#fun fact a year ago roughly around this time i was struck with the idea for frmb

[mangoisms]

[forzalando]

The Perfect Arrangement | George Weasley | Pt. 1

Pairing: George Weasley x F!Reader AU: Bridgerton!AU Word Count: 2.1k Warnings: Bridgerton spoilers, mentions of alcohol

Summary: As a woman in the early 19th century, you’ve been told all your life that marriage should be your ultimate goal, however, you do not share that sentiment. When the insufferable George Weasley devises a plan that may solve your problems, how can you say no?

A/N: hi friends! this will be a multipart (probably 3-4 parts) George fic inspired by Bridgerton. i’m so excited for it and i hope you all are too :) thank you for reading!

The start of the social season had been, as you had expected, the topic of conversation around the ton for the past few weeks. It was impossible to go anywhere without hearing whispers of who would snag an engagement in the next few months.

Particularly, people had been interested in who the Queen would declare the “diamond of the season”. Your mother was positively convinced it would be you, but you had other plans in mind for your life other than parties and dresses and loveless marriage. However, when the Queen took one look upon your face, she quickly declared you incomparable, as she had done the same for Daphne Bridgerton, now the Duchess, a few years prior, and your fate was sealed.

As a member of the distinguished and esteemed Y/L/N family, and as the eldest daughter, you had a trivial, yet necessary and important role to play, even if you longed to free yourself from it. Your mother and father, as wonderful as they might be, had high expectations for you, and you would not and could not let them down.

Your mother fluffed your hair and primped your dress in preparation of the Danbury Ball, admiring you fondly and gushing about how beautiful you looked.

“Maybe your luck will be as wonderful as the Duchess, her love match was indeed unprecedented but oh so joyous. Do you think your fortune might align with hers, dear?”

“Mama,” you sighed. “I have no interest in a life like the Duchess’s. All the parties, teas, and properness. Besides, there isn’t another Duke for me to marry.”

“I did not mean that you would have to marry a Duke to share her fate; only that you may marry for love.”

You huffed as you turned away from the mirror. In truth, you had no interest in marrying for love, or marrying at all for that matter, but the duty of an eldest daughter was set in stone.

All too soon, you arrived at the Lady Danbury’s spectacular first ball of the season; the sea of gowns and tailored coats causing a queasy feeling to settle in your stomach, and you wished with all your might that anything at all would ruin the festivities.

A glass of champagne was placed in your grasp and you let your eyes wander around the room; Lady Eloise Bridgerton, a close friend of yours, donned a similar look on her face though her mother enthusiastically tried to get her to waltz across the dance floor.

Glancing to your left, you noticed Lord Farley, a rather grotesque older man, eyeing you up and down; his beady eyes causing the queasy feeling to return and for your feet to take off in what could almost be considered a sprint.

When he was no longer in your line of sight, you began to slow down your gait, but a shoulder roughly bumped into yours and an unattractive yelp escaped your lips.

The unmistakable chuckle that followed your outburst made you groan due to your detestation of the man you knew you had bumped into.

Lord George Weasley; a man, nay, a boy, with hair of fire and a wit to match. You had known him for years as you were the same age and his sister Ginevra was the best of friends with your younger sister.

“I want to believe, Miss Y/L/N, that you would not take such drastic measures to capture my attention, but I must say I am flattered nonetheless,” George teased, his hand reaching out to steady you as you recovered from the collision.

“Mr. Weasley, I believe you to know me better than that,” you spoke with gritted teeth as you swatted his hand away. “Besides, there are plenty of young women here that would kiss the ground you walk on. Might you bother them instead?”

“Ah, but where is the fun in that? I’ve noticed that you still have room on your dance card?”

“I always have room left on my dance card.”

You tried to step around George and escape his company, but his impossible height made it so easy for him to evade your attempts.

“Is that by choice or because you’re just so pleasant to spend time with?” he inquired with a smirk.

“Suppose a bit of both. Now, if you would be so kind, I’m quite parched and would love another glass of champagne.”

“Perfect, I shall accompany you.”

George Weasley, you surmised very early on, was nothing but a flirt. You wouldn’t go so far as to call him a rake, because as far as you knew he was an honorable man, but he was also most intolerable with his boyish charm, sense of humor, beautiful eyes…

Yes, you were quite sure that he was entirely intolerable.

