermal drones and helicopters buzzed overhead.

The F.B.I. issued an alert for Selena and sent in a search team, but agents and sheriff’s investigators have said little more about her disappearance, or whether they are investigating the older acquaintances who had been riding in the van with her. .

The swift response has surprised some activists. “Nothing moves that fast,” said BethYana Pease, a Crow community organizer.

Families and activists say they have been sounding these alarms for years. They say the crisis flows from generations of discriminatory government policies and racism in reservation border towns like Hardin that devalue Native women’s lives and deaths.

Jay Harris, the county prosecutor, who is a member of the Crow tribe, said the proliferation of meth use and a scarcity of federal law enforcement had exacerbated the problem. Last November, the Crow chairman declared a state of emergency over what he called ineffective investigations and unanswered police calls on the 2.3 million-acre reservation, and said the tribe would move to form its own police force.

Some victims’ families wondered why the deaths and disappearances of their own mothers, sisters and nieces had not sparked a similar outcry. Ms. Pease ticked off names she said had never received justice: 14-year-old Henny Scott, who was found dead two weeks after she went missing in December 2018. Bonnie Three Irons, a mother of six, whose body was found in the mountains in April 2017.

Or 18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places. It was late August when Kaysera went out with friends in her hometown, Hardin, the county seat. Four days later, a jogger found her body in a suburban backyard next to the house where she had been that evening, just steps away from a busy road.

“Where the hell were these big shots when my granddaughter was missing?” asked Carmelia Brown, a relative who said she loved Kaysera as a granddaughter.

Kaysera’s family believes she was murdered, but her cause of death has lingered undetermined for four months, her autopsy still unfinished. Her family says it has never been told a certain time of death. The case is classified as “Suspicious” and still being investigated, said Mr. Harris, the county attorney.

Kaysera’s family members wondered how she could have lain in someone’s lawn for days without being seen. They were troubled that her body had been shuttled back and forth between the funeral home and state crime lab before being cremated by the county coroner, who is also the funeral director. They were disturbed that one of the lead investigators into Kaysera’s death had also been involved in an incident in which her younger brother was beaten and forcibly restrained.

“Why does nobody care about this?” asked Grace Bulltail, one of Kaysera’s aunts and an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re not being given any information.”

Family members were uncertain whether Kaysera and Selena knew each other, but their stories have become intertwined. When Kaysera’s family led marches to the county courthouse seeking answers into her death, Selena attended, her aunt Cheryl Horn said. She posted Facebook tributes to Big Horn County’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.

One morning at Selena’s roadside vigil, as one of her great-aunts lit the day’s fire, her overcoat swung open to show a red sweatshirt bearing Kaysera’s face.

“This is the justice that Kaysera didn’t get,” Ms. Horn, Selena’s aunt, said.

*********

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szopenhauer · 4 years

Text

If money was no object, would you change your wardrobe? I would add to my wardrobe more than change

How do you/did you get to school? walk, then by bus

Have you ever been in trouble for something you honestly didn’t do? yep

Is the idea of having a secret admirer creepy or romantic? creepy

What was the last song you sung out loud? https://youtu.be/wycjnCCgUes

Were you excited to learn to drive, or scared? worried that I’ll waste my money

When was the last time you felt incredibly tired? today

In your opinion, who doesn’t deserve to be famous? many people

Was it hard for you to get up this morning? not really

When was the last time you colored with crayons or colored pencils? few months ago

Do you feel comfortable talking about your disorders, if you have them? depends

Where did you go on your last field trip? not sure which was last

Do you think you make a good first impression? no

Do other people’s first impressions stick with you? might

Have you ever had to give up on someone? sure

Would you rather break up with someone, or them break up with you? them break up with me (not my decision) but usually it’s the other way around

Do you think it’s okay to like a cover more than an original? umm...

Are you calm in emergency situations? depends

Who are you most attached to? my dad

What do you depend on other people for? money mostly :(

What goes through your mind when someone breaks up with you? depends

Do you match your shoes with your outfit? sometimes, it’s not that I have enough shoes to do that lol

Do you feel more comfortable with a male or female doctor/nurse? female

What was the last thing you bragged about? not sure what was last

What’s the ugliest thing on your wall? umm...

