#but it still takes me approximately seven hours of standing in the middle of an aisle to decide what to buy someone

[extervus]

Coming out of Christmas shopping battered and bruised and spitting up blood

[verymuchimmortalcat]

As You Were Once

For Bio Dad Bruce Wayne Month Day 14: De-aged

ao3

@maribat-bdbwm

Marinette was waiting at the airport for her dad, Cass, Damian, Tim and Steph. Lucius had said that there were some important things to handle in the Paris branch of WE and had insisted upon Bruce dealing with it himself. Then the others wanted to join him, leaving Dick as Batman for the week, Signal, Red Hood, Oracle and the Birds of prey to protect Gotham. Alfred had decided to go on a vacation when most of the Manor's occupants were coming to Paris and Duke would be staying with Jason for the next week. 

The five of them had promised that they wouldn't interfere in case of an akuma attack. Though Marinette was sure that they weren't going to sit back if they decided their help was needed. But hopefully they wouldn't deal with anything too severe this week. 

She waves as she spots her siblings, all of them with the exception of Steph trying not to draw attention to themselves. 

“B’s still getting everything sorted at customs and immigration,” Tim informs her once she’s finished hugging all of them.

She frowns, “was there a problem with something?”

“He’s keeping up his cover,” Damian states.

“He’s being unnaturally friendly to someone he hasn’t done a background check on,” Steph says.

“It was starting to get creepy,” Cass adds.

Marinette probably would have run away too. Galas were one thing, everyone there had been through an extensive background check but the whole Brucie Wayne act in front of people he knew absolutely nothing about was a completely different level of strange.

Their conversation turns to everything she’s missed since their last conversation. She gets a very detailed update on Damian’s pets 

They weren't waiting long before they were joined by B. Though he had to leave almost immediately to WE apparently whatever he had come for had been more urgent than they had realised. 

Once her dad is gone the five of them head to the bakery, while there wasn't space for everyone to stay at the bakery, all of them had wanted to spend time with the Dupain-Chengs. 

.oOo.

They're all at the bakery when the screaming starts. All of them immediately jump up but before any of them can join her she stops them and tells them to cover for her. Tom and Sabine don't know her identity and her siblings can't risk theirs over what’s probably a simple akuma attack. 

Promising them she'll call if she needs help she transforms and heads in the direction of the akuma. Adrien's already there but the others aren't supposed to transform unless needed. It's pretty close to WE. Marinette hopes her father actually remembered his promise and didn't become a target. 

She stops to rescue a larger number of children then she'd normally have to. Why are there so many children outside during an akuma attack?

It's only when she stops in front of a boy who appears to be about seven who looks exactly like the photos Alfred has of her father at that age does she figure out what the akuma's powers are. 

De aging. 

Marinette asks him anyway, there is always the possibility that a random Parisian child looks exactly like a seven-year-old version of her father.

It is not a random Parisian child. Marinette is the holder of the miraculous of good luck, you really would think she’d have better luck.

She crouches down so that she’s at his eye level, “I’m going to take you somewhere safe. Is that ok with you?”

He looks unsure but he nods. Picking him up, she swings back to the bakery as fast as possible. She calls Nino, Alya and Kagami and tells them there's a family emergency and to take care of the akuma and to bring it to her so she could purify it. 

Landing in an alleyway near the bakery, she de-transforms. She doesn't bother with telling him to keep her identity a secret. He already knows in the future and he's definitely not going to talk to someone who doesn't already know who she is.  

Holding his hand she leads him to the bakery. She tells Damian to get the others up and takes her dad (wow, is it strange to think of an approximately seven year old as her dad) to the living room.

She tells Tikki to give tiny Bruce something to occupy his time while she and her siblings figure something out. As they all join her upstairs, she sees as each of them realise what's happened and go from shock to laughter. 

"He doesn't remember anything. The others are taking care of the akuma. Figured you’d need help taking care of him," she says before Tim can ask. 

"Hasn't happened yet," Cass states. 

The laughter from a few seconds ago is gone. They all know what she's talking about. This Bruce Wayne hasn't lost his parents. 

This Bruce Wayne also seems to be glaring at them, he also looks scared. She can’t blame him, he wasn’t offered much of an explanation before she brought him here.

"Where are my parents?” he demands, “The girl who brought me here obviously seems to be some kind of superhero. Who are the rest of you?"

None of them look shocked that he knows that she’s Ladybug but none of them are dwelling on that. He asked for his parents what could they even tell him? They obviously can't tell him his parents are dead but they also know it wouldn't be fair to lie to him. 

"Would you like to talk to Alfred?" Tim asks suddenly. They all sigh in relief when he nods. 

Marinette calls Alfred but doesn't hand the phone to tiny Bruce immediately, it would definitely be more painful for Alfred than any of them to deal with him in this state. 

As soon as he picks up, Marinette starts speaking, "there was an akuma and dad became small and he's asking for his parents and we offered to call you instead."

Alfred being Alfred remains calm and asks her to hand the phone to tiny Bruce. All of them are staring at him as he talks to Alfred over the phone. Even though they can hear only one side of the conversation, tiny Bruce seems to calm down. 

Once he ends the call, he hands the phone back to her and says, "Alfred says that some kind of magic made me small and that all of you are very important to me when I become big."

"You're strangely adorable," Steph says. 

He frowns at that and he’s never before looked more like Damian.

“So, what do you like to do when you're bored?” Marinette asks, bending down in front of him and they all watch as one of the world’s greatest heroes rambles on about something his mom showed him last week.

.oOo.

This is the most they’ve ever heard Bruce talk about his parents and Alfred. They’re all listening intently about the woman who was their grandmother right now. Neither of them want to ask for more information. It wouldn't make sense to not know his parents if they were close to him. Alfred mentioned once that Marinette looks startlingly similar to Martha Wayne, Tim wonders if B’s picked up on it yet. Even if he has, Tim supposes, there wouldn’t be any reason for him to dwell on it as far as the Bruce in front of them is concerned his parents are alive and well.

They’ve all snuck pictures of him talking animatedly, he’s too carefree to notice, has no reason not to be. He’s already sent a few to Alfred and the others and immediately switched off notifications. Marinette and Damian do it too when their phones start blowing up, Steph’s just ignoring it and still taking photos and Cass is spamming them back. 

He goes back to watching Bruce talk without the weight he’s been carrying in all the time Tim’s known him.

.oOo.

It's strange, Cass thinks, to see him like this. The closest he's ever been to this relaxed is when all of them are at the manor for something other than a gala or bat business. 

She's alternating between listening to Bruce and tormenting her brothers who stayed back in Gotham. She’s sure if patrol wasn’t starting soon, they would’ve been here already for varying reasons.

She wonders if he’ll remember any of this when he comes back to normal, she’ll have to ask Marinette.

.oOo.

They moved to Marinette’s room in case the Dupain-Chengs check on them. Father’s taking a break from talking and is going through Marinette’s designs, Stephanie and Cassandra are with him. Drake seems to have taken on the responsibility of tormenting the others remaining in Gotham or he’s just texting his boyfriend, Damian doesn’t want to know.

He’s watching as the three of them go through Marinette’s designs, and watches as she gets progressively more flustered as they bury her in compliments, well mostly Stephanie, Cassandra and Father aren’t as vocal but it’s also the most he’s heard Father compliment someone sincerely.

It’s strange to think of the child in front of him as his father. He smiles a lot more and even laughed several times.

And then Stephanie mentions that Damian draws and Father’s asking him if he could look at his drawings. Damian offers him a small smile and unlocks his phone and shows him the recent painting of Titus, Alfred, Ace and Jerry and watches as his Father analyses the whole painting.

Maybe the child in front of him is not the father he’s gotten to know but it is nice to see him all the same.

.oOo.

Marinette’s starting to get worried. It’s been an hour and the others haven’t returned with the Akuma yet. They can’t keep tiny Bruce occupied forever. She’s considering transforming and checking it out when Tim pokes his head out from where he’s sitting on her bed and says, “hey Mari, delivery for you.”

Alya’s standing next to him with the akuma in a jar, looking confused. Marinette sighs, explaining this is going to be interesting.

She climbs up and heads to the balcony before transforming. Alya hands her the jar and Marinette purifies the akuma, calls for her lucky charm and throws it up in the air.

“So…” Alya starts, “wanna explain what that was about?” 

“Family emergency. I’ll tell you about it later. Bye!” and then Marinette’s back in her room. Her siblings seem to be panicking and her dad’s not there. The Miraculous Ladybug should have taken him back to where he was. He’s probably standing in the middle of the street completely disoriented.

Detransforming she joins their discussion, or more accurately panicked argument, to let them know what happened. They’re all on their way to the Paris branch of WE in a few minutes. She’s sure one of the employees is bound to have found him and explained things to him but they’re still going just in case.

He’s attacked by hugs when they find him in the lobby of the building, he looks confused as to why but none of them offer any explanation. Steph’s the first one to pull away when her phone starts ringing.

“Shit. We forgot to tell Alfred everything’s fine again.”

Letting go of her dad, she checks her phone and there at the very top of her notifications is a missed call from Alfred. Just one, he’s not anything like the rest of the family as proven by the hundred notifications below that. Steph’s already picked up the call and handed it to B. Marinette sends Dick a message to let him know that everything’s back to normal and to please not come to Paris once patrol’s done.

There are people staring at them, which isn’t surprising but makes her uncomfortable all the same and she knows the rest of them probably feel the same, though Tim might've gotten used to it. They watch in silence as B finishes talking to Alfred and hands Steph’s phone back to her.

He looks over the bunch of them and asks, “did you have something to tell me?”

It feels like forever that they stand awkwardly looking at him before Marinette says, “nope! Nothing important,” and drags her siblings out of the building and back to the bakery. They can talk to him later and Damian’s yawning on their way back. It’s been one hell of a first day in Paris for them, she can’t wait for the rest of the week.

[nugnthopkns]

dance me to the end of love (ii)

word count: 3.3k

warnings: fem!oc, alcohol consumption, cursing

series masterpost: here

a/n: part two baby! thanks for all the love on part one, it means the absolute world. i have so much love for this story and i hope people are enjoying it :))

Life is settling into a comfortable rhythm.

After spending a good chunk of her young adult life being incredibly studious, Magdalene can finally have the social life of someone in their mid-twenties. Though she’s still spending a fair amount of time by herself in the basements of the University of Denver’s library, Bette convinces her to go out more. Magdalene tries to fight, citing extra work or a good book as an excuse to stay home, but it doesn’t work very often. The pleas of her friend are how Magdalene finds herself currently lounging poolside at Erik Johnson’s house on a Sunday afternoon.

“How’s the new career treating you?” Tyson asks. “I feel like we haven’t seen you in a while.”

Magdalene laughs. “I’ve seen Bette plenty,” she says, “She thinks I won’t take a lunch break unless she shows up.”

“Would you?” the blonde girl questions with a quirked brow.

“Probably not.”

“I rest my case.”

A small crowd gathers around as Magdalene begins to detail the specifics of her job, but she doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as she once would have. In the month or so since graduating school she’s found herself slowly being incorporated into the Avalanche family. It’s almost certainly because Bette and Tyson championed her case, explaining that she doesn’t have much of a support system beyond the two of them, but she doesn’t mind. A few of the guys ask her questions about her work, curious as to why someone would want to spend their life combing through piles of old things. Everyone stays engaged in the conversation until there’s a shout from the kitchen that dinner is ready.

Magdalene shuffles in line behind André, filling her plate with various pasta salads and a hamburger. Once situated with enough food for two meals she returns to the pool deck, sitting on the edge and dipping her toes into the cool water. Bette comes and finds her a minute later and the two of them begin to eat.

She’s still relatively new to the group’s dynamic, but Magdalene can’t help but notice that Ryan is never around. In fact, Magdalene hasn’t seen him since her graduation party. Taking a casual sip of her wine cooler, she asks her friend about the man’s absence.

“Why is Ryan never at these sorts of things?”

Bette shrugs. “Isn’t a huge one for parties. He was supposed to come today, but I guess something came up.”

“I’m not huge on parties,” Magdalene huffs, “But that doesn’t stop you from dragging me to every single one.”

“Unlike you, Gravy gets enough regular social interaction that his absence is permissible. If Tyson and I didn’t take you out you’d talk to your cat more than normal.”

She wants to fight back, but knows it’s pointless. Bette has a point – if it weren’t for her the only people Magdalene would interact with are her boss and her cat. Instead, she grumbles under her breath and changes the subject to the trip Bette is in the middle of planning. It’s coming up in a few weeks, and Magdalene wants to hear a bit more about it before she commits. Despite what she thought about taking time off so close to starting work, it was encouraged by June, but she's refraining from telling Bette that. If it doesn’t sound like she'll enjoy it, Magdalene is banking on being able to use the excuse.

Bette explains that she’s renting a large lake house that is perfect for a relaxing week away from adult responsibilities. The property has kayaks and a hot tub, which pretty much ensures that Magdalene will want to be in attendance. She’ll hold onto that information for a little while longer though, if for no other reason to make Bette squirm a little. At some point Tyson comes to sweep his girlfriend away and leaves Magdalene at the party alone. She makes polite conversation with some other players for a while before heading home herself. Ryan never shows up, despite how much Magdalene hopes he will. At the very least she wants to properly thank him for doing her a favour, though her hoping to see him is much more selfish. He intrigues her and she wants to know more about the tall man with the dazzling smile and a proclivity for wearing all black.

☼☼☼☼

Barn Owl Book Company is filled to the brim when Magdalene approaches the store from the side street it annexes. She should’ve expected it – it’s the first of the month and their newest books are hitting the shelves. However, Magdalene doesn’t exactly have time to wait in line. June gave her only fifteen minutes to run and grab them coffee before they continue the massive task of digitizing a private collection that has just been donated to the university. She estimates it will take almost a month of extended hours to get everything done, and Magdalene believes it. There’s so much to wade through but she knows the end result will be satisfying.

Luckily the café line is fairly short, and Magdalene reaches the counter in a timely manner. “Hey,” she greets the barista warmly, “Could I just grab two medium iced cappuccinos?”

“Anything else?”

“No, that's everything. It’ll be on debit,” she smiles. Magdalene reaches into her backpack to grab her wallet only to find that it’s missing. Shit. The barista has already left to make the drinks, completely unaware that her customer is unable to pay.

Magdalene hears a voice from behind her say, “I’ve got it, don’t worry.” She turns around to find Ryan Graves standing there with a book tucked under his right arm.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she mumbles appreciatively. “I don’t know how my boss would take it if I showed up empty handed.”

Ryan laughs shyly as he pulls his card away from the machine. “I get it, everyone needs a little caffeine this time of year.” The barista comes back with Magdalene’s drinks, which she takes with a smile and a wish for a good day. The two of them head towards the exit, and Ryan pauses once they’re on the sidewalk. “Which way are you headed?”

“Back to work,” Magdalene says, nodding her head in the direction of campus. “I’ve got approximately five minutes to get there before June rips me a new one.”

“June?”

“She’s my boss,” she explains.

Ryan nods in understanding. “I’ll see you around Magdalene,” he smiles, turning on his heel and heading the opposite direction.

In a moment of bravery, Magdalene yells at his retreating figure. “Will you? We never seem to cross paths.”

“I’ll be at Bette and Tyson’s this weekend, and I’m counting on your company.”

Magdalene finds it incredibly hard to focus the rest of the afternoon. She keeps thinking about what Ryan said, which makes her a rather lousy archivist. June sends her home just after seven even though they had plans to stay until ten, citing the fact that she’s scanned the same photo three times before noticing. Caligula’s meowing for pets when she gets home isn’t even enough to distract her from the comment. The absentmindedness continues for another day or so, and it’s becoming so bad Magdalene is worried that June is going to fire her for incompetence.

It’s only when Bette calls to invite her over for dinner and drinks that her mind levels out. “I was wondering when I was going to get the call,” she chuckles absentmindedly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” is the response Magdalene receives.

“Well,” she explains, “I ran into Ryan at Barn Owl the other day and he paid for my drinks because I left my wallet on the table at work, and he said he expected to see me at your place this weekend. So if you never invited me I was just going to show up.”

Bette is smiling, that much Magdalene can infer by the lull in conversation. “I haven’t got the time to call you yet,” she concedes, “But consider this the official invitation to our house for a small party.”

“Anything we’re celebrating?”

“Nope. Have you ever needed a reason to party?”

Magdalene laughs. “Yes. Need one almost every time actually.”

The rest of the week passes fairly quickly. To make up for her blundering earlier in the week Magdalene offers to work a full day on Saturday, by herself, to get the project back on track. June accepts the proposition eagerly, and Magdalene lets Bette know she’ll be coming directly from work. Saturday rolls around and she spends most of her time getting lost in the past lives of the artefacts she’s dealing with. If someone were to ask Magdalene what her favourite part of archiving is, that’s the answer she’d give. There’s nothing more satisfying to her than holding a piece of history in her hands and imagining all the stories it would be able to tell if it could speak.

By the time she’s put in a full work day and finishes locking up the basement floor her department occupies, Magdalene is pretty sure they’re ahead of schedule on the project. She genuinely feels terrible about her misperformance and hopes June will be able to forgive her. On the way to Bette and Tyson’s Magdalene listens to the Leonard Cohen greatest hits cd that came with her car. The previous owner was presumably a big fan, and over the years Magdalene has come to appreciate the folk singer. She never got to see him in concert before his death but turns to his music when she needs to relax. Right now is the perfect time to listen to ‘Hallelujah’ on repeat because she’s seriously freaking out about the idea of spending the night talking to Ryan. Though she still wants to properly thank him and possibly become friends, something about him makes Magdalene nervous.

There’s no way for her to tell if Ryan is there when she parks in front of the house. She doesn’t know what kind of car he drives, or if he caught a ride with someone. Magdalene debates texting Bette to see if he’s there already but decides against it, knowing she’s an adult who is more than capable of pushing down nerves.

She doesn’t bother knocking and just steps into the respectably sized home. The music is loud enough that no one would have heard her anyways. It’s much more of a party than Magdalene was expecting – Bette invited her for dinner and drinks, not a gathering that could pass as a frat party. There are bodies everywhere, and she isn’t sure if she’ll ever catch a glimpse of her friend.

“You seem to be dressed for the wrong kind of party,” a voice chuckles from behind her.

Magdalene turns to see Ryan leaning against the wall, eyeing her business casual attire. “I came from work,” she explains, “And didn’t know it was this kind of party to begin with. I would’ve at least brought a change of clothes.”

“You look terribly out of place,” he agrees. “Can I grab you a drink? The hosts are too busy playing beer pong to, you know, be hosts.”

A giggle escapes Magdalene’s lips at the comment. Ryan seems to have a similar sense of humor to her, which will be beneficial for passing the time if Bette is already on her way to being wasted. “A glass of red wine would be nice.”

Ryan pushes off from his perch and heads towards the kitchen. The crowd parts for the six-foot-five hockey player, and Magdalene follows in his wake quite easily. Knowing the space as well as her, Ryan grabs a wine glass from the cupboard Bette keeps them in and pours the dark red liquid into it. He waits until Magdalene has situated herself on the island before handing her the cup. She takes it with an appreciative hum and waits until he’s grabbed a beer for himself before raising her glass in toast. Ryan does the same, and their glasses clink before each of them take a sip.

“What exactly is it that you do? I bet it’s something super cool and studious, but I seriously don’t know what the hell being an archivist means.”

Magdalene explains her job to Ryan, who is extremely interested. He asks nearly a hundred follow-up questions that she answers sincerely, throwing in a few jokes that luckily crack him up. Conversation moves to his career and then life. Magdalene learns that he’s from Nova Scotia, though he stays around Denver these days, and that if he wasn’t playing professional hockey he’d like to have a career in publishing. Ryan doesn’t press too hard when Magdalene refuses to open up about her family, which she appreciates. It’s a delicate subject that she keeps guarded close to her chest, and a friend’s kitchen in the middle of a party isn’t the place for her to divulge her deepest secrets.

The two of them get refills before exiting the room. Even more people seemed to arrive since Magdalene walked through the door, and the kitchen is no longer an empty safe haven. The music is so loud she can feel the bass thumping in her chest, giving the living room a club-like atmosphere, and it’s too much. Magdalene tugs at the hem of Ryan’s sweater to catch his attention. “Want to go somewhere quiet?”

“I doubt there is such a place,” he yells over the crowd going crazy over some early 2000s hip-hop track.

“Follow me,” she says with a smile, pointing over her shoulder in the direction of the staircase to the second floor.

It takes a minute for them to wade through the throngs of people, but it goes much faster once Ryan takes Magdalene’s hand and splits the crowd. A few boys, who don’t look older than twenty-one and almost certainly snuck into the party, notice where the pair are going and shout congratulations. Ryan shoots them a glare so sharp it could cut stone but doesn’t drop Magdalene’s hand. Once safely on the much quieter second floor, Magdalene makes a beeline for the bathroom.

“Are you coming or what?” she asks when there doesn’t seem to be footsteps following her.

Ryan hesitates. “I, uh, can just wait out here while you’re in there,” he stammers.

Magdalene’s laugh rings out through the empty hallway. “I’m not going to the bathroom. We’re going out the window.”

He isn’t sure how that’s any better, but Ryan follows the brown-haired girl into the room. It takes considerably more work for him to fit through the frame, but after some directions from Magdalene he makes it onto the roof. She sits down and pats the space beside her, encouraging Ryan to do the same. They stay out there, discussing anything that comes to their heads, until the party’s numbers dwindle drastically. Magdalene makes sure to properly thank him for both attending her graduation and spotting her coffee money, and she thinks Ryan might blush a little when she offers to get the next round. He asks about her love of The West Wing, and they launch into a long conversation about the show and cast. The sun fades to black and the cold sets in, and Magdalene finds herself wrapped in Ryan’s sweater without asking. It’s only when she notices it’s approaching midnight that Magdalene clues into how tired she is.

“I think I’m going to head out,” she yawns. Ryan nods in agreement and holds the window open for her to slip in through. Once downstairs, Magdalene goes to lift the sweater from her frame but Ryan stops her.

“Keep it for drive home. I’ll get it back next time we see each other.”

Still feeling bold from the alcohol that left her system hours ago, she reaches out to poke him in the chest. “And when will that be, hm? You seem to enjoy leaving our meetings up to chance.”

It’s Ryan’s turn to laugh. “Think you can swing an extended lunch break on Wednesday? I’ll be at Barn Owl all afternoon. Maybe you can join me for a coffee.”

Magdalene likes the sound of that and agrees. She leaves without seeing Bette or Tyson once, but she doesn’t mind. They’d be happy for her blooming friendship – or at least she’s pretty sure they will be once she calls to fill them in on the details.

☼☼☼☼

Wednesday rolls around without incident, and Magdalene is given a full hour to eat instead of thirty minutes. Walking time has to be accounted for, of course, but she should have nearly forty-five minutes to spend with Ryan if she plays her cards right. There’s no crowd this time, and it’s incredibly easy to spot Ryan sitting in the window she loves to claim as her own.

“Hey,” Magdalene greets, “Did Bette tell you to sit here?”

He shakes his head, perplexed at the question. “No, why?”

“It’s just my favourite seat in the store, that’s all. I thought she told you how to gain some extra brownie points.”

“Should I be concerned about the amount of points I have?” Ryan teases, sliding a cup and pastry bag across the table and into her hands.

Magdalene shakes her head, smiling widely. “You’re doing alright so far. Keep up the good work.”

They eat at a comfortable pace, taking breaks to engage in interesting topics of conversation or take sips of their drinks. Ryan insists his life is boring, but Magdalene is enthralled by the stories he tells. It’s completely different from hers and she feels as though she can live vicariously through the tales of walking through the historic downs of the east coast and swimming in the Pacific Ocean on days off in California. After squeezing every story possible from the man Magdalene shifts gears slightly.

“So, are you going on the trip in a couple of weeks?”

“It’s looking that way,” Ryan shrugs with relative indifference, “Nate doesn’t think he’ll be able to come back, something about a development camp he’s running having the dates switched. He’s asked me to take his spot.”

His neutral mood confuses her. When Bette mentioned his probable attendance months ago, it sounded like he was enthusiastic about spending a week with friends doing nothing to swimming and drinking. “You don’t want to go?” Magdalene probes.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, but sometimes the group parties a little harder than I like to,” he sighs, raising a hand and running it through his hair. That’s something she understands completely, having spent a few too many nights being the sober one out.

“I’ll be there.” It’s Magdalene’s turn to shrug, but the comment holds an incredible amount of hope.

“Well then, that changes everything.”

Was Ryan flirting with her? She spends the rest of lunch thinking about the possibility, and truthfully, it occupies her brain for the rest of the day. However, she keeps her focus and June is none the wiser to the butterflies in her stomach. Work finishes without much fanfare, and her dinner is silent save for the few meows of conversation Caligula offers. It’s late by the time Magdalene falls into bed, cat snuggled into the pillow beside her. On a whim she decides to check Instagram and sees a message request from none other than the man who’s smile has been replaying in her mind. A follow request accompanies it.

Thought that maybe we could quit leaving our meetings to chance and plan something next time :)

He has to be flirting. There’s no other explanation for the witty banter they’ve shared this week, or why he’s reaching out to her on social media. The butterflies in her stomach multiply tenfold as Magdalene types out a reply.

I don’t know, it’s kind of fun being shrouded in mystery. However, I now have the opportunity to stalk your profile ;)

Before she can overthink her use of the emoji, Magdalene shoves her phone in the drawer of her nightstand and rolls over. A slight smile can’t help but appear on her features as she falls asleep, already curious about what his reply will be.

☼☼☼☼

taglist: @scrunchmakar @marcoscandellas @toplinetommy @samsteel @lovethepreds (add yourself to the taglist!)

[pearlcaddy]

Kiss Prompt via DM: “40 for the Soulmate AU?”

40: A gentle kiss that quickly descends into passion, with little regard for what’s going on around them (Sparks verse)

Inspired by this utterly gorgeous fanart by @mamirugbee

Now on AO3!

“LUKE.”

From her spot curled up on the rehearsal studio floor, Julie glances up in time to see Alex slap her boyfriend on the arm. Her boyfriend who is unabashedly staring at her instead of playing his guitar. Under the full volume of his adoring gaze, she can’t keep the grin from slipping onto her face, and as soon as she smiles, he bursts into a giant beam, which only makes her smile bigger and then his smile grows and—

“Is this a rehearsal or the middle school cafeteria?” Bobby grumbles.