“Have you told your mother you have no interest in procuring a husband, yet?” he mused, breaking you out of your trance as he carefully handed you a glass of champagne.

“Don’t call it procuring as if it’s a transaction. And no, I haven’t. Do you think I’d be standing here alive if I had?”

“Good point,” George hummed as his eyes surveyed the room, no doubt searching for the next woman so unlucky enough to be graced with his presence.

“How is your family?” you asked as you sipped on your flute of bubbling liquid.

“They’re doing well, thank you for asking. Work has been a bit hard on Dad but – ”

Before George could finish, a man approached you and bowed; taking the hand not holding the champagne flute and pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

“Miss Y/L/N, would you like to join me for a dance?”

You noticed George looking on angrily at the sight before him, probably because his ego couldn’t take the interruption.

“I’m flattered, Lord Rainier? I believe?” When you received no objections, you continued. “As I was saying, I’m flattered by your offer but I simply must decline. I am feeling a bit ill and all that spinning might make me sick.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Miss Y/L/N. Perhaps another time?”

You gave him a small, soft smile and let out a sigh of relief when he walked away. Turning back to George, you urged him to continue. While you held him in contempt, or so you told yourself, you did enjoy his family as they were all simply lovely.

“You were saying, George?”

“Right, work has been a bit hard on Dad, after his accident a few months ago. He’s been doing better but Charlie had to take a break from his travels to come home and help out since he’s the eldest. Fred and Angelina are expecting again, if you haven’t heard. They’re hoping for a girl this time.”

“Maybe if you were more like your brother you’d be married and having children by now,” you teased.

He gasped and clutched his hand over his heart, drawing the attention of anyone near.

“You wound me, Y/N.”

Much to your dismay, you laughed at his actions, devastated that you gave him the satisfaction of knowing he was entertaining you. However, the moment was short lived as another man interrupted your conversation.

“Miss Y/N, I must say you are looking exquisite this evening. It would be a shame for your dress not to take a twirl on the dance floor. Might I accompany you?”

You tried not to groan when you noticed a line forming behind the man currently asking for a dance.

“Actually, Lord Beverly, I’m feeling a bit warm. I was just about to go outside for some fresh air.”

“I shall accompany you, then.”

“Without a chaperone? Goodness, no, please find another young lady to dance with. There are certainly many that would be delighted at the chance.”

You looked around Lord Beverly to see at least four other men waiting for their chance to ask you for a dance, and the thought of making up more excuses made your head spin. You graciously bid Lord Beverly a good evening, and turned on your heel towards the nearest exit.

In your haste, you did not notice George following you into the gardens.

“Well, you sure like to let them down easy,” he joked.

“George!” you cried. “We can’t be seen alone, are you daft? Trying to ruin me and my family?”

“Calm yourself, my Mother is just right there.”

You looked a bit to George’s left and saw his wonderful mother keeping a careful eye on the two of you, graciously leaving the attention of her husband to ensure that none would suspect foolery between you and George.

“As I was saying, it’s awfully obvious that you do not want any man to court you. Your mother will realize well and soon enough of your…aversion to marriage.”

“The only reason you know that is because you eavesdropped on a conversation I had with Eloise. But yes, I have no desire to marry, and I’m quite certain I never will. I’ll have to fight off suitors and think of a million excuses until I’m considered a spinster and men no longer want me.”

Silence enveloped you both as a tear slid down your cheek. You hastily wiped it away, hoping that George hadn’t seen, but of course, you were not so lucky.

“Is the idea of marriage really that upsetting to you, Y/N?”

“All those men, all they want is a woman to wear on their arm and to give them children. That’s what a woman’s life is in marriage. A husband doesn’t care about his wife’s passions, desires, intellect, among other things, and I can’t bring myself to entertain the idea of a life that has no room for my happiness.”

George was quiet; pondering your response and your feelings, when he was suddenly struck with the most brilliant of ideas.

You see, Mr. George Weasley was in love with Miss Y/N Y/L/N, has been for several years in fact. He couldn’t tell you exactly when or why, but he knew that the fluttering in his chest and the way his whole world became brighter when she entered a room meant that Y/N was more than just someone to engage in friendly banter with.

“I’ve thought of an idea,” George muttered, piquing your interest.

“Whatever might it be, Mr. Weasley?”

“Your…situation, can only go away if men were to believe you were taken, correct?”

