#ficon au

[so-caffeinated]

Chapters: 4/? Fandom: Arrow (TV 2012), Ficon Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Will Queen/Amelia Prescott, Jules Queen/Alex Castillo, Ellie Queen/Sara Diggle, Nate Queen/Penny Bookwalter, Ameliam - Relationship, Julex - Relationship, Elara - Relationship, BookQueen Characters: Will Queen, Amelia Prescott, Jules Queen, Alex Castillo, Ellie Queen, Sara Diggle, Nate Queen, Penny Bookwalter, Oliver Queen, Felicity Smoak Additional Tags: AU, Tropes, trope bingo, Playing with words, Smut, Angst, Fluff, Drama, FiCoN - Freeform, Canon What Canon, this verse may never end and i'm cool with that, Roommates, Amnesia, Sex Pollen, Royalty, Rock Star, only! one! bed!, Fake Prostitute, geographic isolation, professors au, Reincarnation, the smart one tutors the popular one, old west au, both of us are kidnapped, oops this is your phone, Coffee Shop, noir, Secret Baby, Fake Dating, soulmate, time travel (which feels redundant given... ficon), Rivals to Lovers, spy vs spy - Freeform, you're sick or hurt and i gotta take care of you, Apocalypse, stranded by the weather Series: Part 7 of Forever Is Composed of Nows Summary:

There are so many ways the next generation of Queen kids might've fallen for someone. Here are a few of them.

With this posting, the Ameliam amnesia story is complete! To start it from the beginning, click here. 

[artificialqueens]

forever is composed of nows (trixya) 1/2 - beanierose

AN: Title is from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name. My eternal gratitude to nadia for keeping me sane and listening to me shriek about this at all hours of the day and night. Love you endlessly, baby.

(read on a03) | (find me at katiehoughton)

It’s a soulmate AU where you feel the opposite emotion to whatever the other person is feeling | 13,336 words

Nothing happens at all until Katya is seven years old. This is not unusual. Not everybody has a sestrinskoye serdtse, her mother tells her, using the old Russian term for it. Katya likes it better, thinks it’s romantic, and she rolls the phrase around in her mouth for a whole afternoon.

Her parents were not soulbound. It runs in some families; doesn’t run in others. No one in their recent history has been. There’s an aunt way back on her father’s side who, upon finding herself soulbound to an awful tyrant of a man, had walked calmly right into the water and never come back. Or so Katya’s brother had told her and her baby sister one night, sheets over their heads and a flashlight underneath his chin.

His white, round face had hovered disembodied in the darkness, illuminated from below like a carnival head. Anya had shrieked and writhed and put her hands over her ears, but Katya had been transfixed. She thinks about her a lot. The courage it must have taken, to look her fate in the face and tell it no.

It makes her sad, to think that she might not be soulbound. Lots and lots of people aren’t - most people. It occurs in populations with about the same frequency as red hair. Still, Katya can’t help but feel like she’s special. She knows it to be true.

“You’re still special, Katenka,” Mama tells her when she tucks her in at night, smoothing her hand over Katya’s mousey hair.

Sometimes she will pretend like she is. She will double over as if she has been suddenly struck down with grief in the middle of recess. Nobody buys it, and she doesn’t care at all. The idea of it fascinates her.

What must it be like? To be one half of the same soul. To feel the exact opposite emotion to whatever the other person feels. To know, when overcome with euphoria, that your sestrinskoye serdtse is hurting so deeply. To know that your own joy causes them hurt, too.

No one will tell her very much about what it’s really like, and she thinks it’s because they don’t know either. From what she gathers, it’s only extremes of emotion that are intense enough for the other person to notice. So you wouldn’t feel it if they get their favourite coffee in the morning, but if they lose a loved one you’ll have one of the best days of your life.

So far, Katya has met only one couple who are soulbound. They go to their same church and must be about a hundred and twenty years old. They are always holding hands; Katya has never seen them not holding hands. She wonders if they’re capable of letting go anymore or if they’ve grown entwined just like that, like the beech trees in the forest back home in Russia.

“Ne smotri,” Papa whispers at her during mass. Don’t stare.

She can’t help it. No one will tell her exactly what happens when you do find your sestrinskoye serdtse. How do you tell? How can you know for sure that it’s them? And do you continue to feel opposite emotions, once you’ve found them? From watching Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, she thinks not. They always smile all the way through mass, both of them soft and melty at the edges.

Katya has tried asking, her mama and Dmitri and some of her friends at school, but no one answers. Soulbound people are rare, and Katya thinks that makes them superior, but mostly it just means she doesn’t really know what they’re like.

It’s a Wednesday late in August and Katya is lying on her back in the grass. She’s getting stains all over her dress but she doesn’t care, she hates it and its frills and lace. The air is thick with summer and she moves her hand slowly through it, imagines she can feel it shifting like molasses. She is seven years old, and it feels important. Seven is a lucky number, a good year.

Anya wanted to play dolls with her earlier but she doesn’t like how the boy one and the girl one always have to get married and have babies. She wants her doll to be an astronaut or a rockstar, but Anya tells her she’s stupid and Katya’s face gets all hot and Mama has to tell her “bud dobrym.” Be kind.

It’s better, out here in the grass by herself. Mama made lemonade and she spilled a little because she tried to drink it lying down. Her face is sticky, and her hands. She can feel the bridge of her nose burning, prickly with the heat, and she knows she’ll get in trouble later for not wearing enough sunscreen.

Out of nowhere, she feels a wave of bliss roll over her. That’s not unusual for a summer afternoon, except that she can tell right away that this emotion is not hers. It feels milky and intangible, like looking at her reflection in a pond or a river. Something shifting and not quite herself. Katya sits upright in the grass and presses her hand to her chest. She’s trembling and she bites her bottom lip while she waits for it to pass.

For a moment, after it’s over, Katya doesn’t breathe or move. She is so still that an ant crawls up onto her leg and marches up and down her thigh. Another burst of emotion hits her right in the centre of her chest. This time, it’s fear. Katya closes her eyes and breathes slowly through her nose until it goes away.

It isn’t quite the same as her nightmares, or the very first time she tried out the rope swing and arced so wide before plummeting into the river below. It’s more like when she and Dmitri got to watch Pet Sematary at their cousin’s house after Anya went to bed. A fear with no stakes behind it, a synthetic sort of terror.

She does not tell Mama. She doesn’t tell anyone. Who would believe her? All this time she has pretended to feel her sestrinskoye serdtse right on the inside of her chest, carrying them around with her every day. And now it’s really happening.

For the first year or so, it’s not so bad. Sure, sometimes it wakes her in the middle of the night and she lies on her back with her sheets pulled up over her head and her arms folded over her chest like a mummy. Like she’s in a sarcophagus, and she thinks of beetles crawling all over and nibbling at her flesh and her brain being hooked out of her nose or her ear.

No one has told her, but she’s not an idiot. She knows what it means, that she felt her sestrinskoye serdtse so suddenly. She’s older. The person she is soulbound to is an infant. It explains the bright bursts of intensity she feels at all hours of the day and night, that never last more than ten minutes or so.

She’s a little jealous. Everything is going to be different, for them. They won’t have seven years of feeling hollowed out and unwhole. They will feel Katya from their first breath. Have been feeling her. She thinks about them all the time, and wonders how many years it will be before they start to think of her, too.

For Christmas, her babushka buys her a journal. It’s bound in red leather and comes with a lock. Katya slides the key onto the same thin gold chain as her cross and wears both every day. She likes how the key bounces against her chest when she runs around at recess, how in the wintertime it gets so cold against her skin that it burns livid hot. She likes the reminder. There is someone out there in the universe whose soul is bound to hers, a person designed perfectly just for her.

Every night before she goes to sleep, Katya writes notes in her journal. The date, and her feelings. It’s not all that different to how everybody else uses their journals, except that the feelings she writes in it aren’t hers.

As she grows older, and her sestrinskoye serdtse grows older right along with her, it becomes more difficult to separate her emotions from theirs. Whenever she feels joy or peace, she knows that they’re hurting and then she grieves for them and then she’s hurting, too. Now that she’s actually experiencing it, it’s not as fun as she’d always imagined.

At nine years old, Katya goes through a rolodex of counsellors and behavioural therapists and doctors and psychologists. They toss around various diagnoses. Some of them say she has ADD, or maybe she’s autistic. She lacks the vocabulary to explain that her mood swings and her difficulty focusing and her explosive temper are because half of her emotions are those of a toddler. One therapist suggests developmental delay, and Katya supposes that’s not inaccurate.

She learns to be calm through it. She will clench her fists tight enough that she feels the thump of her pulse in her palms like she’s captured a hummingbird. She will count her breaths until it passes. Most days are dreadful. Every time she thinks she’s got a handle on it, something else flares furious and crimson in her chest.

One Saturday afternoon, Katya comes home from the woods and her palms are chafed and red from breaking sticks. She rubs them against the thighs of her pants as she walks in the back door. Her parents are waiting for her at the kitchen table, a chair pulled out for her to sit in and her journal on the table between them. Cracked open, and the lines of her spidery handwriting are barely legible.

“Sit down, Yekaterina,” Papa says. His voice is firm but not unkind.

She does, flopping into the chair and toeing out of her boots. It’s March and not quite warm yet; the heat of the stove makes her cheeks ruddy and she pulls her sweater off over her head. It makes her hair all staticky and her bangs flop down into her eyes.

“What’s going on?” She knows it bothers her father when she uses English at home, knows also that she’s doing it to spite him. “Where did you get that?”

“Tvoya sestra,” Mama says. Your sister.

Katya is up out of the chair so fast that she stumbles over the leg of it and almost goes to her knees. She shoves her sleeves up past her elbows as she bounds up the stairs two at a time. The door to their room bounces off the wall when she slams it open. Anya is sitting cross-legged on her twin bed, brushing the hair of one of her dolls.

When she sees Katya she cowers back against the headboard, her hands up in defence already. She knows what she’s done, then, and she’s afraid. Good.

Katya rips the doll out of her sister’s hands and pops the head off of it in one clean motion. For a second, she flounders. She wants to make Anya hurt, feels the mercury of her anger boiling inside of her stomach. Katya sweeps the rest of Anya’s dolls onto the floor. If she’d kept her boots on she could stomp them. She does it anyway, not feeling the prick of their stupid little hands and pointy noses against the soles of her feet.

Her parents have caught up to her now. She lunges at Anya, her hands extended and her fingers curled up like a dreadful beast. Papa grabs her from behind and lifts her clean off the ground. She thrashes in his grip, screaming and spitting.

The violation of it has cleaved her in two. She feels pink-raw, like the old paintings of surgeries she likes to look at sometimes. Herself, strapped to a table with her guts tumbling out, and rows and rows of people watching from the gallery.

Anya is wailing and clutching at her disembodied doll’s head. Again and again, Katya roars and writhes in her father’s grip, until he manages to get her through the doorframe and out of their bedroom.

“Ya ub’yu tebya,” she screams at her sister. I’ll kill you.

Mama has closed the door on Anya now, but she hears. The whole street must hear. Katya is choking on her anger, trembling with it. It streams out of her, nose and eyes and mouth, and the indignity of it sends her outside of herself.

Papa is still holding tight to her. She fights it for a long while, and then she sags in his arms and brings him to the ground with her. They are all three crumpled in the hallway, Mama on her knees next to Katya and Papa and their pile of tangled limbs.

“Breathe, Katenka. Breathe. It’s okay.” She does, raggedly at first but evening out with Papa’s strong arms still banded tight around her chest. After a long while, Mama says, “you have a sestrinskoye serdtse?”

“Da,” she spits through the grit of her teeth, the rictus of her jaw.

The whole messy truth of it comes spilling out of her, then. She tells her parents how for three years she’s been carrying another soul around with her every day. Feeling the antithetical emotions of that soul. Mama cries, and doesn’t furiously swipe her tears away with her palms the way that Katya always does. She lets them come, lets them collect in the creases at the corners of her mouth as she listens to her daughter.

After a little while, Anya and Dmitri poke their heads out of their respective doorways. Now that the beast of their sister has come to rest, they sit in the hallway as well to listen. Katya talks, and talks and talks.

She understands, now. Why nobody seems to know the truth of what it is like to be soulbound. The sensation of it is like pins and needles or gooseflesh, a tingling hyper awareness and the feeling of not quite fitting correctly inside your skin. It is hard to put words to it.

Katya gets her journal back, and doesn’t even get in trouble for ruining Anya’s doll. Everybody is tiptoeing around her like she’s sick, like she’s dying. It’s not true. Nothing is going to happen to her because she’s soulbound. Well, other than that if her sestrinskoye serdtse falls in love with somebody else, the grief might drive her to madness.

She would not be the first.

It’s the middle of the night; Anya is sleeping on her stomach in the bed next to Katya’s. She sneaks out from beneath the sheets and pads in her sock feet across to the closet. There’s a box at the bottom of it, where she keeps her supplies. Katya rummages through it until she finds her superglue.

Anya’s got her doll laid out on the nightstand, separated from its head by a half inch. Like it’s lying in state, and all the other dolls might come to visit it. Carefully, and still getting glue on her fingertips, Katya fixes the doll’s head back in its right place. She sits it upright on the nightstand, so it will be the first thing Anya sees when she opens her eyes in the morning.

Back beneath her sheets, Katya tries to pick the glue off her fingers. She thinks about her sestrinskoye serdtse. They will turn four later this summer. She wonders what it must be like, for their parents. Raising a toddler grappling with the enormity of two people’s emotions. Today Katya was angry, angrier than she’s been in her whole life. She’s not quite sure what the opposite of that is. Calm, maybe. Or peace. At least her sestrinskoye serdtse had a good day, she thinks, and it makes hot tears form along her bottom lashes.

* * *

Katya starts her fifth journal the same week she starts high school. She has them all labelled carefully with the length of time that they span, lined up chronologically along the bottom shelf of her bookcase. Sometimes she flips through them at random, chooses a day and reads it over.

There are days when she feels all alone in the universe, and remembering that her sestrinskoye serdtse is out there helps her. It lets her feel close to them, to read over her meticulous notes and try to imagine what they might have been going through. She’s fourteen now, and her sestrinskoye serdtse is seven. For half of her life, every single day, Katya has felt them.

It’s been a tough summer. Her anxiety has been there her entire life, when she looks back on it, but it has gotten so much worse since she finished middle school. There are voices in her head all the time, whispering to her. Catastrophizing. Convincing her that every decision is the wrong one. She knows they aren’t really there, but…there is a voice in her head.

Well, not a voice. And not in her head.

A presence in her chest, at all times and in all ways. Whatever she does, she has to weigh the consequences. If she does something that makes her happy, she condemns her sestrinskoye serdtse to misery. Most of the time it is paralytic; she doesn’t dare feel anything at all.

When she thinks critically about it, when she reads back on the last week or month or year of entries in her journal, she knows. They are not having a good childhood, whoever they are. Katya feels happy most days, but she knows it’s because they’re hurting and that makes her hurt as well, and it isn’t ever true happiness. It is ersatz, doesn’t belong to her.

She’s been grappling with it all summer. Trying to figure out just how the fuck she’s supposed to make it through high school. It’s difficult enough trying to fit in without being the freak who is predestined to be with someone she hasn’t even met yet. Who is going to want to date her?

Mama let her dye her hair at least. It felt like watching herself appear, like she was meeting herself for the very first time as she watched the bleach circle the drain. Her hair is waist length and wavy and white blonde. It makes her feel like a Waterhouse painting.

Her therapist keeps trying to instil her with coping mechanisms. Together they agreed that Katya should try yoga, and she does love it, but it also doesn’t cure her mental illness. There has been suggestion of medication, multiple times, but she won’t do that. She has no idea what psychotropic drugs might do to her sestrinskoye serdtse, and they’re only a little kid.

Katya’s not about to fuck them over like that. She’d much rather fuck herself over every day.

For the first semester, she does okay. Having a routine helps her. She gets up at the same time every day, goes to the same classes, practices yoga when she gets home. It’s impossible to predict what she might feel on any given day, but she can control everything else.

She’s doing okay, she really is, and then finals roll around. Everything in high school feels so much more important. The rational part of her brain tells her that it’s okay if she messes up a couple exams, she still has three more years after this to prove herself, but the anxious part of her brain is the one in charge.

It’s exhausting every day just keeping her head above the water, so when Dmitri’s friend offers Katya a drag of his joint she finds herself saying yes. That first time, she doesn’t feel much of anything. The smoke makes her cough and he laughs at her and shame burns hot and insistent along the column of her neck and into her cheeks.

After that though, it becomes their thing. Three or four times a week he sneaks away from the PlayStation tournament the boys are having in the basement and he and Katya share a joint on the back porch, after her parents are in bed.

When he kisses her, it isn’t a surprise. They’ve been building up to it for weeks and weeks, she knows that. His fingers brush hers when he passes the joint over, and he likes to prop his elbow on the back of the bench seat behind her head so she can feel the heat of his bicep.

It’s nice. She’s a bit awkward, not quite sure what to do with her hands, but she likes the soft little puff of his breath against her cheek. When they separate, he tells her “don’t tell your brother.”

The image of Dmitri beating the shit out of him makes Katya snort a laugh. They joke, her family, that Dmitri spends so much time down in the basement and out of the sunlight that it’s stunting his growth. Katya’s stronger than he is, with her yoga and now gymnastics too, these last few weeks.

Still, she doesn’t tell Dmitri. They get high together almost every day. Not just weed anymore, either. Katya discovers that when she has a synthetic euphoria, it blocks off her sestrinskoye serdtse so that she can’t feel them. It’s as if her brain is too full, there’s no room for anyone else’s emotions. It’s the respite she’s been hoping for for nearly half her life. The first couple times, she wonders what it’s like for them when she’s high, but then she stops caring.

Katya fucks for the first time in her twin bed in the room she shares with her sister. Anya and their parents are out of state for the weekend. Dmitri stayed behind and Katya did too, because she has to work her shitty retail job at the mall. She’s sixteen years old, and so wasted that she can’t lift her head up off the pillow.

This boy is not the same boy as her first kiss. He is also not her sestrinskoye serdtse, but she hasn’t been thinking about them so much anymore. She’s not sober, a lot of the time. It actually makes it easier to focus on her classes, because it quiets a lot of her anxiety. Adderall is lovely, makes her so focused and calm. She’s making good grades, so no one seems overly concerned that she has to be drunk or high or both in order to do so.

When it’s over, the boy passes her a tissue from the box on the nightstand and leaves her to clean herself off. She didn’t come, but according to her friends who have started having sex she shouldn’t expect to for the first few times.

After that, she has a lot of sex with a lot of different people. With guys, and with girls too. When all of her friends started becoming interested in the opposite sex, Katya did too, but she also realised she had those same feelings about girls. It complicated a lot of things for her. She doesn’t really tell people. Certainly not her Catholic parents.

She likes sex, likes making people feel good and letting them make her feel good, but there’s always something missing. Sometimes she’ll be rocking over someone’s face and gasping and she can’t help but wonder, just for a second, what this feels like for her sestrinskoye serdtse. They’re still only eleven years old, so she figures she has a good few years until she finds out for herself, but she can’t imagine that it’s good.

Intense pleasure starbursts in Katya’s stomach and she moans softly and arches off the mattress. Violet grins up at her from between her thighs, her cheeks pink with exertion.

“You’re so fucking hot, Kat,” Violet says.

College has been a lot about experimentation, so far. She’s tried drugs she never had access to in her small suburban town, tried a lot of new things. She got her first tattoo recently and it still makes her smile so big every time she catches sight of it. Papa is going to kill her, but it’s worth it.

Violet is hot. Objectively. She’s tall and striking. Katya loves to wrap her hands around Violet’s waist and marvel at how they encompass it completely as she guides Violet down to grind against her face.

They’re not girlfriends. Katya doesn’t do well with commitment, and Violet is totally fine with that. They’re both also fucking other people, off and on, but Katya enjoys Violet’s body and how skilful she is with her hands and her mouth.

Violet doesn’t know that Katya is soulbound. It’s not something she shares with her sexual partners. Some of her friends know, but she doesn’t think it makes particularly good pillow talk.

Hey, I really enjoy fucking you but I’m actually predestined to love somebody else, so.

She can’t imagine it would go over that well. It does feel like something is missing. There’s no intimacy with most of the people she fucks. Violet is different; they’re friends, and they do spend time together outside of sex, but not one on one. Always with the rest of their group.

“Are you coming to Ginger’s party?”

Violet is propped up on one elbow, looking down at Katya. Her makeup is smudged from being between Katya’s thighs, but her hair is still perfectly smooth.

“Duh. You want me to…”

“I got it.”

Usually Violet is the one to supply the weed whenever they all hang out. Her friends know that Katya does a lot more besides that, and she offers to hook them up, but they always decline.

She doesn’t miss the looks they shoot her when she rolls up to a party out of her mind on something a lot stronger than college pot. It’s out of love, out of concern and she knows it, but she bristles at the mere suggestion that there might be a problem. She’s fine. She is fine.

Her sestrinskoye serdtse? Not so much.

They have hit their teenage years, and Katya is riding out those mood swings right along with them. It is really fucking hard. She’s at college now, and everyone is always in chaos but everyone is at least an adult. Katya is thirteen again.

She feels tenderly towards both her own thirteen year old self, and her sestrinskoye serdtse. It’s the hardest age you’ll ever be, Katya is very sure of that. Not fitting in anywhere, the oldest of the children and the youngest of the adults. Still, it’s really hard to be focusing on a class and then have a sudden rush of shame or joy or sadness so intense it makes her lightheaded.

The drugs help her to level things out, and they also provide a very convenient excuse. Oh, that’s just Katya, people say, and it lets her get away with a whole lot. She’s very hung up on the fact that however hard this is for her to deal with, she is at least twenty years old. For her own teenage maelstrom, her sestrinskoye serdtse was only six. There’s an immense guilt there, even though she knows that it isn’t her fault and there’s nothing to be done about it.

When they get their first crush, Katya is certain that she’s going to die. They are middle of the night mooning over it, and she sits and chain smokes out of the open bedroom window. Grief is lodged in her chest, an unexpectedly hard thing in the flesh of her, like a peach pit.

She puts her fingertips to the windowpane to feel the cold of it. Sleep seems like a faraway thing. Her sestrinskoye serdtse is up, thinking on someone, so Katya is up right along with them. She lets her head lean against the glass and closes her eyes, cigarette dangling precariously from between her two fingers.

It is not a pleasant feeling. And when they kiss for the first time (Katya remembers her own first kiss, almost goes under with the weight of her guilt) pain is alive in the pit of her stomach. She tries to be happy for them, glad that they’re able to enjoy being a teenager, but mostly she just hurts.

Sasha keeps trying to distract her. Let’s get out of the house she will say, in Russian or in English depending on how bad she thinks Katya is. They walk around Boston and Sasha talks and talks, and Katya listens because she’s good at that. And she loves her roommate, is grateful to have someone holding her accountable.

“I think they’ve discovered how to jerk off,” Katya says over breakfast one Saturday.

Sasha is at the stove making eggs. She didn’t appreciate Katya’s cannibalism joke and keeps self-consciously rubbing one hand over her smooth white head. Katya has taken to calling her yaytso, mostly because she’s jealous that Sasha pulls it off so well.

“Oh?”

“Yuh-huh. I get these like, insane moments of agony that last for ten seconds.”

She doesn’t know what else that could be. It makes her grin every time even though it fucking hurts. She’s happy for them, feels strangely proud. They’re fifteen now; she’s been wondering when it’s going to start.

“That sounds…unpleasant.”

“Da,” Katya snorts.

Sasha sets a plate down in front of her and Katya starts eating, very slowly. There’s nothing to be done. Unless she finds them, which she has no clue how to even begin to do, all she can do is tuck her chin close to her chest and endure it.

“Katya, are you okay?”

“Right now, or in general?”

Sasha considers her for a moment. She is so calm, so absolutely unflappable. Never loud or crass. Sometimes when she’s drunk or high Katya will try to get a rise out of her, will say things that are both unkind and untrue. It never works.

“Both.”

“Right now I’m good.” She gestures at her plate with her fork. “These are good. Thank you.”

“And in general.”

The way Sasha is looking at her, round and wise like the moon, makes her pause to actually consider it. Is she good? She doesn’t know. It’s been her whole life, like this. It’s something she grew up with, and she was forced to adapt around it. She feels gnarled and wizened.

“This is just…how it is. I have to be okay with it.”

By the time she’s thirty, it’s not cute anymore. When she comes home at four in the morning high, when she’s drunk out of her skull at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, it isn’t charming. Not like it was when she was in high school or college. She can’t explain it away with youthful arrogance.

Rehab is the hardest thing she has ever done, and she does it twice. When she gets out the first time she tries to surround herself with people who are steadfast and calm. She sees Fame almost every single day, needing proof of life from her and glad to be held accountable herself. Sasha got married and moved out, but still loves her deeply and answers the phone at any hour.

For a little while, Anya comes to stay with her. Her sister tries to understand, but she has no experience with addiction or with being soulbound so it’s hard for them both. After Anya goes back home to Denver, Katya relapses hard.

She’s out of rehab now, a whole year clean and sober. She has two jobs and her own tiny shoebox apartment. Sometimes she still misses the place above the bar, but she knows that being able to walk down a flight of stairs from her front door and get wasted is not a healthy environment for an addict.

Her therapist worked with her to handle her anxiety, since she can’t fall back on any of the usual ways she silences it. It is always there, but she is much better at looking it in the face and telling it no.

