#anyway have the meager offerings of my sick brain

[husbandhannie]

for now

pairing: jeonghan x reader

word count: 2.4k

genre: fluff, mild angst, mildly suggestive

warnings: some very mild suggestive descriptions, reader wears a dress at some point but no explicit references to gender are made, angst about catching feelings, a stalker situation that is barely described, mild injuries, some homesickness

a/n: i don't know where i got the motivation from, but i started writing and just didn't stop. this isn't the kind of writing i do generally, so i'm not sure how this went. this is entirely unedited. thanks @starlightjoong for proofreading!

taglist: @itsveronicaxxx @zurikyo @husbandhoshi @junhui-recs

the realization that you’re in love with yoon jeonghan hits you like sinking in warm water - softly and gently, then all at once. 

it shouldn’t have surprised you, not really - not with all the already blurred lines you were crossing with him. friends-with-benefits is a hard enough endeavor to maintain even when you stick to your limits and original agreements - something you and jeonghan definitely didn’t do.

you remember the first time you met jeonghan. as a member of a popular dancing crew, you had met plenty of idols before, but not many of them looked at you as keenly as jeonghan did that night. not that you mind, everyone has been civil to you for the most part, treating you as what you are - a member of staff, a choreographer, someone to help them deliver a better performance. when jeonghan looked at you, however, it was like being put in a shimmering spotlight - right there in the trusted walls of your studio, his eyes glinting as he complimented you on your routine. “i saw your recent video”, he had said, a polite but impressed smile glowing his face, “we’re lucky to be able to work with you”.

save a few stolen glances you’ll never admit to, you manage to keep your eyes away from him that night. 

you remember the first time you voiced out your attraction to him. it wasn’t direct and you would deny it if asked, but both of you knew what you meant. he was present for a joke between you and your crewmate, one about your favorite criminal minds character, and how she was the ‘perfect woman’. “what do you see in her?”, jeonghan had asked once your friend left to take a call, curious eyes searching yours. “oh”, you chewed on it for a second, “it’s hard to put it in words. she’s fun and easygoing, i think that’s definitely a part of it. but she’s also - “, your eyes met his intent ones, “serious, when required. deliberate”, you wondered who you were talking about now, “understands people, and gets along with everyone but”, a pause, “very few know her, and she wouldn’t trust most people to love her”. he had cocked his head, analyzing your words before murmuring, “and you like that?”

your friend entered the room before you could answer. 

you remember the first time you saw jeonghan angry. a stalker had managed to enter your studio, on a night when there were very few people in what you thought was a secure space. you and a crewmate dealt with the intruder, managing to get the situation under control with minimum injuries. one look at jeonghan and his members showed that they were infuriated - at the perpetrator, at not being able to do anything themselves, at the small harm that it caused you. outside of a cursory glance at your friend, jeonghan’s eyes didn’t stray from you though, his stern jaw in sharp contrast with the gentle fingers that fluttered over the bruise on your wrist.

you’ll never say it out loud, but you’ve thought about those tender touches often. and that jaw too.

you remember the first time jeonghan held your hand. since the stalker incident, it had become a regular occurrence for him and his members to show up at your apartment for movie nights - for some reason they thought they owed you their company (not that you minded). you were sitting on your usual seat next to jeonghan when an emotional argument between a mother and daughter came up on the screen, and you were holding back tears before you knew it, slowly taking deep breaths and digging your fingertips in your thighs. nimble fingers intertwined with yours after a minute, jeonghan’s eyes not straying from the television screen while he gave you a gentle squeeze. you rested your head on his shoulder for a few minutes while you closed your eyes to collect yourself, hoping the darkness in the room made your actions unnoticeable. 

that night you wondered if you had imagined the feeling of his lips on your hair. 

you remember the first time you kissed jeonghan. you were at a somewhat exclusive restaurant with a few of your friends, and had run into jeonghan on the way to the bathroom. almost like you couldn’t help it, your eyes scanned his elegantly dressed form while he took in your maroon dress and black heels, his gaze stilling for a moment on the red of your lips. “you clean up nice”, he had said with an appreciative smile, his fingers running through the tips of his hair when you returned the compliment. when you mentioned you were leaving early because all your friends had partners they wanted to get back to, he had offered to drive you home. “please, i insist”, he had said when you protested, “let them go back to their warm beds”. a car ride and a few more compliments later, he was on your couch - his lips pressing open-mouthed kisses on your neck while your gasps filled up your living room, the hands on your thighs almost making you forget that you hadn’t talked about, well, this.

almost, but not quite. one honest “let’s stick to sex because neither of us has the time for anything else” later, he was in your bed, running his hands on your skin like he couldn’t get enough.

you remember the first time you slept in jeonghan’s arms. he had shown up at your door after an especially tiring day, dull eyes missing their usual sparkle. ignoring his feeble protests, you had helped him wash his hair before ordering dinner, gently coaxing him to your bed when he mentioned leaving. with his frustratingly sensitive ears, he lays as far away from you on the bed as he can, to be able to sleep at all. this time though, he stayed close to you, drifting off with his face nestled in your chest and his arms wrapped around your waist, slurred whispers of gratitude leaving his lips before he fell asleep.

jeonghan has a key to your apartment now, so he can let himself in when you’re asleep or not there - even if it’s just to lay down on your bed.

looking back at it now, it shouldn’t be a surprise at all that you’re in love with jeonghan. your time with him reads like something you’ll find in a buzzfeed article titled “9 activities to do with a lover”. from having impromptu dinners to being each other’s sounding boards to watching insignificant movies before drifting off entangled in each other, ofcourse you were going to fall for him. it wouldn’t surprise you if you loved him before his lips touched yours for the first time, if you loved him when his fingertips traced your bruised wrist so tenderly.

and yet, when you wake up at dawn to jeonghan’s form next to yours, one of his hands lightly resting on yours while his face barely touches your shoulder, it takes you a minute to realize that a) you feel much better just by the sight of him in your bed and the feel of his weight snuggled against you, much better since you texted him you were having a bad day, and b) that you’re hopelessly in love with yoon jeonghan. 

it’s quiet for a moment while you ponder on your unsurprising discovery, your eyes tracing his lines in the dim light, your mind recalling past instances where you thought you felt something more for him - more than attraction, more than companionship, more than friendship, more than fondness. it was love, you know now.

then it hits you - holy shit, you’re in love with yoon jeonghan. in love - with someone who you agreed to not have feelings for. if he’s kept up his end of the agreement then he doesn’t feel the same way about you - and the notion is enough to make your chest ache, your body going rigid while you consider the possible heartbreaking situation you’re in. 

you’re in love with yoon jeonghan, and he might not love you back. 

jeonghan must’ve sensed your ordeal, for he moves then, sleepy eyes fluttering open, his thumb rubbing the back of your hand slowly. “go back to sleep”, he nuzzles your neck and whispers, “it’s early”.

your heart constricts a little before a small smile breaks on your face, giddiness bubbling up inside you. it can wait, you think as you press a kiss on his head, it can wait until later. 

first rays of sunlight shine through the curtains on your window while you lay snuggled in jeonghan’s arms, his slow breaths on your skin tickling you just right. you’re in love with yoon jeonghan and he’s asleep in your arms - and for now, that’s enough.

the night of the long-awaited first rainfall of the season is when jeonghan realizes he’s in love with you. how fitting, he thinks.

he’s not surprised by it, not really. he’s been suspecting this for a while now, the possibility crossing his mind more and more frequently as your relationship progressed. when the realization finally arrives, it’s like downpour after weeks of humid haze - a foregone conclusion, yet something that you can’t look away from.

it was autumn when jeonghan met you for the first time. you were wearing your thin purple jacket that october night, one that you had shed when the dance class started. if he has to nail down what made you so irresistible that day, so much so that he barely managed to look away despite the professional setting, it would be how you tried to make your friends smile - trying to lift some weight off of heavy shoulders and bring some light in tired eyes, you shot off gentle jokes in an effort to lift the spirits of your crewmates. whether it was your humor or the fond smile you accompanied it with, it worked - and before he knew it, jeonghan was enamored. 

he likes that jacket. it doesn’t do much to stop the cold, but he feels warm in it. 

it was early december when jeonghan realized that his feelings for you ran deeper than just simple attraction. he had looked up at the sound of your laughter, his mood instantly souring when he saw the source was some joke your friend had made. i want to make you laugh like that, his mind had supplied before he could stop it, and he knew then that there was more to his feelings than he had been willing to acknowledge. 

he knows what it’s like to make you laugh now, and how your body trembles in his arms when he’s cracked a particularly egregious joke. 

he kissed you for the first time later that month. the car had been hot inside because he had cranked the heater up to warm you up, the dress you were wearing probably didn’t do much to keep you at a comfortable temperature. all of that slipped away, though, when you leaned in to press your lips on his in front of your apartment building - the heat of the car, the slight discomfort from his shirt, even your damned legs that he had a hard time not staring at. for a moment, it was just you - enchanting and lovely, dreamy and real. it was just you, with your tentative fingers touching his cheek, your lips moving slowly against his, stretching into a smile when he pulled you closer. it was just you. 

he’s addicted to it now, how you smile against his lips.

it was a spring afternoon, the first time jeonghan saw you cry. he had seen you tear up from movies before, but he had never seen you cry. he had expected the urge to protect and comfort that took over him, pulling you in his arms instantly and pressing kisses on your hair while you cried about an argument you had with your mother. he wasn’t expecting the sense of privilege that came over him though, of being allowed to see you without your carefully constructed armor. you had called him deceptively private once, while you were talking about a tv character you like. you would know, since you’re not much different. 

he’s had that privilege many times since, and he cherishes it more than he can say.

no, it’s not a surprise at all when the realization finally hits him. after months of suspecting and wondering and waiting, the certainty is almost a relief: he’s in love with you. 

the two of you have spent the last couple of hours in your bed, tucked away under the blanket while rain pattered on your windows. your face is devoid of its usual liveliness as you talk about how much you miss home, and how hard it is to hang up every time your sister calls. he makes a small joke after a few moments of silence, and for a moment your eyes brighten as some of the sadness slips from your face, your features morphing into a fond grin. your laughter mingles with the sound of july rain, and jeonghan doesn’t think he’s heard a more joyful sound before. i love you, he almost says it loud, giddy eyes unable to look away from you, god, i love you. 

he’s silent for a few moments then, pondering on this entirely expected discovery. you must’ve noticed the change, as you always do, for you touch his cheek lightly, his name tenderly falling out of your lips. say it again, he wants to say, say my name again.

“i’m alright”, he gives you a wink, pulling you closer so your nose touches his, “just realized something”.

“oh?”, you smile indulgently at him, “may i know what it is?”

“not yet”, he rubs his nose against yours, “soon. not ready to tell anyone”.

something fleeting shadows your face before you mask it with an easy smile, a look that jeonghan has seen for the past week. he wonders: is it love?

“alright then”, you chuckle, “when you’re ready”.

he needs to think about this, he knows. he needs to evaluate the possibilities, needs to prepare himself for rejection if you don’t feel the same way. but that’s for later. for now, he has you in his arms, laughing at his jokes while rain pours down outside. for now, you’re here and he’s in love with you. for now, that’s enough.

“yeah”, he whispers, hand moving to squeeze yours, “you’ll be the first to know”.

[onlyhuis]

can't get you out of my head

member — fwb!vernon x f reader genre — smut, like a little tiny bit of angst? with a happy ending word count — 2.4k synopsis — so what if calling your fuck buddy every other day is a little excessive? maybe you're just in love with him. smut warnings — descriptions of female anatomy, lots and lots of kissing, some dacryphilia, multiple orgasms, begging, creampie warnings — vernon is called hansol - i don't usually do that but just go with it; vernon is kind of a sweetheart tbh this ended up being pretty soft notes — june is back !! i've really been struggling to write these past few months so i'm actually super proud that i was able to sit down and write this as fast as i did. i can't promise another fic anytime soon or any kind of consistent uploads, but i hope you enjoy this meager offering! thanks for the support even while i've been gone :) also this is based on a dream i had about vernon the other day and i could not stop thinking about it it was driving me crazy, so everyone say thank you to my brain or the sandman or whoever put that idea in my dreams because this fic is a result of it. if there are mistakes pls ignore i wrote this at 2am

the thing you remember most about hansol is his lips.

the first time you kissed him was like opening a door to a world you'd never known existed. your past hookups had been terrible kissers, or even worse—hadn't even tried to kiss you at all. you were sick of the boring, underwhelming sex with men who couldn't care less if you got off or not. but some god or being in the universe must've been looking out for you, because finding hansol was nothing short of a miracle.

it was so good, you weren't even that embarrassed when you'd desperately texted him a couple of nights later, practically begging him to come over and fuck you again. he was burned into your brain, the feeling of his mouth locked with yours seared so deep in your memory you couldn't erase him if you tried, but it wasn't exactly like you wanted to. 

he hadn't explicitly said you would only be a one night stand, but you usually didn't hang around the same guy for too long, and he didn't really seem like the commitment type anyway. but when you find something this good, you don't let it go, and somehow you both knew that whatever this was, it was too good to pass up on.

so it wasn't really a surprise when you found yourself on his couch, straddling his lap in the late hours of the night for the third time this week. 

like you remembered, his lips were warm and soft, his cheek brushing against yours as you melted into him. you could kiss him for hours and not notice the time passing at all, so focused on the rhythm of his mouth working you up more than anything you'd done with any man you'd slept with before.

the heat of his hands resting on your hips sends shivers up and down your spine, unconsciously arching towards him as his tongue pushes into your mouth.

one gentle hand travels carefully up beneath your shirt, tracing the skin of your stomach before stopping at your breast, your heartbeat racing beneath his palm.

your breath is hot on his cheek as you readjust your position, slipping your knees onto either side of his hips and sinking down to straddle his lap. your clothed cunt throbs as he presses his bulge against the inside of your thigh, and you don't hold back the open-mouthed moan that escapes you as his other hand quickly reaches up to angle your jaw and guide your lips back to his.

you push your hips down a little harder on him and his nails dig into your breast. his grip tightens a little as his hips cant up against you, desperate for more pressure against his strained cock.

your eyelids flutter as his other hand tilts your chin upwards, finally breaking away from your mouth only to reattach his lips at the base of your jaw. his tongue laves over your skin before he starts to suck, and you shiver when he pulls back and cold air hits the wet patch of spit on your neck.

you have to focus hard not to drool when you open your eyes and catch a glimpse of his face, lust-glazed eyes staring up at you through his long, thick lashes, his intense gaze fixed on you.

if you ever get past this weird in-between stage of talking but not talking, maybe you'll tell him how jealous you are of his beautiful, natural eyelashes. if you ever actually get to have a conversation with him outside of calling to hook up, maybe you'll tell him how nice his lips are. you'll tell him how soft his hands are and how he's by far the best person you've ever slept with, leaps and bounds better than all the rest, and—

before you fully realize what's happening, you feel your shirt being pulled over your head and hansol's lips have made their way down to your chest. without a sound his hands roam your body, fingers drawing invisible lines over your bare skin and leaving trails of goosebumps with every touch.

he doesn't talk much during sex, or maybe you just don't know each other well enough yet for him to have much to say. aside from the way he occasionally murmurs about how perfect you are — an oddly intimate thing to say to someone who's just a friend with benefits, but coming from him it sounds so casual — the only words you ever get out of him are curses and whimpered pleas.

the only words he ever gets out of you are shamelessly begging him, please kiss me again, please, hansol; and you're always too far gone to care about how whiny you sound, because you need his lips on you so fucking bad you think you might just die without them. but he always obliges, quickening the speed of his thrusts and wrapping his arms around you tighter so he can kiss you deeper, until your lips are numb and you can still feel the weight of him holding you even hours after he's gone.