“Middle school cafeteria?” Julie asks, bemused.

“Bobby did his best flirting in the cafeteria,” Reggie explains. “I say best: it was middle school, so he basically just smiled a lot and threw a bunch of ‘do u want to go out with me’ notes as paper airplanes.”

“Hey, those notes got me at least three dates.”

“Out of, like, two hundred,” Alex points out.

“I stand by my methods.”

Julie chuckles and glances back at Luke. Whose eyes are still very much focused on her. That blissful smile works its way back onto her face and—

Alex groans. “Do I need to pour water on you two?”

“Sure,” Luke replies absently.

“Not near the amps!” Reggie squeals.

“Okay, you know what?” Alex gestures pointedly at the studio door. “I am going on a coffee run. Bobby, Reggie, do you want to join?”

“But you said I’m not allowed to drink coffee anymore because it makes me ‘a bit much,’” Reggie tries to point out. Bobby rolls his eyes and elbows the bassist. Then it clicks. “OH. ‘Coffee run.’ Riiiiight.”

Alex studies the ceiling for a second, like he’s searching for rational people in the studio and coming up empty, and then marches out with Reggie and Bobby at his heels.

As soon as they disappear, Luke all but jumps across the studio towards Julie. She tries to put on her best approximation of a “responsible grown-up voice.” “You have got to stop staring at me and focus.”

He lets out an exasperated groan as he flops onto his back and rests his head in her lap. “How can I? You’re here.”

“It’s literally your job.”

But he continues on like she didn’t speak. “AND you’re wearing my clothes.”

She snuggles her shoulders further into his denim trenchcoat. “It’s cold in here.” Sure. It’s definitely the mild A/C. Definitely not that she loves being able to tuck her nose in the collar and fill her lungs with his familiar scent. Definitely not that every time she breathes in the indefinable Luke smell, she has sappy thoughts like “This is what home smells like.”

Capturing a stray curl, he twists it up around his finger. “Can we go home now?”

“You’ve been here for, like, two hours. Come on, you need to focus. This is cute, but it’s very unprofessional.”

He pouts up at her. “When have I ever claimed to be professional?”

“It’s one of the first things I remember you saying to me.”

He kisses the hair around his finger and releases the curl, gazing up at her with such soft joy that her heart beats a little faster. Or maybe it’s his heart beating into their bond. She can’t tell the difference sometimes. “Should I go home?” she asks gently, trying to ignore the immediately disapproving shriveling sensation in both her heart and the bond.

“Nah, if you leave, I’m gonna be just as distracted. Can’t I just take, like, two months off? C’mon, seven years of pining—I deserve two months of non-stop basking.”

“After you finish the Sunset Curve album.”

He pouts again. “No fair. That’s gonna be ages away.”

She wants to keep lecturing him, but… as much as he’s being absurd and over the top, she feels it too. Their journey happened as it was meant to, and she doesn’t regret a moment of it, but she can’t stop her mind from lingering on all the other periods in their lives when they would have had more time to revel in the new relationship. Running her fingers through his hair, she scratches against his scalp, and a smile purrs its way across his lips. “If you don’t start paying attention in class, your dads won’t let me come over anymore,” she teases.

“Can I at least have a kiss?”

Rolling her eyes, she leans down to place a gentle peck on his lips. But once she’s there, with his already familiar lips eagerly greeting hers, she can’t stop with just one. She tries to deepen the kiss, but her neck is bent awkwardly from this angle. As if reading her discomfort, he immediately flips himself around without separating their mouths, coming to kneeling in front of her. He cups her chin with one hand and teases her lips apart , while he runs the fingers of his free hand along the parts of her neck that he’s already learned are the most sensitive. She sighs into his mouth, and for a moment his lips lose the rhythm of the kiss as they twitch into what she suspects is a smirk. His free hand slides under his trenchcoat and around her waist, tugging her in closer to him, and the bond lets out a sparkling vibration, like a throat warbling out a high note. She pulls her mouth from his and starts to work her way across his cheek, reaching for the spot behind his jaw that she now knows is—

Luke jolts away suddenly, water spots speckling his clothes. “What the fuck?”

Alex stands over them, holding his water bottle up like he’s brandishing a sword. “Don’t test me.”

“The amps!” Reggie cries again, shuddering with the well-earned fear of his own lifetime of bad decision-making.

“If the amps get damaged, Luke will pay for it. Now can we please rehearse?”

Luke looks back at her, not nearly as sheepish as she suspects they probably should be. Holding up his pinky, he asks, “If I finish the album, two months?”

“Two months,” she agrees, and links her pinky with his.

He instantly pops to his feet. “Alright boys, let’s do this thing.”

[abarbaricyalp]

Idk if you are still taking prompts, but you know the vine two dudes chilling in a hot tub 5 feet apart cause they're not gay, and a girl quoting it in a park about two girls in the distance and one of them hearing and going "Actually I am gay" Like that scenario, only involving them fixing the boat? Maybe Sarah quoting it to give Sam shit when she thinks Bucky cant hear and Bucky goes "Wait, no I'm gay" or something, or just the general gist of that. Sorry if this us too specific, I've never sent anyone a prompt before :P

Hello Friend! Thank you so much for sending anything in at all! I know the vine you're talking about, but I couldn't find it on Youtube. (I did find a two day rabbit hole of old compilations though) This was also my first foray into writing Sarah as a fully fleshed character! I was excited to get the practice 'cause I had an idea bouncing around in my head about her and Bucky talking after he wakes up in the Wilson house. I kept her a little more like she had been in my other fics pre-show here. I so wish we got a little more of her!

Feel free, anyone, to send me Sambucky prompts!

The North American Superhero in a Domestic Situation

Sarah Wilson loved her brother deeply. The kind of soul crushing love that could only be formed through family, loss, and approximately four thousand brawls around the living room throughout their life. She looked up to her brother more than she could ever imagine looking up to anyone. Even when they were fighting or picking on each other, she couldn’t help but feel a swell in her chest when he came into her line of sight.

That didn’t mean she understood him. In fact, from the age of eight, watching her brother interact with the world had become her go-to pastime. Why did he have to roll every pea around the plate individually before eating them? Why did he and his friends spend seven years socking each other in the arm to prove friendship? Why did he talk to himself in the mirror, even when he knew Sarah or someone else was standing in the doorway?

Sam Wilson was just deeply weird. She had no idea how he had tricked the Avengers, a plethora of bad guys, and half of the media world into thinking he was remotely cool. She saw a news story once that had King T’Challa standing on a platform with Sam and the newscasters talked about how impressive Sam’s suit was. It was unnatural, the effect he had on people.

And in all her years, she never thought she’d see anyone weirder than Sam. But then James Barnes had showed up. It was like a complete reversal of Sam. Sarah was taken in for approximately three hours by his charm and face before she realized he too was deeply, deeply weird.

She justified sitting on the edge of the Paul and Darlene, watching her brother and James Barnes spar off about some dumb trivia fact, by deciding it was an anthropological expedition. The North American Superhero in a Domestic Situation. She watched Sam watch Barnes take a long pull off his beer. She watched Barnes kick his feet up near Sam’s legs and then draw them back quickly when a current jolted the boat. She watched Barnes’ fingers tap-tap-tap against the edge of the boat, inching closer to Sam’s shoulder before he chickened out and brought his hand back to his own lap. She watched Sam suggest Bucky take his jacket off, ‘unless you plan on sun blinding me with the robocop arm.’ She watched Sam look away when Barnes did shrug his jacket off.

When she was seventeen and Sam was fifteen, she had found Sam crying in his room, pillow pressed to his face to muffle the noise. They were at the age where going into each other’s rooms uninvited started international conflicts, but Sarah, who watched her brother intently, felt like she knew what was going on. So she let herself in through their Jack-and-Jill bathroom and shut the door behind her.

Sam didn’t stop crying, not even to yell at her to get out, so she sat on the end of his bed and rolled a baseball under her foot for a while. Finally, she’d said, “You don’t have to tell Mom and Dad, y’know.”

Sam had just about wailed and bit the corner of his pillow to stop himself.

“That’s gross, stop it,” Sarah ordered and pushed Sam’s shoulder back enough to yank his pillow free and then reached over to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “I should make you do the laundry this week so I know I’m not touching your snot germs,” she teased softly.

“How did you know?” Sam hiccuped out. Tears were still brimming at his eyes, but they didn’t fall.

“I’m your older sister. I made you. Like a doll. You think there’s something about you that I don’t know?” she joked. And when the tears did spill over his long lashes, she sighed and pulled him closer to her side. “I just know the way you interact with that boy from the basketball team ain’t just friendly.”

“Jesus, do you think he can tell?” Sam asked and she could hear the mortification in his voice.

“Sam, he’s a freshman in high school. The only thing he knows is that he’s scared of everything too. No one’s paying that much attention to you.”

“Screw you,” Sam muttered.

“What’re all these tears for you if you didn’t make a move and get shot down?”

“God, Sarah, can you not say things like that?”

“Watch your mouth,” Sarah warned with no heat in her voice. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong. I’m not leaving until you do.”

“I just…” Sam sat up and worked his jaw for a while. His chin dimpled and his eyes watered but he managed to control himself. “I’m scared, Sarah. I’m scared of never being in love. Of having to leave if I am. I’m scared to say something and I’m scared not to say something. I’m so scared of...losing any of it.”

“Sam,” Sarah sighed and pulled Sam into another hug. “You’re fifteen. You’re not supposed to be in love yet. You don’t have to think about any of that. You just have to focus on passing Geometry, alright? Mom’ll whoop your ass more for failing than anything else.”

“I have a B+, that’s not failing!” Sam snapped. He kept his face against her shoulder for a second long before he sat up and wiped his tears away. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Who am I gonna tell? I told you, my friends don’t like you as much as you think they do.”

“Your friends like me more than they like you,” Sam shot back and he almost sounded normal.

Sarah smiled softly and patted Sam’s cheek. “I won’t tell Mom or Dad. Of course not. That’s for you to do. But--”

“I’m always going to tell them when you sneak out the window.”

“No! Sam! You can’t! You owe me now!”

“Going to field parties is not the same thing!” Sam said in a shriek as Sarah leaned over to pinch his sides. They grappled for a second before Sam managed to push Sarah off the bed.

“You owe me,” she reminded him as she walked back to the bathroom.

Sam wiped his eyes again and nodded. “Sure, Sarah. I do.”

Sam almost had the same look on his face now. Like there was something he wanted to reach for that he thought was too impossible to hold. The Older Sister Instinct to Antagonize into a Solution kicked in.

“Two bros, chilling on a boat, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay,” she sing-songed. Sam looked mortified again but masked his face into something more irritated with a roll of his eyes when Barnes looked over at him.

“Ignore her. It’s this old video--” Sam started.

But Bucky interrupted to say, “Actually I am gay,” as he looked back over at Sarah. “Sorry if I got your hopes up,” he added with a grin that really did get the hopes up.

“What?” Sam asked and Sarah, ever watchful, could see the beer bottle shaking in his hand.

“What?” Bucky repeated innocently.

“He said he’s gay,” Sarah clarified.

“Thank you, Sarah,” Sam ground out. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Bucky snorted. “When would I have said anything? ‘Sorry for ripping your wings off and kicking you off of a hellicarrier, by the way I’m gay.’?”

“You did what?” Sarah asked.

“‘Sorry for claiming I didn’t bomb the UN only to be reverted back to the assassin who would have done that and then fighting you again. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Thanks for saving my life. Sorry about the giant undersea prison. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘There’s an imminent battle with weird ass space dogs that want to eat our faces. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Sorry about Tony Stark, whose life I kind of ruined. Lovely funeral. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘I’m in the middle of being pissed at you about the Shield. By the way I’m gay.’ ‘Maybe don’t take me rolling through a field of flowers. It does things to me ‘cause I’m gay.’ ‘John Walker’s fucking insane. I’m gay, but definitely not for this bullshit.’ I mean, come on, Sam.”

“Flowers?” Sarah asked.

“Besides, why would you care? I don’t make it a habit of telling straight guys I’m into guys.”

“You don’t seem to make a habit of telling many people that,” Sarah pointed out. “I googled you. Nothing suggesting that came up.”

Bucky shrugged. “I’m a guy from the 30s. It was trained out of me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sarah said quickly. “Back up away from that because we’re not gonna try to Oppression Olympics our way through our histories. Did you just say Sam was straight?”

“Sarah!” Sam hissed.

“Sure. I mean, I saw him with Romanov. Hill. He has Tinder on his phone.”

“Samuel Thomas, you better not,” Sarah warned lightly. “You’re better than that.”

“He’s a lady-killer.”

Sarah snorted and had to bring her hand up to her face. “He definitely is not. There has been no lady-killing on his end for a long time.”

“Sarah!” Sam tried again.

“You explain it to him then. Mr. 30s is gonna need the long way round explanation.”

Sam sighed and dragged his hand over his face. “Dammit. Fine. I’m not straight either, alright? I’m...bi, or something. It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about it.”

“What?” Bucky asked, not unlike Sam had.

“He said he’s bisexual. Interested in both parties. Swings either way. Hit a homerun and then hasn’t really swung since.”

“Sarah, Jesus Christ,” Sam groaned.

“What?” Bucky asked again.

“I was engaged. To a man,” Sam said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked, clearly missing the irony.

“Oh, it was inconvenient for you but I had plenty of opportunities, huh?” Sam asked. “Ms. Tell-It-All over there wasn’t joking. I haven’t swung any direction in a while. Not since before I met Steve. My fiance died. And then it never came up.”

Bucky blinked at Sam. He kept bringing the bottle halfway up his body and then setting it back on his leg without ever taking a drink. “Fuck, Sam, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, which was not what Sarah was expecting and it clearly wasn’t what Sam was expecting because Sam finally moved closer to Bucky on the bench.

“What for? You didn’t do anything. This time.”

“Yeah, but if I’d known you were into me too, I woulda kissed you in Germany.”

“Oh, I am so not into you,” Sam denied. “And I wouldn’t have our first kiss ruined by immediately running into the government’s roving show monkey.”

“That’s the worst,” Bucky agreed and also finally moved over on the bench until they were pressed thigh to thigh. “Tell me how much you don’t like me again,” he challenged.

“I can’t stand you,” Sam answered and brought his hand up to Bucky’s jaw.

Sarah couldn’t fight down the grin that came to her face and turned to prop her feet on the pier, back to Sam and Bucky. Just this once, she didn’t need to watch her brother to understand him.

Read on AO3 here!

[erin-bo-berin]

Daddy’s Little Girl

MASTERLIST

This was an anon request of a fic where the reader is Rossi’s daughter and is dating Spencer. Oh man, I loved writing this cause it was so much fun writing not only sassy Rossi, but overly protective Rossi. I think the gif goes perfectly with this too. Enjoy!

Spencer Reid/Reader

Rating: G (fluff)

Word Count: 2,538

At the age of 60 years old, David Rossi was still very active in the BAU. After all he’d seen in his 40 years in the FBI, suspicious had become his middle name.

That’s how he knew—how he sensed—something was up.

He knew who to go to when he needed information, which is why he was heading down the hallway, opening up the door into the familiar lair of his good friend and colleague, Penelope Garcia.

“Garcia, I need you to do a deep dive.”

•

Your hands were full causing you to struggle to open the glass doors to the Behavioral Analysis Unit. You had almost gotten it open, but it had swung shut before you had even taken a step forward.

“Here, let me help you.”

A large hand appeared on the door handle, opening the door for you. You looked up into the handsome face of Dr. Spencer Reid and tried to refrain from blushing.

“Thank you, Dr. Reid,” you thanked, walking in ahead of him.

He went off in a different direction than you as you headed to your father’s office. 

He greeted you just about as he usually did.

“What are you doing here?”

“Always great to see you too, dad,” you chuckled, holding up the take out cup in your left hand.

“I brought you coffee.”

“I can get coffee around here.”

David Rossi eyed you suspiciously. You may be his own flesh and blood but you weren’t an exception to his natural suspicious nature. In fact, it probably made you even more susceptible to it.

“Yes, but why torture yourself?”

You sat the cup on his desk.

“Besides, I brought you and the team some cupcakes and other little treats,” you motioned to the box, “New item I’m testing out.”

Your father might’ve been the best cook in your Italian family, but you had taken the title of best baker. You owned your own bakery in D.C. that specialized in Italian treats that you’d grown up loving yourself. There were recipes from both sides of your family, recipes that had been passed down for generations and recipes that you’d created yourself that were staple desserts in your shop. You also even sold homemade cupcakes and cakes. 

He peered at the box.

“Prentiss said she wants to adopt you. Especially after the last box of sweets you brought in.”

“Hey, I’m always up for more than one mother.”

Your mother had been wonderful, but you had unfortunately lost her not long after your high school graduation. It had been nearly ten years since her passing and you still missed her daily. Growing closer to your father had really helped your grieving though; he was like your anchor in such hard times.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Dad, can’t I come visit you without you asking me a million questions?”

He chuckled, standing up to hug you.

“I’m just asking.”

“Well, I’m the owner of the bakery so I make my own hours. Meaning that I can come visit whenever I want to. Plus I’ve hired more help recently that allows me to spend time elsewhere other than the bakery. They’re doing fine without me there,” you smiled.

“Besides, you always said that when your passion feels like it’s taking too much out of you that’s when you need to take a step back. I was getting burned out and was losing motivation to bake. Now that I’m not constantly working at the bakery, I’m more inspired to create new things and bring them for your team to try.”

You shook the box gently in your hands at your last words as if to emphasize them.

“I’ll let you get back to work though. I’ll go distribute these and get out of your way.”

“I’ll see you for dinner though, right?” he asked.

“6 o’clock sharp, wouldn’t miss it.”

You smiled, turning and heading back into the bullpen. When you were sure he wasn’t looking, you left the cupcakes on a desk, taking a sharp left towards the exit.

You walked down the hall, where you knew a supplies closet was located. You slipped in, seeing him already there waiting for you, leaning against a stack of boxes filled with who knows what.

“Hey,” you smiled.

Spencer Reid looked up at you and broke into an award winning smile, crossing the short distance to you and taking your face into his hands to kiss you.

“Hey yourself,” he grinned after the kiss.

“I missed you. Things must’ve been busy cause you haven’t called.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he frowned, “Every time I had a moment to call you, Dave- uh your dad was around.”

“Ah, I understand. You can’t get anything by him. You could pretend you were talking to the President and I’m sure he’d somehow figure out it’s me.”

Your hands roam his chest, tugging on his tie gently as you lean up to kiss him again.

You and Spencer had been dating for approximately four months. But, it was hard to do as you were hiding this small bit of information from your dad.

“I don’t like keeping this from him,” Spencer frowned, stroking your cheek with his thumb.

“I know. But I figured it would save the drama of him freaking out.”

“But I’ve worked with him for ten years now. You were practically still a baby when he came back to the BAU,” he chuckled.

You grimaced.

“That’s another reason why. He won’t hesitate to point out the age difference.”

“Oh come on, give him a little credit. I’m sure he’s not that bad,” Spencer mused.

“Are we still talking about the same David Rossi here?”

“He loves you Y/N and he obviously loves me,” he smirked.

“Who couldn’t love that bella faccia?” you grinned.

“I love it when you speak Italian to me,” he mumbled, kissing you again.

Needless to say, very few words were spoken for the next little while.

•

“So I got the information on that deep dive you wanted me to do, sir,” Garcia said, approaching Rossi.

“And?”

“And I don’t see why you can’t just talk to Y/N instead of me snooping on her,” Garcia huffed.

“Your findings, Garcia?”

She sighed and handed over her iPad, showing GPS findings she had on his daughter.

It confirmed what he had suspected the entire time.

•

You had gotten lost in Spencer’s kisses, losing time as well. 

The two of you were so busy that you didn’t even hear the door open or anyone come in. It wasn’t until you heard the familiar voice of your father that you jerked away from Spencer.

“Huh. I came in here for more printer paper and found something else instead.”

“I just refilled the printer this morning,” Spencer said, looking confused.

“So you did,” Rossi said, his gaze hard on you.

“Dad, you weren’t in here for more office supplies,” you crossed your arms, your anger outweighing your previous embarrassment.

“Can I talk to you Y/N?” his eyes flicked to Spencer, “Alone, please.”

You followed him, feeling like a puppy with your tail between your legs. You glanced backwards at Spencer and mouthed your apology at him. He looked as nervous as you felt.

Rossi didn’t say a word until you both were in his office, the door shut firmly behind him.

“So how long have you been dating Reid?” he asked, sitting in his chair, locking his fingers together over his stomach as he looked up at you.

“Four months,” you winced, “How long have you known?”

“I’ve suspected it for a while, but my suspicions were confirmed when I had Garcia check the GPS history on your phone. It seemed to ping a lot at the kid’s apartment.”

“Dad! That’s an invasion of my privacy! You couldn’t have asked me?”

“You couldn’t have told me?” he shot back.

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this.”

You crossed your arms, feeling very much defensive.

“Y/N, he’s 39. You’re 26.”

“So? I’m an adult, dad! Not a little kid. Besides you and mom were seven years apart.”

“Yes, but seven is different than thirteen years,” he pointed out, “You’re not sleeping with him are you?”

“Oh my god,” you groaned, “I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”

“Well I don’t want him getting you pregnant, Y/N,” he fought back.

“What part did you miss that I’m twenty-six? Besides you want grandchildren!”

“No grandkids until you’re 30,” he deadpanned.

“I can’t believe you’re acting like this, dad. I thought you loved Spencer!”

“I do. I just don’t love him dating my daughter.”

Your raised voices were attracting attention so you tried to swallow the rest of your angry words.

“I’ll see you tonight at dinner. Maybe by then you can stop treating me like a child.”

You spun on your heel, marching out of his office and the BAU.

•

Dinner was pretty miserable.

You had had time to cool down and now you just felt exhausted. You didn’t know what to say to your dad to change his mind. You really liked Spencer and you didn’t want something like your father’s approval to ruin your relationship. At the same time though, your father’s opinion meant a lot to you.

You had sat and picked at your salad and now you were barely touching the steak you’d ordered.

“Dad-”

“Y/N, I-”

You both chuckled, realizing that you’d both tried to talk at once.

“You first,” he said.

“I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I didn’t mean to have a tantrum like a little kid. That wasn’t very mature of me. Especially since you were at work and I’m sorry. I just really like Spencer and I didn’t and don’t know what to say to make you feel better about the situation.”

“No, you had every right to be mad,” he admitted, reaching across to take your hand.

You smiled at him. No matter how much you’d argued throughout your childhood and teenage years, even up until now, nothing would make you love him any less.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to date Spencer. I love the kid, really I do, I was just worried for you.”

“Worried?” 

Your brows furrowed in confusion.

“Worried, why?”

“Well you may not remember much about it the first time since I retired from the FBI when you were only six. But I know you remember what it was like when I went back ten years later. I always ended up missing your extracurricular activities, I was hardly around, we didn’t spend much time together. It was all because of this job which can be extremely demanding.”

“I don’t follow,” you said, frowning at him.

“I was just worried that with you dating Spencer it would be the same thing, but just in a relationship. Him having to cancel dates or not be able to spend time with you. I know it hurt your mom a lot. That’s why we ended up getting divorced because it was such a strain on our relationship. It’s a dangerous job. It takes a toll on the person’s significant other, Y/N.”

“I know,” you nodded, appreciating his concern, “We’re taking things slow though.”

“Didn’t look so slow when I walked in on you two in the supply closet,” he muttered.

“Dad,” you groaned, exasperated.

“What I meant is that we’re taking time to get to know each other. I didn’t want to put pressure on him for a big commitment especially since I knew he has a grueling job. So far, it’s been working out. I’ve learned a lot about him and I really do like him. He’s really sweet, thoughtful and cares so much about others. In fact, he’s been wanting to tell you this whole time and it had him stressed out about keeping it secret from you.”

“Sounds like him,” Rossi chuckled, “I have to admit though. If you had to date anyone in this world, I’m glad it’s Spence.”

“Really?” you asked, your heart warming at the unexpected fatherly affection.

“Yes. He’s smart and he’s a gentleman. Plus he carries two guns, so I know you’re always safe with him.”

You beamed, taking a sip of your drink.

“You really mean that?”

“I do. And if it means anything to you, you have my approval.”

It meant the world to you.

•

You and your dad walked off the elevator in front of the BAU, laughing at a story you’d just told.

He told you he had to pick up a few files to take home with him and you said you were happy to join him, just so you could spend a little more time together.

You were shocked to see Spencer still at his desk, working.

“What are you doing here Spencer? It’s almost 8.”

He looked up, seeing you and Rossi and immediately hopped out of his seat.

“I thought I’d get a little work done. But uh, since you’re here do you think I could talk to you? Sir.”

With an amused sidelong glance at you, Rossi agreed.

You watched him walk up to his office with Spencer following behind him.

Of course, being the nosy person you were, you tiptoed after them, simply to listen from the other side of the doorway.

•

“So what did you want to talk about?” Rossi asked, offering Spencer a seat.

“Um well, I wanted to talk to you about Y/N.”

You had to groan. Of course Spencer would do something like this. But it was incredibly sweet, you couldn’t deny that.

“Oh? What about her?”

“Well I wanted to apologize for not telling you about us. She didn’t want to upset you.”

“Go on.”

“I just wanted to say, Rossi, that I have nothing but good intentions with her. I think I’m really falling for her and I would do anything to protect her.”

You smiled, hearing Spencer say that.

“I know you might not approve,” Spencer continued, “But I’ve done nothing but been true to my word and been a trustworthy person for the last ten years and I swear it when I say I’ll take care of her.”

“Spence,” Rossi tried to intervene his rambling, amused, “Spencer!”

Spencer quickly fell silent.

“I believe you. I already talked it out with Y/N at dinner earlier. I told her that if I had to give my little girl away to anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Really?” Spencer smiled big.

You couldn’t wait any longer. You burst into the office with a matching smile on your face.

“Y/N! Were you listening to our conversation?” Rossi reprimanded.

“Yes, I was. I’m nosy. It’s the Italian in me.”

You gave him a hug, thanking him for being such a great dad before you went over and hugged Spencer’s side.