“Yes, I suppose, only I can’t fool them into thinking that. It would become quite suspicious when I’m seen alone everywhere. And, there’s no way I could ever fool my parents.”

“Except you wouldn’t be alone, you’d have me!”

“I don’t believe I’m following your idea, George.”

“Marry me.”

You choked and sputtered on your own spit, unable to take a breath through your coughs and gasps. George’s hands flew to your shoulders to steady you, helping you to breathe easier and calm yourself down.

“George, you must be joking,” you said quietly.

“I am as deadly serious as I could ever be. Not a real marriage, of course. Real in every sense of the word in terms of legality, but not real as in, well, us together. I’ll spend this social season courting you, and at the end of the season I’ll propose. We’ll get married in a few months’ time, and then we can travel the world, doing whatever our hearts desire.”

“Why on earth would you want to marry me?”

“It’s quite simple. You need to get the eligible bachelors of the ton to leave you alone and you never want to marry because your husband would restrict your freedoms. I, as your husband, wouldn’t dare. You’re not entirely awful, I suppose there are far worse people to spend my life with, even if you utterly despise me, and marriage, real marriage, isn’t something I want either.”

You looked at him quizzically, searching for signs that he’d had far too much champagne or had gone completely mad in the head, but he looked right as rain, and your mind was spinning.

“I find it hard to believe you do not want to marry, after all the times you’ve said you cannot wait to marry the woman you love.”

“Honestly, the woman I love is….unattainable, I’ll put it that way. I won’t ever love anyone but her. I’m also waiting for an answer, it’s not every day you have to have a discussion after a proposal.”

“You’re sure this will work, Mr. Weasley?”

“How hard can it be to pretend to be in love with a woman as beautiful as you?”

“I always knew you were a flirt, but God, do you lay it on thick.”

George looked at you expectantly, almost a glimmer of hope is his eye, but as quickly as you thought you’d noticed it, he looked away.

“My answer is yes, George. Let’s fool the ton, our families, court, get married, and then travel the world platonically.”

“That sounds like the perfect arrangement, darling.”

@theweasleyslut @vivacesole @weasleyclaw @nuttytani-reblogs @theweasleysredhair @hufflepuffbaby9 @theboywhocriedlupin @swellwriting @fortisfiliae @thoseofgreatambition @woakiees @wildfire-whizbangs @gcdric

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[lemonandtheart]

@gxmonth Day 18 - This Wasn't In The Rule Book!! vampire au vampire aU VAMPIRE AU~~!! I have always been such a sucker for monsters and magic lol. I wrote a little fanfic drabble a hot minute ago that I'll include under the cut!

There were rumors running rampant all through Domino. Breathless whispers through the crowds of its residents. They spread fear like the plague, but who could blame them? With all of the people who’d gone missing never to be seen again it was only natural such a fear would grow until it had reached an unprecedented proportion. Whether it was truth or not didn’t matter because to the people of Domino there was no doubt. A vampire was on the loose through the city streets after nightfall.

Despite the lack of evidence, Jesse Andersen hoped the rumors true. He’d come a long way to hunt down this supposed dirty bloodsucker. His friend, Jim, had offered to come along on the journey too but Jesse had declined. They didn’t truly know if there was a vampire in Domino City. He’d certainly find out after dark. Since the people of Domino had been keeping holed up inside at night the past few months, he was sure the parasite had to be starved by now.

A chill settled in the night air once the sun fully disappeared over the horizon. Jesse pulled his thick, black jacket tighter to his chest. It would be a long night. He was glad he’s had the foresight of buying himself a hot coffee before the shops closed. It warmed him from the inside out as he perused the streets. Hopefully one of two things would occur: either there was no vampire and he’d be on his merry way after a quick report back to the Vampire Hunter’s Association or there was a parasitic lowlife lurking among the shadows that he would eliminate well before the sun would rise again. Either way Jesse felt that he’d be headed home within the next few days.

He paused underneath of a spotlight near a fountain. It wasn’t running and with the high-rise buildings surrounding he felt even the nearly silent sound of his pulse was amplified. It was quiet—eerily so. Not a thing in the whole city seemed to make any noise and the stillness of it was deafening. A soft, distant tapping of heels against pavement was a deliberate break in the silence. Jesse set his hand on the small stake launcher secured to his belt. The sound echoed and made it seem to come from everywhere at once. He slowly backed up to the fountain, craning his neck around to try and find the direction of the noise. Any direction would do. What he wasn’t expecting was the freezing hands on his shoulders matched with a silken, sultry voice from directly behind him. “Well, what’s a pretty thing like you doing here?”