so maybe you do have a teeny tiny crush on hansol. anyone in their right mind would, and when he's finished with you tonight you're sure you won't have much mind left to even think about it. certainly this is a problem for another day, a day when you'll inevitably call him again so he can make you lose your mind all over again and you won't have to think about how much you like him, and you'll continue like that for who knows how long. 

maybe he'll get bored of you, or find someone else, or move to another city too far for you to justify travelling for a relationship that isn't even a relationship…

… but then he lets out a little groan and you fall back into reality, the reality where you've been making out with him for the past half hour and he quietly but confidently lets you know if he doesn't get his dick out soon he's definitely going to cum in his pants and not only will it make him look like a loser but he also won't get to fuck you, which is the whole reason you asked him to meet up tonight, right?

well, yeah, you guess, but a part of you knows there's more to it than that. but that's not really a conversation for right now.

you lean down to press another chaste kiss against those lips that you can't stop thinking about, and your fingers pull his t-shirt over his head before finding their way down to the button at the top of his jeans.

you've had his cock inside you more times than you think you deserve, but still your stomach bubbles with excitement as he lifts his hips and shimmies out of his pants, the outline against his briefs more than enough to make your mouth water before he slips those off, too.

for tonight, you're the recipient of his undivided attention. you alone get to have him and his perfect cock all to yourself; maybe not forever, but for right now, and that's all you really need.

he presses his hand against his bulge, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure as you stand up from his lap to kick off your pants and underwear.

you must have been taking too long for his liking, though, because as soon as you're fully nude his hands tug impatiently at your waist and pull you back down onto him. 

he lets out a heavy sigh, the head of his cock pressed deliciously against your clit as you start to rock your hips back and forth.

but before long his hands bring you to a stop and he lets out his usual string of pleas to let him fuck you, and now it's your turn to sigh in relief as he pushes into you, the stretch so natural like he was the only one who was made to sit you on his lap.

he doesn't move right away. he never moves right away, whether to give you a chance to adjust or maybe because he himself can't handle the feeling. either way, you always struggle to take in a shaky breath as your walls flutter around him, perfectly thick and long that you could probably cum untouched like this if you sat there for long enough.

but as badly as you want to never move and let him cockwarm you for hours, he always eventually moves. 

he starts out slow, just a few inches at a time, a gentle in and out that's almost romantic until you feel like you can breathe normally again— right before he knocks the breath out of you, increasing his pace until the room is filled with the loud sounds of skin against skin.

he always fucks you like it's been months since he's came, even though you know for a fact it was last thursday and all over your stomach. all you can do now is hang onto his broad shoulders for dear life, nails scratching helplessly at his muscles as he carries you up and over the edge, pushing you into the first of many orgasms tonight.

sometimes he'll make a comment about how wet you get when he fucks you like this, rough and fast as he pounds into you like there's no tomorrow. and that's when you'll agree, yes you love it so much, yes he's so good, yes you need more and please, please keep going.

if it were anyone else they'd probably smirk at that, satisfied with the momentary boost to their ego. but that's what you love about hansol, is that he's not anyone else: he'll take those words and use them to somehow fuck you even rougher and even faster, so rough and so fast that sometimes tears will start to roll down your cheeks, and that's usually about when you start begging him to kiss you.

you can't help it. the way he bounces you so effortlessly on his cock, his lips parted and beads of sweat trickling down his neck, you need him bad. you want to be closer to him, closer than you know is physically possible but damn if you won't try anyway.

throwing your hands around his neck and falling against his chest, tears still streaming from your eyes as you plead with him, repeating his name over and over and over like you've lost your mind and he's the only thing left. in all honesty, maybe he is.

he quietly shushes you and tilts his chin up to capture your lips in the kiss you so badly crave, and it's everything you need and more and somehow still not enough but you can't think straight anymore when his cock is hitting you just right and his mouth is also just right and each vein, each curve, each ridge, drags perfectly along your walls and he's splitting you open and goddamn you are ruined for anybody else.

you feel like you're skirting in and out of consciousness when you cum again, squeezing around his cock so tight that even his powerful thrusts can't continue at their current pace.

it isn't long before he lets go too, holding you flush against his body as he fills you up, painting your insides white with a breathy moan, and in a weird way it makes you feel kind of proud.

you both sit there for a moment, panting as you start to come down.

without even standing up you already know your legs are jell-o, but you don't really have time to think about that as hansol lifts you off his lap and sets you carefully on the couch, leaving you with another kiss before he stands up and disappears down the hall, returning seconds later with a towel that looks suspiciously new.

you'd asked him about his bathroom towels last time you'd been over at his place. a mismatched collection of white and brown and aquamarine that he'd taken with him when he'd moved out of his parent's house, he said, he'd never really had a reason to buy a set of his own. 

the grey cloth in his hand now that he uses to gently wipe between your legs is one you don't remember seeing.

he finishes and you want him to kiss you again, but you're too shy to ask now so he leaves you again with just a kind smile this time.

you've put most of your wrinkled clothes back on by the time he comes back. he offers to drive you home every time afterwards, but you always insisted you were fine, already feeling like you'd overstayed your welcome.

this time he doesn't offer, though, just quietly sits down next to you to pull on his own clothes until you're both fully dressed.

he speaks before the awkward silence has time to set in.

"have you been seeing anybody else?" he asks, and it's probably the longest sentence he's spoken to you outside of when he's fucking you.

it takes you a couple seconds to say no. god, you sound like a loser, but you couldn't lie to him. since the very first time with hansol the thought of seeing anyone besides him hadn't even crossed your mind. just like you thought; ruined.

it takes him a couple seconds to reply, too. 

"good," he says, and you could almost swear his cheeks are pinker than usual as he admits that he hasn't been with anyone, either. "could we keep it that way?"

your breath catches a little. "yeah?"

"yeah," he answers. "whatever… this is, i like it. and i like you."

and just like that, things make sense. 

"maybe, would you, y'know, wanna stay this time?" he asks, and you can't hide the grin on your face as you lean over and kiss him again, your answer evident in the way your hand falls against his warm chest and your fingers weave gently through his hair.

everything is so simple with hansol.

i hope you enjoyed this!! if you did, consider reblogging or leaving a comment or an ask :) it shows me this is something people want to see more of, and knowing people like this makes me want to write more of it! thanks for reading!!

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[frenchy-and-the-sea]

OC-Tober Day 28 - Rest

(from @/oc-growth-and-development’s OC-tober list)

Well, I slid a little backwards into my writing slump, but I wrote this before the event started so I figured that I might as well put it out there anyway!

I’ve had this silly little scene of my wife and I’s d&d girls kicking around my brain for years now, honestly. The concept got a little tainted not so very long ago, but I decided the best way to overthrow that was to just. Go ahead and write the damn thing. So I did!

Have my Val and @colonelcupquake‘s Rona being cozy. ~1100 words

----

The hammock had taken twice as long to set up as the rest of camp, but Val was nothing if she was not stubborn. 

Her argument had been thus: if she had spent years slinging canvas and rope between beams on a ship, then by all rights, she should have no problem doing so between the trunks of trees. The reality was that trees lacked all the convenient little nooks and crannies of crossbeams, and that sailcloth was hard to find further inland, and even harder to lug around. That left only the simple weaves she could find at local trade stops, the sort that she looped around her shifty knotwork while praying to whatever god or powerful, otherworldly mage that was still listening that the whole thing didn't collapse underneath her. 

It hadn't, yet, but the groaning of the ropes threatened.

She had just finished adding a second line to the ends of the hammock and had stepped back to examine her work when Rona appeared beside her, head cocked to one side.

"So this is what you've been up to," she said. Somehow, the words came out all curiosity, without the slightest hint of teasing. Val appreciated that; even her wounded pride wouldn't let her deny how haphazardly she had fumbled her makeshift hammock into existence.

"More or less," she said, shrugging. "Doesn't look pretty, but it didn't break when I tested it. That's something."

"Definitely something," Rona hummed. She picked her way over to the hammock and flattened her hands into the curve of it, pressing her entire weight straight down. The ropes creaked gently, but the hammock mercifully didn't fall.

"You can give it a try," Val offered, stepping up beside her. "It held me. I doubt you'll give it much of a problem."

"Knowing your work, I'm pretty sure we could pile all of us in here and not give it much of a problem," said Rona with a sidelong grin. Val huffed, but denying the little blossom of warmth in her chest at the faintest scratch of praise from Rona was like denying gravity, or coming rain. She offered her hand instead, which Rona took obligingly before stepping back and flinging herself bodily into the hammock. 

“Not bad,” she said when it stopped pitching sideways, wiggling to arrange herself inside. “A nice change of pace from the ground, for sure. Probably too hard to set up often, though. And it needs a pillow.”

She glanced pointedly up to Val, who snickered and swept into a low, theatrical bow.

“Your will, Your Grace,” she said, with as much dour resonance as she could manage while laughing. Then she turned and started towards the piles of fabric that Sarula had arranged at the edge of their meager camp, only to stagger as her captive hand was yanked backwards. 

When she turned, blinking, towards the hammock, Rona was staring up at her with one eyebrow raised and gesturing pointedly to the space beside her.

Fondness welled up through the hollows of Val’s chest, the deep, thought-numbing, flooding sort that only Rona had ever seemed to wake in her. She turned back, feeling her mouth curl into the stupid, love-sick grin that she knew meant she was about to do whatever was asked of her. She let her good sense have one last go at winning her over anyway.

“I don’t think it’ll hold both of us.”

“It will,” said Rona immediately, with a wave of her free hand. “Or it won’t, and it’ll be funny. But it will. C’mon, Val.”

She tugged again, gentler now, but Val had already been done in by her name in pleading tones. Sighing the long-suffering sigh of the thoroughly defeated, Val gestured Rona to one side of the narrow stretch of fabric, double checked her knots, and then gingerly clambered her way in.

It took no small amount of figuring - and a few giggling shoves at offending limbs in decidedly offended stomachs - but very soon they were laying side by side, Rona curled heavily in the crux of Val’s arm, breathing ticklish sighs of content across her collarbone. Their arrangement had left Val with both legs dangling uncomfortably over both sides of the hammock, and with her tail squashed to pins and needles beneath her, but Val had never once fretted about her own discomfort over someone else’s, and she didn’t intend to start now. With monumental effort, she extracted her arm from where it was pinned against the hammock’s side and slid it onto Rona’s back, rubbing lazy circles into the tight bands of muscle there. Another hum of satisfaction washed against the skin of her neck. If Rona could purr, it sounded very much like she would have started. 

“Told you,” the halfling muttered, more sigh than word. “Now you can do this all the time.”

“Oh, I can do this all the time, can I?” Val shifted her hand to squeeze at the little peak of Rona’s hip, and grinned as a foot jolted against her thigh. Rona reached back and swatted lazily at her.

“Fine," she conceded with a wave of her hand, "I'll make the trees for you. Nice fat ones with branches you can tie the ends to. And bigger ones, for shade. A whole army of them. Oaks.”

“You’re getting mighty commanding there, for someone who isn’t royalty,” Val said with a hazy smile. “What if the trees revolt?”

“I’ll give them to Amon.” 

They dissolved into a fit of conspiratorial snickering, delirious with their own stupidity and the giddy exhaustion of near-sleep. Their monk’s predisposition for making nature his own personal sparring partner was matched only by his predisposition for setting things on fire. That Rona would retain him for a personal crusade against disobedient trees was too ridiculous - and too likely - not to giggle about. 

Eventually, though, their weariness got the better of them, and their laughter lapsed into a warm, glowing silence that Val felt like the last creeping rays of sunlight over the horizon. Something shifted beside her, and then Rona’s hand groped across her chest, finding her free hand and twining it with her own. Warmth bubbled up through Val’s innards again, pooling high in her belly. She clasped their fingers tighter.

“We ought to be finishing camp, you know,” she muttered, with effort. Rona grumbled into the fabric of her shirt.

“I finished making my camp,” she said petulantly, and buried her face closer. “Bed. Pillow.”

“Mm. Technically I made the bed.”

“Shh.”

Grinning, Val curled her arm tighter around Rona’s shoulders and allowed her last little touch of good sense to slip away. A rest wouldn’t kill them. There were still hours till sundown, even more till first watch. Amon could make a fire; Dot could cook. Val was thick-headed, but she had spent too long not dying in the company of her friends to think they needed her help in any great capacity. They could afford to let her sleep.

She had, after all, made a very good hammock.

[hadenodom-stories]

Clair’s Voyage, Part 1

Clair woke up in a cold sweat.  There was no light breaking through her open window, and her heavy dark Navy curtains made no noise as they wavered in the summer wind.  It was the 5th of July, and she was freaking out.  Have you ever had a dream that stays on your mind and colors your mood for an entire day?  Clair had just endured the second such dream in as many nights.

Regardless of the dread her dream had instilled in her, she knew she had to get up and moving.  Yesterday's dream had nearly sapped her of all of her energy, and her friend Elaine had noticed at the neighborhood 4th of July cookout.  "I've never seen you in such a foul mood", she'd remarked.  She couldn't let that happen today.  She had a very important interview, and her entire future potentially hinged on it.  She couldn't be in a dour, depressed state -- 'Then I'll have to fake a smile', she thought, 'and I'm absolute shit at that'.  

Despite a grim determination to force herself into a better mood, she found herself dwelling on the previous day's events as she trudged through the hallways of her quiet house towards the kitchen.  By the time she was sitting down, her head full of frizzy auburn hair slumped forward beholding the sight of a depressing bowl of some "healthy" cereal that'd been sitting in the cupboards well past its expiration date, her mind was busy replaying  and reliving the most traumatic part of that day.  The part that she'd seen before in a nightmare just hours before it happened in real life.  The part of the day that was at first clouded in a sense of Déjà vu -- a surreal "I've seen all of these events, in this exact order, before..." sense -- until it burst into traumatic realness.  The pops and whizzes of fireworks zooming into the sky.  The cheers of the neighborhood kids as one particularly bright, low, and loud firecracker exploded.  Her younger brother looking at her with a cheeky "watch this" expression as he prepared to light a cobbled-together collection of old fireworks that he'd taped together and put into a small pipe to launch.  His uncomprehending, still-excited face as the spark ran along the fuse far too fast and the pipe began to tilt back towards him.  The flash and screams afterwards.  And everything going black once she saw the blood and exposed bone.  Once she realized how bad it might be...

She neatly placed her spoon back on the table and stood up.  'No way I can fucking eat now', she thought.  As she walked out onto the back patio and tossed the now-soggy cereal out into the yard for the local cats to enjoy, she remembered her mom's instructions:

"Look, go home.  Just go home.  You heard the doctor, honey.  He's going to be alright.  They're doing their best.  We won't be able to see him for quite a while.  I'll stay here for now.  Just go home and sleep in your own bed.  Get you mind off of it and come back when you're able."

Clair slammed the patio door shut behind her, furious now.  She understood that her mother wasn't exactly a master of emotional understanding or empathy, but how could she be so fucking stupid?  How could her mom just think that she'd be able to go home and be comfortable knowing her brother was in surgery, having seen what happened to him?  'I'm an adult now, but goddamn, how do I even process this on my own?  How do I just move on with my life?  How can she expect me to just go home, forget all about it, and then get ready for this interview?"