“Just remember no grandkids before 30.”

“Okay, Spence we have four years to fall madly in love, have a wonderful wedding, buy a house and then we’ll start family planning. Sounds good?”

You laugh, seeing your dad give you a wink and a thumbs up. Their replies came at the exact same time.

“Sounds good.”

Tag List: @dreatine​ @reid-187​ @groovyreid​ @reidslibra​ @suvikamahes98blr​ @fuckthealarm​ @whatspunispun​ @iamburdened​ @cindywayne​ @thomasfoockinshelby​ @tinyminy88​ @theitcaramelchick​ @missprettyboy​ @hushlilbabydoll​ @sammy-jo1977​ @theonlyone-meeeee​ @haileymorelikestupid​ @lemonypink​ @multifandommandy​

[bonjour-rainycity]

Odin’s Ward ~ Chapter 1

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Rating: T

Summary: After your mother’s untimely death, your father sees no use for you in Alfheim’s castle. He turns to Odin and Frigga, his longtime friends, and begs them to raise his daughter. This results in what many families yearn for their daughters to have: practically unhindered access to Asgard’s finest resources, as well as the attention of Asgard’s princes. Closer in age and personality, you get along better with Loki, and the two of you become fast friends. As you get older, that friendship grows into something more. Always hanging over your head is the threat of your father calling you back to Alfheim to fulfill the one duty he has for you: entering into a strategic marriage and increasing his own power. Still, you and Loki decide to make the most of the time you have left...however long that may be. 

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor am I making any money from this story. 

A/n: Hello, thank you for stopping by! I originally posted this on ff.net, but now that I’m reading it, I kind of hate it. So I decided to clean it up, rework it a bit, and post it here! Also, all the ages I include here are the Earthly approximates of Aesir ages. Because they live for thousands of years, time passes differently for them. I just went with my approximation of their Earthly ages for my sanity and simplicity’s sake. 

Word count: 2947

Warnings: None

Y/n: 7 // Loki: 9 // Thor: 14

Y/n’s POV

“Come now, girl,” Odin’s pinched voice calls ahead of me. I pick up the skirt of my dress and quicken my pace, hoping not to displease him further. The high walls of the castle are imposing enough—I don’t need the added stress of an angry king. Odin continues. “This is Idsol. She will show you to your room and serve as your nanny until you are old enough to require a maidservant.”

He says nothing more. Taking that as a dismissal, I curtsey and murmur a, “thank you, Your Majesty,” to the king.

Idsol, an older, severe-looking woman with a slicked back bun, beckons to me, and I follow her to the doors of my new chambers. When she speaks, her voice is rough, though her phrasing is elegant. It is clear she’s grown up in the influence of Court. “Here, let us get you changed into something fresh.” She leads me into a generously sized room and takes me straight to the wardrobe on the far-right wall. I don’t even have time to assess my new dwellings, because Idsol is pulling the fabric of my dress over my head and shoving me into a new one made of a soft blue color.

“Dinner begins at seven o’clock. I will come to retrieve you and escort you to dinner. During dinner, you will take your seat quietly and not speak unless spoken to. Understand?”

She waits for my nod before continuing. “Keep your head down and your elbows off the table. You don’t want to make a bad first impression, do you?”

I shake my head ‘no’, but in reality, I can’t find the energy to care. It’s been a long, exhausting day, and there’s still nearly half of it left. “Good.” Idsol approves. “Stay here in your chambers until I come to collect you.”

She leaves and I stare blankly at the door, not feeling much at all. Lacking the willpower necessary to climb onto the huge bed, I sit on the cold stone floor and pull my tiny doll—Elsa—into my arms. It’s then that the tears hit me. I rock myself back and forth, clutching the doll that looks so much like my mother, searching for a comfort that is unlikely to be found.

“Mama…” The name echoes off the stone walls.

{***}

When my room becomes dark due to the absence of sun streaming through the windows, Nanny Idsol finds me curled into a ball on the floor, still gripping my doll. Tears stain my face, but I ran out of new ones long ago.

“Oh, now,” Nanny Idsol chastises, pulling me off the ground and setting me on the plush bed. She disappears, returning moments later with a washrag, which she uses to wipe my face clean. She quickly styles my hair into a presentable braid, then picks me up and places me on the ground. “Time for dinner.” She plucks Elsa from my hands, earning a noise of protest from me, which she quickly silences with a look.

I follow her dejectedly to the eating hall. She pushes me in, then abandons me. I file into what I hope is my seat. As the King’s Ward, I know I’m invited to dine with the Royal Family, but I do not feel lucky, as many would. I just feel sad.

King Odin enters and I stand, well aware of protocol even in my current state. As soon as he sits, I make a move to take my seat again, but am stopped by a warm hand gripping my elbow.

Gulping in surprise, I raise my head to see who is touching me. The boy stopping me is tall with wavy blonde hair reaching to his chin. Most likely one of Odin’s sons.

“My Lady, I’m afraid that this is my seat.”

“I-I…”I try to speak, but all that comes out is air. Panicked, I look at the ground.

The boy sighs and uses his grip on my elbow to pull me to the middle of the table. The King’s seat.

“Father, who is this and where does she sit?” Annoyance colors the boy’s voice. If I had to guess, I’d say this one is Prince Thor. I’d heard he’s the eldest of the two.

Odin looks up and seems surprised by my presence. “Ah, I almost forgot.” He stands, evidently preparing to make an announcement. I take a few steps back, hoping to hide behind Prince Thor’s height. It doesn’t work.

“Lords and Ladies of Asgard.” The Court snaps to attention. “It is my…pleasure,” he seems to stumble over the word, “to present to you Y/n Y/L/N. After the tragic death of her mother, my family has agreed to take her in and raise her in her family’s stead.”

Prince Thor rolls his eyes and pushes me forward so the people in the eating hall can get a better look at me. I feel my cheeks heat up as I look down at the sixty-or-so gods and goddesses in the room. They applaud, evidently pleased with Odin’s charity. He smiles and waves before taking his seat a few moments later. The matter of my seat, however, has yet to be resolved.

“Mother?” Prince Thor’s voice is now positively whining.

Queen Frigga looks up at us and assesses the situation. A kind smile crosses her face, and I feel a twinge in my heart. “Sit here, child.” She points to a seat at the far left end of the table next to a boy a few years older than me who had previously gone unnoticed. He’s likely Prince Loki, the youngest.

I shuffle to my seat and wait to be served.

The boy gives me a couple of curious glances but doesn’t say anything until dessert, when he confirms my hunch. “I’m Prince Loki.”

I look up to meet his kind green eyes. “Y/n.” He nods, and that’s the end of it.

After dinner, Nanny Idsol comes to escort me back to my room. As she changes me for bed, she feels the need to talk. “Did you enjoy dinner, Young Mistress?”

I shrug. I don’t remember the taste of anything. Nanny Idsol’s mouth sets into a frustrated line, but she says nothing further. She puts me into bed and leaves me to my tearful night.

{***}

The next three days drag by. I spend every moment I can in my room, but I am still forced to attend dinner. My spot continues to be next to Prince Loki, who never ceases his curious glances but rarely says more to me than, “please pass the butter”. No one else acknowledges my presence.

On the fourth day of my self-imposed isolation, there’s a knock at my door. I open it to see Queen Frigga standing there with a soft smile on her face. My eyes widen and I quickly curtsy. “Good morning, Your Majesty.”

She clasps her hands together, her grace and expensive dress causing her to appear statuesque. When she speaks, it’s with the grace and elegance only obtained through royal blood and years of quality instruction. “Good morning, Lady Y/n. How are you today?”

My mouth goes dry. This is the most intense conversation I’ve had since I departed from Alfheim. “Q-quite well, Your Majesty. And yourself?”

An amused smile floats across her face. “I’ve nothing to complain about. Tell me, young one, why do you keep yourself locked in your chambers?” She bends slightly so she’s closer to my height, but I am still intimidated. It’s not everyday the Queen personally visits the young daughter of a diplomat.

I don’t risk lying to her. “I miss my home, Your Majesty.” She raises an eyebrow, expecting me to elaborate. I oblige. “I miss my friends, and my tutors, and my horses. I miss the music and the sunsets. I miss…” My voice trails off and my eyes find a spot on the floor. I just want to go back to bed.

But the Queen is not done with me, and probes further. “You miss…?”

I sigh, realizing I cannot avoid the words it will hurt to confront. “I miss my mother.”

Queen Frigga’s face turns into one colored with pity and sadness, and something in my stomach clenches. “Young Y/n, your mother is now in Vanaheim, a place lovelier than any other. It is our burden to miss the ones that are gone, but we should also celebrate their fortune. She is happy, I can promise you that. And she watches over you still; she cares for you and sends her love to you.”

My eyes fill with tears. I bite my lip in a desperate attempt to keep them from spilling over.

The Queen continues. “Although I did not know your mother well, I am a mother myself. And, as a mother, I can guess that it would sadden her to see you sequestered into your chambers all these hours. Come, let us get you freshened up. You shall please your mother by playing with the other children.”

I sniffle and follow her to my wardrobe. The impropriety of the situation manages to strike me. “Your Majesty, I can call for Nanny Idsol—”

“Do not trouble yourself,” she interrupts, ending my attempts at protesting. “I know how to dress a young lady, as I once was one…long, long ago.” She throws an impish smile over her shoulder, one I’m sure she does not show often. I feel honored, and a hesitant smile begins on my face. She finds a dress that catches her eye. “How about this? Lilac would look lovely with your hair.” I blush and thank the Queen.

Soon, I’m wearing a new dress and my hair is done in a braid wrapping around my head.

Queen Frigga says nothing of the doll in my arms and beckons me to follow her into the hallway. There, we find a scandalized Nanny Idsol.

“Y-Your Majesty, please. Let me escort Lady Y/n. You must have—”

Queen Frigga cuts my nanny off with a raised hand. “Thank you for your offer, Nanny Idsol, but I’m sure I can manage. In the future, however, please remember that a good caretaker does not ignore the needs of her ward.”

“Y-yes, my Queen. Sorry, my Queen.”

Queen Frigga offers a kind yet firm smile, and I’m filled with admiration. What it must take to exude the perfect balance of authority and benevolence.

We continue on our route, and I get more and more confused as we wind through the labyrinthine halls. It will be quite some time before I will be ready to accurately navigate Castle Asgard alone.

We come to a double set of large oak doors, and the guards posted outside straighten before opening them wide. Cool air hits my face.

The room is a large, circular shape, and the center is slightly lowered than the rest. Mostly decorated in browns and golds, the room has an earthy feel to it. A window opposite the doors allows for some natural light, but the room is largely lit by light spheres and torches. I raise my eyebrows appreciatively. This room could be quite peaceful.

“Mother!”

Any hope of peace is quickly erased by the sight and sound of the two Asgardian princes.

“Thor, Loki.” The Queen uses their names as a fond greeting. “Spend some time with Lady Y/n; help her to feel more at home.” Both boys nod dutifully, but I can tell Prince Thor is a little annoyed at his task of entertaining a young girl. I restrain a huff of indignation. If only he knew how content I would be in my own chambers.

Still, I retain my respectful attitude. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” I curtsy as the Queen leaves, then turn to my face my playmates, curtsying to them both as well.

“Your Highnesses, I am sorry to disrupt your time of leisure.” They both stare at me blankly, as if they’re unsure what to do with me.

Finally, Prince Thor nods, and I take that as my dismissal. I find a spot on the edge of the room and sit there with my doll. Quickly, Prince Thor and Prince Loki forget my presence and resume their game of war. I busy myself playing with Elsa’s hair, admiring how well the color resembles the one shared by me and my mother. It reflects off the light from the torches, creating a mesmerizing effect. I spend the better part of an hour braiding and re-braiding the hair of my doll.

“Mother said to play with her.” Despite his attempts, Prince Loki’s hushed voice carries to my side of the room.

“No,” his brother’s voice retorts, full of manufactured authority. “Mother said to make her feel at home. She looks pretty at home to me on that edge there.”

Prince Loki huffs, and Prince Thor rolls his eyes. “I did not mean that rudely, just that she does not seem like the type of girl to enjoy being around other people.”

I pretend to not have heard their conversation as the youngest prince stomps over to me, his brother reluctantly following behind him.

Prince Loki stops a few feet from me, raising an eyebrow. “Would you like to join us, My Lady?”

Knowing better than to refuse the request of a prince, I accept. “I would be honored, Your Grace.”

Prince Loki takes it upon himself to explain the rules of the game. “You see, Thor’s the hero, and I’m the villain. My goal is to steal the orb he’s guarding, and Thor’s job is not to let me.” Upon seeing Prince Thor’s pointed stare, Prince Loki quickly adds, “You can be on my team.”

I continue to stand safely out of the way.  “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Ready…go!” Prince Thor’s booming voice begins the game. I study Prince Loki’s movements as he tries to concoct a strategy to get past his brother. Prince Thor is older and stronger, but Prince Loki is clearly smarter. He uses strategy and cunning in his attempts, while Prince Thor relies on brute strength. In the end though, Prince Thor wins by decisively tossing his brother across the room. My eyes widen and I clutch Elsa tighter to my chest, but Prince Loki just laughs good-naturedly and brushes himself off, walking back to join us in the center of the room.

“Lady Y/n, why don’t you take a turn?”

Prince Thor and I are in similar states of disagreement with Loki’s suggestion, yet neither of us argues. Not loosening my grip on my doll, I step forward to face Prince Thor. He’s at least double my height and his arms are the size of my head. I’ve heard tales of his affability, but he could probably crush me on accident alone! Still, I dig my heels into the floor, steeling myself for what’s to come. He lets me make the first move—a small step in his direction—before ending my forward progress; with a grand step, he’s placed himself in front of me. He reaches his meaty arms toward my frame and—

Bam!

He takes a startled step backwards.

It takes a second before the gravity of what I’ve just done hits me. Oh gods. I just punched the future king of Asgard in the face.

Prince Loki howls with laughter, but I am utterly mortified.

“Your Highness, please forgive me. I-I am so sorry! I don’t now why I did that. I-I just…”

Prince Thor glowers.

Prince Loki steps between us. “Oh, come now, brother. You cannot seriously be angry with the girl. You scared her, and she reacted accordingly! Leave her be.” Prince Loki’s defense of me is harmed somewhat by his continued laughter.

Prince Thor’s eyebrows twitch before he excuses himself and stalks off to the other side of the room to do some exercise.

Prince Loki’s giggles subside but the mortified look does not leave my face. Still choking a bit on his laughter, he approaches me. “Lady Y/n, I assure you, you did no harm. I do not mean to offend you, but Thor will not have so much as a bruise on his face, as there was not enough force behind your strike.”

I nod dimly, still in a state of shock. I just punched Thor Odinson. My father will be livid if he ever finds out.

As if he can sense what I’m thinking, Prince Loki softens. “No one will know what has occurred here today. Come sit with me, I think I know of a way to cheer you.”

Doubtfully, I follow him to a set of chairs a few feet away.

“May I borrow your doll?”

I very reluctantly hand him Elsa, my most treasured possession.

Prince Loki wraps his hands around her and closes his eyes, already deep in his concentration. His lips twitch as he mutters something I can’t hear, but when he opens his eyes, Elsa straightens.

I furrow my brows and lean in, confused yet eager to see what will happen next.

Prince Loki sets Elsa on the ground between us and lets go. She begins to dance!

My eyes widen and I can’t help it: I laugh. I laugh and clap in delight until Prince Loki joins me. Our laughter even draws Prince Thor in, and the sight of my dancing doll draws a hesitant smile to his face. This is how Queen Frigga finds us when she comes to summon us to dinner, and I can’t help but notice the happiness behind her eyes.

A/n Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought of it and if you would like to be added to the tag list :) 

Link to next part: https://bonjour-rainycity.tumblr.com/post/629970408715763712/odins-ward-chapter-2

Tag list: @80strashbag @dark-night-sky-99

[seducing-a-vampire]

Day 24: Song

@carryon-countdown​

In my defense, I have none For digging up the grave another time But it would've been fun If you would've been the one

--The 1, Taylor Swift

Agatha reflects her relationship with ex-boyfriend Simon and on breaking free from the roles she's been expected to play.

***A million thanks and blushing frog emojis for @snowybank​ for beta reading!!!***

Rating: T  //  Word Count: 1040

 The 1

I wake up alone.

I mean, I always wake up alone. I’ve never actually spent the entire night sleeping next to another person, unless you count the few times Simon and I fell asleep on separate couches in my living room at home. That was years ago, stuffed full with Christmas cookies, Dr. Who playing softly on the TV as our conversation faded into an easy rest.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like, to lie beside someone like that, to breathe so close to another person for seven or eight hours. Watching their chest rise and fall steadily.

Sometimes, I find it impossible that you could ever get used to that. Would that ever feel completely comfortable—another person next to you, an intruder to the rhythm of your own breathing?

Read the rest on AO3 or under the cut!

I remember watching a movie with Ginger one time soon after we met, a cheesy American rom com. She was giggling at the sex scene, which occurred approximately 0.2 seconds after the meeting of this blandly attractive white couple. (They panted and moaned for a bit, and then fell asleep together, naked. Listen, I’m not a prude, but I can’t imagine ever feeling confident enough to forego my pyjamas at night.)  In between the peals of her laughter, she was telling me about her recent hookup with the barista she’s been seeing.

An image popped unbidden in my mind, then: Ginger, in her little navy pyjamas with yellow moons all over them, curled up next to me in my bed.  I didn’t even know if I actually liked that thought, but it was, well, interesting to think about.

Oughtn’t I have figured this out by now? Figured out myself ? I dated Simon for far too long, I snogged Minty in the park across from our old primary school last time I was home, and I fled to California, the land of possibility and no judgement. Still I feel like I’m trapped in a cage of my own making.

I take up very little space in the expanse of my bed. I can stretch out my whole body, feeling the muscles flex and then relax, pointing my toes down like I used to practice for ballet. My soft white linens (with teeny pink flowers dotted all over) feel cool against my body.

My apartment in San Diego is bright and sunny. I like living alone, and I know I’m being honest when I think that because I don’t have the little tense knot in my stomach that I get when I suppress my true feelings. I pour myself a bowl of cereal and curl up on my couch, scrolling through my notifications on my phone as I eat.

Fourteen unread emails, mostly for school organizations that I signed up for and then never participated in. I delete them.

I open up Instagram, and first up on my feed is a picture Baz posted of Simon. Simon’s wearing my old Watford lacrosse sweatshirt. I can’t believe he still has that. He’s in the middle of talking (probably waxing poetic about scones); his hands are blurry from being caught in motion, and his eyes are soft. I know he must be looking at Baz. The caption is just “My idiot.”

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d see Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch posting almost-mushy things on Instagram, let alone that the object of the almost-mush would be Simon.

A few weeks ago, I FaceTimed Penny, and she said they’re still all heart-eyed for each other. It’s easy to admit that even when things were good between us, Simon and I never really had heart-eyes. I’m happy for them.

Goodness knows Simon deserves some happiness of his own. I always thought I’d be the one standing next to him— or sometimes, I thought I’d have to be the one grieving him. Then I tried to break free from that, break up with him, play a different role. The closest I came to actualizing that was when I first came to California. Now, I feel like I’m tripping over my lines again.

Simon was most of my childhood. Talking to him, going to dances with him, studying with him and Penny, walking around Watford with him, rolling my eyes when my parents fussed over him when he was at home with me for the holidays.

I have this funny feeling, looking at the blue-eyed boy in the picture. My fingers move of their own accord as they tap onto my own page and scroll down to the last picture I posted of Simon and me. It was the winter solstice ball, the year before last. I was wearing a divine dress, cream colored with pearls covering the bodice.

My mother and I got into a row the night before over my hair. I wanted to leave it down— straight, elegant, simple. But she insisted I had to do something more elaborate. In the end it turned out rather fine. The entire evening of the ball Simon looked at me as if I were Aphrodite herself. He kissed me that night: chaste, pleasant, perfunctory. Like all of our kisses. It wasn’t bad. It was never bad.

That night, I would’ve bet my wand on Simon and me. We belonged together. We made sense. But in that relationship, I think we were both stunted. Held back.

I tap back to the photo of Simon with his soft eyes, and I know it’s true.  I hadn’t noticed before, but in the bottom of the picture, you can see someone’s long and slender hand resting on Simon’s knee.

I look around at my apartment: quiet, peaceful, especially in the mornings. There are palm trees bending gently in the wind outside my window, and the sliding door next to my couch leads me to a small balcony from which I can see the bright blue of the ocean. A different ocean than the one I spent my summers visiting as a child. But even fuller with possibility.

It might’ve been easier if Simon had been the one. But he’s not. And I’m not that to him, and I don’t want to be. I suppose I’ve got to keep figuring out what I am to myself.

[devildaddies]

Are you aware of Greek and Roman mythologies? If so then can u make an angst of mc being turned into stone by a Medusa after the exchange program... In front of the brothers? One of them is her lover so what would they react?

sure!! sorry it’s not very angsty:(( also, we chose three brothers only since no one was specified uwu sorry for the long wait!

—

Around the middle of the year, Diavolo announced that there will be two new exchange students from Olympus: Dionysus and Medusa. Dionysus, being the God of drinking and parties, quickly made friends with Asmodeus while Medusa stuck with Simeon quite a lot.

Overall the pair seemed pretty normal, or at least what normal is in Devildom, but for some reason, Medusa always wore sunglasses indoors. One day, you and the seven brothers were walking down the hall and your eyes landed on a pair of sunglasses on the floor. You picked it up and examined it, then looked around the area to find the person who owned it. After a few moments, you spotted Medusa frantically pacing back and forth.

Assuming she was looking for her sunglasses, you approached her and tapped her shoulder, causing her to freeze. “Is this yours?” you asked. With her back facing you, she replied, “Are they sunglasses? If yes, then they are mine.” You, being the curious meddler you always were, were curious about why she always wore sunglasses. Indoors. Maybe her eyes were so beautiful that the Avatar of Lust would be jealous.

You gently grabbed her shoulder and forced her to face you. “Can I see your-“ Before you could even finish your sentence, your eyes met with her golden orbs. You were so mesmerized by them that you were frozen still and couldn’t move an inch. No, you were turned to stone.

Lucifer:

Lucifer wasn't one for fits of rage. After all, he believed was far more superior than Satan and would never stoop down to his level, but this time he just might. Nope, you cannot kill an exchange student. The exchange student didn't mean to do it; It would be irrational to harm her. Lord Diavolo will be unhappy with you if you kill the exchange student.

Lucifer sighed and forced his brothers into their classrooms while taking particularly long with Mammon because he wouldn't stop crying. He calmed himself and simply told Medusa to return to her classroom while he would handle this. He very carefully and quite easily picked you up in his arms and carried you up to Lord Diavolo’s office.

Now away from the prying eyes of students, he can break his calm facade and show his true emotions: Lucifer began to have a full-blown mental breakdown. Lord Diavolo laughed as he has never seen Lucifer this disheveled and simply told Lucifer to calm down. ”CALM DOWN? CALM DOWN?!?” Lucifer practically shouted at Diavolo before almost immediately apologizing for disrespecting him.

Lord Diavolo put his hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and explained that for centuries, a lot of humans would often sell their souls to demons because their loved one had been turned into stone, and they want them to be turned back. This being a lucrative business opportunity, Lord Diavolo and several other demons have created several methods of turning a human that has been turned to stone back to normal. Lord Diavolo then calls Barbatos on his DDD to come to his office. Barbatos enters and looks at you knowingly. He takes a look at Lucifer and uses all his willpower to stop himself from bursting into laughter as Lucifer looked like he aged a thousand years from the sheer stress of you being turned into stone. Barbatos quickly brought you out of the room as if this wasn't the first time he's done this while Lucifer could only watch you be carried out the door.

A couple of hours have passed since you've been taken away and Lucifer has been pacing back and forth this whole time. Around hour three, Lord Diavolo had to attend to business in the palace and so had to leave Lucifer alone with his thoughts. What if she isn't okay? What if she stays like that forever? Fuck, do I even know how to function without her? His thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door, which was opened by no other person than you.

He quickly stood up and walked towards you as if to hug you but just said: “Oh, you're back, are you alright?” You poked his arm teasingly and said, “Yes, were you worried about me or something?” He quickly responded that he was confident in Lord Diavolo's abilities and so he didn't worry at all. He couldn't admit that he, the Avatar of Pride, who is second in command of the whole Devildom that is feared by all, was so scared of losing you. You looked down and smiled because you knew he was lying. ”Your hair is messy,” you said with a rather smug look on your face. He blushed and looked away, straightening his tie while muttering something about not having enough time to get ready this morning.

Mammon:

“M-M-M-MC!” Mammon was the first one to react. Well, violently react. As soon as he saw the shocked expression plastered on your face with your whole body turned to stone, he screamed so loud that God probably heard him all the way from heaven.

He immediately rushed to your lifeless form and aggressively grabbed your stiff shoulders. He glared at Medusa for a split second before she darted off to someplace else as soon as she caught Mammon’s sharp glare on her. He then returned his attention to your figure, his look softening to that of a needy puppy’s. He cupped your face in his quivering hands and gazed at it, that frozen look on your face leaving a scar on his mind forever. Lucifer approached Mammon and told him to step away from you so that he can bring you to Diavolo, who will return you back to normal.

However, Mammon just furrows his brows at Lucifer and completely envelopes you in a tight embrace. “NO! MC stays with me! AND I WILL KILL THAT SNAKE-HAIRED BITC-“ He declared, but was cut off by Beelzebub forcefully grabbing him by the back of the collar and dragging him back up to his room. Beelzebub sets him down on the floor. Mammon, with his legs sprawled on the floor, crossed his arms and started sulking. Beel hummed in pity. “Don’t worry. Diavolo’s gonna bring her back, you know.” But, he received no response from his older brother.

He was silent—completely silent, which was an extremely unusual situation. The only thing on Mammon’s mind was you, who could end up staying dead, or returning, but who knows what could possibly happen? Right now, all he wanted to do was to reunite with you, feeling the warmth all over your body and hearing your sweet little insults that, secretly, brought music to his ears. He hugged his knees and buried his crying face in them.