Her sestrinskoye serdtse is doing well. They’re twenty five now, and Katya can only assume that they’ve built a life for themselves. She gets the odd day of blistering joy, but most of the time she feels sad and has to reconcile that with the fact that they’re happy.

It’s been rough for both of them. She still keeps her journals, has so many of them now that she’s thought about putting them into storage in her parents’ attic, but she likes to have them close. She’s happy for them, she is.

But she’s thirty two years old and she hasn’t met them yet, and it feels more and more like she’s never going to. It seems unfair of the universe. If it’s going to tie her to somebody, surely the least it can do is deposit that somebody neatly into her lap.

These days, there are groups online. Forums where people talk about their experiences being soulbound, and tentatively try to figure out if the person behind one of these usernames could be their sestrinskoye serdtse. It isn’t easy. The general consensus, among the people who have been fortunate, is that you can’t know for sure until you meet them face to face.

Katya doesn’t do a whole lot of meeting face to face. New people make her wary. She teaches, yoga in the mornings and Russian in the evenings. Every time she gets a new student, or a whole new class, she is careful to look each of them in the eye and introduce herself. She’s never felt anything more than pleasure that they trust her, that they have come to her for guidance.

She settles down nicely into her little life. There’s no more partying, no more stumbling vulnerable and high in the street. She goes to bed at the same time every night, wakes up at the same time every morning. The routine is the thing that keeps her anxiety at bay. And she supposes it’s a kindness on her part, towards her sestrinskoye serdtse. Katya never throws any curveballs at them, doesn’t fall in love or risk her heart.

Sometimes she wonders whether they can feel her at all, or whether they’ve completely forgotten that she’s there.

* * *

“Could you at least try to have a good time, tonight?” Fame grumbles at her. She’s leaning on the vanity with both elbows, as she puts the finishing touches on her lipstick.

The crisp edge of Fame’s mouth is such a contradiction to the smudge of Katya’s own lipstick that she laughs, can’t help it. She’s only going to this stupid show for Fame. Because it’s in a bar, and now that they’re both sober they can lean on each other.

“Tell me again who she is.”

Fame rolls her eyes so hard Katya is worried for a second she’s going to pop her lashes. They’ve been through this at least four times already, but Katya’s memory is not the best and well…she likes hearing Fame describe her.

“Her name’s Trixie. She and I worked at the beauty counter together in college. She is a-”

“Full Dolly fantasy!” Katya interrupts and then screams out a laugh and stamps her feet.

She’s seen a couple pictures from their college days, but Fame wouldn’t let Katya google Trixie. She wants her to get the full effect live and in person. It’s country music, Katya knows that much, covers and some originals.

“Right.” Fame hesitates for just a second and then turns to face Katya. Her hip props her up against the edge of the countertop, and she reaches for Katya’s hands to hold in both of hers. “Hey. Thank you. I know you hate music.”

“I don’t hate music. Just like…singing. Live singing.”

The so-familiar fluttering starts up in Katya’s chest and she kneads two fingers against her breastbone and waits for it to pass. She’s been feeling a lot of dread, lately, which she supposes means her sestrinskoye serdtse is excited about something. She’s happy for them, but she would love to make it through just one day without a cataclysmic sense of doom hanging over her head.

“All good?” Fame ducks her head just a touch to grab Katya’s eyeline.

Part of their journey to sobriety together has been total honesty. Fame knows that Katya is soulbound, and that it played a big part in her addiction issues in the first place. Addiction is a disease, she knows that, but it can be aggravated the same way her hip flexors get achy if she pushes too hard to try and get her straddle split.

Her sestrinskoye serdtse aggravates her. The last thirty years of her life, every single decision she has made she has had to consider them too. It made her very selfish for a long while there in her teens and early twenties. She’s back to selflessness now, tries to avoid things that will trigger any extreme of emotion in her at all.

“I’m good. Let’s go.”

The bar is crowded, because it’s a Friday night in Boston so they all are. Fame clings tight to Katya’s hand and leads them through the crowd. They have a little table reserved right up front near the stage, because Trixie is apparently a big enough deal that she gets to do that. Fame deposits Katya at the table like a toddler and goes back to the bar to get drinks for them both.

There’s no band, Katya notes with interest as she drums her fingers against the tabletop. There’s a microphone set up in a stand, and a pink guitar, but no other instruments.

When Fame comes back to the table, Katya gives her an exaggerated groan and drops her head into her hands. “Is this gonna be some acoustic bullshit?”

“Probably,” Fame says. “She plays guitar. And autoharp.”

“What the fuck is an autoharp?”

Fame pulls her phone out of her purse to start searching for a picture, but the lights dim and a few rowdy dudes whoop and holler and Fame hastily puts her phone away again. “I’m pretty sure you’re about to find out.”

Trixie comes out onto the stage, and Katya takes it like a punch to the gut. The lights make her blonde hair glow pink and it feels like intimacy, like pre-dawn. She’s wearing a very tiny, very tight dress that is all pink gingham and white fringe. Full Dolly fantasy, indeed.

Her hair is teased so high and it curls all the way down to her waist. It gets in her way so she can’t pull the strap of her guitar over her head, has to have a techie guide it around the back of her neck instead.

She strums her opening chord and the crowd roars wildly. According to Fame, Trixie has quite the fan base. She started posting music online and earned a following pretty quick. Now she tours around, playing small venues and selling her EP.

Katya is transfixed by Trixie, can’t draw her eyes away from her for more than a second at a time. She bops around the stage like she’s buoyed by the audience, stomping and jumping in her white cowboy boots. And every time the noise of the crowd swells, each time it crescendos, Katya feels anguish right in the centre of her chest. The same as always, she recognises it as something that doesn’t belong to her. It’s her sestrinskoye serdtse, having the time of their life.

She works two knuckles of her right hand against her breastbone and wrinkles her nose. This is fun, she’s having a good time watching Trixie, and she refuses to let her sestrinskoye serdtse be in charge tonight. It’s Katya’s turn.

“Now? Really?” Fame leans over to whisper to her.

“Guess so.”

She does her best to push it down. Everyone cheers and claps for Trixie so loudly, because they all came in here already loving her. They know all the words to everything she sings, even her original songs, and they sing along with her. Katya cheers too, whistles loudly with her fingers. It makes Trixie’s head snap towards them and she grins widely when she sees Fame.

At the very end of the show, everybody is applauding Trixie and hollering, and Katya feels misery rolling in thick waves that crest over the top of her head. It’s the strongest it’s been for a really long time. She ducks her head to put her chin against her chest and breathes raggedly against the feeling that she’s going to pass out.

Fame has one hand wrapped tight around Katya’s elbow and she focuses on those five points of contact. It’s so unfair that she can’t have just one night without having to share her whole self with somebody else. Hot tears of frustration collect along her lash line and she watches Trixie liquidate and shimmer pink and gold in front of her, blinks hard to bring her back into focus again.

“She texted me earlier. Said to come backstage after. Wanna come too?”

It’s maybe not the best idea. Her ribcage aches with the phantom hurt so that she can’t take a deep breath. One time, she watched a documentary about people who have had limbs amputated but can still feel them. Sasha found her crying into a bag of Skittles and took the remote away from her.

“Sure, okay. I need a cigarette first though.”

She heads outside, already fumbling with the carton of cigarettes and her lighter. There’s a lot of people crowding right outside the entrance of the bar and it feels like they’re all touching her at once but from the inside, beneath her skin. Katya loops around to the left and into the alley, leans back against the brick. The dumpster hides her from view mostly, so she closes her eyes and tilts her face up to the moonless night.

Everything is beginning to wear off now. She’s not sure whether it’s the cigarette, or if whatever her sestrinskoye serdtse was doing that made them so happy is finally over. It’s quite a bit colder out here than inside the bar. Katya crosses her left arm over her body and secures her hand at her right hip. It is not her first time hunkered in an alleyway on the precipice of tears.

Once she’s done with her cigarette she stubs it out against the wall and rummages in her purse for gum. Smoking is disgusting, she knows that, so she always does her best to cover up the smell of it after. Especially when meeting new people. And, well, her therapist does always say she has an oral fixation. Gum helps.

There’s no bouncer or anything - Trixie might be popular but she’s not that famous - so Katya knocks once and then opens the door to the tiny green room. Fame is seated on a little couch, her legs crossed at the ankles and tucked neatly in. She’s watching Trixie remove the layers of performance from herself.

“There you are,” Fame says when she sees Katya. “Trixie, this is-”

“Katya, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Trixie is wiping away something Katya assumes to be Pond’s cold cream with a facecloth. She’s brushed her hair out so that it isn’t teased quite so high anymore, but it’s still curly and thick and shiny. She’s changed into a different dress, a floaty lacy thing that looks like a Victorian nightgown. Katya wonders if Trixie ever wears pants of any kind. She can’t imagine it.

“Yeah! Katya.” Sasha told her once that she responds to her own name the same way a golden retriever does. She feels the warmth of embarrassment spreading up her throat and scrubs a hand at the back of her neck. “I’ve heard almost nothing about you. This one wanted me to experience you myself.”

“And how was your experience? Of me.”

Trixie gets done wiping her makeup away and starts rubbing some kind of lotion into her skin. The fancy bottles look familiar and Katya figures she’s probably seen them in Fame’s bathroom, before. The two of them did work the beauty counter together all those years ago, they probably trade all kinds of secrets. A weird flare of jealousy burns in Katya’s stomach for just a moment.

“Really good. You were…wow. You had them eating out of your hand.”

“I told you you’d like it,” Fame says. She’s so smug, but Katya is not about to point out that Fame specifically told her she probably wouldn’t like it. Not in front of Trixie, who looks so quietly pleased.

She’s finished with all of her serums and creams and wipes her hands clean on the facecloth. Freckles scatter her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, Katya notes. She’s really, really cute. Full lips, round cheeks, a graceful slope to her nose that Katya is very envious of.

A flutter starts in her chest, something with wings that Katya cages immediately. She doesn’t date anymore, doesn’t bother with it. Sometimes she will take a random girl home with her for the night, but it’s a lot more difficult to do now that she’s sober. She’s a solitary creature, and that’s okay with her.

Done with her beauty routine, Trixie finally turns away from the mirror to look Katya in the eye for the very first time.

Oh.

Years later, people will ask the two of them how they knew. To those who aren’t soulbound, it’s difficult to understand, but Katya explains it like this: imagine you’ve spent your whole life with a stone in your shoe, you’ve learned to live with it, you don’t even notice the discomfort some days. And then just like that, the stone is gone.

Neither of them says anything. For a horrifying second, Katya thinks she’s the only one who feels it and she has actually lost her mind here in this bar. Then Trixie takes a couple of stumbling steps backwards and catches herself against the edge of the vanity table. Her knuckles are white. Fame darts a puzzled glance between the two of them and then gets to her feet.

“I’m going to um…give you a minute,” she says, but Katya’s not even hearing her. Not really.

She’s staring at Trixie, she knows she is, but she thinks it’s okay because Trixie is staring at her right back. Neither of them moves or speaks. She knows that it’s true, feels it as surely as she’s ever known anything, but she wants to be certain.

“Trixie. Trixie, when’s your birthday?”

“August 23, 1989.”

“Fuck,” Katya says, and has to sit down.

It seems to jolt Trixie into action. She crosses the distance between them and goes to her knees at Katya’s feet on the disgusting green room carpet. Trixie fumbles for Katya’s hands, takes both of them in hers and squeezes.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Is it you?”

Katya bites her lip. She feels relief, and wonder, and she feels it twice. After thirty years she’s gotten very good at separating her own emotions from those of her sestrinskoye serdtse. From those of Trixie. Holy shit. She recognises Trixie’s own awe, feels it milky and ephemeral the same way she always does. But now she doesn’t feel the opposite of what Trixie feels. She feels the truth of it.

“I felt the day you were born,” Katya says.

Of all the things she ever imagined she would say to her sestrinskoye serdtse when - if - she ever got to meet them, this was not high up on the list. But Trixie is at her feet like supplication, like exaltation.

Trixie’s hands are still in hers. Katya absently notes her nails, trimmed short and painted baby pink, and wonders whether that’s for playing guitar or…

When at fifteen she figured out she was bisexual, Katya had been extremely annoyed. Her friends were sweet about it, told her it widened her dating pool and really she was so lucky, but all she kept thinking was that she wouldn’t even know whether her sestrinskoye serdtse is a man or a woman until she met them. And then she’d worried that they’d be a woman, and they’d be straight, and they wouldn’t want her.

“How old are you?” Trixie asks, wide-eyed.

Katya screams and clutches tighter at Trixie’s hands. “Shut up, you cunt! I’m only thirty seven, so.”

“I’m just about to turn thirty.”

“Yes, I know. Trixie. Oh my God. You’re…”

She trails off, not entirely sure where she’s going with that. Thirty years of anticipation, and no small amount of despair, is welling up in her chest. It comes spilling out of her eyes, one hot tear that rolls cinematically down her cheek. Trixie reaches up to swipe it away with the pad of her thumb.

“Katya.” She gets up from the floor and comes to sit next to Katya on the little couch. There’s not an awful lot of room, and Trixie’s hips are wide, so their knees press together tight. “You’ve been there my whole life. Like, whatever I’ve been doing I’ve always known there was someone out there who cares about me because I could feel them. You.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Trixie. God.” She can’t seem to stop saying Trixie’s name. She likes the feeling of it in her mouth and the way it sounds, likes too how Trixie’s smile grows wider each time.

One gentle hand comes to rest at Katya’s knee. Trixie is tall and broad, and her hands are a lot bigger than Katya’s are, she notes with interest. Trixie is the most beautiful woman she’s seen ever, ever, ever.

“What do we…do now?” Trixie asks.

Kiss me, Katya thinks, but doesn’t say it. She’s known Trixie for all of five minutes, even though her soul has known Trixie’s for thirty years. It’s an insistent and quivering thing in her chest that she tries to ignore.

“Do you have to like, get on a bus or something? I don’t know how tours work.”

It makes Trixie laugh, and Katya is quietly pleased. She’d like to make Trixie laugh more, would like to hear it every day from now on.

“I’ve got three days in Boston before I move on to New York. Wanted to catch up with a few friends in the city while I’m here.”

“Okay! Do you maybe want to come back to my apartment?” Trixie opens her mouth and Katya hurries through the rest of her sentence. “Not for- just to get to know each other a bit. Oh! And I have something to show you.”

Trixie’s eyes drag very slowly down Katya’s body, from the crown of her head, and come to rest right in her lap. She arches one eyebrow. Katya screams her most obnoxious, pneumatic laugh and shakes her fists in the air.

“I would love to see what you have to show me,” Trixie says once Katya’s done screaming. “I gotta tell Bob.”

She gets up from the couch and smoothes her skirt out against her legs with the flat of her palms. Katya is struck once more by how lovely she is. Want fills her up slowly, warm and liquid. She presses her thighs together, and then realises that not only can Trixie see her doing that, she can probably feel it too.

Trixie holds out a hand for her and tugs her up off the couch. When they move for the door, she doesn’t let go. Katya’s palms are clammy and definitely unpleasant, but when she moves to take her hand back Trixie squeezes tighter.

“Roberta!” she yells down the hall.

A woman appears with a cardboard box in both arms. She’s taller than Trixie, even, and her braided hair is piled up on top of her head in an intricate style that gives her an extra six inches at least.

“Beatrice,” Bob says with a smile that definitely reads I am going to murder you. “I’m very busy hawking your merch right now.”

“Sold any?”

“Not a one. Actually had to pay damages to a few people for the indignity of having to look at your face.”

Katya watches their interaction with interest. She knows almost nothing about Trixie, but seeing her with Bob is putting a couple of pieces into place. Trixie is acerbic and sarcastic. She might look like a princess, but there’s a bite beneath the pink and the lace that Katya is very interested in knowing more about.

“Tell your dad if he buys five shirts I’ll let him stick it in.”

“My dad’s dead,” Bob says, and then cackles. “My bomb pussy killed him.”

Trixie suddenly seems to remember that Katya is still there, tethered to the end of her arm. She glances at her, but when she sees that Katya is grinning right along with them her shoulders come down a little.

“I’m going home with Katya. I’ll text you.”

“Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova,” Katya says, and offers her hand for Bob to shake.

She doesn’t miss the tiny squeak Trixie lets out next to her. Katya enjoys her full name, enjoys how Russian she sounds when she says it even though she was born right here in Massachusetts and doesn’t have an accent. Or not a Russian one, anyway.

“Nice to meet you.” Bob turns to Trixie. “Since when do you go home with groupies?”

“She’s not a-” Trixie starts indignantly, and then catches herself. “Katya’s different. I’ll text you.”

“Be safe, please. I’m not paying for your gonorrhoea treatment. Again!” Bob calls after them as Trixie starts dragging Katya down the hallway.

“Ignore her.”

“You haven’t had gonorrhoea?” Katya says sweetly.

“I pay for my own treatments, bitch!”

Katya cackles again. The way Trixie makes her laugh is new, feels different. She doesn’t recall herself ever having made some of these sounds before. Her heart is so light she feels six inches off the ground, and Trixie is still holding her hand.

They come out into the main area of the bar. A couple of people are hovering and Trixie signs autographs for them, takes selfies, listens intently as they gush at her. She gave Katya her hand back, had to, so she stuffs them both into her pockets and hovers a few feet away. Waiting for Trixie to be done. Waiting to take Trixie home.

Fame is sitting at the bar, stirring the straw around and around in her glass. Panic guts Katya and her intestines fall out at her feet. The whole reason that she’s here in the first place is to be sober with Fame, and then she let her wander off to the bar by herself.

“You good?”

“Are you good?” Fame says. She notices Katya’s eyes on her glass and huffs. “It’s virgin. Give me a little credit.”

Katya climbs up onto the barstool next to Fame’s. “Right. I’m sorry. Yeah. I’m good. I’m really good.”

“Are you going to explain, or?”

Across the bar, Trixie is saying goodbye to the last of her fans. She exchanges a couple words with Bob, who is beginning to pack up the merch table, and then she turns around. When she sees Katya her face breaks wide open and she smiles, starts heading for them.

“It’s her, Fame.” Katya rests a hand at Fame’s knee and hopes that she can feel how Katya’s whole life has changed. “It’s Trixie.”

Fame doesn’t frown - she would never invite a permanent crease to form - but she does tilt her head in puzzlement. “What’s her? What’s going on?”

When Trixie reaches them she rests her hand at the back of Katya’s chair. Her knuckles are just barely touching Katya’s spine and she leans back into them, likes feeling Trixie so close to her.

Understanding drops Fame’s jaw and yanks a gasp from her throat. “Wait a minute. Oh my God. Trixie, are you soulbound?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“She doesn’t know?” Katya whips around in her seat to look at Trixie, who is blushing so furiously that it’s spreading down to her chest.

“I never told anyone. Ever. My whole life.”

Katya can only stare at her. It’s been hard enough all this time carrying Trixie’s heart along with hers. She can’t fathom doing it alone, not having Sasha to sit with her when it gets bad or Fame on the other end of the phone any time of the day or night.

“Wow. Uh. Congratulations?”

“Thanks,” Katya grins. She hops down from the barstool and adds another two inches difference between herself and Trixie. “We’re headed to my place. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

She shouldn’t leave Fame here, she knows that, but Trixie is growing rapidly more impatient and Katya wants to get her home before she changes her mind. Fame is still mostly just staring in wonder at Trixie, but she does manage a little nod.

“Yeah, sure. Or before that, Katya, if you need.”

Tenderness makes Katya’s heart soft and sticky. She kisses Fame’s cheek, even though she hates it when Katya leaves red lipstick on her. While she’s right there, she whispers her gratitude into Fame’s ear. Reminds her that it goes both ways, that she can call Katya too.

And then she leads Trixie out into the night. She has an overnight bag with her, a pink duffel, and Katya takes it and hikes it over her shoulder. It’s still humid from the day and the back of her neck feels damp already, but it’s less hot and she’s glad for that.

“Are you okay to walk? You must be exhausted.”

“Walking‘s good. I always have a ton of adrenaline after a show.”

That piques Katya’s interest. She would very much like to know how Trixie usually burns off that energy. It’s not a question for right now. She starts moving, feels the warmth of Trixie right beside her. Her apartment is only a few blocks from the bar.

“So. You told Fame you have a soulmate?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty much common knowledge in my circle of friends.” Katya is glad that they’re walking, glad she doesn’t have to look Trixie in the face for this. “I haven’t always…found it easy. I’ve needed them.”

Trixie hums a little noise at that, but doesn’t say anything else. They’re at Katya’s building now and she swats Trixie away when she tries to take her bag back, fumbling awkward and one-handed for her keys. She’s determined to be chivalrous.

Her place is a two-story walk up. She invites Trixie to go ahead of her, pretending that she has to lock the door behind them even though it locks itself and she absolutely just wants to look at Trixie’s ass as she goes up the stairs.

It’s electric and thrilling, feels adolescent to be here with Trixie like this. It’s been a long time since she’s brought a girl home with her. If she can, she likes to go back to their place instead so that she can leave when she wants in the morning and doesn’t have to awkwardly try to shepherd them out of the door.

Katya gets the door open after wrestling for a second with the sticky lock. The humidity is making it worse than normal. It’s not because Trixie is leaning with one shoulder propped against the wall, shamelessly watching her. It’s not.

“I am comfortable with a level of filth that other people find it difficult to accept,” she offers as a prelude before she opens the door.

It’s not actually that bad, not as bad as it was in her twenties, but still. She imagines every inch of Trixie’s home is color-coordinated and pristine. Katya double checks the front door is locked and puts the chain on it, turns back around to see Trixie already in her kitchen and studying the paraphernalia Katya has tacked to the refrigerator.

“Can I get you a drink? I don’t keep alcohol in the house, but I have tea, coffee, juice.”

“Hot water is fine. Do you have honey?” Trixie starts opening cabinets to check for herself and finds it almost immediately. “Lemon?”

Katya wrinkles her nose. She is notoriously terrible at feeding herself. Her refrigerator is usually barren. She only likes two foods at a time, would happily eat the same thing every meal for the rest of her life if her friends didn’t intervene.

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s fine. Honey’s good for my throat.”

Once the kettle is on the stovetop and heating up, Katya excuses herself to change. In the bathroom, she stares at herself in the mirror over the sink. Her sestrinskoye serdtse is here. Right out there, in Katya’s living room. And she’s tall and blonde and gorgeous and famous, sort of a little bit. It’s so ridiculous that Katya actually laughs, out loud, and then splashes cold water on her face.

When she comes back out, Trixie is over by the bookshelves running her fingers along and touching all of Katya’s tchotchkes. She turns around at the sound of the bathroom door opening.

“You have a lot of cool stuff.”

“Thanks! It’s vintage, mostly.”

Trixie tilts her head in consideration of that. “Does it count as vintage when you’ve been alive for a hundred and fifty years?”

Katya screams, again. Her neighbour is going to give her that stern look when they bump into each other in the mailroom tomorrow, but she doesn’t care.

When you’re an addict, people often tiptoe around you. Katya is used to people - especially new people - treating her like she’s gun shy or easily spooked.

“You’re a villain, Trixie Mattel.”

Her cheeks pink at her full name. Trixie spreads the skirt of her dress out in her hands and bends her knees in a little bow. “What was it like, witnessing the Industrial Revolution firsthand?”

“Stop!” Katya gasps.

Trixie is grinning open-mouthed. Even teasing, Katya thinks she is so lovely, so sweet and wonderful. She can hardly believe it. For just a second she wonders whether this is a soulbound thing, whether it puts rose-tinted glasses over her and that’s what makes Trixie a pink angel, but she doesn’t think so. She thought that the second she saw her, before they knew they were soulbound.

The kettle starts whistling and Katya fixes their drinks, hot water with honey for Trixie and green tea for herself. She joins Trixie on the couch and hands her the mug, wraps both hands around her own.

Her phone in her back pocket is jamming awkwardly into her hip. She tugs it free and goes to put it on the coffee table, then thinks better of it and hands it to Trixie instead.

“Here. Gimme your number.”

Trixie adds herself as a contact. She’s put an emoji after her name, the two pink hearts, and Katya grins to see it. She sends Trixie a text so that she’ll have her number too.

“Hold on, some weirdo’s texting me.” Trixie glances down at her own phone, but Katya doesn’t miss the way she watches her from the corner of her eye, looking for her reaction.

For a little while, they trade information back and forth like secrets. Katya asks Trixie about her childhood, her family, where she grew up, and she offers her own answers truth for truth. She learns all about Wisconsin, about growing up poor and how that has given Trixie the work ethic she has today.

It’s getting late, but they’re not on the other side of the night yet. It hasn’t rolled over into morning. Trixie is sitting with her elbow propped up on the back of the couch and she plays absent-mindedly with strands of her own hair. She’s warm and Katya smells adrenaline and sweat on her, and leftover perfume.

“Hey,” Trixie says when there’s a lull in their conversation, and reaches out to prod Katya’s bicep. “What did you want to show me?”

Katya gets up and leads Trixie to her bedroom. She keeps her old journals in here, because it’s easier than fielding questions whenever she has friends or family over. They take up the bottom three shelves of her bookcase. She gestures to them, and Trixie sinks down to kneel on the carpet.

“I uh, kept notes. Helped me make sense of things, I guess. And so that I could ask them - you - for the stories.”

Trixie looks up at Katya and she has one hand over her heart like she’s trying to keep it in her chest. “Can I?”