She continued to ruminate and curse her mother's lack of empathy - or at least the kind of empathy Clair expected - as she lazily got ready for her interview.  It was only 5 AM and her interview wasn't until 9, but there wasn't anything else to do and she certainly couldn't go back to sleep.  She was going to put on a frightfully awful dress - she hated dresses - with a pair of shiny black businesslike pumps - which she also loathed - and apply more makeup than usual, and then go spend a couple of hours at the hospital trying to get an update on her brother's situation.  'I'll go ahead and let mom know that I can't handle this on my own while I'm there', she thought.  'She won't care, but I'll let her know'

In her old, grey Civic hatchback with the paint peeling, she barely focused on the road or on driving.  The static-filled dulcet tones of an NPR reporter reciting headlines momentarily calmed her, but she wasn't processing any of the words.  She was just busy thinking of what she could remember from last night's dream.  It was a mess - all she could remember was some boy she barely recognized (but couldn't place) talking to her mother, and her mother suddenly displaying more emotion than Clair had ever seen from her - but she still wasn't able to actually identify the emotion her mother was feeling in the dream.  Something like shock - or confusion - or betrayal - or all of those.  Clair tried in vain to figure out who the boy in the dream was - his face looked very familiar, but she couldn't remember where, other than the dream, she'd seen him. And as for what emotion her mother had been reacting with or what the boy had been telling her mother, she was at a complete loss.  Her eyes flashed upon a sign and her brakes squealed.  Lost in thought, she'd almost missed the exit for the hospital.

The hospital was a tiny rural hospital on the edge of town, a decaying building full of old doctors and young underpaid nurses, kept alive on a shoestring budget despite the exorbitant prices it charged you for the simple privilege of remaining alive.  Clair was sure that her mom wasn't ready for any of the financial burden her brother had just incurred -- at least not on the meager retirement checks and alimony they'd subsisted on since her dad had left.  Walking into the main waiting room, she was mentally prepared to hit her mom hard with three questions:  "How is he?", "When can I see him?", and "You're not going to make me stay at the house by myself for another night".  The last one wasn't a question, but she expected, at the very least, her mother's acknowledgement.  Instead, she was met by the face from her dream - the unfamiliar boy - walking out of an empty waiting room.  She couldn't help but stop in her tracks and stare at him.  "You're Micheal's sister, right?", the boy said, seemingly unphased by her glare.  "Yes", she finally managed to respond.  "He's not here anymore", the boy replied.  

"What?"

"They took him to a hospital in Jacksonville.  He's stable.  Your mom didn't call you and tell you?"

"No..."

"Oh, well.  They left about 30 minutes ago.  He's stable, but your mom's kind of a wreck.  I stayed to meet up with his friend Lisa who wants to ride with me to Jacksonville.  He's going to go into another surgery to try to save his face and they said he'll probably be ready for visitors by later tonight."

'This is absurd', Clair thought.  'How can this random boy know more about my brother's situation than me.  How could my mom be so detached as to not tell me any of this?  And I'll be goddamned if anyone's going to finally visit my brother's hospital room before me'

"You can ride with us if you'd like", the boy offered.

"No, thanks, I actually have to drive to Jacksonville this morning anyways.  I have an interview at 9..."

"Say no more... I guess I'll see you there"

With that, the boy walked past her.  She turned and followed him outside.  "So... who are you?"

"Oh, we've met before I think.  I'm Cavill, Micheal's... we're friends.  I've been here since last night worried sick about him.  I guess your mom wanted you to be home so you wouldn't worry yourself sick like her."

"Fat lot of good that did", Clair replied drearily.  "And yeah, we have met... Micheal just never bothers to introduce his friends to us.  I guess he gets that from mom, the habit of keeping everyone at a distance"

"Cigarette?"  Cavill was holding out a crumpled pack of smokes.  It was odd to think that anyone Micheal hung out with smoked -- to Clair, she couldn't think of her brother as anything but a kid.  Hell, she had a hard time calling herself an "adult"

"No thanks", she replied, waving sheepishly.  

"I quit like a month ago - most on your brother's insistence.  But sitting here waiting last night and stressing out... I just couldn't do it.  I went and bought a pack of smokes.  Micheal would be ashamed of me."

"Don't say that.  I've never known Micheal to be anything but supportive"

"Yeah, but he..."  Cavill's voice trailed off as he began to choke up.  "He's the only person that really ever cared, you know?  And I care about him too.  I don't want to let him down."  A single tear ran down his cheek.

Clair was at a complete loss.  She always came to a complete loss when anyone cried or became vulnerable around her.  'I guess I'm not too unlike my mother', she thought.

"You won't.  You know he talks about you sometimes?  The other day he told me that you're learning guitar and that you're pretty good"

"I'm not, and he knows it.  He just..."

She wasn't sure why Cavill was trailing off now.  She'd met friends of her brother's before, but something was different in the way Cavill talked about his bond with Micheal.  What was it?  

Suddenly, some neurons firing in her brain or some semblance of emotional intelligence came to her, and it made sense.  Months before, Micheal had confessed to her that he was in a relationship but said it was a secret and refused to give her any more details.  It'd annoyed her at the time - she hated secrets in any form and saw them as puzzles or riddles that she needed to solve - but now, with her brother's somewhat-secretive friend quietly crying over a cigarette in front of her, an uncomfortably vulnerable figure, she felt like she was close to unraveling this particular puzzle.  She eyed Cavill again, taking him in.  He was a bit taller than her brother, and thinner.  His hair was golden-brown and jettisoned out from his head at odd angles, like some sort of anime character's.  His face didn't quite match it - soft angles, a small button of a nose, and thin lips.  Blue eyes.  He looked absolutely sad, and she couldn't stand to leave him here on his own.

"You're going to Jacksonville, right?", she said.

"Yeah, but I'm waiting for Lisa, remember?  She's my ride"

"Well, you can ride with me if you want.  I'm going right now."

"That's probably more convenient.  Lisa lives between here and Jacksonville and hasn't even left her house yet".

"Well, I'll make some room in my car.  And I have an interview later on, so I won't be able to give you a ride back until after lunch"

"That's okay, I'm staying at the hospital for the day if I can help it"

Clair looked at Cavill, who'd extinguished his cigarette between his fingers and was starting to walk behind her towards her car.  "Go wash you hands and splash some water on your face", she said.  "I don't want the smell of cigarettes in my car, and besides, you look tired"

Cranking her car, her head disappeared in thought again.  What was the meaning of the dream she'd had the night before?  What kind of secret life had her brother been living?  Who is this Cavill kid she's seen around who's suddenly very attached to her brother?  Why would her mom not tell her that her brother had been taken to a hospital an hour's drive south for surgery?  What was Cavill telling her mom in the dream she'd just had, and why did it make her mom so... upset?  

She couldn't sit there with her thoughts for a second longer, so she reached for the pair of pliers in the center console and used them to twist the metal stub on which her car radio's volume knob had once rested.  The dulcet tones of the NPR announcer now filled the silence:  

"Next on NPR:  We talk to an experimental psychologist about a new study on the phenomenon of apparently precognitive dreams.  Can dreams predict the future?"  

Not even NPR was going to give her a moment of escapism. 

=============================================

This is part one of my unfinished series about a girl named Clair whose dreams begin to mirror reality (sounds fun until it happens to you!), which for now is going to be titled “Clair’s Voyage”.  I started writing a story along these lines, with much less detail, a few years ago until it was apparent that I was writing a longer story than I’d set out to write.  At that time, I just saved the draft but left it unfinished.  Now, I’m adding more details and breaking it out into different parts.  It may become a book by the time I’m done.  Clair, you see, is an aspiring psychiatrist - she loves studying the mind and how it works - but right now she’s just trying to struggle through community college and get a job as a secretary at the local psychiatric hospital.  She’s also trying to struggle with the traumatic events surrounding an eerie July 4th, on which her brother was grievously injured in a scene that played out exactly how it had played out in her nightmare the night before.  With her brother’s boyfriend, Cavill, at her side, she’s about to embark on a journey of discovery and empowerment filled with ups and downs and unspeakable trauma.  So be sure to tune in for the next Part of Clair’s Voyage. 

[stormyweaver]

Borrowed Time || Chp. 1

So my latest hyperfixation has been this show on Netflix called ‘Swee/t Home’. It’s a live-action South Korean adaption of a webtoon comic, and seriously if you’ve never heard of it before, at least watch the first episode. If you aren’t hooked, gosh, I don’t know what could make a person want more! But you don’t have to have seen the show to enjoy this I think, but again I’d highly reccommend checking the series out. I adore every single character and I’ll probably be writing more about them all, but for now I’m focusing on Pyeon San/g-wook because h-he’s my fave... He’s basically a mysterious drifter who dolls out justice in his own badass way, and he’s amazing and a super complex character. 

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EPISODE FIVE, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED:

This is after Sang-wook kills the pedophile he was hired to find, and then drags his body outside while bringing two other victims who had died to a monster inside the apartment building. It was pouring raining and my brain instantly went: how can you have a out-in-the-rain scene without sickness? BLASPHEMY! Anyway hope y’all enjoy!

The timing might have been slightly comical if he didn't have a splitting headache. Or, was it a concussion? That... nurse had mentioned something similar, but he truly hadn't paid her any mind. Why would he give someone so prying the time of day in the first place? He hated being touched without his permission, no matter the reason; maybe she had simply been trying to help, but there was absolutely no way in hell he was going to let her continue treating him as if he was some weakling.

No, he only... felt weak, due to all of the stress. He would bounce back eventually - he inevitably did. Though he could never fully comprehend why, his body had an uncanny ability to heal faster than most, and bestowed him with a strength that most people only ever imagined themselves possessing. It had served him well over the years, made him capable of surviving on his own for as long as he'd needed to, aided him in carrying out the tasks others simply didn't have the stomach for. It had of course, had it's downsides - there were injuries and ailments he simply couldn't knock in a matter of hours, and those instances where he'd been forced to finally allow his body to rest were intensely irritating.

A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead as he staggered through the dirtied hallway and, sensing that he was finally alone, allowed himself to lean bodily against a flyer-littered wall. His breath was coming in short, harsh pants, almost bordering on wheezing, though his teeth instantly grit at the idea. He wasn't weak-- damn it, if Jae-heon had just left him out there to die, he wouldn't be feeling like utter, completely useless shit right now. The zealot likely loathed him just like the rest, if not fear then at the very least an intense dislike. Only his 'vows' or whatever meaningless word of God had made him keep the gate open. He swallowed- or rather, made an attempt to, and was unsurprised to find that the action was mildly painful. Pair that was the throbbing near his sinuses, the malaise, and the general feeling of being lethargic, it wouldn't take a medical professional to inform him that he was unwell. What was that old saying? Something about only fools catching a chill from standing out in the rain? Nonsense. But... well, he wasn't about to start pondering old proverbs with a pounding headache. At least he wasn't getting a nose bleed. Just a stuffy one. It took Sang-wook longer than he would have preferred to stand up straight again and continue limping down the walkway, but eventually he did, coming to a stop on the corner of a vacant room. He could practically hear his limbs creak as he perched himself on the edge of a step, and one hand automatically slipped into his jacket pocket. Some habits were harder to break than others. And if ever there a time he truly needed a smoke... With the lit cigarette between his lips, he began to ponder what his next move would be. He had technically finished his business there; no other reason to remain other than the fact that fucking monsters were roaming the city. Of all the positively inconvenient bullshit - monsters. Not that he had any real plans after taking care of matters. He never did. Being a drifter meant not making attachments, not allowing himself to get roped into anything unless it was related to his main task. And yet there he was, with an apartment full of people who either saw him as a thug or a threat or, for some irritatingly insane reason, a person to be pardoned. A laughable concept at best. He didn't even want to be pardoned - he didn't regret the things he had done, to begin with. And wasn't that one of the key steps to getting into heaven? Being repentant for your sins? Well, that was already one big strike against him. Just how did that damned nosey priest expect him to continue on, then? Why had he been so adamant about "saving" him? Why? A trail of smoke filtered past his nostrils, nose absently wrinkling as the thoughts only served to frustrate him all the more. What the hell was he going to do... He brought the stick to his lips again, but his breath caught pre-inhale, mouth forming a deeper frown than normal. A small pin-prick had been stinging the back of his nose ever since he'd woken up, but so far he'd been able to ignore it. Until now. He sniffed harshly, once, twice and, thinking that was that, but the moment he closed his lips around the cigarette, he inhaled harshly through his nose. "hH'KGSHHh!" The sneeze jerked his head down sharply, though he managed to keep it relatively quiet. The last thing he needed was some passerby hearing and having the guts to try and approach him. Though containing it hadn't done his headache any favors, and his teeth had nearly snapped the cigarette in half. Hell, he couldn't even smoke in peace. What was the point of still being alive, again? "You shouldn't be smoking," Ah, there it was. Sang-wook didn't need to glance up in order to place the voice - he could smell the self-righteousness from a mile away. Or, he would have, had he been able to smell anything at the moment.

Resisting the urge to sniffle, he made no attempt at offering even a semblance of acknowledgement towards the other. Not that it would stop him from poking his nose where it didn't belong, so it came as no surprise when Jae-heon stood directly in front of him, gradually lowering himself until he was seated similarly to the other with a soft grunt. Sighing, Sang-wook plucked the useless cigarette from his lips and tossed it to the floor, swiftly crunching it beneath his boot. "I'm not,"

Jae-heon hummed in acknowledgement. "I don't say it to judge," Sang-wook wasn't sure why he felt the need to clarify, but his gaze did flit over to the other's general direction for a moment. He could see the glint his blade gave off out of the corner of his eye. Curious. Although he didn't doubt the other's skill, he just didn't see a point in taking it with him everywhere. But that was ultimately his choice, and he didn't have the mental capacity to bother pondering why he did so. "How are you feeling?" The scarred man barely lifted his eyes to Jae-heon, who gestured with his chin towards the direction Sang-wook had originally walked from. "Yu-ri took a look at your head injury, right? Is it serious?"

The only response he gave was a meager shrug. Sang-wook wouldn't willingly give information about how he was feeling when it didn't matter in the long run. Whether he was fine or slowly bleeding out, what difference would it make? You shouldn't be alive in the first place; why does he care? God, thinking made his head throb. Couldn't he just be alone in this god forsaken complex for more than a solid minute?

He heard Jae-heon sigh, noted him shift slightly, but still kept his gaze glued to the floor. "What you did... I can't agree with your actions," Sang-wook almost scoffed aloud. Was he really expected to listen to a lecture about right and wrong? His attention was already split, anyway. The itch sparked in his sinuses still burned, not having been satisfied with the weak excuse for a sneeze, and every facial muscle was tensed as he worked to smother the sensation into submission. At least he always happened to look stoic, so he doubted the other would notice. Still, hearing Jae-heon gear up for a sermon of sorts didn't bode well for his waning resolve. "But I do understand why you did what you did. The others might not - they might still see you as something that you're not-" "What would you know about what I am?" Sang-wook interjected sharply, a scowl evident on his features. Admittedly, it hurt to talk, and he internally cringed at the trace of hoarseness in his voice. But he didn't like anyone thinking of him as some misunderstood wretch worthy of some kind of redemption. He wasn't a hero, he wasn't a villain, not good or evil - he simply was, and he never needed to be more or less than that, didn't need to satisfy anyone's opinion of him. Jae-heon glanced down momentarily, looking as if he were trying to gather his thoughts. Speaking could come as easily as breathing at certain times, and yet there were moments were every point of diction managed to fail him. "I'm not here to pity you. And I wouldn't claim to understand you. Every person has their reasons for what they do - and every person has to stand with those reasons before the almighty. I'm not here to judge," The scarred skin beneath Sang-wook's eye jumped slightly. "Then what are you here to do? Whatever it is, you're wasting your..." He had to pause, throat constricting momentarily before he sighed unevenly through his nose, "... breath. You should be more concerned about yourself," Jae-heon couldn't help but quirk a miniscule smile at that. "That isn't God's way. Besides, I wouldn't still be alive if I had decided to be selfish," His thoughts shifted to Hyun-su, Mr. Han, Ms. Im and Ji-su - he had all of them to thank for his life, for making it this far. People who, while they may not have shared the same faith as himself, had believed that sticking together and looking after each other was the way to survive - was the right path. No matter their differences, they chose to be selfless, and that was what had led them to finding the other survivors. Sang-wook didn't reply, mainly due to the fact that he wasn't sure he could safely do so without breaking his concentration. Though it didn't matter - Jae-heon continued anyway. "You didn't have to bring back Min-Ju and Su-ung. I won't ask you why, because to me, what matters is that you did. That means something," When Sang-wook didn't respond again, Jae-heon opened his mouth to continue, only to be silenced when the other opposite him took in a sharp inhale and twisted off to the side. "hH'GKxnt! h'HCHGnt!" Jae-heon blinked for a moment, not really startled by the sneezes but seeming to examine Sang-wook with a little more scrutiny, to which the the other flashed him a glare. Unfazed, he continued to gaze at the other. "You look pale. You should be resting," Sang-wook simply scoffed, cringing at the phlegm lining his throat. He desperately needed to sniff back the moisture threatening to breach his nostrils, but his pride held the action back as Jae-heon continued to press the issue. "You're up and about after having passed out - and you were in the rain for a good while. You might be getting sick," And if he was? What the hell did it matter? Sang-wook wanted to press both heels of his palms against his eyes and grind until the pressure behind them lessened at least a little. He was exhausted, and fatigue suddenly swept over him like the storm clouds still raging outside. Everything felt heavy and sluggish which, for someone with normally such sharp senses, was more than off-putting. It felt wrong. He felt wrong. Why was the good Christian wasting time worrying about whether or not he was ill when there were literal monsters still roaming the apartment? As if sensing his turmoil, Jae-heon finally moved to stand back up, katana blade resting by his side. "You should go see Yu-ri - at the very least she can give you something for your head," He began to turn away, paused, then uttered something that made the skin on the back of Song-wook's neck prickle uncomfortably.