Hours of endless sulking have passed, and Mammon finally decided to speak up. “Beel, what if she doesn’t return?” He questioned in a muffled, almost inaudible voice. Beel sighed in relief, knowing that Mammon will not stay dead silent forever. “I know she’ll come back, I feel it.” This response caused Mammon to relax his tense body a bit.

Suddenly, the door swung open, causing Mammon to perk up. He shoots up and hurriedly dashes towards you. He furrowed his brows and bent forward to meet you eye-level. You pushed the middle of his brows back up. “Don’t do that, you’ll get wrinkles.” He blushes and stands straight, placing his hands on his hips. “W-Well, I- Um- You’re back, I guess,” he muttered, trying to seem like he doesn’t care, but you were still able to hear the obvious relief in his tone. You giggled. “You know, even while I was frozen stiff, I was still able to see everything that happened around me-“ you started, gently grabbing his collar and bringing his face closer to yours until your noses were already touching. “-including everything you did and said that openly expressed concern for me.” Mammon widened his eyes, his bottom lip quivered a bit. He grabs your waist and pulls your body close to him, placing his head on top of yours to prevent you from seeing the tears that started rolling down his cheeks. “I…I thought I’d lose you for real… S-Stupid…”

Satan:

”WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST DO-” When Satan saw your motionless form, he stayed true to the fact that he was the Avatar of Wrath and tried to kill Medusa. In fact, it took literally all six of his brothers in their full-demon forms to pin him down, which was rather shocking, as he was only the fourth most powerful.

Simeon came over due to the huge commotion and quickly escorted Medusa away from the blast zone of Satan’s rage. While Satan was trying to free himself and swearing that he will torture and end Medusa, Lucifer took out his DDD and called Diavolo. With Lucifer distracted, Satan was able to release himself from their grasp and got up. "WHERE THE FUCK DID SHE GO? I AM GOING TO-" Satan was quickly restrained again by Lucifer who told Satan to calm himself and that MC will be alright. DID YOU JUST ASK ME, THE GODDAMN AVATAR OF WRATH, TO CALM DOWN?

Although Lucifer's words were meant to relax Satan, it only made him far more infuriated. Every sense of logic, rationale, and intelligence that Satan is known to possess just flew out the window. Barbatos arrived at the scene and hauled you away to an unknown location while Satan could only stare. Lucifer and Beelzebub dragged Satan to his room and locked him in while saying that Lord Diavolo will return MC to normal and that Satan will stay here until he calms down. Lucifer put a spell on the door quite similar to the one he used on Belphie's door. Satan used all of his strength to try to get out but couldn't, which of course, only made him angrier. He punched a hole through the wall.

It's been five hours since you've been carried away by Barbatos and Satan is still as mad as he was earlier, or perhaps even more so. There are now approximately 31 holes in Satan's wall, 4 ripped pillows and one destroyed book (which was an accident because he would never hurt a book intentionally). Satan was lying on his bed, still seething, staring up at his ceiling.

Scaphism? No. Electric Chair? Nope. Crucifixion? No. Brazen Bull? Perhaps. Medusa will be made into an example that if anyone dares hurt MC, consequences will not be lenient and- Satan's thoughts were cut off by three knocks on his door. Satan got up and walked towards the door, irritated that he had to leave his thoughts on how he should torture Medusa. At the door, his thoughts were racing on who could it be. I swear if that is fucking Lucifer coming in to give me a lecture on making a scene, I am going to- the door opened and it was you.

You are holding a tray of tea-his favorite blend of black tea- because, on your way up to his room, you heard the breaking of plaster walls, so you decided to take a detour and make him some tea. When Satan saw you, he immediately calmed down and smiled at you. You entered his room and immediately saw the destruction and chuckled a little. You looked at him who is now as red as a beet. "Okay, so I may have uhm, gotten a little angry," he says embarrassed and not looking into your eyes. You give him a peck on the cheek and pour him a cup of tea.

[welllpthisishappening]

One Foot In (1/7)

The facts were these.

Killian Jones was dead. This much Emma knew, standing in the middle of the funeral parlor staring at him. What she didn’t know was why. Or how. Or what she would do when she touched him.

Because Emma Swan had a gift. Touch a dead thing once, bring it back to life. Touch it again, dead forever.

And the last thing Emma could do was bring Killian back to life, talk to him for the first time in years, only to watch him die all over again. Not when she’d spent the better part of those same years being in love with him.

-----

Rating: Teen, but with eventually kissing and magic-type magic Word Count: 9.3K this chapter.  AN: Approximately two years ago, seriously, I got a message asking if I would ever be interested in writing a Pushing Daises AU. I was! So I wrote a little blurb and some more very nice people were like this is good, you should write more. I did. And then did...nothing with it. Until now. I’ve been hoarding this for long enough and I’m actually pretty proud of it and it’s got a whole bunch of some of my favorite things. There will be a lot of banter and more kissing than you probably expect if you’ve seen the show, and a lot of magic and magical explanations. If I have any talent writing banter it comes directly from watching Pushing Daisies, so hopefully I’ve done them well here. Also shoutout to @distant-rose​ for the Fathership.

Updates every Wednesday going forward, and if you’d like to be tagged let me know: @shireness-says​ @optomisticgirl​ @nikkiemms, @teamhook, @dayo488​, @greymeetsblue​, @jennjenn615​, @heavenlyjoycastle​, @klynn-stormz​, @superchocovian​, @onepunintendid​, @jonesfandomfanatic​, @lfh1226-linda​

|| Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll ||

-----

Emma Swan is nine years, six months, twelve days and, approximately, fifteen hours old when she realizes she is hopelessly, painfully, deliriously in love. 

It’s not a particularly pleasant feeling. 

Mostly because it happens suddenly, without much prompting and the object of her affection is currently spraying her in the face with the hose in his front yard. 

She yelps, water catching on her eyelashes and strands of her hair, but he just grins at her, taking a step forward to make sure her clothes are drenched through. Ingrid is going to kill both of them. Emma can almost hear Liam laughing somewhere. 

This, of course, is why she’s so frustrated by her sudden realization. 

Emma has been standing on the Jones’ front lawn for as long as she can remember – directly opposite of her own front lawn and close enough that Ingrid can still yell for her to come home when dinner is ready. Or when there’s pie. There’s almost always pie. 

Emma’s friendship with Killian Jones is not much more than happenstance and convenience. He lives across the street, with his brother in a great, big house with stained glass windows that paint the inside of the living room different colors when the sun sets. They met by mistake, Emma drawing with chalk at the end of the driveway and he was watering the lawn and dared to disturb her masterpiece. 

She threw chalk at him. 

It went from there. They talked and yelled and Emma may have stomped her foot more than once regarding the destroyed drawings, but Killian picks up the broken pieces of chalk and offers her one and they come up with a rather stunning visual of a futuristic outer space world with some kind of monorail system. The engineering is very impressive. 

And they don’t ever really stop. They dart back and forth across the street for years, afternoons spent constructing spaceships out of cardboard boxes Liam brought home from work and evenings in the kitchen with Ingrid while she lets them test a new flavor of pie she’s experimenting with. They watch movies and celebrate birthdays and there’s a secret handshake because of course there’s a secret handshake, and Emma tells Killian she sometimes wonders what happened to her real parents and Killian tells Emma he’s scared Liam is going to disappear like his dad did. 

She shouldn’t love him. 

And yet, at nine years, six months, twelve days and, approximately, fifteen hours old, Killian Jones is quite possibly the most important person in Emma’s life. 

Except Ingrid. Because she makes all that pie. 

Killian is quiet – at least at first, soft-spoken words, but with a certainty that rings of clarity and confidence and it hadn’t taken long for him to grow a little bolder with Emma around. He laughs easier as the years go on, smile wide and, usually, only for her. His hair is almost always too long, dark strands that drift dangerously close to his eyebrows and a gaze that Emma also seems to covet. 

She doesn’t realize that yet, because she’s nine and she doesn’t know what covet means, but, eventually, it will all make sense. 

And eventually, she will regret not telling Killian Jones that he’s her best friend and she’s absolutely, positively in love with him. 

But Emma is nine and she believes she’s got the rest of her life and the rest of Killian’s life and she hasn’t allowed a little thing like death to even begin to enter the back corners of her mind. 

That will change soon. 

“Killian Jones, I am going to murder you,” she shouts, lunging forward. He laughs even louder when her feet skid on the slick grass, a flash of blue eyes and that smile that, even then, Emma considers hers and hers alone. 

“That’s not very nice, Swan. You’re the one who got in the way of all my work.” “Your work?” He nods seriously, as if he’s not directing the hose directly at her feet now and she’s going to have to throw these jeans away. They’ll never dry. “Did you not see that list of chores Liam left? Making sure the lawn wasn’t dry was one of them.” “It’s a lawn, how dry can it be?” “I didn’t ask.” “Didn’t you want to know?”

“Maybe,” Killian admits, flicking his wrist up to move the water so it hits Emma’s stomach and she gasps when some of the air gets knocked out of her. “But you came over here.” “And?” “And what? You’re here aren’t you?”

It’s impossible for Emma to realize what exactly that question means in the moment, but she’s also just realized she’s in love with Killian, so her heart does a fairly good job of attempting to beat its way out of her chest. 

He drops the hose. 

“You could have told me you had stuff to do.”

“But you were here,” he says again, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. It kind of is. She can’t remember a single time he told her to leave. 

Even when she was the new kid in school –  after she and Ingrid first moved to Storybrooke and Emma heard the whispers because she didn’t have real parents and no mom to make her lunch, but Killian just bumped his shoulder against hers and flashed her half a smile. He held her hand when they walked into school. 

Killian never cared about cooties. 

Or anything except Emma. 

“Yeah,” Emma mumbles. She digs her toes into the mud under her, the soft squelch of it almost matching up with the erratic rhythm of her pulse. “Well…”

He practically beams. 

And Emma isn’t sure what’s going to happen next because she’s never encountered a moment quite like this, but she can hear Liam’s footsteps and grumblings about the state of the lawn and— “Killian, if you’re just going to stand around all day...” he starts, but his eyes dart towards Emma as soon as she moves her foot again and the look on his face is unreadable. Particularly to a nine-year-old coming to terms with the idea of first love. “Oh,” Liam says. “Hey, Emma, I didn’t know you were here.” She shrugs. “I was going to ride my bike, but then Killian thought he was funny.” Liam’s expression changes again, more emotions Emma is not nearly old enough to understand or deal with, but it will, eventually, be that kind of day. At the moment, however, it’s sunny and there are a few clouds in the sky. The perfect day to race down the hill on the other side of town.

“How many times in a row have you beat Killian?” Liam asks knowingly, and Emma laughs before she can continue to consider whatever he’s doing with his face. 

“Forty seven.” “Oh, that’s not true, at all,” Killian shouts, ducking down to grab the hose again. Liam’s quicker than him, though grabbing him around the waist and pinning him against his chest. “God, Liam, let go of me!”

“Nah, little brother—” “—Younger brother!” “Semantics.” “Stop trying to show off!”

Emma is still laughing, her sides feeling as if they’ll split from the force of it. Killian scowls at her when she doesn’t come to his immediate aid, but her eyes dart back towards Liam. He nods. And it only takes a few moments for Killian to realize what’s going to happen, more flailing limbs and shouted protests. 

“Swan, Swan, Swan,” he chants, a nickname that isn’t really a nickname, but might be his in the way the smile is hers and Emma shakes her head when she grabs the water hose. “Don’t do that, that’s not even fair!” “I know it’s not,” she says. “But you were being a great, big giant jerk before and Ingrid’s going to be mad my jeans are all muddy.” “You should have dodged better then!” “Ah, c’mon now, little brother,” Liam chastises, still holding him around the waist and he’s probably bruised from Killian’s elbows. “That’s not hospitable at all. Emma’s a guest in our front lawn and you went and ruined her whole outfit.” Killian groans, but the sound turns into a yelp as soon as the water hits his feet and he realizes how cold it is. Emma widens her eyes. “Swan is not a guest,” he argues. 

Emma briefly wonders if her eyes can actually fall out of her face. It feels as if they’re about to, that particular proclamation ricocheting around her brain and her subconscious until she’s certain it’s the only words she’ll ever hear again. 

Killian blinks when Emma doesn’t say anything – or move the hose away from his feet. “You haven’t beaten me down the hill forty-seven times,” he mutters. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

She sticks her tongue out at him. 

And sprays him directly in the chest. 

There’s no way to really avoid Liam in this, but he doesn’t seem to mind, more laughter and tangled limbs, Killian’s hair sticking to his forehead and the shell of his left ear when Emma moves the water again. And for a few seconds Emma thinks she’s winning whatever unspoken battle they’ve staged here, but Killian’s always been a little shifty and and he turns quickly enough that he’s able to sneak out of Liam’s grasp. 

He moves towards her quicker than she’s ready for, tugging the hose out of her hands with an almost triumphant noise. 

“You’ve got to be faster than that, Swan,” Killian grins, waving the hose through the air until it feels as if Emma’s standing in a rainstorm. 

“You are the worst!” “Tell the truth about the hill!” “I am,” Emma yells, sniffling when the water threatens to find its way up her nose. “Oh, my God, I’m going to kill you!” Killian shakes his head, dodging what Emma thought was a particularly well-placed kick at his ankles. “No, you’re not. You like me way too much to kill me.” “That’s not true.” The words feel heavy on her tongue, despite the laughter still clinging to Killian’s voice and Liam’s rather pitiful attempts to get back on his feet after falling in the mud. Emma swallows, desperate to understand what is happening in the pit of her stomach, but Killian doesn’t look away from her. 

He keeps staring and the water keeps running, slowing slightly because they’re probably emptying the Storybrooke reservoir at this point. 

“I don’t know about that, Swan,” Killian says, leaning towards her. Emma gets the distinct impression he doesn’t mean to do that. 

“Liar, liar.” “I’m not the one lying. Forty seven? That’s impossible.” “If you think you’re winning, you should have been keeping better track.”

That catches him by surprise, a quick bark of laughter and water splashing on Emma’s shin when he jerks his hand to the side. “Sorry, sorry,” Killian mumbles when he notices the look on her face. “That one really wasn’t on purpose.” “Yuh huh.” “Swan.” Emma rolls her eyes, the sarcasm obvious in his voice and the half a smile on his face. Liam has finally stood up. “How many times do you think we’ve raced down the hill?” she presses, moving forward to push her finger into his water-soaked shirt. 

That gets him to blink. 

She takes that as another victory. 

“Way more than forty seven,” Killian answers. “And I win most of the time.” Emma stamps her foot – which gives Killian just enough time to wrap his own fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away from him and pinning it against her side and the water is absolutely getting colder when he holds the hose directly above her head. 

“Say it’s not forty seven,” he laughs. Emma shakes her head, pressing her lips together tightly as if she’s refusing to give federal testimony. 

Liam appears to have given up on even trying to salvage the situation. 

“It’s not forty seven, Swan,” Killian continues. “I’ll give you...maybe thirty two, tops.” “Nope.” “Thirty five?” “I have beaten you down that hill forty seven times Killian Jones and that’s only in the last year since I started keeping track.” “You’ve only been keeping track for the last year?” “You never kept track to begin with!” “She’s got a point, little brother,” Liam muses. He’s sitting on the far side of the lawn now, doing something that may actually be pulling weeds and no one could have taken better care of that house than Liam did. 

“Oh, shut up,” Killian grumbles. He snaps his head back towards Emma, mouth twisted and eyes slightly narrowed. “Alright, so you started counting this year. I’ll give you that you’ve won most of the races, but I demand a recount for the rest of the summer.” Emma scoffs. “No way. You’re only mad because you didn’t know you were losing and—” “—And you were playing a game I didn’t know we were playing, Swan. So, either you agree to the terms or we keep up this...whatever we’re doing.” “You being a jerk,” she mumbles, and that time her kick lands on his ankle. Killian lets out a gasp of pain, expression shifting slightly and they’re both drenched, water falling from their clothes and their hair and everything feels slightly heavier than it had a few moments before.

It’s not a feeling that belongs in summer vacation. 

Killian hums, the tips of his ears going red and Emma learned that particular tell when she was seven and he tried to tell Liam he hadn’t gotten in trouble for fighting with that kid on the playground. The kid on the playground had been making fun of Emma’s distinct lack of parents. 

“Forty seven though?” he asks. “Really?” “Really, really,” Emma promises. “But I’m...we could start a new count. If you want.”

“Yeah?” “We’ve got all summer, right?” “And forever,” Killian says with a shrug, another string of words that seems to take up residence in every corner of Emma’s brain and she feels her lips part slightly. It’s her body’s natural reaction to try and keep breathing. 

She’s stopped breathing at some point. 

And someone else is calling her name. 

“Emma Swan,” Ingrid yells, leaning out the front door of the house across the street and the smell of lemon meringue is already obvious. “If you are done destroying all your clothes, then I think it’s time for you to come back over here and eat some lunch!”

Emma’s shoulders sag with the weight of her disappointment – an overreaction in the moment, but eventually it will seem like the most reasonable thing she’s ever done. “Do I have to?” “In twenty-four seconds or less.” “Fine,” Emma sighs. She glances back at Killian before she turns towards home, the smile still on his face and a piece of hair seemingly stuck to his forehead. He waves a dismissive hand through the air at the interruption, as if they do have all the time in the world. 

“I’ve got to help Liam anyway. But, uh...after? We could…” “There’s pie,” Emma finishes sharply. “I mean...it smells like pie? You could come over and then we could go.” “Ok.”

Liam makes a ridiculous noise a few feet away – disbelieving and adult and Emma ignores it because she’s nine and cutting into her twenty-four seconds of travel time across the street. “Emma,” Ingrid calls again. “Now!”

“Right, right, right, I’m coming. But…” She glances at Killian and she’s not sure why she feels like she has to make sure, but it feels important and—

“I’ll see you later, Swan,” he says. “I’m sorry about your jeans.”

“That’s ok.” Ingrid is shaking the screen door now. “Emma!”

“Ok, ok! I’ll see you later.”

Ingrid takes one look at the state of her as soon as she gets across the street, lets out a knowing laugh and mumbles something that sounds a lot like we should just buy new clothes every week under her breath. “Go upstairs and try and get some of the mud out of your toes before you drag it across the entire house, ok?” Emma nods, a blur of water-logged fabric and muddy footprints. She’s in the bathroom when she hears it, only a few moments later and nothing has really changed, but it suddenly feels as if everything has been flipped upside down, and Emma cannot possibly be expected to keep up with all of these emotions. Or sounds. 

It’s a crash — loud and jarring and then absolute, overwhelming silence. 

She freezes, heart sputtering in her chest and it’s impossible to know how she knows, but Emma knows and something is wrong. 

She hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about her jeans, sprinting back down the stairs and skidding into the kitchen and Ingrid is lying on the tiled ground, the pie splayed out around her when she dropped it. 

“Ingrid,” Emma whispers, knowing it’s pointless. She doesn’t know how she knows that either, but that appears to be the theme of the day and the step she takes forward is alarmingly shaky. “Ingrid,” she repeats. “Are you…”

She can’t bring herself to finish that sentence. 

It’s obvious anyway. 

Ingrid is dead. 

Emma exhales, tears in her eyes and disbelief churning in the pit of her stomach where, just a few moments ago, there were butterflies and the certainty that everything was going to be alright forever and ever. 

She tilts her head, as if that will change the scene in front of her and the combined scent of lemon and drying mud is particularly disgusting. 

“Ingrid?” Emma repeats, moving towards her as if there are magnets and supernatural forces involved. There are. It’ll just take a moment for her to realize that. 

Dropping to her knees, she ignores the pain that shoots up both her legs when she lands on the floor and Emma doesn’t ever actually cry. The tears are there, but they don’t spill over onto her cheeks. They stay in her eyes and, possibly, her soul and eventually that will feel like a very large sign. 

With neon lights and sound effects. 

In the moment though, it’s just another thing in an increasingly thing-filled situation and part of her wants to call for Killian. Most of her wants to call for Killian. 

But Emma’s mouth doesn’t appear to be working anymore, breathing a very particular challenge and Ingrid isn’t her mom. Ingrid isn’t even her officially adopted mom yet, that’s a work in progress and Emma’s fairly certain Liam did something that may help and there were suits involved and Killian stayed at their house that day while Ingrid baked something. 

Emma inhales sharply through her nose, Ingrid’s eyes already a little glazed over and staring at absolutely nothing and, if asked, she would have no idea why she does what she does next. Reaching out a finger, she pokes Ingrid in the shoulder, fingertip just barely skimming her skin.

Ingrid blinks, exactly, three times and sits up as normal as ever. 

She’s very clearly breathing. 

Emma might not be. And she’s worried about the state of her eyes again. 

“Did you get mud in here?” Ingrid asks, like that’s an entirely reasonable question and Emma is still frozen. Her mind can’t keep up with the moment or the feelings coursing through her veins, a mix of terror and surprise and happiness, plus whatever she may still be feeling for Killian and she still wishes Killian were in the kitchen with her. “Must have slipped,” Ingrid continues. She shakes her head, clearly unaware of what just happened and Emma is still doing her best to keep breathing. The pain in her side makes it clear it’s not working very well. 

“Emma,” Ingrid says lightly, leaning close enough that Emma jerks away out of instinct. That will eventually prove important. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s wrong, sweetheart?” “Nothing,” Emma mumbles. The word comes out far too quickly though, less a word than just a jumble of syllables and—”I just...heard you fall.” “Because of the mud. Did you not even change your clothes yet?” Emma shakes her head. Her throat feels far too small and far too big, all at the same time. “No, I…” “Well, go back upstairs and make sure you wash behind your ears and—” Ingrid glances around, grabbing a handful of plastic bags and pushing them into Emma’s chest. Her fingers never touch Emma. “Just throw them in here. I think we’ve moved past salvageable on that front. I swear, the messes you and that Jones boy get into should be documented for—”

It annoys Emma that no one will finish their sentences. 

But the timer on the oven dings, wholly unnecessary given the pie that’s still on the kitchen floor and Emma’s annoyance ebbs as soon as she hears the first shout. That’s not the right word. It’s less of a shout and more like absolute and complete anguish. 

Her head snaps towards the open window, the same one that looks directly onto the Jones’ front lawn and she can barely make out the top of Killian’s hair. He’s kneeling on the ground, clearly not worried about the state of his jeans or the mud that’s likely working its way into the fibers, gripping something. 

It takes Emma exactly two seconds, one gasp and three blinks to realize what he’s holding — Liam, dead. 

The tears that land on her cheek feel like brands, hot and emotional and she’s moving before she realizes, dashing around Ingrid and across the street. A car honks at her when she runs in front of it, but Emma doesn’t slow down and Killian’s still yelling and Liam is very obviously dead.

He looks just like Ingrid. 

Or just like Ingrid did before Emma touched her. 

Because Emma touched Ingrid back to life. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Killian stammers, eyes already rimmed red and the shake in his voice seems to rattle down Emma’s spine. “He was there and it was fine and then I...he wasn’t and he just...he fell over and it was…”

He lets out another choked sob, falling towards Emma’s shoulders like those pesky magnets are involved again and the only thought in her head is to hold onto him, like she’s trying to keep him there. Permanently. 

She’s got no idea how long they stay there, and it’s impossible to tell Killian’s tears from the rest of the water in Emma’s shirt. She can hear Ingrid on the phone, quiet and slightly frantic and the ambulance arrives twenty minutes later. 

There’s no explanation. 

It makes no sense. Because Liam Jones was young and healthy and fully capable of keeping his brother pinned to his side so Emma could point the hose directly at his feet. A dead Liam Jones makes no sense.

And Emma doesn’t say much for the rest of the day, just keeps staring ahead and trying to breath, her fingers laced with Killian’s for however many hours it takes for his uncles to show up.

“Killian,” a man yells. He jogs up the front steps of the porch, an oversized coat hanging off his shoulders and something that may be several earrings glittering under the street lights. 

Emma dimly remembers Ingrid tearing through Liam’s paperwork that afternoon, trying to find someone to come watch Killian — and the result is two uncles, one named Nemo and the other Shakespeare, who’d spent most of their lives as part of a traveling acting troupe. They’re eccentric in a way that's fascinating at any time, let alone one that includes a dead Liam Jones, but Killian rushes towards the man who called his name. 

His whole body shakes with the force of his tears. 

And, for the first time since she moved to Storybrooke, Emma feels out of place sitting on that side of the street, not sure she understands the weight of wrong that seems intent on dragging her into the Earth. 

“It’s alright, my boy, it’s alright,” the man continues. He barely pays any attention to Emma when she moves, but the other one, wearing his own ridiculous coat that looks like it came directly from the Navy, casts her a speculative glance. 

She tries to smile. 

She does. But it’s been a seemingly endless day and they never rode their bikes down the hill. 

Emma can’t believe she’s worried about riding her bike down the hill. 

“I think it’s about time you got some rest, huh?” Ingrid asks. She’s standing in the doorframe, apron still tied around her waist from that afternoon, but it doesn’t smell like pie in the house. 

It smells like mud and ending and Emma is tired. That must be it. 

She nods, and for a few minutes it’s normal and almost good and the lingering taste of toothpaste in her mouth as she climbs into bed is almost comforting. But then it’s Ingrid stepping into her room and tugging the blankets up under her chin and the kiss she places on Emma’s forehead will linger for years. 

It’s the last thing she ever does.

Ingrid kisses Emma and her whole body goes taut, eyes getting that same glazed look as she falls directly onto her back. 

Emma doesn’t gasp. 

She blinks, opening her mouth and leaning over the side of the bed like this is one, long practical joke. Ingrid doesn’t move. And Emma has had enough experience with dead bodies in the last twelve hours to realize she’s facing her third. 

Or, well, second. Technically. 

“Ingrid,” Emma whispers, not expecting an answer, but frustrated all the same. She reaches her hand out, pushing and prodding and touching and none of it works. She uses two fingers and three, tries punching Ingrid’s shoulder, but nothing happens. 

Ingrid is dead. 

And Emma runs – directly across the street. 

The Navy man opens the door, a little starling with dark eyes and shaved head, but Emma can feel the tears on her cheeks again, shoulders shaking with the effort of running and figuring out what’s going on and he doesn’t object when she falls towards him. He wraps his arms around her middle and lets her cry. 