Who’s your favorite philosopher? Schopenhauer because of all the memes

Do you think Freud was out of his mind? well I prefer Jung

Einstein? he was cool

Who’s your favorite painter/artist? I like many

What day is it? Friday

Are you wearing anything blue? nah

Do you know anyone named Graham? just bread :P

Are you sitting next to anyone? not currently

Do you dislike the last person you Facebook messaged? nope

Who’s the quietest of all your friends? K. always was

Are you home alone right now? If so, where are the people you live with? my mom’s home, my dad is at work

Are you a chocoholic? noooo

Is there a song that reminds you of the person you love/like? Do you listen to that song often? one of them is t.a.t.u. - All the things she said

Do you listen to music while you fill out surveys? sometimes

In the past week, what song have you listened to the most often? not sure

While playing video games, do you prefer being first or second player? second

How many people do you depend on? not many

How many people do you think depend on you? they could live without me

What is the worst color combination? brown and black?

Have you ever injured yourself walking around in the dark? yeah

What’s so scary about clowns, anyway? nothing to me and it’s annoying that they’re part of so many horrors

When was the last time you acted like someone you’re not? sigh...

How many hats do you own/wear? shitload

Do you ever receive comments on your weight? ppl are jealous of my weight so basically my illness :(

Is there anything that you do just to make other people happy? of course

What was the last thing that you wrote down [with a pen/pencil]? not sure what was last

Has anyone told you that you have a nice smile? my gf only

Are you uncomfortable with being photographed? yup

Do you like playing tic-tac-toe? I always win What about hangman? I played it couple of times Are you dangerously in love with someone? woah

Are you cute or sexy? cute Is English your 1st language? it’s not Did you ever perform in front of your entire school? elementary - more than once Did your older sibling ever tell you freaky stories that you believed? one time she told me that school was flooded and there were fish and frogs and then I said that to my mom and she called me a liar and got mad even tho I explained to her it was my sister’s idea :( Are you single and proud? you can be single and proud as well as be happy in a relationship too, I am in one now Are you more happy when you’re with people or alone? 90% of time alone What do you think about guys shaving their legs? that’s their life Do you wear lipstick? nah Name something you lost or gave away that can never be replaced. I don’t wanna talk about it

What music album would be used for a movie about your life? soundtrack to my life would have to be a mix of songs from different bands/vocalists

Who was your first crush and what made them special? she was just adorable with her clumsiness and her perfect body and that face and voice and she was just a pretty cool friend to me and I wanted to take care of her so badly, she was the very first girl I ever had a crush on irl if not in general but she was hetero and she changed a lot (not in a good way in my opinion) Write about your first kiss. Was it everything you wished or hoped it would be? I... I never imagined my first kiss before it happened?...

Write about something you now know that you wish you knew earlier in life. How could this knowledge have helped you? blergh

Name one thing you feel brings out the good in people. there’s no such thing, it’s all about the person If you invented a device that could fix one problem you are facing right now, would you use it? What problem would you like to solve? absolutely, my health issues Name something you found; what was it and where did you find it? I’ve found shitload of stuff but one thing was the most odd and that’s a taxidermy ferret shawl someone left on a bus stop - at first we thought with dad it must be alive but we came closer and realized someone lost their piece of cloth and we took it Describe the longest amount of time you have ever been away from home. almost a month, I was in hospital Name a celebrity or famous person you wish would take you out on a date. - Have you ever seen a ghost? it seems, it was not just white but a little bluish, no legs and weird face - shaped like in a clay, mostly transparent, slightly glowing, it was in open doors of my room, I woke up with a weird feeling that someone’s watching me and I got really scared so I hidden under a blanket and didn’t look there again until morning, I was trying to convince myself it’s just a shirt that was hanged in the hall but mom said there wasn’t anything like that there at night, now I wish I could see that again hoping I would try to do something more brave about it, I kinda worry I was rude towards them whoever it was