"Take care of yourself," Jae-heon’s retreating footsteps seemed to echo unusually loud, and it wasn't until he could no longer hear them any longer that Sang-wook finally indulged in a thick, pitiful sniffle and allowed his head to drop into his waiting hands.

[recurring-polynya]

I try to make this Tumblr a place for my truest friends, those nice people who read my fanfiction, to get bonus content. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, on a wave of inspiration. It’s an expansion of an event that came up in Between Tides – Renji breaking his arm back in Inuzuri. This will eventually be a flashback in a larger story, but not for a while, so this is sort of like a preview. (mmmaybe The Heart is a Muscle p6? I am mid-p4 now).

Anyway, here’s a sad story about Inuzuri, dirtbag teens in love, and back-alley surgery. I heard you like flashbacks, dawg, so I put some flashbacks inside of the flashbacks.

Rated T for some gruesome imagery and one cuss. You don’t have to have read any of my previous work, although I guess this contains some mild spoilers for the Heart is a Muscle.

As usual, @diademchiofthetripod made it better for me, particularly the beginning, but if there are parts that are still bad, those are mine.

In later years, when she recalled The Accident (which she usually tried not to), Rukia always thought of herself as the stupid one, but really, she wasn’t doing anything much stupider than usual. 

She saw the man’s lead pipe, of course; dull and heavy, hanging by his side.  It was a serious weapon in Inuzuri, and he was a large man with a mean face, but he was also sloppy drunk, and his money pouch was beyond tempting, only loosely tied to his belt. She had made it ten paces away, nearly across the street, when she felt the hand clamp onto her arm like an iron band. What she had failed to notice was that her mark had a partner.

Said partner had one hand tight on her neck, the other twisting her own hands painfully behind her back, while the mark tapped the pipe in his hand and slurred out all the things he was going to do to her after he split her head like a melon. Rukia was running numbers, examining possibilities, playing out scenarios for escaping. 

It was not looking good.

The man raised the pipe.

Rukia squeezed her eyes shut.

It was the worst sound she had ever heard in her life to date, a meaty crunch, the shattering of bone. Later in her life, there would be worse sounds, the sound of a sword sliding through flesh, the sound of an Arrancar’s Resurrección. But this was bad enough.

Rukia also had a partner, a loud boy with a stupid amount of red hair, who had just interposed himself between Rukia and the lead pipe. Wait. That was incorrect. He was not a boy any more. This was, in fact, the exact moment when she stopped thinking of him as a boy. He towered over almost everyone she knew in this town, this awful place where everyone and thing was stunted and twisted. His shoulders were wide and strong, despite never getting enough to eat. He had not been a boy for a while.

 Right now, the air around him boiled. The lead pipe was bent ridiculously over his forearm. Rukia could not see her rescuer’s face, only his broad back, and past his shoulder, the wide eyes of the man with the leadpipe. Then, Renji growled out what the terrified man could do with himself, and clocked him in the face with a left cross before whirling on Rukia’s captor. 

The partner was startled by the arrival of this flame-haired monster, and Rukia slipped his grip, kicked the man in the nards, and beat it. She was not abandoning her partner, she would never. This was standard protocol. They had stayed alive in this brutish place for over eight years by being small and quiet and very, very quick. They would need some new strategies, Rukia, realized, because Renji was no longer small and quiet. He was still quick though, she could hear his heavy footfalls behind her, feel his presence in her wake in a way that, as far as she knew, only the two of them could do. She was glad he had stuck to the old standard operating procedures, too, even though he now very well qualified as one of the brute class.

She ducked between some decrepit buildings, under some hanging laundry, around the stench of the tanner’s, and skidded to a halt in a dank alley illuminated by a thin shaft of dirty sunlight.

For a long moment, she breathed in and out, watching the dust motes hanging in the air, afraid to turn around.

“Rukia… are… are you alright?” Renji panted behind her. 

She slowly turned. He was cradling his right arm in his left. 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let me see it.”

She should have called him an idiot, a moron. Could he not find a weapon, a stick, anything, rather than his own precious body to put between her and certain death?

“It doesn’t look all that bad,” he admitted, experimentally holding it out for examination. 

It looked terrible. It should have been a bruised lump of blood and pulp, but instead, it just looked wrong. The bones were not in the places where arm bones should be, nor were they the right shape, but the skin was miraculously unbroken. He could move it around and flex his hand well enough, although this caused things to shift around sickeningly beneath his skin. The entire arm was slowly turning a deep purple.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, it hurts pretty bad.”

“Dammit, Renji,” Rukia glowered at him. 

The look in his eyes was sheepish through the pain, and her heart twisted in her chest. Why did she always have to be so impulsive, so stupid? Why?

*   *   *

Rukia hated taking so much of the food, but she and Renji might need it and Fujimaru didn’t. Mameji was sick again, so Rukia left some for him, though they weren’t sure whether it actually helped. It seemed like he was through the worst of this spell, but she didn’t want to take any chances, as if waking up in Inuzuri every morning didn’t constitute taking a chance.

“Make him stay in bed for at least two days after he seems better,” she ordered Fujimaru, as if he didn’t know this, as if they hadn’t all been through this a dozen times now. “Thank you for staying with him.”

“Whatever,” Fujimaru said glumly, his eyes glued to the mangled mess of Renji’s arm.

Renji was uncharacteristically quiet. They had already had the argument, screaming through the night, and he had lost. Renji was the biggest of them, the strongest. His stoicism meant nothing, the gang depended on him. They had to try to get it fixed.

There was a healer, more of an apothecary, really, who lived up in 76. Seeking medical attention was a valid reason to get a travel pass, but they lacked the finances for the bribe, so they traveled by stealth instead. 

Rukia and Renji went up to 77 all the time for thievery purposes. They were too well known in Inuzuri, and also, there was better stuff to steal up there. They didn’t take the others with them, not anymore. One border crossing was a calculated risk, less so when you could use your spiritual pressure to lighten your feet and keep air in your lungs. Two was exponentially more dangerous. When you arrived in Soul Society, they branded a number on your soul with demon magic. The penalty for being caught in a place that didn’t match that number was supposed to be a second death, but the vile souls that passed for law enforcement down here would probably find some much worse things to do to you first. One district away meant safety was only a mad dash for the border to get you back where you belong. Two districts was something else entirely.

Rukia tried not to think about how Renji had made this journey once before, in the middle of the night, with herself, dying, tied to his back. She imagined he didn’t like to think about that much, either. She had been gored by a wild boar, out in the woods, her side ripped open. Renji had stopped the bleeding with his spiritual energy, a feat that he had not been able to reproduce, nor did he wish to, because it hadn’t healed anything, only burned the wound closed. The old apothecary had apparently had to tear her open again, and sew everything back together with needle and thread and his own meager healing abilities, while Renji looked on and held down her convulsing body.

The old man was not a kind man or even a good man. He did not work on charity cases, but he saw a strong young man who could read and write and even do a few figures, so Renji spent the next six weeks working off his debt, collecting payment from deadbeats on top of a little light bookkeeping and writing out prescriptions, while Rukia slowly recovered in the back room. 

Renji could have stayed. Rukia was listening at the door when the man offered to get him a work pass. A work pass, the value was immeasurable. “They’ll let you keep the girl with you, if you tell ‘em she’s your wife,” Rukia remembers the apothecary saying, the words burned into her brain, and for a moment, her head swam with possibility. Renji was always trying to gain steady employment, but there was little to be had in Inuzuri. This work was mildly unsavory, but hardly the worst thing they’d ever done. She hadn’t seen much of life in District 76, but surely it had to be miles above 78. 

 “Thank you,” he had said quietly. “But I got friends depending on me back home.”

“You’re a moron,” the man told him. 

Renji never mentioned it to her and she wasn’t about to admit she’d been eavesdropping. She agreed with his decision, it was absolutely the correct one. Still, it sat heavy and dark in the pit of her stomach, the idea of what he had given up, alongside the guilty feeling that some part of her, no matter how briefly, had wanted him to agree to it, especially the part where she got to stay too. 

After that, she asked him to teach her to read and write, a crusade he’d given up on after years of her rudely brushing him off. She could still do neither as well as he could, although, she realized with a sick feeling, that it was his right arm that was broken, his writing arm. She hoped she could be as valuable to the old apothecary as Renji had been.

But when they reached the shop, it was run down and in ill-repair. The apothecary, whose name was Kitajima, looked old, very old. One could theoretically live forever in Soul Society, but most souls become worn down eventually, and once the degradation began, the end usually came on quickly.

“Barely have any business these days,” he grumbled. “Don’t need any help.”

Fortunately, for as poorly as the job turned out, Rukia had managed to make off with three silver coins from that asshole with the lead pipe. The apothecary’s rheumy eyes locked on them. “I will take a look,” he agreed. 

“As I told you the last time you were here,” the old man growled at Renji as he examined the arm, “You have the demon magic in you. The shinigami use it to cast spells, but also to push their bodies past what is normally possible. Like a fool, you have done this without proper training. You have broken and healed yourself simultaneously,  but with no skill, and you have made a hash of it.”

“I wasn’t trying,” Renji pointed out plaintively.

“Can you repair it?” Rukia asked.

“I can rebreak it,” Kitajima replied, addressing Renji only, as though Rukia didn’t even exist, “and set the pieces properly. It will take all your silver. I will need the girl to help. It will be terrible.”

The more powerful painkillers had been sold off long ago, so Kitajima gave Renji some willow bark tea before they started, and optimistically suggested that he would probably pass out very quickly.  Rukia had seen Renji take a lot of damage before, and had an awful sense that this cheerful prediction was not to come true. 

The things that happened next are best glossed over. But when it was finished, Rukia sat with Renji’s sleeping head in her lap, smoothing his hair back from his sweat-glazed forehead. Kitajima was trying to give her instructions, but her head still spun from the horror of it all. 

The old man would not bear the risk of harboring souls outside of their home districts, not this time. As soon as Renji could stand, they needed to leave.

It was likely that Renji would be set upon by fever. Kitajima pressed a few more packets of tea into Rukia’s hand. It might help. If she could not keep the fever down, it would likely kill him.

There was one last thing. The old man took her wrist in one withered claw. “There are ducts in the arm. They are not real. They cannot be seen without the second sight. It is how the demon magic runs through your body, from your heart to your hands. His were injured, possibly ruined. I have fixed his bones, but this cannot be fixed.”

“I understand,” Rukia replied, even though she didn’t, not really. Later, she would see pictures in textbooks, and truly understand what he had lost.

The fever set in even before they left, but the old man’s good will had worn out, and it was nightfall, the best time for going, so they went. Renji’s temperature increased steadily as they moved south, sticking to the treeline, away from where people lived. His eyes were bright and wild, and he spoke of things that didn’t make any sense, a farm, a mother, a pet dog.

Rukia couldn’t decide whether it was better to stop frequently, to give Renji rest and a chance to drink his medicine, or if it was more important to get him home, to a roof and a blanket and most importantly, safety. She compromised by dragging him through the night, his huge bulk leaning more and more heavily on her shoulder, until they crossed the Inuzuri border, where they collapsed together in a pile of dead leaves under a big oak. The sun was coming up, and the bare branches of the tree did little to block its rays, but Renji fell unconscious almost immediately.  

Rukia rested, but she did not allow herself to sleep. Renji was burning up. Maybe the sleep would help, maybe it wouldn’t. She wanted to bathe his forehead, but she needed to conserve their clean water to mix with his medicine. She thought about searching for a stream, but she was terrified to take her eyes off him, even knowing there wasn’t a thing she could do if he took a bad turn. It was a chilly day at least, and she wished for cold breezes, even as she shivered.

She wanted to be furious with him. How dare he even think about trading his life for hers, as though outliving your friends was some sort of mercy! But she couldn’t stay angry. She knew, she had known since they put Kosaburou in the ground, that she had it in her to push onward though sorrow, through despair. But Renji had anchored himself to her, even moreso than the others, although he would never admit it. When she died, so would go the thin threads of common sense and self-preservation that tied him to this plane. He wasn’t the depressed type, at least she didn’t think he was, but he would just keep doing progressively stupider and riskier things until he’d finally earned his lottery card for meeting up with her again in the World of the Living.

Luckily, after a few hours, his fever broke, and not long after that, he woke. Rukia propped him up against the trunk of the tree, and made him eat one of their sour, wrinkly apples while she heated his tea with her demon magic, as the old man had called it.

“When did you learn to make heat with it?” Renji croaked. “Can you teach me?”

“You have to get better first,” she replied gently. 

“Ru– Ru– Rukia, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“You dumbass,” she chided him. “It was me. I was the one who was stupid.”

“We– we both need to be more careful,” he wheezed.

She studied his face. There was the faintest shadow of stubble on his jaw. He wasn’t a boy anymore. “No, I think that’s wrong,” she replied. “Being careful isn’t going to save us. Enough people saw you block a lead pipe with your bare arm. That’s a good start for a reputation. We would be foolish to waste it. It’s time to stop sneaking and skulking, and be bold and brash instead, to take this town for all its worth.”

He leaned his head back against the tree. “Can we start… tomorrow?”

Rukia laughed, and brought over his tea. When she bent to give it to him, a bold and brash thought seized her, and as his hands took the cup from hers, she leaned in and pressed her lips to his. He froze completely, his muscles locked in something like rigor mortis. She knew, with utter certainty, that his brain had abruptly devoted 100% of its processing cycles toward not dropping that tea.

This was the second time she had kissed him. The first had been many years prior. Inuzuri was a bad place for children, and girls in particular. Rukia had decided early on that, even if it wasn’t necessarily good, she wanted her first kiss to be freely given, and with someone she thought fondly of. She had carefully considered all four boys; any of them would have sufficed. Kosaburou would be gentle and thoughtful about it. Fujimaru, cheerful and easy going. Mameji would take the obligation very seriously, and never tell a soul. And then there was Renji. Grumpy. Pessimistic. She wasn’t even entirely sure he liked girls– he scolded the other boys any time they had “romantic notions,” as he put it, and he stiffened like a board if he thought she was going to touch him. Perhaps, like a cat, she was drawn to him because of the discomfort she sparked, but he was the one her heart settled on. She cornered him under a different tree, one summer morning when the others had already headed down to the river for some fishing. 

“I want to kiss you,” she informed him. “Just the once, not a regular thing. Is that all right?”

His eyebrows drew together. “Why me?”

“I like your hair,” she replied, the first thing that popped into her head.