The rest is a whirlwind of phone calls and suitcases and arrangements that Emma is not capable of making. The state, however, is more than happy to do just that – a car set to pick her up after the funeral that will bring her to a group home in a different state and promises that everything will be fine, but Emma doesn’t trust much of anything anymore, particularly after Ingrid was alive. Again. 

And then dead. Again. 

None of it makes sense. 

But that’s for a different moment and a different day to understand and in this moment Emma can’t help but keep glancing across the cemetery towards Killian, fidgeting in a suit with splotchy cheeks and shoes she knows don’t fit. 

He nods towards the patch of grass in between the two services, hand stuffed in his pocket. His tie is slightly off center. 

The state had to buy Emma a black dress. 

“You’re leaving,” Killian whispers, not a question, but a statement of fact and Emma’s neck aches when she nods in response. 

“I’ll be back.” “I don’t want you to leave.” “I don’t want to either. I’m...I’m sorry.” Killian tilts his head, confusion settling into the space between his eyebrows. “Why?”

Emma doesn’t have an answer to that. She has suspicions. And she’ll figure them out later, but right then, nine years, six months, fifteen days and, approximately, ten hours old, Emma Swan only has the certainty that she loves Killian Jones more than anything in the world and she doesn’t want to walk away from him. 

So she takes a step forward. 

As first kisses go, it’s probably not the greatest. There are two funerals happening and those suspicions lingering in the back of Emma’s mind make the air around her feel heavy, but she’s only a little certain she won’t ever be back and the rest of the reasons don’t matter. 

She tilts her head up, a quick brush of her lips over Killian’s. He doesn’t pull back, but it’s nothing more than that, until his thumb brushes over the curve of Emma’s cheek, catching a tear on the pad and the smile he gives her when she pulls back echoes in her memories for the next twenty years. 

“Ms. Swan,” a state official says brusquely and it must be time. 

She nods another, still shaky and uncomfortable, but that may just be the state of her lungs and the ability of either one of her legs to hold up her weight. Killian hasn’t moved his thumb. He doesn’t appear to want to. 

“I’m going to see you again,” he says, a promise Emma tries desperately to believe. It doesn’t work, the guilt and the weight in the very center of her is too big and too much and nothing has made sense, so it only makes sense that she doesn’t respond. 

She will, eventually, regret that. 

Because Emma Swan doesn’t ever see Killian Jones again. 

At least not while they’re both alive. 

Emma wakes with a start, glancing around her room like she’ll see several different ghosts spying on her. It feels that way, has for the last three days when she first started having these dreams and really the whole thing can fuck right off. 

It hasn’t happened in years – nightmares about that day and that night and how cold Ingrid looked when the EMTs carried her out of the house, the same ones who’d showed up for Liam. 

The irony of that was not lost on a grown-up Emma. 

Because a grown-up Emma was also a vaguely jaded Emma and she stopped having nightmares about Killian Jones and death years ago. 

Her subconscious does not seem to care. 

Her subconscious seems intent on driving her insane. 

Emma never went back to Storybrooke. She left with that state worker, lips still tingling from a first kiss that in retrospect would have been adorable if there wasn’t so much goddamn death involved, but Emma barely had time to linger on that thought before she was shipped to the first of nearly a dozen group homes and foster homes and less-than-pleasant foster families. 

It went on that way for years nothing permanent and everything disappointing and Emma has kept a fairly wide berth between herself and lingering human contact. Because, well, here’s the thing; Emma Swan is not exactly normal. 

In that she’s decidedly unnormal. 

As unnormal as it is possible to be. 

Because Emma Swan can wake the dead. 

And kill them again. 

It takes Emma three houses and one birthday without anyone acknowledging it is her birthday to grow disillusioned enough that it somehow makes sense to start conducting a few macabre science experiments. She’d always had her suspicions after that night and things that timed up too well to be coincidence and Emma starts with a dead bird she finds on the side of the road. 

It’s gross. 

The whole thing is gross, but she can’t shake this feeling that something is wrong with her, some fundamental issue that makes her unlovable and unfixable and she’s got to do something or she’s positive she’s going to shake herself out of her own skin. 

So she starts with the bird and it flies away and something else falls out of a tree and it might be a raccoon, but Emma’s never seen a raccoon. So, she doesn’t spend too long thinking about it before she runs away. 

And the houses keep coming and the experiments keep being...gross and Emma realizes, when she’s twelve years, ten months, sixteen days and nine hours old, that there are some rules to all of this. 

They’re relatively simple, but they’re unbreakable. 

Touch a dead thing once, it comes back to life. Touch it again, dead, forever. Keep a dead thing alive for more than one minute and something else has to die in its place. 

It’s then that twelve-year-old Emma realizes magic never comes for free. There’s always some kind of price. And she never looks for Killian Jones. 

She never goes back home. 

She moves – house to house and family to family, in name at least, until she ages out of the system and scrapes together enough money waitressing to pay the rent on the shoebox of an apartment she can live in. She moves out of that apartment eventually too. 

The concept of roots kind of freaks Emma out. 

Everything kind of freaks Emma out. 

She assumes it’s because she’s wrong. 

At, like, the most basic level. 

She does a good job of hiding it. Most of the time. She’s grown up and the years have passed, as the years have a tendency to do, and she’d saved up enough from those first few waitressing jobs that it only makes sense to open up her own restaurant and Emma may hate roots, but she’s still kind of a sentimental loser and her restaurant is on the other side of the county from Storybrooke and only serves pie. 

Damn good pie, but only pie. 

It’s kitschy. It kind of balances out all the death in her life. 

Emma shakes her head, still sitting upright in bed and she’d left the TV in the corner of the room the night before. The news is on now, some perfectly coiffed broadcaster talking about a murder victim and reward for any information and Emma mutters a curse under her breath because she knows it’s only a matter of time until—

Her ringtone is loud enough that she’s momentarily concerned about the effect it will have on her wallpaper. 

Ruby is already talking by the time Emma swipes her thumb over the phone screen. 

“Em, Em, Em, Em, where are you? Are you home? Are you at work? Are you on your way to your very short commute from your home to your work?” “Are you breathing?” “No, this is more important than breathing.”

Emma slumps into the small mound of pillows behind her. There is only one thing Ruby would consider more important than breathing – money. 

The story of how Emma Swan meets Ruby Lucas is fraught with miscues and miscreants, but the important thing is that a perp Ruby was chasing over the goddamn top of buildings missed a step and suddenly fell directly into the alley behind Emma’s restaurant. 

Where she was taking the garbage out. 

He died rather instantly. And then...was less dead once he slammed his hand on Emma’s forearm. All of which Ruby saw. 

Emma managed to swat at his head before he took off back down the block, but the damage was done as they say. Not Ruby. Obviously. She claims it was fate and meant to be and, well, it’s much easier for a private investigator to figure out who killed murder victims when she’s got a partner who can wake them up and ask them. 

“What’s the gig?” Emma asks, mostly because sometimes she likes to use the wrong lingo on purpose if only to get Ruby to make that put-upon sigh. It works. 

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.” “Listen, Rubes, I’ve got, just like, a ton of mail order...orders waiting for me, so if this is going to take several thousand years then…” “Did you just call them mail order orders?” “That makes sense.” “Ehhhhh.” “Give me a break, I literally woke up five minutes before you called.” Ruby doesn’t sigh at that. She doesn’t say anything. That’s more concerning. “You just woke up?” she asks, a note of concern in her voice that probably shouldn’t feel as if it affects several of Emma’s internal organs. “Was...more weird dreams?” Emma makes a noncommittal noise – mostly to save face and partly because she’s been incredibly vague with Ruby about the dreams, only mentioning them when her partner pointed out how dead tired she looked during a trip to the morgue earlier this week. Ruby thought she was far funnier than she was. 

“Emma,” Ruby chides, drawing out her name until it feels like a reprimand and punishment. “C’mon, seriously. What are you even dreaming about?” “Nothing.” “Is your eye twitching?” “Excuse me?” “Your eye twitches when you lie,” Ruby says. “Like every single time. It may be your most giving tell, honestly.” “How many tells do you think I have?” “I know you have, at least, five. The eye twitch is the most obvious, but sometimes you play with your hair and you scrunch your nose. Plus that foot bobbing thing and, uh...that’s four, right?” Emma makes another noise, eyes flitting back towards the TV and she can’t shake the feeling she should know something about whatever the story is. “Damn,” Ruby huffs. “I can’t think of the last one. You know what, it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to distract me and it’s not working.” “Did it not?” Emma laughs. 

“No. Kind of. But no. Listen to me, do you want to get paid or not?” “I thought we already talked about all the mail order orders I have. There are just...a questionable number of rotten strawberries in my walk-in.” “It’s weird that you use rotten fruit.” Emma shrugs. And tugs her hair over her shoulder. “Cheaper that way,” she explains, not for the first time. “Plus, it’s not like I’m eating my own pie.” “Can’t have your pie and eat it too?”

“I don’t think that’s the colloquialism you were looking for. And you’re still getting sidetracked. Does this have something to do with the body they’re talking about on the news?”

“If the body on the news is offering a five-figure reward for any information regarding his untimely demise.” Emma doesn’t usually react to Ruby’s blunt viewpoint of the world and its numerous dead bodies, but she can’t suppress the shiver that moves her body when she hears his and something is wrong. 

“His? And did you say five figures?”

Ruby hums, sounding as if she’s already decided what to do with her share. “His. I promise that is the least interesting part. The interesting part is that he was found out by the old quarry on the other side of the county, you know right near the bottom of the—”

“Hill,” Emma finishes. “The bottom of the hill. That’s…” Her vision swims, memories and moments attacking from every angle until she has to glance at her arms to make sure she’s not sporting inexplicable bruises from the past. She’s not. 

Magic only goes so far, it seems. 

“Yeah,” Ruby says, confusion obvious in all four letters. “That’s exactly right. They say it looked pretty bad. Some kind of something gone wrong, but the town isn’t happy about it and they don’t like the limelight and the allusions that they’re a hotbed for murder so I guess the mayor’s offered up a bunch of money and—” “—What was the guy’s name?” “What?” “The guy,” Emma repeats, and her voice scratches on the words. “You said it was a guy right? At the bottom of the hill? In Storybrooke?” Silence. 

There’s silence on the other end of the phone. 

And Emma’s head snaps back towards the TV when they finish their report because services for the deceased are being held tomorrow and— “His name’s, well, it was, I guess, his name was Killian Jones,” Ruby says, and Emma doesn’t really hear the rest of it. 

She barely realizes she’s agreed to any of this until the local news ends, switches over to even crappier daytime programming and Emma has no idea how she gets through the day. She bakes. That’s kind of her thing. 

She bakes and comes up with ridiculous recipes and flavor combinations and the customers are happy and Ruby announces I’ll see you tomorrow when she slams the door closed behind her nearly ten hours after it feels as if the world has ended. 

Killian Jones is dead. 

And Emma can’t seem to catch her breath. 

Ruby’s standing outside her car the next morning, two cups of coffee in her hand and an expectant smile on her face. “Your eye is twitching,” she says conversationally, handing Emma what better be a latte. It’s not. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Sure I don’t. I’m just paid to observe and critique—” “—No one is paying you to critique.” “Whatever,” Ruby shrugs, swinging open the passenger side door of Emma’s car. “Why the face about this place?” “I will tell you it’s less threatening when you rhyme.” Ruby scowls. “That was not intentional and mostly the fault of the limits of the English language. You lived there at one point, didn’t you?”

“Were you looking me up last night?” Emma balks, and her hand is shaking so hard it’s difficult to move the gear shift. 

“Please, don’t insult me like that. I looked you up as soon as I met you.” Emma jerks her head around, only to find Ruby grinning at her like several metaphorical cats. “Then why the third degree?” “There are no degrees here. There’s friendly curiosity, particularly when it comes to the state of your body and your ability to do what we’re going here to do.” “I’m fine.” The lie is honestly almost offensive. Emma made sixteen pies the day before. One had five different kinds of berries in it. She tested a new crust recipe she’s been thinking about for years. 

Literally. Years. 

She’s so stressed out she’s not sure she even shut her eyes the night before. 

And that’s not the right word at all. 

She’s goodman terrified. 

She can’t believe Killian is dead. 

Ruby throws her whole head back when she laughs, the sound filling the entire car and lingering on air molecules. “God, that was horrible,” she mutters. “Ok, let’s try it again. You know this guy?” “Small town.” “Not an answer.” “I knew him.” “In a personal sense?”

“Oh my God, Ruby,” Emma groans, and she can’t slump down in the seat while she’s driving. It’s definitely the most unfortunate thing that’s happened to her all day. She can’t imagine that will stay the same going forward. “I left Storybrooke when I was nine!”

“Yuh huh, yuh huh, yuh huh. Ok. So...what is it, childhood sweetheart?” “You know me better than that.” “I thought I did until I saw the explosion in your kitchen yesterday and now I’m starting to think you and our body were a little—” “—Can we not call him a body,” Emma snaps, knuckles going white when she grips the steering wheel too tight. 

Ruby blinks. “Still sweet on him?”

“I was nine.” “That’s not an answer.” “No,” Emma says, and she doesn’t expect that to hurt nearly as much as it does. That’s insane. This whole thing is insane. She wrote down conversational ideas for her sixty seconds with Killian somewhere around four in the morning. 

Every one was worse than the last. 

“No?” Ruby echoes. “You should tell that to your right arm.” Emma groans, not taking her eyes off the road because she can feel her arm shaking against her side. Her elbow keeps digging into her rib. “This is going to be fine,” Emma mumbles. Ruby does not look convinced. 

That’s probably for the best since Emma can’t control her limbs – or her mind. 

And she might not be nine years old anymore, but she’s fairly certain part of her never really stopped loving Killian Jones and the rest of her never forgot Killian Jones and they don’t hit any traffic on their way to Storybrooke. 

She figures that’s some kind of sign. 

They come up with some excuse for the funeral director – a portly man Emma doesn’t recognize who doesn’t recognize Emma because she hasn’t been in Storybrooke in nearly twenty years – and he directs them towards the viewing parlor. 

The whole thing is sterile and unfeeling and Emma keeps exhaling dramatically. 

“They think he was into some shady stuff you know,” the man says, voice dropping low like he’s sharing secrets with them. Ruby arches an eyebrow. 

“That so?” “Oh yeah, yeah, very messy crime scene. Guess he came out on the short end.” Emma's stomach turns, mouth dropping open. “And no one else was found there? Just Kill—Mr. Jones? He was the only victim?” “You think the police are hiding more dead bodies?” “That’s not what I said.” “What she means,” Ruby says, stepping in between the two of them before Emma can throw the first punch, “is that it seems strange that there would be a sign of struggle and nothing else. No other evidence of other people around?” The funeral director does not look impressed. “That’s not my area,” he shrugs. “All I know is there’s a reward and the mayor’s going crazy trying to keep the cameras out of here and the kid’s uncles are besides themselves.” Emma has to count to ten in her head to make sure her exhale doesn’t fly out of her. Ruby’s gaze flashes her direction. “Right,” she says. “Well, if you don’t mind…”

There are a few more words exchanged – and possibly a few well-placed bills, but Emma ignores all of that, taking in the scene and there’s an actual sign at the far end of the room. 

In Loving Memory of Killian Jones. 

Emma drags her hand over her face, blinking back whatever has suddenly appeared in her eyes and she resolutely refuses to believe they’re tears. 

She can’t believe he’s dead. 

“Em,” Ruby calls. “We’re uh...we’ve only got a couple minutes here.”

Emma nods brusquely, avoiding the slightly accusatory stare of the funeral director and—”What if I did this on my own?” 

“What?” “My own. Just...there’s, you know, years and a familiarity there and he’s...well, it may be weird to wake him up and stun him like that.” Ruby’s eyebrows set several different records for height and movement. “You think we’re going to stun him? And did you say wake him up? He’s not asleep, Em.” “I know, I know, but...just...I think this is for the best.” “Yuh huh.” “You keep saying that.” “That’s because I can’t figure out another string of words to use in this situation. You know you can’t stay in there long.” “I know.” “You’ve got sixty seconds to figure out who killed this guy.”

Emma shivers. And Ruby notices. Always. Perpetually. Infuriatingly. “I know,” Emma says again. “Trust me, it’s...I’ll be in and out and we’ll be collecting money in no time.” “Announce that a little louder.” Emma sighs, Ruby staring at her like she’s taking stock or emotional inventory. It seems to last forever and Emma does her best to keep her breathing even when Ruby leans around her to open the viewing room door. 

“Sixty seconds,” she repeats. “That’s it.” “Aye aye.”

The door sounds impossibly loud when it closes behind Emma, another sound that makes her jump and sigh and she’s an absolute disaster. Or at least she thought she was until she turned and saw the coffin and then it feels a little like melting and a bit like freezing and it’s a strange combination, particularly when she’s also fairly certain her lungs have disappeared entirely. 

She squeezes her eyes closed, desperate for some trace of confidence or courage. It’s disappointing when she can’t find any. 

“C’mon, Swan,” she mumbles, half to herself and half to the person on the other side of the room because that’s exactly what the person on the other side of the room would say to her.

Emma takes a step forward, wobbly at best and petrified at worst, lifting the coffin lid, and her lungs reappear in a miracle of modern science as soon as her eyes land on him. 

“Oh,” Emma breathes, and that’s about all there is to it. 

He’s wearing a suit, hair even longer than it was when he was ten years old. It curls slightly, just behind his ears, and there’s a dusting of scruff on his face. His hand is folded over his chest, only one hand, making his jacket twist slightly and Emma feels as if her throat is closing. 

He’s got an earring in one ear. 

It makes her laugh. 

“Oh my God,” Emma mumbles. “You look like a pirate.”

She closes her eyes again when he doesn’t answer – she refuses to acknowledge why he doesn’t answer, but she’s got a job and justice needs to be served or something. Ruby probably has several dozen new pairs of shoes she’s already preordered. 

Bobbing on her feet as soon as she’s within arms-length of the coffin, Emma shimmies her shoulders, like that will help shake free the nerves clinging to the base of her spine. Her lips feel far too dry, breathing far too erratic, but she’s on limited time and she’s got to touch him. 

She’s got no idea where to touch him. 

She scans his face, trying to find a spot that isn’t too forward or too weird and her eyes land on the scar on his cheek – a souvenir of a race down the hill and faulty brakes and Liam had been white as a sheet when they came home with Emma’s blood-stained sweatshirt pressed against Killian’s cheek. 

“Ok,” she nods, and talking to herself is definitely a sign of impending insanity, but she kind of hopes she’s already gone insane and—

He moves far quicker than she expected. 

Emma’s no more than brushed her fingertips over the curve of his cheek than he’s throwing his arm out in the minimal space between them, his wrist colliding painfully with her stomach. She stumbles backwards, barely keeping her balance and mumbling a string of curses under her breath and when she looks up he’s brandishing a chair at her. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Killian shouts, and Emma does her best to quiet him without taking a rogue chair to the side of her legs. 

“Listen, listen, listen. Do you remember when you were a kid there was a girl who lived across the street from you?” He doesn’t immediately put the chair down. He licks his lips instead. And the tips of his ears go red. “Swan?”

Emma nods, ignoring the lump of everything in the back of her throat at her sound of her own name. “Hi.” “Hi? Did you just say hi? What are you doing here?” “I’m uh...how much do you remember of, like, the last seventy-two hours?” Killian makes a face, an expression that does something particular to Emma’s heart and soul and whatever, tilting his head and his eyes widen when he notices the coffin he just leapt out of. “Oh, shit. Is that…” “Yeah,” Emma says. “So, uh. I don’t have a lot of time here.” “How much time is not a lot of time? God, are you some kind of angel? Is that what’s happening? Because if that’s what’s happening, then that’s a really twisted trick to show me you when I’m dead and—” “—No, no, I’m really here.” She ignores most of that sentence too. She’ll have the rest of her life to linger on what those words, maybe, mean. “But, um, we’re wasting time.” “To?” “Have you tell me who killed you.” Killian blinks – far too quickly to be anything except entirely distracting, and Emma wishes he wouldn’t because she’d really like to see his eyes and she’s almost pleased to realize her memories of his eyes have remained perfect for the last two decades. “Are you a cop?” 

“No, but, Killian, you’re really cutting into your time here. It’s like...twenty seconds now.” “What?” “Killian!” His answering smile is blinding. That’s the only word Emma can come up with. It makes her breath catch and her shoulders sag, as if all the worries and fears and anxieties of the world have disappeared. At least for a moment. 

“It’s really good to see you, Swan,” he says, taking a step towards her and Emma backs up on instinct. That gives him, visible, pause. “I don’t know who killed me.” “What?” “I have no idea who killed me. It was an arrangement and—that’s not important, but I don’t know how it happened. I think I had a dream about some kind of blade but—” He cuts himself off when he twists the wrong way, gritting his teeth when his gaze falls on the blunt end of his left arm. “Holy shit,” Killian mumbles. “That’s...shit did I bleed out somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” Emma admits. “That’s why I’m here.” “To find out why I died?” She nods. “And you’re not an angel?” She shakes her head. “Huh, well I’m sorry to disappoint, Swan, but I’ve got no idea. Does that send me directly to hell or something?” “I’m really not an angel.” Killian hums, rocking towards her and ignoring whatever Emma’s eyes do at that. “So, uh...what happens now? I was dead, wasn’t I?” “Yeah. Um...well, I have to touch you and you’ll be dead again.” “You have to touch me?” “Them’s the rules.” He chuckles, the smile on his face her smile and Emma’s a greedy jerk. She wrings her hands together. That’s probably the fifth tell. “You know,” she mutters. “When I was a kid...I was...you were my first kiss.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” “You were my first kiss too,” Killian says. “And you’ve got to touch me so I die again?” “Please don’t say it like that.” There’s more laughter and they’re definitely in the final seconds and Emma tilts her head up as soon as Killian’s incredibly shiny dress shoes threaten to brush against her flats. “No better way to go out then to go out kissing, huh?” “Oh my God.” “Admit it, Swan, that was funny.” “It was not.” “You’re arguing with a dead man.” She rolls her eyes, but her stomach doesn’t get the memo about jokes and humor and Killian mumbles hey under his breath. “Missed the mark, didn’t I? You don’t…” His ears are still tinged red, a hand reaching behind his back to tug at the hair at the nape of his neck. “It’s not a requirement, Swan. The kissing, I mean. Just felt...symmetrical.” “You were always way better at math than me.” Killian grins. “So?”

And for half a breath, Emma is going to do it. She’s going to kiss him and it’ll be something, in some kind of way that may result in a complete and total mental breakdown, because Killian’s already leaning towards her and she really can’t cope with the cut of that suit, but that seems a little morbid too and Emma pulls her lips back behind her teeth. 

“Ah,” Killian says, a note of disappointment in his voice that does not make sense for a man who’s standing a few feet away from his own coffin. “That’s fine, Swan.”

He’s called her Swan more in the last forty-five seconds than he did in the last forty-five days they saw each other. 

Emma’s not totally convinced he isn’t doing it on purpose. 

“What if...you didn’t have to be dead?” Killian scoffs. “That’d be ideal, honestly. Is that an option?”

The objection sits heavy on Emma’s tongue, the certainty that the rules are the rules and there’s no way to break them, but he’s standing there and smiling at her and she takes a step back before she can consider anything except how much she wants Killian Jones to be alive. 

With her. 

Emma hears the timer on her phone go off. Her sixty seconds are up. And Killian Jones is still alive, smiling at her.

[caiminnent]

please, be golden [kylux, rated T]

PROMPT: worked themselves to exhaustion (@badthingshappenbingo​​​, 12/25) & @kyluxzineproject​

SUMMARY: After Snoke's death, Supreme Leader Ren and General Hux try to keep the First Order from falling apart—each in their own way.

FANDOM: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

TAGS: Bad Things Happen Bingo, First Order Politics (Star Wars), Diplomacy, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Established Relationship, Courting, Idiots in Love, Overworked Armitage Hux, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Stimulants

NOTES: Here is my Kylux Standard Zine work to pair with @mi-caw-ber​‘s amazing art! Find the art here on Tumblr and weep with me.

Below is only a 1.4k of snippet of the fic; because posting 11k on Tumblr in one go is just... no.

11K || ALSO ON AO3

Ren barges in at 0225.

Rather, Ren bangs his massive paw on the door and waits just long enough to make it technically not barging in before the access panel beeps. He storms past the office space without a stray glance in. The refresher door slams closed a moment later.

Well. That answers how it went.

Hux sighs, slumping in his chair. Figures that Ren would choose now to leave his lair. He couldn’t have shown himself when Hux could use his intimidating presence yesterday, of course not. Couldn’t have defended the Order he’s supposed to be leading against that boar Kratkitki at the holo-conference earlier. No, Hux had to face all that, alone—like he always does.

He ought to cite reports to write and turn Ren away—better yet, let him stay. Would serve Ren well to toss and turn alone while Hux sits in the next room, nearby but unreachable. No help at all.

If only.

Double-checking that the documents are synched, he disconnects his datapad and switches off the monitor, leaving the empty cups lying on his desk. It’s going to be a seven-minute shower, if Ren’s eerie silence is any indication; tidying up can wait.

He’s wrong, for once. It’s full ten minutes before Ren steps out of the refresher in a cloud of humidity and honey soap—long enough for Hux to change and leave a clean set out for Ren, for hygiene’s sake. Ren might be fine with wearing the same clothes for a standard week straight; but he’s not coming anywhere near Hux’s bed in them.

At least Ren stopped taking offence at the gesture.

Ren undresses swiftly, not a care for modesty—his or Hux’s. Keeping his eyes on the clothes he’s folding and putting away, “Your quarters come with a ‘fresher attached as well, surely,” Hux says. A nice one, too, what with having been Snoke’s star pupil back in the day. Ren has no reason to keep coming to Hux’s quarters for a shower. “Unless you destroyed yours.”

The bundle of black fabric floating past halts above the hamper.

Hux’s stomach sinks.

A muscle in his cheek twitching, “Ren,” he sighs, the word sour in his mouth. He was jesting, for stars’ sake. They are—he thought they were beyond meaningless destruction by now, that it had become one of those things: things from their shared past that they could gingerly jest about now, to be openly laughed at one day. Isn’t that why they’re doing this? What’s the point of this if it’s not helping Ren keep his head?

Nothing, obviously.

Hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, “I didn’t destroy my refresher,” Ren says, his voice only slightly raspy with disuse instead of the regular post-tantrum hoarseness.