*btw my grandma said that after death some chemicals leave the body and fly like a fog through the cemetery if casket and grave aren’t blocking it too much Describe your note-taking style and habits. everywhere and usually not in line, can be even upside down, just random, different size, clue words etc. Do you believe that we are all here for a reason? What might the reason be? suffering to deserve heaven? Have you ever done something just to feel the danger, or to feel alive? I hurt myself today To see if I still feel I focus on the pain The only thing that's real What are all your thoughts on god? overthinking... What did you learn today? for example - that explaining things to people make me realize more than just thinking about something What 5 traits do people first notice when they meet you for the first time? ask them Have you ever carved your name or initials into a tree or stone? poor tree :( In what ways have you traveled? car, bus, train, bike, even a little bit by ship What historical events happened the year you were born? nothing interesting

Do you watch really old tv shows or movies from the 1970’s or earlier? sure

What would you do if you saw a complete stranger dealing drugs in public? nothing If you don’t have to be up by a certain time, do you like to sleep in as late as possible? no longer than 11 am What are you wearing at the moment? Is it for any particular reason? pajama because it’s past midnight and I should be asleep but I have to finally finish this survey then dry my hair and drink some water first Are either one of your parents retired? my mom is and my dad will be soon Do you buy a lot of DVD’s, or do you tend to just watch everything online for free? watch online, I have no money for buying movies that I’ll watch less than 3 times Does everyone in your household own their own computer? nope

Are you a good gift giver? I try my best and been told that I am despite not being rich

Do you know what XOXO stands for? hugs and kisses

What’s the first person who comes to your mind when you hear the word blue? me

Have you seen any of the Harry Potter movies? first ones

Do you like your significate others siblings? I don’t know her brother

Have you ever recieved a singing birthday card? omg I loved those and I wish I got one :(

Do you remember who your kindergarten/pre-school teacher was? I liked her so much I’ve been sending her cards on holidays years after

Were you ever a girl scout or a boy scout? never

Do you own anything made of lace? hmm...

How many people do you share a name with? I don’t know anyone with my name

Imagine your dream home, does it have a fence around it? if it’s not an apartment then of course it does, highest possible and thick as I don’t want to see or be seen by my neighbors

Do you own any yellow shoes? yep

Can you type fast? very

In school were you bullied? I was

Are you sarcastic? yeah

Do you read the newspaper? nah

If you died today where do you think you’d go? hell :(

Have you ever been to therapy? few times, didn’t help

Do you use online dating? did

Did you miss alot of school? I was sick often

What was the last thing you got falsely accused of? not sure what was last

What was the last thing you ordered online? shirt, I’m waiting for the package now

Have you ever been kicked out of a store? no :o

Do you feel like you accomplished anything today? hmm...

What is/was your favorite teen magazine? trzynastka or however this shit was called

Would other people describe you as creative? I guess

What color are your slippers? grey and white

Are you haunted by memories of stupid things you’ve said and done? constantly

Did you like high school or college better? didn’t go to college

Who was your favorite Olsen twin? I didn’t have a favorite

Do you ever listen to Celtic music? used to, with John

Do you know a lot of rich and spoiled and selfish people? had classmates like this and neighbors too

Do you enjoy mornings? rarely, not really

Have you ever feared going to jail or thought about what it would be like? thought

Did you know that the zodiac signs (the regular ones) are Greek? ok

Have you ever learned about Greek mythology in school? didn’t like it

Do you stay up late? as you can see

what do you hear right now? nothing

what is one thing in your life you feel truly guilty for? personal

have you ever been slapped in the face? I’ve been slapped without any reason, I was bullied

how about punched? hit with a ball only and my head was hit with a bottle too once

have you ever come up with a memorable quote yourself? I’ve been quoted

what do you think about masturbation? personal

What color did you first ever dye your hair?: either red or black

What’s the color of the bath towel you use most often?: green

Ever eaten a piece of dog or cat food out of curiosity?: ewww, nooo

Can you name one song by Prince?: Purple rain for example

Would you rather paint or make pottery?: paint

Are you currently taking this survey before or after 9pm?: after, I started over 5 hours ago...