Jesse jolted from the grasp and yanked the weapon from its holster, aiming it squarely at the chest of the man, no, monster he was looking for. He had messy, untamable, two-toned brown hair and a set of gleaming golden eyes staring hungrily at him. He wore a low-cut V-neck shirt that nearly slit down to his stomach, the two sides of the fabric held together by thin string tied crossways. The sleeves, he noticed, were ruffled when he moved his hands up to the sides of his head — palms facing forward in a show of submission. His pants buttoned and sat snugly on his thin hips before disappearing beneath his high-heeled boots at the knee. The heels dug into the stone of the fountain he stood upon; the streetlights the ideal backdrop for his cape he wore over the ensemble. It fastened just above his clavicle with a jeweled button. Jesse sneered in disgust at the creature, but more so at the choice of apparel. It was far too extra, making him look more like a movie villain than a bloodthirsty creature of night. “Hasn’t anyone warned you it’s dangerous to be out so late at night?” The vampire questioned.

“I could ask the same to you, vampire.” Jesse responded, gesturing to the launcher aimed still at his chest. The vampire chuckled.

“Perhaps, but I own these streets. The name’s Jaden by the way. Jaden Yuki. To whom do I owe the pleasure of meeting this lovely evening?”

“Jesse Andersen. Sorry to say, but these streets were never yours.” Jaden kept his hands raised but stepped down from his position atop the fountain’s rim. Jesse began backing up, his eyes and shot never leaving the vampire as he strutted towards him.

“Is that so?” He drawled, continuing his slow approach. Jesse’s fingers twitched on the trigger, the small movement pushing Jaden to respond. He kicked high, knocking the weapon out of Jesse’s hands and into the sky. It came crashing back to the Earth and hit the rock of the fountain with a horrendous crack, bouncing into the water in a jagged movement. Jesse’s eyes widened at the horror of being disarmed. He hadn’t expected to find an adversary of any remarkable skill on the streets of Domino. Now, only panic and fear pooled in his stomach as he kept his eyes locked on Jaden’s. “Care to tell me what brings you here, Jesse?”

“You.”

“Me?” Jaden asked, cocking his head to the side in an innocent way.

“Obviously! You’re the one who’s been kidnapping people for the past few months!” Jesse’s words only seemed to confuse Jaden more. He furrowed his brow hard.

“Wait, wait. Hold on a minute. First of all, I haven’t kidnapped anyone ever! I haven’t even been out from the lair in a year or so! I’ve been—”

“I thought you owned these streets?” Jesse sassed.

“Well, ehe, I thought it’d sound cool. Didn’t it?” Jaden admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“That doesn’t matter!” Jesse exclaimed, shaking Jaden’s shoulders. Jaden pouted.

“Fine, fine. Anyways, I’m not the one you’re after.”

“Great! Now I’m stuck in the heart of Domino with two vampires wandering the streets with no weapon.” He whined, coming to sit at the fountain. Jaden shrugged casually.

“There are plenty more vampires than that here, but okay.” An idea struck Jesse, fast and hard and stupid. So stupid, in fact, it just might work.

“You!” He exclaimed suddenly, rushing Jaden and squeezing his shoulders roughly. Jaden blinked slowly at him.

“Me?”

“Yes! You’ve got to know all the vampires around here!”

“So?”

“So, you must know the one responsible! You can help me!” Jaden’s eyes narrowed, intrigue taking over.

“Oh? And what’s in it for me?” He purred. Jesse gulped but didn’t let the fear register. He knew it’d make his job so much easier to play the enemy. If he could get Jaden to work with him, he could eliminate not only the immediate threat but Jaden as well. Killing two vampires with one stake. All he had to do was play his cards right.