He contemplated this for a minute, then shut his eyes and clenched up his entire body, like he was ready to take a punch. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“You can just say no if you don’t want to,” Rukia replied. “You look really, uh, nervous about it.”

He took a deep breath in and out through his nose, and then his face relaxed, if not the rest of him. “Naw, it’s okay. I want you to. Go ahead.”

Rukia didn’t actually know much about how kissing worked, so she just sort of pressed her face up against his, their lips and noses squishing together uncomfortably. When what she gauged to be the correct amount of time had passed, she retreated again. “Did I do okay?” she asked.

Renji’s gaze was unfocused and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Yeah, it was nice,” he agreed, his voice sounding very far away. She suspected he was just trying to be kind.

“Let’s go fishing,” she said, and then he chased her down to the river like nothing at all had happened.

Rukia had observed a few more kisses since then, and had a better idea of how it was supposed to go, although Renji was no more helpful. She squeezed his fingers gently as she backed away.

“You saved me,” she said very quietly. “The hero is supposed to get a kiss.”

“Rukia,” he murmured, staring into the cloudy tea, unable to meet her eyes. “You shouldn’t’ve. We can’t.”

“You don’t want to,” she suggested.

“That’s… untrue,” he managed, and took a sip of his tea. 

“Then why can’t we?”

“It would be unfair. The others…”

“I love all of them! I love all of you!” Rukia proclaimed, and Renji stiffened. That was the true sin, not kissing, but loving, in this forsaken place. They never said that word, none of them, not even once. But they had lost Kosaburou already, and everyone knew Mameji’s cough was never going to go away, and being careful wasn’t going to save any of them. Rukia swallowed. “But you’re the one I want to kiss.”

Renji squeezed his eyes shut and drank more of his tea. It wasn’t fair of her to do this to him while he was in tremendous pain, but she had almost lost him, she could still lose him. The fever might return, the wound might sour. And even if he recovered, there was the next heist, the next lead pipe, the next boar. Rukia felt seized with the need to make the most of every minute in between.

Renji sat back, rubbing at his splinted arm ruefully. He looked awful, pale and hollow-eyed and clammy with old sweat. Rukia loved him so much, she couldn’t stand it. She shouldn’t have said it out loud, she realized. The word was, indeed, a curse, an evil magic spell.

Renji turned his head to the side, pressing his cheek against the bark of the tree. “You’re such a bother, Rukia. You saved my life the first day we met, and you’ve been nothing but trouble to me ever since.”

“I know,” she replied.

“Can I go back to sleep, or do we need to get moving again?”

“You can sleep for a bit if you like, but you’ll be more comfortable back at the squat.”

“I’m comfortable enough here.”

He closed his eyes, and Rukia wondered if he was going to sleep like that, propped up against the tree. After a minute, though, he opened them again.

“If you want to kiss me now and again, I suppose that would be all right,” he pronounced with an air of finality. “But I kinda feel like shit right now, so maybe we could start that tomorrow, too.”

[radishannibalblog]

WIP-un-Beta’d, not Brit-picked.

TW: Depression, past assault, PTSD, mention of anti-depressants, redheads being called ginger, bad Britishisms and probably worse French.

~

Corsica, 1979

“Go away, Adam! Stop annoying me!”

"Va-t'en, Adam! Arrête de m'embêter!”

Adam pursed his lips and fought back the tears. “I hate you! I hope you die!”

"Je te déteste! J'espère que tu mourras!"

~

London, 2004

“He’s rich, he’s handsome— what more do you want in a man, Adam?”

“Excuse me? Were you in a coma a year ago when yours truly almost got killed by a rich, hot, blind date? Oh, no, you weren’t, you wrote an article about it.”

“Adam, I care about you, and the best way to get over your trauma is to do a therapeutic version of it. Make happy memories to retrain your brain—trust me, I write for the abnormal psych column.”

“You write for the News of the World, you delusional cow.”

“My research is always thorough, Adam. Just go with it—I’ll vouch for him!”

The ginger devil hands a card to Adam, cocks her head snappily with a plastic smile, and click clacks off in her Pradas.

Adam looks at the card wearily. He’s avoided hookups and dates for the last year; and he felt no obligation to his tabloid writer nemesis, occasional best mate and fuck buddy. But he was getting resentful of his fearful self—and he was getting sick and tired of the cyclic self hatred.

“Where did you go off to, Adam Towers?” He lamented.

~

“Oh, bugger.”

No matter how well Adam had wormed himself into the posh upper crusts, his meager freelancer pay was never enough to grace himself at a three star Michelin restaurant in London. When he was notified of the place, it was too late to turn back. He’s definitely way too underdressed. A tell tale handiwork of that bloody Freddie Lounds, he was sure.

Unfortunately, where the old Adam would’ve jumped into Topman and snagged a suit en route, the new Adam on antidepressants was uncaring to a fault. Besides, he definitely didn’t want to go home with this most-definitely-a-serial-killer-date, anyways.

He walked in, blinded by opulence, feeling the confused gaze of the host.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Um...reservation for Lounds and company?”

“Oh, yes. Please follow me sir.”

Adam follows, thankful for the disciplined host to not to scoff at his simple jumper and leather trou. Then, his heart stopped.

Cor...Freddie Lounds was right.

His Hitchcock date was handsomely dressed in all black, dark hair set immaculately and, oh dear, has he got heterochromia? Oh, a scar—how did he get injured? Christ, those cheekbones—fucking hell, he’s gorgeous!

“Mr. Towers?” The odd eyed man stood, searching, a polite smile playing on his pouty lips.

“Ah, yes—wait, you know my name? Freddie didn’t give me yours.”

“Jean Duran. I apologize. I am in need of much discretion due to my work.”

Scoop. Scoop. Scoop.

“You must know then, that I am a journalist?”

“Yes.”

~

Adam shook his hand and sat, putting on his jaunty reporter smile. “Well, now you must tell me. You’ve peaked my interest.”

Jean looked up amused, the menu in his hands. He orders for both, Adam deferring. “I am not averse, as long as I may hear something about you.”

“I’m sure you’ve had me surveilled, what can be left to learn?” Adam half joked.

“Something from your childhood, perhaps?”

Adam looked up, taking a sip of aperitif as he gauged how much danger he was in.

But, he wanted a scoop.

Wanted it SO BAD.

“Name the age.”

“Six.”

The Londoner chased his memory to filter out what he could part with.

“I lived in Corsica.”

“Corsica? Interesting. Visiting a relative?”

“My turn? For fairness' sake. What is it that you do?”

“I am a banker. My previous question?”

“No; Dad was on sabbatical. Is any part of what you do illegal?” Wiggles his brows cheekily.

“Yes. What was the worst memory you had while there?”

Woah, there—a bit too honest isn’t he? Interesting…

As for the question aimed at him, this was tricky.

“I had a fight with a friend I made there. Do you fund illegal activities?”

“Depends. Why did you two fight?” Jean remained nonchalant.

“I don’t remember well, really. I’m sure he was being an arse. As I was a delightful child.” He grins.

“Tell me about all parties involved in one of your illegal dealings.”

“No.”

The waiter arrives with the first course.

“Ok, then.” Adam concludes. Tucking in for his soup.

“Is this the end of conversation for us? Are we to eat quietly like a couple on the verge of divorce?” Jean smirks.

Adam takes a moment. “Of course not. How do you know Freddie?”

“I know her through Dr. DuMaurier.”

“That makes more sense. I couldn’t imagine you even remotely being acquainted with that ginger pest.”

“Such a terrible remark for a friend. Do you have many?”

“No. Not close ones. You?”

Jean wipes his mouth with the napkin and looks up.

“No. I find the term friend to be a very vague term for a person who is not useful, but leeches your time, money and energy.”

“God, you’re a cynic! You make me feel so much better about myself.”

Jean just raises his eyebrows and smiles.

“He...was a friend to me. The one from Corsica? I followed him wherever he went.” Adam looked down, a bit embarrassed about that part.

“Such pity then, that you’d lost him.”

Adam looked up from the second course, mind blank but to reply vaguely.

~

The courses came and went, their Q and A not heating up the way Adam anticipated. Adam declined dessert and ordered coffee.

“So, Mr. Duran, why on earth did you come on a blind date? A bit of a risk—as you stated in the beginning.”

“I was bored.”

“Bored?”

“Yes.”

“Wha—“

“Same question. How about you?”

“I...Freddie assured me that you are rich and handsome. And I trusted her, stupidly—I mean, the illegal dealings part. I do find you very handsome, and clearly, very rich.”

“So, this will end here then?”

“Normally, yes. I’ll just write up a storm about you. But, since I have experienced near death under similar circumstances, I am not inclined to do so. And because I am very, very attracted to you. Except... you also frighten me just as much.”

“The Tramell case?”

Adam looks away and nods. Dessert arrives. The old Adam would have put up an air of nonchalance, but now, he felt too tired to do that. He felt his interest suddenly leave him. It happened a lot with his medications. A sudden and consuming numbness.

Jean studied the change in Adam’s demeanor and held forth a spoonful of chocolate mousse.

“Mr. Towers, I insist that you must try this mousse. It is utterly decadent.”

Jean looks at Adam playfully. Adam’s numb heart jolts something hot.

He considers the offered spoon and hesitantly allows Jean to dip it delicately in his mouth.

The bowl of spoon stroked Adam’s tongue suggestively before slipping out. Adam fluttered his eyes closed for a moment, the intent of seduction palpable and highly irresistible. The younger man’s soft moan was only audible to them. Adam savored the bitter chocolate and swallowed—trying and failing to center himself. He licked his lips and locked eyes with Jean.

“I should go,” Adam uttered.

TBC

[hamlets-ghost-zaddy]

queen of peace

Part 8/10 Shifty Powers x Reader

You regret the words before the syllables form, before they’re from your mouth, but then they’re spiraling through the air and you can’t cram them back in.

Ricocheting around your brain, dunking your anger into a frigid swell of shame, the echoes of your callousness send thoughts spinning until you’re motion-sick; until they don’t sound like words at all—more like liberal strokes of cruel unfeelingness—and you will later marvel at your mechanical ability to escape: leaving a penny on the table, leaving Shifty sitting there, shame-faced and red. It was cowardice, how you fled from your own vitriol: ‘I don’t have much left, Shifty, but at least leave me my dignity.’

The next morning, you rest your head against the worktable surface, piled with Aigle fabric bolts, the words repeating again. You went to bed hearing them, woke hearing them, and no matter how you plugged your ears or shut your eyes, you couldn’t hide. They haunt you, plummeting through and dragging you low. But its deserved, you know; Shifty was trying to help, trying to be a good friend. You snapped at him, and though the words cripple you with guilt, it’s preferable, you assure yourself, to the alternative: to seeing flashes of Shifty’s expression, seared forever in your memory, when your words hit.

His nighttime eyes shone with injured earnestness, with undiagnosable hurt, his cheeks hollowing and graying and—stop, you think, resolutely taking up your needle. Dwelling wouldn’t do you any good, not when you needed to finish the meager order stack as quickly as possible. And anyway, you think, he probably thinks I’m a horrid, wretched little girl now.

And rightfully so, too.

Pass the needle in-and-out, in-and-out of the fabric. Pull the thread, tighten the stitch, finish the commission, receive the payment, and pray the bankers deign to bestow a small mercy on you (it’s unlikely, considering this would be the second year in a row you’ve requested an extension on the loan payment, but you can’t afford to be realistic. Threadbare optimism is all you have to cling to).

You’re fulfilling your last order—letting out a favorite nightgown for a very pregnant Mrs. Morrison—when Mother peers into the workshop. She knocks softly on the doorjamb, wavering and unsure if she’s welcome to enter, and you’re careful not to look at her: the rush of guilt would only increase, rendering you paralyzed. She’s crept around the house since you laid out the truth of financial ruin—and how it directly resulted from her carelessness—and its precisely what you had carefully avoided. She’s sinking once more into the shadowy depths she had been lost to after your father’s death, succumbing further every day to her grief. Time had been the cure but, with how life currently slams every opportunity closed on you and your Mother, you wonder—if Mother does manage to pull herself out of her grief this time around—if there’d be anything to live for when she resurfaced.

You tried so hard to protect her from this, too: to protect her from herself, terrified of seeing her look at you but not really see you. She would perch in the sitting room, staring out at the front garden, and blink at you blankly when you asked if she wanted tea, or if she wanted to take a stroll around the neighborhood, or how she was doing. Now, just as it had then, life has emptied from her eyes, guilt opening up a drain she’s unable to plug, but your acknowledging it would mean acknowledging losing another person: your mother, Shifty. Both repelled and isolated because of your hardheartedness.

Biting your lip, you wait for Mother to speak.

“Darling,” she begins, softly. “There’s some Americans here to see you. Margaret is with them.”

“Americans?” you repeat, perking up despite yourself.

Startled to find you looking at her, Mother shifts under your stare. You lower your eyes back to your needle, shame heaving your shoulders. “Well, yes,” she offers, “They say they’re here to place orders.”

“Oh,” you breath, gathering yourself from the stool and following Mother through the sitting room and into the entryway. The front door hangs open, Margaret leaning against the doorjamb with Allen Vest at her side and a herd of olive-uniformed boys at her back. You recognize Skip Muck’s cackling laugh, spy the bright grin of Don Malarkey, catch the flash of Alex Penkala rolling his eyes among other faces you recognize from Margaret’s Christmas Eve party.

Margaret straightens at your appearance, hand fluttering up to fluff her curls as a roguish grin curls her lips. “Hey there, pretty lady. Just who we were wanting: we need a miracle-worker.”

“A miracle-worker?” you repeat, arching an eyebrow, not helping yourself from sweeping all them into a quick glance. “What do you need? Water to wine? Curing the blind?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” pipes George Luz, his head popping in between the much-taller shoulders of Muck and Penkala. “Heya, sweet thing, how’s it rolling?” he adds with a wink.

Don Malarkey nudges George. “He’s not serious; we’ve been given orders that we’re shipping out soon and we’re all in desperate need of uniform repairs.”

“Our new CO isn’t as much of a—” Skip hesitates, obviously trying to settle on an appropriate vocabulary choice for the present, mixed company, “Stickler for uniform regulations, but we also don’t want to look shabby when we’re going to meet up with a lot of other Airborne companies.”

“We’re the Screaming Eagles not the Scruffy Eagles,” offers George, earning him another nudge to the ribcage.

“Ah,” you reply. There were nearly ten men haunting your doorstep—a day’s worth of hard work, from the state of the fraying thread on their citation patches, the snagged fabric puckering at the sleeve-cuffs—but your fingers itch for the challenge, for the distraction of a series of goals to strive toward, pushing through a feverish night of work and into the small hours of the morning. “If you boys are wanting mends, I can get everyone done by this tomorrow.”

“Don’t make any promises,” Margaret interjects with a wink. “This is the first wave of orders; there’s more to come.”

Interpreting your raised eyebrows, Malarkey supplies, “Word is you’re the gal to go to, ma’am, and that word has spread like a wildfire through Easy, Fox, and Dog.”

“Company names,” Penkala interjects, helpfully.

You nod vaguely, mind caught and stuck on wondering how the ‘word’ got out, and why it spread with such ferocity—wondering who ignited the spark. Your brain conjures Shifty’s face—smiling and bright, a twinkle in those nighttime eyes, and so different from when you last saw him—but you hastily push it aside, asking, “Um, how many orders am I facing down then?”

Margaret, impossibly, smiles wider. “Oh, well over four-hundred.”

And maybe you are a miracle-worker: after all, it is a miracle you don’t faint.

…

George Luz lingers, waiting to be the last client to put in his order of the ‘first wave,’ and once you’re done calling notes for his uniform jacket to Margaret, acting as your assistant and secretary—organizing the order receipts—he hops down from the tailor’s block, immediately nosing through the parcels of brown-papered, orders completed and needing to be delivered. “What are you up to?” you ask, eyeing him over your shoulder as you hang his jacket up alongside the others. You’re relieved all of the men’s clothes already have their last names patched on them; it saved paper, twine, and safety pins.

