#apparently my 'oh let me write a quick little thing' ideas come in 500 words or 10k

[im-fairly-whitty]

Title: Forget Me Not by @im-fairly-whitty (Ao3: im_fairly_witty)

Fandom: The Witcher (Netflix/Books/Game)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences 

Wordcount: 11731

Summary: You meet up with your soulmate in dreams once or twice every year your whole life, giving you the chance to grow up together and befriend each other no matter where you live. The catch is you only remember what happens in those dreams if you’re currently in one, or if you meet in real life and you BOTH want to be with each other, meaning your waking lives carry on as they would have otherwise with you none the wiser as to whether or not you have a soulmate out there.

This leads to unexpected and wonderful tearful reunions between soulmates discovering each other in waking life, but if your waking selves don’t get along or have emotional constipation (cough, Geralt, cough cough) you and your soulmate can only watch helplessly from your dream meetings as your waking selves make things terrible for both of you without even realizing it.

Additional Tags: Geraskier of course. Instant friendship, but a bit of a slow burn romantically, because Geralt's had five year old Jaskier for fifteen minutes (and if anything happened to him he'd kill everyone in this room and then himself) but romantic feelings don't start until later when they're both adults. Hurt comfort, wump, First Kiss. Happy Ending because RIP season one but I'm different. Also young Jaskier is a national treasure who must be protected at all costs.

For @geraskierweek​: prompt 1, Soulmates

Geralt is eighty five years old when he meets his soulmate for the first time in a dream.

He knows it’s a soulmate dream too, he’s never dreamt anything nearly so vivid or calm, only ever having had muddled nightmares if anything at all. But now he finds himself standing in a field of wildflowers, a slight breeze brushing over the loose black shirt he’s wearing. An unseen sun warms his skin in the perfect pleasantness of a calm summer’s day.

And Geralt feels sick to his stomach. Because he does not want a soulmate, had been convinced that he didn’t have one after decades of nothing.

But as he walks across the field he hears the soft gurgling of a brook and sees exactly why it’s taken so long for his first dream to come. Sitting on the bank of the stream, shoes and socks stripped off with his feet splashing in the water, is a five year old boy.

Geralt’s sick feeling doubles as he silently watches the boy from afar, suddenly far more furious at destiny for what it’s just done to this poor child. Matching him up with a monster. The boy should be meeting someone his own age right now, a childhood friend seen fleetingly in dreams once or perhaps twice a year as they aged together. Not a witcher.

Geralt jumps as the little boy looked over his shoulder, spotting him. For a moment Geralt considers just turning and leaving, just walking away and out of this poor child’s dreams for good.

But then the boy’s eyes light up in a look of eager happiness and he waves excitedly, jumping up and running over to him before he can get away.

“Hi! My name’s Julian! What’s your name? Do you know what this place is?” The little boy asks excitedly, jumping up and down with seemingly boundless energy. “There’s so many flowers, I love them!”

“I’m Geralt.” Geralt says a little stiffy, mind reeling a bit. Because he can’t remember a single time in his life that a child has greeted him with anything other than fear, and it’s stunned him as easily as Axii.

“Hi Geralt! I’m Julian!” says Julian brightly, having apparently already forgotten his previous introduction in his excitement. He grabs Geralt’s hand before he can react and pulls him along. “Come see the stream I found!”

Geralt swallows as he lets himself be tugged along, at a loss for words or thought. Instead he finds himself listening attentively as Julian drags him to stand in the shallow water, proudly showing him wet rocks and pebbles of slightly different colors.

It’s only been a few minutes when Geralt feels the dream already starting to fade, they never last long for the first few years he’s heard. But by the time Julian disappears from sight Geralt is absolutely heartbroken for the child, having already come to love him in the kind of way that would have him burning a village should he come to harm.  

And Geralt is absolutely furious to know that he will have no memory of the dream once he wakes up. That neither of them will remember their encounter until the next time they meet.

***

 Julian is eleven when he finally realizes why he can never remember Geralt when he wakes up.

“You’re my soulmate aren’t you.” Julian not so much asks as simply states, looking up at Geralt.

The two of them are sitting cross legged in the wildflower field they always meet in, braiding long strands of grass to see who can make the longest one. Sometimes they explore together, sometimes they sit on the bank of the stream to splash around, sometimes Julian manages to get Geralt to tell him a story. They’re always very exciting stories.

“Hmmm.” Geralt grunts, not looking up from his grass braiding.

“My mum says if you meet your soulmate in your dreams not to bother telling them your name, because neither of you will remember when you’re awake.” Julian says, reaching over to pick a flower to weave into his grass braid. “That’s why I only remember you when we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Hmmm.” Geralt says again. But Julian knows it’s the “yes” kind of hmmm. They’ve met enough times over the years that Julian knows what all the hmmm’s mean now.

They continue to braid for a few quiet minutes, the soft breeze rustling through the wildflowers.

“How come you’re so old?” Julian asks, looking up at Geralt. “Aren’t soulmates supposed to be the same age?”

There’s a kind of almost smile on Geralt’s face which means he’s supposed to be chuckling, but then a little bit of a sad look too.

“It’s because I’m a witcher.” Geralt says, not looking at Julian as he plucks another long blade of grass. “It means I’ll live for hundreds of years and still look about this age.”

“Oh, like elves.” Julian asks, nodding sagely.

“Yeah, a little bit like elves.” Geralt says with a shrug, but now his little smile stays.  

Julian’s nose wrinkles, “Does that mean it’s not going to be until I’m like fifty that we meet in real life? So I look as old as you do?”

Geralt actually laughs at that, reaching over to ruffle Julian’s hair. “I do not look fifty. Thirty at most.”

“But you’ve got white hair!” Julian says defensively, warming to his argument. “Only really old people have white hair, everybody knows that Geralt.”

“A fair point, little lark.” Geralt says. His smile dims a little. “And I don’t know when we’ll meet in real life. I hope we don’t.”

“What?” Julian cries, jumping to his feet, throwing his grass braid into the air for emphasis. “But we’re soulmates! We gotta meet in real life too so we can be real life friends! How else are we gonna remember each other when we’re awake?”

“My life isn’t one that you want to be in.” Geralt says gently. “I’m always in danger, I’m always having to fight monsters and travel hard. You wouldn’t be able to come with me, it would be too dangerous and I would be too unkind.”

“But you’re always nice. You’re my best friend!” Julian insists, crossing his arms.

“It’s easier here.” Geralt says simply, going back to his braid. “I don’t have to worry when I’m here. But if we meet in real life you’ll be frightened of me, I’ll have two great swords on my back and be in dirty armor and look angry all the time to scare off people who want to hurt me.”

“I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Julian says seriously. “I’ll make them be nice to you, I’ll tell them how great and kind you are and then you won’t have to worry.”

“I’m sure you would.” Geralt says with a sad smile, holding up his finished grass braid to Julian as they feel the dream start to fade.

***

 Geralt is ninety five the year that Julian’s mother dies. He holds the fifteen year old on his arms as the boy cries bitterly into his shoulder the entire dream they’re together, having had no other shoulders to cry on when he was awake.

***

 “I ran away from home last month.” Seventeen year old Julian says.

Geralt looks over at him where they’re both lying in the grass, hands behind their heads as they stare at the blue nothing sky.

“Did your father finally throw you out?” Geralt askes. “Or did you finally hide enough money for Oxenfurt?”

“A little of both.” Julian says, voice deceptively easy. “Got caught sleeping with a maid and figured it was time to get out while I still could. I didn’t fancy being beaten within an inch of my life like Mother.”

A long moment of quiet passes between them.

“Are you safe? Where you are?” Geralt asks, looking over.

“Not really.” Julian says quietly, reaching down to pluck a blade of grass and starting to slowly break it apart in his fingers. “I’m pretending to myself that I am, but I know I’m going to get stabbed if I hang around much longer. I’ll probably wise up in a day or two, once I get over my pride.”

“Did you buy a knife like I told you to?” Geralt askes, knowing perfectly well how futile giving advice of any kind is, but having to try anyway.

“I didn’t.” Julian says, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “I was even looking at one in the marketplace, thinking how much I wished I knew how to use one properly.” he looked over at Geralt, sharing the moment of sad irony with him. “It’s utter rubbish, this not being able to remember business. At least when we meet I’ll suddenly have the knife wielding skills of a bandit from what you’ve taught me.”

Geralt chuckles a sad kind of chuckle that ends in a sigh.

Another minute of silence.

“And don’t say we’re not going to meet, because I can feel you thinking it and we are.” Julian says, raising up on one elbow to glare at him more easily.

 “We aren’t going to meet.” Geralt said, shaking his head tiredly. “You’ll see me coming a mile away and be too terrified to even get a look at my face. As you should be.”

 “I won’t!” Julian insists. “We’ll end up in the same seedy tavern someday, soon too now that I’m traveling, and we’ll see each other across the crowd as I’m playing my lute and suddenly I’ll remember how to wield a knife and you are going to remember you owe me a drink.”

Geralt only keeps shaking his head. “You only get your dream memories back if you both want to be together Julian. You know I don’t want a soulmate. My life isn’t the kind that’s supposed to be shared, there’s not a chance that I’m going to see you in real life and want you around me. Neither of us will remember.”

“You can’t convince me I’m unattractive Geralt, I have an extremely healthy self image.” Julian says, stretching in a comical attempt at a sexy pose.

“You’re a child.” Geralt scoffs.

“Not for long.” Jaskier says, raising an eyebrow. “Give me a few years and I’ll look as old as you, and then when I find you I’ll keep badgering you until you let me stay, and then boom. Soulmate memories.”

Geralt snorts. “If I had an entire week I could not explain to you all the ways in which that is extremely unlikely.”

Geralt closes his eyes, but he can feel Julian watching him from across the grass.

“If we already remembered each other, would you come get me?” Julian asks quietly, the barest hint of a shake hidden in his voice.

Geralt opens his eyes, looking at him steadily. “If we already remembered each other I would have come to get you the day your mother died, and then killed your father for good measure.”

“Okay.” Julian says, voice still quiet as he curls up a little in the grass, still laying on his side.

Geralt can smell the fear starting to seep off the boy as he feels the dream start to fade around them, pulling them back to real life.

“You’ll be alright.” Geralt says, reaching over to grip the boy’s shoulder comfortingly. “You’re stubborn and you’re quick on your feet if nothing else, you’ll survive.”

“Geralt, I-” Julian’s hand grips his.

And then the dream fades.

 ***

 Geralt is ninety nine the first time he finds himself in a soulmate dream where he finds that he’s even more upset than the very first time he found himself in the wildflower field.

“Geralt!”

He looks over and see Julian...no, Jaskier, sprinting toward him. The young man slams into him at top speed, grabbing him in a hug that is buzzing with energy and excitement.

“We met!” Jaskier cries, his eyes actually filling with excited tears. “We met! We met! I can’t believe we finally met, and Gods Geralt you never once mentioned how lethally attractive you are in real life! I thought I was going to die when I saw you! And-”

There are too many things in Geralt’s head that need to be said, too many competing emotions warring to get out first.

But Geralt does the most important thing first and wraps Jaskier into a protective bear hug, holding him close. Jaskier returns the hug eagerly, quieting for just a moment despite practically humming in excitement.

“We didn’t remember.” Geralt says quietly, pulling out of the hug enough to look Jaskier in the eyes, then anger surfaces for its turn out in the open. “And what are you doing Jaskier? Why on earth are you following me around? You nearly got slaughtered by elves on your first day! Do you have a death wish?”

“But that’s the thing Geralt!” Jaskier says eagerly. “I can tell there’s something special about you! I saw you in the tavern and I could tell!”

“You know we’re soulmates?” Geralt demands.

“No, no, no memories at all, but still it feels like...” Jaskier bites his lip, searching for words, which doesn’t happen often. “I’m not sure what it feels like, but it just feels like I’m supposed to be around you, I feel like you can keep me safe. I haven’t figured it out yet obviously, but maybe I will soon!”

Geralt feels his heart ache, remembering the disgust and irritation he feels toward Jaskier in real life without his true memories to assist him.

“I’m sorry for hitting you.” he says quietly.

“Oh that’s alright.” Jaskier says with a grin. “I supposed I deserved it, but I did warn you I was going to be stubborn!”

“Jaskier there’s no way this is going to work.” Geralt says, shaking his head. “I’ve already decided to shake you off when we reach town tomorrow, you’re too slow on foot and you sing too much.”

“You are so grumpy in real life, you know that?” Jaskier says, narrowing his eyes and jabbing a finger at Geralt’s chest. “Like, unbelievably grumpy, and mean! Do you have an entire witcher mutagen dedicated to being taciturn in real life that doesn’t affect you when you’re asleep? I swear you’re like a whole different person!”

“I’ve only known you for a few days in real life.” Geralt said, dropping his arms to his sides with a sigh. “You’re seeing what the world sees of me. I never let that guard down, ever. I can’t afford to. That’s the reality of being a witcher, I can’t ever be vulnerable or that’s the end of it for me.”

“I’m sorry.” Jaskier says, his eyes dropping. “I’m sorry your life’s been like that.” He looks up with a flame of anger in his own eyes. “I hate the way people look at you, the way you save all of them and then they treat you like garbage. I’m going to make them see who you really are Geralt, I’m already working on songs to do it.”

“Your songs that are already changing the truth of what actually happened to us?” Geralt said with a smile.

“Yes! And they’re going to be fantastically popular.” Jaskier says, absolutely convinced.

“Also,” Geralt says, his smile disappearing and raising an eyebrow as his grip on Jaskier’s shoulder tightens. “You are utterly shameless. I can smell you constantly reeking of lust around me when we’re walking around together, have you ever once in your life tried to be subtle? That’s the biggest reason I’ve decided to shake you off tomorrow.”

Jaskier grins sheepishly, “In my defence you haven’t told me how old you really are?” he tries. “I’m still out there assuming you’re a foxy mid to late thirties.”

“Will it really make a difference when you find out I’m ninety nine?” Geralt asks flatly.

“No.” Jaskier says, his grin no longer sheepish. “Oh, and happy hundredth by the way if you haven’t told me by then.”

“No changing the subject.” Geralt says sternly. “We’re likely never going to see each other again in real life after your obnoxious performance, so I hope you’re satisfied with our one death outing together.”

“Oh, we’ll meet again.” Jaskier said happily.

“And how can you be so sure?” Geralt says dryly.

“Because I’ve already decided I’m going to stalk you across the continent like a lovesick schoolboy.” Jaskier says proudly. “And my awake self decided that all on his own.”

“That’s because you are a lovesick school boy. One who’s going to get himself killed by following me.” Geralt says, shoving at Jaskier’s shoulder as they begin to walk across the meadow to their usual spot by the stream.

“Honestly though Geralt, why have you kept me around even this long? You have to like me at least a little.” Jaskier asks, looking at him curiously as he follows.

“You’re the first human I’ve ever met who doesn’t smell like fear when they look at me.” Geralt says with a shrug. “It’s intriguing. Novel.”

Jaskier makes a sad kind of noise, looking at him and then wrapping him in a second hug.

“Geralt, here I was fishing for compliments and you have to hit me with that?” Jaskier mumbles against his chest.

“Well I’m never ever going to say it in waking, so I might as well.” Geralt sighs.

“Just you wait, we’re going to make it, I know we will.” Jaskier says, looking up at him with a smile full of determination. “I’ll track you down again, you’ll see.”

 ***

 Only nine months and one dream pass before Jaskier manages to find Geralt again in real life. He is extremely smug.

 “Just you wait, Witcher.” Jaskier says, using the name he’s picked up from using in real life. “By the end of the year we’ll both have remembered.”

 ***

 If Geralt had known three years passed without a single dream he would have been worried, but of course he has no way of knowing that until he finds himself standing in the field of flowers again.

Jaskier is standing a ways off, arms folded tightly as he stares off into the nothing distance, his shoulders tense.

“Jaskier.” Geralt calls, and the bard turns, a look of sheer relief breaking through his worried expression as he runs to Geralt.

“Why was it so long?” Jaskier asks, face buried against Geralt’s neck as they hold tightly to one another. “Why haven’t we seen each other in so long Geralt?”

Geralt takes a long moment just to breathe in Jaskier’s scent, which is riddled with fear and unease, then kisses his forehead, aching because he knows there’s no good way he can apologize for how he’s acted in waking life. Because of course they have seen each other, quite often in fact, but Geralt hates seeing it with remembering eyes. His gruffness, the constant shoving Jaskier away both figuratively and literally. The way that Jaskier puts up with it all with a smile.

Things aren’t always bad, they’ve had good times too, but not nearly enough to make up for it in his opinion.

“I don’t know.” Geralt says slowly, almost having to remember how to use long sentences again after so long in his customary waking gruffness. “Perhaps it’s because we’re together often in real life. The dreams don’t feel like they have to pull us together any more.”