“Would…some of my blood be fine enough payment?” He asked, playing as though he was embarrassed by such an idea. He’d noticed many vampires he’d dealt with in the past responded well if he pretended like he was new, nervous, and never before bitten. It was like the idea of being the first to drink from a human was a special treat that was rarely given. He’d been bitten plenty by vampires and honestly it wasn’t that bad. It only would become a problem should he take his lifeblood—the true way to turn a human into a vampire. Jaden pursed his lips as Jesse lowered the collar of his jacket, offering payment upfront for his cooperation. He closed in on Jesse, gripping his biceps and wetly licking a stripe up Jesse’s neck to his ear. Jesse hated the way his body shuddered at the feeling, both of the lick and Jaden’s hot breath now in his ear. Though, he was also grateful for it. It helped to sell the unspoken act of it being his first time. He bit his own lip, mentally preparing himself for Jaden’s fangs. It was always the initial jab that was the worst part. A short, single noise of amusement left Jaden’s mouth before his answer rang numbly in his ear.

“No.” Jesse felt his eyes widen when Jaden pulled back to look Jesse in the face, a casual smirk present on his lips. He had never once in all of his time dealing with vampires ever had one turn down a willing, easy meal. It was astounding and almost admirable. Jaden was on an entirely new level of vampire he’d never seen before. He could feel his cheeks flush with real embarrassment of being turned down so casually. What, was his blood not good enough? “I came up for a reason tonight, Jesse. Would you like to know it?” Words failed, so he simply nodded. Jaden closed the short distance between them and slotted his chin in the juncture of Jesse’s neck, lips less than an inch away from Jesse’s ear. He whispered like he was revealing a grand secret. “You see, I’ve very recently come of age. It’s time to build a court of my own, but to do that I have to prove myself. Know how?” His answer was a shake of the head. He could feel Jaden’s smirk grow. “I have to turn a human into a vampire in front of everyone I know. A little ceremony if you will. I was hoping to find myself a willing participant to join my court. My first member. That’s all I could ever ask for.”

The color that’d been building in Jesse’s face drained. He was terrified in the, albeit gentle, grip of a vampire that wanted to turn him. It was a good thing in a way. At least Jaden didn’t have any desire to kill him, and that made him feel a bit better. Still, with all the vampires Jesse’d seen he’d never truly spoken to one longer than necessary. In one short description from Jaden, he felt like he’d learned more of the societal structure of vampires than he had in his relatively short career. Jaden pulled away from him, making eye contact with Jesse. He could feel the icy cold of Jaden’s fingers on the skin of his face. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Jesse shook his head, hoping to tune back in. “What?” He asked. Jaden shook his head softly, tsking.

“I said that if you wanted to, we could have a little fun. Make a game of it. Only if you’re a willing participant of course. I’d hate to coerce you into a life you’re uncomfortable with.”

“A game of what?”

“Rewards! If you win, I’ll help you track the vampire behind the disappearances and as an added bonus I’ll leave Domino. But if I win, you’ll stay and become my first court member. We can still track the vampire down, that’s a given. Either way you’ll still benefit in one fashion or another.”

“And what game will we be playing?”

“How’s hide and go seek? I know it’s a bit unfair since I know the city better than you, so we can keep tally at the fountain. Say, five minutes to hide and ten to seek? We’ll play ‘till dawn, so twelve rounds. No rooftops, no going into buildings, no turning into bats. Sound fair?” Jaden extended his hand to Jesse. His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t believe he was even considering it, but it was true. Jaden was the best bet of actually locating the vampire he was looking for, and even if he lost Jaden didn’t seem like that bad of a guy. He was inclined to take Jaden’s hand, so he did. A searing pain ran up his arm and radiated through his body. “The oath is bound. I’ll seek first.” He turned his back to Jesse, covering his eyes with his hands. “One…Two…Three…”

Jesse ran as fast as his legs could carry him. The people of Domino were depending on him to end their blight. He had to win. He felt a sort of obligation to rid the world of these vermin. Yet, there was something about Jaden Yuki that’d drawn him in way too far for a first encounter. His initial presence had felt intimidating, domineering, and had in an instant become soft and genuine. It felt so wrong to see any good in one of those filthy creatures of the night, but Jesse couldn’t help it. He could sense the overwhelming good nature of Jaden and it made him feel inclined to believe that this would be a fair game.

That was five minutes. Jesse tucked himself tight into an alleyway. He slowed his breathing, trying hard not to give himself away. The click of Jaden’s heels against the concrete filled every crevasse and made it impossible to know how close or far Jaden really was. The gentle glow of the moon and the harsh lights of the city around were the only means Jesse had of sight. He wished desperately for the warmth of the sun. This alley felt like static on his skin. The clicking finally stopped. He held his breath, shifting slightly back behind the boxes he was obscured by. “Found you!” Jaden smirked. He’d moved so fast he’d nearly materialized out of thin air. “Alright! One to nothin’! Better catch-up Jess, unless you secretly do want to be a vampire!” He stuck out his tongue past his sharp teeth before taking off down the alley. Jesse couldn’t help the smile that overtook his face. This was actually kind of fun. Jaden, as dangerous as he had the potential to be, actually was making this unfortunate situation fun.