Then again, if Ren had had a tantrum and gone through his quarters, someone would have heard and reported it to Hux, too. His datapad has been mercifully—mercilessly—quiet the entire delta shift.

A twinge of guilt passes through his chest.

“All right,” he says, because sorry doesn’t belong between the two of them. If they started to apologise for every hurtful word and assumption they have ever thrown at each other’s face, they would be here all month.

Not that the word is likely to exist in Ren’s vocabulary.

“I didn’t!” Ren snaps, the corners of his lips turning down at the perceived insult, body growing stiffer in indignation—on the verge of that tantrum, now. The hovering bundle starts quivering violently.

Stars, it is far too late into the delta shift to deal with Ren’s moods.

Resisting the urge to dig the heels of his palms into his eyes until white sparks in his vision—satisfying as it would have been—Hux forces the lines of his body to relax instead, an invitation for Ren to mirror him. The simplest way to defuse Ren is to give him a lead to follow.

Meeting his gaze, “I believe you, Ren,” he says, mild but clear, honest—at least, honest-sounding enough to give Ren’s building agitation a pause. He doesn’t give Ren time to size up his sincerity before heading to the refresher himself, unlatching Ren’s dirty bundle from empty air along the way.

He doesn’t linger long, still not comfortable going about his full routine while not alone in his quarters. A hot shower to wash away the cycle’s—hells, week’s—troubles would be blissful; but the cubicle is still wet from Ren’s turn and anyway, the idea of undressing again and standing under the spray doesn’t hold much appeal at this hour, even if he already won’t be able to fall asleep soon with the amount of caf in his system.

Besides, the Supreme Leader is waiting.

He half-expects to find Ren still standing there and fidgeting when he walks in; but Ren has already settled in the middle of the bed, a dark lump against the white bedding, the plush duvet pushed to his waist. Ren has done him the courtesy of letting him choose his side, although it matters little when he pulls Hux close as soon as Hux slides under the covers. Hux puts up only the token fight before getting comfortable between Ren’s arms, kicking the rest of the duvet out of the way. Ren runs hot enough to make any extra coverage unbearable within minutes.

They lie in… not peace, but an acceptable approximation of it. His head is buzzing with everything he’ll need to take care of after his first cup of caf later in the cycle; Ren distracts him by nosing at his neck, his ear, his hair before it can latch onto anything specific. For his own sake. When they are—when Ren is being this way, affectionate and indulgent, Hux is foolishly, dangerously willing to dismiss that Ren is the reason his task list is so long. That he wouldn’t even be in Hux’s bed right now had Ren not failed again.

He is too tired to muster up the disappointment.

“Tell me something,” Ren whispers.

“Yes?”

Ren shifts behind him. “No, I mean—talk to me. Tell me about your week.”

He snorts. “You don’t want to hear about my week.” Nor does Hux want to talk about his week, giant waste of time that it has been. Following-up on holo-mails that go nowhere, trying to prioritise the plethora of critical issues they must allocate for in their budget, status reports that show nothing but how the High Command is sitting with their thumbs up their arses while the First Order’s funds dwindle and glory slips further out of their reach. If he were the Supreme Leader—

—but of course, he isn’t the Supreme Leader. Is that not the root of their predicament? Nothing he can offer to potential allies and benefactors will ever be enough to sway them to their cause while the Supreme Leader of the First Order hides away and seeks guidance from ghosts.

A breeze brushes against his mind; mild, warm wind over chilled skin, caked scent of suns over damp ground, raw dough and—

His jaw locks with a click, a lungful of recycled air and faux-honey shattering the deception easily enough. That storm is developing across his forehead again, the spot above his brow pulsing in time with his heart hammering in his throat. “Ren.”

“I’m not in your head,” Ren amends. “I just sensed your… grievances.”

“You are the biggest,” Hux grits out, shifting away—Ren’s arm snaked across his entire middle holds him in place. When did that happen? “Ren. Let go of me.”

“Talk to me,” Ren repeats, chapped lips catching on Hux’s hair. “I can’t ease your mind if you don’t.”

It will take more than half-remembered pillow talk to ease Hux’s mind. It will take more than talking, if they are to solve anything. However, Ren has got a point. Division of work is a key principle in a functional organisation so long as all parties are aware of the big picture—which Ren might not be, having operated outside of the Order for the longest time. Perhaps it’s time for an alternate approach.

When Hux isn’t hurting to sink his teeth at Ren’s bared throat and Ren can be reasonably expected not to fling himself into that temper tantrum they’ve narrowly missed at the slightest provocation.

“Tomorrow,” he promises. Tomorrow, they talk.

[aminiatureworld]

Connection

Ship: Geralt x Jaskier

Warnings: None

Premise:  Jaskier calls Geralt out for his reticence on hand holding. Geralt is quick to deny this, but even quicker to prove the bard right, as well as prove to himself how much it matters.

Author’s Note: Sorry for the horrendous summary, but I actually quite like this fic. Also two thirds of it was written at midnight, so forgive me for any typos or odd shifts in tone, scene, etc. I realize most of my fanfiction is written between midnight and three am. Maybe I should fix that.

Ao3 link in reblog

“Tell me Geralt, what are your thoughts on hand holding?” Geralt’s head snapped up in confusion as he stared incredulously at his companion. Jaskier was perched on top of the room’s dresser, feet propped up on the windowsill. It seemed a particularly stupid way to sit to Geralt, but he’d long ago learned that the bard didn’t really care what Geralt saw as stupid, or perhaps Jakier did care and then made a concerted effort to do everyone one of those things, Geralt still hadn’t quite decided, having instead accepted that his companion was of a particularly odd, if vaguely endearing, nature. Now though Geralt was very sure the bard must be pulling his leg, perhaps in an effort to spark some new lyric to try on the disgruntled inn patrons, or perhaps out of sheer boredom. Shifting his weight slightly Geralt hoped that this conversation would be as short as possible, for sometimes it felt like a sprint to keep up with the odd, twisted conversational logic that Jaskier often took. Even the opening statement gave the Witcher pause, for who on the Continent thought actively of such things? Grunting he shrugged his shoulders.

           “Oh c’mon!” Jaskier prodded, plinking a particularly pretty chord, though Geralt could tell one of strings was becoming a bit shredded; which one he had no idea of course, picking up on subtle things like off strings wasn’t the same as retaining a shred of musical knowledge that Jaskier, seemingly daily, tried to impart on Geralt. Now Jaskier almost looked the same way he did during his teaching attempts, slightly bemused, ready to whip out the chalkboard and textbooks. It was a bit unnerving, and Geralt looked down, not particularly looking forward to where this was going. He could hear the bard swing down and hit the floor, and looked up in time to see Jaskier sit crisscross on the small pile of boards that passed as a trunk-made-table, honestly did the bard know how to sit normally?

           “Why,” Geralt stared at Jakier. “do you think of such odd things?”

           “Why don’t you think of such normal things!” Jaskier cried out in return, beaming like a child who’d just proved himself right. “Honestly Geralt, who doesn’t think of such things? For someone so grouchy about any close contact, you don’t actually have any rules set out about it. Or any logic. I think I’ve washed your lovely body more often than our two palms have touched. Don’t you think that’s even a little odd.”

           “Tch.” Geralt wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, realizing that the bard was indeed right, Jaskier probably had touched Geralt’s hair more than his hands, but wasn’t quite willing to admit it, for doing so felt oddly like defeat, or perhaps it was just that Jaskier, when proven right, seemed never to shut up about it. Deciding that he’d rather just humor the bard than have this conversation, Geralt sighed and gestured for Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier needed no encouragement, quickly slapping his hand into the Witcher’s. It stung a bit, Geralt had realized that musician hands were quite calloused, and that Jaskier was unnervingly strong, about the second time they’d met, and even now he marveled at it. He squeezed the bard’s hand, thinking it was dry and warm, and oddly comfortable, before letting go. “Happy?” The bard shook his head.

           “That won’t prove me wrong Geralt, and you know it. Anyone who has to do something to try to prove they’re right is only admitting failure. Nevertheless,” he patted Geralt on the shoulder, a familiar action, which originally caused Geralt exasperation, but now brought only a sense of fondness for their ritualistic banter, not that he’d admit that, not on his dying breath. Just as he’d never admit that, now that Jaskier brought it up, he realized he’d rather like to hold the bard’s hand more, well, he’d like to do a great deal more than that if he allowed himself to drift down that particular vein of thought, but he was buried approximately one hundred levels too deep in denial to cross that bridge. He could only imagine the months of gloating that would cause, or maybe there wouldn’t be gloating, but rather, a closer relationship, which scared Geralt even more, those close to him had bad track records for fate being kind on them after all. It was better just not to try and approach that bridge, much less cross it. With that thought in mind Geralt stood up.

“Where are you going?” Jaskier exclaimed, flopping onto the bed where Geralt had been sitting moments ago.

           “To get information, I want to know what exactly we’re looking for.”

           “Wasn’t that it’s a kikimora well established?” Jaskier asked, laughter in his eyes. “Look Geralt, you don’t have to run away from this, I full believe in your ability to hold my hand, give it seven years and I’m sure you’ll have mastered it.”

           “Tch.” Geralt grunted, rolling his eyes. Jaskier looked even more pleased, evidently the Witcher would have to say something or cede the board, not that this wasn’t already doing that. He looked for some sort of excuse. “This is for your sake, not mine. I don’t want to hear you complaining the whole way back if you accidentally stumble on it and get your doublet dirty or whatever.”

           “Aww, you care.” Jaskier smiled, a smile which flipped something in Geralt’s stomach and made him want to return the gesture, every. damn. time. “Well, this is the price you pay for never revealing your big dark secrets to me, best of luck to you then, and remember you wouldn’t have to do this if you let me go with you.” Geralt barked out a half laugh, half snort.

           “Never.” And with that he strode out and slammed the door. Standing for a moment he could hear the bard chuckling inside, he had a nice laugh that one, before focusing on his music. The familiar pizzing and strumming, a melody picked up here and dropped there, random words, some louder than others, escaping the bard’s mind into sound, it made Geralt feel some sort of happiness, to see someone so in their element and so happy. He was glad that Jaskier was happy. Wished he could share in the effusive sunlight of his companion. But to do would be to go down that path in his mind, and a second moon would appear in the sky before that happened.

             Geralt came back from his expedition covered in black blood, and buzzed enough off of potions to feel completely overwhelmed by the bustling tavern, filled with sounds and smells and colors which seemed to knock into him like a wave. He stumbled his way towards a seat in the corner, head pounding in a myriad of different ways, as if being both smashed by a hammer and stabbed by a million needles. He felt too nauseous to ask for food or drink, worried he might cause a scene in the middle of high hours. Instead he leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to slow his breathing and get the steel he’d need to make his way upstairs and, hopefully, into a bath.

           Slowly he managed to pick his way through the wave of sound, trying to find some sort of lifeline. It was the busiest hours of the night, and Jaskier was in the middle of a performance, singing some sort of song about a highwayman leaving his lover with the promise of gold and riches. Right now the lover was despairing over his disappearance, and Geralt, having listened to this song many times before, reflected on the silliness of the song, for never in real life would a highwayman suddenly save his fair love, declaring that they’d be together in life and death. Still the song was mysterious and repetitive and softer than the usual fare, and Geralt found himself lifted up by it, by Jaskier’s voice, and the slight scratch the strings made when he lifted his hand from them, and for a moment the pain was beaten back by comfort and routine, and by a beautiful voice belonging to a beautiful bard, and, as if by magic, all seemed not overwhelming and gross and dirty, but pure and beautiful and calm.

           The spell, of course, lasted not one second when Geralt made to move, and the nausea, pounding, and overwhelmed sensation slammed back into him like a wall. The Witcher gritted his teeth as he lurched up, determined to make it upstairs. His steps were sluggish and slow, and he marveled that if a monster were to come upon him now he’d probably be useless, for the potions were a double edge sword, and when the adrenaline left so did his focus, and the outside came crashing in, blocking out everything that made him good to fight. A feeling of frustration and uselessness came over him, and Geralt nearly slammed into one of the wooden beams. Immediately he could feel the noise shift, and cursed himself. Jaskier’s music had stopped, and Geralt looked up through his haze of discomfort to see the bard rushing to collect his coin, before hurtling towards Geralt. Looking at his companion, Jaskier called to the innkeeper behind the bar, asking for a tub to be brought up along with hot water, before draping Geralt over his shoulder. Geralt grunted, feeling slightly self-conscious, but now wasn’t truly the time to be batting away the bard’s help, and thus the Witcher leaned onto his companion’s shoulder, and allowed himself to be brought up to their room.

           “Don’t sit on the bed.” Jaskier said, dumping the Witcher onto the trunk. “I don’t know if we’d be able to get clean sheets by tonight.” Taking off his now bloodied doublet, Jaskier placed his lute, which had been slung onto the front of his chest to keep it from being broken or dirtied, on the windowsill, before sitting down on the trunk next to Geralt. “Now, we wait. Bad round this time?” Geralt grunted in assent, and Jaskier nodded. “How you witchers manage it without companions I don���t know.”

Geralt, who was barely keeping upright, wanting nothing more than to sleep and blackout the truly horrendous head pain and waves of discomfort, dragged his hand towards Jaskier. The bard looked slightly confused, and Geralt grunted once more. “What, do you want something?” Jaskier laughed softly, it came out in a huffed, confused way. Slowly he entangled his fingers into his Witcher’s. “Is this it?” Geralt closed his eyes and hummed, not feeling altogether comfortable to confirm, both in fear of being sick and due to the small voice in his mind jeering him this was very foolish indeed. They kept like this for some time, until a knock on the door notified the pair that a bath was finally ready. Everything was brought in, and nothing was said as Jaskier stripped Geralt, shoved him into the tub, and helped the poor Witcher clean off, as well as preventing a drowning, for Geralt was truly bound and determined to sleep, come hell or high water, in this case the latter being more likely. Still, it was accomplished, and as Geralt stumbled onto the bed, he felt a tugging sense of gratitude and comfort, and something else. “Jaskier?” he called out.

“Yes Geralt?” Came the immediate reply, and Geralt smiled slightly to himself, comforted by the familiar reply, the constant presence.

“I ruined your doublet.” He could here a burst of laughter coming from the bard, all in a heap, a lovely soft sound, amplified by the after effects of the Witcher’s potions.

“That you did.” He heard the reply, heard the bard approach, surprisingly quiet and soft. A hand reached out and Geralt took it. It was warm and strong, calloused in the best way, a symbol of talent and tenacity and beauty. “Well. Perhaps it was Fate.” came a soft reply. Geralt smiled, and as he drifted to sleep, he considered that, though the night had been in many ways a debacle, he was glad that he had an anchor to keep him steady, a hand to guide him through the noise and lights and disorder, and if that remained the case, maybe the world wasn’t so great a cesspit as he thought it to be.

             The squat village seemed even squatter from the main path, and as it disappeared into the distance Geralt looked back one last time, not because it was noteworthy in any way, but because it’d become some sort of habit after his leaving of Blaviken, you never knew when someone was going to turn an entire village on you, might as well enjoy an easy parting. It wasn’t something he told anyone, to bring it up was also to bring up a past he’d rather forget, but he still kept onto the tradition. Looking down he noticed Jaskier was smiling slightly, and for a moment Geralt wondered if he was going to bring it up, but instead the bard simply sighed and, kicking in a rock off the path, began to speak.

           “So, I see that you didn’t shake hands with your business partner after claiming your sum.” A rush of relief and irritation accompanied the statement, and Geralt huffed, turning so his gaze went straight ahead. They’d not brought up the night of his job, a source of great relief and consternation for Geralt, and now, faced with the idea of talking about it, he realized that it was easier to theoretically be nonchalant and aloof than actually feign disinterest in a topic or event. “Geralttt.” Jaskier was evidently plunging straight ahead into this topic, “We need to talk about it someday. You need closeness! Contact! A friendly handshake every once in a while!”

           “Why?” Geralt grumbled.

           “Well because it’s not normal for a one night stand to be easier than a handshake. Besides,” he added, grinning mischievously, “I think you’d quite like holding hands, at least every once in a while.” Geralt shifted his weight and looked once more at the bard. Jaskier was looking quite smug, as always, but there seemed to be something behind it, some genuine worry or care, Geralt could tell in the slight way his shoulders were pushed back, the quiver in his smile and in his hands, which were being wrung together. It struck him as odd that anyone should care so much, but evidently Jaskier was one such person. And, though he didn’t like to admit it to himself or anyone else, Geralt did care about Jaskier being happy and content, even if it seemed like a silly reason to be so upset over. If Geralt didn’t care about it, why did Jaskier? Still, the bard could be persistent, and might as well humor him even if he wasn’t, after all, it was just hand holding. Even if it was something that Geralt rather not think about, or talk about. Even if it was easier to pretend he didn’t care.

           Swinging off Roach, Geralt gripped the reins with one hand. The other reached out, and slow disentangled Jaskier’s right hand from his left. Looking straightforward again, Geralt grumbled; “There. Happy?”

           “Mhmm.” The bard hummed in reply, and gave Geralt’s hand a squeeze. Geralt huffed slightly, but he had to admit, it was nice to hold hands, as if a small, quiet part inside of him was suddenly glad to be connected to someone, to be able to share such a mundane and human connection with another. It passed a spell over him, seemingly, and for a moment he was incredibly content.

           “So, what about a kiss?” Jaskier’s playful voice broke through the reverie and Geralt’s stomach took a flip. He went to remove his hand, but Jaskier had a strong grip, and held on. “I’m kidding!” He assured, and laughed slightly. Geralt simply grunted, and tried to ignore the slight burning beneath his cheeks. Still he made no attempt to separate himself from Jaskier again, and, as they walked towards whatever new adventure was awaiting the pair, Geralt reflected that he was quite content where he was, and was grateful for the bard, and for whatever strange humor Fate had been in when linking the two together.

[untitledbkdkblog]

took me a bit longer then I wanted, but I managed to finish before his birthday was over in my timezone. happy birthday blasty, glad you got to spend it with your greenbean

AO3 link

edit: in my rush to post before it hit midnight in my timezone, I forgot to tag @third-winchester-second-potter and thank them for the photo album idea

Three months nine days and approximately eighteen hours, that's how long Izuku had been planning this. This, the best damn birthday ever, as to be proclaimed by his boyfriend Katsuki, as soon as it’s over. After nearly two decades of knowing each other, and three years together, properly, it had been hard to track down every picture of them, but he was sure now that he had found most of them at least. Between what he got from his mom, Katsuki’s parents, and their old classmates from UA, he now had a photo album thicker than most of the books they had to lug around in their third year of high school. But the real surprise, that wouldn’t be till the end, not till after dinner, not till Katsuki got to the last page of the book. That’s the part Izuku had really put the most work into.

Tracking down all the photos, reserving a nice table at Katsuki’s favorite restaurant, making sure no press would be around to disturb the high ranking duo, and worst of all, making sure Katsuki had a nice looking suit to wear, it was all a breeze compared to putting together the last page of the photo album. He had poured his heart and soul into it, and keeping his boyfriend from finding the rough drafts had been hell. He’d take the entire League of Villains any day over trying to hide shit from a pro hero ever again.

    Fixing his tie in the mirror he knew it would all be worth it though. He had made sure tonight was going to be perfect, the best birthday Katsuki would ever have. Taking a moment to take one last look at himself, he nodded. “Alright, go time. This may be a sensitive mission, but I’ve planned out everything. Well, almost everything, but I can’t make a plan for the impossible. That’s just impractical.” Grabbing the nicely wrapped package of the foot of their bed and tucking it under his arm he stepped out of the bedroom, and right into his boyfriend's chest.

    “Damn Deku, took you long enough to get ready,” Katsuki chuckled, grabbing Izuku’s arms so he wouldn’t topple over. “Weren't you the one in a hurry earlier?”

    Smoothing out his boyfriend’s suit, and then his own, Izuku nodded. “We are in a hurry.” Taking Katsuki’s hand he made his way towards the front of their house. “I took the appropriate amount of time to get ready. You’re the one who took twenty minutes to put on that tie, Kacchan.” 

    A sigh, a very dramatic sigh in Izuku’s opinion. “I hate these damn things Deku, is it really necessary? Where are we even going?” Katsuki closed and locked the door behind them, before following Izuku to the car.

    “If I told you,” Izuku leaned into the backseat, placing the present down there, “Then it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?” Standing back up, he noticed his boyfriend still standing on the drivers side. “You can’t drive Kacchan, I’m the one who knows where we’re going.”

    “Nah, wasn’t planning on it.” He grinned. “Just enjoying the view.”

    Now it was izuku’s turn to sigh. “Get in the car Kacchan. You can enjoy the view all you want after dinner.” Getting into the driver's seat, Izuku heard a chuckle, and simply rolled his eyes as he waited for Katsuki to be ready to go.

The ride to the restaurant was mostly uneventful, filled with the sounds of the radio, and Katsuki insisting to know where they were headed, as Izuku took a less than direct route there. Both for the sake of surprising his boyfriend, and to make sure no one was following them. Even with the indirect route Katsuki still managed to guess about a block away from the restaurant, leaving Izuku grumbling about a blindfold.

Once there Katsuki ordered, predictably, the spiciest thing on the menu. The two ate and talked, and as it got later watched as the restaurant cleared out. Twenty minutes to midnight Izuku finally gave his boyfriend the present. “Oh can I open this now? And here I was starting to think it was just an empty box you wrapped up to look pretty, Deku.”

Izuku rolled his eyes, laughing. “Don’t worry Kacchan, that's not till next year's gift.” He was fidgeting a bit now, picking at his hands and unable to sit still. Luckily, Katsuki was too invested in unwrapping the book. “Anyways, I think you’ll like this a bit more than an empty box.”

Laughing as he tossed the wrapping paper at his boyfriend, Katsuki looked up at him. “Only a bit more? Damn deku, and here I thought you’d put a bit more thought into my present then that. Or was all the dramatics over the suit and restaurant a ruse?”

“That’s it. You’ve caught me.” He tucked the crumpled up paper under the table for the time being. “All of this was just a cunning ruse.” Katsuki was looking down at the photo album now. “All I got you was a book you’ll probably only look at this once.”

Izuku had feared that Katsuki would simply open it, leaf through the pages, then close it again, but was able to sigh in relief as he slowly made his way through the pages. Izuku kept moving in his chair as Katsuki took the time to stop and look at all the pictures. He frowned, a worrying sight, until Izuku noticed where he was. A little less than halfway is a gap in the pictures, as a startling jump from seven year old Izuku and Katsuki to nearly sixteen year old Izuku and Katsuki was made. A nearly ten year gap in age, that Izuku knew Katsuki regretted. He sighed in relief as his boyfriend kept going, and his expression softened. Three quarters of the way through he looked up. “How long did this take you.?”

“Long enough that Kirishima was a real pal for letting me keep it at his place when I wasn’t working on it. Putting them all in the right order was still only the second hardest part of it all.” He smiled, urging Katsuki to keep going.

With a nod, Katsuki went back to the pictures. “That explains why you two kept making excuses to hang out the last couple of months.” Izuku blushed, a bit embarrassed at having been caught, and Katsuki chukled. “Relax, if it had been anyone but you two I might have been worried, but I have it on good authority that Kirishima’s planning something for you know who, so I assumed he was getting your help on that too.”

Izuku chuckled now. “So you heard that too, huh. Well, yea, we were both helping each other out with our projects.”

“Well now, that sounds ominous Deku. What have you been planning?” Katsuki looked up and grinned, just as he turned to the last page.

With an eye roll Izuku nodded to the book. “Why don’t you finish the last page first. I put a lot of work into that, you know.” Katsuki threw his hands up in defeat, looking down to the last page.On the left page was a photo taken after their last big mission, the two of them standing side by side, hands clasped and in the air above them. And on the right page was a letter. 

“If I told the little green boy, in the beginning of this book, where he would be at twenty two he would think it was a dream come true. If i told that same boy during the empty page where he would be, he’d think I was lying to him. And if I told him just five years ago, he’d think it was impossible. But it’s not. It took a lot of work, on both our parts, but it was possible, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know you mourn for the time we missed out in middle school, and I do too, sometimes, but our relationship is so much stronger now for it. We’ve moved past that, and worked for a friendship. For a relationship. Built on talking, and understanding, and most importantly, sharing. That little quirkless boy has become the hero he always dreamed to be, and he’s done it with the partner he always wanted standing beside him. Some days I still have to pinch myself, just to reassure myself that this is real, because you make me so happy, even when we’ve both had a bad day at work, and I could never ask for anything more. We’ve known each other our whole lives, and I want to be able to say that, for the rest of mine. Whether I live till ninety nine, or just till next week. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and that’s why, Kacchan, I need you to finish reading this, and look back to me again.”

As Katsuki read Izuku grabbed the much smaller box he had hidden in his suit’s inner pocket, and quietly got down on his knee, waiting for his boyfriend to finish reading. By the time he did look at Izuku, Katsuki’s eyes were red around the edges, and even in the low lighting of the restaurant Izuku could tell they were shiny with the beginnings of unshed tears. He heard Katsuki whisper his name, but ignored him as he opened the box. “I’ve been thinking about how to do this for a very long time, and at some point I realised, I was never going to be able to make it perfect, because no matter what I tried to plan, I always thought of something better three days later. So I decided, why bother with perfect, when I could do something, us, instead. That’s what we’ve done our whole lives after all.” As he was talking Katsuki got down on the floor with him, so they were kneeling in front of each other, both properly crying now. “It seems silly, to ask you to make me the happiest man alive on your birthday, but what can I say, I’ve always taken a shot at what I want.” They both chuckled at that. “So Kacchan, will you marry me?”

It was silent for fifteen, agonizing seconds, before Katsuki pulled him into a hug, laughing his ass off. “Of course I will.” He kissed Izuku once before pulling back to look at him. “You’re a dumbass though, you know that? Not perfect my ass. We could have gotten takeout at home, and you could have shoved it in my face and said ‘let's do it’ and it would have been perfect. You always overthink everything. And I love you.”

Izuku wiped some of the tears away from his own face, laughing a bit. “I love you too Kacchan. Thank you.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the one who should be thanking you right now Deku. For the best damn birthday ever.” Katsuki smiled, pulling his fiance in for another kiss, longer this time, and full of promises.