“Oh, just looking,” George replies, far too innocently. “Are these the things you’re done with?”

“Yeah, I need to drop them by this afternoon and collect the commission money,” you reply, sticking a needle between your lips and sniping a length of olive thread—one of the only spools left in the workshop that’s well-stocked—as you take down Penkala’s jacket. Around the needle, you call to Margaret: “What’s needed for Penkala?”

Hunching over her notes, Margaret replies, “‘Refasten buttons, all are loose; redo Eagle patch, and patch holes on left bicep.’”

Nodding, you mumble ‘thanks,’ taking it to the worktable and poking a gentle pinky-finger through the bicep holes. Your question to Shifty, asked only four months before but feeling a memory from a different lifetime—maybe someone else’s life—drift back to you: did the boys really take cheese-graters to their uniforms? Why and how could they acquire so much wear and tear so quickly?

George follows you to the worktable, the stack of parcels migrating with him. You raise an eyebrow at it, and then at wide grin worming across his mouth—as if he tried mightily to repress it, but then, when has George ever known how to hide his every emotion? The kid’s face reads like an open book. “What are you up to, Georgie?”

“Well, hear me out,” he begins, talking in a great gush of words as if he’s sure you’d shoot down his idea before it’s even from his mouth—not that he’s wrong, you think, tying off the olive-green thread and beginning to mend Penkala’s sleeve-holes. “Why don’t I make all the deliveries for you? That’ll save you some time and you can completely focus on finishing up the orders. I mean, how much time do you waste making deliveries when you could be here, putting in elbow grease and making money?”

You frown down at the jacket. “I don’t know; it’s just…I’m really sorry, but I can’t afford to pay you.”

You can almost feel George shaking his head, his persistent rebuff palpable when he replies, “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to pay me. I’ll do all the deliveries for free.”

Now, you frown up at him, a protest forming on your tongue: you don’t want hand-outs. You want to be respectable, earn your keep and be independent on your own merit, but if you denied George’s offer, should you—from the same logic—return all of the men’s jackets? Your eyes slither from George’s open and hopeful expression, as if he thinks making deliveries will be the most fun he’ll have this side of the Atlantic, and to the neat row of American Airborne uniforms. You glance at Margaret, madly scribbled up totals and making notes that none of the men have prepaid.

George offered a kindness; Margaret offered a kindness; and every single man who left his jacket in your care—entrusted you to do a service—did, too. It’s too coincidental after yesterday, and you know Shifty plays some part in the plot. The fury, the heated and sharp anger, you felt in the teashop perks up in your stomach, wanting to rise and push hot words from your mouth all over again, but then Shifty’s expression flashes behind your eyelids. With these jackets, a favor had given, you realize, but not a favor to me. Shifty, perhaps in league with Margaret, had convinced the men to bring their orders to you as a favor to them, but you would earn the money through hard-work and timely delivery: no prepaying, no hand-outs.

When your eyes return to George—sheepishly, you wonder how long your silence has dragged, considering the concern darkening his eyes—he asks: “C’mon, why not? Friends help out friends, no strings attached. Putting up with my dumb jokes is payment enough, right?”

And that single innocuous question suckers the air from your lungs, grand-slams every thought from your brain, leaving a dull ache behind your eyes. ‘Friends help out friends, no strings attached,’ you turn over mentally; it’s what Shifty proposed, granted on a much more drastic magnitude. Friends don’t deal in repayments, they deal in affection and trust; they operate above the reaches of dignity because, you think as you observe George’s keenness to help you, my success is their success; my dignity is their dignity.

It takes a great feat of restraint, but you want until after you send George on his way with the deliveries under arm, until you’ve completed repairs on five of the jackets, until Margaret suggests stopping for tea and toast before you allow yourself to slump, forehead pressed to the worktable. Groaning, you wonder how you’ll ever earn Shifty’s forgiveness.

(Yet, the respite doesn’t last long: more groups of Americans soon show up on your doorstep).

. . .

With every day that passes, you expect Shifty to drift in on the heels of one of the ‘waves’ of Airborne men shuffling in and out of your workshop, yet, his abashed grin never winks into existence to warm you. You expect Shifty to accompany George Luz in on one of his many thither-hither jaunts to deliver finished orders or follow Margaret in to help sort through the stacks of orders and receipts, logging the payments, but he remains a specter of your imagination, always lingering on the periphery of your thoughts and imagination.

After keeping at a mad pace for eight days—filling orders as quickly as the American boys, enlisted and officers alike, tottered out of your workshop—George informs you the Airborne is to ship out at the end of the week. You don’t allow yourself to nibble at your lip or worry your fingers together, speculating if you ought to send a note with George for Shifty, begging him for forgiveness. You trust George would see it delivered safely—he’s been nothing but reliable with the other two-hundred-seventy-plus orders, though you suspect he’d snoop and read it before handing it over—but you do hold onto the girlish hope Shifty might want to see you one last time, if only as a final homage to the friendship you once had (the friendship I brutally axed to death, you remind yourself savagely).

You haven’t the time to worry, not with your skin cracking from sewing so much; not with her muscles cramping and the orders piling up. You put on sewing gloves—they slow you, but at least you can keep going—you don’t fuss when Mother throws herself into the work at your side, silent and dogged despite her arthritis, or when Margaret completely bans you from so much as glancing at the account ledger.

“Completing the orders and earning the money ought to be your only concern,” Margaret tuts, slapping your hand away from her spidery lines of arithmetic. You shake her head, tucking your chin to hide an affectionate grin, all the while thinking of the drafted letter begging for a loan extension tucked into your sewing apron. If the payments from the American orders fell short—don’t think about it, don’t even consider it, you internally coach yourself—you’d have to send the letter out on Saturday, the day after the American Airborne left Aldbourne.

(Don’t think about that either, you mentally tack on.)

On Thursday, in the quiet hours of the afternoon, George appears on your front stoop for his usual afternoon deliveries, payment collected that morning jingling cheerily in his pocket. “You know,” he says, accepting your offer of the tea and toast you, Margaret, and Mother had just made. “It’s been a good time doing all these deliveries, getting to chew the fat with the people I drop things off for and stretch my legs while I’m doing it. I think I might like to do that after all this is over.”

You shrug, not helping a grin from George taking an overenthusiastic bite of his toast and a loud slurp of tea. His table manners are hopeless, honestly. “Why not? You can do whatever you’d like. I mean, with your charm and can-do attitude, George Luz, you could dethrone Cary Grant as king of Hollywood, if you wanted.”

“Aw, gee, you think I’m charming?” he crows, perching his teacup and plate of toast on the desk next to Margaret’s ledger to sling an arm around your shoulders. “You’re too sweet to me, I swear! What did I do to deserve you, huh? You’re like an angel!”

“Alright, alright; get off me, please.” Feigning surliness, you shrug him off but your efforts are subverted by a snort bubbling up from your diaphragm and popping from your nose, a round of giggles following closely. George looks as though he’s won the lottery and, some small part of you thinks, it almost feels as if you have, too.

You haven’t laughed in weeks, not since the Aigle fabrics appeared in the post office.

. . .

Thursday inches along, taking George on another delivery run, and dusk descends on your back garden. Every time you think to glance up, sunlight has leeched more from the world. By the time it’s fully dark, the BBC’s news bulletin concluded and allowing for a radio play to alleviate the daily gloom of wartime, you shoo Margaret and Mother: Mother to bed and Margaret to a date with Tommy Beale (she even gushed at a poor private named Hoobler, one of the stranglers who’d yet to collect his order, regaling him with the details of Tommy having positively dragged feet about asking her on a proper date for years. Though you agree Tommy has been an absolute horror, you also can’t help thinking of poor Allen Vest, who’s obviously smitten with her).

And isn’t that a nice change? You wonder, refastening a loose button onto Toye, Joseph’s dress uniform jacket. Being able to giggle over the possibilities of a date, of having multiple suitors? You sigh, longing for the days of mooning over handsome boys—allowing yourself to be a girl—and not mooning over a tin of freshly baked scones in the bakery shop window, hunger grumbling in your stomach.

A faint knock on the front door echoes to you. Checking your watch, a quarter past eleven, you wonder why George is out, cavorting, so late the night before loading out to wherever the Airborne is bound for next. Knowing your mother could (and has) slept through German bombings, you feel no qualms with shouting, “It’s open! Come on through, George!”

The front door whines open, the floorboards complaining under the weight of a person, and you’ve tightened the button with three more stiches, tying it off and nipping the thread, before a gentle voice says, “It’s not George.”

Startled, jumping from your stool and upsetting it in your haste, you twist over your shoulder to find Shifty—cap worrying between his fingers, just like when I first saw him, steals through your thoughts, just like at the teashop—shadows from the weak electric light hollowing out his cheeks, defining his nose. He looks like a man, like someone you don’t know, standing there with something—something you’re too scared to name for fear of being wrong—darkening his eyes.

“Shifty,” escapes on a breath without conscious decision. Silence; you track the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows; you pretend you can see the thoughts and words forming, and quickly tossed aside, darting across his expression. Reaching a hand behind you, clutching the worktable, you attempt to steady your weak legs and hide the tremors turning your fingers jittery.

The movement startles Shifty, prompting him to move in careful steps—as if tiptoing around a skittish forest creature—and he sets a parcel on the worktable before bending to righted your stool. When he straightens again, his face is close to yours. Involuntarily gulping, you step back only to bump into the worktable. You bury your fingers into Toye, Joseph’s jacket, pressing the newly hastened button into your palms. “Um,” you begin. “I, um, owe you an apology, Shifty; I shouldn’t have reacted to your offer the way I did; you were being a good friend—”

“No, stop,” he interrupts, voice soft and it’s just not fair for him to look at you like that, especially after he hadn’t looked at you like that when you kissed him. “Please, stop.” Pain tucks the corners of his mouth, a marginal movement you’re privy to from proximity. “It was a crazy offer and I didn’t consider your feelings when I decided to ask you. I just made up my mind that that was the answer to all your problems after Maggie told me; that I’d sweep in and fix everything, and…and…” He nibbles his lower lip.

You can’t stand him looking like that, can’t stand knowing it’s because of you, so you offer: “No, Shifty, none of it was your fault. It was a solution, granted not one I was willing to consider—”

“And rightfully so,” he interjects, fiercer than you thought him capable of, his hands capturing yours and pressing hard, a physical askance for you to listen to him, to believe him. His eyes catch yours, and you’re trapped (except, ‘trapped’ implies it’s unwilling) under those eyes. A constellation burns there, threatening to swallow you whole. “It wasn’t a solution because I was lying to you; I lied to you from the very beginning because…”

“Because…?” you echo when his hesitation stretches.

Biting his lip again, he sucks in a deep breath. His eyes never leave yours. “Because I said you’re my friend and that I wanted to help. But the truth is, y/n, you’re not my friend; you never have been. I kept up this façade for so long because…because of that day, that very first sewing lesson.” His eyes leave yours, sweeping to encapsulate the sewing workshop, a wry smile quirking his lips. He mumbles, “I guess it’s fitting that I tell you here, huh?” His eyes drift back to yours. “We kissed, but then you looked so horrified afterwards, you apologized so quickly, and I knew you only saw me as a friend. After that, I was…I am so scared of losing you as my friend that I never tried to act on…I decided having you as a friend was better than not having you at all.”

“What?” manages to cobble itself together in your brain, coming out on a choked wheeze. Swallowing once, twice, you rally your thoughts but the one conclusion logic offers you is too ludicrous—too illogical—for it to be real. You try speaking again, “What do you mean?”

A blush creeps into Shifty’s cheeks. “I mean…well, I mean that I’ve…” He hesitates, his hands dropping yours to gently cradle your jaw, tilting your head up, and then your nose are bumping, his lips ghosting over yours in indecision and hesitation. Stretching up on your toes, you catch his lips in your own, fingers skittering up to clutch the lapels of his jacket, and your mouth slots with his. Every inch of you presses into him. Shifty’s height forces your spine to arch, stretching your arms as your hands migrate to his hair, threading and rethreading the silky hair around your fingers, trying to drown every sense with him: Shifty Powers. You try to exist in the same space, try to live in the same breath, and you know it’s foolish—against the laws of physics, nature, and biology—but you keep trying; you want to keep kissing just to try.

When he pulls away, gulping down air, he concludes, “I’ve been in love with you for a long fucking time.”

. . .

Shifty props you onto the worktable after some half-hour’s worth of kissing, gently smoothing your hair as he explains, “As much as I’d like to go on kissing you, I’ve got two things for you. It’s, uh, why I came. That, and to apologize.” He crooks a grin at you, placing a kiss on the corner of your lips that makes you chase his mouth a few inches as he moves back. “Didn’t expect to kiss you, I promise. I didn’t want to take advantage.”

Blushing, you thread your fingers with his, and quip back, emboldened by his kisses, “Well, maybe, Shifty Powers, I was wanting to take advantage of you.”

That crooked grin stretches into a proper grin now. “Well, after you open this for me, I don’t see why you can’t do just that.” He places the forgotten parcel in your lap.

Arching your eyebrows, wanting to ask if his confession wasn’t gift enough for one day, you grab a pair of sewing shears and snip the twine off the package. The paper flops open to reveal a carefully folded length of blue fabric and a little wooden carving nestled at its center. Cradling the carving in your palm, cool against your skin, you realize it’s a doe, legs delicate and thin, but head tilted in curiosity and—you fleetingly allow yourself to think in wild imagination—defiance.

“I carved her for you in December. I wanted to give it to you during the Christmas Eve party, but then…” he hesitates, his fingers tapping out a nonsense rhythm on your knuckles. “I went to that dark mental place, you know. Then, I was going to give it to you after, but I began to wonder if you really are a doe.”

“I’m not?” you ask, glancing up at him through your eyelashes. “What would you say I am, then? Have you figured it out?”

Shifty shrugs. “No, not really; nothing I can say definitively, at least. Though,” he tilts his head, considering, “maybe a lioness?”

You hum, your turn to kiss the corner of his lips. He’s agile, turning to catch your mouth, and he works at your bottom lip, gentle and considerate and eager. He draws back with a long inhale of breath, leaving you blinking and dazed—suddenly wakened from a drunken stupor. Clearing your throat, you say, “Well, I think the doe is lovely; she has a spirit and fire to her, even though she looks fragile. Thank you.” Carefully, you set the doe aside, already planning to transport her to your bedside table, so she might greet you every morning and bid you a restive sleep every night. You return to the blue fabric, shaking it out to find—“My dress!” Your eyes swing to Shifty. “You went and bought it back?”

Shifty shrugs, abashed anew. “I didn’t believe that you had been meaning to sell it. It’s what made me go ask Margaret about if you were having money trouble. In her defense, she wouldn’t tell me anything at first, but after she did, I went and got the dress.”

You shake your head, voice quiet. “She didn’t know. No one did.” Hugging the dress to your chest—a dress you convinced yourself was gone—you offer, “You have to understand, Shifty. I didn’t keep my problems from only you; I didn’t tell Margaret, or even my mother. Some part of me wanted…wants…to be like my Mother used to be; to be like how I remember my father. They took chances, but they made their way on their own merit. I just couldn’t…I know my pride is silly and prickly but…”

Now, Shifty shakes his head. “Please never apologize. I understand; my folks didn’t have much money, and I was always determined to make my own way in the world. I get it, y/n, and it’s one of the reasons I’m a goner for you.”

Your hands slacken, arms and dress falling into your lap, and you’re transfixed by the pooling blue fabric—as sleek and brilliant as a springtime creek swollen with melted mountain snow; as flooded with promise as the waving green shoots along the creek-bed. Returning your face to his, you kiss him chastely, adding a whispered, “Thank you.”