He found Jaden easily, far too easily. He’d been out in the open, almost waiting for him. With each passing round Jaden found him with unfathomable ease and Jesse him with increasing difficulty. It all came down to the final round – Jaden’s six to Jesse’s five. It was Jesse’s turn to seek. “Good luck, Jess. I can’t wait to see how good you’ll look on the ceremonial altar for me!” He winked suggestively and, in a flash, he was gone. Jesse closed his eyes and willed the color from his face. He was a grown ass man. He could deal with comments like that! He could! He began his count.

There was breeze now that brushed and caressed his skin with an all-new chill. It made him feel uncertain. Could he really find Jaden? He had been getting harder and harder to find. If he failed to find him, he’d still finish the job he’d come to the city to do. The only difference was that he wouldn’t be leaving. His heart fluttered in his chest. It was making him feel fuzzy to think about. He didn’t hate the idea; he hadn’t hated the idea from the start actually. If he had, he wouldn’t’ve agreed to play. Hell, he didn’t even hate vampires down to his core like most of his friends did. He’d mostly joined to thanks to Jim’s glowing reference and the promise of traveling about. You had to dehumanize vampires to bring yourself to kill them. He’d gotten good at it and he loved to be good at something. He didn’t think now though that even if a good opportunity showed itself that he could go through killing Jaden. He’d done an excellent job at humanizing himself from the start to Jesse.

His counted ended and the final chase began. He only had until the sun rose now. Domino was huge and for once that evening, he actually felt defeated. Still, he pressed onwards and kept his search going. Every alley, every street, behind every garbage can and every car. It was like Jaden had disappeared entirely until finally he reached the first place he’d hidden. “Jaden! I know you’re there!” Jesse bluffed. He heard a chuckle come from behind him and flipped around. Jaden was so close, leaning in towards him.

“So close and yet so far.” Jaden said, gesturing over his shoulder. The sun had already begun to slink over the horizon. He felt Jaden’s thin but strong arms wrap around him and a swirling vortex of black consumed them.

[nanoland]

Title: Besyd the scarcety of bread amowngst us

Fandom: Supernatural 

Pairing: Crowley/Dean Winchester

Summary: In which Dean asks a question.

Warnings: Crowley being Extremely traumatized and kind of oblivious to that fact + SPN demons being SPN demons (i.e. remorseless bodysnatchers) + Dean being his casually misogynistic self + graphic descriptions of starvation + exhibitionism (sorta?) + sexually explicit content because this was MEANT to be straightforward smut and then Crowley happened, the prick.

Also on AO3!

0  

“So how come you aren’t a hot chick?”

The glass stills an inch from Crowley’s pale lips. “I humbly beg your pardon?”

It’s late. The bar’s quiet. He doesn’t need Dean to repeat himself. Just a moment to decide on a response.

Well on the way to utterly shit-faced, Dean gestures vaguely, meaninglessly. “You offer people stuff. Then, ten years later, you drag ‘em to Hell. And – and they know that’s what’s gonna happen if they make a deal with you. Which means that you gotta be real fuckin’ persuasive. Which you are. Grade A Bullshit Artist and don’t I know it. But... uh, what was I gonna… yeah, wouldn’t it be easier, right, just way easier if you were a hot chick?”

Crowley can tell he’s not done, so he keeps his silver tongue behind his faintly yellowed teeth for the moment.

While Dean is usually delightful company, in his surly, macho way, this evening there’s an uncommonly obnoxious edge to everything he says. That almost certainly means his insecurities over what he’s been letting Crowley do to his arse lately are acting up.

Understandable. Still annoying.

So Crowley’s more than willing to let his favourite human dig himself a wee bit deeper before pouring boiling tar into the pit.