“It’s been three years Geralt and we haven’t remembered a thing yet.” Jaskier says, his voice sounding a little hoarse against Geralt’s neck. “I, I guess things are pretty normal for us only having known each other three years though, right? Loads of people probably act like we do. With me hanging on and you hating everything...”

Geralt bites his lip, realizing that Jaskier had gotten so used to glossing over his emotions around Geralt in real life that he’s even doing it here now.

“You scare me in real life.” Geralt said, being the first to be honest. “I keep thinking I’m going to break you or scare you off like everyone else, I don’t understand what you see in me to keep following me and being kind and it frightens me. That’s why I still have so many walls, I’ve never had a real human friend, and I’m afraid of how fragile I think you are.”

Jaskier makes a small choking sound, nearly a sob as he looks up and Geralt sees tears in his eyes. “We are friends then?” he asks, voice hoarse. “In real life I mean, I always keep hoping we are or, or will be, but I just don’t know what you think about me really so I just keep joking around it and-”

“You’re the truest friend I’ve ever had Jaskier.” Geralt said firmly, putting a hand gently to his cheek. “You just picked the worst possible person to try befriending. I promise.”

“O-okay.” Jaskier said, tears sliding down his cheeks as he gasps for breath a little. “Okay. It’s just so hard to tell with you sometimes.” He wiped fiercely at his eyes. “Gods, sorry, I swear I’m not this distraught in real life, honestly I’m alright, I’m perfectly pleased to keep worrying away at you for the long haul. It’s just so...so disorienting to be back here I suppose, to remember. I just wish we both remembered already.”

“It’s alright little lark.” Geralt said softly, sitting in the grass and pulling Jaskier down into his arms. Holding him tight, as if it could make up for three years of only rough and brief touches in passing. “This is my fault, I always told you I’d be miserable company in real life.”

“It’s not all bad you know.” Jaskier swallows, resting his head against Geralt’s chest. “Really it’s not. You’re always so kind to people who really need it, and you make the worst jokes when we’re alone on the road together, and you’re so soft with Roach, and you’re terrifying at Gwent. And I know you really do care about me, because you’re always saving my skin every single time I need it, and I know you make sure I get the best parts of our food when we’re running low, and I know you bought me those boots last month because mine were falling apart so don’t even pretend it was because they were cheap anyway. I know they weren’t. I know clothes Geralt.”

Something warm gently flickers in Geralt’s chest as his bard lists so many things Geralt hadn’t considered as being good. They were just things he felt he needed to do. But coming from Jaskier they did sound good. It almost makes him feel better.

“So you’re not miserable then?” Geralt asks hesitantly.

“No! No, not by a long shot.” Jaskier says, wide-eyed as he looks up at him. “Geralt these are the best years I’ve ever had in my life, I get to go adventuring with you and see sights no one in Oxenfurt’s ever seen, and then I get to go hole up for the winter in a warm classroom and write songs while you hibernate up at your witcher castle. This is the dream Geralt.”

“You should have better dreams.” Geralt says softly. “These years are the prime of your life, you should be spending them doing something else.”

“If you remember to tell me all that again when we wake up I’ll do it.” Jaskier says, a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Speaking of better dreams,” Geralt says flatly. “would you actually die if you didn’t jump in bed with everything that moves? As glad as I am that you appreciate me dragging you out of every fire you light under yourself, I sometimes forget I’m supposed to be fighting monsters, not cuckolded husbands.”

“Do you have any idea how much sexual frustration I deal with on a daily basis just from being around you?” Jaskier replies seriously. “When you walk around looking like a marble statue in black leather and a loose ponytail? And that’s just when you have clothes on.”

Geralt rolled his eyes. “Well, good to see you’re feeling better.”

“I’m serious Geralt.” Jaskier says, curling closer to him, looking down at the grass. “I’m not just sticking around for the song material anymore. I’ve...really fallen for you. You could at least pretend to notice.”

“You’re still so young.” Geralt shakes his head, resting his chin gently on Jaskier’s head. “You get obsessed with things all the time, I know you’ll get bored and move on eventually.”

“I won’t. Not from you.” Jaskier says firmly, one hand holding tightly to the front of Geralt’s shirt. “And you can’t keep using my age as an excuse either, I know for a fact that you don’t sleep with prostitutes your age when we visit the Passaflora, so you can stop pretending that’s a valid excuse not to be attracted to me at this point.”

Geralt only chuckles. “I’m only telling you what I really think in waking life Jaskier, you can’t get mad at me for it here.”

“Well, what do you think here?” Jaskier asks, looking up at him, their faces only inches apart now.

Geralt thinks for a moment, looking into the young man’s cornflower blue eyes. He can’t deny that in waking life he has considered more than once how attractive the bard is. But even in waking it’s not something he’s considered at length, far more concerned with the constant challenge of keeping his curious human companion in one piece than anything else.

“What I think here is that you are still young.” Geralt says gently. He kisses Jaskier’s forehead and the bard heaves a sigh.

“You’re the worst soulmate ever, you know that?” He says, squinting up at him accusingly.

“I’ve never claimed to be anything else.” Geralt says, a little too soberly.

“What if we don’t see each other again for another three years?” Jaskier asks, smelling nervous again.

“That’ll probably mean we’re still traveling together fairly often.” Geralt reasons. “You know, if you leave me alone maybe we’ll see each other here more again.”

“Not a chance, witcher.” Jaskier says. “Not a chance.”

 ***

 By the time they’ve traveled together for the better part of twelve years in waking life they’ve seen each other four more times in dreams. Which is not nearly enough, and somehow far too much.

“I’m going to ask you to escort me to Cintra tomorrow night for the betrothal feast, I got invited to play at it.” Jaskier says quietly against Geralt’s shoulder. The two of them are standing in the field of wildflowers together, simply holding each other after years of distance.

“I’ve been gone three days after a selkimore.” Geralt says with a smile. “How are you so sure I’m even alive?”

“Well now I know you’re alive.” Jaskier says, looking up at him with a grin. “I’ll remember.”

“You won’t.”

“I will.” Jaskier says, as if it’s a fact, not a wish. “And when you’re back you’ll probably be covered in all kinds of filth like usual and I’ve got a bath and everything all planned to butter you up to make you come with me.”

“I won’t like it.” Geralt warns.

“You don’t like anything.” Jaskier points out.

“I like you.” Geralt says.

Jaskier looks up at him with his thirty one year old eyes and tilts his head a bit. “How do you mean?”

“In waking life.” Geralt says simply. “I’ve started to really...like you. Unironically, I love having you around me.

“You absolute bastard! I knew it!” Jaskier cries in delight, taking hold of Geralt’s shirt collar. “And yet you still pretend we aren’t friends, but you do like me. I see you listening to all my songs from the back of the tavern, and the way you smile just a little when I talk too long even though you aren’t listening, and you are going to agree to come to Cintra with me aren’t you?”

“I probably will.” Geralt sighed. “When was the last time I told you no?”

“You tell me not to do things all the time, I just don’t listen.” Jaskier says with a smug grin.

“When was the last time you asked me for something and I didn’t eventually do it. Even if I didn’t outright agree.” Geralt corrects gently.

“Do you think...do you think we’ll remember soon?” Jaskier says, eyes wide in hope.

Geralt thinks they might, he really does. Even when awake he’s taken to being far more protective of the bard, keeping him close whenever he can, wanting him to stay. Wanting him. Even if he can’t even admit it to himself while awake.

But he just can’t bear to get his bard’s hopes up when he knows he can’t guarantee anything upon waking. For them to remember both of them have to want to be together, and for years now they’ve only been waiting on him.

“Perhaps.” He says with a shrug. He rests a hand against Jaskier’s face and the bard leans into his touch. “But I hope so.”

“Geralt, can I kiss you?” Jaskier asks, as calmly as if asking whether it was raining outside.

“If you like.” Geralt says.

Their first kiss is as gentle as the breeze whispering through the wildflowers at their feet, as calm as the small brook that flows past them.

The dream fades before they have the chance for a second one.

 ***

 Geralt is sitting in the wildflower field with his head in his hands. Even in dreams his constant waking headache hasn’t left him, in fact it almost seems worse.

Because it’s been five months since Cintra, and everything has gone exactly wrong.

He hears Jaskier appear behind him but doesn’t move. Footsteps through the grass, and then the pleasant warmth of Jaskier draping himself over Geralt’s back, slim arms wrapping around his neck as the bard kisses just behind his ear. 

“Well, I assume it’s safe to say that neither of us saw that coming.” Jaskier says with a tired chuckle. “You left in a marvelous huff before I could ask, why did you claim the law of surprise? Really Geralt, after seeing all that, what on earth were you thinking?”

“That you would think it was a terribly funny joke when I inherited a new second hand crown or a fine jacket from it. That we’d both get a laugh from it after such a trying night.” Geralt says hoarsely, having no reason to lie.

“Geralt...” Jaskier says, at a loss for words.

Geralt doesn’t move as they sit in silence, because they both already know that if he hadn’t invoked the law of surprise then he wouldn’t have stormed off on his own, that he and Jaskier would have stayed together, that they just might have remembered each other by now.

And instead they are now alone in waking life, who knew how far apart. For who knew how long this time.

Geralt feels his hair pulled loose out of its half ponytail and Jaskier’s long fingers begin to comb through it. It eases his headache a bit and he closes his eyes.

“But why did you run so fast and so far?” Jaskier asks quietly. “You’d disappeared before I’d even gotten to my feet Geralt, you were long gone by the time I got back to the inn. No one says you have to actually take the child for your own, you could just be a sort of godparent couldn’t you? Just visiting every now and then like a kind uncle, they won’t even be born for-”

“Because I can’t stand it when destiny gets her hooks in children, and this time it’s my fault.” Geralt growls. “When that baby is born they’re going to be caged in at every side by destiny. No matter what they do, they’ll never be able to escape being a child surprise. They aren’t even born yet and their choice is already stripped from them. Because of me.”

Jaskier’s fingers go still in his hair.

“Is that why you hate the idea of soulmates so much?” Jaskier asks quietly.

“This, no, this isn’t about that.” Geralt shakes his head, but Jaskier is already gone from his back.

The bard moves in front of him, sitting down in the grass and looking at Geralt, trapping his gaze. “Is this why we haven’t remembered each other in waking life yet?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt can’t quite tell what emotion it is flavoring the bard’s voice this time, but it’s something sad. “Because deep down you think I’m trapped in this, so that’s why you keep pushing me away? That I have no choice but to be herded back to you by destiny? Is this because I was a child when we first met?”

“That isn’t what I-”

“No, you know what? It’s my turn to talk.” Jaskier says, and the sadness in his voice is so close to anger now that Geralt wishes he was anywhere else but here. “You always say that you don’t believe in destiny and that everything’s up to chance, but we both know that’s not true. I don’t love you because destiny told me to, I love you because you’re the best man I’ve ever met, here or awake. You’ve been the only person I can always rely on, even when you pretend you hate me. 

“And think of Urcheon and Pavetta! They had it exactly the same as us, he was already grown when Pavetta was born too, and they still loved each other and remembered their soulmate dreams when they met in person. And now they’re together despite the greatest odds all because of destiny, and after what we both saw at that feast don’t you dare tell me that their love for each other isn’t real.”

“And now they owe their unborn child to a witcher.” Geralt says sourly.

“And why is that so terrible?” Jaskier cries in frustration. “You’re a lovely man Geralt, why is being connected to a child such a terrible concept to you?”

“Because I was a child surprise Jaskier!” Geralt shouts, he doesn’t remember getting to his feet, but now he’s standing over the bard. “Where do you think all the old wives tales of witchers stealing children come from?”

“But those are just tales, they don’t-” Jaskier says weakly.

“Every witcher was a child surprise.” Geralt says hotly. “That’s where we all come from. A life is saved and the law of surprise is demanded in return, and when the child is old enough to walk they’re whisked away, no matter how hard the parents beg. Because it’s destiny. And then seven out of ten of those little boys dies in terrible agony. Because it’s their destiny. My mother couldn’t have kept me back if she wanted to, I don’t even know if she wanted to Jaskier. My entire life has been set by some great unseeing hand and I hate it, and now it’s used me to get its claws into the unborn heir of Cintra, all because I couldn’t keep my idiot mouth shut. Do you perhaps, in all your sage acceptance of fate, see how that could perhaps possibly upset me?”

“Geralt, I didn’t know.” Jaskier says, face pale.

“No, you didn’t.” Geralt snaps. “Because as lovely as things are in this bloody field while we’re asleep, in waking my life is a terrible, dangerous, dark thing. Destiny decided before I was even born that I was to face pain and death every second of my unnaturally long life. I’m always going to be at the end of a blade, and the only thing that’ll keep me from being on the wrong end is if I treat everything around me like a threat. That is why we haven’t remembered each other in waking Jaskier, because you don’t belong in a life like that. I refuse to trap you in that with me.”

The breeze that is always brushing across the wildflower field has disappeared, leaving things unnaturally silent as Jaskier stares up at him. Wide blue eyes gazing at him, mercilessly soft. Geralt wishes that Jaskier would jump up too, that he would start yelling back at him, shove him, give him something else to react against. But he doesn’t.

“Do you love me?” Jaskier asks, watching him.

“What do you mean?” Geralt says.

“Do you?” Jaskier asks.

“Of course I do.”

“Good.”

“What do you mean, good?”

“Because I love you,” Jaskier says simply, picking a pale yellow wildflower from the grass by his knee. “and if we both still love each other that means we’ll manage to find each other again once you come to your senses.”

“Jaskier, I-”

“You don’t get to bad mouth destiny for supposedly taking away my choice and then go and try to take it away yourself.” Jaskier says, getting to his feet.

Geralt finds himself powerless to move as the bard tucks the flower behind his ear and kisses his cheek. Jaskier wraps his arms around his neck.

“I’ve been in your life for twelve waking years witcher,” Jaskier says gently in his ear. “And I’m not a child anymore. By now I know exactly what I’m getting myself into every time I tag along you know, I choose to be around you. I want to be with you. I’ll see you again.”

Geralt closes his eyes, gritting his teeth. Then he sighs, resting his head on Jaskier’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” Geralt says.

For yelling at him? For trying to force Jaskier’s hand? For abandoning him without a word in waking life? Or just for destiny tying them together in the first place? Maybe all four.

“Everything will be alright.” Jaskier says, kissing the corner of his mouth. “With us and with your child surprise. Even if it takes a while to get there.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of me?” Geralt asks. “How can you stand to be around me, even when I try driving you away?”

“I can always tell you don’t mean it.” Jaskier says, looking serious. “Deep down I think I know it’s not the real you when you act like that. But you’re lucky my waking self is convinced we’re soulmates and that we’ll wake up any moment, because sometimes you really are a prick Geralt.”

“You really think we’re soulmates when you’re awake?” Geralt asks, looking him in the eyes.

“It’s a ridiculously optimistic wish I can’t manage to make myself let go of.” Jaskier says with a shrug. “But we both know I’m a bit of an idiot.”

“Hmmm.” Geralt agrees.

“Not nearly as much of an idiot as you, but we make a fine pair I’ll admit.” Jaskier says with a grin.

Geralt moves to kiss him, but the dream fades before he has the chance.

 ***

 The next time they meet he kisses Jaskier before he has the chance to say anything.

“Well. Hello, you.” Jaskier says, breathless but smiling as Geralt finally releases him from the kiss.

“Didn’t get to kiss you last time,” Geralt says, burying his face against Jasker’s neck and breathing in the bard’s scent. “Wanted to get it done first this time.”

“Well I certainly have no objection to that.” Jaskier hums. “I miss you you know, it’s been a few years. I’ve started courting a countess in your absence if you can believe it.”

“How terribly unfortunate for you.” Geralt says. He laughs as Jaskier smacks him.

***

 “So. Yennifer.” Jaskier says quietly.

The two of them are curled up together in the long grass, Jaskier’s back against Geralt’s chest. The bard traces his fingers aimlessly over the arm Geralt has around his waist.

“Hmmm.” Geralt says, burying his nose in Jaskier’s hair, as if that will somehow keep them from the topic. But this is the first time they’ve seen each other since the djinn, so of course they’re going to talk about it.

“You know for not wanting people to be attached to you through cosmic means, you’re terrible at it.” Jaskier says.

“I really don’t need a reminder.” Geralt grumbles, closing his eyes tiredly.

“Why did you bind yourself to her?” Jaskier asks, words crisp. As if trying his hardest to keep them unemotional.

“She saved your life Jaskier, I couldn’t let her die.”

Geralt nearly whines as Jaskier pulls away from him, sitting up to look him in the face.

“She framed you for something that nearly got you executed, and then she tried to rope me into a dark ritual that went so badly it ripped an entire manor to pieces.” Jaskier says flatly. “You’d known her all of a few hours. You absolutely could have let her die.”

“Jaskier.” Geralt sighs.

“Is it because she’s older than you?” Jaskier says, his tone back to the flat clipped tone that means he’s hiding his emotions. “Is it because she’s powerful? Because she hates you? Everything I’m not?”