[calumcest]

you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - chapter one

[ao3]

The tattoos appear one Wednesday night. 

“What’s yours?” Michael demands, sounding beside himself with excitement. Luke frowns.

“What’s my what?”

“Your tattoo.”

-

another soulmate au...but this time its ANGSTY (but dont worry it will end happy because i am me)

The tattoos appear one Wednesday night. 

Almost everyone wakes up for a few minutes at around three-thirty a.m., feeling a strange burning sensation in some square inch of their body. Almost everyone rubs sleepily at the patch of skin - wrist, bicep, shoulder, hip - rolls over, and goes back to sleep. 

Some people, of course, are already awake when it happens, and some people wake up and don’t go back to sleep. Those are the ones who start shooting off confused questions on social media, comparing tattoos, trying to figure out what they mean. A few people start theorising - mine reminds me of my wife, they say, or, mine reminds me of my first love, and by the time the rest of Australia wakes up, the theories have ballooned from maybe they’re to do with someone you need to reconnect with to this is a clear sign from the government that they’ve placed chips in our minds and know what we’re thinking about. 

Australia is the first major country to get them. As Tuesday rolls into Wednesday across the globe, more and more people’s thighs, forearms and ankles start to burn, until, by the time it gets to LA, people are buzzing with anticipation, almost the entire country awake at three-thirty in the morning, waiting for their tattoos. 

Luke doesn’t notice his immediately. He sleeps like the fucking dead, so he hadn’t even woken up in the middle of the night like most people, and he wakes up late for work so doesn’t have time to check his phone for the fifty billion messages he’s received overnight until he’s made it onto the train, panting as he flops into an empty seat opposite an elderly lady. She gives him a warm smile, which Luke thinks is a little strange, but he returns it slightly tentatively, pulling his phone out to avoid any further eye contact. 

His phone lights up before he even touches it, and Luke frowns as he sees new messages appearing every few minutes. On top of the messages, he’s got seventeen missed calls from Michael, twenty-five from his mum, three from his dad, and even some from Jack and Ben. 

He unlocks his phone and heads for the messages app, barely managing to open the group chat with Michael and Calum before his phone is lighting up with Michael ringing him again. 

“What?” he hisses, as quietly as he can, throwing an apologetic look at the lady opposite him. “I’m on the train.” 

“What’s yours?” Michael demands, sounding beside himself with excitement. Luke frowns. 

“What’s my what?” 

“Your tattoo.” Luke blinks. 

“Are you alright, Mike?” he says. “You know I don’t have any tattoos.” 

“Are you fucking serious?” Michael says, now sounding incredulous over the staticky phone line. “Have you not, like, looked at your phone? Seen the news? Spoken to a single person?” 

“I woke up late,” Luke says, a little defensively, even though he doesn’t really think he needs to defend not looking at his phone for an hour while he showered, dressed, made breakfast, sprinted to the station.

“Jesus Christ,” Michael says, and Luke can just imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Trust you to sleep through something like this.” 

“Through what?”

“Everyone got a tattoo last night,” Michael says. Luke hesitates for a moment, and then rolls his eyes.

“Mike, I’m not that gullible,” he says. “I think even I’d wake up if a tattoo artist broke into my house overnight.” 

“I’m not joking,” Michael says impatiently. 

“Where are they, then?” Luke says, slightly amused. 

“Mine’s on my elbow,” Michael says. “But everyone has them in different places.” 

“Right,” Luke says. “That’s convenient. Is this just a ploy to try and get me to strip naked on public transport and embarrass myself?” 

“Why do you never believe anything I say?” Michael says indignantly. 

“You’ve never given me much reason to,” Luke says. There’s a beat, and then-

“Yeah, that’s fair enough,” Michael says. 

“What’s yours, then?” Luke asks, because he might as well humour Michael. 

“It’s, uh,” Michael says, cagily. There’s a moment’s pause, and when it becomes obvious Luke’s waiting for an answer, he says quietly: “Duke?” 

“Duke?” Luke says, because he cannot have heard that properly. “Like, Calum’s dog Duke?” 

“Yeah,” Michael says, sounding a little nervous. Luke rolls his eyes. Obviously Michael’s just picked the first fucking thing that came to mind.

“Right,” Luke says. “Not really doing yourself any favours on convincing me this isn’t just a massive joke, Mike.” Michael makes a small noise somewhere between outrage and embarrassment. 

“Check the fucking news, then, arsehole,” he says, and then there’s a beep and he’s hung up. Luke removes the phone from his ear, screen back on the group chat where Calum’s still sending messages, and clicks out and onto his news app. 

He’s immediately confronted with approximately thirty-seven articles about tattoos. Blurry pictures of people’s tattoos, clips of news anchors showing their tattoos to the camera, interviews with people who claim they know what the tattoos mean, interviews with medical officials who are telling people to stay calm, the tattoos don’t appear to be dangerous. Luke’s first reaction is to bring down his notification bar and check the date - okay, May the seventh, so this isn’t an April Fool’s. It might be a late April Fool’s, though, he thinks.  

“He’s not lying to you,” someone says suddenly, and Luke’s head jolts up to see the old lady opposite him smiling at him benignly. 

“Uh, sorry,” he says, “what d’you mean?” 

“Your friend,” she says, “Mike? He’s not lying. Everybody got a tattoo last night.” She rolls her sleeve up to expose a frail, wrinkled arm, and right there, in the middle of her forearm, is a tattoo of a policeman’s hat. 

“That was my late husband’s identification number,” she says, pointing to the number underneath the hat. 

“Oh,” Luke says, because he has absolutely no idea what the appropriate response to everybody got a tattoo last night, by the way, here’s mine of my late husband’s police hat and identification number is. The lady smiles at him again, and rolls her sleeve back down. 

“You should look for yours,” she says knowingly, like she understands this whole tattoo situation. Luke opens his mouth, although he’s not really sure what he’s about to say - thank you? Piss off? What sort of a fucking alternate universe am I living in? - but then the train doors open and he looks outside and realises this is his stop. 

“This is my stop,” he says, thankful that this incredibly uncomfortable conversation is over. “Have a nice day?” He’s not really sure why he phrases it as a question, but he doesn’t have time to think about it, grabbing his bag and coat and just about making it off the train without getting decapitated by the closing doors. 

What a weird fucking start to the day, he thinks, as he starts towards the ticket barriers, but upon realising he’s left his season ticket at home all thoughts of a tattoo leave his mind. 

 ------- 

 The first person Luke sees when he gets into the office is Calum. He’s wearing a scarf indoors, which strikes Luke as a little strange, but he doesn’t have time to ask because as soon as Luke walks into the room, Calum rounds on him.  

“Why the fuck haven’t you been answering your phone?” he demands immediately. 

“Jesus Christ,” Luke groans as he throws himself into his chair. “Not you too.” 

“What?” 

“Mike rang me trying to convince me to get naked on the train because apparently someone tattooed me in my sleep last night,” Luke says, powering up his desktop. Calum gapes at him. 

“Are you telling me you haven’t seen yours yet?” he asks in disbelief. 

“What? Cal, are you fucking serious?” Luke says, annoyed. He might be gullible, but he’s not that gullible. “I’m not falling for this shit.” 

“Have you checked the news?” 

“Yeah,” Luke says, swivelling in his chair to face Calum as he waits for his computer to turn on. “It’s got to be some kind of joke. A late April Fool’s, I dunno.” Calum stares at him as though he’s just said the sky is green, or All Time Low are a bad band, or something. 

“Are you insane?” he asks incredulously. 

“Alright, show me your fucking tattoo, then,” Luke says sarcastically. Calum hesitates. 

“I don’t want to,” he says shiftily, after a moment.  

“Right,” Luke says smugly. “See?” 

“See what?”

“Mike came up with some bullshit too,” Luke says. “Said his was fucking Duke.” Calum stares at him for a moment. 

“Wait,” he says, and he sounds a little strangled. “Duke? Like, my dog?” 

“Yeah,” Luke says pointedly, in what he hopes is a I’m not that stupid kind of tone. 

“Oh,” Calum says, and now he sounds somewhere between frightened and elated. Luke cocks his head, frowning. 

“What?” he asks. 

“It’s just…” Calum trails off, and shrugs. 

“What?” Calum bites his lip, and then tugs the scarf down. 

There, inked on the side of Calum’s neck, is a Gibson guitar with six numbers on it: 201195. It takes Luke a minute to put two and two together, but after realising it doesn’t say 2011-95 but 20-11-95, it suddenly makes sense. That’s Michael’s guitar, and that’s Michael’s birthday. 

“Oh,” he says, and now he’s just confused. “Why the fuck did you get Michael’s guitar tattooed on your neck?” Calum lets go of the scarf and it snaps back up, covering the tattoo again. 

“I didn’t,” he says. “It appeared last night.” 

“Well, where’s mine, then?” Luke asks sceptically, looking down at his hands and turning them over and over, like a tattoo is suddenly going to appear. 

“I don’t know,” Calum says. “Andy’s was on his arse.” Luke stares at him. 

“I’m not getting my arse out in the office,” he says. Calum rolls his eyes. 

“Go to the fucking toilet,” he says. Luke stands up, because it seems like until he plays into this elaborate prank it’s not going to end, and then stops. 

“Wait,” he says. “What if it is on my arse?” 

“Then it’s on your arse,” Calum says, sounding a little nonplussed. It’s Luke’s turn to roll his eyes. 

“I won’t be able to see it,” he says, hoping Calum will get the hint. Calum stares at him for a moment, then shrugs, and stands up. 

“I hope it’s on your dick,” he says, with a grin. 

“Fuck you,” Luke says, as they walk to the toilet opposite their office. Luke pushes open the door to the first cubicle, and then pauses. “Wait, is it going to look weird if we’re in a cubicle together?”

“Probably,” Calum says, but he follows Luke into the cubicle anyway, closing the door behind him. 

It’s cramped with Calum in there too, and they shuffle around each other for a moment before Calum hops onto the toilet and gets out of Luke’s way, leaving him to take his jacket off and then fiddle with his shirt buttons. 

“This is the world’s worst strip-tease,” Calum comments after a moment, and Luke scowls at him. 

“Dickhead,” he says, and then, having finally removed his shirt, he turns around to hang it on the hook on the back of the door. That’s when Calum gasps. 

“It’s, uh. It’s on your back,” he says, and he sounds a little worried. Luke twists, trying to see. 

“What?” he says, because he’s not that flexible. “Where?”

“On your shoulderblade,” Calum says, pointing, as if it’ll help. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke can see a crease of concern between Calum’s brows. 

“I can’t see,” Luke says grumpily. 

“Hang on, I’ll take a picture,” Calum says, standing up and fishing his phone out of his pocket. Luke stands still for a moment, until he reckons Calum must have taken the picture, then turns around. Calum hesitates for a moment, then thrusts the phone at Luke. 

Luke sees his skin, pale and freckled, broken up by dark black ink. It’s a strangely beautiful tattoo, a bird carrying what looks like some kind of stick in front of a waning moon. It reminds him a bit of two of his ex’s tattoos, actually - he had some kind of bird on his neck, and a bunch of moons on his forearms.

It’s that thought that’s on his mind as he looks over the picture again, and his eyes fall on the stick. 

It’s a drumstick. 

Oh. 

Oh. 

“Fuck,” Luke says, and he suddenly feels sick. No fucking way has he woken up with his first ever tattoo, and it’s something to do with Ashton. “Fuck. Calum, tell me this isn’t real. Tell me this is a fucking prank.” Calum looks at him like he wishes he could tell Luke it was a prank, and shakes his head slowly. 

Luke feels his knees give out, falling to the cold tile floor hard. 

“It comes off, right?” he says, an edge of panic in his voice. Calum looks at him again, and then shakes his head again. “Cal, please. I- I can’t have a tattoo to do with Ashton.” 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Calum says, eyes sincere and sad. 

“What does it mean?” Luke asks. Calum shrugs helplessly. 

“No one knows,” he says. 

“But you have Michael,” Luke says desperately, “and Michael’s got you.” Calum hesitates, and then shrugs again. 

“I don’t know, Luke,” he says gently. 

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” Luke says, like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. 

“Maybe,” Calum echoes, but he doesn’t sound sure at all. 

 -------

 It takes three months before it’s decided what they are. 

A huge number of studies are done in that time. Calum and Michael themselves volunteer for one, because apparently not everybody knows what - or who - theirs refers to. Some people turn out to have no tattoo, and it seems like people are only getting their tattoos on their eighteenth birthdays. It’s the only topic in the news for that entire time - the only topic of conversation, the only topic Luke encounters fucking anywhere.

He’s grateful his tattoo is on his shoulderblade, so it’s mostly hidden, because he sees everybody sneaking furtive glances at people’s necks, hands, forearms, collarbones, anywhere with visible tattoos. He dodges questions about what his tattoo is from everybody but Calum, Michael, and his family, because the words rise like bile in his throat - it’s Ashton. 

(“Oh, Luke,” Michael says sadly, when Luke tells him, and pulls him into the tightest hug Luke thinks he’s ever had.)

(“Oh, Luke,” his mum says sadly, when Luke tells her, sigh broken up by the static of the phone line.) 

(“Oh, Luke,” Jack and Ben say simultaneously on their group call, a moment of tense, awkward, sad silence hanging between them for a moment afterwards.) 

After three months, though, there’s a huge press conference. They’ve worked out what they are, the authorities say, and they’re going to do a televised conference announcing it and explaining how they reached that conclusion. 

Of course, the whole world is on tenterhooks. They do it in Europe, because it’s deemed the easiest timezone for everybody to work around, so Luke finds himself wedged between Michael and Calum on Calum’s sofa at eleven p.m., biting his nails almost obsessively. 

Michael and Calum aren’t speaking much, either. Luke’s not really sure it was the best move for them to be together while finding out what their tattoos about each other mean, but frankly, he’s too focused on finding out what his tattoo means to worry about them. 

At two minutes past eleven, researchers begin to file into the panel in front of the audience of journalists, world leaders standing behind them. It looks almost comical, Luke thinks a little hysterically, a row of men and women in lab coats to highlight their authority on the matter, the world’s most powerful people standing solemnly behind them. Some of their tattoos are visible too, but Luke’s too caught up willing time to move faster so he can finally fucking find out what having a tattoo about Ashton on his shoulderblade means. 

At four minutes past eleven, they start speaking. There’s about five minutes of preamble that Luke can’t follow, lots of words like hypothesis and methodology washing over him, and then the researcher sitting in the middle of the panel clears his throat, pushes his glasses up his nose, and takes a deep breath. 

“From these international, rigorously conducted studies of large portions of different populations, we have concluded,” he says, and nobody breathes. This is the moment. Luke’s heart seems to be trying to get his daily quota’s worth of heartbeats into a single second. “We have concluded that these tattoos appear to be soulmate markings.” 

Luke hears nothing that he says after that. 

Soulmate markings. The words echo in his mind, bouncing off every cell in his brain. 

It can’t be right, Luke thinks desperately, as he watches the panellists take questions from journalists but doesn’t hear the words they say. Ashton’s not his soulmate. There’s no such thing as soulmates, and if there were, Luke’s wouldn’t be the first man who had ever truly broken his heart, who had left him almost incapable of carrying on, who had brought him so fucking close to the precipice. 

He’d thought Ashton had been it, back then. He’d thought that he’d been so lucky to find the guy he wanted to marry so young in life. And then, three years later, Ashton had turned around one day, ashen-faced, and told him he didn’t love him anymore. 

That had been it. Luke’s world, Luke’s mind, Luke’s heart, had broken. 

So there’s no fucking way, no fucking way, that Ashton can be Luke’s soulmate. Luke’s soulmate wouldn’t have fallen out of love with him. Luke’s soulmate would never have pushed him so close to never seeing another birthday again. Luke’s soulmate wouldn’t leave him. 

Luke’s so caught up in the sickness that’s washed over him, hands trembling, freezing and sweaty, that he doesn’t realise what this means for Michael and Calum until a noise pulls him back to reality harshly. It’s Calum, clearing his throat. 

“Well,” he says, and he sounds weirdly high-pitched, and suddenly Luke thinks, shit. Calum and Michael are soulmates. 

“Yep,” Michael says, equally high-pitched and slightly choked. 

“Oh,” Luke puts in, because fuck, Calum and Michael are soulmates. 

“Oh,” Calum says, like he’s just remembered Luke’s there, and then there’s two sets of arms around Luke, warm and vanilla and mint and pine. 

“Oh, Luke,” Michael says, and he sounds so sad that Luke���s heart breaks all over again. 

Neither of them say anything more, because there’s so much to say that picking any one thing would be doing everything else an injustice.

 -------

 Luke does nothing about it for five weeks. 

Michael and Calum don’t say anything about it either, not wanting to push, but Luke’s getting kind of sick of the wary looks they send in his direction, of the whispered conversations that stop as soon as he walks into the room. They’ve fallen into it so easily that it chokes Luke up when he sees them, easy touches and glances that they’ve always had but have somehow taken on a new meaning. 

(“When did you know?” Luke asks Calum one night over the phone, staring up at his ceiling. 

“That I was in love with him?” Calum asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ve always known,” Calum says, and Luke’s heart hurts because he’s so happy for them, he is, but he’s so fucking miserable.) 

He jumps every time he gets a text for the first few weeks, thinking it might be Ashton, and filled with both relief and a little bit of disappointment when it never is. His mum doesn’t ask, and neither does his dad, and nor do Jack and Ben, and he loves them all for it. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but he hates the way it hangs, thick and solid in the air between them all every time he calls. 

Five weeks is when he breaks. 

He’s in the toilet at work, sat fully-clothed on the closed toilet seat, practically hyperventilating as he types, erases, types, erases. 

Hey. I know we haven’t spoken in years-

Hey. I know we haven’t spoken in a while-

Hi. It’s Luke. 

Hi. It’s Luke (Hemmings).

It feels fucking awful still, even after a few years have passed, to see Ashton Irwin staring at him at the top of the screen, not the stupid inside joke contact name he’d had for the entirety of their relationship. It feels fucking awful typing so formally. It feels fucking awful not knowing what to say to someone who used to know Luke better than anyone else. The whole thing feels fucking awful. 

Eventually, when he’s been sat on the toilet for so long his arse is starting to go numb, he just types two words. 

What’s yours? 

He puts his phone back in his pocket, unlocks the cubicle with shaking fingers, and goes to wash his hands, because otherwise it’ll look like he’s incredibly unhygienic. 

His phone buzzes as he’s drying his hands, and his heart lurches. He hastily wipes his hands on his trousers, fumbling with trembling fingers with his phone and nearly throwing up when he sees Ashton Irwin flashing up on his screen. 

Ashton Irwin It’s you. 

 ------- 

 Luke sits on the information for two days before telling Michael and Calum. 

They’re at Michael’s, sitting on the sofa eating pizza (or, at least, Michael and Calum are eating pizza - Luke’s half-heartedly prodding at his), and Calum and Michael are having some kind of a heated squabble about whether tuna on pizza is acceptable or not, and Luke just blurts it out. 

“I texted Ashton,” he says suddenly, and both Michael and Calum stop, dead still. 

“You- what?” Michael says, after a few (incredibly strained) seconds have passed. 

“I texted Ashton,” Luke repeats, mumbling this time. He’s gazing intently at his pizza, mostly to avoid looking at Calum or Michael. 

“Did he reply?” Calum asks. 

“Yeah,” Luke says. Both Michael and Calum inhale sharply. 

“What did he say?” Michael asks. Luke swallows. He doesn’t think he can say it out loud. 

“I-” he starts, but cuts himself off, the words too heavy for his tongue to handle. He shakes his head instead, fishing for his phone in his pocket, and chucks it over to Calum, who catches it deftly. Michael leans over as Calum types in Luke’s passcode - his birthday, because he’s too stupid to remember any other date - and there’s a moment of tension, of bated breath, as they wait for the message to load. 

Luke knows when they’ve seen it because both of their faces contort into the same expression, somewhere between worry, confusion, fear, concern and sympathy. 

“Fuck,” Michael says, staring at Luke almost hesitantly, like he’s about to implode. 

“Are you okay?” Calum asks quietly. Luke shrugs. 

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, because he doesn’t. He’s over Ashton, he is, but he’s never going to forgive or forget the way Ashton left him, the way he broke him and swept away, not even glancing at the pieces of Luke he left in his wake. Ashton can’t be his soulmate. 

“That’s okay,” Calum says, calm and reassuring. “It’s okay to not know.” 

“It’s just a tattoo,” Michael says. “Tattoos can’t tell you who to love.” 

It makes Luke feel a little better. 

 -------

 He doesn’t text Ashton again. 

In fact, he’s almost succeeded in pushing Ashton into a corner of his mind again, shoving him back into the Do Not Open box that this tattoo business had let him out of, when his phone buzzes in the middle of the night a week later. 

He reaches over groggily, aiming to turn off whatever it is that’s lighting up his screen and sending vibrations resonating through his bedside table, but wakes up with a shot of adrenaline when he sees the name lighting up his screen. 

Ashton Irwin We should probably talk about this. 

Luke sits bolt upright in bed, palms suddenly sweating. The only thing he can think to do is unlock his phone and dial Michael, knowing he’ll be up, even though it’s two a.m. 

“What?” Michael asks, sounding slightly irked. Luke can hear clicking in the background, so it’s probably a safe bet that he’s playing a game. 

“Ashton texted me,” he says, and the clicking stops. 

“What did he say?” 

“Uh,” Luke says, holding the phone away from his ear and squinting as the bright screen blinds him in the darkness of the room. He fumbles for his light switch with one hand while exiting back into the messages app with the other. “‘We should probably talk about this.’” 

“Yeah, we should,” Michael says, “that’s why I’m asking what he texted you.” 

“No, that’s what he said,” Luke says. 

“He said you should talk about it?” 

“Yeah.” There’s a pause.

“That bastard,” Michael says calmly. “What did you say?”

“Nothing, yet,” Luke says. “I called you first.” 

“Tell him ‘nah, you’re good’,” Michael says, and Luke knows he’s only, like, ten percent joking. 

“Michael,” he says, tone admonishing, but his stomach feels a little lighter. Knowing he’s got Michael and Calum on his side - fiercely on his side - makes it feel a lot less scary, a lot easier to handle. 

“Well, what do you want to say?” Michael asks. 

“I don’t know,” Luke says. He’s fantasised about this so many times since they broke up - about Ashton texting him, about Luke having the power to say no, or say yes - but he’s never decided on a resolute response in his daydreams. 

“You don’t have to reply,” Michael says. “You don’t owe him shit.” 

“I know,” Luke says, and it comforts him, somehow. “Maybe I won’t.” 

“I’ll reply for you,” Michael says, and then there’s more clicking. “Just give me a few minutes to look up how to say ‘go fuck yourself’ in at least forty different languages.” Luke laughs at that, the knot in his stomach loosening considerably.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he says, because now that he’s talking about it, now that it’s not just in his own head and his own heart, it feels a lot less frightening. “What a fucking joke. We get soulmates, and mine’s Ashton?” 

“That’s what you get for saying my fringe was ugly in Year Seven,” Michael says. 

“It was ugly.”

“Well, now something else terrible is going to happen to you,” Michael says cheerfully. 

“What’s worse than waking up with a giant tattoo about Ashton on my back?” Luke says. 

“Having to speak to him again,” Michael says. Luke doesn’t really think he can argue with that. 

“I’m going to turn my phone off,” he says, stifling a yawn, because now that the adrenaline’s subsided, the exhaustion is kicking in again. 

“You should just block him,” Michael suggests. Luke is sorely tempted for a moment, but then sighs.

“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he says, because it’s too late, and he’s not thinking straight, and he doesn’t want to do something he’ll regret. “Thanks for listening to me, Mikey.” 

“Always,” Michael says, with a sincerity Luke didn’t know he had in him. “But you’re going to have to pay me for my services in food.” 

“I’ll cook for you,” Luke says. 

“I said food, not chargrilled remnants of what used to be pasta,” Michael says. 

“I can cook pasta,” Luke protests. 

“‘Cook’ is a bit of a strong word to describe what you can do with pasta,” Michael says. 

“Arsehole,” Luke says, but he’s smiling. 

“Love you too,” Michael says, and Luke can hear the grin in his voice. “Go to bed.” 

“Alright, mum,” Luke grumbles. “Night.”

“Night,” Michael says, and then he hangs up, and Luke’s suddenly all too aware of the silence and darkness and sheer loneliness of his room. 

He switches his phone off, rolls over, and lets the warm feeling of knowing Michael’s there for him envelop him, eventually drifting off to sleep.

 -------

 “So,” Calum says, when Luke walks into work the next morning, exhausted and late. He’s swivelled around in his chair to face Luke, fingers steepled against his chin like he’s deep in thought. “Did you text him back?” Luke scowls. 

“I wish Michael would let me tell you things myself,” he says, slamming his bag onto his desk with a little more force than strictly necessary. 

“Did you?” Calum asks again. Luke shakes his head, throwing himself down in his chair, taking his phone out of his bag and putting it on the table before chucking his bag under his desk. 

“I don’t know if I want to,” he says. 

“Fair enough,” Calum says, with a shrug. Luke bites his lip. 

“Do you think I should?” Calum shrugs again. 

“I think you should do what feels right,” he says. 

“I don’t know what feels right,” Luke moans, putting his head in his hands. “He’s my fucking ex. He fell out of love with me. How is he my soulmate?” 

“Maybe he’s, like, a platonic soulmate?” Calum offers, and then recoils in the heat of the glare Luke sends his way. 

“Ashton’s not really high up on the list of people I’m looking to be friends with,” Luke says. Calum looks like he’s about to say something, but then Luke’s phone buzzes. He looks over, half-expecting it to be Michael, but-

Ashton Irwin Don’t ignore me, Luke. This is important. 

Anger suddenly flares hot in Luke’s stomach. 

“Is it him?” Calum asks. Luke nods, and holds the phone up over his desk for Calum to see. “Are you fucking serious?” 

“He texted me at two a.m.,” Luke says. 

“He’s so fucking entitled,” Calum says, sounding almost as irate as Luke feels. Luke’s so angry that he types out a response without even thinking about it. 

Me Are you fucking serious? You texted me at two in the morning. 