After quickly throwing back the last of his drink, Dean goes on: “Now, I didn’t go to some dickslurp business school. I ain’t that brand of asshole. But I’ve seen enough beer ads in my time to have an idea of how marketing works. You got something you want people to buy? Fastest way is to get a hot chick in a bikini to hold it up. Because guys have most of the money in this shitty world of ours and guys think with their dicks. I know I do. So why did you decide to possess someone who looks like a balding, middle-aged banker going through a stressful divorce? That ain’t enticing. That ain’t capturing anyone’s interest. Y’know?”

“Mm,” says Crowley, and stands up.

“Fuck’re you doing?” Dean slurs, watching him take off his tie.

“Ever heard of the Seven Ill Years, Squirrel?”

“Nope. Seriously, what’re you doing?”

Draping his overcoat over the back of his chair along with his tie, Crowley sets about taking off his jacket. “‘The Seven Ill Years’ refers to a particularly shitty time in early modern Scotland; the 1690s.”

He tugs off his costly leather shoes and places them side-by-side under his chair. “I was in my… early thirties at the time, I think. Thirty-two? Maybe thirty-one. Whatever.”

Dean is gaping now. He’s never seen Crowley without his outer layers, much less the growing slice of exposed chest as Crowley unbuttons his shirt.

“For a lot of complicated reasons relating to oceanic thermohaline circulation, solar activity, and a few ill-timed volcanos, the weather turned rotten. These days, it’s called the Little Ice Age. Us pigshit stupid peasants who lived through it didn’t know anything about all that. All we knew was that it was freezing bloody cold and the crops kept dying.”

“Dude,” Dean hisses, red-faced as Crowley sets his shirt alongside his jacket and overcoat. “Stop it! We’re going to be thrown out!”

“No. Look around. Is anyone paying attention to us? Precisely. We’re invisible to them at the moment, Squirrel. One of my little tricks.”

“Oh. Okay, that’s good. But that’s still not an excuse to take your fucking pants off in public oh my God oh my God!”

They’re expensive pants and Crowley takes care to fold them before putting them down. “To cut a long story short; famine struck. And famine, it’s…”

Crowley pauses, thinking, ignoring Dean’s pathetic attempts not to gawk at his dick.

“It’s hard to describe famine to someone who hasn’t lived through one,” he says eventually. “Language – English, at least – isn’t equipped to convey what it feels like to be so hungry you’ll try to boil and eat someone else’s shoes. Then someone else’s children. Then your own children. There are no words for it. Or, if in some distant corner of our monstrous universe there are, then they’re words that would drive a human raving mad to speak them.”

Naked now but for his black socks, Crowley scratches his stubble. “Sometimes I think that’s why I got on so well in Hell.”

He sits back in his chair. Folds his legs. Taps his fingers on the side of his empty glass. “Don’t get me wrong; having someone cut open your lungs, fill them with scorpions, and sew them up again isn’t fun. But – how can I put this? – you can process it. You can grapple with it. You know why you’re suffering; because you’re in Hell, and that’s what Hell is for. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is going about your everyday life and watching all the people around you – the baker, the priest, the prettiest girl in the village – go about theirs while they turn into walking skeletons. And knowing they didn’t do anything to deserve it. Couldn’t have done anything to deserve it, because no crime, no matter how vile, warrants that kind of punishment.”

Dean says nothing.

After a moment, Crowley pulls himself from the dark, sucking well of memory to add, “Anyway, to answer your question; I don’t want to be a hot chick because a. I’m a man and b. hot chicks are skinny, and I will cheerfully burn this world to the ground before I endure living in a hungry body ever again.”

He glances down at his unclothed meat suit and smiles proudly, running a hand up one of its thick thighs. “Also – y’know – I personally think this long-deceased lad of mine is sexy as Hell.”

Gazing at his shoulder, Dean says roughly, “Didn’t know you had tattoos.”

“Oh. Those. Yeah. Can’t stand them. Worst decision the stupid bastard ever made.”

“I think they’re kinda cool.”

“Do you? Well, you do have incredibly bad taste so perhaps that’s not surprising. Now, are you going to get over here and put that erection to good use?”

Oh, bless him; he’s adorable when he squirms.

“Here?” Dean asks, eyes wide.

“Here.”

He says it like a challenge, for Dean can never resist one of those. Immediately, those wide eyes become narrow and determined.

The boy stands. Looms over Crowley, who casually flicks both their glasses to the floor and moves to sit on the cool wooden table. It’s clean, more or less, thanks to Dean (for once) agreeing to follow Crowley to a semi-respectable establishment.