(And, until that evening, you had thought of the War as olive-green khaki. But, as Shifty peeled off his jacket and shirt, leaving him in his white undershirt; as he lays atop the quilt on your bed, refusing to ‘compromise’ you by joining you under the covers and instead contented to press kisses to your temple, your nose, your mouth, holding you close against him; as you listen to his breathes even into sleep, you think of the War as chiffon: easy to tear and irrevocably ruin, but soft and precious and, if handled mindfully enough, capable of heart-rendering beauty.)

(When the morning comes, the War of khaki will follow, hurrying Shifty back to his barracks and toward the inevitable invasion of Europe. He leaves with kisses, your postal address in his pocket, and a promise you dare to hope will remain unbroken: ‘I’ll be back for you.’)

tag list: @gottapenny, @maiden-of-gondor, @wexhappyxfew, @medievalfangirl, @higgles123. @mayhem24-7forever

[builder051]

Mike & Co story arc: part 1

This is going to be a 5-parter?  Maybe?  Something like that.  Nowhere near as long as Hildur and Pierce’s storyline, but still decently extended.  The episodes will move among different characters’ POV, and Mike, Jason, Colby, Ash, and Hannah will all be included.  There will be a little bit of illness/emeto, but it’s going to be mainly plot.

WARNING FOR EATING DISORDER CONTENT.  It kind of features in this part, but it’s going to be vague and kind of glossed over throughout because it’s not the main focus of this arc, but it’s definitely a thing that affects all of these charas, whether directly or indirectly.

Also, a warning for an obscene amount of cursing.  This girl is by far my most foul-mouthed character.

_____

Everything’s fine.  Everything is completely and totally fine.  Her grades are good.  She’s not being forced to go home for spring break.  There’s plenty of new stuff to watch on Netflix.  So why Mike goes into the 7-11 and buys out a display of Hostess Cupcakes is beyond her.  Nothing’s weighing on her mind.  She hasn’t been in a fight.  The urge just hits like a ton of bricks and she’s suddenly powerless.

She hasn’t done this in months, and maybe that’s why she’s so out of practice in saying no to herself.  Mike holds the plastic shopping bag in the crook of her elbow and swallows the first cupcake in two bites.  She reaches in for another, and self-hatred flares up in her ribcage.  That feeling’s more familiar.

Mike finishes the sweets by the time she finishes the walk to the campus.  She crumples the shopping bag and lobs it into the trash outside the humanities building, then shoves inside.  It’s after five on a Friday, so the hallways are deserted.  That’s a good thing.

Mike pauses to take a long drink from the water fountain, then ducks into the bathroom to get down to business.  She feels weird and shaky and a little guilty to be doing this again after being clean for so long.  But post-purge guilt still beats holding onto the calories.

It’s like riding a bike; the technique comes back quickly, and Mike’s at the sink washing up within minutes.  Her eyes are read and teary, and they’ll probably stay that way for half an hour or so.  At least she’s on a college campus, so she can blame smoking pot.

She dries her hands with a paper towel, then uses it to wipe her mouth.  Now that the deed’s done, she’s exhausted.  The tremor she felt earlier has crept permanently into arms and legs, and she knows it won’t go away until she falls asleep or eats something for real.  And that’s definitely not going to happen any time soon.

Mike wants to go home.  There’s no reason to loiter around campus anymore; her classes are all done for break.  She can practically hear her bed calling from across town.  Some music, some TV.  Maybe a little ibuprofen/Unisom cocktail.  That sounds nice.

But Jason and Colby are probably home.  They are more often than not, and it’s way too early for them to have retired to the bedroom.  They’re probably sitting at the kitchen table right now, wondering where the fuck she is, because that’s all they seem to do.  If she wants them to stay out of her business, she can’t go home yet.

Mike considers sending out an exploratory text message, a simple hey what are you doing?  But if anything’s going to get her caught, it’s that.  She never initiates contact.

Mike shoves her phone deep into her pocket and starts a circuit around the campus.  If she goes out behind the Humanities building and walks the paved loop around most of the main thoroughfare, she’ll kill an hour and another couple hundred calories.  Mike wraps her arms around her midsection and slaps her feet hard against the sidewalk.

She wishes she could refocus, just snap her fingers and immediately place some other fixation in her brain, at least temporarily.  Bile and chocolate still coat her back teeth, and Mike isn’t sure if she’s disgusted or thrilled.  She wishes she had a cigarette.  But it’s cold and windy out, and it probably wouldn’t stay lit anyway.  Just like she can’t stay normal.  

“Why’d you do that?” Mike spits under her breath.  “Why’d you fucking do that?”

She can’t come up with a good answer.  She just felt like it.  She gave in.  She fucked up.

If she was talking to Colby, he’d say it was ok.  It’s ok to fuck up and have a setback.  She can just try to do better tomorrow.

Mike guesses she can.  But it doesn’t make her any less stupid today.

Jason would tell it like it is.  He’d give Mike a good disappointed head-shake and tell her to go fuck herself.  Or just eat food like a normal person and not throw it back up.

Then she’d ask him how he knew what normal people did.  The possibility of an argument would be too good to resist.

“You don’t know what normal people do either,” Mike huffs to herself.  “Not everybody thrives on conflict like you, bitch.”

She would’ve clocked herself in the face with that comment if the choice had been anywhere near logical.  The desire to hit something is rising fast.  There’s a dilapidated storage shed coming up a few feet off the path, and Mike steps onto the soggy grass and slams her fist into the dented door.  It produces a hollow sound, and the whole shack seems to shudder even though the punch is weak.

Something perks up in Mike’s brain as adrenaline starts to flow, and she hits the door again.  She assumes a sloppy boxing stance and jabs right and left and right again.  Her knuckles start to hurt, and somehow that makes her laugh.  She switches to battering the door with the heel of her hand.  It creaks as if it’s going to give way under Mike’s meager strength, and in her mind, it’s fucking hilarious.

If she manages to break down the door, is there going to be some kind of junker lawn mower inside?  Mike’s suddenly keen to find out.  The pseudo-boxing match is making her tired, so she readjusts and rams the door with her shoulder.  Pain lances down her arm and across her back.  She’s too bony to throw her weight around without hurting herself.  But it doesn’t keep her from trying again.

Mike backs up a foot or so and throws her hip and elbow into the shed.  She feels something give way, and she knows she’ll only need to smack the thing another couple more times to force the door open.  She takes a second to catch her breath and swallow bitter saliva before she puts her back into it again.

“Hey!  What are you doing?  That’s university property!”

Mike looks over her shoulder to see two campus police officers hurrying toward her.  “Fuck,” she mumbles.  She should run for it.  But she’s so close to forcing the shed open.  She doesn’t want to stop.  She can’t stop.

Mike butts the side of her body into the door one more time, and the latch breaks off the door with a crunch.  She falls sideways as the door swings open under her, but before she hits the ground, one of the officers has his hand wrapped around her arm.  “What do you think you’re doing?” he barks.

She got the door open, but it’s not like it proved anything.  Now she’s stuck here with two cops, and she might have been committing a crime.  She has a feeling explaining the truth is going to get her nowhere.  I had to do something to distract myself from the fact that I’d just broken a 4-month clean streak from my eating disorder probably isn’t going to hold water with the police.  Like she’d willingly speak those words anyway.

So she does the next worst thing she can think of.  Mike draws her free arm back and aims a punch at the officer’s jaw.

“Whoa, calm down,” the other cop says, moving his hands in a shushing motion.  “We just want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” Mike grunts.  She manages to get her feet under her.  The officer holding her arm doesn’t have much on her in height, but he’s heavy.  His belt and tucked-in shirt hold a substantial beer gut.  She bets he hits the Hostess cupcakes pretty hard too.  Mike can barely look at him without being disgusted.  She gathers her remaining strength and socks him in the stomach.

“Ma’am, I need you to put both hands up.”  The fat officer tries to manhandle her around to face the shed’s outer wall.

“Let me go,” Mike grunts.  “Don’t touch me.”  She continues to struggle.

“We just wanted to have a chat,” the other cop says, reaching for Mike’s flailing hand.  He has red hair like Ash, and the thought of her old friend makes her want to knock him to the ground.  She doesn’t have a reason to hate this officer.  She doesn’t have a reason to hate Ash, either.  But the violent feelings don’t stop coming.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”  Mike thrashes her body, and the fat cop’s arm comes around her waist.  He isn’t holding her tightly, but panic strobes in her brain, and she feels sick.  She wants to run.

“You want to get booked for resisting arrest?” The red-headed officer asks.

“I don’t want anything to do with anything,” Mike spits.  Her head is growing foggy.  The peeling paint on the outside of the shed blurs before her eyes.  One ear is about ten times heavier than the other, and she tilts badly to one side.

“Stand up straight.  Put your hands behind your head,” The fat cop says.  “This is the last time I’m gonna ask.”

Mike might’ve complied.  Or maybe she wouldn’t’ve.  She doesn’t get the chance to decide, though, because vertigo suddenly takes precedence, and she doubles over to retch against the wall.

“Hey, alright.”  The fat cop lets go of Mike’s stomach and grips her by the back of her shirt instead.  “This for real or are you just playing?”

Mike gags and manages to choke, “I’m fine.  Leave me alone.”  She takes one stumbling step away from the officers and almost falls.  She claws at the side of the shed to hold herself upright.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk.  You can sit down, cool off a little,” the red-head offers.  He puts his hand on Mike’s shoulder in a way that’s half-comforting and half-threatening.  She jerks away and covers her mouth with her hand.  She throws up anyway, and it’s mostly chocolate mixed with some snot and bile.

“Fuck.”  She thought she’d gotten it all back up.

“Ma’am?”

“Shut the fuck up.  I’m not going with you!”  The force of shouting makes Mike lightheaded, and she stumbles again.

“Are you going to faint?”  The cops look at each other.

“Just leave me alone,” Mike mumbles.  The words are getting harder to form.  Her vision swirls, and it only makes the dizziness worse.

“We’re gonna get you some medical attention, ok?”  The fat cop puts his arm around her waist while the other one talks into a walkie-talkie.  Mike catches the wordambulance.

“Don’t take me…” she chokes out.  They can’t take her to the hospital.  They can’t.  She won’t stand for it.  She’ll run away.  She’ll let Jason drive her home.  “Call my brother.”

“We’ll call him when we get to the ER,” the red-headed officer reassures.  “They’ll help you out with whatever’s going on or whatever you took.  Then we’ll get in touch with your family…”

Mike wants to burst out laughing again.  They think she’s high.  She wishes she was high.  But she’s already out of her mind and her eyes are red, so there’s probably little difference.

“Fuck you.  I’m alright.”  Mike makes one more effort to get away.  She’ll escape the fat cop’s partial embrace and run.

But she can’t even get on her feet.  Mike lists sideways and everything goes dark.

[ahumanfemale]

Confessions : A Companion Piece (2/2)

Inspired by the work of @summermint. (X)

But what if Sonny receives on the very first day of each month, an email sent from an anonymous email account, containing a tiny confession from someone who loves him?

This is how it goes … and how Sonny feels about it.

1st January - Sonny sits behind his desk, anxious energy twisting and writhing low in his gut.  He squirms in his seat, mind reeling.  Work had piled up in the time he’d spent agonizing over his life choices and he does his best to at leasat make a dent.  Sometimes he forgets what he’s done.  He does paperwork and argues with Rollins for fun and the small gift box with the purple wrapping fades to the background.  For a minute.  Until he catches a glimpse of the receipt on his desk and the fear starts up again.

What if Barba knows?

What if he takes one look at his note and laughs?

Oh, God.  What if he calls Benson?

Sonny groans.

He’s a few seconds away from braining himself on his desk for his own stupidity - and to keep himself from ever having to face the consequences - when his computer chimes.  A happy, innocent sound that completely belies the nature of his existence at that moment.  An email.  He notices the unnamed sender and almost deletes it, imagining already a pitch for cheap designer sunglasses or Viagra, but the subject line stops him.

To my Sonny

He clicks the message open, hungry eyes scanning the few meager lines of text.  His heart jumps in his chest and he blinks.  First in confusion, then in joy, and then in something like abject terror.

Old?

Cynical?

Asshole?

What were the chances?

1st February - The second email comes late in the evening, just before midnight as Sonny is finally crawling into bed.  His phone beeps to signal a message and any other day he would have left it.  But today is February the first and he’d snuck another gift to Barba earlier in the day, leaving the small box of candy on Carmen’s desk while she was at lunch.  Once may have been a fluke... he gets an email on the day of Barba’s first gift, from an anonymous person who wants to Sonny to be waiting at home for them.  But twice?  Sonny settles himself against the pillows and opens it up, surprised at the personal admission.  Would Barba go so far as to mock him with false confessions?  Confessions like this, that reek of vulnerability?  He didn’t know.  Sonny had always worried that he was the last thing Barba would want.  Maybe he was.  Maybe this wasn’t Barba, telling Sonny what he wanted and needed and missed out on.  

Sonny read them again anyway. 

1st March - There’s something wrong with him.  It’s all he can figure, knowing how God felt about the thoughts running through his head.  Sonny was born Catholic, was raised in the church, had even considered joining the clergy himself.  And still here he was, imagining loosening Barba’s tie with the blunt edges of his teeth.  Grabbing the taut elastic of his suspenders and snapping them, gently at first, and then harder to listen to Barba’s shocked gasp as they stung the tender skin of his nipples through his shirt.  Sonny feels guilty, feels sick as he feels himself stiffening insistently behind the loose fabric of his boxers.  He knows he’ll touch himself soon, knows it will be Barba’s direct green gaze behind his eyelids as they shutter closed and as he fucks the tight circle of his fist.

His admirer has trust issues.

Sonny has faith issues.

1st April - Barba knows.  

Sonny is certain of it now, with the message sitting in his inbox.  He’s read it dozens of times now, memorizing those two sentences with all the affection he can muster in a halfway house with ten other men.  He knows it’s a mistake to have something personal with him - any one of the guys in the other bunk beds would be willing to bust him up just for being a cop - but he couldn’t leave it behind.  Not knowing what his next confession was due to arrive on Barba’s desk that day, knowing what he would read when he opened it.  

Barba knows.  

Barba prays for him.

Sonny wants to go home.

1st May - He would think that scarf was ugly - Sonny was particularly fond of it.  His great-aunt Vera bought it for him because it matched his eyes.  Didn’t matter.  Sonny had his eye on a better one anyway - something dark blue and pristine white.  Something draped carelessly over Rafael’s chair while the man takes a phone call.  He makes sure to take off down the hall before Barba returns.

1st June - Barba’s confession in June hurts the most but Sonny understands.  Appreciates it, even.  Sonny knows how hard it is.  To have someone under your skin, in your blood.  Before acceptance comes denial.  The period where you concern yourself with the superficial - is it the ties, the flecks of gray in his otherwise dark hair?  Could those same things on someone else hold the same sway?  Sonny knew now that they didn’t... but Barba deserved to discover that for himself.  Even if it killed Sonny to read, even if every part of him screamed in misery.  First at the thought of someone else taking his Rafael into their body, at the thought of someone other than him seeing the look on his face as he surrendered himself to orgasm.  Then at the idea of Rafael in so much pain, at hating himself so much.  Sonny wanted to comfort him.  Wanted to tell him that it was okay, that he understood.  

That maybe what they were fighting didn’t have to be a battle.  That maybe it could be a beginning.  

1st July - Sonny gets ice cream every day for a week.  Delights in the color staining Rafael’s cheeks and maybe spends too much time cleaning the sticky sweetness from his fingertips.  Rafael practically runs out the door and Sonny wants to chase him and offer strawberry-flavored kisses and a still-cool tongue on which to spend himself.