“Course. They’re about you.”

Katya settles cross-legged on the end of her bed to watch. She picks at her cuticles, feeling suddenly bare. Lots of the people in her life know that she’s soulbound, but since the day that Anya found her journal nobody else has ever seen them.

The first one Trixie picks out is the first one Katya started. It’s thirty years old and the binding is coming apart a bit, she keeps meaning to tape it together. The pages are yellow and her writing is a little faded; Trixie cranes her neck over it until her nose is almost touching.

“You didn’t start from my birthday?”

“I didn’t have the journal yet,” Katya explains.

Trixie doesn’t seem to even really be listening. She’s following the words on the page with her fingertips as she reads, like she’s trying to absorb them. It feels voyeuristic to watch, even though it’s Katya’s own words that she’s reading.

“Wow. I never even thought about that. How weird it must have been for you when I was a little kid.”

Katya snorts a laugh. “Weird is an understatement. Thought they were gonna ship me off to the looney bin a couple times there.”

“When did you get back?”

The way she teases with her sweet voice and her sweet smile is like taking a hit to the solar plexus every time. It’s like they’ve known each other years. Katya kicks her foot out in Trixie’s direction but isn’t quite close enough to make contact.

Trixie closes the journal and puts it back in its place on the shelf, skips ahead several years. The one she pulls next is from when she was nine and Katya was sixteen. It wasn’t a good year for either of them, Katya remembers that much. And she remembers how she had handled it.

Not gracefully.

“I had kind of a shitty childhood,” Trixie offers. They both know that Katya already knows that, but she’s grateful anyway that Trixie has chosen to share. “Yours seemed pretty good though. I was sad a lot, so I guess you were happy?”

Oh. Right. That.

“I was…” Katya pauses to swallow roughly. Her mouth is suddenly dry and she works her tongue around her teeth. “I was high, Trixie. Like a lot. For years and years.”

Trixie very slowly closes the journal and sets it down in front of herself. She doesn’t lift her head to look at Katya. A little crease has formed between her eyebrows that Katya wants to put her mouth to.

“You were high?”

“Yeah. Or drunk. Sometimes both.”

Katya is way past the point of shame. She’s worked through it a lot in therapy and in AA meetings and now she can view that part of her life with a sort of detachment. Like somebody else did those things.

“You knew that whatever you felt, I would feel the opposite, and you chose to get high anyway?”

“Trixie-”

“Do you know what the opposite of euphoria is, Katya?” Trixie suddenly seems to realise the imbalance between them and gets to her feet. “It’s fucking misery. All the time. And then imagine that you’re nine fucking years old.”

Katya hates confrontation, always has. And she doesn’t know enough about Trixie yet to know where the lines are, how carefully she needs to tread. She lays her hands flat against her thighs, palms up.

“I didn’t think it would count. If it was synthetic happiness.“

“Well it fucking did. I was a kid.”

God. She knows that. She thought about it a lot when she went to rehab. That it wasn’t only her own life she was destroying. And every addict says that, of course, because everybody has an intimate circle of collateral around themselves, but for her it was different.

“I know you were. I know. I’ve had a lot of guilt about that.”

“Well why the fuck did you do it then?” Trixie has her hands in two tight fists and she’s pressing them against her legs as if she doesn’t trust what she might do with them otherwise.

“I’m happy for you that you don’t have enough of a concept of addiction to understand why it’s not that easy,” Katya says very gently.

“Don’t patronise me!”

Katya closes her mouth. She always thought that feeling the opposite of what the other person feels is cruel, is an unkindness on the part of the universe, but this is even worse. Trixie’s heart is aching inside of Katya’s chest. She can feel how much she has hurt her, can even feel how Trixie is on the hot edge of tears.

“I’m sorry. I was selfish. I wish I could take it back.”

“I have to go,” Trixie says. She looks around herself in confusion, like she can’t understand how she got here. “I can’t be here with you. I have to go.”

She’s at the door before Katya can even begin to figure out how to ask her to stay. It’s an unusual sensation. She’s not in love with Trixie, not yet, but she is the love of her life. Trixie is her sestrinskoye serdtse, but Katya feels certain that if she lets her go now that’s it for them.

“Trixie, please-” Katya starts, and gets her own front door closed in her face.

She slumps against it and sinks to the ground, lets her head smack back heavily against the wood. And then again, and again, and one more time. Katya draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, opens her mouth to let her teeth scrape against her own skin.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Katya heaves herself up off the floor. Her phone is face down on the kitchen countertop and she reaches for it, dials without looking.

“Katya?”

“Da,” she says.

She starts explaining the whole situation in rapidfire Russian, and as she talks she moves through her apartment and lets her muscle memory kick in. She rinses their two mugs and closes her blinds and checks that her lunch is ready to go for the morning.

On the other end of the phone, Sasha listens intently. Sometimes she just needs to rant in her mother tongue, and her old roommate is always so receptive and kind. Katya tells her that she found her sestrinskoye serdtse and that they are beautiful and funny and kind and that Katya is never going to see them again because the mistakes she made at thirteen are still, still, wreaking havoc in her adult life.

“Katya, you said you can feel how upset she is?”

“Da.” She bows her head over the sink and lets a tear drip off the end of her nose into it. “It hurts.”

“Okay. Well don’t you think that might mean that she feels how sorry you are, then?”

That did not occur to her, and she feels like a colossal idiot. Katya turns out all the lights through the kitchen and living room and gets into bed, phone tight in her grip still.

“Do you think it will make a difference?”

“I’d say so.”

Sasha has switched back to English now. Katya assumes Shea is there, knows how much Sasha hates to speak Russian in front of her wife and exclude her in any way, even accidentally.

“I like her so much. I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”

“I think you should give her some space for tonight. She was fresh off a show, right? Her emotions have to have been running high.”

Katya huffs a little noise of agreement. She knows that Trixie is tired because she feels it, layered over top of her own exhaustion like she is the photograph and Trixie the negative.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Trixie is vibrant and technicolor and Katya feels not all the way here.

There’s whispering on the other end of the phone, the sound of a door closing. “Do you need me to come over? Or I can stay on with you till you fall asleep.”

“I’m okay. Really. I’m just gonna pass out. Thank you, yaytso.” The nickname makes Sasha grunt and Katya grins, hurries to follow it up with something a little more tender. “Ya lyublyu tebya.”

They hang up. Katya doesn’t fall asleep, of course not. She lies on her back with her arms crossed over her chest so she can feel it rising and falling, to remind her that she will go on breathing even though it feels like her lungs are collapsing.

All of her life, she’s imagined this moment. What it will be like to meet her sestrinskoye serdtse. She always figured that whoever they were, no matter what, the two of them would just fall into it. That it would be easy.

She’s still awake when the sun comes up and she rolls out of bed and runs through her salutation. It does help, grounds her a little bit. Now that she’s listening to her body, it has finally gone quiet. Trixie is sleeping, then. Katya is teaching some classes today, but not until a little later in the morning. She takes a long shower and tips her head back beneath the stream, lets the hot water pound down over her face.

Her bangs are getting long. She huffs a breath and they flutter against her forehead. Katya runs through her usual makeup routine, dark smudgy liner and a crimson lip. She feels a little more like herself now.

Having Trixie in her space brought a few truths home for her. Firstly, she needs to get some actual food. Her refrigerator is almost totally empty and it’s embarrassing; she’s nearing forty.

Part of the reason she doesn’t eat is that she hates the grocery store. The lights stress her out and she gets so self-conscious, worries that she’s in everybody’s way while they try to browse the shelves.

It’s not yet eight, so it’s fairly quiet still. She gets a cart in the hope that she will be encouraged to fill it. Katya paces up and down the aisles choosing things at random. Back when she lived with Sasha they had a good arrangement going: Sasha made meal plans and went to the store and cooked everything, and Katya did the dishes and took out the garbage.

She misses her, fires off a quick text to tell her so. There’s no response, but Sasha is probably busy getting ready for work and is also probably exhausted after staying up with Katya all night like she’s a colicky infant.

Katya finds herself picking up a whole bag of lemons without really thinking about it. She hates them, and she pauses for a second and then goes ahead and puts them in the cart. She pays for everything and heads down the block towards her apartment with a brown paper bag cradled in each arm.

She’s not looking where she’s going, because she’s trying to figure out how to get her keys out of her pocket without dropping all of her groceries. A voice startles her and it takes twenty years of yoga, of centring herself, for her not to dump everything out on the sidewalk.

“Let me help.”

“Trixie?”

“Hi.” Trixie chews on her lip. She’s not wearing any makeup and her hair is back in a ponytail. There are blue tinted shadows beneath her eyes and a line across her forehead that was not there last night. “Here. Give them to me.”

“You’re here.”

“I’ve been buzzing.”

“I’m not home,” Katya says, and immediately wishes she had a hand free to slap over her face.

It makes Trixie smile though. She’s still holding her hands out and Katya passes the bags over. She gets the door unlocked, ushers Trixie up the stairs ahead of her and opens her apartment door as well. She has about three seconds to collect herself while she locks it behind them and she takes a very deep, very slow breath.

Trixie is at the kitchen island unloading the bags, putting the perishables in the refrigerator. It’s so achingly domestic that Katya feels like she’s going to die. Instead, she heads to join Trixie and help her.

“These are for you.” She holds the bag of lemons out towards Trixie.

Her face goes soft around the edges. Now that Katya’s getting a good look at her, she sees that the whites of her eyes and the tip of her nose are a little pink.

“I talked to Fame,” Trixie offers. She takes the lemons and puts them away into the refrigerator, very carefully not looking at Katya. “You were right. I don’t know what it’s like, to be an addict. She helped me to understand a little better.”

For just a second, she bristles. She doesn’t like the idea of Trixie and Fame talking about her. But Trixie is here, so whatever Fame said clearly worked.

“And, Katya.” Trixie turns to look at her then. Her shoulders go down and she sets her jaw. “I felt you. Felt how guilty you’ve been, all this time. How sorry you are.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” she agrees.

Those words have been offered many, many times. To her friends and family and coworkers and doctors. This is the first time she’s really sure that the other person understands how deeply she means them.

“I forgive you,” Trixie says. She takes Katya’s hand in hers and laces their fingers together. “I can’t say I understand, but I…appreciate how difficult it’s been. For you.”

“Has it been difficult for you?”

Trixie huffs an adorable little noise. They’re just standing here, holding hands in the middle of Katya’s kitchen. It should feel ridiculous. It doesn’t.

“Yes. I’ve ached for you, every day. Tried to move past it-” She cuts herself off and frowns. “Well. I guess you know about that. But yes. I’ve wanted you so badly, my whole life.”

“That’s pretty gay,” Katya says. She’s grinning, can’t help herself. Trixie learned the truth, learned about the part of her that pads restlessly, concentrically in her heart. And she came back.

Trixie snorts. “Uh yeah, well I’m a giant lesbian, so.”

“I wouldn’t say giant.” Katya lets her eyes roam over Trixie. She’s in flats today, cute little pumps, but she still has several inches on Katya.

She screams that banshee laugh again and throws her head back, closes her eyes. It’s so cute. Trixie is so cute. When she gets done cackling she goes quiet and then she wells up, her brown eyes almost green in the early morning light.

“I don’t want this to be ruined before it even starts,” she whispers.

Katya reaches for her, not sure what her intentions are until she gets her hands on Trixie. She brings her in for a hug, one hand cradling the back of her head and the other rubbing the space between her shoulder blades.

“Hey, no. Trixie, baby, shh, it’s okay. Nothing’s ruined. We’re okay.”

She holds her for a long time, feels the material of her shirt getting damp. Trixie has her arms low around Katya’s waist. They’ve known each other for barely twelve hours. But they have also known each other for thirty years. Pressed together like this, Katya’s heart greets Trixie’s warmly.

Oh, there you are.

[chaossmagic]

.

[fulcrumahsokaamidala]

Sunday Spectacular #24

Happy Sunday!!! So this is me thanking awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and all the time they put into their fics. ♥️ I want to recommend spectacular fanfic stories I read this week! ♥️ They are posted in the order I read them. All posts will be tagged #spectacular fic rec

Last week I didn’t post because it was my last week before spring break. I had so much homework that I didn’t read fic almost at all. I’m just adding what I read the week before to this post.

A Soul Lost at Sea by @tinaday3w​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Olicity Victorian AU - Five years after pirates attacked his ship, Royal Navy sailor Oliver Queen returns home to England to find his affluent family in financial ruin. So when he’s presented with the opportunity to marry Felicity, eldest daughter of the ridiculously wealthy Noah Smoak, Oliver doesn’t hesitate to capture her hand…even though he has no idea if he can capture her heart. Or if Felicity could ever possibly learn to love a soul lost at sea.

Pieces of Always by @so-caffeinated​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows.Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. You do not need to have read FiCoN to enjoy this, but it will spoil the end.

A Surefire Guide to Getting Over Your Ex  by lilbluednacer | Arrow | Completed

Summary: Felicity and Oliver can totally start sleeping together without ruining their friendship… right?

An Island Of His Own Making by @realityisoverrated-fic​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Oliver broke up with Felicity and Tommy because it was the right thing to do, at least, that's what he keeps telling himself.

The Green Arrow Did It by @realityisoverrated-fic​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: Tommy is on the other side of the country. Oliver is at work. Felicity is home alone with the twins. The twins might be ninjas.

Pas de Deux by @realityisoverrated-fic​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: With Oliver gone, Felicity and Tommy need to figure out who they are as a couple.

Workouts and Babbles by ElasticMonk | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Oliver comes to the rescue of one cute blonde at his gym just as Felicity stumbles upon one handsome mayor at her gym. They both have something in common, but will it bring them happiness?

The Daughter That Was Left Behind by @laxit21​| Arrow | WIP

Summary: Before the Gambit, Oliver Queen met QC intern Felicity Smoak. When he boarded the Gambit, he left something behind. Now, five long years later someone is waiting for him.

Artemis by @laxit21​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: When the Queen’s Gambit sank, two people were stranded on Lian Yu. Five years later, four came back.

in another world (just the two of us) by @inlovewithimpossibillity​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: She knows she has no right, no place here to say anything about it, but she can’t help the images that flash through her brain. A different Connor, with a kinder face and no facial hair, a different Mia too for that matter, in a completely different place. Somewhere darker and grimier, as if the filter that seems to shine over Star City has been removed.

[When Dinah and Laurel restore the rest of FTA's memories, Mia and Connor talk through some of their issues... or at least they try to. It's a little hard when you have two lives' worth of memories in your head.]

The Miracle of the Avenging Angel by @realityisoverrated-fic​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: It's a typical weekend in the Merlyn-Queen-Smoak household. Temple on Friday night, church on Sunday morning, and a whole lot of smut and confusion in between. It's the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the Green Arrow in Starling City and Prue has an unusual interpretation of her superhero father.

(your love is) always on my mind by @inlovewithimpossibillity​ | Arrow | One-shot

Summary: She’s clearly taken some time to get ready and that thought alone has Oliver’s heart beating out of his chest at an abnormal rate. The concept that she wanted to look nice for him makes his heart glow in a way he’d forgotten it even could. And good lord, she looks so much more than nice.

[An evening set between 6x03 and 6x04 because we all know these two couldn't keep their hands off one another]

Baby Daddy by more0rLessJess | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Bartender Oliver Queen was living his twenties to the fullest, he lived with his best friend John Diggle, and his brother in everything but blood, Tommy Merlyn just moved into their apartment as he started his professional baseball career for the Starling City Rockets. On top of that, his childhood best friend Felicity Smoak, who was no longer goth and instead blonde and beautiful, was back in town and they were hanging out again. Oliver thought his days were going to be filled with partying, one night stands, and boys weekends while also spending quality time with the girl everyone kept telling him he was in love with. Until his ex-girlfriend dropped a baby on his doorstep who turned out to be his son. After a lot of thought and Felicity Smoak pep talks, Oliver decides to keep and raise his son with the help of his friends. Or the AU fic inspired by the Freeform sitcom Baby Daddy that no one asked for but I needed to write. Aka Oliver and Felicity are childhood friends and are hopelessly in love with each other and everyone knows but them, oh and now they’re raising a baby. What could go wrong?

It’s in the Air by @emmilynestill​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: December 23, 2016. It’s Mayor Queen’s first-holiday party and love is in the air.

No, wait, that’s tension in the air. Bitterness. Regret. Painful longing for one’s former love. Awkward interactions with current significant others. A little humiliation mixed in. Yup, this was one great party.

Then the gas came.

Maybe love was in the air afterall.

**Just my usual lock Oliver and Felicity in a room with a mind-altering substance with a dash of holiday magic thrown in. And, by magic, I mean Sex Pollen. And maybe a little Truth Serum to stir things up.**

Always Been You by @smoaking-greenarrow​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: On Oliver's last night in Starling, Tommy throws him a yacht party. When his little sister and her best friend show up, Oliver has a hard time hiding the torch he's always carried for Felicity. But he's leaving in the morning... They both know it can only be a one-time thing...

From Russia with Love by griever11 | Arrow | Completed

Summary: Rookie FBI Agent and resident IT extraordinaire Felicity Smoak has just landed the assignment of a lifetime. Together with Supervisory Senior Agent Diggle, she returns to Starling City undercover in an attempt to flush out the elusive Odessa gang that has been a thorn in the Bureau's side for many years.

Leader of the Russian mob Oliver Queen stumbles upon a piece of information that unfortunately requires a certain set of hacking skills that no one he knows seems to possess. Lucky for him, he comes across an unusual criminal hacker who has mysteriously turned up in Starling and funnily enough, seems just right for the job.

How's that for perfect timing?

All Her Firsts by @callistawolf​ | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Felicity Smoak visits Starling with her high school decathlon team, prepared for a week of intellectual rigors. What she doesn’t expect is the emotional roller coaster that follows as she begins to fall for her host- the totally-out-of-her-league Oliver Queen.

Almost Lover by lust_muffin | Arrow | WIP

Summary: After the siege, after the whole mess with Slade Wilson, after telling Felicity he loved her without meaning it (but totally meaning it), things hadn’t been great between them. Tension was running high, they had problems communicating when that was something that never happened before and Laurel… Laurel was making everything worse. Until one night, she went too far. And that was the point that changed their lives forever.

Or a “what would Oliver and Felicity’s life be like if they got together sooner?”

It's A Long Corgi... by @alexiablackbriar13​| Arrow | One-shot

Summary: William accidentally, secretly adopts a corgi puppy.

Felicity and Oliver eventually find out. Eventually.

Daughter of the Demon by @laxit21 | Arrow | WIP

Summary: What if in 1988 while traveling through Las Vegas Ra’s al Ghul bumps into a nice waitress named Donna Smoak and they have one-night stand together? A little bundle of joy named Felicity Smoak is the result. In 2014, the Demon Head becomes aware of his youngest daughter’s existence.

The Ravager by @laxit21 | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Slade Wilson’s plan for revenge against Oliver took time, money and no shortage of lives to pull together. His plan didn’t anticipate Felicity Smoak. How will his plan change now that his lost-lost daughter is working with the very man he’s trying to destroy?

Felicity of Themiscyra by @laxit21 | Arrow | WIP

Summary: Years ago, Donna Smoak left the island of Themiscyra and her sister Queen Hippolyta behind to live in man’s world. She never told Felicity the truth about where she came from. As a result of the Undertaking, Felicity discovers some of her Amazonian abilities and makes an interesting new friend: Diana Prince.

I Scream But No Sound Comes out by @laxit21 | Arrow | WIP

Summary: When Oliver returns from Lian Yu after five years, he comes back different. What happened there damaged more than just his body. How will his friends and family deal with this new Oliver?

[the-ships-to-rule-them-all]

22!!!!!!!!!!!!!

from Greece to London to Los Angeles, it’s been a year of growth and change and I’m astoundingly grateful for everyone who has been here from the highs and lows and the screaming fangirl fits. thank you for making my life better

my favorite people on the planet, the ones who make my universe brighter just by existing

@goodqueenalys Mere you are one of the smartest most genuine humans I’ve ever met. I am in awe of the way you have nothing but kindness in your heart and that at the same time your spine is pure solid steel. your strength in your convictions, your passion, your willingness to educate, your creativity, the way you listen, the way you care. I am so so glad to call you my friend and to have you by my side.

@blyedeeks SOUL TWIN!!! can you believe that we only met 3 years ago? it feels like we’ve known each other our entire lives. Sometimes you meet someone who can understand you in ways that don’t seem real because they get you on such a deep level. I think I said something like that for the past two years but it’s still so true. And you are the kindest more brilliant star in sky Cams. I truly don’t know where I’d be without you, definitely not as confident or as loud. I love you a lot and I am so blessed to have your kindness and positivity on my side.

@marauders-groupie Lana’s words are spun starlight, she just captures something so instinctively human and tender with her poetry. She’s one of the kindest people in the world and she serves the universe. Oh, and she is determined and dedicated and passionate and she just believes so strongly in the goodness of a single person, in her own value that I can’t help but believe in myself more because of her strength and courage and beauty.

@astranautics Caroline!!! my girl, my wonderful amazing girl. I cannot believe that I was your Tumblr crush. There’s such a softness to your words, a willingness to share and that all too familiar desire to love and be loved in return. the fact that you send me stuff about my hockey boys legit has made me cry because you take such an interest in me and I just I feel so warm when we talk, I love that your life is so wonderful and yet mundane, I love hearing about your day and I love watching you believe in yourself

@koridick BABE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the amount that I love you is beyond words. You are so passionate and sweet and if I could save your messages when reacting to my poetry to just constantly brighten my day I would because every time I remember how you react I feel so inspired and worthy. I feel like my life isn’t right when I don’t talk to you and I’m so grateful that we both shipped Poly Rangers and got to sharing headcanons and writing fic and you are so talented and wonderful.  Your willingness to put up with my rants and the way you support me and love me is the greatest feeling in the world. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!

@sometimesrosy there’s something to be said about having someone who has lived a life believe in you. I feel like I can go to you for anything, Rosy. You are so so smart that sometimes I read your answers and it takes me a minute to reorient myself.

@everybodyknows-everybodydies I’m so utterly proud of the person I’ve seen you becoming over the past year. You are so talented, so talented and you are so tiny and cute that sometimes I can’t believe how much passion you have in your body. Your art, your convictions, your passion, it’s so beautiful to see and I love you so so much

@thesnowyswan my darling Rae!!!! you have made me a so much better writer, a so much better person and I love you so so much. thank you for all your support and encouragement and I love talking any and everything with you. you are such an utter badass and passionate and dedicated

@bishops--knifetrick I LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH BABE!!!!! we talk almost every day and I don’t even know what I would do without you! you’re so incredible and beautiful and amazing and truly someone special 

other people who are absolutely incredible and whom I adore so so much

@harpermcintyre (Al, babe thank you for always being kind and generous) @scodelariokaya (Nik is brilliant and beautiful and she deserves the universe) @wellsjahasghost (Jade is remarkable and funny and her words are spun gold) @mego42 (Meg is one of the smartest, calmest people on this site and she deserves only good things) @wellamyblake (MJ makes me laugh on the daily and her understanding of nuances is only matched by her passion) @thatonekimgirl (Kim!! when we met at HVFF I didn’t think that we’d end up linking back so soon, thank you for dragging me into the spiral that is loving VirtueMoir) @bellamysprincessa (Katie, I love you. I love that you are so supportive and I adore that we always seem to watch the same shows as you scream about something in the chat) @head-and-heart (Kate is a gem, a smart supportive gem of a human whose tags I live for) @deadshotbellamy (Grace is a gorgeous girl who has two of the greatest urls I’ve ever seen) @tybowen (Jen is a badass, a beautiful badass but yeah, her best quality is that she is strong in her convictions and passionate about the things she chooses to give her heart to)  @bb-8(Cody, you are so talented and smart and genuine and I love you so much) @montygreen (Leila, you are so talented and wonderful and I love you so much and your gifsets are so beautiful they take my breath away) @ohmypreciousgirl (to think that five years ago your blog was one of the first that I followed, that your passion and intelligence were a reason I even joined Tumblr in the first place, the fact that we are friends is incredible. I’m so grateful to you) @cllarkegriffin (Hannah, you are so incredible and I'm blessed to call you a friend) @clarkegriffintitties (Julia, I love you so much) 

the writers who own my heart, whose ao3 pages I’m constantly refreshing, who make me fall in love with these characters all over again

@deadcatwithaflamethrower (HER WORLDBUILDING IS TO DIE FOR, she just is constantly reinventing the universes that she plays in and reinventing my own opinions of characters by making them so much more complex!!!! she’s just so incredible) @so-caffeinated/ @dust2dust34 (their verse of FICON is one of the most awe-inspiring things I have ever read and it’s funny and sweet and action-packed and so full of family feels. I fangirled so much when I met Bre at HVFF, it was great and I just, they are so talented and I love writing poetry inspired by their writing) @rongasm (Rachel creates such works of art for Stydia and Percabeth and they are tender and touching and I could read the Harry Potter au for the rest of my life) @welllpthisishappening (Laura is a master at creating perfect pieces that I didn’t realize I wanted, she’s so talented and passionate and her stories just cause me to have such a massive grin on my face and she definitely reignited my love of CS) @ink-splotch(creates such masterpieces of Harry Potter and Marvel in terms of character study and what ifs and it’s just, I sometimes read them and cry but also rejoice) @lostcap (Phia’s poetry is pure spun sunshine and steel, there’s such a force to her words as though she is channelling the greek muses and the moment that she named me as one of her favorite tumblr poets is quite possibly one of my greatest accomplishments) @jasonsmclean/ @bipercabeth (have created one of my favorite series EVER, and are worthy of all the praise they’ve ever gotten) 

some other amazing people who have made this year spectacular

@bellameblake @bellsblake @bellblake @asexual-mechanic @apirateslifeforsmee @jahaliel  @molliiholmes @nerdybellamy @prosciuttoe @jbuffyangel @turtlejustice @junebugninja   @missemarissa @rashaka @griffndors @grumpybell @kindclaws @weirwolves @dreamcourtrhys @cath-avery @stydixa @ofnailbatsandaxefives @llysandra @whoeveryoulovethemost @impvlsivee @stilesprefers-screamers @readymachine @bellarketm ​ @warriorsaralance

thank you, if you’re reading this, for making my year truly special

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - October 5th, 2018

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them.