“Jaskier, no.” Geralt says, pushing himself up with a frown. “Yen is a good person, she’s just very old and hurting.”

“So you want her as your soulmate instead because she’s like you.” Jaskier says. “Because you can’t want things for yourself if they don’t involve something dangerous enough to kill you. That’s why you really like her isn’t it? Because chasing after her gives you the same rush as hunting monsters, it’s all you know how to do.”

“This is not about replacing you.” Geralt says, reaching for his wrist. “You’ve been with plenty of other people, that countess of yours kept you occupied for several years, why am I not allowed the same?”

“Because I don’t bind their souls to me with a djinn wish!” Jaskier snaps, yanking his arm away and getting to his feet.

“Jaskier, please, I’m sorry.” Geralt says, kneeling in front of the bard, hands up in surrender. “A djinn can’t kill its master, the only way I could think to save her was by binding her to me. It’s magic that can be undone, it’s not the same as destiny. I couldn’t let her die after she saved you. I would have broken if you’d died because of me.”

Jaskier crosses his arms, swallowing hard as he looks away. But he doesn’t say anything.

“And you’re right,” Geralt says, pressing on in the way he only ever manages when he’s not awake, when there’s only Jaskier to hear him. Where not even he will remember what he said in a few hours. “I am attracted to her because she’s like me. We have a lot of the same pain, a lot of the same fears.”

“Oh? And what is it that Yennefer of Vengerburg is so afraid of?” Jaskier says hotly.

“That she’ll never truly be loved, that’s she’s so far from human that no one will ever be able to need and care about her.” Geralt says.

“You can’t honestly believe that about yourself.” Jaskier says, looking at him with an expression of sad anger.

“I do when I’m awake.” Geralt says quietly. Because what else can he say?

Jaskier clenches his jaw, making a muffled irritated sound as he turns and stomps a few steps away, rubbing his face before turning back.

“How can you be so thick?” he cries, sharply gesturing at him with both hands. “How Geralt? How can you possibly be this dense? Why must you always see something simple and think to yourself, how can I make this as complicated as possible instead, hmmm? Is that something they taught you in Witcher school, all those apparently eons ago since you’re sooo old that you’re beyond the reach of human love and reason? You drag yourself into every terrible situation you can find, and then you have the audacity to be shocked when it has less than optimal results. Every single time.”

Jaskier is rambling. Which Geralt knows by now means less that the bard truly means what he says, and more that the man is trying very hard not to cry.

Geralt silently gets to his feet and catches Jaskier, pulling him into an embrace despite the bard’s protests and struggling. Jaskier hisses and pushes at him, hitting his chest, but then the bard goes limp in his arms, beginning to cry into Geralt’s shoulder.

Geralt says nothing, having nothing he can say. So he just holds Jaskier as the man sobs, looks up at the blue nothing sky.

“I hate these dreams.” Jaskier says thickly, face buried against Geralt’s neck. “I hate them. Everything is simpler when I’m awake, I hate remembering that things could be better, I wish I could just forget.”

“You don’t mean that.” Geralt says, his heart breaking.

“Don’t I?” Jaskier says, looking up at him with red rimmed eyes, tears running down his cheeks. “When I’m awake at least I have the luxury of thinking you’re an unrealistic fantasy, I can think every second I have with you is the best I’ve ever had. When I’m here I’m reminded every minute of what I don’t have, and even worse that you do care. It’s like having two hearts to be broken instead of only one Geralt.”

“Jaskier...please...” Geralt says helplessly, words failing him as surely as if he were awake. “If I knew how to fix this I would, you know I would.”

“I don’t know that anymore Geralt, that’s the problem.” Jaskier cries. “Because all I’ve ever heard you say in waking is that you don’t want to be needed, and when I’m here all you ever talk about is how much you don’t want me in your life with you. What am I supposed to think Geralt?”

“I...”

I’m not good at this.

I’m only pushing you away to protect you because I really do love you.

I need you.

But Geralt can’t figure out how to get the feelings from his brain to his mouth, leaving him stumbling for words as Jaskier watches him.

Geralt feels the dream fading around them and it only blocks his speech worse as he panics.

Jaskier disappears from his arms.

 ***

 The next time Geralt finds himself in the wildflower field he is immediately consumed by a prickling feeling of guilt and panic that curls in his gut. Because even in waking he’s been consumed by uneasy guilt for the last two weeks, convinced he’s made a truly deep mistake but not quite knowing why underneath all his justifications.

If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.

...I’ll see you around Geralt...

And now he knows exactly why, with excruciating clarity.

He sees a figure in the distance, watching him. Jaskier’s shirt is whipping in the stiff wind that races across the wildflower field, stronger than it’s ever been before, ripping petals off stems. The blue nothing sky has become a dark grey nothing sky above them, and sharp, dangerous shadows stretch across the field from nowhere.

“Jaskier!” Geralt shouts, starting toward him. He has to reach him, he has to make things right, fix what he’s done. He’s messed up far too badly this time, he has to fix this.

Jaskier doesn’t move, just watches him approach as the wind picks up even stronger, ripping up blades of grass and dirt that pelt against Geralt as he picks up speed.

“Jaskier, I-!”

Jaskier turns away from Geralt and walks away.

He takes two steps and vanishes completely into thin air.

Geralt stumbles to a halt, shielding his face as he shouts Jaskier’s name, not even hearing himself above the howling of the wind. He tries to push forward but is knocked to his knees. He squeezes his eyes shut against the gale, hunching down to dig his fingers into the ground to try and anchor himself, but everything feels like it is slipping, being ripped away from around him as he tries desperately to-

***

 Geralt jolts upright, already half to his feet in a blind panic before the sleep clears from his head. He looks around and sees his camp. He’s awake. He’s alone. His pulse is racing from his dream.

He pants as he sits back down on his bedroll, forcing himself to take deep breaths as his heart beats far too fast for a witcher.

The noises of the forest night gently ease back into his senses as he rubs his face. The chirping of crickets, the whispering of a night breeze in the tree branches above him, the soft noises of Roach, who is watching him with worried interest from where she is grazing a few yards away in the dark. His campfire hasn’t even burned down to embers yet, so he gets up and throws on another log for the flames to eat at, trying to ignore the cold sweat covering him as he shakes slightly.

Because he hasn’t been able to sleep for three days now. Not even meditating helps for long.

Because every time he truly slips into unconsciousness he ends up in the same nightmare, and he doesn’t even know why it’s a nightmare. He’s always standing alone in the middle of a torn up field cast in a dark reddish light, strewn with the dead wreckage of uprooted grass and flowers. There is a dried up streambed and the air is dead still around him, feeling nearly suffocating.

And that’s all there is. Geralt’s never even seen the field before that he knows of, but every nightly visit fills him with such a sick feeling of loss that he wakes up shaking.

The night before it all started he’d actually woken up crying.

Though he doesn’t remember what it is he dreamed of that night.

“It’s got to be a warning.” Geralt says to Roach as he pulls a waterskin from his pack, voice not shaking. “If it’s the same vision repeated. But I don’t know what for, I never see anyone or anything. There’s not even buildings...just...dead flowers...”

He sits heavily on a log near the side of the campfire, drinking from the waterskin as he tries to pull his thoughts back together. But as he does his mind turns immediately to the other thing he’s been desperately trying not to think about.

Because he may be haunted by a dead field in his dreams, but when he’s awake all he can see is the back of a red doublet. All he can hear is his own angry words ringing in his mind. Jaskier’s unsteady ones in reply. Playing over and over and over and over-

“What am I supposed to do?” Geralt growls, throwing his hands up at the sky. Roach startles a little at his near shouting but Geralt isn’t even sure he’s talking to her anymore. To himself? Maybe. “I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I’m alone...”

Didn’t he want to be alone? Isn’t that what he’s been claiming his entire life?

“He was going to get hurt.” Geralt says lamely, his worn out excuse sounding pitiful. “He’s already spent too much of his life around me...he should be somewhere else...”

Nevermind that after so many years of company Geralt is always miserable without the bard beside him, no matter how much he tries to deny it. No matter that he knows for a fact that he’d hurt Jaskier worse than any monster they’d faced over the years when he’d shouted at him on that mountain.

The part that really hurts though is that Geralt knows he hadn’t even blamed Jaskier for things that were really his fault. He’d targeted Jaskier knowing he would take it, that the bard was the one person in the world who always stuck by him no matter how he treated him.

And it made Geralt sick. He’d finally crossed the line. Crossed the line and lost what he hadn’t known he had.

No, because that was a lie too. He knows he loves Jaskier, has for years. He’s just too much of a coward to accept it. Not when there is so much love bursting out of the bard, a frightening amount of care and affection waiting right in front of him. Something that Geralt can’t stand to lose, and therefore couldn’t risk touching, in case he harms it.

Geralt snarls at himself, starting to gather up his camp. Roach knickers curiously as he saddles her and packs everything into saddlebags, then goes over and stomps out the campfire. There was no use hanging around if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway. That and he needs to get on the trail before he loses his nerve.

“Come on Roach.” he barks, pulling himself up into the saddle and digging in his heels.

Roach winnies and starts off under the light of the moon as Geralt steers her back to the main road.

If Geralt rides hard they could be back to the mountain in a day or two and he can track Jaskier from there. On foot the bard won’t have made it too far in three weeks, Geralt knows Jaskier prefers staying days or even weeks at a time in each town when Geralt isn’t with him. If he’s lucky he might be able to track him down in three or four days time.

He only hopes he won’t be collapsing from lack of sleep by then. He still has no idea how to treat his nightmares, should probably contact Triss or Yen about it before he goes mad, but Jaskier at least he knows how to find.

He has no idea what he can possibly say to the bard when he does, but even riding in the right direction makes him feel a little better. He just tries not to think about how long he’s been riding in the wrong one.

 ***

 Jaskier has been bleeding for three weeks, but it’s the kind that no one else can see.

He bleeds into his lyrics, he bleeds into the notes he sings. Late at night he lays in bed, staring blankly at the wall of his inn room, feeling his sadness seep down into the sheets under him. Leaving him feeling hollow and cold.

The coin is good. People are moved by his music. The inn rooms are good. Paid for by the coin.

He supposed he could have found himself good company as well if he’d been able to look anyone in the eye.

Instead he is sitting outside in the dark. Alone. He sits under a tree near the empty market square of the town he’s been staying in for a week now, only the low flickering glow of hung lanterns to keep him company as he watches the night around him. It must be close to midnight, but he’s been sitting here since sunset, his lute laying silently in his lap, watching the night with him.

Because Jaskier does not know why it hurts so much, why being chased off by Geralt of Rivia has cut him to his very core in a way nothing else ever has. Especially since, despite the cheerful face he wears, Jaskier is no stranger to grief and disappointment.

Jaskier had longed after Geralt from the moment they met, back when he was practically still a child. They’d become good friends, despite what the Witcher often claimed, and Jaskier had always thought something was different about them. There must have been with the way Geralt allowed him closer and longer than anyone else in his life. Jaskier knew that Geralt cared about him underneath all of his emotional barriers, in recent years he’d even thought...had even suspected that...

Jaskier takes a slow, deep breath of the cool night air. He has been still so long that his body feels a step distant. As if he is merely a spirit watching invisibly with the trees as the night air brushes through the sparse grass in the empty marketplace. He wonders if this is how Geralt feels when he meditates.

He’ll never know now. Not now that Jaskier is finally realizing that it’s over. That he will no longer track down the Witcher, can never again follow behind him. Because if after all this time, after all these years, Geralt truly wants him gone...then Jaskier will finally give up.

So why does it feel like something deep inside of him has broken?

Jaskier watches as a figure makes its way down the street toward the square, a large man who is moving slowly. Jaskier watches with a detached kind of interest, this is simply the latest passerby to wander through the square this evening and Jaskier sits in the deep shadow of the tree, tucked safely out of sight.

But as the man moves closer Jaskier feels a prickle of unease. The man is moving more strangely than he’d realized, slowing every few steps as if...smelling the air...

Jaskier’s pulse quickens as his brain starts flipping through his mental catalogue of beasts and monsters, one that is quite extensive after decades of traveling with a witcher. He suddenly feels very foolish for indulging his dramatic side by staying out so late alone, his warm inn room with its lovely lockable door feels as if it is on the opposite side of the continent.

In the dark of the night Jaskier makes out the creature stopping, as if it can hear his pounding heart, and then Jaskier breaks into a cold sweat as whatever it is heads directly toward him, eyes reflecting unnaturally in the weak light of the lanterns.

Jaskier stumbles to his feet, clutching his lute in one hand and drawing his silver dagger with the other. A gift from Geralt he’s worn for the better part of twenty years now, having been taught to use it after a life on the road.

“Stay back.” Jaskier says in as clear a voice as he can manage, brandishing the dagger. “I’m armed with silver and I have no interest in a fight tonight. Take yourself elsewhere.”

The figure stops, hands held up. “Jaskier, it’s me.” Says an all too familiar voice.

Jaskier feels a raw place inside of him ache as Geralt cautiously edges a bit closer, enough to be illuminated by the light of a lantern.

Jaskier’s hand trembles on the dagger, and then he sheaths it. He turns and walks away without a word, feeling a clawing sense of deja vu as he walks toward his inn.

“Jaskier, please.” Geralt’s voice says, and of course the Witcher keeps up easily, walking by his side as Jaskier refuses to look at him.

After three weeks of bleeding he just doesn’t have anything left to give. He is drained, he can’t even look at Geralt.

“Jaskier-”

He jerks as he feels a hand close on his wrist. He feels tears start to prick in his eyes as he yanks his arm away, turning to look Geralt square in the face.

“Why are you here?” Jaskier demands, his voice nearly a snarl as he looks up at the witcher. “What do you want, Geralt?”

Geralt stops, looking stung. Good, as he should. The brute probably hasn’t even given what he did a second thought the whole time Jaskier’s felt like dying.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.” Geralt says, sounding gruff and oddly off balance.

“Go back to whatever contract it is you’re working and leave me alone.” Jaskier snaps, struggling to keep down the hot tears he can feel rising. “I left, just like you wanted, alright? Now go.”

“I didn’t...I...” Geralt struggles for words, huffing in frustration as he rubs his face. 

Jaskier can’t tell for sure in the dim light but he thinks he sees dark circles under the witcher’s eyes, as if he hasn’t been sleeping. He’s...never seen Geralt look this worn out before...

He swallows, trying his best to push away the concern rising in him as he starts to notice signs of distress all over Geralt. Bags under his eyes, his hair loose and unbrushed, armor dusty with hard travel but clean of the viscera that would mean he’d been getting work. Things that perhaps only Jaskier would notice.

“You didn’t what?” Jaskier asks, hating himself for still caring enough to be worried, his voice losing a bit of its heat.

“I didn’t...mean it.” Geralt says, his voice sounding a little hoarse as he gets the words out.

“Didn’t mean what?” Jaskier demands, folding his arms as tightly as he can, as if that will shield him from this distressed witcher who has tracked him down in the middle of the night. Who doesn’t look at all like he’s working a contract. Who looks as tired as Jaskier has felt for weeks.

“What I said.” Geralt says, swallowing as he looks away, as if unable to meet Jaskier’s gaze. “On the mountain. I was angry. I was unfair to you.”

Jaskier feels stunned, unable to say anything.

Geralt...is apologizing.

“I know I’m a terrible companion-” Geralt says, continuing in the silence.

“You are.” Jaskier says, his voice higher than it should be.

“But...everything feels wrong without you.” Geralt looks up, catching Jaskier’s gaze with his steady golden amber eyes. “I’m not good at this. I’m not good at words like you are Jaskier. But I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said.”

Geralt looks like he is biting the inside of his cheek, as if he’s scared. Jaskier has seen Geralt upset, uneasy, surprised, hesitant, even startled. But never scared, and he finds it scares him.

“I...” Geralt swallows, looking like he is bracing himself for something painful. “I need you Jaskier. And I know that I’ve made things so difficult, and I know that you have no reason to forgive me, but I don’t think I can pretend anymore that I...that I don’t care for you. Even if that means you might be in harm’s way. Because you’ve been by my side for decades, and I don’t want to continue without you.”

Jaskier feels as if the ground has dropped out from under his feet, as if he’s been slammed back against the wall behind him. His head is an overwhelming mess of fragmented thoughts and emotions, because what on earth is happening?

He presses a hand tight against his mouth as he turns away from Geralt, unable to handle his gaze a moment longer as he tries desperately to think, to pull together some of those words he’s so well known for. He can do this, he can come up with some scrappy, witty reply. He can shrug all of this off with a joke that will clear everything up and they’ll be on their way again.

Just like he has for the past twenty two years now.

But instead Jaskier’s chest shudders and he feels hot tears spill down his cheeks as he begins to cry. His shoulders tremble as he tries to stifle the emotion down behind the hand he has painfully tight against his mouth, his other arm still held against himself as if it could hold him together.