Is the sun shining bright outside right now?: it’s the middle of the night!

Would you rather watch a horror movie or a romantic comedy?: romantic comedy ^^”

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sunkissedpages · 6 years

Text

We’re Only Kidding Ourselves- Part Six || Tom Holland x Reader

A/N: Sat down with my rose water candle lit, James Taylor record playing, and cherry coke and finished this sucker. Don’t let the beginning fool you 👀

Prompt: Enemies to lovers au (from @marvelellie‘s 1k writing challenge!!)

Summary: You work as a production assistant for the Spider-Man: Far From Home crew, or rather as Tom Holland’s handler. The two of you don’t get along very well to say the least, but you won’t quit and he can’t fire you so you’re stuck with each other.

Warnings: swearing, angst god why am I such a dramatic ass bitch I thrive on it

What I listened to while writing: ...the twilight score (the only good thing that came out of that franchise was the music don’t @ me) I listened to A Nova Vida 3 times in a row. Also Tiny Meat Gang which if any of you read this part of my intro regularly I’m so sorry my music taste is so fucking weird if you couldn’t tell already and TMG takes the cake.

Word Count: 3k

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

“Y/N?” Tom asked, breaking the silence.

“Hm?”

“Don’t sleep on the floor tonight.”

You froze, only 93% sure you’d heard him correctly. “What?”

“You slept in like six sweaters last night, you’ve been taking ibuprofen all day, don’t make yourself miserable again by sleeping on the floor.”

You stood unmoving, still all the way across the room with your arms crossed. Tom was way more observant than you gave him credit for. “Tom, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” In fact, you were almost positive it was a terrible idea.

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll sleep on the floor tonight, but as your boss I’m demanding you sleep in the bed,” he insisted.

“You know you’re not actually my boss, right? And you have a concussion there’s no way you’re sleeping on the floor,” you sighed and gave in “but if it’ll get you to shut up we can share the bed.”

You turned off the light and made your way to your side and hesitantly climbed into bed next to him before settling under the covers. There went your heart again, pounding rapidly in your chest, and slowly what had been a comfortable silence slipped into an awkward one. Both of you were lying on your backs, completely stiff, totally uncomfortable. You’d been tired after watching Titanic, but now you were wide awake. It was just like last night and you were about to give up and move to the floor again when Tom spoke suddenly.

“We should order waffles in the morning.”

You wanted to laugh. You had been expecting him to say something serious about how this wasn’t working and one of you should move to the floor, but instead that came out of his mouth.

“What?”

“I don’t know, I just feel like the waffles here would be good,” he laughed.

He must have hit his head harder than you thought. “Okay, yeah sure we can get waffles,” you agreed. “Goodnight, Tom.”

“Goodnight, y/n.”

You woke up to sunlight, not your alarm. Tom had opened the curtains and the light was streaming in through the window, directly into your eyes. Slowly, things came into focus. Tom was getting ready in front of the window, making him look like a silhouette against the pink sunrise. You watched him throw a t-shirt over his head and roll a pair of socks on. You didn’t know what time it was, but you could tell it was the early from the way your body protested when you rolled onto your other side, away from the sunlight.

Tom turned around when he heard you moving. “Oh, sorry did I wake you?”

You rolled back over. “No, it’s just the sunlight.”

“Sorry, I’ll close the curtains when I leave. We’re not called for a few more hours if you want to go back to sleep. I’m just headed to the gym. Do you want to come?”

“No thanks, I’m good.” You couldn’t tell if he was just being polite or extending a genuine invitation, but running around after Tom’s ass all day was workout enough. Of course, you kept that bit to yourself. “Are you even supposed to be working out with your head and stuff?” you asked, concerned that you’d get in trouble he didn’t rest for as long as possible.

“Doctors said I’d be fine today,” he shrugged and slung a backpack over his shoulder.

“Okay, well be careful, have fun and all that jazz,” you said and waved a hand in the air noncommittally, already half asleep..

“Get some more sleep, sounds like you need it.” Tom said as he put on his sneakers. “When I come back I’ll have the waffles.”