Angel multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - Oliver encounters a stripper by the name of Angel and is blown away. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961898/chapters/37227686#workskin

Undisclosed Desires multi-chapter WIP by @green-arrows-of-karamel - People seldom show their true face to the world. Nobody knows this better than Felicity Smoak. She worked hard to get where she is and nothing, not even a nuisance like having a stalker, can stop her. When the threat proves to be more serious than she thought, Felicity is forced to hire Green Arrow Security. Her reluctance to have a bodyguard, shadowing her all day long, transforms itself into a —irrational, some would say— dislike for the man in charge of her safety. No other client had ever driven Oliver so crazy as Felicity Smoak does. That has nothing to do with her mesmerizing beauty or her astonishing intelligence but everything to do with her exasperating stubbornness. Honestly, he doesn't know what’s her problem is with him. If it wasn't because, Thea, his little sister, made him promise that he’d personally protect the woman, he would have quit months ago. It takes very little to ignite the fire between them. A single innocent comment can turn into an epic battle of vicious words, with the only purpose of irking each other. Everyone around them watches all happening from the front row. They ask themselves what will befall first… Felicity and Oliver killing each other, or realizing that they’re in love. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808077/chapters/36794202

The Reason multi-chapter WIP by flipflops - Oliver is an Alpha and Felicity is an Omega....circumstances lead Oliver to find this out and a very bad time or maybe very good time... https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012431

Oliver the (Divorce) Lawyer multi-chapter WIP @someonesaidcake - Black tie, white shirt, grey suit... when Oliver put them on that chilly December morning, he hadn't planned on meeting her. 'Her' being Felicity Smoak, the sassy dark haired college student and daughter of his (only) client. This should be fun... https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823708/chapters/34304472

While You Were Sleeping by @lostolicityscenes -A continuation of When She Wakes Up. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/178461071976/while-you-were-sleeping

P.S. Hong Kong: Was it Real?!? multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue for Olicity trope-tastic award: Fake Marriage - This is off season 3 Flashbacks. When Tommy goes to Hong Kong he doesn’t go alone he takes his friend Felicity as the best information system being to help him locate Oliver Queen. Tommy may leave empty handed but Felicity gets to be a bride… https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025697/chapters/34832747

Queen vs Queen multi-chapter WIP by @muslimsmoak - Felicity Mignonette Renaldi Smoak has been handling being a princess pretty well so far. After all, she did only find out at the ripe young age of 15. Now, she is 21 and ready to take the throne of Genovia after being under the tutelage of her aunt. But there’s only one thing in her way, wait, actually two. Two things in her way: Oliver Queen, the hot young bachelor she danced with the night of her homecoming ball, who neglected to mention that he’s after her crown alongside his uncle Malcolm Merlyn, and the fact that she has to marry within 30 days if she wants to be Queen. Ray Palmer, Duke of Keystone is sweet, sensitive, intelligent and kind and seems like the perfect choice. But marrying and falling in love are two different things. A Princess Diaries AU  https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808065/chapters/36794172

DONE by @imusuallyobsessed -  Felicity only said yes to ARGUS protection because she thought it would keep William safe. But Diaz found them anyway. Now? The only one who can protect William is her. She's done playing games. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104653

10 Rules of Rebounding multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - Oliver and Felicity start a sex relationship as rebounds for each other. What’s supposed to be just fun, soon gets complicated when it turns out that their work lives collide, Robert Queen fears their sexual relationship could threaten his company and an ex comes back into the play. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403404/chapters/35749620

Find Your Faith by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Felicity's mother calls her out of the blue and, after a difficult conversation about the events surrounding Oliver's sudden incarceration, gives her advice on how best to approach the situation she's found herself in https://archiveofourown.org/works/16107146

Fall 2037 - A FiCON Headcannon by REDDuke62 - Oliver's quiet morning in the statehouse gym is interrupted by Thad DeWolfe the Third https://archiveofourown.org/works/16124756/chapters/37670732?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#comment_186445142

The Queen's Mage multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Words have power, and mages, those with the aptitude to draw on that power, are few in number. Thus, their services are highly sought after by anyone who has exhausted all mundane means of solving whatever problem is plaguing them. Felicity is reminded of this fact the hard way when she is hired by Moira Queen, the Lady Starling, to find and return to her son Oliver, who fled his family home five years ago following the death of his father. With a threat hanging over her should she return without Robert Queen's heir, Felicity begins her search. When she finds Oliver, and ends up joining his vigilante crusade while she waits for him to decide whether to return home, the last thing she expects to do is fall in love with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617068/chapters/33781269

Fear Wakes You Up multi-chapter WIP by @smoakmonster - In a world divided into factions, being Divergent means certain death. For years, Oliver has hidden his terrible secrets–masking his own Divergence within the chaos of Dauntless, covering up the sins of his father’s past that mark his body beneath tattoos, and pushing himself to overcome his nightmares through endless simulations. He’s biding his time until he can somehow save his sister back in Abnegation. But everything changes the day a new batch of transfers arrive. The day he meets her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058117/chapters/37490819

Hard To Find Love multi-chapter WIP by Mellowyellowdiamonds - Through a tragic twist of fate Felicity finds herself left with an orphaned young William Clayton. Keeping her promise to her friend, Felicity raises William diligently, loving him as if he were her own child, only to have Moira Queen storm into their lives several years later demanding custody of her grandson. Locked in a war with Moira Queen, things get complicated when Felicity finds herself developing unwanted feelings for William's biological father, Oliver Queen. At the same time she must try to manage her meddling 13 year old son, who has it in his head that if Felicity would just cooperate and fall for his father, everything would be right in the world. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15941786/chapters/37173917

Love and Little Cupcakes multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - Felicity loved sweets so much that she paid no attention to her lovelife. Until Thea Queen came into her store wanting fabulous cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. SO ADORABLE! http://archiveofourown.org/works/12400539/chapters/28216053

Rebels Connected multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak is an escaped mutant on the run. Oliver Queen, leader of an underground safe house for mutants to call home comes to her rescue. Everything changes once he brings her into the organization and his life. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014089/chapters/37369784

Home To You multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Oliver Queen has never done what his family expected of him. He took a gap year after high school instead of going to college right away. He quit his fraternity sophomore year to join the student newspaper, switching his major from business to journalism. He became a photojournalist for a wire service instead of taking a place at Queen Consolidated. He went missing after six months instead of coming home for his sister’s twenty-first birthday. He survived five years of captivity in a war zone when everyone thought he was dead. He came home. But home didn’t have a place for him in it anymore. His parents were both dead, casualties of their own mistakes and a city they had turned against them. His sister was all grown up, the CEO of Queen Consolidated with a fiancé and a dog and a life of her own. Oliver didn’t belong in his old life, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He was a man without a home, without any way of finding one, until he stopped by the IT department of his sister’s company to get files off an old, battered memory card, and found a woman with curly blonde hair and bright, intelligent eyes chewing on a bright red pen and swearing at a computer screen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613188/chapters/28734552

Life's All About Changes multi-chapter WIP by Crazyreader2468 - After agreeing to plead guilty to being the Green Arrow in order to get FBI assistance in capturing Diaz, Oliver finds himself in a supermax, a maximum security federal prison, serving a life sentence. As he struggles to become accustomed to life in prison, his family, friends, and teammates struggle to live without him, as well as continually attempting to find a way to get him pardoned. Will they succeed in obtaining a pardon and will Oliver survive until they do? Mostly AU from right before the ending of episode 6 x 22 and after most of 6 x 23. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936172

From Somewhere Within multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - Their connection has always felt natural to them, safe and secure. But others tend to fear what they don’t understand, and as far as their enemies are concerned, the world isn’t ready to accept two people who can know each other the way that Oliver and Felicity do. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009244/chapters/37356257

And So The Adventure Begins multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity spent her first year of college focused solely on her studies. In year two, with the convincing of her best friends Iris and Sara, she lets her hair down a bit. Oliver spent his first year partying with his wingman Tommy and living up to the status that came with his last name. He realizes he should buckle down focus on the most important part: actual school. Oliver and Felicity meet, and even though they are on different ends of the spectrum, they don't realize that they can each bring out hidden parts of one another. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800025/chapters/36771018

Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356

Fictober #1 -"Can you feel this?" by @tdgal1 - a season 2 rewrite where Oliver's dreams come true! https://archiveofourown.org/works/16154804

| ONE | (Oliver the Footballer) multi-chapter WIP @someonesaidcake - Felicity Smoak had a plan; to save enough money to kick her monotonous job and start up the company of her dreams. She made good plans, solid plans, attainable plans. He was never part of her plan. His name was Oliver Queen, the reclusive Brazilian football star with a broken smile and a story to tell. He'd never planned on her either. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15005402/chapters/34779542

Fictober18 #2 - “People like you have no imagination" by @tdgal1 - Felicity accuses Oliver of having no imagination https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167668

Deep Water multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A Season 7 Speculation fic. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15081917/chapters/34968092

If I Tremble multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - A collection of prompts and ficlets, with all the smut! Olicity sexy times are the best times. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409122/chapters/35762643

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 // 

[soyster-writes-fanfiction]

abrogate - a miraculous ladybug SpyxFamily-inspired AU fic

on ao3 exclusively

abrogate (verb) – to treat as nonexistent; to fail to do what is required.

After a disastrous job at one of his father’s parties, sixteen-year-old Adrien Agreste, an assassin now known by the name of the Midnight Killer, must attend public school to conceal his identity while wrangling with his defiant kwami to fulfill his father’s wishes.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng, also known as Agent Ladybug within the reformed Order of the Guardians, is full-time student and a part-time spy. Assigned to the recent Agreste Mansion murder case by her handler and mentor, “Master” Wang Fu, Marinette must make friends with one Adrien Agreste to gather the evidence required to implicate Gabriel Agreste, retrieve his stolen Miraculous, and complete her mission.

Neither of them expected for their lives to collide quite like this.

—

Fake dating AU, largely inspired by my recent SPYxFAMILY obsession.

Is this the fanfiction I was planning on posting that I was talking about a couple of months earlier? Absolutely not LMAO. I'm a stupid idiot who got obsessed with SPYxFAMILY and, for some reason, thought the idea could work with MLB. As per my usual behavior, I wrote this over the course of one very caffeine-fueled day and decided to hit the post button this afternoon. Will I regret this? Probably. Hope ya'll will join me for this ride because this is my first ever romance-centric fic and I am a raging aromantic.

[ruwithmeguys]

Olicity Fanfic Rec List:

(You’ll find all of these on AO3 unless I specify otherwise)

There’s so much love in this fandom and a great way to express them is to write fanfiction! I’ve had a tiny but if a difficult time recently - my mum was ill, ambulances, hospital and lost of chocolate (me) was involved - and I haven’t been able to write a thing.

Coming back to it, I took a quick look through all the bookmarks I’ve near-to obsessed over in the past and thought I’d write this list. @scu11y22 is to thank so if you actually manage to find one you haven’t read, then go send her a word :)

(This list is not exhaustive) They are to be: multi-chapt, slow burn, well written, mature, no threesomes (ditto x 1000), no kids and AU/canon divergent... and not @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 AMAZING FICON

So.

Legacies series by @chronicolicity

Part 1 is called You’re His Hope ( Felicity struggling to save Oliver's humanity after losing him to the League of Assassins. Anything else would legit be a spoiler. Expect drama, romance, angst, humor, plot and plot TWISTS. Sparked by some amazing Tumblr theories I apologize in advance for completely ruining.) And so on and so forth.

The Crow

(Bratva Captain Oliver Queen has been looking for revenge his entire life. When he can’t trust his own family, the Bratva to get it, he finds the answer to all of his problems in Felicity Smoak; a genius hacker who is running for her life from the same object of Oliver’s hatred, The Triad. With an unlikely partnership, The Crow might just find out that light can shine in the darkest of places.)

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EVER TO EXIST BY @anthfan JUST MAYBE?

AO3 Address: Anthfan

(My personal fav is the Devil’s Backbone)

When the Day Comes 

“Have you talked to her?”

“Yeah.”

“So you'll call her-” Thea sent a teary look back through the window at Tommy.

“I'll call her if he wakes up.”

“When,” she gripped him fiercely then, her little nails digging into his forearm, “when Tommy wakes up.”

Oliver nodded, “Yes, of course.” His tone as hollow as his smile had been.

An all time favourite of mine: Sins by @smoakandarrow

(Oliver Queen is alive.After being presumed dead in a violent shipwreck five years ago, Oliver Queen returns to Starling City determined to right the wrongs of his family. But the billionaire playboy's homecoming stirs more than feelings for joy; it threatens secrets someone is determined to keep buried. Secrets that threaten the life Oliver has just reclaimed, and the lives of those he loves the most.Vowing to protect his family at any cost, Oliver digs deeper, bringing danger to his doorstep, and leaving him with the shocking realization that the sins of the past are rooted much closer to home than he ever thought.When friends may be enemies, when enemies may be his best allies, when love is used as a smokescreen to hide the most vicious hate, Oliver isn't sure who he can trust. He just knows that he'll do anything to protect those he loves... even it means dying all over again.)

You Have Not Failed This Verse  by @so-caffeinated

(Sometimes a payday ain't exactly what it seems.) Don’t let the brief description fool you. It’s incredible.

Hands 

(Felicity knows her place in Oliver's life. She's the sidekick not the love interest. But in the Summer after the artificial earthquake lots of things can change.)

The Ways of the Universe 

(No two epic love stories are the same. For Oliver and Felicity, it's quite the long road. What with all the crime-fighting, and super-secret identities, and emotionally-stunted men, and old flames, and meddlesome friends and family. Some goats, too. Picks up right after the end of 'City of Heroes' (2x01). Any similarities with the rest of S2 are, for the most part, coincidental.)

What Happened in Vegas - a very different take on the usual Vegas hookup fics

(It's all fun and games until you wake up hung-over and married to a stranger. Five years ago Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak made a drunken mistake that could never be corrected. After years on a hellish island he comes back as a man on a mission only to find out that what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. (Season One Rewrite))

Every single story by @supersillyanddorky06 but especially Predator

(Oliver Queen is the one anomaly in the Chicago Outfit. He is the only non-blooded member to be a part of the high circle in the family. His reputation precedes him and he is their best hunter. Felicity Smoak, daughter of the Starling boss, infiltrates his house, intent on killing him. But a startling encounter tips the scales. He goes on the prowl and she escapes. Hate, heat, and friction. Sparks. But something bigger is happening in their world. And despite their disagreements, only they can fight it down. Mob AU. Not Bratva. Enemies-lovers. You'll want to bash their heads sometimes. Stuff will happen. Enjoy! )

The Legacy Series by @ash818 (I’m sort of in love with this universe: it involves Oliver and Felicity’s children and it’s a wonderful and very serious - possibly quite honest - look at what the future might look like for them. Plus, I wrote a one-shot for this. SHE’S THAT GOOD.)

(It's 2039, and Jonathan Queen cannot stop looking for trouble. Then trouble finds him and his family, and Jonny discovers that there is more to his parents than he ever suspected. He must learn to bear the weight of his parents' past, and he must learn fast, because time is running out for his mother.)

Most of these aren’t finished but this one hurts me because it’s been left alone:

Somewhere Out There

(When Felicity falls through a gate that takes her to a parallel universe, she finds herself in a world that is so much like her own, except for one very important thing.)

Layers 

(I feel sad. Wanted something to cheer myself up. This is the result.I have no set dates for updating, so bear with me.This is the Bratva fic no one wanted. Note - I like that Oliver isn't possessive. I also like when women have agency. You will find both here. This is a Oliver/Felicity-centric story.)

His Girl Wednesday and Some Things Are Meant to Be

Insanely long fics (THANK GOD): Missing her interview for a position in the IT department of QC, Felicity Smoak meets Oliver Queen, son of the CEO and future CEO himself. Only Oliver doesn’t take the company as seriously as he should and after yet another fiasco with his assistant, his mother decides to take matter into her own hands and select one with more qualifications than long legs and deep cleavage. In an effort to get her off his back, he pretends he already hired one: the blonde nerdy girl he met a few minutes ago.Or when Arrow and Ugly Betty crash in my head (except we all know Felicity could never be ugly). It is mostly Arrow, I borrow a few plot ideas/characters from Ugly Betty.

Sequel: Three years ago, Oliver went on a cruise on the Gambit and never came back, leaving Felicity devastated. She forced herself to move on with her life, trying to forget that the love they had shared was one she'd never get to live again.

Except Oliver didn't die on that boat. But no matter how much he wants to, he knows he can't come back. Too many things happened, and the only way to keep his loved ones safe is to stay as far away from them as possible.

It all changes when Felicity starts questioning the circumstances of the accident that took him away from her...

One More From the Top

(In the aftermath of his fight with Ras Al Ghul, Oliver finds himself somewhere unexpected: his hospital room when he first came back from the Island.With a second chance to right the mistakes he’s made since coming back to Starling City, what will Oliver do to save the people he’s loved and lost?Will he be able to change his past or will be he forced to watch history repeat itself?)

Break

(After the events of Unthinkable, Felicity burns out from Arrow activities. So she takes a step back to get some air. This story tracks Felicity's journey of becoming a heroine in her own right as she helps form the Justice League.)

Good, Better, Best Series by redtoes - a three part series each specifying how O + F got together and stayed together. Not very long but 15 chapters so...

The Grand Adventures of Felicity Smoak 

(a.k.a How Felicity did not save the day.Felicity's father comes back only to take her away from the life and the people she loves. But sometimes, it takes a series of misadventures for a girl to discover how badass she really is and how valuable she is to her friends. She gets in trouble, gets rich, gets in trouble, gets hurt, gets in trouble again and gets the guy.Canon divergence. From in mid s02 before the revelation of Slade Wilson.)

Another I need to mention - though it isn’t a multi-chap slow burn - is: This Love Thing

Also a short fic but there aren’t that many slow burns around :) is Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone

(When meeting Felicity, Oliver has a flashback. Afterwards, he flees, leaving behind his 'latted' laptop. She further investigates on her own, but lurking underneath everything else is Felicity's concern for Oliver. Just like with anything that matters to her – she doesn't know why he matters but he does, she can't let the episode – what she fears to be PTSD – go.)

The Darkest Hour

(just weeks after moving to Starling City, Felicity Smoak is kidnapped for information she does not have. She endures weeks of torture before she is rescued by a man in green leather and his partner, John Diggle. As Felicity begins to put the pieces of her life back together, she realizes the trauma she suffered changed her in unexpected ways. Restless and with a driving need to help others the way the man in green helped her, she finds herself using her brilliant mind and considerable computer skills to follow a different path fraught with danger and violence. As Felicity grows closer to the Green Arrow and Diggle, helping them in their cause to save Starling City, the three struggle against unseen enemies, and discover the unexpected truth behind her kidnapping.)

All in a Day’s Work

(By 9:00 a.m., she had broken a heel, lost her cell phone, and been the victim of a coffee catastrophe. By 9:30 a.m. she had “borrowed” the NSA mainframe. By 10:00 a.m., she was engaged to Oliver Queen. Really, it was all in a day’s work. Plotty, fluffy fun with a side dish of heart.)

The Best of Friendships have Benefits

(like Communism or time travel, having a sex-buddy sounds a lot better in theory than in practice. However, Oliver and Felicity see it as a means to rebuild each other. So, inevitable consequences be damned, they still give it a go, not expecting to gain a whole lot more than what they initially bargained for.)

Also, most fics by @yellowflicker09011996 will make you want to tear out your own heart but one of my favourites is: All The Worthy Places  (They say if you get hungry enough, you start eating your own heart. When she sits on top of him, arms and legs tight around him and kisses his mouth like she wants to eat him alive, Oliver believes it. ) and To Rage Against the Dying Light (There could be no time to think, no moment to feel. The dark was going to engulf him till there was nothing left, if he so much as flinched.He had known grief and he had known fear but this… this was wordless.Nobody had ever told him that ruin felt so much like death.)

The Fall Verse by @callistawolf

(Taking place directly after the events in “Sacrifice” (the season 1 finale), Felicity tries to pull Oliver back from the edge. But is Oliver ready to be pulled back? Or is he ready for the fall?)

Step By Step

(During the summer between seasons two and three, Oliver and Felicity are attempting to navigate their new status post-fake but not actually fake I love you's, and a kiss that may or may not have meant everything. Or: What would have been different for Oliver and Felicity if that summer had been about both of them truly coming to terms with what they meant to each other. Basically - Felicity decides to live her life, and Oliver realizes that her life doesn’t necessarily include him as much as he may want. How he reacts, and how Felicity responds to his actions, shape the future of their relationship.)

City of Fallen heroes

(Five years ago, Felicity was kidnapped and forced to do the unthinkable in order to return home. Convinced she couldn’t be the loving wife Oliver deserved, she left and tried to keep her darkness from hurting their daughters. The return of an old enemy will force Felicity to decide if she’s the monster she thought she was— or the hero her family believes her to be.)

Absolution

(It’s been two years since the Atom invented a plague that wiped out most of Starling City. With a ruthless government agency in control, and a hooded vigilante fighting to shut the Atom down, Felicity Smoak quickly learns that life post-apocalypse isn’t exactly like it seemed in movies.)

He Deserves a Shot at Being Happy alos by @chronicolicity

(Short version: an AU where Tommy Merlyn didn't die, and is around for season 2 of Arrow.Long version: Tommy Merlyn has spent most of his life being an expensive disappointment to his family, but now he's a part-owner of a semi-successful nightclub in the worst area of town (it's seriously looking up) alongside his best friend, who — after five years on a deserted island — decided to come back to be a freaking vigilante. It's a long story, one that's longer than Tommy wants to remember, but it took the Glades collapsing and the death of one of their best friends to get him officially done with being a troublemaker. Nothing interesting. Just running a nightclub, and trying not to get into any trouble.Oliver's been gone god knows where for most of the summer, which means he's stuck being the big brother to the guy's snarky little sister, whose boyfriend "Ron" seems completely set on getting himself killed. An afternoon of test-driving Verdant's new cocktails gets interesting when Felicity Smoak and John Diggle show up asking (more) questions about where to find Oliver, and Tommy has to decide whether he wants to keep his new rule.Spoiler alert: he doesn't.) It’s so good guys... THE SLOWEST OF SLOW BURNS BUT SO FLIPPING REWARDING.

In Another Life

(Their lives couldn't be more different - and yet Oliver can't take his eyes off the beautiful blonde woman that leaves the subway every morning at 7.43am. There is something about her that makes him look up every morning - something that also makes him aware he'll never be good enough for her, or that she'd even notice him.He had no idea how much his life would change the day he rushed over to help her...Olicity AU - no Lian Yu, no saving the city (at least not in the way we know from Arrow :D ))

Felicity Takes a Holiday

(Frustrated by Oliver's apparent indifference, Felicity takes a solo trip to NYC where she meets with unexpected dangers. Is it super-soldiers amped up on Mirakuru, or Beasts created by Muirfield? Starts at the end of Season 2; a story of how Oliver comes to realize that he is in love with Felicity, told with help from CW's Beauty and the Beast and a whole lot of Diggle.)

What’s a Little History Between Me and You by @sarcasticfina

([Canon-Divergent] In the wake of The Undertaking, Felicity returns to Starling City when her brother Tommy is severely injured, and soon finds her world turned completely upside down.)

THERE AREN’T THAT MANY SLOW BURNS @scu11y22

[allthereclists]

Olicity Fics

canon 

After the Storm by smoakoverwatch 4,002

The four months Oliver thought Felicity was dead. And the one month he realized she wasn’t.

In Deed and in Truth by MachaSWicket 14,090

Oliver loves with his actions. Felicity doesn't always understand this.

For A Child's Happiness by writewithurheart 22,319

When a tragic car accident leaves Sandra Hawke on the brink of death, her former roommate, Felicity Smoak, is called in to take care of her son, Connor, as his legal guardian. Putting aside her crazy life to step in, Felicity finds her life in a crazy whirlwind that threatens to sweep her away. Then she discovers something that has her whole world crashing down around her.

The Way It Was Supposed to Be by hannasus 47257 

QUEEN INC. CEO DISAPPEARS NIGHT BEFORE WEDDING

The FBI and Star City Police are investigating the disappearance of Queen Inc. CEO Felicity Smoak, who was last seen on the night before her wedding. Smoak, 28, disappeared mysteriously from her penthouse apartment in midtown, sometime after midnight Friday.