Because he’d thought he’d been bleeding for three weeks, in a way no one else could see, but suddenly he thinks perhaps he’s been bleeding for far longer than that...that perhaps he’s been bleeding for years. And he suddenly doesn’t know if that’s something he can go back to. Because Geralt says that he cares for him, which Jaskier knows for this vocabulary sparse witcher means love.

And if Geralt loves him, can Jaskier really chance losing himself entirely should things go wrong again? Because if he forgives Geralt this time, if he allows himself to want the witcher this time, Geralt will have all of him. Jaskier won’t be able to hold back, he knows it, he won’t be able to keep the vulnerable parts of himself safe anymore.

And that scares him more than he’s ever been scared in his life.

He braces his free hand against the wall as he shakes. It feels as if some secret part of him, some reservoir of extra years of sadness and longing and hurt he hadn’t known about have come loose, flooding him with an overwhelming wave of unexpected emotion. But where is it coming from? He wildly wonders if perhaps he is dying. Because this is what he imagines dying would feel like.

“Julian. I’m sorry.” Geralt says, his voice full of so much pain and concern that it makes Jaskier cry harder. He feels the faintest pressure ghost over his shoulder, as if Geralt had nearly reached out for him but then pulled back. “Do you want me to go? I’ll leave if you want me to. I’m sorry, I don’t, I didn’t mean....”

“Don’t!” Jaskier says, the word coming out in a teary panic. “Don’t leave.”

Because as much as he wants all of this to somehow disappear, even if he can’t bring himself to turn around just yet, the one thing he knows that will not be able to stand is if Geralt leaves him like this.

He bites his lip hard as he feels warm, hesitant hands on his arms. And then Geralt pulls him against him in a tight hug, arms wrapped around Jaskier’s chest protectively. Jaskier leans back against him, holding onto Geralt’s arms like a lifeline, fighting to get his breathing under control as the physical contact anchors him, somehow making everything seem less like it’s spinning out from under him. Geralt has never held Jaskier like this, but it still somehow feels familiar, it feels safe and right and has Jaskier wishing it could always like this.

“I’m sorry.” Geralt says again quietly, his voice right next to Jaskier’s ear. “I just don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you either,” Jaskier says, his breath finally under control. He feels a cool breeze sweep past them. “But it’s so hard to keep this up Geralt, I can’t stand only remembering how much I really love you when we’re asleep, when we’re waking it’s like-”

Jaskier’s breath catches as the same instant that Geralt’s does, memories of a wildflower field rushing through him. Years of friendship and love and trust revealing themselves like a flower unfurling. His fingers dig into Geralt’s arm in shock as the witcher’s embrace tightens almost painfully, because of course if Jaskier is remembering, they both are.

“W-we’re awake.” Jaskier chokes. He turns in Geralt’s arms, looking up at him. “We’re awake.”

“We’re awake.” Geralt says, his voice thin with shocked wonder.

“We’re awake!” Jaskier cries, throwing his arms around Geralt’s neck as his tears begin anew. But this time he is laughing through them as Geralt crowds him up against the wall, kissing him hard and desperate.

“I haven’t slept in a week.” Geralt says between kisses, his voice raw with emotion as his hands roam Jaskier’s body, as if checking to make sure it’s really him. “I thought I’d lost you, the field, it’s all ripped up, I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Jaskier gasps, carding his fingers through Geralt’s white hair even as he pulls him closer. “I’m sorry Geralt, I was so hurt and angry, I couldn’t stand it anymore when I didn’t think you cared anymore. But you’re here, we’re both here and we’re awake and we remember. You really want me with you then? If we both remember?”

“I’ve always wanted you with me little lark, I just took too long to realize it.” Geralt says, burying his face against Jaskier’s neck and breathing in his scent.

“I can’t believe we aren’t trapped in that wretched field anymore.” Jaskier says giddily, nuzzling against Geralt’s temple as he runs his hands down the witcher’s sides, just because he can. “We can get something to eat together, we can see a sunset, we can sleep in a bed, we can be around other people.” His eyes light up. “I have my lute! I can play you songs instead of only singing!”

“We’ve already done all of those things.” Geralt says with a fond smile, kissing stray tears off of Jaskier’s face.

“But now we can really do them. Together. Because we’re finally both here.” Jaskier says, taking Geralt’s face in his hands and kissing him softly.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.” Geralt says, eyes closed as he rests his forehead against Jaskier’s. “I’m sorry I hurt you, little lark.”

“Hush. No more apologizing.” Jaskier says, stroking his thumb against Geralt’s cheek, his heart flutters as the witcher leans into his touch. “This is all I’ve ever wanted, you’ve already given me the best proof you can that you really mean it.”

“What do we even do now?” Geralt says with a chuckle, shaking his head a bit with a smile. “We won’t fade away in less than an hour, what do people even do with so much time together?”

Jaskier smiles as the witcher’s last last words are drowned in an enormous yawn. He wraps his arms around Geralt’s neck, gently kissing down the side of his throat.

“First you are going to carry me back to the inn and we are going to sleep until tomorrow evening because you look ready to fall over, darling.” Jaskier says softly. “And when we wake up we’ll still be together, and we will still remember we are together.”

“Mmmm.” Geralt hums appreciatively, hoisting Jaskier up into his arms with little effort. “And then?”

“I’m sure we’ll think of something to occupy ourselves.” Jaskier says, resting a hand on Geralt’s chest and leaning up to bite at his lower lip. “I’ve got some very time consuming ideas we can try. I have the room paid for through the end of the week, fresh heartbreak sells very well you know.”

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Geralt says soberly, holding him closer as he begins to walk toward the inn.

“You already have.” Jaskier says softly, resting his head against Geralt’s shoulder.

There are so many things that must still be discussed, how this changes things. But Jaskier can’t find himself quite caring at the moment, instead closing his eyes he basks in the warm feeling.

Because he feels that he is home. A home that he will finally never have to leave again.  

[rvmmm21]

. you know who i am? .

k, so i didn’t mean for this to get so out of hand. also, my first time writing in present tense? idk how to feel about it, but i guess it’s different. it felt so different writing for like actual humans lol. my first ‘normal’ fic, this is!

please for the sake of this making sense can we all pretend jennie, joy and irene are around the same age? also look who had fun with brand names. moi.

anyways this is [badgirl/bully!joohyun ‘persuading’ clumsy freshman!seungwan to be her assignment buddy] 

...

University culture is grating.

It’s overwhelming and it suffocates her. She has no time to prepare herself for the apparent runway the halls have become, what with the stupid-rich kids treating every day like it’s a fashion show; Seungwan can barely blink from one person to the next without being smacked across the face with fur coats from Chanel, Louis Vuitton sunglasses hidden under Prada nylon bucket hats and Off-White tracksuits tucked into Balenciaga socks. She hadn’t considered a future in law enforcement, but had she done so, anyone who tucked their trousers into their socks mid-calf would find themselves behind bars with the rest of the criminal scum. End of.

Just as she dusts her hands of that smug little sentiment, Seungwan finds herself with a face full of hair, and an even bigger nose full of what smells like laundry detergent. She lets out an embarrassing squeal, and the girl turns round to face her. A ghost of a scowl brushes across her face before she fixes her with an indiscernible gaze.

That scowl is an awful colour on a face as pretty as yours, she impulsively thinks.

Seungwan knows no more about the history of art and the intricacies of sculpture than the average Joe, but she’s sure Michelangelo missed the mark with David. She inwardly laughs at the thought of the man dedicating his entire being to crafting his flimsy idea of ‘perfection’ when she’d just bumped into it; the real thing. Of course, if that was defined by forming new constellations from faded freckles on flawless skin, or vantablack tresses framing sharp features like a painting, then yes; she was, by very definition, ‘the perfect (wo)man’. Easily outdoing anyone within a 50-metre radius.

Heck, make that 500.

The girl glares intimidation and Seungwan manages to save herself the humiliation of drooling in front of the white-hot beauty and her friends with a quick gulp, already feeling crimson seeping into her cheeks.

Perfect; now that she’s watched whatever new potential friendship this was blow up in her face, all she has to do is avoid her at all costs from here on out.

She mouths a haphazard apology and zooms past before anything can come of it, keeping her head down even after she’s well out of sight. Seulgi, Seulgi, Seulgi, save me, she brisk walks and begs all the way to class.

~~~~~~~~~~

A small commotion rings through the lecture hall of keyboard clicks and lethargic shuffles, calling to attention the girl who’s just spilt her drink down her front, now frantically digging around in her backpack for anything she can use to soak it up. A few jeering giggles are stifled, meanwhile students close by donate tissues and sympathetic looks. They are gratefully accepted with rapid-fire bows and machine-gun stuttered apologies.

“That freshman’s just ruined her rep, huh?” Jennie chuckles, “blindly walking into people… can’t even keep liquid in the cup. Give her a dog collar and a sign and she’s good to go.”

“Eh, I thought it was cute.”

Jennie’s retort comes quick.

“Sooyoung, you think anything in a skirt is cute.”

“What,” the girl says, ignoring the implication, “Haetnimie doesn’t wear skirts. And she’s not even wearing one right now. Plus, I didn’t say ‘she’s cute’, I said ‘it’s cute’. Learn the difference, idiot… it’s not like I wanna have at her or anything…”

Jennie shoots her an incredulous look and Sooyoung relents the banter. They both turn their attention to the girl sitting next to them, completely un-present in the moment. Sooyoung notices who she’s looking at and leans in to nudge her.

“Joohyun,” she whispers, poking her in the ribs when it’s obvious their friend is well on her way to signing a contract with NASA with how apparently well accustomed to space she is, “what do you think of her? Or are you still mad she walked into you?”

“Nah, forget it,” Jennie waves her off before she’s even had a chance to respond, “she’s not interested. I had to literally pay her money to go on a stupid double date with me in high school. I washed five cars for her to not even hold his hand once during the movie.”

Instead of participating, Joohyun sighs, casting the girl in question a seemingly uninterested stare. Unbothered eyes take in the sight she’s presented with: frustrated brows knitted together under a wispy caramel fringe and a blot of taro milk tea the size of Canada staining her baby blue jumper.

“I want her.”

The words are so simple her friends almost miss them entirely.

Sooyoung and Jennie battle for first place in an impromptu competition of ‘who’s-the-most-shocked’.

“You’re joking! Yah, you’re so annoying seriously, now?! You couldn’t have ‘wanted’ Min-seok in year nine?! I paid good, hard cash for that stupid boy!”

Joohyun looks at her, smug as a cat.

“I did it for you, Jennie. I didn’t even remember his name was Min-ho.”

“Min-seok.”

“Yeah, right.”

Sooyoung, wide-eyed and on the verge of passing out, grabs Joohyun by the shoulders, ignoring the glare she receives for it. “Joohyun, seriously? You’re serious. You want her like want her? Or want her like you wanted that cookbook after that trial week of Food Tech during summer break?”

Joohyun regards her, absolutely blasé. “I don’t follow recipes.”

“Exactly. Are you play-”

Sooyoung’s statement dies down with the rest of the class as the lecturer walks in. Furious clicking, hurricane scribbles and flipping pages are all that remain as the lesson kicks off, Jennie and Sooyoung casually scrolling through Instagram while the professor speaks. Joohyun leans forward, elbows on desk and chin resting on interlocked fingers. Her full attention is on the poor girl on the other side of the hall, intermittently peeling the cold, damp fabric away from her body, face flushed and avoiding all eye contact. Joohyun snickers at how uncomfortable it must be to have to sit through class in a wet jumper, how awkward and squeamish she looks.

Strawberry-tinted lips curl into the faintest smirk.

Hello cutie.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Yah! Kang Seul-Gi!” Seungwan calls out to chocolate-swirly space buns and baggy gym clothes hurtling towards her from across campus grounds, “where the heck were you?!”

“Sorry sorry! Overslept!”

“What!? Your class starts at noon! … and this is like… day 1!”

The girl looks like she’s barely had the chance to screw her head on the right way as she joins Seungwan on the steps of the university entrance.

Seungwan’s sweating buckets; physically and metaphorically, both from the waves of humidity and her all-exclusive one-idiot circus show this morning in class. That little muck up makes it to the tippy top of the endless list of embarrassing things Seungwan has stored in her long-term memory.

“You okay?”

Seungwan palms rosy cheeks as she takes another mouthful of her rainbow sherbet cone.

“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me.”

Seulgi chortles as her best friend recounts her ordeal, trying to subdue the sea of smart alec remarks bubbling under her skin.

“So that was great, too. And now I’m a laughing stock. A meme. They’re probably editing my stupid face as I speak…”

Seulgi reverts back to the first incident. Of course she would.

“Sooo… not like in the dramas then?”

Seungwan hangs her head, “not at all… she looked like she wanted to kill me.”

Seulgi lets out a snort before prodding her with more curious questions. The cogs in Seungwan’s brain churn and stutter as she tries to filter as many redundant adjectives as possible, only using ones she deems absolutely necessary to describe the most beautifully terrifying girl she’s ever seen.

Just then, as if Seungwan had meant to conjure hell itself, the three girls make an appearance from round the corner, chatting amongst themselves and taking Seungwan and Seulgi by surprise. The latter glances down where steely fingers are squeezing her wrist, as if that’d activate some magical cloak of invisibility. Seungwan’s as good as swallowed her tongue, shakily motioning to the girl in the middle of the black velvet storm with her eyes and a few nose twitches.

“H-her…” she stutters, finally getting her brain into gear after they leave, “… her.”

Innocent eyes double in size at the realisation.

“Wha-wait no, her?! You bumped into… her?! Her, Bae Joohyun leader of killer senior pack Bae Joohyun?”

Seungwan’s heart only thumps faster at the panic in Seulgi’s voice, but her words still mean nothing. The other girl swipes the dangling question marks off the top of her friend’s clueless head.

“Yo Wan-ah, you have to lay low. I mean why would you even – oh geez wow you really messed up. Can’t you look where you’re – I can’t even begin to – why would you – oh my gosh!”

Seulgi’s disjointed sentences allow enlightenment to trickle in and Seungwan slaps a hand over her forehead, mortified.

Oh god no. That’s the Bae Joohyun?

She’d heard the rumours. Many, rumours. Bae Joohyun who makes her juniors cry. Bae Joohyun; precious daughter of the most elusive mafia gang leader in all of Korea. Bae Joohyun; ice queen senior, sole roost-ruler of Hanyang University and the biggest bully you’ll ever meet.

Positively preposterous, empty claims with no evidence whatsoever to back them up… she hopes.

“Pft yeah okay she’s… mean, but she’s not like… jesus or anything she can’t… like… part the Red Sea or, turn water into vodka I don’t know,” Seungwan tries and fails at consoling herself, receiving nothing but an apologetic pat on the back from the girl beside her.

“Yeah well… she’s not the messiah but everyone treats her like it. And for the sake of your own neck, you’d better start too. Watch out, Wan-ah.”

Seungwan hadn’t paid any mind to those wet-eared freshmen whom she’d overheard during orientation gossiping about Joohyun and her charming little posse; but perhaps she should have.

She gulps, too afraid to think of anything else.

~~~~~~~~~~

Seungwan often fantasizes at work. There has to be some way to pass the time, after all.

Deep down she’s a sucker for romance, she knows it far too well; she envisions herself ten years down the line, letting whoever she has on the other end of the phone know that she’ll be home soon, that work has just been extra grueling today, and that she cannot wait to give them a cuddle. She’ll stir the dinner pot while she tells them stories, pausing in between to remind her lover how beautiful they are. Perhaps one day, the honour will be hers, to see her soulmate walking down the aisle.

But as the tinkling of the doorbell rings through her café, Seungwan files those cloudy fantasies for later and greets her first customers with a smile.

She hasn’t been sleeping very well, worrying her mind with ridiculous thoughts and impossible scenarios. All involving Joohyun as a tick-tocky alligator and herself as none other than Captain ‘I’m-actually-innocent-why-are-you-still-trying-to-eat-me’ Hook.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s five minutes to closing time. Seungwan suppresses the yawn in her chest and blinks away the moisture in her eyes. Just zero to sixty, five times in your head. You got this, Seungwan. Gosh, there’s no one in the café and hardly anyone outside. She briefly contemplates closing early.

“Small iced Americano.”

“Coming r – aii!! Ai…!”

Seungwan’s adrenaline spikes so high she could serve it ice cold in a coffee cup right now. Caught completely off guard, she begins stammering nonsense behind the till, crinkling the leather of her dark brown work apron and then using the hem of her polo shirt to wring clammy palms none the drier. All the while her customer stands there, brow quirked and card held out between slender fingers. Her expression, although slightly amused, threatens her to take her money, or else.

Before she can open her mouth, a buttery voice snaps her out of her trance.

“Hello, Seung – wan… hey, don’t we have Korean Literature together?”

Seungwan tries not to spontaneously combust on the job as she instinctively slaps a hand over her name tag. It’s useless though, it is now known. Known to her, of all people. The notorious Bae Joohyun; dressed in Acne jeans and an over-sized midnight Balenciaga cardigan, she looks like any other young, caffeine-dependent university student. But Seungwan knows a lot better.