So he remembered that. Half of you wondered if he’d just said it in a sleepy haze, but you were happy he was following through. Tom closed the curtains as promised before he left and you fell back asleep almost immediately.

When you woke up again it was to the door slamming closed. After you realized it was only Tom you relaxed a little. His hands were full of takeout boxes and you could hear the music blasting from his earbuds.

“You hungry?” he asked and only got a groan in response. You held a pillow over your eyes as he opened the curtains to let the light in again. He shook his head, but smiled at you as he sat down in the armchair in front of your side of the bed. “Here,” he held one of the boxes out to you, “you don’t even have to get up.” You didn’t move. “Come on, y/n, your food is going to get cold.”

You sat up at last, squinting in the bright sunlight, finally getting a good look at Tom. He’d discarded his t-shirt in the time he’d been back, presumably while you had the pillow over your face, and was now sitting shirtless in front of you. His shoulders and arms glistened with a fine sheen of sweat and his damp curls stuck to his forehead stubbornly.

“You okay?” he asked, holding your food out to you and cocking his head to one side. You realized you’d been staring.

You chalked it up to being tired and took the food from his hands. “Yeah sorry, still waking up.”

“I didn’t know what to get you, so I got you these.”

You opened the container and peered into it. Inside were two chocolate chip waffles with strawberries on top. “These are perfect, thanks.”

“You want syrup? I have a bunch of the little packets.”

You made a face. “No thanks.”

Tom stared at you in disbelief. “You don’t like syrup?”

“Hate it.”

“Figures,” he scoffed and you rolled your eyes. “You hate everything good.”

He was joking, but you fought a frown, suspecting that what he said had some truth behind it. Sometimes it did feel like you were the villain in Tom’s eyes, always on his ass about schedules and social media. It was kind of your job to take the fun out of everything, and you supposed he had a right to be frustrated about it, but you still felt the sting of every snide comment he made to you.

As you ate your waffles you gazed out the window, watching Venice wake up. The city was drenched in golden light that made everything look like an old movie. The canals were already bustling with produce salesmen and friendly neighbors greeting each other. Excited families of tourists walked up and down the sidewalks with open maps trying to get a head start on the day. In the building across from yours, women leaned out of windows to hang laundry or water plants. It looked like the intro scene to a classic romance. You snapped your attention away from the window when you felt Tom looking at you.

“Are you okay?” he asked for the second time.

“Just people watching,” you shrugged, skirting around the question then changed the subject. “By the way, why are you lying to Harry and Haz about the rooms? I didn’t say anything to them about it, but figured we should be on the same page.”

“Oh, uh, the pair of them have big mouths and I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

You almost choked on a strawberry. Tom had lied because he thought someone would assume you and him were sleeping together.

“If anyone thought that, we’d just tell them the truth, obviously.”

“Yeah, but once it got out people’d assume the worst and you’d get fired, or even blacklisted,” he explained.

You hadn’t even considered the possibility of consequences to sharing a room if people found out. Wasn’t having to share it with Tom at all punishment enough?

“What would happen to you?” you asked.

“Probably nothing,” Tom admitted with a shrug.

“What the fuck? That’s not fair.”

“I know, but you’re the handler. Maybe I’d get fined.”

“That’s fucked up.”

Tom leaned back, brushing the damp curls off of his forehead. “Anyway, that’s why we can’t tell anyone.”

“Okay, good to know.” You looked down at your half finished waffles. “You want these? I’m full.”

“Sure, thanks.” Tom took the container from your hands and immediately ruined your leftovers with three packets of syrup.

You thought about yesterday, how easy it would’ve been to ruin your career with a few little words. “I wish you’d told me not to say anything sooner, I could’ve fucked that up for both of us.”

“Sorry,” Tom said sheepishly. “It’s just awkward to talk about, and honestly it’s fucking sexist, but it’s the industry.” Tom finished scarfing down your waffles then looked at his phone. “Fuck,” he said with his mouth still full, “we have to be ready in 20 minutes.”