Smoak planned to get married on Saturday to former playboy Oliver Queen, who launched a failed bid for the mayor’s office last year. According to SCPD spokeswoman Sameena Patel, Queen has been cooperating with investigators. “There’s not a worry about” his possible involvement in her disappearance, Patel said.

all eyes on you by callistawolf 91,235

When the team learns that Slade Wilson is alive and in town and his vendetta against Oliver is also alive and well, everything in Oliver’s life is turned upside down. Is his fledgling relationship with Felicity strong enough to handle the fallout?

The Unimaginable by juliesioux 121,881 

This takes place over the course of the five months after the events at the end of the season 4 of Arrow.

State of the Union by varellanoemo 151,589 

The events immediately following "Schism" find Oliver Queen struggling with his acceptance of being appointed Mayor of Star City and being the Green Arrow. He's having to learn a different way to make a difference and knows that he will have to rely not just on himself, but on one particular person, Felicity Smoak, to help him rebuild their city, together.

Pieces of Always by Bre, So_Caffeinated (so_caffeinated) 365,545

Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. 

Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. You do not need to have read FiCoN to enjoy this, but it will spoil the end.

The Ways of the Universe by CyberQueens 143,466

No two epic love stories are the same. For Oliver and Felicity, it's quite the long road. What with all the crime-fighting, and super-secret identities, and emotionally-stunted men, and old flames, and meddlesome friends and family. Some goats, too.

au

Sleepless Nights by thatmasquedgirl 1,761 Part 3 of The Drug in Me is You 

Oliver can't sleep. After they talk, neither can Felicity.

Last Resort by Kayleegee 5,607 Part 6 of The Bodyguard Series

McKenna has come to a relative peace with keeping the Big Green Secret, but being an active participant? That’s a whole other issue. For one thing, she’s wearing the wrong shoes.

Melding of the Minds by thatmasquedgirl 7,672 Part 3 of Mind Over Matter

Oliver gets in trouble and Felicity saves his hide. Again.

Call It a Family by dettiot 11,873

A series of moments in the life of Felicity Stark, after her family gets a bit bigger. Through good times and bad, it’s about family. A follow-up to It Runs in the Family, an Arrow/Iron Man crossover--now with more characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

Two Ships in the Night by CSM 18,650

Childhood friends AU. Growing up as a military kid you know the first rule is don’t get attached, after all if it’s one thing military kids know how to do, is say goodbye. Oliver does the exact opposite and falls in love with his best friend.

The Unbearable Hotness of Being by MachaSWicket 20,328

A silly, epistolary tale of a kind-hearted but occasionally clumsy woman who realizes she lives in the same apartment building as the most unbearably handsome man in the world.

This feels like falling in love by Sophie1973 51,572

6 years ago, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak struck up an unlikely friendship. This friendship has only strengthen with time, through good and bad moments, such as Oliver losing his mother and Felicity facing an unexpected pregnancy.

Now that Oliver’s antics has gotten him cut off and thrown out by his father, he seeks refuge with Felicity and her daughter, and realizes it is time for him to re-evaluate his life, find a job he loves and discover happiness was right in front of him this whole time.

Five Lives by flavinja 56,542

Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak live their own lives without ever meeting each other. The universe tries to fix this with a bit of time traveling.

Love is Red by dettiot 63340

Actors Felicity Smoak and Oliver Queen have known each other for years. They’ve never been more than acquaintances. Yet when they are cast opposite each other in an unusual romantic drama about astronauts on the first mission to Mars, the sparks of attraction might just flare up into a bright red fire.

Start of Something New by bri617 111676

Award-winning actor and heartthrob Oliver Queen has had enough of his Hollywood life and decides to take a year off to reconnect with his roots in Starling City. What he didn’t expect was to get stuck in an elevator with his dog and his new neighbor Felicity Smoak, CEO and founder of rising tech company SmoakSolutions, or the easy-going friendship that came out of that first meeting.

But is friendship really all there is between them?

Keep It Professional by mogirl97 121,606

When Felicity's parents announce that they're hiring someone to be her personal bodyguard, what she hears is that she's going to be stuck with a 24/7 babysitter... something she is so not on board with.

When Oliver takes up the offer to work for the Smoak family he thinks it's just another job, but he has no idea what he's about to get himself into.

Protecting the "tech empire heiress" is the easy part, matters of the heart are where things get a bit more complicated.

A Woman’s Guide to Vigilantism by Jules_Ink 123555

After five years of hell, fear, and poor decisions, of becoming a weapon, Felicity Smoak returns home to her family intending to finally make things right—only to find that there are some things you cannot run from. Like love. And mortal enemies. And your mother’s loud voice.

His Girl Wednesday by BlueBayou 340,195

Missing her interview for a position in the IT department of QC, Felicity Smoak meets Oliver Queen, son of the CEO and future CEO himself. Only Oliver doesn’t take the company as seriously as he should and after yet another fiasco with his assistant, his mother decides to take matter into her own hands and select one with more qualifications than long legs and deep cleavage. In an effort to get her off his back, he pretends he already hired one: the blonde nerdy girl he met a few minutes ago.

collection

In another life

to save later: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9465681/1/

[queenarrow]

Hi geniewithwifi! I'm relatively new to the Arrow fandom and only started out reading fanfiction recently, and my friend recommended your stories to me. I've been thoroughly enjoying all of your fanfics, and just wanted to say you are an amazing writer! I'm now looking for more fanfiction to read, but wanted to ask, if you had to pick ten Arrow fanfiction writers you'd recommend to me to read their work, what would the list be? Thank you for all the wonderfulness you write, and in advance!

Anon, you are either trying to kill me or get me sent a lot of hate mail, I’m not sure which. TEN? Only TEN!? That’s practically impossible. I’m just going to make a list and that’s the number that it will be.

First off it depends on what you like. Authors have their niche that they like to enjoy writing. I tend to be on the AU side, but I write canon as well. And then sometimes, an author will write only two stories and they’re both really good, but I forget about them because they no longer write Olicity Fanfiction.

And If I make a list, I’m gonna miss them, and they will see this because Murphy’s law, and then they’ll wonder “why didn’t Genie mention me?” see how dangerous this is? But I’ll humor you, but please know that this list isn’t exhaustive, there are amazing writers out there that I’ve forgotten or haven’t read; or that others enjoy and I don’t. This is very subjective and I”m honored that you asked me. 

These authors are in no particular order (re alphabetical) and on here because I’ve read almost every single one of their fics. 

@ash818

This is a must read series. It’s not your typical Olicity fic, but it’s Next Gen, and Jon is a little shit and I absolutely adore Abby. You’ll look at it and say… but Oliver’s not the Arrow? What is this? AND THEN YOU’LL BE SCREAMING FOR MORE BY THE END OF IT.

Start Here: Legacy Series

@alexiablackbriar13

Lexi writes a lot of AU fics; and I’m not talking coffeeshop AU. I’m talking full blown she created a new species MULTIPLE times and makes it work. Find her HERE

@anthfan 

anth has been here forever. She tends to write a lot of Canon and Alternative Canon, so check her out. Her tropes series is a good one, as well as the devil’s backbone. Find here HERE

@beinmyheart

I love her AU’s. THere’s the spy one oh i love that one.  They’re mostly one shots but I love them all. Find her HERE

@dust2dust34

BRE WRITE EVERYTHING. Okay. You want smut? BRE. You want Bratva? BRE. You want ghosts? BRE. You want canon? BRE. 

Find her here

@bri617aroundtheworld

bri writes typical AU’s (not extreme like Lexi) and I love her Across the Highs, the lows, and the inbetweens. Find her HERE

@ghostfoxlovely 

Sammy writes EVERYTHING. She’s also considered among the Queens of Evil. (She will kill people. Watch out for that). Her Icing on the Cake right now IS SO ADORABLE. FIND HER HERE

@machawicket

I BOW DOWN TO MACHA. THERE ARE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE MACHA. REad it all. Read everything. DOn’t stop. Read Velocity. Read E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Find her HERE

@dettiot

Dettiot is a really great author, i’ve really enjoyed all her multichapters. Find her HERE

@so-caffeinated

Janis has figureheaded FICoN. You don’t know what that is? you’ll soon find out. Ask ANYONE. Find her here. 

@thatmasquedgirl

Masque writes along the same lines as Lexi, with super extreme AU’s with badass Felicity most of the time. Her tamest one is Technical Assistance, which is a season 1 rewrite with Felicity falling in love with the Hood. READ THEM ALL. 

@hopedreamlovepray

Hope’s specialty is Fix-it fics. Didn’t like how an episode turned out? She’ll fix it for you!  They’re really short and sweet. The first Olicity fanfic I ever read was a hope’s and it was her “Not Just a Close Shave.” Find her HERE

@tinaday3w

Okay. Tina is smutty I’ll tell you that. I haven’t read Oliver on Vacation, but Felicity’s Sweet Revenge is really smutty. The one I am enjoying, however, the one that I drop everything to read when she posts is A SOUL LOST AT SEA. O.M.G. YOU HAVE TO READ THIS ONE IT’S FANTASTIC AND SWOONWORTHY AND GUh. READ IT. 

@rosietwiggs

I’ve read all of Rosie’s. She writes smut as well as some canon and AU. Her writing is exceptional and it’s worth a recommendation. She writes Felicity so damn well. AND SHE NEEDS TO UPDATE THE NEW NORMAL BEFORE I GO CRAZY Find her HERE 

@sarcasticfina

Fina! My gosh Fina tries to kill you with her masterpieces that aren’t done, but what is there is like a Mona Lisa. They’re excellent. However, if unfinish fics turn you off, I’ll be careful what you start. Because every single fic you want her to finish, it’s that good. HERE

@whatcuriousthings

she’s thelittlegreennotebook on AO3, and she’s underappreciated by the fandom. I personally love her oneshots. She has a Felicity Darhk one, and my personal fav–  The One You Can’t Repair. FInd her HERE

@writewithurheart 

Nic is my beta and my BFF so JUST READ HER. Once More is great and finished, her steampunk AU is GETTING SO GOOD. Find her here

@hannasus

Her two that I can pull off the top of my head is Into You like a Train, and The Way it was Supposed to Be: HERE

@entersomethingcleverhere

Carla IS AMAZING. She has really awesome multichapers, including a Pride and Predjudice fic. Her millitary one will make you cry tears. FIND HERE 

@mogirl97

MORGAN HAS SOME OF THE BEST FICS. I’ve read every single one of them. Find her HERE

@chronicolicity

He deserves a shot at being happy is the best season 2 rewrite. The end. 

Find her HERE

@ruwithmeguys

INDECENT PROPOSAL. Guys, this is as close to canon characterization as I’ve been able to find in Fanfiction. She has Oliver and Felicity’s relationship down to a T. There’s a section in there, (chapter 3 i think) that is the EPITOME of OLICITY. Find her HERE

@supersillyanddorky06

READ ALL OF MATTY’S. The Phoenix, the Albatross, the Firebird. (I personally do not rec The Predator because I have not read it, and refuse to read it until Matty finishes her other fic, or until predator is complete. That’s just my weird quirk, so go ahead and be obsessed with it like everyone else)  READ HER HERE

@bindy417

HER ALSAHHIM ONE IS KILLING ME. She has another one which I follow with Felicity an ARGUS agent and Oliver who’s been missing for five years . READ HERE

@melsanfo

Masquerade and the Mermaid’s Kiss are the best mentioned, as well as Two Men, Same Name written with dettiot HERE IS MORE OF HER

@adiwriting

I love her xmen and City of Fallen Heroes. Find more of her HERE

SuchaPrettyPoison

HER WWII OLIVER AND MATH FELICITY ARE ADORABLE AND I NEED MORE OF THEM. Her swooner series is also amazing. I don’t know her on tumblr but go give her my love if you do! 

THIS IS NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST. Because I read more than just all these authors. These are the ones I’ve read almost everything by and came to my head quickly. I love all fanfiction authors, and you know if I’m reading your fics or not because I do comment on them. 

Peace out and keep writing!!

[so-caffeinated]

Hi,

I just wanted to say that I’m so happy you’re writing new FiCon content, and am even happier to hear that you’re enjoying doing it! It’s so vital to hold on to the things that bring you joy.

Anyways, my Ameliam heart was very full after that 3 part series and I’m looking forward to reading whatever else you decide to write in this universe :)

Thank you so much, Anon!

A few years ago, I’d somehow turned writing into a source of stress for myself. I burned out hard, to be honest. I’m such a perfectionist and, frankly, between the lack of feedback that comes with original work (as compared to fanfic, anyhow) and the hard financial realities of trying to self publish, I was not in a great place. Therapy helped a lot. Time did too. I’ve learned a lot about being gentle with myself and done so much work to adjust my expectations of success. At this point, now that I’m finally not only able to write but finding joy in it, the writing itself is my goal. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the feedback and interaction. But the balance is different.

Ameliam has always pulled me in. I loved working with them again, and letting them have conversations that really dove into what she’s learned, how she saw their relationship’s foundations, and who Will was without his trauma weighing him down was just a joy. The next story is a Julex AU (around 6k), the one after that will be Elara. After THAT I’m doing a royalty AU which will be much longer and ensemble. I’ve had this concept for many years. Ameliam is central to it, but it also definitely has big storylines for BookQueen, Julex, and Elara. Multi chapter for sure, can’t even guess how long or how long it’ll take (and for once, that’s okay!! Thanks, therapy 😂). I’ll likely post as I go, though. I’m not committing to weekly updates but I’ve got it as a loose goal for myseld. I also have bits written for an Ameliam rock star AU (including one original song so far, which I wrote). That’s further out probably but it’s been hijacking my brain a lot. A LOT. Too much, possibly, but I can’t be sad about it because it’s sooooo fun.

Anyhow, it’s been ages since this universe started. I’m amazed and thrilled that there are people who still want to play in this sandbox with me. And I’m so glad it’s my happy place again.

[artificialqueens]

forever is composed of nows (trixya) 2/2 - beanierose

(part one)

AN: This monstrosity of a chapter would not exist without my amazing betas nadia and meggie, as well as the wonderful cheer squad that is conny, shea and mia. Thank you all so much for listening to my nonsensical ramblings at all hours of the day and night.

(read on a03) | (find me at katiehoughton)

It’s a soulmate AU where you feel the opposite emotion to whatever the other person is feeling | 15,497 words

It feels a little like they exist outside of time. It’s still early, and the street below is quiet. Katya has her kitchen window open; she leaves it that way all summer, even though Mama tuts and frets. She likes the smell of the morning, likes feeling like she’s the only one awake in the whole world.

She isn’t. Trixie is here. She extracts herself from Katya’s arms but stays close, her body warm and good next to Katya’s. She swipes at her cheeks with the pads of her fingers and huffs a self-conscious little laugh. Katya likes her so much.

There’s a box of tissues on the countertop and Trixie pats delicately at her face like she’s forgotten she’s not wearing makeup and is trying to preserve her mascara.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m not really a crier. I don’t know why I can’t stop today.”

Katya snorts. “I am. The drama of it all? I love it.”

It makes Trixie laugh. Making Trixie laugh is her new most favourite thing to do. Katya wants, so badly, but everything is tentative. She’s not looking to freak Trixie out here. She turns away from her and busies herself with the kettle, setting it on the burner to boil. A tingling hyperawareness of Trixie travels up her spine and along her arms, into her fingertips.

She’s right there. It’s so surreal. She’s waited her whole life to find her sestrinskoye serdste and now she’s here in Katya’s kitchen like they do this every Saturday. Trixie is rummaging in the refrigerator and singing something under her breath.

“Breakfast?” She pops back out to look at Katya around the door.

“I’m teaching a class in about an hour. I don’t like to eat till after.” Trixie wrinkles her nose at that. She’s holding a carton of eggs in both hands, cradling it against her stomach protectively. Katya wants to let her do whatever she likes. Is going to let her. “But we could go out? When I’m done.”

Trixie nods, a few more times than is strictly necessary. She puts the carton of eggs back and closes the door, leans against it. Every time Katya looks at her, it feels like the first time. The light makes Trixie’s lashes and her eyebrow hairs look extra blonde. She has a dimple in her left cheek when she smiles.

And Katya feels, clearer now than she ever has, the tenderness that Trixie has towards her. It’s making her punch-drunk, a bit lightheaded. The kettle starts whistling and she’s glad to busy herself. Trixie works right beside her, slicing up a lemon into segments. The way her wrists move and the delicate grip of her fingers around the knife makes Katya wonder whether she plays piano as well as guitar.

She’s so femme. Not that Katya is at all that butch, but Trixie is something else. Her ponytail is held up with a pink scrunchie and she’s wearing a white mini dress with a pink denim jacket on top. Katya wants to undress her, wants to look at her soft stomach and her thick thighs, but she also doesn’t really want to deconstruct this carefully cultivated look.

“Do you have a container? Usually I like to freeze them.”

Trixie is going to leave things in Katya’s freezer. Trixie is going to come back here, lots and lots of times. She waits patiently for Katya to absorb that information, her face totally smooth and free of uncertainty.

“Um. Yeah. Sure.” She digs around in the cabinet for a Tupperware and hands it to Trixie over her shoulder, not looking.

She takes it. She takes it, and her other hand touches the back of Katya’s head. It’s so quick, could have been an accident, but Katya feels Trixie’s intention behind the wall of her own chest. Trixie wants to touch her.

“I’m gonna go right ahead and slice them all up.”

Katya leans back against the countertop and rests her hands either side of her hips. She knows it makes the muscles in her arms flex, makes her tattoos shift, and she catches Trixie looking. Ever since she met Trixie she’s felt off-kilter, like she has to tread carefully so she doesn’t lose her balance. It’s not really her.

She’s a top, thank you very much.

“That’s very presumptuous, Miss Mattel.” She lifts one eyebrow, sees the two lovely spots of colour that appear in the apples of Trixie’s cheeks, is thrilled by that.

For a second she wonders whether Trixie will be flustered. Instead she puts the knife down - right, oops - and narrows her eyes at Katya. “We are literally soulmates, you dumb slut.”

It’s the first time that either of them has said it so plainly, and it takes them both by surprise. Trixie’s gaze immediately lowers and Katya sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. She likes the way that sounds, would like to hear Trixie tell it to everyone she knows. Katya wants to lean out of the open kitchen window and call down to the people beginning to fill the street below.

“We sure are.” She grins, waits for Trixie to smile back at her. “I gotta get ready for work. Make yourself at home. Fill up my freezer with whatever you want.”

She leaves Trixie in the kitchen, carving her bag of lemons into neat and even segments. Katya’s outfits for teaching vary quite wildly. It depends on how lazy she’s feeling and how on top of her laundry she’s been that week. She just did some, so she picks out her favourite red unitard. It has little eyes embroidered around the bottom of the legs and the built in sports bra makes her tits look bigger than they actually are.

She winds her hair into two braids to keep it out of her face during class, even though her bangs are in her eyes again so she’s still going to end up cranky and sweaty. Maybe Trixie will trim them for her later. Katya puts on some more deodorant, sprays some perfume as well. She’s primping now, and it’s not for her students.

When Katya comes out of her bedroom and Trixie catches sight of her, she drops the knife into the sink. It clatters loudly, and the water is still running, but Katya hears the strangled little noise that Trixie makes. She doesn’t say anything, but Katya doesn’t need her to. She can feel it. The knot of desire tightening in Trixie’s stomach, the frantic pounding of her heart, the rush of blood into all of her extremities.

“You’re so- I just want-”

Trixie holds her wet hands out in front of her like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s cleaned the kitchen while Katya was changing, and she’s poured Katya’s tea in a travel mug for her to take to the studio.

Katya wants, too. She does. She’d like to call in sick to work today and take Trixie to bed. But they’ve only known each other for a handful of hours, and if this is going to be forever…she’s not looking to rush things. They deserve more.

“You like it?” Katya turns around to let Trixie see the back of her outfit. Her ass is nothing spectacular compared to Trixie’s, but it’s toned and round and she enjoys showing it off.

She turns back around, and Trixie is blushing again. Still. “I like it very much. You look really hot.”

“Thanks. I gotta leave now, but you can hang out here and I’ll see you when I’m back?”

“No, I’m gonna go back to my hotel,” Trixie says. Katya tries very hard not to let it show on her face, and then remembers that Trixie can feel the disappointment that has just reared its head in her stomach. She comes hastily around the kitchen island to take Katya’s hands in both of hers. “To freshen up. I’ll meet you someplace.”

She feels childlike with wonder. Trixie’s fingers are warm, not so slender and bony as Katya’s, and her thumbs are making absent-minded circles over the backs of Katya’s hands.

“Oh. Okay. Yeah.”

“I want to spend the whole day with you. If that’s alright.”

Trixie is just as tentative as Katya is. She can feel her own heartbeat and feel Trixie’s too, ever so slightly out of sync. Neither of them knows what they’re doing here, not really. Katya had asked her last night if she knows many other soulbound people and she said she doesn’t think so, but since she’s never told anybody before it’s not something that really comes up.

In her nearly forty years on the planet, Katya has only met three soulbound couples. She knows plenty of people who haven’t found their sestrinskoye serdste yet; up until yesterday they’ve been the only people she has who really know how hard it is. But only three who have actually made it work. There were the Sullivans that she grew up watching not at all discretely every Sunday at church. Her friend from college, Brooke, who just last year got married to Vanessa. And her colleague Raja who used to talk non-stop about Raven, her wife.

Three couples is not many, not nearly enough that Katya can hazard a guess as to how this is supposed to go. And anyway, Brooke’s the only one she’s close enough to that she felt comfortable asking what it was like. With Brooke and Vanessa everything happened so quickly, like a flash flood. Katya isn’t sure if it’s because they’re soulbound, or because they’re lesbians.

“I want to spend the day with you too, Trixie.” She still enjoys the sound of her name very much. It feels like an incantation, like if she says it enough times everything between them will go smoothly.

And, well, she’s been waiting thirty years to put a name to her sestrinskoye serdste. When she was younger she used to try and imagine what it could be, would sometimes name them inside of her head just to see what it felt like. Trixie never crossed her mind.

Not just her name. Everything about her.

“I’ll walk you to work?”

Katya agrees to that. She can’t imagine not agreeing to anything that Trixie suggests. She has her gym bag with everything she needs for work slung over her shoulder. It keeps slipping down so she has to hold on to it, but she still has a hand free to hold Trixie’s. They’re clasped loosely so that they can walk, and she likes how warm Trixie’s palm is and the way that their knotted hands will sometimes bump her hip, sometimes Trixie’s.

At the door of the yoga studio, Katya takes her travel mug of tea back from Trixie. Everything this morning has been so achingly domestic. She likes the way Trixie looks in her space. Katya isn’t usually one for sharing her apartment. She loves having friends over, but loves equally when they leave again at the end of the night. It isn’t like that with Trixie. She wants her there again, as many times as Trixie would like.

She has trouble focusing during class. Her students can definitely tell. Usually, she is completely committed to their growth, making sure to divide her attention evenly between all of them. One of her regulars is still having a bit of trouble with her salabhasana and Katya kneels beside her and helps guide her into it, but she’s thinking about Trixie. Kneeling beside Trixie, putting her hands on Trixie.

It takes her until the class is almost over to realize that part of the reason is because Trixie is thinking about her. Trixie is back at her hotel, freshening up — Katya can’t fathom how she could possibly look more like a perfect paper doll cut neatly from a magazine — and thinking about her. And she can feel it, and she can’t focus on much more than the heat between her thighs.

When class is over and Katya checks her phone, she has a text from Trixie. Her head snaps up and sure enough, Trixie is right across the street leaning against the edifice of the laundrette. She has her phone in both hands, her head bent over it. Katya watches her for a second. She wonders if other people are watching her too and wondering who she is. Katya likes the idea of that, of getting to walk outside and greet Trixie and maybe some of those other people will see them and be jealous.

A couple of her students are waiting behind to ask her questions. She’s patient with them, because she feels good after an hour of practice and because she likes them. They’re enthusiastic and willing to learn and she appreciates it. She feels eyes on her and when she sneaks a glance Trixie has put her phone away and is watching.

Outside in the sunshine, Katya gets to hug Trixie hello. She’s let her hair down and it falls in soft curls all across her shoulders and her back. She’s put makeup on, an intricate and graphic eye look and a pink lipstick and more blush than Katya has ever seen on a real person before.

“You know you don’t have to put makeup on for me.”

“It’s not for you,” Trixie shrieks, indignant, and swats at Katya. “It’s for me. I’m feeling my fantasy.”

Katya laughs at that and reaches for Trixie’s hand to hold. She can’t fathom not touching her. Not after how long they’ve waited, how much they’ve hurt. Trixie has sunglasses on top of her head and she puts them on, looks at Katya through the pink circle lenses.

“You’re beautiful either way,” Katya says. She doesn’t mean it to come out with quite so much tenderness, but the way Trixie chews on her bottom lip is worth it.

Just like Trixie suggested, they spend the whole day together. Trixie’s been to Boston a couple of times before but hasn’t seen much of the city, so Katya gets to show her around. Trixie is sweet and enthusiastic, tethered to the end of Katya’s arm. She has something to say about every single thing Katya points out to her. She overflows with opinions and anecdotes, and Katya wants to collect each one like a pearl and thread them all together.

Things between them are so easy. And it’s not just the soulbound thing. Katya is sure after only a day that even if Trixie wasn’t her sestrinskoye serdste, they would still be friends. They have the same sense of humour. Trixie keeps up with Katya’s tangents in a way that not many other people are able to. They laugh all day long.