Oh god save me… what the hell is she doing here!? This has to be a set up. She’s here for me. I’m going to die tonight. Mummy, daddy I love you.

“J-J-Juh…”

She can’t say it. All the years of schooling; learning the alphabet and how to enunciate your words drain out through the holes in her ears. She gawks dumbly, moving her head in what could be considered to be a nod.

“Ah, I thought I recognised you,” she doesn’t even bother trying to sound surprised, “I’m Joohyun.”

Don’t I know.

All Seungwan can do is nod again, hating herself for even breathing right now.

Joohyun clicks her tongue and fiddles with the card in her hand, impatient, “soooo… is this Americano free, or…?”

Yes, yes it’s free, please just take it and go! I’ll upgrade it to an extra-large if you want, on me! If it means I’m spared for the rest of my student life, take it all! Jesus, how did you even find me?!

“Ah, yes. Sorry! Uh, yes that’ll be um two fif – two… two thirty.”

There’s a shaky exchange of a debit card and a forgotten peace treaty iced Americano before Seungwan takes an unconscious shuffle back from the register, eyes glued to the smudge on the toe of her right sneaker, unable to meet Joohyun’s piercing gaze for too long.

“Thank you, Seungwan.”

The way she lingers on the ‘S’ whispers shivers down the girl’s spine. She glances up at the worst possible time, too, nearly jumping out of her mismatched Muji socks when she sees Joohyun’s hibiscus-tinted lips bloom into a coy smirk.

“I’ll see you around.”

And with what a shivering Seungwan could’ve sworn was a terrible attempt at a wink, Joohyun is gone. Clutching at her chest, she tries to slow her accelerated heartrate, praying she doesn’t need heart surgery after what she’s just been through.

Seulgi’s so hearing about this.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Daebak,” Sooyoung scoffs, side-eyeing Joohyun as she twiddles her pen.

“What else did you say?” Jennie presses, taking a sip of her chai latte.

Joohyun merely hums, disclosing no further details of her little cafe incident. She misses Jennie’s disbelieving grin when the walking, talking definition of awkward bumbles into the lecture hall, just on time, armful of texts and messy cinnamon locks matted to her face.

Sooyoung can’t resist a jest. “Joohyun, look. It’s idiocy on legs.”

Joohyun bites back a snort as her eyes follow the girl stumbling and murmuring apologies all the way to her seat. She slumps into the chair with burning cheeks, brushing her hair back with her fingers and fiddling with her gingerbread fringe. Too cute, Joohyun thinks, gritting her teeth.

It happens about mid-way in the class. The mention of pair work triggers the uniform eye-roll, groan and grumble combo, more so from the seniors, who sure as hell don’t want to be paired with icky, snot-nosed first-years who can barely lift their spoons to their mouths. The grumbling evaporates when it is stated that, although compulsory, it is not a fixed-paired assignment.

Seungwan breathes a sigh of relief along with a few others, content to set up camp in the aisles of the library, perfectly undisturbed. But she suddenly feels paler than chalk; flashbacks of heeled boots, midnight cardigans and heart surgery flooding into her veins once more when she catches a pair of stealthy pupils regarding her from across the room. A deceptively sweet smile sparkling on those dreaded lips, breath-taking and utterly petrifying all at once. Even from the other side of a bloody lecture theatre, Bae Joohyun has Seungwan sweating bullets and unconsciously fidgeting at her collar to release steam no one else can see.

About a minute away from hurling herself out the nearest window, Seungwan diverts her attention to her notebook at the last second. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Seungwan stabs her chopstick into the egg yolk, watching it dribble all over her rice. She’s jealous of her own best friend who doesn’t have to live every waking hour with a red sniper laser dot on her back.

Should’ve majored in art too, goddamnit, she curses, poking her lunch in a dazed stupor.

“Wan-ah!”