1st August - Fuck.  Oh, fuck.  There was nothing Sonny would love more than darkening bruises on his hips.  Bruises in the shape of Rafael’s fingers.  Indentations pressed into pale skin as Rafael thrusts up, as he pulls away to finish across the soft flesh of his lower abdomen.  The feeling as Rafael smears his fingers into his on fluids and traces it into Sonny’s skin - wide across his hips, low onto his pubic bone and the thick patch of curls at the base of his prick.  For his own part of the bargain... Sonny didn’t know yet.  It would require thought, consideration.  An outrageous amount of fantasizing.  Absolute fucking certainty because he was going to remember it forever.

1st September - Sonny has three weeks of vacation days saved up.  He sets aside fourteen of them, already wishing for the days they’d spend in a red convertible on smooth road.  The world in front of them.  Reality behind them.  When he could whisper Italian nothings in Rafael’s ear as he drove and fully appreciate the man’s knuckles pulling white on the steering wheel.  His gruff promises of what will happen to Sonny once they stop for the night.

Sonny can’t wait.

1st October - He would wear a chain of bruises.  A sweet, sacred rosary of love bites so long as it was the shape of Rafael’s teeth that marked his skin.

1st November - What Rafael doesn’t know is that he hums a lot.  When he cooks, when he cleans.  When he thinks.  When his body is at the very edge of release and he’s hoping the vibration in his chest will tip him over the precipice.  He’ll find out soon enough, Sonny imagines.  He only has one confession left - his last.  His final expression of courage, of hope.  He already has it written - he’s just waiting for the day to come around.

He hums the entire way home.

1st December - The ring fits.  

They both knew it would.

[sylvaniaschoolofmagic]

The Solstice: A Pleasant Present Morning

[It’s the morning of the Winter Solstice, one of the biggest holidays of the year, and for the first time, Sonic has people to spend it with.]

Sonic didn’t quite know what to expect when it came to the holiday season at Sylvania. He liked the Winter Solstice and its celebrations just fine he supposed, though growing up in an underfunded orphanage, it had always felt a little lackluster. There was never much in terms of festive cheer to go around, and the best the orphanage could offer was meager food and even meager-er presents. Not that he needed presents to be happy, but getting something other than socks for once would be nice. He was sure that just having some friends to spend the day with would make it more special, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up too high. He didn’t want to be disappointed if it didn’t live up to all the hype.

So, naturally, the hedgehog, never having an exciting Solstice in his life, didn’t expect to be jolted awake that morning by Ray cheering in his ear and sending cold chills through his body.

“AAH, COLD COLD COLD COLD,” Sonic yelped, nearly falling out of bed. Once he regained his balance, he quickly burrowed himself deep in his blankets, teeth chattering. “Ray! Don’t do that!”

“Sorry!” the ghost apologized with a chuckle. “I’m just excited. Happy Solstice, Sonic!”

“Wha…? Oh yeah.” The hedgehog squeaked out a yawn, pulling his covers up tight to his chin. “Happy Solstice. I’m goin’ back to bed.”

“What? No!” Ray whined, leaning closer over him. “You’re like, one of the only Gryffindors who stuck around for the holidays this year. The whole tower is empty. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting here to wake you up? Ghosts don’t sleep. I’ve been very patient, dude.”

Sonic groaned, turning over onto his side so he wasn’t facing Ray. “What time is it,” he grumbled, squeezing his eyes shut. Sunlight was beaming in through the tall windows, painting the empty beds in the room a warm yellow, so it was at least past sunrise.

“Like… 8 in the morning.”

“Nope. Goin’ back to sleep, g’night Ray.” Sonic buried his face in his pillow as Ray dramatically huffed besides him.

“Really? You don’t wanna even open your presents?”

The hedgehog’s ear twitched at the mention of gifts, and he cracked his eyes back open. “... I have presents?” he asked, incredulous. “As in, plural?”

“Well, it’s like, three,” Ray shrugged, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. “But yeah, presents.”

Sonic sighed as he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing his bleary eyes. “Might as well investigate. Not like you’ll let me sleep anymore, anyways.”

“Wooo!” Ray smiled, flying around the circular room in excitement as Sonic groggily got out of bed. The rest of the bedroom was completely vacant, as was much of Gryffindor tower. Only a small handful of kids were staying at the school over the holidays, so the whole place was pretty quiet. Sonic and Knuckles were both staying over break, neither of them having families to return home to. The two students would basically have the castle to themselves, and the ghosts had been looking forward to hanging out more and celebrating the new year together.

Sonic trudged out of the bedroom, still keeping his blankets tightly around him. He looked like a small burrito, only his head and his socked feet sticking out. He plodded down the stairs, Ray having to remind him not to fall. Once they made it down to the common room, Ray hurried over to the fire roaring in the fireplace, landing next to one of the armchairs with a couple of presents resting on its cushion. There were a couple of similar piles scattered about the room for the other students who were sticking around, none of them touched yet. Sonic’s was the smallest, but he didn’t care a bit.

“Those mine?” Sonic asked, waking up a little bit more. His eyes widened as he looked at the presents, his brain just now realizing that they were really for him. There were three! And none of them looked like socks! He trotted over to the chair, Ray eagerly floating next to him as he picked up the presents and sat down. He wriggled his upper body free of his blanket burrito, allowing for some more movement, as he looked over the presents. The first one he picked up was about the size of a textbook, but a lot lighter than one. The professionally-wrapped gift had a tag on it, perfectly centered, that read: From Professor Vanilla and Cream. Happy Solstice!

“Yo, Prof Vanilla and Cream sent me something!” Sonic gasped, showing the box off to Ray.

“Oh man, I bet I know what that is,” Ray smiled, leaning in close. “Open it, open it!”

“Alright, alright! I swear, you’re more invested in this than I am,” the hedgehog smirked, tucking a finger under a taped edge of the wrapping paper. He tore into it, completely freeing the box within a matter of seconds. The box was a dark warm color, reminiscent of hot cocoa, and had crisp green lettering on its lid. “Tea Cakes… Handmade Confections from Ice Paradise’s Premier Bake Shop. Ooo, sounds fancy.” He gently lifted the lid off of the box and set it to the side, immediately releasing the scent of fresh-baked pastries into the air.

“Oh man, I’ve heard Tea Cakes enchants their boxes so the food inside stays warm and fresh,” Ray said, inferring the delicious smell from Sonic’s expression. “I’ve always wanted to try their stuff! Oh well, downside to being dead, I guess.”

“Yeah… maybe we can snag you and Mighty something next Halloween! Then you guys should be solid again, right?” Sonic asked while picking up the small cakes, cookies, muffins, and crumbles that filled the box, turning them over with his small fingers. Everything looked and smelled amazing. There were nutty and spiced seasonal ones, sugary sweet and sparkly ones, and ones that smelled like butterscotch and lemonade and chocolate and espresso. According to the label on the inside of the box lid, the pastries had minor magical side effects, from giving you energy and pep to making you feel warm and stress-free. “Woah, these are cool…” he smiled, taking a toffee chunk cookie out of the box. “Y’know, sometimes magic can get on my nerves, but other times it’s like, the best thing ever.” He took a bite of the cookie, the warm freshness hitting his tongue and melting almost like butter. Salty and sweet, crunchy and soft all at once, and just the first bite felt like it lit a small flame in the pit of his gut, warming him from the inside out. By the time he was done, he had no need for his blanket burrito anymore, feeling toasty and snug. “Mmm… I gotta thank Vanilla and Cream later, this was so sweet of them.”

“Haha, literally sweet,” Ray joked.

The next present he opened was smaller, and not as neatly wrapped. There was tape all over the place, and the tag read, in all caps: FROM KNUCKLES TO SONIC HAPPY SOLSTICE. Sonic smiled, a chuckle escaping his lips. “Of course ol’ mitten-hands would have trouble with tape. Let’s see what we’ve got here!” He started pulling off the wrapping, with a bit of difficulty-- the thing was seriously taped shut, like the secrets of the freakin’ universe were secured inside. When he was done he was covered in tape, and bits of wrapping paper littered his lap and the floor. What was inside was a small handmade booklet, papers folded and hole-punched and tied together with string. The front cover, written in what appeared to be crayon, were the words KNUCKLE’S GUIDE TO CHAOS (TOP SECRET!!!) Underneath that, a crude drawing of Knuckles and what Sonic guessed to be the Master Emerald, and underneath that it said BY: KNUCKLES, as if Sonic could forget who would give this to him.

“Woah. Handy,” the young hedgehog mused, flipping through the pages. They were filled with the echidna’s large, scrawly letters in colorful crayon rather than the usual ink, with diagrams and pictures of emeralds and monsters. One page in particular was titled HOW TO MEDITATE: BECAUSE I’M SICK OF REMINDING YOU HOW and was filled with a list of instructions, like CLEAR YOUR HEAD and SIT STILL. That last one was underlined and circled and had multicolored arrows pointing to it. By multicolored he meant red and green, since those were the only two crayons Knuckles seemed to have. The red crayon was used for the text, all of it written exclusively in uppercase for whatever reason, and the green for all the pictures.

“Woah, did Knuckles make that?” Ray said, leaning in over/through Sonic’s shoulder.

“Uh, yeah,” the hedgehog jumped, momentarily having forgotten that Ray was there with him. He instinctively moved his hand so that it covered up a drawing of the Chaos Emeralds.

“It’s okay dude,” Ray whispered, “Mighty and I already know about the Master Emerald stuff. Remember Halloween?”

“Ooooh yeah,” Sonic nodded, recalling that the two ghosts had seemed familiar with the Master Emerald, even if they didn’t talk about it much. “When did Knuckles…?”

“Last year. We can turn invisible, and Knuckles didn’t have a good hiding spot for it yet. Didn’t take long for Mighty to stumble across it and tell me,” the transparent being shrugged. “Knux was always pretty tight-lipped about it, though.”

“Huh,” Sonic muttered, unsure what to say about that. Knuckles wasn’t that tight-lipped with him, at least not about Chaos stuff. Of course, he’d sort of wormed his way into that secret, but the echidna had also become one of his closest friends. They hung out all the time, while they saw the ghosts less frequently.

Knuckles’s motives and decisions were weird, Sonic decided. He’d give you a top-secret document for Solstice, but he wouldn’t talk much about his parents or what Angel Island was like. Either way, the fact that he hand-made a personal Chaos guide for Sonic was super cool, and Sonic definitely needed it. He gave the pages one last flip through before setting the thin book at his side. He was looking forward to digging into it later.

There was only one gift remaining at his feet, this one the largest of the three. Sonic picked it up and hoisted it into his lap, grunting a little bit with the effort. “Woah, what’s in this?"

“Mmmmmmmm,” Ray hummed excitedly, trying not to grin too wide. Sonic shot him a look, confused and amused.

The hedgehog understood his expression when he looked back at the present and read the tag. “From Mighty and Ray?” he read aloud, now very confused. He looked back up at the ghost floating next to him, who was now positively giddy. “But I thought you two couldn’t touch stuff, how’d you…?”

“Let’s just say we now owe Vector a favor or two,” the squirrel winked before frantically motioning towards the present. “Come on, open it!”

Sonic, catching the ghost’s enthusiasm, ripped into the wrapping paper with reckless abandon. It looked just like a box at first, but as soon as he realized what it was, his jaw dropped to the floor. “No way. Is this… a record player?!”

It was. Clearly pre-owned, beat up and well-loved, the wood panelling chipping off on the corners and worn off near the switches and knobs. Packaged with it were two records, neither of which Sonic had heard of before, but had cool enough album art that he was optimistic about what they sounded like.

“Yeah!” Ray said, smiling from transparent ear to transparent ear. “It used to be Vector’s, I hope you don’t mind. ‘Cause we overheard you one day saying you missed listening to music, and Vector was going to get rid of this to get a new one, and… Are you okay?”

“Dude,” Sonic said quietly, staring down at the old record player sitting in his lap. “This is insane! I love it! As long as it plays music, I don’t care how banged up it is or where it came from. It’s great.” He looked up at Ray, a giant grin plastered on his face. “Thanks, man. Aw, now I feel bad that I didn’t get you guys anything!”

The ghost laughed, a noticeably echo-y sound. “Thanks kid, but like you said before, me and Might aren’t the best with tangible objects. Kinda hard to shop for someone who fazes through everything, y’know?”

“Haha! Yeah, I guess you’re right,” the young hedgehog admitted sheepishly.

“Don’t sweat it, Sonic. You and Knux are the first two kids in a while who’ll actually hang out with us, so we just wanted to do something nice, is all.” Ray shrugged with one shoulder, and floated down a little bit closer to the ground so that his eye level was a little more even with Sonic’s.

“Aaawwwwww, shucks, buddy! Us Green Hill kids gotta stick together, right?” He held his closed hand out for a fist bump, despite an actual bump not being possible between them.

Ray let his own fist hover right in front of Sonic’s, their knuckles brushing and Sonic feeling a chill run up his arm. “Yeah. Green Hill bros.”

ooo

The two Gryffindors met up with Knuckles and Mighty at breakfast. The Great Hall was practically empty, which was a shame considering how gorgeous the decorations looked. It seemed like the amount of candles that normally floated above the tables had doubled, completely filling the hall with bright tiny lights. Snow appeared to be falling from the ceiling, the grand fireplaces were crackling and popping away, and nearly every surface imaginable was covered in holly and tinsel. The whole room glowed and glittered, toasty warm and smelling sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg wafting through the air.

“Hey!” the two Hufflepuffs waved, sitting (and floating) at one of the far tables, nearest to one of the fireplaces. The few students who were still at the school were scattered around the hall, paying little regard to which tables were supposed to seat which houses. The tables were lined with all sorts of foods and drinks, and despite how sparsely populated the room was, it didn’t feel awkwardly quiet.

“Mighty! He liked it! Sonic liked our present!” Ray cheered as he and Sonic made their way over to them, the ghost waving his hands in the air.

“Yes!! Knuckles liked his, too! We did good, bro!” Mighty said with a smile, giving his best friend a high five when he got close enough. “Happy Solstice, you two!”

Sonic sat down next to Knuckles, who had a bag of potato chips open in front of him in addition to his plate full of breakfast. “Hey Knux, hey Mighty, happy Solstice!”

“Happy Solstice. And stop calling me that,” the echidna smirked, nudging Sonic with his elbow. “Thanks for these muggle snacks, by the way. These things are pretty good.”

“Yeah, I see you already got started on the chips,” Sonic said. Knuckles held the bag out to him, and he reached inside to take a few. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I already finished all the fruit snacks,” Knuckles snickered, putting the bag back at his side.

“Dang, dude! I’ll be sure to get you more of those next time,” the hedgehog laughed. “Oh yeah, thanks for the you-know-what guide. That looked like it took a lot of work to make, it’s super cool!”

The corners of Knuckles’s lips tugged upwards. “Cream helped me out a little. Just with putting all the pages together and some of the pictures.”

“Wait, so Cream knows about this stuff too? For top secret information, a lot of people around here are in on it.” Sonic crossed his arms with a huff, pouting his lips in such a way that his smile was still showing through.

“I didn’t tell her anything, I got her help with the pictures before I wrote any of the words down,” Knuckles rolled his eyes.

“Oh yeah, guys,” Mighty’s voice caused them to look up, the crimson ghost floating just above the table. “Have you heard? Every year there’s a snowball fight after breakfast on the Solstice. There’s always a bunch of kids, so it’s usually a good show.”

Sonic’s eyes went wide. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to have a snowball fight. I’ll be there.”

Knuckles nodded, making a fist with one hand. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

“Alright, cool! It’s usually on the Quidditch Pitch,” the armadillo nodded. “We should make sure the other first years know… C’mon, Ray!”

“Yeah! See you guys later!” Ray replied, and the two ghosts flew off to other parts of the Great Hall.

Sonic’s leg was bouncing into overdrive, excited to get out there and play in the freshly fallen snow. Presents, friends, good food, and a snowball fight to look forward too? The solstice was looking to be one of his best.