Trixie likes to take pictures. She takes pictures of Katya and pictures of both of them and pictures of the duckling sculpture in the public garden. When they stop for lunch, Trixie posts a few to her Instagram story. She’s tagged Katya in one of them. It’s a photograph of her, head turned so she’s almost in profile. Trixie’s put a few gifs of hearts around Katya’s head like she’s a cartoon, all lovestruck.

“You kind of have a lot of followers on here,” Katya says. She’s not really sure how to feel about that. Thousands of people are going to see her in Trixie’s story and wonder about her.

Trixie sets her fork down and looks at Katya across the table. “Katya. I’m already sort of famous, and that’s only going to keep growing. Or I hope so, at least.”

“It will,” Katya hurries to reassure Trixie. She believes in herself so much that Katya knows it’s going to happen for her.

“If that’s gonna be a problem for you,” Trixie trails off, waves her now empty hand in the air.

Katya does Trixie the courtesy of really thinking about her answer before she says anything. Just because they’re soulbound doesn’t mean they won’t still have to compromise and work at things.

“It isn’t a problem. I’m really proud of you.”

She can sacrifice a little of her privacy if it means that she gets to be a part of Trixie’s private world. Trixie is smiling into her salad. Beneath the table, she slides her foot forward until it nudges in between both of Katya’s.

“Obviously. I’m incredible.” She fans herself with one hand and makes a little moaning sound and Katya feels it like a hand around her throat, has to press her thighs together even as she laughs.

They head back out into the warmth of Boston in the summertime. Katya sweats even in her unitard, which professes to wick moisture away from the skin. She didn���t bring sunglasses with her and she has to shade shadesher eyes with her hand so that she can even see Trixie.

“Here,” Trixie says. She hands Katya the carton of cigarettes she’s been carrying around all day in her little clear plastic backpack.

Katya didn’t want to carry her duffel around with her all day, so she left it at the yoga studio. They’ll swing by later to get it, but for now Trixie is carrying Katya’s phone and keys and wallet and her cigarettes. It’s so domestic that it aches physically in her chest.

Katya fishes a cigarette out of the pack and lights it, hands everything back to Trixie to put away. She inhales deeply, holds the smoke in her mouth for as long as she can before she has to exhale.

“You keep doing that.”

“Hmm?” Trixie turns to look at her. Her sunglasses are so huge that Katya can’t see much of her face, but she gets the idea. “Doing what?”

Katya takes another drag. “Handing me cigarettes before I even ask.”

She’s done it three or four times so far today. It’s cute, she likes it very very much. And likes too that Trixie doesn’t seem to mind Katya smoking, even though she really shouldn’t be enabled and she’s going to quit soon, she is.

“Oh,” Trixie laughs. “Yeah. I can feel when you need one. I’m craving them too, you bitch.”

Katya stops walking in the middle of the sidewalk, just exactly how she always hates when tourists do. Trixie takes hold of her elbow and draws her to the side so that they’re both leaning against the warm brick of the building beside them.

“You can feel that?”

“Yeah. I can feel pretty much everything.” Katya opens her mouth to apologise, because God knows even she can barely deal with how much she feels sometimes, but Trixie cuts in. “I like it. I like being soulbound to you, Katya.”

It wipes her out. Katya presses the back of her hand to her forehead and closes her eyes. She’s still holding her half-smoked cigarette and she stubs it out against the wall.

When she opens her eyes again Trixie is watching her. She doesn’t look nervous. And that’s probably because she already knows, before Katya speaks.

“I like being soulbound to you as well. A lot. I can’t believe you’re real.”

Trixie takes her hand, now that it’s free. She’s been doing that a lot, all morning. Reaching for Katya, wanting to be near her. It’s sweet, and it’s good, because Katya wants to be near Trixie every day from now on.

“I’m real. You are, too.” She squeezes Katya’s fingers as if to ground her. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Katya says, and finds that she means it.

It takes her the better part of an hour to plan out in her head how to ask Trixie to come up to her apartment. Spending the whole day together has been wonderful, and Katya wants Trixie to spend the night, too.

Not for sex. They’re not going to have sex today, she’s pretty sure. Trixie deserves better than for Katya to shove her up against the front door the second that they get inside, even though it’s all she’s been able to think about for most of the afternoon.

At the door to the building, Katya opens her mouth, but Trixie gets there first. “Can I come up? I don’t wanna say goodbye to you.”

Trixie’s anxious to ask; Katya feels her heart fluttering in her own throat. Both of them are swinging wildly between ease and awkwardness.

“Yes. Yeah, God. Come up.”

Each time Trixie is in Katya’s apartment — this is the third, already, wow — she seems more at home than the last. Katya’s been wearing her unitard out and about around the city all day. Trixie had asked her whether she wanted to change and she had levelled her with a look, had done a little pirouette right where she stood to prove to Trixie that she’s comfortable in her skin.

She leaves Trixie to go shower. And yeah, she hurries, and maybe she gets her makeup remover in her eye and curses loudly up into the stream of the water. She debates, once she’s out. Part of her wants to put on something cute, but she’s tired and she wants to be comfortable. She iscomfortable, around Trixie.

Katya pulls on a pair of gym shorts that she’s had for so long the material has started to go bobbly, and an oversized tee that hangs off one shoulder. Back out in the living room, Trixie has settled herself on the couch and is scrolling through Netflix.

“You look so cute,” she says when she sees Katya.

Her heart grows wings, soars up into her throat. Trixie thinks that she’s cute. Trixie is patting the seat cushion next to her and looking at Katya expectantly.

Inviting Katya onto her own couch. It shouldn’t be hot, shouldn’t send another rush of want through Katya’s stomach and thighs.

She leaves a respectable distance between them when she sits down, and Trixie huffs and shunts over until their legs are touching. Hers are bare too, her dress riding up, and she’s taken off her jacket.

“Do you know what this is?” Trixie gestures at the screen with the remote.

“Do you think I’m some kind of crazy bitch? I’m not that old, I know what Friends is.”

Trixie laughs and dumps the remote on the coffee table. It’s stained with rings from all of the mugs Katya likes to set down carelessly, and one of the legs has a dent she doesn’t even remember putting there. She can’t imagine anything in Trixie’s apartment is less than pristine, but she doesn’t seem to care at all.

“White people problems,” she says in a nasal valley-girl voice that makes Katya wince and hide her face against Trixie’s shoulder.

The sound isn’t even on, she’s got it muted with subtitles, but that’s good. It’s good. It means they can talk. And they do.

Katya has known Trixie as a whole, for all of her life, but she is still not certain about all of the different pieces. And that’s alright. There’s forever to learn.

Last night was hard and lonesome; her body hurts. After an episode and a half, Katya lays herself down right in Trixie’s lap. It’s something she does all the time with friends, but there’s a different sort of intimacy to it tonight.

Trixie’s hand comes to her hair right away and her fingers sift through the knots and tangles. She’s so gentle. When she’s finished, she leaves her wide warm palm at Katya’s cheekbone and her thumb makes slow arcs back and forth.

Katya closes her eyes and allows herself to drift slowly in and out of consciousness. Trixie is above her, smelling so good and still petting Katya’s hair. She talks for a little while longer, but Katya is listening more to the intonation of her voice than the words themselves. Her mumbled, lazy noises in response get more spread out and eventually she gives up altogether.

Trixie is behind her when she wakes up again properly, laying down on the couch. Her arm circles Katya’s middle so that they don’t both roll off, and Katya is delighted to find her there. She’s awake too, Katya feels her awareness like a third presence in the room.

She rolls over, careful not to dislodge Trixie’s arm. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep a lot last night.”

“It’s strange,” Trixie says, and there’s a note of wonder in her voice. “When you’re sleeping. It’s like, this absolute calm. I felt so good, just now.”

I want to make you feel so good, Katya thinks, but does not say. She met Trixie yesterday. And, as much as it aches low down in her gut, she’s enjoying the anticipation too much to give in just yet.

“Do you want to come to bed? The couch isn’t so comfortable.”

“I can’t,” Trixie sighs. Her eyeliner has gotten a little smudged and her lipstick has worn away in the middle. It’s a different Trixie, her first time meeting this version of her, and she likes her just as much as all of the others. “I have to get on the bus at six.”

She sits up, and Katya lets her because she isn’t sure what else to do. They’ve only had this one day and it is so unfair of the universe. To drop Trixie right in her lap and then take her away again just as quickly is cruel and barbed and makes it so that her breath catches in her throat.

“Tour bus?”

“No. I’m not that successful yet. An actual bus.”

Katya likes that. How she says yet, how she believes in herself so unwaveringly. She hopes that Trixie will grow to believe in Katya like that, and in them both together.

“I can’t believe you have to leave already.”

“I know.”

Katya is still in Trixie’s lap and she looks up at her. It’s not a flattering angle, shouldn’t be cute, but Katya likes the smooth column of Trixie’s neck and her round chin.

She sits up, because Trixie’s thighs are warm and soft and right there. It would be so easy to turn her head just a little and open her mouth against Trixie’s skin. Katya feels a bit spaced out from her nap. When she settles upright her brain takes a second to catch up and she closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose.

Gentle fingers at her shoulder make her open her eyes again. She’s not startled by it. It seems as if she will never be startled by Trixie, and Trixie won’t be by her either, because she is as aware of Trixie as she is of her own hands.

“I should go,” Trixie says, and does not move.

She’s got her elbow propped against the back of the couch, her head resting in the cup of her palm. And she’s looking at Katya, and her face is smooth and patient and gentle. Her hair is a little funky in the back from lying on the couch and her makeup is coming away so that Katya can see her pink nose and cheeks.

It’s lovely. Trixie’s lovely.

“You should go,” Katya agrees.

They both know that when Trixie leaves here, they’re not going to get to see each other for weeks. She’s got several more dates of her tour, and then she has to go back to Los Angeles for a bunch of meetings with her producer.

After that’s done, she told Katya that she’ll fly back to Boston and spend some more time with her. Real time, time that can be just theirs. It’s too far away though, and Katya can’t fathom one single day without Trixie now that she knows her.

Trixie’s phone vibrates with a text from Bob. She wrinkles her nose and reads it aloud to Katya. It’s a very graphic description of what Bob is going to do to Trixie if she misses her bus in the morning.

“Go, honey,” Katya says gently. She doesn’t really mean for the hypocorism to escape her, but Trixie blushes immediately and gets this open-mouthed, startled look. “You need to get some sleep.”

Instead of getting up, Trixie tips forwards on the couch until her face is hidden against Katya’s shoulder. She brings her hand up to cup the back of Trixie’s head, touches her thumb to the shell of Trixie’s ear.

“I don’t wanna leave you.” She’s a little petulant, a little bratty, but it’s because she doesn’t want to say goodbye to Katya so it’s just about the most endearing thing she’s ever heard.

This middle of the night tenderness is making Katya brave. She lets her lips brush the crown of Trixie’s head and lingers there for a little while. “I don’t want you to leave me, either. I really don’t. But you’ll be miserable in the morning.”

“I’ll be miserable in the morning anyway,” Trixie says, and sits up. She blinks at Katya. “I can’t believe we only get one day.”

She looks a little teary again. Their twin sadnesses live inside of Katya’s chest, one red and one blue and just slightly offset so that she can hardly breathe around the three dimensional ache of it.

“We don’t just get one day. We’ll see each other soon, honey.”

Trixie nods and bites her bottom lip like she’s trying not to cry. She gets up from the couch and collects her jacket and her backpack, puts her pristine white sneakers back on. She lets Katya walk her all the way down to the lobby and they wait together for her Uber.

They’re holding hands again. Katya’s not wearing any shoes or a bra and Trixie looks like she’s just been released from her twist ties and lifted from her packaging. They must make an insane pair, but it’s nearly one in the morning so Katya doubts anybody’s going to judge them for it.

When the car pulls up Trixie lets out a strangled little noise. She turns to Katya and wraps both arms around her waist, presses her face to Katya’s neck. She has to bend to do it, because she’s several inches taller, and Katya likes the arc of her spine.

“I’ll see you soon, baby. It’s gonna be okay.” She gentles Trixie with her fingers through her hair.

Trixie straightens again and she’s not crying but her eyes are pink and she’s blinking much more than usual. She reminds Katya of a bunny with her soft hair and her big eyes and her little sniffles.

She steps out of the building and greets her Uber driver, slides into the back of the car. Her face is turned towards the window and she flutters her fingers at Katya in a little wave.

Katya turns around to head back upstairs, because she doesn’t want to watch Trixie drive away from her. In her apartment she brushes her teeth and turns out all the lights and flops right into bed. She has both arms around her other pillow and she cradles it to her chest, gives it warm soft skin and thick thighs and hair that smells like juniper berry and lavender.

Her phone is plugged in on the nightstand (she’s proud of herself for remembering) and it buzzes with a message notification. She rolls over and opens one eye to peer at it, the screen too bright even though it’s turned all the way down.

today was one of the most fun days of my whole life, Trixie has sent her. While she’s looking at their conversation, another text comes through. i’m so happy I found you.

Katya still only has one eye open. Her heart is molten and pouring down to pool in the pit of her stomach. She types awkwardly with one finger.

im happy i found u too u rotted skank bitch from hell

go to sleep now, mother

She chases her messages with a whole string of the heart emojis Trixie likes so much. She’s out just that quickly, before Trixie’s reply even comes through, and she sleeps better than she has in weeks.

Texting Trixie becomes a part of Katya’s day right away. She’s not usually big on messaging people, prefers to see them face to face or at least call if that isn’t an option, but she likes it. She likes feeling her phone buzz and seeing the notification and thinking of Trixie.

Sometimes it’s intermittent. They’re both busy, and on separate schedules. Katya wakes up in the mornings to a bunch of messages from Trixie detailing how the show went that night, and she replies for Trixie to see when she wakes up in four or five hours. They call and FaceTime too, but it’s harder to make time for that.

Katya is sitting at the tiny dining table she has crammed in next to the window, working on a bowl of cereal and trying hard to ignore her phone. She’s taught two classes already this morning, back to back early ones, and she’s starving.

good morning baby

She hasn’t sent anything else yet, because she wants to really talk to Trixie. Katya stirs her spoon around and around in her mostly empty bowl. She has her chin propped in her other hand and she gazes out of the window, watches a man across the street setting up to paint a storefront.

Two weeks today, since she met Trixie. It feels like forever ago, and like Trixie was here just last night. She worries at her phone, pulls the case off the corner and back on over and over, and wonders whether Trixie is awake.

She isn’t, Katya is pretty sure. She thinks a lot about waking up and rolling over to look at Trixie, the awe in her voice when she told Katya how good it was to watch her sleep. She can usually pinpoint the exact moment Trixie wakes up because she gets a little flare of awareness in her chest and then less than a minute later her phone vibrates with a new text.

Katya has a Russian class to teach tonight. She busies herself with her lesson plan. This despondent version of her that spends all day squirming around the hook in her guts is someone she doesn’t know and doesn’t particularly like.

She likes Trixie. Likes her very much. But she has to go on with her life. She can’t sit around like it’s 1860 and she’s waiting for her lover to return to the homestead, even if the idea of putting on a prairie dress and sighing dramatically is extremely appealing.

Katya’s phone vibrates and she hurries over to it on the kitchen counter, props her forearms either side of it so she can lean down.

morning gorgeous, Trixie has sent. Heat rushes into her cheeks. Last week, Trixie requested that Katya send her a selfie because she wanted to set it as her phone wallpaper, and when she did Trixie had sent her about forty fire emojis in a row and told her she’s beautiful, a model, she looks like Linda Evangelista.

Katya watches the three dots flickering in the grey bubble and thinks about Trixie touching the screen of her own phone a few hundred miles away.

how’s your morning been??

Katya starts typing, and then thinks better of it. She calls Trixie instead, tries to stifle her grin against her palm when she picks up on the first ring.

“That bad?” Trixie says.

Katya taps the button to put Trixie on speaker. She likes this the best — having Trixie to talk to while she does things. “No. It’s been good actually. How are you?”

“I’ve been awake for about four seconds. Please don’t grill me during this very difficult time.”

“Sorry honey,” Katya laughs. She starts running water to fill the sink; there’s a few days’ worth of dishes piled up that she should really take care of.

Trixie is still talking, telling Katya about the show last night and how amazing the crowd had been. She sounds like she’s laying down still, her voice all soft and breathy. Katya aches to know for sure, to lie next to Trixie in the mornings and see her all sleep-rumpled and cute.

“Stop it, Katya,” Trixie says gently. “I can feel you making yourself sad. Only two more weeks of tour. We can do it.”

Katya is up to her elbows in suds, fumbling gracelessly with her plates and bowls because she can never figure out why her dish soap makes everything so slippery.

“I don’t want to do it.” She says it like it’s a secret, even though she doesn’t really have those from Trixie. “I miss you.”

She does. She misses Trixie so much that it hurts, which makes no sense. They had a day and a half together, that’s all. Last week Katya called Brooke at three in the morning (which is only two in Nashville, so whatever) to ask whether it ever stops being like this.

Brooke said that she and Vanessa have only spent at most three days apart in a row since they met. That when they first met, when it was new, they were not out of each other’s company for more than an hour at a time for weeks and weeks.

It wasn’t particularly helpful.

“I know, babe. I miss you too. But I’ve been trying to think of it like this: I get to have you with me always. Tons of couples do long distance and have to snatch moments wherever they can, but I get to feel you every minute of the day.”

Katya is standing still as a river stone, Trixie’s words sliding smoothly around and over her. Her ears are ringing. She swallows roughly once, and then a second time.

“Couples?” she finally manages to grit out.

“Oh God. Oh my God.”

Trixie sounds more like she’s talking to herself than to Katya, and it’s that that breaks her open. She laughs, too loud in her small apartment, and pulls her hands out of the sink. Katya dries them and takes her phone off of speaker so she can press it to her ear again. It feels more intimate; she likes to hear Trixie right there.

“Don’t freak out on me now, Trixie. You said it.”

She gets a long sigh, and she feels Trixie’s trembling shock at her own self. “Yeah. I did. I want to be a couple. With you. You awful crone.”

“I want to be a couple with you, too. God knows why; you’re so mean to me.”

It makes Trixie laugh, and Katya is laughing too, and it doesn’t ache quite so terribly anymore. This is a temporary predicament, and she still gets to talk to Trixie all the time, and it’s going to be okay.

“Katya,” Trixie says, right as a wave of longing crests up from the pit of Katya’s stomach into her throat. “I wish I was there. I wanna touch you so bad.”

“Yeah. Me too. Listen, I uh- I gotta go. I’ll catch you later. Bye.” She hangs up before Trixie can protest and bows over the counter, head in her hands.

A couple of times when they’ve talked on the phone, Trixie has done this. All of the breath support comes out of her voice. She talks about want, and Katya hears rustling on the other end of the line and has to close her eyes.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk Trixie off. Of course she does. But not for their first time. It’s romantic, which is not like her, but something about Trixie makes Katya want to be chivalrous.

She tries to busy herself cleaning the kitchen, but her thighs are trembling and there’s an ache between them that she’s struggling to ignore. It starts ramping up and Katya closes her eyes and breathes raggedly through her mouth.

And then it dawns on her.

Katya fumbles for her phone and types quickly, doesn’t give herself the time to think over whether this is a good decision.

beatrice mattel!!!!!

i know what ur doing

can u pls not im trying to live my life

Her nipples are hard and rubbing uncomfortably against the fabric of her sports bra. Katya runs the faucet until it’s as cold as it’s going to get and pours herself a glass of water, downs two thirds of it in one go. It doesn’t help very much. Her knees buckle and she crashes against the cabinet, almost goes to the floor.

Katya reaches for her phone again. For a second she debates calling, forcing Trixie to respond, but she can’t listen to her while she’s like this.

trixie. please. dont.

Part of the reason she doesn’t enjoy texting so much is because she finds it hard to convey tone. Trixie teases her a lot about being older, but this is one area where she really feels it. Trixie wields punctuation and capitalisation and emojis like weapons to make clear just exactly what she means.

Katya still feels desperate and fragile, but the edge of it comes away and her phone vibrates.

sorry

didn’t mean to upset you

won’t happen again

She sighs and balls her hand into a fist, presses her knuckles to her forehead. Trixie is a bit of a brat, she’s entitled and she takes exactly what she wants. And Katya loves it, wouldn’t want her any other way.

im not upset

im horny

you cunt

Part of her wants to go to her knees on the kitchen tile and stuff three fingers inside of herself. She’s so close; it wouldn’t take a lot. But it feels indecent and she doesn’t want her own hand. She wants Trixie’s.

i know

i did it on purpose

since you won’t talk dirty to me

Oh, but she will. She will, she wants to, she is going to. Katya is not in the business of saying untrue things, or of not saying things that are true. She thinks there’s an important distinction there. She takes a deep breath and taps out her message.

trixie

trixie

i cant stop thinking about kissing you

The response comes through immediately. Katya imagines Trixie typing with her left hand, wiping her right clean against the sheets. Imagines her chest all flushed and her pupils blown wide and her thighs trembling.

why didn’t you then?????

i wanted you to

i was waiting

For a second Katya is affronted that it’s her responsibility. Trixie could have kissed her just as easily. But then she supposes Trixie hasn’t ever had to do that before, hasn’t needed to make the first move because everyone around her seems to give her exactly what she wants at all times.

trixie oh my god

the second youre here

This time Katya can’t blame her arousal on Trixie. She feels like every single hair on her body is standing on end. She moves for the bedroom, stripping her bra off over her head as she goes and leaving it dumped in the hallway. Her phone buzzes in her hand.

yeah?

Katya puts it down for just a second so she can pull her yoga pants and her underwear off. She climbs onto the mattress on her knees and sinks down, grinds against the sheets.

She wants to touch herself; she doesn’t want to stop talking to Trixie; she can’t call her.

yeah

i wanna kiss you for hours and hours

She pauses for a second, but it’s not like Trixie doesn’t already know. There’s no mystery when Trixie’s arousal pulses hot and insistent between Katya’s thighs.

and then i wanna taste you

and touch you

and hear you

god, trixie

im gonna fuck you so good

Katya turns her phone over then and puts it on the nightstand out of her way. She lets her right hand drift between her legs. She’s so wet that it’s all down her thighs, and as soon as she brushes her fingers over herself her hips buck sharply.

She rolls her left nipple — it’s a little more sensitive — between two fingers, and sets a rhythm of tight little circles over her clit. Already pleasure is tingling up the column of her spine and all across her scalp. She’s embarrassingly close, considering all she’s been doing is texting.

But she’s been texting Trixie. And Trixie’s been touching herself, has brought both of them right up to the edge. Katya’s going to be the one to tip them over.

Their first time is still going to be special. This doesn’t count. They’re both touching themselves and thinking of each other and it’s the hottest fucking thing that has happened to Katya in her whole life.

Katya slides a finger inside of herself and clenches around it so violently that all of the breath leaves her chest like a gut punch. She adds another and then a third, her hips rocking wildly and without rhythm so that she barely has to move her hand at all.

The circles she’s making over her clit are getting faster, and she’s so wet she can hardly get enough friction. Katya bites down hard on her bottom lip and curls her fingers and comes hard. Finds herself whispering Trixie’s name as she does.

And then just as she’s coming down another wave hits her and she realises. That was Trixie.

Katya flops onto her back on the mattress and throws an arm over her face. She feels more blissed out than she has in months, maybe years. Since she got sober. She laughs out loud into her empty apartment, and then her phone starts ringing.

“Did you just-?” Trixie says in lieu of hello.

“I sure did, mama. You?”

There’s a beat of silence and Katya imagines Trixie arching lazily in her hotel sheets. Not that she’s ever seen that. They’ve never even kissed, for God’s sake.

“Yeah. It was- really good.” Trixie’s voice is living room quiet, middle of the night tender.

Katya’s breathing is still a little faster than normal. It’s the middle of the day, which is indulgent and unusual for her. For Trixie this probably counts as morning sex.

Or, well- does it count as sex? If this were a normal situation, Katya would say not. But when she was touching herself she was thinking about making Trixie feel good, wondering whether Trixie could feel everything with the same intensity. Katya is fuzzy-skinned and plump like an overripe peach.

“If you’re gonna do that again, I need some warning. Can’t have you jerking off while I’m trying to teach a class.”

The laugh Trixie lets out at that is loud and long and caterwauling. It makes Katya laugh too and she rolls over onto her stomach, phone still held to her ear and getting a little sweaty now.

“I have to ask your permission to come now? What are you, my dad?”

Katya groans and hides her face in the pillow, but she’s already pretty desensitised to Trixie’s off-colour humour. Other parts of her are not so desensitised and she rolls her hips down into the mattress.

“You slut,” Trixie gasps right into her ear. “You’re not done?”

“I hate you so much.”

She can hear Trixie’s grin, the way her words arc around it. “Yeah. Hate you too. Can’t wait for you to sit on my face.”

“Fuck,” Katya says, and hangs up on Trixie again.

Her wrist hurts from the awkward angle she’s at but she’s close enough already, again, that it doesn’t matter. Katya rolls her hips down against her fingers and wishes Trixie were here. She wants to put her face between Trixie’s thighs, wants to feel her heels dig into her back. The thought of it is enough and she comes open-mouthed and silent, Trixie’s name caught in the back of her throat.

After that, things are different.

Trixie gets braver and brattier. She likes to tease, a lot. Sometimes Katya reciprocates, but mostly she shuts Trixie down. She always gets into a snit over it and refuses to text back even though Katya can feel how much Trixie misses her when they go more than an hour without talking.

There are four days left of Trixie’s tour. Four days until she’s back in Los Angeles. She has a lot to take care of once she’s home, so she told Katya she won’t be able to make it out to Boston for another few weeks.