That sentence didn’t mean much to you, but Tom launched himself out of the armchair and began rifling through his suitcase frantically. He let you brush your teeth and hair before hopping in the shower, something he probably should have done much earlier. Getting ready didn’t take much time for you now. You usually just threw on whatever and Harrison’s hoodie over top so you were pretty much dressed and ready by the time Tom was done showering.

“We’ve got five,” you informed him as he shook his hair dry with a towel.

“Yeah, I know,” he snapped.

You pursed your lips, but kept your composure. “Okay, well I’m going downstairs. We shouldn’t go together.”

Tom didn’t even acknowledge he heard you or say goodbye as you let yourself out. You’d never met a boy so obsessed with his appearance.

Most of the cast was downstairs already when you got there. Of course Tom was the only one missing. If he was late everyone was going to be even more pissed at him than they already were.

“Wow, y/n, we beat you for once,” Haz joked when he saw you.

“Haha,” you said, genuinely trying to laugh, but ended up sounding like a robot trying to imitate human sarcasm.

Harrison scrunched his eyebrows and pulled you to the side. “You okay? You’ve been acting really weird lately.”

“Would you believe me if I told you it was the time change?”

“It’s only an hour different from London, but yeah I’ll believe you if you want me to.” You smiled thankfully. Haz had always been there to talk if you needed, but never one to pry, even when he knew something was up. “How’s Tom?” Haz asked, changing the subject for you, not knowing it was going to make you even more flustered than you already were.

“What, why would I know how Tom is?” You were definitely sweating.

“You were supposed to be checking up on him to make sure he’s resting.”

“Oh yeah, he was fine when I last saw him.” You weren’t technically lying, but Haz only stared harder at you, his icy blue eyes trying to read you. It made you feel guilty about keeping things from him.

“You sure you’re okay?”

You were saved from answering when Zendaya appeared behind Harrison and grabbed him by the shoulders and greeted you both.

“Y/n, please tell me you’re going to the thing tomorrow night,” she said. “Don’t leave me alone with the boys.”

“What’s wrong with ‘the boys’?” Haz protested, while Z nudged him playfully.

“What thing? I thought tomorrow was an off day.”

“Yeah we get the afternoon off, but there’s a party at some bar late tomorrow night. It’s one of those mandatory press outings that get publicity for the movie.”

You were familiar with these events because you were usually forced to go. The last one had been bowling back in London where you weren’t even allowed to participate, but had to monitor everyone’s alcohol intake and social media posts for the night. Harrison had hung out with you out of pity, but the rest of the cast kept their distance from you, the chaperone, and you couldn’t blame them.

You automatically dreaded the thought of having to go to this party. It sounded a thousand times worse than the bowling thing, but forced a smile for Zendaya anyway. “If it’s a publicity event, I’ll probably be there working.”

“Thank god,” she cheered before shifting her gaze over your shoulder. “Well good morning, sunshine.”

Tom had appeared finally and smiled brightly at her, an expression you’d only seen him give Zendaya. He looked at her like she hung the moon, which was fair, but for an actor he didn’t hide his infatuation very well. You fought the urge to scoff. Zendaya could do way better than Tom.

“How’s your head?” she asked him.

“Like nothing ever happened” he replied and knocked on the side of his skull as proof.

“Yep, he’s still a dumbass,” you added under your breath earning an elbow in your side from Tom.

“Fuck off, y/n.”

“You first.”

To your surprise, Tom chuckled. “Good one. Are you sure I’m the one with the concussion?”

“Oh like yours was so original,” you shot back.

Tom didn’t respond, but rolled his eyes through a smirk.

Now that Tom was downstairs everyone could get to set. Apparently the first scene of the day was taking place on some sort of tour boat, which made your job a lot easier because Tom was stuck on a boat. All you had to do was make sure he stayed on the boat.

Honestly at this point you had no idea what this movie was even about. There were about thirteen kids on that boat and you didn’t know what any of their characters were, aside from Peter Parker. You were so removed from the production process by now that you were almost always lost during filming.