She scoffs at the familiarity, but Seulgi’s crescent moon grin makes Seungwan momentarily forget.

~~~~~~~~~~

The black cursive of Han Kang’s literature stares up at her as she tries to digest what she’s reading, but she swears her brain allocates the worst times for that sneaky Bae Joohyun to pop up like an unwanted advertisement. Seems like now, she’s going to have to sit through an entire trilogy.

Despite the crippling dread, Seungwan can’t help but wonder. They’re so silly, but she wonders them anyway. She feels free to let her mind wander in the safety of the university library.

Bae Joohyun; Seungwan’s mind is unchanged; she’s the most beautiful girl she’s laid eyes on. It’s a unique kind of beauty; mysteriously edgy, knife-like and femme fatale. The grin Joohyun gave her in class this morning, she knows she should be running from it, but it doesn’t stop the fact that it’s been playing in her head on repeat ever since.

Seungwan unintentionally imagines what it would be like to kiss that sunset-infused smirk right off her face.

Too bad she’s a mean one, she sighs.

She doesn’t get much further with the actual task at hand when her blood-pressure plummets; she watches leader of the killer senior pack, Bae Joohyun, artlessly sit down in the chair next to her. It’s like the world stops spinning for the second it takes their eyes to meet, and Seungwan quivers in her seat, thoughts of literature fleeing out the back of her brain.

Trying to be polite, she gives her a courteous nod and returns to her reading. But Joohyun just sits there, staring, peppering her body with smoking bullet holes – it frightens her in the weirdest way. She can’t help the tiny bubble of… excitement? At the fact that Hanyang’s notorious Bae Joohyun is sitting next to her. Probably to get close enough to kill her, of course, but she’d count her blessings, no matter how terrifying. The thread finally snaps, and Seungwan is able to channel her inner stone statue no more, wordlessly excusing herself and stumbling to the bathroom.

It’s empty and silent; exactly what she needs. She flicks some cool water over the burning in her cheeks and dabs at the heat welled in the corners of her eyes.

But just as she’s about to leave, Joohyun’s standing in the doorway; cloaked in all her intimidating aura and eclipsing her only exit.

“Bathroom break so soon?” Joohyun’s voice drips into her ears like melted honey as she observes a wry smile crawl onto her face, “we’ve barely gotten started. Let’s get back to work… partner.”

It’s kicking in only now what Joohyun is saying. And it takes everything Seungwan has to formulate a pathetic response.

“Oh right, a-about that,” she nervously chuckles, averting her gaze and scratching the back of her neck, “uh, I-I was just um… I don’t wanna drag anyone down with – you know because you’re a senior and all – was m-maybe thinking –”

She doesn’t get very far when Joohyun begins advancing, walking towards her with such sure, dominating strides Seungwan has no choice but to back away, the piercing squeaks of Adidas sneakers easily drowning out the clicking of Louboutin heeled boots. Joohyun sports that coy smirk the whole time she’s cornering poor Seungwan, further and further back, until…

A tiny yelp is torn from her as her back hits the wall. Seungwan strains up to meet her eyes, 5 inch boots are a very useful intimidation tool. Her heart feels about as fragile as sugar glass, and she thinks it would do her good to invest in those styrofoam packing peanuts and a roll of caution tape.  

Joohyun observes the little caramel-haired mouse girl she’s caught; pressed against the cool, beige tile, both hands out in front of her, quivering like a jello pile. She quickly notes the way the top of Seungwan’s head just about grazes the bottom of the wall-mounted paper towel dispenser, and it stretches her grin even further. She looks irresistible, those doe eyes the colour of warm cocoa. Who knew she had a thing for sweet faces, well-intentions and weak-hearts?

Realising her hands aren’t doing anything to keep the other girl at bay, Seungwan drops them like a tonne of bricks - she’s never felt so small and helpless in her life. The rich scent of vanilla and mint tickles her nose; Joohyun’s too close, and she really needs those fragile stickers to go over the thumping in her chest. But she also wants to nuzzle in closer to that intoxicating shampoo smell.

“P-please… I-I didn’t mean to…”

Her voice sounds so tiny and fragile, it tugs on Joohyun’s heartstrings.

“You know who I am?” she demands in somewhat of a growl, caging the smaller girl in with both arms pressed on either side of her head, causing her to gasp out, “you’ve heard?”

Seungwan shrinks a little more, petunias searing onto her milky cheeks at the proximity, but terror-stricken nonetheless. It’s burning, and it’s too much.

A small ‘mm’ and a teary nod is all she can offer.

Joohyun shoots her a challenging smirk, a kaleidoscope of obsidian pebbles flicker in her darkened eyes as she brings a single finger under the girl’s chin, tilting her so she’s forced to look up.

“And you still think you have a choice?”

Seungwan wishes she could rear up at the challenge, hammer some humility into that smug attitude in front of her; put Bae Joohyun in her place. But who is she to change the way the world works? Girls like Joohyun toy with what they want, and get what they toy with; the natural order of things Seungwan has no hope of re-routing. Her resolve, her dignity and everything she’s built up in her 20 years on earth crumbles at her feet; she doesn’t bother picking up the pieces.

With that, she looks up at the girl who still has her locked in with her eyes alone, and meekly shakes her head.

Seungwan can finally breathe when Joohyun detaches herself from the wall and runs both hands down the front of her blouse. She hears a chuckle and before she knows it, there’s an arm around her waist, moving them in tandem.

She doesn’t see the triumphant smile etched into Joohyun’s rosebud lips, like she’s swallowed a coat hanger. All she knows is that they’re now bound by this assignment, and that Joohyun is leaving with exactly what she came for.

Seungwan hides a shy grin of her own.

[deaky-disco-queen]

Who You’re Gonna Call? - Breaky Week Day 7

A/N: My final piece for Breaky Week! It’s for the prompt Someone Dies (None of the Boys dies, don’t worry, it’s really fluffy) and I Kind of barely skimmed the prompt but I really wanted to write this so here it is. Also there is a Tiny reference to some gore and murder and a suicide Happening so if that’s triggering for you please be careful or just don’t read it. It’s really minor but just to make sure. 

Can also be read on AO3. 

+++

“Guess what I bought!”

John sat on Brian’s desk, kicking his legs against his chair, grinning in the way that made his eyes crinkle up and showed off his tooth gap. Brian tried very hard not to be endeared by it but failed.

   “What did you buy?” He asked.

   “A spirit box!”

He showed him some weird device that looked like some kind of radio or walkie-talkie of some kind. Brian blinked several times, trying to make sense out of what John had said and what he was seeing.

   “A what?” He then asked.

   “A spirit box! It’s really cool! You can talk to ghosts by scanning through radio stations and they can use the radio waves to string sentences together. In a way.”

Brian groaned in annoyance and buried his face in his hands. John laughed and boxed him in the shoulder playfully, obviously enjoying his pain. He almost regretted saying yes when John had asked him to join his weird ghost hunting show as a co-host but he knew it was John’s passion project and he was his friend first and foremost and he didn’t want him to fail at his job just because Brian didn’t want to risk being awkward around his crush. Also, he didn’t want to imagine how this would have turned out if head asked Roger to be his co-host.

It didn’t stop him from wondering why he even liked John, though.

Nobody frustrated him quite like John. It wasn’t just the fact that he kept arguing with Brian that ghosts were real- they weren’t- or that they seemed to disagree on many other things that were so trivial it shouldn’t matter. Except when it came to John, they did and most of the time, they could be found squabbling about one thing or another. John was also very fond of playing tricks and little pranks on him. It was never anything mean so Brian never got mad at him. It just didn’t made any sense why Brian fell for him of all people.

   “Deaky…” He said, already feeling a headache coming. “You’re not really believing that, are you?”

John shot him a look that told him he did, in fact, believe it and Brian groaned.

   “Alright, sure, I’ll humor you. How does it work?”

   “I’ll show you at the location today. Finish up whatever you have to do and meet me at your car.”

John grinned and jumped off the desk and patted his shoulder when he passed him and Brian sighed and rubbed his temples before he went back to work.

+++

   “Oh, that looks like a haunted castle right there!”

John laughed and spread his arms out as he grinned widely at Brian. Brian was frowning up at the castle. If he had to pick a location for making a horror movie it would probably this one. It was old, with ivy growing over the walls and the towers, the windows were dark and it loomed over them on top of a hill.

   “I hate it already.” Brian said.

He shot the camera John was holding a quick look before adjusting his gear and double-checking the battery stand on his own gear. It would be a long night and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.

   “Do you have your sleeping bag?” He asked John.

John gently kicked a bag on the ground in front of him and Brian nodded happily, crossing that from his mental To-Do-List.

   “I can’t wait to meet some ghosts!”

Brian rolled his eyes on him but followed John towards the castle. It was even more creepy inside than outside. It was dirty- unsurprisingly, nobody lived here and the owners probably wanted to play up the whole ‘haunted’ look- and dark with weird portraits, old armors and typical medieval style decor around. And lots of spider webs.

   “This is-” They both started at the same time.

   “-gross as fuck.” Brian finished, wrinkling his nose.

   “-fantastic!” John said, grinning wildly.

They exchanged a quick glance, before breaking into giggles. They made sure to get some good footage of the unsettling hallways until they came to a big ballroom of some kind.

   “Hello, ghosts!” John yelled, cheering when it echoed through the room.

Brian shook his head at him but filmed it anyway, keeping the camera on his face to capture the childish delight on his face.

   “So tell me why we are here, then.”

John’s face lit up visibly and Brian smiled despite thinking this whole thing was kind of stupid. He was cute when he got excited. And if it meant he had to listen to a ghost story and John’s rambling for a while, then so be it. Brian sat down on the windowsill and waited until John had set up their tripod. Their legs brushed together when he sat down next to him.

   “Alright! Welcome to another episode of Unsolved! Today we are here in the Thrawcliff Castle where some extremely fucked up shit happened and we will try and get some ghosts to tell us more about it!”

He smiled at Brian before he went off about the history of the castle. Apparently, some 500-ish years ago the son of a rich family that owned the castle started hearing voices and developed violent tendencies that ended with him murdering his three siblings and his parents, only to commit suicide afterwards. It was a unsettling and sad story but once John got to the part where he talked about people feeling presences and apparitions, weird happenstances and whatnot, Brian felt the need to roll his eyes.

He let John talk, not feeling like he had anything but skepticism to add and while that was the whole reason he was here in the first place, he didn’t want to dampen John’s fun just yet. Not that he would, John seemed to not give a shit whether Brian was a fan of a location or not, still excited and determined to find a ghost. Or proof of a ghost.

   “This is going to be fun!”

   “Well, at least you can see the stars very well tonight.” Brian added, a smile tugging on his lips.

   “Stars and ghosts, we’re in for an amazing night!”

   “No ghosts, just stars, Deaky.”

John grinned at him, knocking their shoulders together, not even bothered by his lacking enthusiasm. He was probably used to it already, they have been doing this for a while now, after all.

   “Why not both? They are not mutually exclusive.”

   “Ghosts don’t exists, stars do.”

   “How do you know?”

Brian groaned loudly.

+++

They decided to test John’s spirit box thing on top of the tallest tower.

It was a horrible loud, piercing noise and Brian physically flinched back when he heard it for the first time and it didn’t get better with time. Brian hated it. He didn’t think he could hate it any more than being in a unsettling place in the dark and sleeping there but he was proven wrong. John loved to do that and he managed it again.

   “It switches through radio channels so ghosts can string words together to talk to us.” John explained to him.

Brian only barely resisted the urge to cover his ears.

   “Let’s go and ask the ghosts some questions, why don’t we?”

It was stupid. John was just talking to static with no answers- the unintelligible stuff- didn’t count because it wasn’t words- but he was ecstatic about the whole thing and kept asking questions. Brian had no idea how he did not get frustrated by getting nothing concrete in return over and over again.

   “Isn’t that amazing?” John asked.

   “Amazingly annoying.”

John rolled his eyes at him.

   “Come on, let’s do solo investigations!”

+++

The thing was, Brian didn’t believe in ghosts. He was a man of science and ghosts just didn’t seem like a plausible thing to him. Aliens, sure, space was just too big for them to be the only intelligent life form out there but ghosts? He couldn’t believe in it no matter how many different theories John proposed to him. None of the evidence convinced him enough to believe in it.

But Brian was still very afraid. Not because of ghosts, because that was stupid, but because there were so many other things to be afraid of. Ghosts may not scare him but potential injuries while being far away from medical help, getting an infection from the filthy surroundings and meeting some random serial killer sure did. The last one wasn’t really as likely as the others but he was still afraid of somebody lurking in the shadows of wherever they were, just waiting to get a chance to rob him or whatever. People were way scarier than ghosts.

So he hated the solo investigations because it was scary to be alone in a dark hallway in a creepy castle.

   “God, fuck, okay. This is still stupid but here we go: Hello, ghosts.”

He walked down the hallway, his flashlight shaking slightly.

Their fans found it hilarious that the skeptic of all people tended to get the most scared. Brian liked to think it was because he had common sense. John would happily invite a demon to possess him if it let him prove their existence. And Brian could respect that dedication. He just wished it wasn’t ghosts and demons and all of these kinds of things John was so obsessed with. It would save him so much trouble.

   “Damn you, John.”

He slowly made his way down the stairs into the dungeon- because of course all the gory things happened in the dungeon and many gory and downright disgusting things had happened here if John had been telling the truth- and he started to question his life choices again.

   “If there is anyone in here with me, please speak up.”

Of course there was only silence and Brian sighed.

   “Please don’t make me use the stupid box. Just talk to me so we can call it a day.”

There was still no answer and Brian sighed again, louder this time, and set down the spirit box and turned it on, flinching at the ugly sound it made. He tried to get some ghosts to talk to him but- unsurprisingly- got no response and left the dungeon as soon as John called him to tell him his ten minutes were up.

   “How was it? You scared? Met a ghost? Or a serial killer? Maybe a weirdo in a trenchcoat?”

   “Stop making fun of it and get us a ghost, I want to leave.”

John laughed and made his way downstairs while Brian set up their sleeping bags in the ballroom. He could hear John yelling at the ghosts- air-, demanding them to show themselves and talk to him. He was mercilessly taunting him and Brian could never understand how John could believe in them and yet be so incredible fearless. He read all these stories about them doing terrible things and causing violence and stuff and yet he didn’t seem to be scared at all. Or his way of dealing with being scared was cursing ghosts out.

After a while, it grew quiet and Brian knew John had finished his private investigation and waited for him to come back.

   “Find anything?” Brian asked.

   “Oh, I got some really interesting answers! I’ll show you later. Are you ready to go to sleep?”

+++

Brian could never sleep at locations and today wasn’t an exception. It was cold and uncomfortable and he was still afraid someone with bad intentions was going to show up. He just lay in the dark, turned away from John to see the door to the room which probably didn’t help his paranoia much.

   “Can’t sleep?” John asked quietly.

   “You know I can’t.”

He could hear John shift behind him and then he was kicked in the back until he turned around to face him. John’s face was barely visible in the darkness but he could make out his silhouette faintly.

   “Nothing is going to happen to us. No bad people will come for us. No one but us and the ghosts here. And since you don’t believe in those, you’re good.”

   “I know that.” Brian whispered. “It’s called an irrational fear for a reason.”

John chuckled softly and Brian hit him blindly in the chest, grinning satisfied when he let out a low groan.

   “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from any ghosts and serial killers. I promise.”

It didn’t really calm Brian in any way but it was a nice sentiment. He didn’t have to tell John that- he knew that- and so he didn’t and just let the silence between them drag on.

   “Oh for fucks sake, c’mere.”

   “What?”

Before getting an answer, John unzipped his sleeping bag and reached for him, pulling Brian close. John was way stronger than he looked.

   “Let’s zip us together.”

Brian tried to argue but it was a weak attempt and he held the flashlight so John could make their two sleeping bags in on big one. Then, he forced him to lie down facing away from the door, his head resting on John’s arm and their legs tangled together. His nose was almost touching his shoulder and Brian felt himself blush.

This wasn’t what normal friends did, was it? Though, normal friends wouldn’t go ghost hunting together either so was he really in any position to judge? John might not be the most touchy-feely guy but they had been friends for years now and he didn’t mind Roger or Freddie being all over him.

   “Are you comfortable?”

Brian nodded despite it being a bit of a lie. He didn’t know where he was supposed to put his hands so they were just awkwardly laying between them. John didn’t seem to have this kind of problem, easily wrapping his arm around Brian’s waist.

   “Good, then sleep. I’ll fight any evil people trying to get to us.”

   “You’re ridiculous.” Brian said.

   “No, just in love with you.”

Brian’s breath got caught in his chest. John’s bravery floored him over and over again. Of course he had no issues just confessing his love like this, as if it was nothing, as if he had nothing to fear, nothing to lose. Sometimes he wished he had even half of this bravery. But even now, he could not say anything even though he really wanted to.

   “It’s okay, Bri, you can confess your crush tomorrow. Maybe over brunch?”

   “Brunch sounds nice.” Brian choked out.

John hummed satisfied and pressed a short kiss into Brian’s hair.

   “Great, looking forward to it.”

[kariachi]

”So, we’re gonna start today’s Martin Mystery rewatches with The Vampire Returns. Should I have listened to more of the Young Frankenstein soundtrack during lunch in preparation? Probably. But here we are instead.

I love how this show always specifies the exact time shit starts going down. For instance, in this episode, 10:32 pm CEST

~~

Good on Lady Soulsucker’s date for paying enough attention to notice when the girl he’s out with grows fangs and her eyes start glowing. You don’t see that often enough.

Aw and then she takes the daintiest bite of apple with teeth bigger than Date-Dude’s face.

I wonder how they got out without being noticed... can’t remember if the vampires in this episode can do the ‘turn to fog’ thing. Sure I’ll find out later.

~~

Diana sitting there with a book and a crowd of impressed young ladies. What are you showing them, Diana? Did you make this book yourself? Did you mother write it? I can’t think of a reason for the ooo-ing and ahh-ing going on otherwise. Either that or you managed to attract a pack of lesbians and they are trying to get in your pants.

...ya know I’m kinda all for the idea that Diana has unwittingly attracted a chunk of Torrington’s lesbian population and they are all trying to smooze in the awkward way that only a young gay can manage.

Also hello Tonio, it’s nice to see you. I’m going to have to include you in this in some way, I believe, given the location and also that this is a fic for nix.

Martin, Martin, sweetie, no. You are not getting that girl. There were actual sparkles coming off her, you don’t deserve that sort’ve quality. Plus, ya know, she sounds like your brand of nerd isn’t her style. I know the saying is “aim for the moon, if you fail you’ll land among the stars” but let’s be realistic for five seconds

Tonio can see this disaster coming from a mile away.

Amber is not having it, solidly unimpressed. I’m shocked.

You think the girls at this school ever rate the boys and just, give Martin a solid 6/10 for effort and moxie alone? “We wouldn’t date him, but at least he’s entertainingly stupid.”

Amber’s look of shock and concern at the idea of Martin enjoying studying. Like she’s about to call in the Psi Psi Psi girls and Diana, clearly their moron has fallen ill. Diana, meanwhile, is just pissed and I can’t decide whether the idea that this is because Martin is lying to get a date or because ‘has he been lying for the past our entire lives’ is funnier.

Though, given we’ll be working with witch!Martin for this it’s not like he’s lying. He just doesn’t like studying, well, anything they teach at Torrington. (Although I am still a big fan of the idea that he’s perfectly bright and just doesn’t apply himself like, at all.)

Martin don’t growl at your sister, you’ll get enough chances to in season 3.

And Amber trying to let him down easy.

~~

“Very rare, and totally irreplaceable” and you, all the way into season 2, are going to work with them, in your office, immediately after calling in Martin- known disaster and Destroyer of Projects? I swear you’d think MOM wanted her crap ruined. After a point you have no one to blame but yourself.

Martin no.

I repeat, MOM, no one to blame but yourself. Most people with an ounce of sense would stow away the shit they didn’t want destroyed when the guy who keeps destroying shit was called in.

Diana no. You’re being sent on a mission not a fucking river cruise.

~~

Introducing, the world’s scariest tunnel of love. First condoms in the water, now people going missing, this dude is just done.

Well Lady Soulsucker just fucking demolished that place didn’t she. Godsdamn, forget shutting it down because people disappeared, shut it down because it’s officially a safety hazard.

Okay, access hatch in the ceiling, that explains that.

...Okay but Martin isn’t entirely wrong with his assessment here? Something strong and nocturnal is right on the nose, and while the werewolf and half-beast-half-humanoid (and I love he uses that word specifically) hybrid guesses aren’t quite right, they aren’t far off the mark. He brought his A game today.

Diana, darling, kids playing practical jokes generally don’t leave fair rides completely demolished in their wake. That is not a normal occurrence.

Java about to eat half-consumed food off the floor like child did Diana not teach you better than that? I wouldn’t be surprised Martin didn’t but Diana?

500 year old saliva. This is the sort’ve ridiculousness I expect from this show. What, did Lady Soulsucker not swallow, spit, or brush her teeth since she escaped her coffin? Was she going around with 500 years of no brushing on her breath? Of course she’s got vampire hypnosis it’s the only way she could get a date.

Vampire goes rwar at children, flees into the sun to escape capture. Also he may need some heavier clothes, those don’t seem to be keeping the sunlight out.

~~

Martin no.

Billy making himself useful. Helping them follow the massive flashing clue that is the vampire’s clothing.

Martin slow your jock-ass down

Martin no, purple isn’t your color.