That’s fine. It’s fine, because Katya got Trixie’s roommate’s phone number from Fame, and she’s going to LA.

The Russian class she teaches is on summer break now, and she’s taken a week of the vacation days she never usually uses from the yoga studio. She’s going to be there, when Trixie steps off her plane, and then they’re going to spend a whole week together.

It is an enormous effort not to think about it too much. If she gets excited, or anxious, Trixie is going to know and she’s not going to drop it. Katya has texted Kim a few times to arrange things. They’ve talked on the phone once and she had to sit on the floor in padmasana and breathe slowly through her nose and focus on absolute stillness so she didn’t clue Trixie in.

The night before Katya leaves for Los Angeles, she sits on the sill so that she can smoke out of the open window. It’s so hot in Boston that she’s only wearing her underwear. She’s got Spotify pulled up and her speaker playing from the kitchen, everything Trixie’s ever uploaded.

She’s performing right now. Katya closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. She thinks a lot about the first time she saw Trixie perform. If she was a little smarter she would have realised before they met that Trixie was her sestrinskoye serdste, because she suffered so badly watching Trixie get her life up on the stage.

Now, it’s like being high. She gets to feel Trixie’s euphoria, her pride in herself, the joy that buoys her to bounce around all over the place while she performs. It does worry her a little. She’s an addict; she can’t really be trusted with things that feel this good.

Sweat is collecting in all of Katya’s creases, her elbows and the backs of her knees, but she doesn’t want to move. This is the time that she feels the closest to Trixie. And she is so achingly proud of her she can hardly stand it. Tomorrow she will fly across the country. Trixie isn’t back until the day after, so Katya has an evening to acclimate to Trixie’s space and hope that she gets along okay with Kim.

It feels as though she’s been waiting all of her life, because she has. Only, these last few weeks have been different. They talk all day long, their hearts are full up with each other almost every moment. While she has been waiting, Trixie has been with her.

Flying is not her favourite thing, but Katya has both of Trixie’s EPs saved to her phone and she plays them on a loop for the whole six hours. She closes her eyes and thinks about Trixie, about how she’ll get to touch her tomorrow. Kim has promised to keep Trixie as distracted as possible today so that she won’t notice Katya has disappeared off the earth for a handful of hours. She’s going to manufacture a crisis, apparently.

Kim is a good friend who loves Trixie very dearly and is thrilled that she’s found Katya. She knows that Trixie is soulbound now, apparently, and Katya wonders who else Trixie has told but is too afraid to ask.

She answers the door and lets Katya in to the apartment. Her makeup is kind of similar to Trixie’s, looks like it must take hours and hours to do in the mornings. She’s tall and her hair is lilac and Katya is immediately obsessed with her.

“That’s Trixie’s room.” Kim gestures to a closed door off the living room. “Make yourself at home. Help yourself to whatever. She’s going to absolutely lose it.”

Katya drags her suitcase into Trixie’s bedroom and leaves it just inside the doorway while she takes the space in. The walls are a soft pink like the inside of a shell. Trixie’s bed is in the middle of the room beneath the window, made neatly with white sheets. There are plants on almost every surface, fairy lights strung up along the bookshelf.

It’s clean, and beautiful, and so Trixie that Katya has to sit down in the white chair at Trixie’s vanity table. She has a blanket folded over the back of it that looks handmade, and Katya brushes her fingers over the wool.

Kim pokes her head around the doorframe. “I’m making tea, if you want some?”

“Sure, thanks. Whatever you’re having sounds good.”

“It’s so like her in here, isn’t it,” Kim says. She’s got this soft little smile on her face and Katya realises for the first time that she’s not the only one missing Trixie.

There are lots and lots of people in her life. People Katya doesn’t know, has no idea even exist. She’d like to meet them, like to hold Trixie’s hand and be introduced to them all as her girlfriend. She’s been calling her that inside her head, but hasn’t yet been brave enough to say it out loud.

It turns out that Kim is great. She’s got a sharp sense of humour that is so much like Trixie’s. They make sense, the two of them. Katya gets to hear stories about what Trixie is like to live with, what she was like in college.

She knows, sort of, because she felt her every single day. It’s nice to attach some anecdotes to the emotions. While Trixie’s been away, each day Katya has chosen a random excerpt from her journals to share with her. It’s like a horoscope, but it’s a recollection and not a prediction. Sometimes Trixie has remembered the events vividly and shared them with Katya, and other times she’s had no idea what was happening.

Katya sleeps in Trixie’s bed. It doesn’t smell too strongly of her, because she’s been away from it for nearly six weeks. Tomorrow night though, she’s going to sleep in this bed with Trixie right beside her.

Her flight gets in pretty early in the morning, which means she’s definitely going to be grumpy. Katya puts on one of her favourite dresses, a long-sleeved black one with floral embroidery. At the airport she gets a chai latte for Trixie and a black coffee for herself and she stands at arrivals, watching everybody pouring out.

The way the airport is set up, with glass all along the hallway, means that she can see Trixie quite easily. She’s coming up the ramp, dragging her pink suitcase behind her. She isn’t looking where she’s going; she’s got her phone in her free hand and she’s typing rapidly with her thumb.

Katya’s phone buzzes insistently in her hand over and over and she unlocks it, opens her messaging app.

babe

tell me not to turn around and get on a plane to boston

that’s a dumb idea, right?

Katya grins and darts a glance at Trixie. She’s almost at the exit now but she still hasn’t looked up from her phone. Even coming off a flight she’s so beautiful, her hair in two braids down her back and little pieces curling around her face.

its a very dumb idea, yeah

because im not in boston

Trixie’s head snaps up at that. She picks Katya out of the crowd right away and when their eyes meet she stumbles, the rhythm of her stride knocked off balance. Katya feels Trixie’s shock hit her and has to take a steadying breath, but the rush of joy that immediately follows is so good it makes her lightheaded. Trixie smiles so big and then ducks her head like she’s shy.

When she reaches Katya she barrels into her and wraps her arms tight around her shoulders. Katya brings a hand up to cradle the back of her head.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she laughs, and Trixie makes a small, strangled noise.

“What are you- how did you get here? Holy shit. Katya.”

Trixie untangles herself from around Katya but doesn’t go far, captures her face between her palms. Her own face is slack with awe so that she’s not even smiling, but Katya is, can’t seem to stop.

“You should tell your roommate not to let strangers into your apartment while you’re out of town.”

“I missed your first time meeting Kim?” Trixie pouts.

Her hands are still on Katya’s face and she seems to remember that quite suddenly. Her thumb comes to Katya’s bottom lip and drags it down experimentally (she sends a silent prayer of thanks up to the gods of liquid lipstick).

Katya sucks in a breath. This is her last ever first kiss. She wants it to be right. Eyes closed, she waits to feel Trixie’s mouth on hers. Instead, their foreheads meet, and when Katya opens her eyes again Trixie’s looking down at her like she’s drowning.

“I wanna kiss you so bad,” she says, and her voice is all punched out and breathy like she already has. “God. I want you so much.”

Katya lifts her chin a little and lets her hands settle at Trixie’s waist. Go ahead.

“But once I start, I’m not gonna be able to stop. And I don’t wanna do it here.”

That’s a very fair assessment. Katya laughs to break the tension and hands Trixie her chai, takes her suitcase from her so she can focus on drinking it.

“Come on, honey. Let me take you home.”

They sit on opposite sides of the car in the Uber to Trixie’s apartment, leaving their hands on the middle seat. Trixie strokes her fingers across the back of Katya’s hand, kneads her knuckles into the meat of Katya’s palm. Trixie’s hands are the most tender part of her, Katya thinks. Not her heart. Trixie’s heart is strong and sure.

Kim has made herself conspicuously absent from the apartment, left a note to tell them that she’ll be back in the morning and to please at least disinfect the surfaces when they’re finished.

While Trixie freshens up from her flight, Katya runs through a very quick flow for calm and inner stability. She’s nervous, which is ridiculous, but Trixie makes her feel like a teenager. When she comes out of the bathroom Katya is on the couch, scrolling blindly through Twitter so that she doesn’t look like she’s just sitting waiting for Trixie.

“Hi,” Katya says, and intimacy colours her voice so it sounds like come here.

Trixie does. It doesn’t surprise Katya at all when she sinks down right into her lap, knees bracketing Katya’s hips and her thick thighs framing Katya’s slender ones.

She’s got her hands braced against the back of the couch either side of Katya’s head like she doesn’t trust herself not to ravage her immediately.

“I’ve thought about this every moment of every day since I met you,” Trixie says.

She’s doing a really good job of sounding confident, but Katya feels her uncertainty just as intensely as she feels her own.

“I have too,” Katya confesses. She reaches up to touch Trixie, the soft skin of her cheek. “God. You’re so beautiful.”

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Trixie says. Her voice is so quiet, gentle like she gets when Katya’s anxiety is bad and she’s doing her best to soothe her. “If that’s alright.”

When Trixie leans in and closes the distance between them, Katya can hardly breathe around the swell of her heart in her throat. Trixie’s lips are soft and she tastes like mint, must have just brushed her teeth. Katya’s ready for Trixie to deepen things right away but she doesn’t, kisses Katya soft and slow. It feels so good, and she feels how good it is for Trixie too and it’s almost too much. She finds herself balling her hands tightly into fists and then flexing her fingers again, over and over at Trixie’s hips.

“You can touch me,” Trixie says against Katya’s mouth. “I want you to touch me.”

She splays her hands wide at Trixie’s ass and uses that grip to haul her in close. Trixie’s hips rock down sharply against Katya’s and she can feel the heat of her already. Trixie’s hands are in Katya’s hair and she tugs experimentally right at her scalp. Katya gasps into Trixie’s mouth and presses her legs together, can’t quite hold back the low groan that rumbles out of her.

“Really?” Trixie grins down at her. “Huh. I thought you were the top.”

Even after only four weeks, even though this is their first time doing this, Katya knows how much Trixie enjoys making her flustered. She likes to hear Katya strung out and desperate. It makes sense that she’d want to see her that way too, beneath her on the couch.

“I brought a strap, you fucking bitch,” Katya says, and gets her hand up beneath Trixie’s dress to brush against her.

It makes her stop laughing immediately, makes her fall forwards and let out an utterly obscene whine right against Katya’s ear. She rocks against Katya’s fingers, already soaked through her underwear.

Touching Trixie feels so good, and she can feel how good Trixie feels to be touched at the same time, and it’s the hottest and most intense thing she’s ever experienced.

She pushes the fabric of Trixie’s underwear out of the way so she can get her fingers against the slick heat of her. When Katya touches Trixie’s clit she yelps and a shudder rips through her entire body.

“You brought a- a dildo through TSA?” Her voice is coming in short bursts now and she’s panting already, her breath hot at Katya’s neck.

“No,” Katya snorts. “Just my harness. Figured you probably have your favourites.”

Trixie clenches around nothing at that, Katya feels it both where her fingers are and between her own legs. She’s still making lazy circles against Trixie’s clit and she picks up the pace a little bit.

“Oh, fuck, Katya,” Trixie says when she slides one finger into her.

“Yeah, baby. Working on it.”

Trixie likes to talk, is a chronic interrupter. It’s not at all surprising that she talks constantly while Katya fucks her. She adds another finger pretty much right away, because Trixie is so wet and desperate that there’s no resistance at all.

“God. Fuck. You feel so good. Did you-” Katya curls her fingers and Trixie growls in the back of her throat. “Did you know it would be this good?”

Katya has her open mouth against Trixie’s neck and she lets her teeth graze very lightly against the smooth skin there, lets the tip of her tongue just dart out to touch.

“I didn’t know. But I hoped.”

Trixie bites Katya’s clavicle. “More, Katya, please. I need more. I need you to fill me.”

She obliges, adds a third finger that makes Trixie cry out. Katya is barely even moving, just letting Trixie ride her hand and grind against her palm. They’re both still fully clothed.

When Trixie comes she’s silent, which is interesting. They’ve touched themselves together a few times, so Katya knows what it feels like when Trixie comes, but it’s different having her right here in her lap. She works her through it, fucks her with three fingers until she’s trembling and collapsed against Katya’s chest.

As soon as she gets her breath back, Trixie climbs off of Katya’s lap and goes to the floor. She kneels in front of the couch and wraps her hands around the backs of Katya’s thighs, hauls her to the edge of the cushion. Trixie shoves the skirt of Katya’s dress up out of her way and pulls her underwear off, tosses them aside somewhere behind herself.

The anticipation is driving Katya nuts. She can feel Trixie’s warm breath so close to where she needs her, and she can feel how badly Trixie wants her. Trixie lays her cheek against the inside of Katya’s thigh and blinks up at her.

“I’ve thought about this so much. Your thighs. How much I’ve been wanting to be between them. I wanna eat you out every day for the rest of my life.”

Katya’s hips lift at that, chasing Trixie’s mouth. She decides to play nice, for once, and licks Katya slowly. It’s so good. Katya pulls her dress up over her head. She’s not wearing a bra and she pinches and rolls her nipples, stares down at Trixie between her legs. Katya grinds against Trixie’s face, chases the coiling tension in the pit of her stomach.

Trixie slides two fingers into her at once and sucks hard on her clit and that’s all it takes, she comes with a little shout and arches off the couch cushion.

Still on the floor, Trixie smiles sweetly up at her. “I want you to fuck me. Properly. I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”

“Sure, honey.” Katya sits up and leans forwards, takes Trixie’s face in both hands so she can kiss her. She smoothes her thumb over Trixie’s eyebrow. “Since you’ve been such a good girl, we can do that. Go pick out something nice. I’ll be right there.”

She makes herself wait much longer than she’d like. Katya likes to top, she likes the control that it gives her and it makes her feel good to be wanted so badly. She just needs a minute to get into the right headspace. She pours herself a glass of water from the Brita in the refrigerator and drinks it slowly.

In the bedroom, Trixie is lying on her front in the middle of the bed. There’s a dildo next to her on the sheets, pink and thinner than Katya would have expected. She rummages in her suitcase for the ring harness and steps into it, glad Trixie is face down and doesn’t get to see this part. Once everything is in place Katya gives an experimental tug on her dick to make sure it’s secure.

Trixie is whining very quietly and her hips are rocking back and forth, but she doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t look at Katya. Between her own thighs, Katya feels how desperately Trixie needs her right now.

She puts a knee on the mattress and Trixie keens when her body dips towards it. Katya nudges Trixie’s legs apart and settles between them, drapes herself over Trixie’s back. She kisses Trixie’s shoulder, open-mouthed, and lets her dick slide against the crease of Trixie’s ass.

“Good girl, Trixie. You’re so patient. Are you ready, baby?”

Trixie nods. She’s got her face squashed against the pillows so Katya can’t see much more than the curve of her cheek and her delicate ear. She wraps one hand around her dick and guides herself into Trixie.

For the very first time, Katya realises what it must be like to have an actual dick. As she pushes inside of Trixie she feels it, feels the stretch and how good it is to be filled. Trixie angles her hips up and back and Katya pulls out just a little, fucks into her hard again.

“Oh, Trixie, that’s- wow,” she says into the back of Trixie’s head, and gets a little keening noise of agreement.

Katya sets a steady rhythm, fucks Trixie hard and reaches around underneath their bodies to rub at her clit. She can feel exactly how much Trixie can take, knows just how hard she can push it. Sweat beads at her hairline and slides down towards her ears.

“Wait, wait, stop,” Trixie says.

Her hips still immediately and she supports her body weight on her elbows. She doesn’t think she hurt Trixie. She’d have felt it, surely, and it doesn’t feel like Trixie’s upset.

“I wanna see you. I wanna kiss you.”

Katya pulls out and gives Trixie room to roll onto her back beneath her. She pushes back in immediately, because it feels so fucking good to be inside of Trixie and she wants to stay there forever.

The snap of Katya’s hips against Trixie’s does not at all match the leisurely way that she kisses her. She licks into Trixie’s mouth, bites her bottom lip and sucks on it to soothe her.

“Oh, yes, right there,” Trixie gasps when Katya shifts the angle of her hips. “Don’t stop, Katya. Don’t stop.”

When Trixie comes she closes her eyes and tips her head back and clutches at Katya’s shoulders, one leg up around her waist and the heel of her foot digging into Katya’s ass.

After they’ve both used the bathroom and Katya’s taken the harness off and gotten each of them a glass of water, she joins Trixie in bed. Trixie tucks herself under Katya’s arm and traces lazy, concentric circles over her stomach with the tip of her finger.

“Ever let anybody rail you on the first date, before?”

“Only my uncle,” Trixie says, and then screams a laugh at herself. “But this wasn’t our first date.”

It wasn’t. She’s right. Katya kisses Trixie’s forehead because she can, because Trixie’s right there and she’s been thinking about it for a month.

“I’m so happy you’re here. I can’t believe that you’re here.”

“It’s okay?” Katya asks quietly. Part of her has been worried that Trixie is going to be mad, isn’t going to want Katya in her space.

Trixie props herself up on one elbow so she can look down at Katya. She has an adorable little crease between her eyebrows and she studies Katya for a long time.

“When you’re not near me,” Trixie starts, and touches the tips of two fingers to Katya’s chin. “It is a physical ache. I don’t ever wanna do that again. I don’t ever wanna be away from you for that long again.”

They spend almost the entire week together and settle quickly into a routine. Katya wakes up early in the mornings and does yoga in the living room, smokes a cigarette on Trixie’s tiny balcony while she waits for the kettle to boil. She comes back to bed with tea for them both and gets to wake Trixie. Every morning, when Trixie opens her eyes to look at her, Katya feels a little surge of joy right in the centre of her chest. She likes being the first thing Trixie sees each day.

Today is her last day in Los Angeles. They’ve gotten to walk around holding hands in the daylight. They’ve hiked and gone to the movies and gotten ice cream; they’ve fucked like every time is their last. Katya finds that she likes LA, even though it’s even more disgustingly hot than Boston.

She could see herself here.

Trixie is still sleeping and Katya leaves her tea on the nightstand in case she wakes up, goes back out onto the balcony with her phone in her hand. She dials, listens to it ring twice before it connects.

“Katenka?”

“Da, Mama. Privet.” Now that she’s older, and less stubborn, Katya speaks mostly in Russian to her parents. She doesn’t want to lose it, and now that she’s not living with Sasha anymore it’s good to practice.

Katya leans against the railing and holds her phone to her ear, only half listening. Her mother likes to begin every conversation by catching Katya up with all of the neighbourhood gossip. Half of these people she hasn’t seen for fifteen years, but she offers her mother a little assent every now and then anyway.

“Listen, Mama,” she says when there’s a break in the conversation. “I found them.”

“Your sestrinskoye serdste?” her mother gasps.

They’ve been worrying. Papa doesn’t show it, but Mama often frets that Katya is approaching forty and maybe she should forget about being soulbound and just settle down with someone. She knows that they’re afraid they’re going to die without seeing their daughter married off. But now there’s Trixie.

“Da. Her name is Trixie. She’s a musician. She lives in California. I’m at her apartment right now.” She pauses to give her mother time to digest all of that and then she says, softer, “I really like her, Mama.”

“Oh, Katenka, sweetheart. That’s wonderful. I’m so glad. Can we meet her?”

She thinks about that, about bringing Trixie home to her family. She knows that Trixie’s relationship with her own family is strained, thinks about her mother hugging Trixie hello and bringing her into the kitchen, trying to fatten her up. “Soon, Mama. I promise.”

The sliding door to the balcony makes a screeching noise when it’s pushed open further, and then Katya feels the warmth of Trixie right behind her. She wraps both arms around Katya and draws her back against her chest, kisses her cheek.

“I have to go. I’ll talk to you later. I love you,” Katya says, and hangs up the call.

She turns in the circle of Trixie’s arms and leans in to kiss her good morning. Trixie is responsive, opening her mouth and sliding her tongue against Katya’s. When they break apart her cheeks are flushed.

“That your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so fucking sexy when you speak Russian.”

It makes Katya laugh and Trixie grins too, pleased with herself. Her hair is a little rumpled and Katya smoothes it down for her, leaves a little kiss at the end of her nose.

“She wants to meet you. She’s very excited that I found my sestrinskoye serdste.”

“I still can’t believe you call it that.”

Katya lifts both eyebrows and leans back a little against the grip of Trixie’s arms. “What do you call it?”

“A soulmate. Because I’m not a pretentious asshole.”

She swats at Trixie, pouts at her, but she knows Trixie can feel that she’s not offended. Quite the opposite. Every single thing Trixie does endears her hopelessly to Katya. They make out lazily on the balcony for a little while, neither of them caring that the whole world can see. Katya still remembers the way Trixie looked down at her and said she never wants them to be apart. It makes her brave.

“Hey, Trixie?”

“Mm,” Trixie hums, and kisses her again.

Katya takes a small step back, her ass hitting the railing, so she can see Trixie properly. “What do you think about me moving out here? I could get a really tiny, really shitty apartment and teach yoga.”

“No,” Trixie says. It doesn’t match up with the joy that has come to life in her chest, the joy that is pouring slowly through Katya as well like longing made liquid.

“No?”

Trixie shakes her head, says it again. “No. No tiny apartment. Move in with me.”

For a long moment Katya can only stare at her, slack-jawed. She thinks about it. She’s always been a solitary creature, afraid of commitment, afraid of intimacy. But then, isn’t that because all this time she’s been waiting for Trixie? It doesn’t scare her. Not like it used to. She still hasn’t said anything, and she knows it’s freaking Trixie out but she can’t make her brain work.

“Katya. I know this is insane. I know we’ve only known each other for like a month and a half. But- I’m in love with you. I love you.”

She remembers the very first time Trixie felt it. They had been in the kitchen, Katya cleaning the dishes from the dinner Trixie had cooked for them. Trixie had been sitting on the countertop, swinging her bare legs and occasionally poking Katya in the side with her toes.

“Why don’t you go run yourself a bath? I got you a new bubble bar while you had your meeting, today,” Katya had said. A rush of clear and brilliant adoration had washed through Trixie and she had gaped at Katya for a second before kissing her, with more tongue than she anticipated.

She remembers finding it funny that Trixie had only just then realised. Katya’s known it from the very start. It’s been a fact of her life: her name is Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova, she is an addict, she is in love with her sestrinskoye serdste.

“Oh, Trixie, baby,” she says on a bubble of wet laughter, has to close her eyes so she doesn’t cry. “I’ve loved you for your whole life.”

They’re both crying then, and laughing, and clutching at each other. Kim pokes her head around the doorframe to look at them.

“What are you two lesbians doing?”

“Kimberly,” Trixie says like she’s thrilled to see her. “Is it cool if Katya moves in here?”

Kim snorts. “Is she gonna contribute to the rent?”

“I sure will. And the chores. I’ll be a very good roommate.”

Trixie’s hand is inside the waistband of Katya’s yoga pants and she tugs them away from her skin to let cool air inside. It’s very distracting, makes Katya shiver. She reaches around behind herself and circles Trixie’s wrist in her fingers to keep her still.

Kim is watching them, a look of disgust on her face, but then she grins. “Then yes. It’s cool. It’ll be nice to have someone else to share the burden of living with Trixie.”

“Wow, fuck you too,” she says, but she’s smiling still.

Suddenly the prospect of leaving tomorrow doesn’t seem so awful. They spend the afternoon at the beach. Trixie’s wearing a pink coverup and a huge hat and she sits neatly on her towel and reads, occasionally looking up at Katya over top of her sunglasses.

Katya wades into the ocean. A small child is watching her from a few feet away, staring at her tattoos. She smiles at them, allows them to touch her skin when they come closer. She’s got her hair tied up on top of her head in a scrunchie so they’re all on show, even the one between her shoulder blades that isn’t visible very often.

Once the child’s parent comes to collect them, Katya walks a little deeper until the water laps at her waist. From here Trixie looks like a vintage drawing, like a 50’s pin up girl. She’s got the front of her hair pinned in curls around her face to complete the fantasy.

The water is cool and lovely but Katya still feels hot. She put on sunscreen, mostly because she wanted Trixie to rub it into her back and then she got to rub Trixie’s back too. It’s difficult to cool off when Trixie insists on lying out like a lizard, but she doesn’t mind really.

They’re going to get to do this forever. The thought makes her smile, and suddenly she needs to be close to Trixie. She starts making her way to shore, the water dragging at her thighs and calves so she can’t move as quickly as she wants to.

When she reaches Trixie, Katya kneels down beside her. She keeps her in place with one hand at her thigh and leans in beneath the brim of her ridiculous hat. She kisses her, lets herself linger because this part of the beach isn’t too crowded.

“Hi, beautiful,” she says when they separate. “I missed you.”

“You were twenty feet away,” Trixie says, but she knocks her forehead against Katya’s and then steals another kiss from her.

Katya unrolls her own towel and stretches out next to Trixie on the sand. She doesn’t have the attention span for sunbathing usually, but lying here watching Trixie she has plenty to keep her occupied.

After a while Trixie sets her book down and pulls a notebook and a pink pen out of her bag. She’s working on a new song; Katya’s spent the last few nights lying with her head pillowed on Trixie’s thighs and feeling the reverberation of the guitar through her skull.

She likes to watch Trixie work, see her chewing on her bottom lip and sighing every now and then. Sometimes she will hum the melody very softly so that Katya almost thinks she’s imagined it.

They leave the beach when Trixie gets hungry and get dinner at her favourite vegan burger place. They have fries to share and Trixie lets Katya feed them to her across the table. She’s sad, and trying not to be, because she doesn’t want to make Trixie sad as well.