Today you, Harry, and Harrison were stuck inside a random building with a bunch of crew because they had to clear so much space for a clean shot of the boat on the canal. The three of you practically lived behind the monitor these days. You all were making up your own dialogue for the scene being shot because the only people who could hear what was going on had headsets. Technically, as a production assistant you had a headset you could use, but this was more fun.You called Jacob, Harrison took Tom, and Harry claimed Tony.

Your Jacob voice was absolutely terrible. “I’m Jacob and I hate this fuckin hat, Ned would look better with a bowl cut,” you said in your lowest possible register.

Harry and Haz burst out laughing, getting some annoyed looks from the director of photography and digital intermediate technician.

“Something Jacob would say, but definitely not like that.” Haz teased. “His voice isn’t even that low, y/n!”

“Okay fine, you go.”

“Uh, I’m Tom and I can’t keep my mouth shut during interviews.”

“Or ever,” Harry added and you were surprised that sentence hadn’t come from your own mouth.

“How do you sound just like him?” You shook your head in wonder. If you had your eyes closed you could've sworn it was Tom standing in front of you and not his best friend.

Harrison cleared his throat. “I’m Tom and I don’t need a fucking handler, god I’m twenty-two for fucks sake.”

“Heard him say that before,” you groaned.

“Keep going, Haz,” Harry encouraged.

“Yeah, I have a handler, but y/n’s on her goddamn knees for Jon Watts and he fucking buys into it. It’s the only reason she hasn’t been fired!”

“Wait, what the fuck, Harrison?” you felt like you’d been slapped.

“Dude.” Harry shook his head.

“That’s not funny! Did Tom actually say that?”

Haz and Harry went stiff and silent in front of you. You had half a mind to go outside and yank Tom off of that fucking boat yourself, but you needed to know if it was true first.

“Great fucking job, Haz,” Harry muttered.

“So he said that about me?” You looked back and forth between the two of them, daring one of them to answer you. Hesitantly Harrison nodded. “When?”

“The first day in Venice, when he had those meetings.”

You wracked your brain, trying to think of when Tom had the opportunity to talk shit about you to the boys, but you were with him the whole day.

“How is that possible?” you demanded.

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but Harrison gave him a look like a warning. Harry continued anyway.

“In the groupchat.”

In that moment you felt everything slow down. The roaring of anger in your ears halted, your breathing slowed, time stood still.

“You guys have a groupchat to talk shit about me?” Your voice was much quieter than it had been less than a minute ago. The sentence sounded ridiculous coming out of your mouth.

“It’s just our groupchat it isn’t meant for that or anything,” Haz mumbled, finally speaking up.

“Not specifically, but it happens anyway?” you assumed out loud. Neither of them denied it. “When did he send it?”

Haz shot Harry another look, which he ignored. “When he was in the meeting.”

“So he sent that when we were all sitting in the hallway together and neither of you bothered to say anything to me?”

“What were we supposed to say?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe: hey y/n, your boss is a huge fucking dick maybe quit while you’re ahead so you don’t look like an idiot when all of this blows up?”

“Y/n, you already knew he hated you, why is this a big deal now?”

But you couldn’t exactly explain that you were so upset because you and Tom didn’t really hate each other as much anymore and bonded over Titanic and waffles, and shared a bed, so you just started taking off Harrison’s sweatshirt. It felt like it was suffocating you now.

“Y/n what are you-”

“You can take this fucking back.” you shoved the sweatshirt back into Harrison’s arms and started towards the doors.

“What? Y/n, can we talk about this-”

“You didn’t want me to report him, did you?” you cried. “That’s why you really didn’t tell me?” Again, you received no answer.

“Where are you going?” Haz asked, pleading, but you didn’t know. All you knew was that you needed to get out of here.

“Don’t follow me.”

You burst out of the building and onto the streets of Venice, your heart being pulled in a thousand different directions. Traffic moved around you effortlessly, like you weren’t even there. The hotel. The airport. Tom. What was going to be the least painful?

Son of a bitch this is late I’m v sorry!! But um wow what a ride, who let me have a computer?? It’s very possible this has typos, also sorry for that.

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