Okay, can I just say here that Lady Soulsucker looks fucking weird? She looks like a haunted porcelain doll. Or a shitty oc. Here, a theme song to go with her.

Question, why is there a surf shop in the middle of Paris? Is Paris big for surfing? A true French sport?

Oh, yeah, Simone, I forgot her name. It’s very French. Also dude chill.

Diana will not be stopped by some weird hyper-jealous dude.

She also, ya know, looks like a fucking corpse. But yeah, the reflection thing is your first clue something’s up.

He doesn’t see her, he doesn’t hear her, he doesn’t smell the 500-yo morning breath. I claiming him as an anosmiac by the way, the flag is in.

Welp. I can’t decide whether this feeding was more or less extreme than the last one. I mean, this time was pretty fucking hardcore, but last time she demolished an entire fair ride.

Simone, sweetie, have you considered that if you are looking for a specific guy maybe, just maybe, the way to go about it isn’t to just eat whatever random dude happens to be within hypnotizing range? Just a thought?

“He needs help, I’m going in” Martin says right after watching a guy get eaten by a vampire, proving that while he may not be the moron we deserve, he’s the moron we need. Diana, on the other hand, is a voice of reason and doesn’t deserve this shit.

Lucky those clothes were there to break your fall, Martin.

Martin, after dropping from the ceiling into a vampire’s feeding ground, alone: Don’t make me fuck your shit up! Simone, seeing this: Oh yay it’s my moron! Speak of the devil!

Am I saying Gerard was probably just as much an impulsive dumbshit as his great-x-grandson? Yes. Yes I am.

“Clever, and brave.” And a complete moron of a dork. “Just like my Gerard.”

“And just as handsome” it’s nice to see the looks keep in that family? I don’t believe Gerard got the floaty hair though, but his hair looked stupid so really Martin has the advantage there.

Vampire minions are strong, holding back Java with one hand.

Vampire true love is apparently very sparky.

Well Diana, at least you saved the watch.

~~

Martin gets abducted by vampires, Billy immediately must run to the scene.

I’d be impressed with your strength, Java, if those doors hadn’t looked 70% fallen in before you got to them. You could’ve probably gotten the same result from a hearty cough on them.

Gerard=Martin w/o floaty hair or modern fashion. Don’t know why the portrait is in black in white.

You’d think Billy could’ve taken the thirty seconds to read a brief overview about the woman while he waited for Diana and Java, but no.

No wonder Gerard looks weird, there’s not even a splash of warm color in that outfit. And warm tones don’t do Simone any favors. Coordinate your fashion better, people, you’re vampires for fuck’s sake! What would Mike say!

How do we know about genes from a 15th century vampire? Also I note she says ‘relative’ and not ‘descendant’, but I’m not in the mood to dig into that.

Billy you are literally a galactic conqueror, but your big boy underwear on and get in the basement.

Let’s be real, Diana, that’s just a sibling thing. You go into horrible places to save them so you can give them hell about making you go to a horrible place to save them.

How many minions has Simone gotten together? Like, the clan hasn’t been renewed yet, so... When did she get the time? It’s been like 24 hours

Okay, that explains new guy A, what about B and C over there, who look like they stepped out of Robin Hood? where they sealed in with you? Is this the old crew?

Simone, queen of the night and motivational speeches.

Martin you can’t just call on a specific guy, poor thing probably had a heart attack. “Fuck, my Lady’s new consort has beef, fuckfuckfuck” but no, you just want some fucking fries. And Simone is fucking loving it.

~~

Okay, so we know some of them sleep upside down.

It’s nice to see vampires can still be active sleepers.

Hissy vampires on all fours

Vampire!Martin is perfectly fine with being an evil trophy husband

Vampire!Martin standing there like “yeah, you rule the underworld, babe, rocking it!”

~~

“Do you know how much grief I’ll get at Torrington if my stepbrother comes back a vampire?” Would it really be that much more than you get just for having him as a stepbrother in the first place?

A vampire lord consort and yet still, at heart, an annoying brother

Simone: Get me back my fucking moron and we’re all screwed!

Tell me that’s like, Diana or Java’s dirty sock because I’m fairly certain even Martin doesn’t deserve to have his own stuffed in his mouth

And Simone becomes a massive fucking bat beast. Fur, muzzle, little winglet-dealies, big ears, big teeth, no tail...

Okay, yeah, Java’s sock, cool

Those are some seriously dirty windows. Or, well, were.

Sunlight burns everybody but also burns Simone to fucking ash right quick. Which then removes the curse on her victims.

Also I wanna know more about this apparent vampire gene. It is of much interest, especially given next episode will be dealing with werewolves and in some folklore werewolves when killed become vampires, so...

~~

Martin. No.

Amber really. Either you were setting him up or you yourself are dense as teak.

Oh Martin... stick with spies and monsters, honey

[magpiefngrl]

Drarry AUs: mermaid

A few days ago I asked for prompts for drabbles to kickstart my creativity, which is slumbering for months now, and you responded and gave me some fab ideas <3 However, the fact that I’m, apparently, completely unable to write anything under 500 words means that these “drabbles” are going to take me a while. 

@go-to-helvetica said: “a mermaid au because mermaid!Harry is my jam” 

Thank you for the prompt! I hope you like what I did with it :)

(No warnings, rated Teen, 1.7k, beta’ed and preread by the lovely @nerdherderette at a moment’s notice! I’m so grateful <3)

Customs of the land and the sea

Sunlight tickled Draco’s eyelids, tugging him out of a deep slumber. Licking his dry lips, he tasted sand and jerked awake. With wakefulness came the feeling of heavy, soaked limbs and burning lungs. He turned to his side and retched saltwater. Coughing, he wiped his face and attempted to sit up when a hand touched him lightly on the back.

‘Are you OK?’

Draco flinched with an undignified squeak.

Startling green eyes met his. The green eyes belonged to a face more handsome than faces had any right to be. Draco felt another part of him burning. Somewhere lower than the lungs this time. The man’s naked torso was glistening and tan and Draco swallowed hard as his eyes travelled down the planes of his chest and stomach—and came upon a silvery tail, twitching in the surf.

A merman! The legends were true, then.

Draco shook his damp hair out of his eyes and sat up. A quick glance told him he was in a small cove, not far from his town. He dimly remembered a storm breaking out during the night, the waves slamming into—oh fuck. They’d been out on Theo’s yacht.

‘Where are the others? Are they OK?’ He rasped, his throat hurting.

The merman shrugged. ‘Maybe? I don’t know what happened to them. Perhaps my friends saved them. Or ate them.’

Draco shuddered and shuffled a little back onto the beach. In the stories, the merfolk weren’t kind people. ‘Are—are you going to eat me, too?’

The merman tilted his head. ‘No, I don’t eat on the land.’

Draco’s shoulders refused to relax. ‘Well, why did you save me then? It was you who brought me here, right?’

The merman’s gaze travelled all over Draco’s face, then his body, making Draco’s cheeks heat up, his skin tingle. It was a predatory gaze, curious and greedy, but also tinged with a sentiment that Draco couldn’t discern.

‘I’ve seen you before,’ the merman said.

‘You have?’ Draco spent a lot of his time in the sea, usually taking one of his family’s boats for sailing or fishing in the bay. ‘What’s your name?’

‘In my country I’m called—’ here the merman made a screeching sound that pierced Draco’s ears. It sounded like Haerrrr and a long vowel eee at the end.

Draco gave it a try. ‘Harry?’

The merman mouthed the word as if tasting it. ‘Harry is good,’ he decided. ‘And you’re Draco. I heard your friends call you that.’ He blushed and his tail stirred in the surf.

Draco let his gaze wander down Harry’s torso and he burrowed his fingers in the sand to stop himself from reaching out to touch him. He’d heard of the merfolk beauty but he also knew it was more than that. ‘Charming like the devil, they are. They lure you in,’ his grandfather used to tell him on winter nights when the sea outside his window raged and swallowed ships whole. ‘And then they have their way with you, down in the murky depths of their world.’

In those days, ‘having their way with you’ conjured images of torture. Now, Draco could think of another interpretation that made his mouth dry.

Harry didn’t make him feel unsafe. He made him feel quite a lot of things, but fear wasn’t one of them. Draco stretched his hand out. The merman looked at it but made no move to take it.

‘In my country it’s custom,’ Draco explained, ‘to shake the hand of the man who saved your life.’

Full lips stretched into a smile that almost made Draco’s heart stop. Death by supernatural beauty: that’d be a first. Harry took his hand and Draco squeezed it lightly. Harry squeezed back. His hand was large and warm, and felt wonderful wrapped around Draco’s.

Draco didn’t want to let go. ‘Thank you for saving me.’ For a brief moment, an impulse to follow Harry to the sea overwhelmed him, and, startled, he dropped his hand.

The tide was coming in, the water reaching Harry’s waist and nearing Draco’s legs. He pulled his feet up, even though every part of him was damp.

Harry gazed out to the sea. ‘I need to go back in.’ His tail flopped impatiently. ‘I wish—I wish I could stay longer.’

‘I wish you could, too,’ Draco whispered.

Harry turned his back, his tail splashing once in the water, but he seemed to change his mind. He turned back to Draco, bit his lower lip and reached out. He buried his fingers in Draco’s hair, caressing white-blond strands, running down Draco’s skull in a way that brought shivers to Draco’s spine. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ Harry smiled wistfully. ‘It’s… it feels nice.’

Draco’s heart pounded as loud as the sea. ‘It does.’ His voice came strangled and he coughed to clear it. ‘It feels really nice.’

Harry’s fingers trailed down Draco’s face. ‘You feel different, too,’ Harry whispered. ‘It’s so hard—to leave you. Now that I know what you— what you feel like to hold.’ Face swiftly turning red, Harry shifted down the shore. A second later, his tail flapped in the surf, and then he was gone.

Draco returned to the town to find it in unrest and mourning. Fishermen had gone missing since the storm and Theo and Vince had yet to be seen, but Blaise had found his way to the shore riding—according to the stories he told everyone who’d listen down the pub—a giant turtle. Blaise had always had a tendency to tell tall tales, but how could Draco doubt him ever again? The legends were true; perhaps turtles let people ride them to safety just as mermaids touched people’s hair. He didn’t tell anyone about his experience. Let Blaise have the attention and give interviews to the county’s paper. Draco wasn’t in the mood.

He felt listless after meeting Harry. He ate little, slept little and thought of the merman constantly. He had no idea how he could go through life without ever seeing him again. He went fishing several times in the next two weeks, but Harry was nowhere to be seen. Of course, Draco had never noticed him before. Perhaps Harry saw him and stayed away. That made Draco feel worse.

When at home, he spent all his time in his workshop carving wooden figurines; but whereas in the past he carved dragons and serpents, he now carved sea creatures, fantastical and fanciful—creatures that drew the admiration of friends, even though his father disdained them as he held no respect for anything that wasn’t useful.

Draco’s favourite wooden animal was a half-dragon, half-dolphin that was small enough to hang around his neck with black string.

A fortnight after the storm, on the night of the new moon, his mother caught him at the front door.

‘Going fishing again?’

‘Just here in the bay,’ he told her. ‘I’ll take the Narcissa.’ It was the small green boat Draco’s father had gifted to his mother when they were engaged.

She laid her hand on him. ‘You’re different. It looks like grief, but it’s as if someone has cast a spell on you. You seem distracted all the time. Oh! Draco…’ her eyes lit up and she took a step back to take him in. ‘Are you in love?’

Draco had no idea what he was except that he felt as if he was drowning in a longing he could never satisfy. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and opened the front door. ‘I’ll see you later.’

The evening was calm and his boat bobbed quietly in the dark water. Draco sat back on the stern and let his right hand trail in the ocean, while he looked at the stars. They held as many secrets as the ocean. The breeze whispered softly and he’d almost dozed off, his hand still trailing the cold water, when something brushed against his fingers. Draco’s eyes shot open, body tense and mind alert.

His hand felt the stirring in the water again and the feel of something warm, something that wrapped around it. Draco’s heart drummed fast and loud as he turned to the starboard side and saw a dark shape in the water. Two hands grabbed the side of the small fishing boat and Harry pushed himself up, water dripping down his face and naked chest. In the starlight, he looked as fanciful as the creatures Draco carved; a figment of his imagination, a dream made real because he willed it so.

Draco wrapped his fingers around the dragon-fish he wore around his neck and knelt on the side. ‘I thought I’d never see you again.’

‘I thought I could stay away,’ Harry murmured. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘So you saw me all those times I came out here?’

Harry gazed in Draco’s eyes. ‘I looked for you every night.’ He reached out and touched Draco’s hair again. ‘Your hair reminds me of the stars,’ he said.

‘”Fairy hair” they call it in my town,’ Draco murmured and leaned closer, feeling Harry’s breath on him. ‘I’ve missed you. I-I brought you something.’

He pulled back a little and took off the wooden animal. ‘I made this,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to have it. Something from the land.’

His eyes startled, Harry nodded, and Draco put it around his head. His fingers traced the cool, wet skin and rested around Harry’s neck.

‘In my country it’s custom,’ Harry said in a low voice, ‘to kiss the person who gives you a gift.’

The force of Draco’s desire squeezed his chest and made his breath come shallow. He leaned closer and felt Harry’s breath on him. ‘It’s a good custom.’ His lips played on Harry’s, his heart thrumming a wild tattoo against his ribs.

‘Customs should be observed,’ Harry murmured and rose an inch, his tail flapping below him, and kissed Draco. He tasted of the sea and of something feral and untameable and utterly enchanting. Draco deepened the kiss, one hand cupping Harry’s face, the other holding him tight around the shoulders. The feel of his ocean lips, demanding and insistent and increasingly more ferocious, made his blood sing. He could spend eons kissing Harry and he knew with a certainty as final as death what it meant to give your heart to the sea.

***

Dare Dating (8th year)

Pirate AU

Durmstrang!Harry and Beauxbatons!Draco AU 

Royalty/Arranged Marriage AU 

Musicians AU

Medieval AU

Fae AU

Adventure AU

Firefly/Space AU

Magical Flower Shop AU (canon universe)

kofi 

[curliesallovertheplace]

The Walk

Pairing: Misha x reader

Prompt: 500 miles by the Proclaimers

Words: 1950ish

Warnings: none, just a lot of fluff and a lot of walking

Beta: Thanks to @sassy-losechester for betaing this one shot! 

A/N: This fic is written for Kari’s RPF Song Challenge by @thing-you-do-with-that-thing. It’s in support of @wayward-mirage RPF Appreciation Day 2017. I hope you guys enjoy it! Feedback is very much appreciated since I’m trying to improve my writing and I want to push myself so any critique is welcome :) A/N 2: I actually did some research in hopes of getting most details right and making it realistic. I have no idea where Misha lives right now so I went with Los Angeles. Also, I know it won’t play out to be 500 miles, but by the use of google maps and the internet I decided it would be quite inhumane.  A/N 3: Also the gif fits the story perfectly in my opinion! Because there’s no way Misha would take the easy way. :) 

“You guys ready?” Misha exclaimed through his megaphone, eliciting excited screams from the crowd in front of him. “I said: you guys ready?” The people gathered around the table he was standing on shouted in unison. “Alright, let’s get going then!” With those words Misha pointed to the road ahead of the group and jumped from his made up stage. He rushed to the front of the crowd, setting a steady walking pace, leading the way. As he looked behind him, he saw the San Diego Comic Con sign becoming smaller and smaller, all while a sea of people marched right behind him.

For the first hour of the hike the actor chatted with his fans who joined him on this crazy adventure of his. The small talk died down just like the number of people walking with him. Every now and then a small group would join them, picking up his location from his twitter messages. But when night fell Misha was left on his own. His only companions were waiting for him at his first night’s checkpoint. Encinitas, California. If he was lucky, they would have checked into the hotel already, everything ready for him to just face plant the mattress.

What was he even thinking? Misha laughed to himself and shook his head when he remembered the original idea. If there was anyone around, they’d probably think he was a madman for laughing for no apparent reason. His initial plan was to walk 500 miles and literally fall down at his girlfriend’s door. On one knee specifically, pulling out a ring and asking you to marry him. After just one day, Misha thanked the gods that his friend Darius talked him out of that idea.

“Try to walk from San Diego to Los Angeles first, big boy,” he had said. After researching some stuff, Misha quickly adjusted his plan. Twenty days of hiking was a little crazy, even for him. It would have been one hell of a proposal though.

Misha smiled when the city lights greeted him on the horizon. He quickened his pace, the promise of sleep and a warm meal giving his sore muscles a boost of energy. His calves burned, but he ignored the pain and marched on towards the booming city. The closer he got, the more people joined him again. His fans cheered him on as he walked the last few miles. Every few turns he checked his map to find the right street, making sure he was going the right way.

The hotel sign greeted him and so did his friends at the entrance. Darius grabbed his friend while someone else took over the backpack. “Thank you, guys, for walking with me and I hope to see you again tomorrow,” Misha smiled. With the last remnants of his energy he waved at the little crowd and stumbled through the hotel entrance into the lobby, his body heavy with exhaustion.

A quick meal later the actor collapsed on the bed. The moment his head hit the pillow, he was knocked out, his eyes heavy with sleep. His mind blocked out his friends strolling around the room and the noise they made. As sleep washed over the actor, every thought that passed through his head revolved around you. Your smile, your laugh, the little lines etched in your skin. Even in his dreams you were the only thing on his mind. Memories of your relationship made Misha smile in his sleep. Predictions for the future had him feeling euphoric. He imagined mini versions of you and him running around, the wedding ring you would wear leaving a tan line because you would never take it off, having you by his side forever. And if you said yes in a few days, that dream would start to become reality.

Misha’s eyes fluttered open when his alarm buzzed next to his head. He was pulled abruptly from his happy dreams, pushed back into reality where you hadn’t even said ‘yes’ yet. Without a conscious thought he pressed the snooze button on his phone. He slowly opened his eyes, blinking against the morning sun, an empty spot next to him. Oh how he wished you were right beside him, all cuddled up against his side. He could have taking a flight home from San Diego, but Misha wouldn’t be Misha if he would do it the normal and easy way.

The actor stretched his arms and legs and he felt the ache settling into his muscles already. Four more days, he thought to himself. Four more days and you would be in his arms. Hopefully his fiancée by that time and not just his girlfriend anymore. Misha had told you this whole trip was some outrageous promo stunt for GISHWHES. Personally he thought it was the perfect excuse for a seemingly random five day walk and after talking with Jensen and Jared about it, they unanimously decided it was the most plausible lie.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Darius grinned down at his tousled friend. Misha grunted something back as he climbed out of bed, his legs stiff and painful with every move. “How you doing? Can your old body still handle it?”

The actor glared at his best friend. “I could use a massage,” he threw back with an innocent smile. Darius grimaced and shook his head, scurrying out of the room. Misha jumped under the shower to fully wake up. The warm water relaxed his muscles and relieved some of the tenseness. He quickly got ready and packed his backpack for the day. It would be a long walk today and the earlier he left, the more breaks he could take. With his bag slung over his shoulder he closed the door of the room behind him and made his way towards the restaurant of the hotel.

After breakfast Misha resumed his quest. A few dozen of people had shown up and together with them and Darius he marched the first few miles of the day. People left and people joined, all for the good cause of GISHWHES. The part of the wedding proposal Misha wisely kept to himself. The group stopped in Carlsbad for lunch where Misha’s team by car had set up a picnic area. The break didn’t take all that long and rather soon than later the actor and his following were back on the road. A few hours and a couple of stops later Misha arrived at the camping site he would stay at for the night. Sleeping in a tent wouldn’t be as comfortable as a good old hotel bed, but any form of rest and comfort was good enough after the walk from today.

And so the days went on. Waking up, eating, walking, more eating, more walking, more eating, sleeping. Repeat. It wasn’t until Misha entered his neighborhood in Los Angeles that he came back out of his trance. His mind had been high with focus, the endless roads eventually hypnotizing his thoughts, his feet marching of their own accord, automatic pilot on. Even though the sun had gone down, Misha found his way home down the dimly lit roads. He easily recognized his street by the horrendously ugly letter box of Mr. and Mrs. Miller. Oh and let’s not forget their neighbours obsession with garden statues. It was hard to miss those.

But the thoughts of the ugly mailbox and the creepy statues all disappeared when his eyes landed on your house. He was home, finally. Misha’s fingers slipped into the pocket of his jacket, tracing the outlines of a small velvet box. His feet marched through the front yard and up onto the little porch. He didn’t have the time to ring the bell, the door swinging open before him.

And there you were. All the pain and tiredness of his body was forgotten the moment the actor laid his eyes on you. Your smile beamed up at him and you threw yourself into his arms. “God I missed you,” Misha whispered into your neck, pressing kisses on your skin.

“I missed you too, baby,” you grinned as you pulled back. You shared an intimate kiss, standing in the doorway for what seemed like forever. “Let’s get you inside. C’mon.”

Misha intertwined your fingers and pulled you back to face him. You furrowed your eyebrows, silently questioning what was wrong. He took a deep breath before sinking down on one knee. He pulled the red box out from his jacket and looked back up at you, his beautiful girlfriend. You stood there with confusion in your eyes, tears already forming and the hand he wasn’t holding clasped in front of your mouth. And he hadn’t even uttered a single word yet.

“Y/N,” he started off his speech. “When I wake up, I know I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to you. When I go out, I know I’m gonna be the man who goes along with you. If I get drunk, I know I’m gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you. And if I haver, I know I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you.”

You were already shaking your head at his words, a fond smile tugging at your lips. He was quoting that damn song. Misha grinned up at you and chuckled out the next words. “When I'm working, I know I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you. And when the money, comes in for the work I do, I'll pass almost every penny on to you. When I'm lonely, well I know I'm gonna be the man who's lonely without you. When I'm dreaming, I know I'm gonna dream about the time when I'm with you.”