“How long do you think it’ll be. Before you can move here?”

Katya chews and swallows her food because she knows Trixie hates it when she talks with her mouth full. There’s a little streak of sunscreen on the tip of her nose from when she reapplied before they ate that Katya can’t stop looking at. She feels good, warm and loose-limbed and sitting out on the patio with the woman she loves beyond her capacity to love.

“M’not sure. I’ll have to give notice on my apartment, and at work. Break it to my parents. Pack everything up. Hire movers, I guess?”

Her chest gets tight. There’s so much to be done. She’s really going to uproot her whole life for somebody she’s known not even two months. It’s insane, and she’s definitely going to be scolded by her family and her friends and colleagues.

And then Trixie reaches across the table and takes her hand. Her skin is so soft. Katya knows now that it’s because she moisturises religiously, has been allowed to work Trixie’s expensive lotions into her legs for her at night.

“You don’t have to do this. If it’s too much.”

“It’s a lot,” she agrees. “But honey, you’re the only person that I want to be with, every single day.”

That makes Trixie blush and Katya feels her squirming pleasure, remembers too late that when she knocks the breath out of Trixie like this she has to deal with her own lungs caving in too.

“I love you so much. I’m so excited.”

Yeah. She is too.

*   *   *

Katya packs up her entire life in five neatly labelled cardboard boxes. They hire a truck and make an adventure of it, her and Fame. She says she wants to visit LA anyway, now that summer is rolling lazily over into fall and she can bear the heat a little better.

People have been a lot more accepting than Katya anticipated. Her mama had cried when she told her she was moving, but had insisted it was out of joy that she finally found Trixie. Most people, when she tells them she found her sestrinskoye serdste and she’s a tall, blonde country singer, are thrilled for her.

There are a lot of yoga studios in Los Angeles. Katya finds a job easily and finds that she loves it. It’s winter and she doesn’t need a coat or three layers of thermals. She likes the sunshine and she likes the beach and she likes Trixie most of all.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon a week before Christmas. The apartment is decorated, and Kim and Trixie even let Katya hang some of her ornaments on their tree. There are little plastic babies and eyeballs and hands and the two of them are gracious enough to pretend they don’t think she’s a lunatic.

Katya hears footsteps thundering up the stairs and the clutch of excitement in her chest, suddenly. The door opens and Trixie comes hurtling into the apartment, goes straight for the kitchen. She turns on the radio and fiddles with the knobs, grabs blindly for Katya’s hand when she comes to stand beside her.

“Are you okay, honey?”

“Shhh. Listen.”

Trixie turns up the volume and the two of them stand hand in hand in their kitchen and listen to the radio announcer, introducing newcomer Trixie Mattel! and the lead single from her new Christmas album.

“They’re playing it!” Trixie yells, and throws her arms around Katya.

She can feel the wide arc of Trixie’s grin against her neck. “Oh my God, baby, I’m so proud of you.”

Trixie’s phone is vibrating frantically with messages from just about everyone she’s ever met in her life. She turns it over and dumps it on the counter, holds Katya in place with both hands at her shoulders.

“They’re playing it,” she says again, on a whisper this time, and shakes her head like she can’t quite believe it.

Once her song finishes she shuts the radio off and they stand in the silence together. Trixie is shaking, her lashes are wet and sticking together and she’s staring open-mouthed at Katya.

It would be difficult for her to put words to how she’s feeling right now. But that’s alright, because Katya feels everything too just as fiercely. And she knows that Trixie knows how proud she is, so she doesn’t have to embarrass herself by trying to say it out loud.

After that, everything happens quickly. She knows it doesn’t work that way, that Trixie has been trying for years and years to break into the mainstream. That the radio calling her a newcomer just reinforces the idea that things fall magically into her lap, when really Katya knows how much she has to fight for everything she wants. But it seems like one minute they’re sharing their tiny two bed with Kim and the next, they’re shopping for houses.

Trixie is very particular about it, which comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. They’re looking for a fixer upper, partly because the royalty checks Trixie gets in the mail aren’t quite that fat yet, and partly because Trixie wants everything to be just to her taste.

Their taste, she keeps insisting, but Katya doesn’t care as long as there’s a space for her practice and Trixie lets her hang some of her favourite drawings. Katya likes the idea of doing things herself, of making their home pretty for her girlfriend, and has taken to spending hours in the evenings on her laptop in bed next to Trixie researching how to plumb a toilet or demolish a soffit.

She wears her glasses, because she’s thirty eight years old, and because she knows it makes Trixie hot for her. She gets an hour at most before Trixie takes the laptop from her and climbs into her lap and kisses her deep and slow.

Everything is feeling very adult, all of a sudden. She has a job and a girlfriend that she’s buying a house with and suddenly the future isn’t so intangible. She’s planning for it, letting herself think about five or ten years from now.

This year, in September, she will have been sober for five years. There are days it hardly crosses her mind, and days she can’t focus on anything else at all, but those are a lot more rare now. If Trixie comes home from the studio or meetings or a television performance and finds Katya on the bathroom floor with all of the lights out in the apartment, it doesn’t take her by surprise because she feels Katya’s fear. And because of that, she knows to wrap both arms around her and sit in the silence until she comes back to herself.

Most days are good days. It helps, that her reason for staying sober is no longer just for her own sake. She was always terribly selfish, because all addicts are, and she likes that Trixie has made her selfless.

“What’s this one?” Katya calls out.

She can’t see over the top of the cardboard box in her arms and she feels juvenile yelling for Trixie like they’re playing Marco Polo. Today is one year since they met and — they haven’t done it on purpose — they are moving into their first home. It’s a three bed bungalow in Pasadena that Katya is only paying for about twenty percent of, but Trixie insisted.

Katya can’t stop thinking about Trixie in overalls with a scarf tied around her hair, standing on tiptoe to paint the parts of the walls that Katya can’t reach. She has a tour coming up in the fall, and neither of them want to think about being apart for seven weeks, but everything is different now. Trixie will come home from tour to their house. She will help Katya raise their dog, a rescue named Bunny they both absolutely adore.

“That’s for my office,” Trixie says right into her ear. It startles her, but Trixie catches the box before she’s even really dropping it.

Katya pads down the hall after Trixie and follows her into the room at the front of the house they’ve designated as her workspace. All of her guitars will hang on the wall in here eventually. Right now there are drop sheets down still to protect the new floors they had installed throughout. Trixie sets the box down and turns to look at Katya.

“Hey,” she says. Come here.

Katya steps into her space and slides her arms easily around Trixie’s waist. She kisses her, slow and exploratory until she feels Trixie’s knees start to liquify and she sags in her arms.

Since they’ve lived together, things have settled down a bit. Katya no longer feels every single tiny blip on Trixie’s emotional seismometer. She still gets the big things, like how it was when they were growing up, but so much better.

“I can’t believe this is our life,” Katya whispers. She kisses Trixie again, takes her time because they have time. They’ve got all the time in the world, now. Trixie is always responsive, always sweet and silly, and she kisses Katya like she likes her so much.

“Listen. I gotta talk to you about something.” Trixie takes a deep breath and meets Katya’s eyes. “I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore.”

There’s mischief flitting with crêpe paper wings inside of Katya’s chest. Trixie’s mouth isn’t smiling, but her eyes are, and she’s clinging tight to Katya’s hands.

“Oh no?”

“No. I want to be your wife. I wanna marry you, Katya.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on your knees or something?” Katya says, and is proud that her voice only cracks once.

Trixie kneels down as daintily as she can. She’s wearing jeans today, which startled Katya so badly this morning that for a second she felt like she’d seen a poltergeist. The floor is dusty and there’s still protective paper covering the window and a bulb dangles grotesquely from a wire over their heads because they haven’t picked a fixture yet.

It’s perfect.

“Katya,” Trixie starts. She takes both of Katya’s hands in hers and Katya kneels down in front of her, wants them to be on an even keel for this.

“I could say a bunch of straight people shit, like that I can’t imagine my life without you in it, but the gag is that it’s true. I can’t, because I’ve never experienced that.”

Trixie laughs, and Katya does too even though hot tears are already sliding down her cheeks and off the end of her nose. It earns her a look of concern from Trixie and she makes a little noise to say keep going.

“And I know that we’re forever and it’s just a piece of paper and it doesn’t really mean anything, but…it kinda does mean something. To me. And I just really like the thought of calling you my wife and never ever shutting up about it.” She darts a glance over to the dog, who is hopping around and wagging her tail furiously. “Plus, our daughter is illegitimate and we just can’t have that. The scandal of it all.”

Katya chokes on a sob and then surges forwards to kiss Trixie. It is not at all sexy; she’s openly crying into Trixie’s mouth and Bunny is barking at them both, getting swept up in the excitement.

She kisses Trixie deep and open-mouthed, lets her tongue slick inside and keeps Trixie in place with her palm at her cheek. She’s going to be her wife. Katya likes that thought, and likes the thought of being a wife herself, too. It doesn’t terrify her anymore. How could it?

Here is Trixie, warm and soft and good and asking Katya for something she has always intended to give. They separate and the dog nudges her way in between them and licks Katya’s neck, her wiggly body bumping into Katya’s stomach.

Katya keeps Bunny aside with a hand at her chest. Trixie is grinning so big that her eyes are creasing and Katya can see all of her teeth. Her freckles are dark with the summertime and her nose is a little sunburnt and Katya loves her.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, you fucking monster. You swamp thing.” She rests her forehead at Trixie’s chin for a moment, just to catch her breath, and then she straightens to see her again. “Yes. Of course. Of course.”

[madeline50i5-blog]

Donald Trump N'assistera Pas Au Dîner Des Correspondants De Los angeles Maison Blanche.

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[the-ships-to-rule-them-all]

21!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

two of my favorites moments of this year, going to comic con and getting to meet Colin with my cousin @dashing-rapscallions (who is the greatest person) and meeting some of my favorite authors and then going to HVFF again, having David remember me, meeting some amazing people, getting to spend time with my mom AND BEING IN A OLICITY SANDWITCH. 

my favorite people on the planet, the ones who make my universe brighter just by existing

@goodqueenalys I am so completely and utterly grateful that I had the courage to send you that message Mere. You are one of the smartest most genuine humans I’ve ever met. I am in awe of the way you have nothing but kindness in your heart and that at the same time your spine is pure solid steel. your strength in your convictions, your passion, your willingness to educate, your creativity, the way you listen, the way you care. I am so so glad to call you my friend and to have you by my side. 

@blyedeeks SOUL TWIN!!! can you believe that we only met 2 years ago? it feels like we’ve known each other our entire lives. Sometimes you meet someone who can understand you in ways that don’t seem real because they get you on such a deep level. I think I said something like that last year but it’s still so true. And you are the kindest more brilliant star in sky Cams. I truly don’t know where I’d be without you, definitely not as confident or as loud. I love you a lot and I am so blessed to have your kindness and positivity on my side.

@marauders-groupie Lana’s words are spun starlight, she just captures something so instinctively human and tender with her poetry. She’s one of the kindest people in the world and she serves the universe. Oh, and she is determined and dedicated and passionate and she just believes so strongly in the goodness of a single person, in her own value that I can’t help but believe in myself more because of her strength and courage and beauty. 

@gabrielledelacour Caroline!!! my girl, my wonderful amazing girl. I cannot believe that I was your Tumblr crush. There’s such a softness to your words, a willingness to share and that all too familiar desire to love and be loved in return. the fact that you send me stuff about my hockey boys legit has made me cry because you take such an interest in me and I just I feel so warm when we talk, I love that your life is so wonderful and yet mundane, I love hearing about your day and I love watching you believe in yourself 

@gustinfucker BABE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the amount that I love you is beyond words. You are so passionate and sweet and if I could save your messages when reacting to my poetry to just constantly brighten my day I would because every time I remember how you react I feel so inspired and worthy. I feel like my life isn’t right when I don’t talk to you and I’m so grateful that we both shipped Poly Rangers and got to sharing headcanons and writing fic and you are so talented and wonderful. it seems impossible that we only met last year. Your willingness to put up with my rants and the way you support me and love me is the greatest feeling in the world

@abazethe100 Anna!!!!! I’m so glad that you are so busy even if it means that we don’t really ever talk, I love you so much and the moments where we get to just do deep dives into this show that we love so much are one that I hold incredibly close. you are so intelligent and wonderful

@sometimesrosy there’s something to be said about having someone who has lived a life believe in you. I feel like I can go to you for anything, Rosy. You are so so smart that sometimes I read your answers and it takes me a minute to reorient myself. 

@everybodyknows-everybodydies my soulmate, god I’m so jealous you are back in the place where we began but I’m so utterly proud of the person I’ve seen you becoming over the past year. You are so talented, so talented and you are so tiny and cute that sometimes I can’t believe how much passion you have in your body. Your art, your convictions, your passion, it’s so beautiful to see and I love you so so much

@clarkebell the fact that I get to read Karly’s work, the fact that I encourage her brilliance is something I hold as one of my greatest contributions to humankind. Not to mention that she is absolutely gorgeous, inside and out. She is funny and smart and passionate and I love her a lot. Thank you for making my year so great babe!

@thesnowyswan my darling Rae!!!! you have made me a so much better writer, a so much better person and I love you so so much. thank you for all your support and encouragement and I love talking any and everything with you. you are such an utter badass and passionate and dedicated and I can’t wait to meet you!

other people who are absolutely incredible and whom I adore so so much

@harpermcintyre (Al, babe thank you for always being kind and generous) @clarkeseden (Scarlet you are so talented and genuine, I love you a lot) @kazghaffa (for introducing me to Six of Crows and being so hilarious) @scodelariokaya (Nik is brilliant and beautiful and she deserves the universe) @martinlydia (G!!!!!!!! I’m so so grateful to have you in my life, you are so talented and wonderful and I’m so glad that stydia brought us together) @wellsjahasghost (Jade is remarkable and funny and her words are spun gold) @mego42 (Meg is one of the smartest, calmest people on this site and she deserves only good things) @wellamyblake (MJ makes me laugh on the daily and her understanding of nuances is only matched by her passion) @thatonekimgirl (Kim!! when we met at HVFF I didn’t think that we’d end up linking back so soon, thank you for dragging me into the spiral that is loving VirtueMoir) @bellamysprincessa (Katie, I love you. I love that you are so supportive and I adore that we always seem to watch the same shows as you scream about something in the chat) @head-and-heart (Kate is a gem, a smart supportive gem of a human whose tags I live for) @deadshotbellamy (Grace is a gorgeous girl who has two of the greatest urls I’ve ever seen) @thelovelylights (Jen is a badass, a beautiful badass but yeah, her best quality is that she is strong in her convictions and passionate about the things she chooses to give her heart to) @clarkebellamy (Karo, you are so incredibly talented, like you make magic with my words and I hate that timezones make it impossible to really talk but know that I love you a lot) @jynersos (Cody, you are so talented and smart and I cannot wait to meet you next semester and just hang out and be IN LONDON) @montygreen (Leila, you are so talented and wonderful and I love you so much and your gifsets are so beautiful they take my breath away) @ohmypreciousgirl (to think that five years ago your blog was one of the first that I followed, that your passion and intelligence were a reason I even joined Tumblr in the first place, the fact that we are friends, that we talk a lot is still shocking to me. I’m so grateful to you)

the writers who own my heart, whose ao3 pages I'm constantly refreshing, who make me fall in love with these characters all over again 

@deadcatwithaflamethrower (HER WORLDBUILDING IS TO DIE FOR, she just is constantly reinventing the universes that she plays in and reinventing my own opinions of characters by making them so much more complex) @so-caffeinated/ @dust2dust34 (their verse of FICON is one of the most awe-inspiring things I have ever read and it’s funny and sweet and action-packed and so full of family feels. I fangirled so much when I met Bre at HVFF, it was great and I just, they are so talented and I love writing poetry inspired by their writing) @rongasm (Rachel creates such works of art for Stydia and Percabeth and they are tender and touching and I could read the Harry Potter au for the rest of my life) @lottswrites (Lotts has such a way with dialogue and scenes and masterfully portraying universal emotions. They are funny and amazing and I’m really grateful for their encouragement) @ticogirls (SO FUNNY AND TALENTED, her gifsets are beautiful, her opinions are fire and Mel’s writing just makes me grin) @welllpthisishappening (Laura is a master at creating perfect pieces that I didn’t realize I wanted, she’s so talented and passionate and her stories just cause me to have such a massive grin on my face and she definitely reignited my love of CS) @ink-splotch (creates such masterpieces of Harry Potter and Marvel in terms of character study and what ifs and it’s just, I sometimes read them and cry but also rejoice) @lostcap (Phia’s poetry is pure spun sunshine and steel, there’s such a force to her words as though she is channelling the greek muses and the moment that she named me as one of her favorite tumblr poets is quite possibly one of my greatest accomplishments) 

some other amazing people who have made this year spectacular 

@bellameblake @bellsblake @bellblake @asexual-mechanic @apirateslifeforsmee @jahaliel @flynnintime @molliiholmes @nerdybellamy @prosciuttoe @jbuffyangel @turtlejustice @junebugninja @scottsvirtue @clarissasjace @missemarissa @rashaka @dangerous--waters @griffndors @blarkebitch @grumpybell @kindclaws @ravenbellclarke @dreamcourtrhys @flydestiel @stydixa @ofnailbatsandaxefives @llysandra @whoeveryoulovethemost @impvlsivee @stilesprefers-screamers @readymachine @bellarketm @clxrkblakee @warriorsaralance

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - March 24th, 2017

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! Click on the titles to get the links! They are posted in the order I read them.

Was it Ever Real? multi-chapter by mindramblings ARGUS Agent Oliver Queen is given one last mission. He has to go undercover and get close to a member of the Bratva's daughter: Felicity Smoak. Complications arise, however, when he finds himself falling for her. Will he be able to stay focused on the job or blur the lines?

Finally Home by @wherethereissmoak - Oliver is rescued from Prometheus, but discovers Felicity's chair in the bunker is suspiciously empty. So Awesome!!

The White Queen by @felicityollies - How do you break a man that is already so very broken? You break the love of his life, of course.

Time for a Story multi-chapter by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances.

A Day in the Life multi-chapter by @tdgal1 - Felicity Smoak is an MIT graduate and assistant to Oliver Queen.   Suddenly she is his pretend girlfriend and in the spotlight.  Oliver Queen needs a girlfriend to get rid of an obsessive former lover and to please his parents. Fluffy, funny, happiness!

Calculated Chaos multi-chapter @stygian-omada-fan - Sequel to The Nightmare, I don't care if you're 4, or 40 you don't hit people

Running Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4 multi-chapter by @geneshaven - Oliver and Felicity are on the run from the authorities

Our Version of Events multi-chapter by @machawicket and @geneeste - Action star Ollie Queen is trying to clean up his image and land parts that require him to do more than appear shirtless while fighting stuntmen. Pop star Felicity Smoak wants to be seen as an adult in time for the release of her new, grittier album. And talent manager John Diggle’s got an idea about what coverage of Oliver and Felicity’s brand new (and totally fake) romance could do for them both.

In Another Life (I Could be Your Man) multi-chapter by @angelicmisskitty - Their lives couldn't be more different - and yet Oliver can't take his eyes off the beautiful blonde woman that leaves the subway every morning at 7.43am. There is something about her that makes him look up every morning - something that also makes him aware he'll never be good enough for her, or that she'd even notice him. He had no idea how much his life would change the day he rushed over to help her...Olicity AU - no Lian Yu, no saving the city (at least not in the way we know from Arrow :D ) LOVE LOVE, LOVE!

Untitled by @dettiot - a prompt... Oliver and Felicity at the grocery store, Oliver and Felicity hosting a team dinner, or both :)

You are my Strength by @alanna-the-lionheart - 5x17 spec fic - As Prometheus tortures him, Oliver holds on tight to hope. His team, his friends, his family…they are his strength, and they will find him. He trusts them; he trusts all of them. But more than anything, he trusts her.

A Soul Lost at Sea multi-chapter by @tinaday3w - MAGNIFICENT regency romance where Oliver is a pirate who had returned to his previous life.

Untitled by @alexiablackbriar13 - Prompt: Allergy -  So sweet!

Untitled by @dmichellewrites - Prompt a story with Felicity and Lyla

Untitled by @dmichellewrites - Felicity takes a turn dressing up as the Green Arrow

Prompts and Drabbles by @wherethereissmoak - Chapter 1: The prompts were “I thought it was a one-night-stand…and now we’re married…” and  “I’m your husband. It’s my job.”Chapter 2: “The skirt is supposed to be this short.”

Untitled by @dmichellewrites - Prompt: Cake - Olicity wedding cake!

Trust Me multi-chapter by @felicityollies - When a prostitute meets the perfect client, she has to remind herself that there’s no room for getting close to someone in her line of work.

Keep it Professional multi-chapter by @mogirl97 - Oliver is assigned to be Felicity's bodyguard - Delightful!

Tumbleweeds multi-chapter by zarrati - Set post "What we Leave Behind". Instead of going to Susan's, Oliver finds himself at Felicity's apartment to check on her. What starts out as Oliver trying to be a supportive friend soon sets them on the path of growing back together.

When Locksley Met... multi-chapter by @emmilynestill - A collection of one-shots wherein Oliver and Felicity’s fierce (and fluffy) guard dog meets their friends and family. Also, an Olicity-observed-from-a-third-party collection. CUTENESS OVERLOAD!

Kick Off Your Sunday Shoes by @wherethereissmoak - Prompt -"How long have you been standing there?" Set early in Season 3

Olicity - He's going to be okay. He's safe. multi-chapter by @marytagus - A fanfic on Felicity Smoak dealings to get Oliver safe from Prometheus torture.

In My Daughter's Eyes multi-chapter by @smkkbert - Oliver and Felicity are parents following a teenage pregnancy, they balance family life with school and I love it!

As Easy As Falling multi-chapter by @charlinert - Felicity has just received tragic news when she meets Oliver, I believe there is hope, highly recommend but you will cry but not every chapter!

Deceive, Inveigle and Obfuscate multi-chapter by @machawicket - AWESOME story about a pretend marriage between Oliver and Felicity for reasons

Snowfall multi-chapter by sentencefragments - With her car stuck in the snow and the only thing slightly warm her best friend's wedding dress in her backseat, Felicity chooses  to take a leap of faith and venture into the snowstorm to find some help. or at least shelter. She slips and tumbles into a deep ditch. Lucky for her, someone finds her and carries her to his cabin and crackling fireplace.

Red Red Wine multi-chapter by @lynslogic - Felicity's mother meets Oliver Queen who owns a winery and gives him her number

Bound to You multi-chapter by @bindy417 - Felicity is an ARGUS agent and Oliver with the Bratva but they met long before that! This story gives the past and the present. 

Domestic Disagreement by @wherethereissmoak - Oliver and Felicity are back together in a new home, and he's mad at her for something. Domestic Olicity fluffiness.

Every Life Has a Moment multi-chapter by @laurabelle2930 - The Queen family took Felicity in and raised her from age 7, Felicity and Oliver became bestfriends until they realized they could be more

Am I Going Alone multi-chapter by @abadspellr - AU. What would happen if Ivo killed Sarah instead of Shado? How does Oliver's life change? Can he still be The Hood? Can he still find Felicity? Can he learn what it means to be a hero? A re-imagining of Arrow with old faces in new roles.

Pieces of Always multi-chapter by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. You do not need to have read FiCoN to enjoy this, but it will spoil the end. Really love these stories!!

One Plus One Equals Three multi-chapter by @perfectlittlesoul - a glimpse into the happy married life of Olicity - super sweet

I did for this for you by @callistawolf for Olicity Valentine's Smut-a-thon - Oliver and Felicity have just reunited and things are getting hot and heavy between them as they celebrate their return to each other. And then Oliver discovers something...

Intermezzo by @nodecaff4me for Olicity Valentine's Smut-a-thon - Oliver hates the opera, prompt “I think you’ll be happy to know that I’m not wearing any underwear…”

Untitled by @deadlybingo - post 5x17 fic what happens after the credits

Olicity Drabble 5x17 - Holding by @laurabelle2930 - Post 5x17 fic An Olicity moment.

A Home for Shadows by @olicitykaramel - Post 5x17 fic Dealing with the aftermath

Picture Perfect multi-chapter by @thebookjumper - She’s not really sure what prompted her to do it.   Okay, that might be a bit of a lie.  Sure, she’s not completely positive of her reasoning, but she would bet Oliver’s fortune that it had quite a bit to do with the four empty bottles of wine littering her counter top and the three other women lounging around her apartment in various states of undress.She doesn't want to be cute anymore.  She's sexy and she's going to prove it. SO AWESOME!

Actions Speak Louder Than Words (And Other True Sayings) multi-chapter by @so-caffeinated - All-in-all, it’s the best kidnapping experience Felicity’s had so far by a lot. So, it’s kind of an epic surprise when the fallout from it is so, so much worse.

Revelations and Confessions by @geniewithwifi - Post 5x17 Olicity moment

Gather Your Darkness by @imusuallyobsessed - What happened right after Oliver came into the bunker and said, "I'm shutting everything down." The bunker is quiet, Oliver's asleep, but Felicity and Digg can't just leave him.

// @almondblossomme // @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @stygian-omada-fan // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo // @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1 // @quiveringbunny // @quant-um-fizzx // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan //

[lori19e56561589-blog]

Kid's Holy bible Trainings.

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