“What did you say?” Calum wants to know, and Luke dutifully reads it out to him. Calum nods approvingly. “Call him a bastard next time.” Luke laughs, both bitter and amused, and then his phone buzzes again. 

Ashton Irwin I know you’re at work. 

Ashton Irwin Call me on your lunch break? 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Luke mutters, thrusting his phone at Calum. 

“At least he put a question mark this time,” Calum says. “Fucking arsehole.” 

Luke’s fingers are shaking as he types.

Me Fuck you. You left me like it was nothing, like I meant nothing after I gave all of myself to you for three years. You never checked in on me, never asked about me, never bothered seeing if I was okay. You just told me you fell out of love with me, and then up and left. You don’t get to demand shit from me now. 

Luke erases it all. 

Me I don’t have anything to say to you.

The typing bubble pops up as soon as Luke’s sent the message, and he watches the words form in front of his eyes. 

Ashton Irwin I do, though. 

 ------- 

 Luke’s not really sure how he finds himself standing outside in the biting early-October wind on his lunch break, finger hovering over the dial button on Ashton’s contact name. 

He’s been standing there for five minutes, almost pressing it but never quite getting there (except one time his finger had slipped and he’d pressed it and then stabbed the ‘end call’ button about fifty times straight in a blind panic). 

On the one hand, he really, really doesn’t want to talk to Ashton. He’s moved on from Ashton, with a lot of expensive therapy, a lot of leaning on his friends more than he should have and a lot of eating his body weight in processed food, and he wants Ashton to stay a part of his past. He’s worked hard to get to where he is today, and he doesn’t need to be flung back to where he had been. 

On the other hand, this is kind of a big deal. They’re soulmates. Ashton was right, although Luke doesn’t want to admit it - this is something they should talk about. Plus, it can’t hurt to hear what Ashton has to say, right?

With ten minutes left of his lunch break and approximately the same amount of time before he has to start sacrificing fingers to frostbite, Luke takes a deep breath and presses the dial button. 

It rings twice, and then there’s a click as Ashton picks up. 

“Hello?” Ashton says, and Luke suddenly feels incredibly sick. He hasn’t heard Ashton’s voice in two years, not since he was telling Luke he didn’t love him anymore, and it throws Luke back to that place, making him feel small and vulnerable and pathetic. 

“Hi,” he says, and he’s proud of how steady his voice comes out given the circumstances. “I have ten minutes.” 

“Okay,” Ashton says. “You’re still living in Sydney, then?” 

“What?” Luke says, slightly taken aback by the question. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Cool,” Ashton says. There’s a moment of awkward silence, and Luke contemplates Googling the quickest way to end his own life before Ashton speaks again. 

“How are you?” he asks, and Luke can’t help but laugh at that. 

“Are you fucking serious?” he asks, and he suddenly feels a little better, a little more in control. Ashton’s asking how he is, and he’s the one laughing. He’s the one with the power. Ashton wants to talk to Luke - Luke doesn’t want to talk to Ashton. 

“What?” Ashton sounds a bit defensive. 

“Get to the point,” Luke says, feeling braver and bigger with every passing second. “I didn’t call for a fucking catch up.” 

“Jesus,” Ashton mutters. “What the fuck happened to you?” You happened, Luke thinks bitterly, but he won’t give Ashton that satisfaction. 

“I grew a fucking spine,” he says instead. “Just tell me what you wanted to talk about.” 

“Well,” Ashton says. “I just- I feel like we should talk about the fact that we’re...y’know. Soulmates.” 

“I don’t have anything to say about it,” Luke says. 

“Are you serious, Luke?” Ashton says, sounding slightly pissed off, and Luke’s caught off-guard for a moment, hearing his name in Ashton’s familiar yet strange voice again. 

“Yeah,” Luke says, and he can’t help the bitterness that tinges his tone. “You fucking left, Ashton, and it’s been two years. What the fuck am I supposed to have to say to you?” 

“We’re soulmates,” Ashton says, like that’s supposed to mean something to Luke. 

“Oh, what, so you wouldn’t have fallen out of love with me if you got a fucking tattoo a few years earlier?” Luke says, fury swirling in his chest. “You needed a bit of ink to tell you who to love?” 

“That’s not what I mean,” Ashton says, even though to Luke it sounds like it’s exactly what he means. 

“Right,” Luke says sarcastically. “What’s the point in this call?” 

“To fucking talk, Luke, not have you bite my head off,” Ashton says. The fury grows hotter in Luke’s chest, seeping into his veins and heating up his muscles. 

“Talk about what?” he spits. 

“You’re my fucking soulmate!” Ashton says, voice rising. “Don’t you want to fucking talk about it?” 

“No!” Luke shouts, and two passers-by give him an odd look. He lowers his voice, and tries again. “No. I don’t have anything to say about it.” 

“I think we should meet up,” Ashton says. 

“I think you’re fucking insane,” Luke tells him. “I’m going back to work. Don’t contact me again.” 

“Wait,” Ashton nearly yells, and Luke, out of instinct, hesitates. “Uh. What’s your-  what’s it of?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Luke growls, and hangs up. 

He lets out a shaky exhale as he tips his head back against the cold brick wall behind him, anger pounding through his veins, ringing in his ears. 

Fuck Ashton Irwin, he thinks, blinking up at the cloudless sky. Fuck Ashton Irwin, and fuck the soulmate tattoos. 

chapter two

[portalford]

Another Life or Another Dream

AO3

Stanford Pines is seven years old and can’t sleep.

His brother, Stanley Pines—also seven—can’t sleep either.

These things may or may not be directly related.

“Sixer, s’like, the middle of the night.”  Stan, still mostly asleep, pulls a pillow over his face.

Ford, hanging upside down off his bed, swats the pillow away.  “It’s two in the morning, Stanley.”

“Yeah?  S’worse.”  Stan pats around for the pillow for about three seconds before giving up and tossing his arm over his eyes.  “Go back to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

That gets him one open eye.  “Didja try lyin’ down.”

“Yes, Stanley.”  

Both eyes open now.  “Bad dreams?”

Ford hesitates a moment, two, before admitting, “Yes.”

Stan is scowling, but Ford knows it’s not at him.  “Want me to go check in the closet?”

“No.”

“Under the bed?”

��No.”

Stan’s scowl has morphed into a frown.  He’s thinking.  

“I fell asleep reading a book about monsters,”  Ford offers.  Maybe if Stanley has more information he’ll be able to help.  “I didn’t get to the part about how to fight them—maybe if I read that it’ll help.”

Stan, wide awake now, stands up on his mattress so Ford doesn’t have to lean out so far.  “Want me t’ listen so I’ll know too?”

Ford had really been hoping for this, but he offers Stan an out, just in case: “You sure?”

“Yeah, dude.”  Stan bounces up; Ford catches his arm and helps drag him up into the top bunk.  “You think I’d miss a chance to punch a monster?”

“You wouldn’t miss a chance to punch anything.”

“‘Xactly.”  Stan pokes him in the ribs, right where he’s ticklish.  Ford scoots away before either of them can escalate things.  “Start readin’, Sixer.”

Ford opens the book to the correct chapter and clears his throat, like the announcers on the radio do when they have something important to say.  “All right.  ‘Changelings are fearsome creatures, but they are not invincible.  There are some weaknesses you can exploit, should you be faced with this beast…”

*****

Stanford Pines is twenty years old and can’t sleep.

Fiddleford is awake as well, but he seems happy with this state of affairs, blankets pulled up to his chin to ward off the chill of their poorly-equipped dorm and weighty book of advanced mechanics balanced on his knees.

Most nights, Ford is perfectly content to work well into the earliest hours of the morning, and sometimes straight through until classes the next day.

With the current state of his throat, head, and overall wellness, however, he would welcome unconsciousness over the awful half-alert state he’s been in most of the day.

A stifled cough escapes—his control is slipping, after twenty-three hours of forcing his mind and body to operate at normal capacity—and catches Fiddleford’s attention.

“Stanford?”  Fiddleford lowers the book just enough to see over it.  “Y’alright?”

Ford discreetly clears his throat.  “Fine, yes.”  Damn.  He still sounds like he’s dragging his voice over a gravel road.

Fiddleford’s book is lying in his lap now, disregarded.  “You sure about that?”  

He’s using the tone that means he knows Ford is lying, and that he’s allowing one more chance for Ford to tell the truth of his own volition.  Ford ignores it.  “Certainly.”

Fiddleford is glaring overtop of his glasses now.  “Stanford Pines, you are sick as a dog, and lying like one t’boot.”

Ford badly wants to make a sarcastic response, but he’s no longer sure he can speak without setting himself off coughing.  He settles for a shrug.

“Did you take anything?”

Another shrug.

“Heaven’s sakes, Stanford.”  Fiddleford tosses his book aside and bustles off to the drawer that contains various over the counter medications (his), snacks (his), and spare pencils (Ford’s).

Two minutes and no less than six furious and deathly sincere threats of shoving aspirin “down your stubborn gullet God help me I’ll do it,”  Ford has been coerced into taking painkillers and drinking a glass of water.  Fiddleford offered to run out and get soup and crackers, but Ford refused.  Fiddleford has a test tomorrow—he should be sleeping.

“It ain’t until tomorrow afternoon, knucklehead,”  Fiddleford says when Ford suggests this.  “I got time.”  A moment of silence.  “Still can’t sleep?”

Ford makes a vague gesture with his hand to the affirmative.  Now that Fiddleford knows he’s ill, there’s no need to try and keep up a facade of being well.

“My sister used t’read to me when I couldn’t sleep.”  Fiddleford hefts his book.  “This stuff’ll put me to sleep, and I like mechanics.  I bet it’ll work on you.”

“Bet it won’t,”  Ford rasps.

“I’m not takin’ that bet because you’ll kill yourself to win.”  Fiddleford fluffs his pillow behind him, clearly settling in for the night.  “I’m gonna read out loud and you can tell me to shut up whenever.”  He harrumphs and starts from what’s clearly the middle of a sentence in the middle of a chapter.  “—can be modified to accept most kinds of springs.”

Ford doesn’t tell him to shut up.

*****

Stanford Pines is twenty-eight years old and can’t sleep.

To be entirely truthful (and the rarity with which he is truthful these days, even to himself, would be disturbing if he could dredge up the energy to feel disturbed), he can’t remember the last time he did sleep.  Possibly three days ago.

Now, being unconscious while a multi-dimensional demon uses your body for nefarious means probably should not count as sleep, but the other option was to admit that he truly could not remember the last time he slept, and that was unacceptable.

So.  Three days ago.

His house is freezing.  He’s had this thought many times in the past however-long-it’s-been, and every time it takes him longer and longer to remember that this is because he fell behind on his heating bill at some point Before.

Absurd things, bills.  He should have built that self-sustaining generator and taken his house off the grid entirely.  Why hadn’t he?

Ah.  Yes.  

Anyway, the cold makes him sluggish, but not sleepy, so it’s nothing to be concerned about.  Imagine being concerned with something like the temperature.

Ridiculous.  There are thousands of things much more concerning than the measure of hot or cold, and he is dealing with approximately nine hundred and fifty-three of them.

This is not an exaggeration.  He did the math a few days (months? years?) ago. 

Oh, it would have been three days ago—he remembers because he came to groggy and wondering when theoretical mathematics made his ribs hurt.  His head, certainly, if the problem was knotty enough, but surely not his ribs?

Realization had set in a moment later (as had the ever-impending panic attack, but let’s not dwell on that).

The glass of water he’d been drinking falls from his hand, apparently for no reason.  He stares at it blankly, mind automatically attempting to draw patterns in the spattered liquid and crystalline shards of glass.

Another part of him offers some comparison between his own mind and the shatter-shapes of the glass.  He promptly silences that part.

He’s shivering.  Probably it’s why he dropped the glass.  Probably it’s the cold.

He tucks his hands under his armpits.  That should help.

Still.  Best not to sleep.

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-something years old and can’t sleep.

His sleep schedule is haphazard, but the sleep itself is better than it has been in years.  Complete and utter exhaustion will do that for a man.

The nightmares don’t even wake him up every time anymore, so those ones don’t count.

Unfortunately, tonight he’s let himself go past ‘exhausted to the point of collapse’ and right into ‘exhausted to the point of being too wired to sleep’.

Nothing Bill has or ever will put him through could rival the sheer torture of this state of being.  He takes a moment to enjoy being able to think such a thing without fear that Bill will pull the thought from his head and use it against him.  Only a moment, though—his concentration is too fragmented for anything more.

He won’t take anything to help himself sleep—he never does.  He can’t.  A single moment of grogginess could be a moment too many, and he won’t take that risk.

He falls back on well-worn techniques instead—cataloguing the constellations of different worlds, conjugating pluperfect Kesslian verbs, translating a poem he heard at a campfire one time.

He doesn’t think about Earth.  Somehow that never helps.

There is one thing to say for running so utterly on empty:

once you fall asleep, you’re far too tired to dream.

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-eight years old and can’t sleep.

He was asleep, until about thirty seconds ago.

He much prefers being awake.

His hands are shaking and his heart is pounding and judging from the pain when he twists to look at the clock, he probably wrenched his back again.

There is nothing yellow in the room.  The only omen of Bill is the remembered laughing cacophony in his head.

Sometimes, in more morbid moments, he fancies that the metal plate reinforcing his skull only gives Bill better ambiance and acoustics for his fits of hysterics.

His back is aching and it’s still hours before anyone else will be up and he can’t tell if the faint tremor in his body is from exhaustion or the nightmare.

He still prefers being awake.

*****

Stanford Pines is fifty-eight years old and can’t sleep.

It isn’t because of nightmares or illness.  There are no demons, real or imagined, and he isn’t lost in another dimension.

“And then what, Grunkle Ford?”

It is, in fact, because of two small children with an insatiable appetite for stories.

Ford smiles at Mabel.  She’s far more likely to air her impatience with his theatrical and intentionally-provoking pauses than Dipper, though her twin’s expression matches her eagerness.

“Are you sure you want to know?”  He asks, just for that little bit more.

Mabel does not disappoint.  She swats at him—she has quite an arm; Ford wouldn’t be surprised if Stan has been giving her boxing lessons—and yells “YES!”

“C’mon, Grunkle Ford, tell us,”  Dipper cajoles.

“All right, all right.”  He leans in, as though to tell them a secret, and they mimic the motion, eyes bright with anticipation.  “The ice would have crushed the boat if we had tried to go through—so we went over instead.”

Bafflement.  “What?”

“We flew.”

Astonishment.  “It was a flying ship?”

Ford laughs.  He can’t help it—their unfeigned delight at the strangeness of the universe reminds him of days when his eyes had been that bright, his wonder that unfettered.

He is living those days vicariously through them for now, for now, but—maybe not forever.

He has hope that he will live them for himself again someday soon.

He has hope for a lot of things now, actually.

It’s nice.

Mabel opens her mouth to ask what is probably seven or eight questions all at once, and lets the air out in an ear-piercing squeal as Stan swoops in from behind and swings her up onto his shoulders.  He catches Dipper with his other hand, tucking the boy up under his arm.  “All right, you little gremlins, time to hit the sack.”

“Awwww—”

“But Grunkle Stan—”

“Don’t ‘but Grunkle Stan’ me, kiddo.”  He gives Dipper a little shake, nearly dropping him in the process.  He is either not aware of or ignoring the fact that Mabel has stolen his hat and is trying to find some way to wear it that will not impede her vision.  “Ford’s got enough nerd stories to last ten of your young lifetimes.  Trust me—I’d know.”

Ford makes a bit of a face at that.  He has to stop it from twisting into a smile when Stan makes a much more exaggerated face in return.

“Could you do the monster chase game, Grunkle Stan? Please?”  Mabel’s eyelash-batting is entirely wasted due to the fact that Stan can’t see her, but it adds something to her plea nonetheless.

“What’s in it for me?”

“We’ll go to bed without complaining?”  Dipper offers.

“If you catch us we’ll pick up the whole yard tomorrow!”

Ford and Dipper give near-identical winces at Mabel’s recklessness.  

Stan, of course, is immediately sold.

“Done,” he says.  He swings Mabel off his shoulders and lets Dipper down, but keeps hold of both of them.  “Hope both of you are ready to lose all your free time.”

“Big words,”  Mabel challenges.

Stan snorts.  “On my mark—readysetgo!”

They’re off, Stan roaring in a fairly good imitation of the giant six-legged creature of unknown origin Ford had run across on D-272, and Dipper and Mabel laughing and shouting as they barrel toward the stairs.

It’s impossible to sleep through this racket.

Ford doesn’t mind at all.

[chaoskirin]

The Seven Seas--Final Chapter

Fandom: Queen Genre: Sci-fi/Gen Rating: PG Chapter 4 Word Count: 2003 TOTAL WORD COUNT: 8073

A couple notes: I originally outlined this for the inclusion in a zine. When that didn’t happen, I sort of set the project aside for a while... But after The Seven Seas of Rhye came up on my playlist recently, I decided to expand it a bit and write it. My original target for zine printing was 4 pages or 4,000 words, so I’ve expanded it a little. I hope you enjoy the end. Thank you for reading.

---

The magnitude of a concert can be outlined by several things.

First, the talent. In the case of Queen, this was largely a non-issue, as they were four of the most talented people on the planet. To be fair, this was Roger's assessment, and Roger possessed an ego roughly the size of a stack of thirty blue whales. For the purposes of comparing size, it might have been more logical to select something land-based, such as school buses or football fields. However, in dealing with an ego so large, one must delve into the outright ridiculous or downright strange--sometimes both at the same time. Therefore, whales.

Roger's ego was only surpassed by Freddie's, which no scientist has ever been able to measure.

Second, pizazz. No concert performed by Queen could ever be any less than a spectacular free-for-all of pyrotechnics. A smorgasbord of sparkles... Each properly calibrated to draw the most admiration from the crowd. Professionalism demanded a panel of lights so bright and hot that it could melt the cheese right off a hamburger from a whole kilometer away. If the entirety of the fire brigade wasn't on standby, the show just wasn't worth anyone's time. On the other hand, if the venue burned to the ground in the middle of the concert, it made for particularly bad press. It was a very fine line.

(There are other, more mundane things that go into making a concert a huge success, but this is not a bedtime story, and boring the readers to sleep would be far from ideal.)

But most of all, a crowd defined the magnitude of the concert. Without a crowd, nothing else mattered. That was Roger's expert opinion, at any rate. Which meant on the day of Queen's impromptu, unplanned, desperate, world-saving, hail-Mary concert, Roger Taylor delivered.

Though the fallow field stretched for acres in every direction, it was full to capacity, with people pressing in shoulder to shoulder, eliminating any space between them. Queen's stagehands--those they'd been able to rouse from their vacations--struggled to keep the crowd away from the makeshift stage. This task was hampered by a rather massive electronics rig that jutted out into every opportune space... much like an exploding flan.

John and Brian bent over it, whispering to each other as if they were the best of friends. If one could hear their words, though, one would understand that these were not the hushed intonations of friends--barbs abounded; when Brian called John an incompetent buffoon, John retorted by telling Brian in no uncertain terms that he was a technologically inept upside-down tortoise who couldn't wire his way out of a paper bag. When Brian noted that no one would need to wire their way out of a paper bag and that only an uncivilized rutting salmon wouldn't just tear through it to escape, John insinuated something terribly rude about Brian's dear mother.

In other words, they weren't friends at all. They were brothers.  

"Five minutes," Freddie said for the thirteenth time. Delays, as always, remained a trick of the trade. "Is this thing gonna work or not?"

"The aliens are in place?" John asked. One of the lighting scaffolds dimmed, casting the shadows under his eyes into positively evil relief.

"Yes. All of them. Leader, Glasses, Arsehole, and their entire crew." Freddie gestured up onto the far corner of the stage, where they'd built a tiny set of bleachers for the occasion--so tiny that Roger had to squint to see them. The slug-like creatures undulated over them like... Well, like an exploding flan. One must never fail to re-purpose a simile where appropriate, after all. Their shining silver ship lay just behind them, reflecting the light of the setting sun.

John looked at Brian. Brian looked at John. Neither of them trusted each other, and yet they both trusted each other implicitly, with their very lives. They were and would always remain a true paradox in every sense of the word.

"You guys can make out later," Freddie said. "Is the thing ready?"

Brian rolled his eyes. "I can say with absolute certainty... That is, with nearly every resource available to us... Ah, there's a VERY strong likelyhood--and a very TINY possibility that... I guess what I mean is that were I a betting man, which I'm not. Well, I am occasionally, but there's a time and place for it, and it's probably not here. Let me put it this way. I believe, with every fiber of my being--"

As Roger wondered if Brian had an off switch, John interceded: "We're as ready as we'll ever be."

"Good enough," Freddie said.

Brian thanked John for his ability to summarize. John patted Brian on the shoulder. They all climbed onto the rickety stage as the crowd cheered.

The aliens also cheered. Probably. Never easy to tell when you were sitting behind a drum kit several meters away from something approximately the size of guitar pick. Freddie acknowledged the would-be invaders with a nod, put his hand over the mic, and turned to the others.

It was never a good idea when Freddie put his hand over the mic on stage.

"I've changed some of the lyrics, darlings, for this special occasion."

Roger, who would be singing backup, paled enough for Freddie to see, even in the shadows. Freddie smiled and flicked a dismissive hand. "Don't worry, dear. Everything still rhymes."

"But... rehearsals!" Brian argued. "Our chance at--!"

But Freddie had already turned back to the crowd, his microphone live. "We've got something special for you tonight I think you're going to love. A new song!"

He waited, as all great showmen did, for the crowd to both cheer uproariously and fall to silence. As they were taking just a bit too long to get to the silence part, Roger smashed one of his floor toms as close to his own mic as he could get, creating the wiggle of noise juuuuust prior to a sound system emitting feedback. It had the desired effect.

With a devious grin, Freddie sat at the piano and stared daggers at the aliens. In the few seconds between the stage hand whisking away the standing mic and the sound crew activating the mic at the piano, he said, "This is what you wanted. This is what you're gonna get."

Ominous.

Even from the opening piano riff, the crowd was hooked. On their feet. Cheering. And Freddie sang the Seven Seas of Rhye for the first time in public, with some modifications which would never be heard again:

"Fear me, you lords and lady creatures. I descend upon your earth from the skies. I command your very souls, you unbelievers. Leave me what is mine--The Seven Seas of Rhye." Not bad so far, Roger thought as he eyed the special red button just to the side of his bass pedal. Out of all of them, he alone could be trusted with the proper timing, and it had to be perfect. If it wasn't perfect--

Well, it would probably still be okay. But Freddie thrived on perfection, so perfection it was.

The second verse got a little weirder.

"Can you hear me, you slugs and sluggy counsellors? I stand before you naked to the eyes! I will destroy any snail who dares abuse my trust-- You'll leave me what is mine--The Seven Seas of Rhye."

Roger, whose eyesight was very bad to the point where sometimes he couldn't even be sure whether he was staring at his own drums or a series of giant, empty bowls, glanced over at the alien bleachers. He thought--he hoped--they were no longer cheering.

He eyed the red button again. Not yet. First, he had to try to keep up with Freddie's lyric alterations; at the last minute, he decided maybe it would be better to loudly hum into his mic instead, then--either out of charity or mischief--Freddie kept the lyrics exactly the same as he'd written them.

"Sister... I live and lie for you. Mister... Do and I die. You are mine, I possess you. I belong to you forever."

Roger didn't hear the next verse. At all. Brian took over singing along, and Roger played on shoddy muscle memory--After all, he'd only just learned the song, so no one could blame him for missing a strike or two on a cymbal.

If Roger knew anything, though, he knew timing so implicitly, so instinctually... and he knew exactly when...

"I'll come out alive," Freddie sang. His arm blazed with hidden pyrotechnics as he pointed directly to the aliens' home planet of Denmark.

And Roger smashed the button next to his bass pedal.

Freddie sang, "Be gone with you, you small and shady conquerors," and the sky exploded with the most precise of direct hits. As Brian had calculated, Denmark lay at an amazingly fortunate and perfect angle to explode from earth's northern hemisphere. At least, that's what Freddie wanted them to think--for a Queen explosion, this one was rather small, but it had to look real.

Despite their tiny size, Roger could hear the aliens' audible gasp even over his drumming.

Unwilling to break his stride, Freddie continued.

"Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries. I've challenged the mighty Leader and his arsehole-- And taken what is mine. The Seven Seas of Rhye!"

Although everyone had doubts that the ploy would work given its absolute simplicity, the aliens still piled back into their ship, their slimy backsides squirming over each other like maggots in roadkill. As the ship lifted off to retreat, the stage crew covered their escape with a helpful volley of fireworks that exploded just a bit too close.

Roger turned his eyes to the sky just in time to see the silver saucer streak away into the sunset.

---

"Am I going to wake up at some point?" John queried hours later. Long after the concert ended and the crowds had filed out, Queen still sat on the stage as their crew cleaned up around them. "I feel like that should have been a dream. Was it?"

"I was thinking maybe we were dead," Brian answered, after which the two of them shared a private chuckle.

"No, we're not dreaming and we're not dead," Freddie said. "We've single-handedly saved the planet from annihilation, all thanks to yours truly."

Roger sighed. He knew this whole thing would go right to Freddie's head. Any attempt science made at measuring his ego now would backfire tremendously. People would die if they ever tried to figure out Queen's prodigy of a singer, and they would have been asking for it. No one could pin down Freddie Mercury and hope to survive.

"They'll be back," Brian said, after which John applauded him and handed him a certificate printed on expensive parchment. It was already framed.

Bran scowled. "This says, 'award for the most obvious statement ever,' and it's sealed by the prime minister and the queen."

"I've had that in my suitcase for the past year," John said. "Figured tonight you'd say something stupid enough for me to give it to you."

"But the queen," Brian stammered. John shrugged.

"Be that as it may," Freddie said, "Captain Obvious is correct. They'll be back, but I suppose that's a problem for the future."

Roger very much thought that was the right way to look at things. After all, the future wasn't real. It couldn't hurt them. And with every day that passed, the future technically got farther and farther away. By right of its very existence, the future could never be the present, and Roger preferred to live in reality.

As a dubious corollary, Roger also believed the past didn't exist, insofar as he couldn't get drunk in it. So maybe he wasn't the right person to ask.

"So now what?" Brian asked. "What do we do?"

With a smile and a flourish, Freddie said, "We play, darling. We play."