The first tears had started rolling down your face and Misha gently wiped them away with his thumb. “When I come home, I know I'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you. And if I grow old, well I know I'm gonna be the man who's growing old with you.” You laughed as he took a deep breath, making him grin in return. He opened up the jewelry box, revealing a gorgeous ring. “Y/N, will you do me the honor of marrying me so I can do all those things I just rambled?” Even though Misha saw the pure happiness on your face, he couldn’t help but feel anxious as he waited for your answer.

“Yes,” you uttered. “Yes, I will.” Misha slid the ring on your finger and pulled you into his arms, kissing you passionately. “Now get in, you silly goose.” Misha snickered at the nickname as he stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. The both of you plopped down onto the couch and you cuddled up against your fiancé’s side.

“Misha,” you said, pulling back from him a little. “Did you seriously just quote 500 miles by the Proclaimers?”

Misha nodded sheepishly and you grinned in response, pressing your lips against his one more time. “If I hadn’t, the walk would have been kind of dumb and meaningless.” You shook your head at him as your fingers played with the little hairs at the nape of his neck.

“How far did you actually walk?” Misha replied with a simple 124 miles like it was nothing.

“I was thinking about walking circles around our house but that would have just been ridiculous,” he scoffed with a smirk.

You smile up at him, noticing the tired but excited look in your fiancé’s eyes. “We will walk the other extra miles together,” you promised him. “We’ve got a lifetime to do so.”

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[rebeccahpedersen]

Monday’s Quick Hits!

TorontoRealtyBlog

Too Much Information…

Have you ever had gum-grafting?

I did.  On Friday.  And it was far worse than I thought it would be.

I almost chickened out, to be quite honest.  After they froze my teeth, mouth, lips, gums, and basically half my face, I panicked.  But eventually I calmed down, and in the words of Gary Gilmore I just said, “Let’s do it.”

It’s awful.  I’ve been splitting blood for three days, and that made for some very interesting client interactions on Saturday & Sunday.

So………on to something real estate related, then?

–

F*** The Rich, And Tax Them Too!

Nobody cares about this, right?

Only me?

In 2019, I see just as many examples of people caring too much about things that don’t affect them as I do the complete opposite: people not caring at all.

Toronto City Council, in its infinite wisdom, is contemplating (ie. this is already a done deal) the creation of a new land transfer tax threshold for those properties selling over $3,000,000.

Read the article here:

“Create New Land Transfer Tax Bracket On Home Sales Over $3-Million, Toronto Councillors Propose”

Man, it must be nice to be a city councilor!  You just sit around all day and come up with ideas for new taxes, without consulting anybody in the process.

This idea is being floated by none other than Joe Cresey, he who would literally put a safe-injection site in your living room if he could.  In fact, he might have already tried, but you wouldn’t have been told, because he doesn’t like communicating with his constituents when they disagree with him.

Now I understand that people who don’t own housing, or people who purchased for $985,000 really don’t care about the land transfer tax that those buying over $3,000,000 are going to pay.  But maybe they should.

Let’s not forget, the Toronto Land Transfer Tax didn’t exist until 2008 when Mayor David Miller essentially pulled it out of nowhere.  Well, not nowhere, of course.  The Ontario government already had the same tax in place, but the Toronto government thought nothing of doubling the tax.  Imagine Toronto City Council suddenly coming up with a 13% sales tax to match the HST?  And suddenly we paid 26% in tax on every purchase we made?  Crazy, I know.  Except that this is exactly what happened with land transfer tax, and the fight against it just wasn’t strong enough.

Toronto expects to collect a whopping $730 Million this year from land transfer tax, which goes a long way toward paying the bills at city hall.

But how much is too much?

City council has increased the land transfer tax amounts twice already since its debut in 2008.

And we’re constantly hearing the boo-hoo’s of city council about “missing their targets” and not raping home-buyers enough, as per this December 2018 article:

“City Of Toronto Land Transfer Tax Revenues Miss Target For First Time”

Just couldn’t quite make that $818 Million “target,” eh?  Boo-f’ing hoo.

Imagine that.  A “target” for tax revenue.

Am I the only one insulted by this?

I just can’t get over the fact that this tax didn’t exist just over ten years ago, and now the city cries when it can’t quite get it’s billion dollars for absolutely, positively, nothing.

This is a nothing tax, plain and simple.

We pay property tax to the city, which is a tax directly attributable to services received in exchange for home ownership.

And the insult to injury here is the new’ish fee of $75.00 required in order to pay your land transfer tax bill just to begin with!

Folks, don’t delude yourselves into thinking that city council’s pending increase in LTT for homes over $3M is an isolated event.  It merely opens the door to further taxes down the road.

Every resident of the city should be outraged.  Or, I dunno, maybe you just love paying taxes…

–

Can I Get A Do-Over?

This is from the library of “Worst possible scenario.”

Imagine you put your home on the market and everything is going according to plan.  You’re getting showings, the open house is busy, and you’re gearing up for an “offer night” on Monday.

But then imagine the worst possible scenario.

What could it be?

Perhaps, I dunno, a massive tree falling down in a storm and crushing the house?

Close.

A couple of weeks ago, a house flooded during the Sunday open house, and this was one day before offers were scheduled to be reviewed on the following night.

If I were the listing agent for the property, there’s no question what I would do: I would terminate the listing, fix the problem, and re-list in a couple of weeks, or a month, when the buyer pool is less scared of the problem.

What did the agents in this particular case do?

They went ahead with the offer night!

They sent an email to everybody that had shown the house and disclosed what had happened, which was great; that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.  But it just reeked of “Nothing to see here, folks.  Just this little spot of water, which we’ve cleaned up, and now there’s no problem.”

Why in the world would they go ahead with the offer night?

What buyer in his or her right mind would purchase a house that just flooded?

The listing agent sent a 3-page email complete with times, dates, repairs, and photos, which, again, is exactly what you’re supposed to do if and when making a disclosure.  But the tragic decision to go ahead and try to sell this house on the scheduled offer night, to buyers that wanted to purchase a newly-flooded house, was terribly misplaced.

The house still sold, and over asking too.  I know, I know, “over asking” means less and less these days, but it did sell a good amount over list.

However, there’s absolutely, positively no doubting that one, two, or ten buyers said, “Thanks, but no thanks” at the prospect of buying a house that just flooded, and for the life of me, I just can’t understand this course of action by the sellers and the listing agent.  Unless they needed to sell, like, that day, then there’s just no reason for this.

–

How Tough Is The Rental Market?

Really tough, if you’re incapable of performing common, routine, day-to-day functions.  Honestly, just listen to this…

I have a listing right now in an area in the northwest-GTA, and the interactions I’m getting with would-be tenants and agents are bizarre.

I’m looking at an Equifax Credit Score of 522 right now.  Five-twenty-two.

I have never seen a credit score that low in 15 years.  I’ve never actually seen one below 600.  Bless these folks for trying, but two prospective tenants who both have credit scores in the 500’s, one of them unemployed, and looking to spend 65% of their household income on rent.  It doesn’t make sense.

But the real kicker here was the folks who took eight days to get their offer and supporting documentation together.  For real, an agent sent me an offer to lease eight days ago, with zero accompanying information.  Even if it wasn’t common knowledge in the agent community that you need to have a credit check, employment letter, and rental application (plus often pay stubs and references from previous landlords), I always write this on my listings!

I told the agent that the offer wouldn’t suffice, and he just said, “Oh.  Okay.  So now what?”  It made me want to spit blood….

I outlined exactly what the agent needed to do, and every day for the past eight days, I’ve been receiving one more piece of the puzzle.  Except even those pieces don’t fit.

For example, I received an email saying, “Here is the husband’s credit report,” only it wasn’t a credit report, but rather it was an iPhone screen-caputre of the first page of an Equifax Credit Score Report, which is typically 12-15 pages in length.  I told the agent to please have the tenant download the report, save it as a PDF, and email it.  I was told, “He doesn’t know how to do that, and I can’t help him right now.”

Really?  Then how is he going to take care of a house?

These folks completely disregarded the process required to find housing in this market, and seemed to be willfully ignorant about what they needed to do.  The agent kept asking me, “Is this really necessary?  These are good people.  I promise!”

This went on for eight days; I’m talking employment letters that aren’t signed by anybody, and are in an MS Word file, upside-down photos of the OREA Rental Application, only 1/3 filled out, and a screen-capture of a TD Bank account with 10-15 debits/credits, but no date, no name, no account number, nothing.  So, this would-be tenant spent $87.20 at Fido last month?  Great!

And you know what?  I don’t blame the prospective tenants.  I blame the agents representing them.

It’s times like these I couldn’t be happier that it now takes a 2-year college course through Humber College to get into real estate.

–

Not In My Backyard!

A friend of mine is part of a running group that passes through several different areas of the city with a horde of joggers every week, and I was shocked to hear about his latest experience.

Do you know Heath Street?  Great spot, right?  Family-friendly, scenic, really nice jogging trails connecting to the ravine.

Well, a local yahoo apparently told this group of runners that they “weren’t welcome” and stressed that they, apparently, had no right to trespass on this particular section of city-owned streets.

But it didn’t end there; this yahoo also called the head of the running group (I suppose this person was listed online?) to complain, and tell them to stay away.

Isn’t that nuts?

It reminds me of the Nike ads from the late 1990’s comparing the treatment of skateboarders to other athletes.  They did one about running…

  –

Bottom Of The Barrel?

You know we’ve really become lax with the rules surrounding home building when you see this noted on the MLS listing:

“All Building Permits In Place And All Done Legally”

Really?  We’re actually advertising this now?

It’s like a parent bragging, “I take care of my kids.”  We’re just noting things that are supposed to be done?

A person selling a newly-built house got permits?  And it was done legally?  And this simply MUST be noted on the listing?

Yeah, well, I guess that’s where we are now.  That’s how far we’ve come.

Toronto is full of homes that were renovated without permits; some even built without permits!  And I have a sneaking suspicion that the Canada Revenue Agency is going to start coming after the buyers of homes if they can’t go after the builders.

Consider the “substantial renovation.”  You all know what this is, right?

The developer keeps the side walls of a brick bungalow so he can claim this wasn’t a “new build” but rather a “substantial renovation,” and then doesn’t apply for the TARION warranty so he doesn’t have to charge GST.

The Canada Revenue Agency has become more fierce than ever.  Just ask your accountant, and he or she will tell you stories.  And guess what, folks?  They’re coming after your substantial renovation.

Like every other agent in Toronto, I have sold homes without a TARION warranty.

But going forward, consider the red flag raised.

–

Okay, if you see me this week, just cut me some slack.

Yes, I look like a vampire.

Yes, I look like I have the mumps too.

Yes, I scare my daughter daily with my bright purple mouth, dripping blood like a zombie.

And yes, I have consumed eight packs of Kraft Dinner, five cans of Zoodles, and a family-pack of Spaghettini cooked so soft you could almost drink it.

Happy Monday, everybody!

The post Monday’s Quick Hits! appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

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[rebeccahpedersen]

Monday’s Quick Hits!

TorontoRealtyBlog

Too Much Information…

Have you ever had gum-grafting?

I did.  On Friday.  And it was far worse than I thought it would be.

I almost chickened out, to be quite honest.  After they froze my teeth, mouth, lips, gums, and basically half my face, I panicked.  But eventually I calmed down, and in the words of Gary Gilmore I just said, “Let’s do it.”

It’s awful.  I’ve been splitting blood for three days, and that made for some very interesting client interactions on Saturday & Sunday.

So………on to something real estate related, then?

–

F*** The Rich, And Tax Them Too!

Nobody cares about this, right?

Only me?

In 2019, I see just as many examples of people caring too much about things that don’t affect them as I do the complete opposite: people not caring at all.

Toronto City Council, in its infinite wisdom, is contemplating (ie. this is already a done deal) the creation of a new land transfer tax threshold for those properties selling over $3,000,000.

Read the article here:

“Create New Land Transfer Tax Bracket On Home Sales Over $3-Million, Toronto Councillors Propose”

Man, it must be nice to be a city councilor!  You just sit around all day and come up with ideas for new taxes, without consulting anybody in the process.

This idea is being floated by none other than Joe Cresey, he who would literally put a safe-injection site in your living room if he could.  In fact, he might have already tried, but you wouldn’t have been told, because he doesn’t like communicating with his constituents when they disagree with him.

Now I understand that people who don’t own housing, or people who purchased for $985,000 really don’t care about the land transfer tax that those buying over $3,000,000 are going to pay.  But maybe they should.

Let’s not forget, the Toronto Land Transfer Tax didn’t exist until 2008 when Mayor David Miller essentially pulled it out of nowhere.  Well, not nowhere, of course.  The Ontario government already had the same tax in place, but the Toronto government thought nothing of doubling the tax.  Imagine Toronto City Council suddenly coming up with a 13% sales tax to match the HST?  And suddenly we paid 26% in tax on every purchase we made?  Crazy, I know.  Except that this is exactly what happened with land transfer tax, and the fight against it just wasn’t strong enough.

Toronto expects to collect a whopping $730 Million this year from land transfer tax, which goes a long way toward paying the bills at city hall.

But how much is too much?

City council has increased the land transfer tax amounts twice already since its debut in 2008.

And we’re constantly hearing the boo-hoo’s of city council about “missing their targets” and not raping home-buyers enough, as per this December 2018 article:

“City Of Toronto Land Transfer Tax Revenues Miss Target For First Time”

Just couldn’t quite make that $818 Million “target,” eh?  Boo-f’ing hoo.

Imagine that.  A “target” for tax revenue.

Am I the only one insulted by this?

I just can’t get over the fact that this tax didn’t exist just over ten years ago, and now the city cries when it can’t quite get it’s billion dollars for absolutely, positively, nothing.

This is a nothing tax, plain and simple.

We pay property tax to the city, which is a tax directly attributable to services received in exchange for home ownership.

And the insult to injury here is the new’ish fee of $75.00 required in order to pay your land transfer tax bill just to begin with!

Folks, don’t delude yourselves into thinking that city council’s pending increase in LTT for homes over $3M is an isolated event.  It merely opens the door to further taxes down the road.

Every resident of the city should be outraged.  Or, I dunno, maybe you just love paying taxes…

–

Can I Get A Do-Over?

This is from the library of “Worst possible scenario.”

Imagine you put your home on the market and everything is going according to plan.  You’re getting showings, the open house is busy, and you’re gearing up for an “offer night” on Monday.

But then imagine the worst possible scenario.

What could it be?

Perhaps, I dunno, a massive tree falling down in a storm and crushing the house?

Close.

A couple of weeks ago, a house flooded during the Sunday open house, and this was one day before offers were scheduled to be reviewed on the following night.

If I were the listing agent for the property, there’s no question what I would do: I would terminate the listing, fix the problem, and re-list in a couple of weeks, or a month, when the buyer pool is less scared of the problem.

What did the agents in this particular case do?

They went ahead with the offer night!

They sent an email to everybody that had shown the house and disclosed what had happened, which was great; that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.  But it just reeked of “Nothing to see here, folks.  Just this little spot of water, which we’ve cleaned up, and now there’s no problem.”

Why in the world would they go ahead with the offer night?

What buyer in his or her right mind would purchase a house that just flooded?

The listing agent sent a 3-page email complete with times, dates, repairs, and photos, which, again, is exactly what you’re supposed to do if and when making a disclosure.  But the tragic decision to go ahead and try to sell this house on the scheduled offer night, to buyers that wanted to purchase a newly-flooded house, was terribly misplaced.

The house still sold, and over asking too.  I know, I know, “over asking” means less and less these days, but it did sell a good amount over list.

However, there’s absolutely, positively no doubting that one, two, or ten buyers said, “Thanks, but no thanks” at the prospect of buying a house that just flooded, and for the life of me, I just can’t understand this course of action by the sellers and the listing agent.  Unless they needed to sell, like, that day, then there’s just no reason for this.

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How Tough Is The Rental Market?

Really tough, if you’re incapable of performing common, routine, day-to-day functions.  Honestly, just listen to this…

I have a listing right now in an area in the northwest-GTA, and the interactions I’m getting with would-be tenants and agents are bizarre.

I’m looking at an Equifax Credit Score of 522 right now.  Five-twenty-two.

I have never seen a credit score that low in 15 years.  I’ve never actually seen one below 600.  Bless these folks for trying, but two prospective tenants who both have credit scores in the 500’s, one of them unemployed, and looking to spend 65% of their household income on rent.  It doesn’t make sense.

But the real kicker here was the folks who took eight days to get their offer and supporting documentation together.  For real, an agent sent me an offer to lease eight days ago, with zero accompanying information.  Even if it wasn’t common knowledge in the agent community that you need to have a credit check, employment letter, and rental application (plus often pay stubs and references from previous landlords), I always write this on my listings!

I told the agent that the offer wouldn’t suffice, and he just said, “Oh.  Okay.  So now what?”  It made me want to spit blood….

I outlined exactly what the agent needed to do, and every day for the past eight days, I’ve been receiving one more piece of the puzzle.  Except even those pieces don’t fit.

For example, I received an email saying, “Here is the husband’s credit report,” only it wasn’t a credit report, but rather it was an iPhone screen-caputre of the first page of an Equifax Credit Score Report, which is typically 12-15 pages in length.  I told the agent to please have the tenant download the report, save it as a PDF, and email it.  I was told, “He doesn’t know how to do that, and I can’t help him right now.”

Really?  Then how is he going to take care of a house?

These folks completely disregarded the process required to find housing in this market, and seemed to be willfully ignorant about what they needed to do.  The agent kept asking me, “Is this really necessary?  These are good people.  I promise!”

This went on for eight days; I’m talking employment letters that aren’t signed by anybody, and are in an MS Word file, upside-down photos of the OREA Rental Application, only 1/3 filled out, and a screen-capture of a TD Bank account with 10-15 debits/credits, but no date, no name, no account number, nothing.  So, this would-be tenant spent $87.20 at Fido last month?  Great!

And you know what?  I don’t blame the prospective tenants.  I blame the agents representing them.

It’s times like these I couldn’t be happier that it now takes a 2-year college course through Humber College to get into real estate.

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Not In My Backyard!

A friend of mine is part of a running group that passes through several different areas of the city with a horde of joggers every week, and I was shocked to hear about his latest experience.

Do you know Heath Street?  Great spot, right?  Family-friendly, scenic, really nice jogging trails connecting to the ravine.

Well, a local yahoo apparently told this group of runners that they “weren’t welcome” and stressed that they, apparently, had no right to trespass on this particular section of city-owned streets.

But it didn’t end there; this yahoo also called the head of the running group (I suppose this person was listed online?) to complain, and tell them to stay away.

Isn’t that nuts?

It reminds me of the Nike ads from the late 1990’s comparing the treatment of skateboarders to other athletes.  They did one about running…

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Bottom Of The Barrel?

You know we’ve really become lax with the rules surrounding home building when you see this noted on the MLS listing:

“All Building Permits In Place And All Done Legally”

Really?  We’re actually advertising this now?

It’s like a parent bragging, “I take care of my kids.”  We’re just noting things that are supposed to be done?

A person selling a newly-built house got permits?  And it was done legally?  And this simply MUST be noted on the listing?

Yeah, well, I guess that’s where we are now.  That’s how far we’ve come.

Toronto is full of homes that were renovated without permits; some even built without permits!  And I have a sneaking suspicion that the Canada Revenue Agency is going to start coming after the buyers of homes if they can’t go after the builders.

Consider the “substantial renovation.”  You all know what this is, right?

The developer keeps the side walls of a brick bungalow so he can claim this wasn’t a “new build” but rather a “substantial renovation,” and then doesn’t apply for the TARION warranty so he doesn’t have to charge GST.

The Canada Revenue Agency has become more fierce than ever.  Just ask your accountant, and he or she will tell you stories.  And guess what, folks?  They’re coming after your substantial renovation.

Like every other agent in Toronto, I have sold homes without a TARION warranty.

But going forward, consider the red flag raised.

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Okay, if you see me this week, just cut me some slack.

Yes, I look like a vampire.

Yes, I look like I have the mumps too.

Yes, I scare my daughter daily with my bright purple mouth, dripping blood like a zombie.

And yes, I have consumed eight packs of Kraft Dinner, five cans of Zoodles, and a family-pack of Spaghettini cooked so soft you could almost drink it.

Happy Monday, everybody!

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