“These hands,” Crowley murmurs, running them across Dean’s broad chest, “don’t have a single callous or scar. See? Soft as butter. Not a single day’s honest work, either of them.”

Dean swallows. Leans in to kiss him, hesitant and gentle.

Contrary to popular belief, Crowley likes gentle. Or, more accurately, Crowley likes being pampered.

He goes on: “And these legs…”

A groan escapes Dean’s lips as one presses up against his crotch.

“…these legs haven’t walked more than ten miles, collectively, since I moved in. No muscles. No blisters on the undersides of their feet. Not so much as a splinter.”

“Jesus,” Dean mumbles, drawing him in and latching onto his neck.

“And this stomach is never empty. Never even close. Never once forced to digest anything that isn’t purely, perfectly delicious. I treat my meat suits better than most people treat their family heirlooms.”

“Crowley. Fuck.”

He squeezes Dean’s arse and growls, “Because this is my reward, Dean. I won this. This softness, this safety. This nurtured, nourished flesh. I endured the seventeenth century and all humanity’s horrors. Endured my mother. Endured Hell. Built myself a reputation and a kingdom. All for this. And isn’t it wonderful? Say that it is, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean moans, even though he can’t understand a word; Crowley slipped into Gaelic a while ago.

(The things Crowley wants to tell Dean and the things Crowley wants Dean to know are categories that rarely overlap.)

Crowley takes Dean’s leaking cock in hand.

“Say I’m beautiful.”

Dean’s knees buckle as he whimpers, so Crowley wraps an arm around his narrow, underfed waist.

“Say you love me.”

Dean comes in his palm, gasping and cursing.

“Say you love me more than anyone else.”

“I’m guessing that was all Scottish dirty talk?” says Dean when he has his breath back. “You were – what? Calling me your bitch?”

Crowley smirks, licks the sweat off Dean’s jaw, and gives his backside a pat before reaching for his clothes. “None of your business. Go get me another drink, would you? Ta.”

 the end

NOTES: The title is taken from a quote found in Karen Cullen’s ‘Famine in Scotland: the ‘Ill Years’ of the 1690s’ (you can find extracts via googlebooks). Yes, canonically Crowley WOULD have been about thirty when this happened. Just in case his origin story wasn’t horrific enough wheee :D

[orangeoctopi7]

Who’s a Threat Now?

: Chapter 1 : Chapter 2 : Chapter 3 : Chapter 4 : Chapter 5 : Chapter 6 : 

In this chapter we finally get to the scene I first envisioned when I decided to write this fic. It was loosely inspired by this post by @a-tale-of-two-stans Obviously my idea ended up being quite different, but I still slipped in some of the dialogue. 

Morning came cold and cloudy. The storm last night had left a fine layer of ice over everything, which in turn was hidden under another layer of snow. Dangerous driving conditions, which Stan would normally take as an excuse to stay home all day. Not today though. No, today they had a very important mission. Thankfully, they only had to drive as far as the high school, and the poor road conditions meant they would probably be the only ones there, leaving very little chance of being caught.

“Why did you have to buy such a conspicuous car?” Ford complained as Stan parked the Stanleymobile as best he could behind one of the school’s dumpsters.

“Hey! This baby’s a classic, and easily the best purchase I’ve ever made!” Stan defended. “She’s gotten me through some of the roughest patches of my life!” Although, Stan would be lying if he said he’d never thought the same thing to himself. There had definitely been some points in his life where driving a car that blended into the traffic more easily would have saved him some trouble. “And besides, we’re just breaking into the school on a Saturday. Even if there were people out in this weather to see us, who would even care?”

“I just don’t want to attract any undue attention.” Ford grumbled. 

They made it to the autoshop’s door with minimal slipping and sliding. Stan picked the lock with ease, and they began searching for another small soldering iron. 

“If we can’t find another iron of the same size, I may have to just make one myself.” Ford mused as he perused another box. They were all too big. “On the positive side, I’d be able to make one the perfect size for the microcircuitry, but on the negative side, it would add yet another day to our stay here.”

“Well, let’s hope we can find a little one here then.” Stan said, pulling out a drawer and dumping its contents onto a workbench. “The sooner the better, right?”

Ford hummed in agreement. Their search was much more thorough that the one they’d conducted during the school day earlier in the week. They had no fear of discovery while the school was empty. Still, they searched two whole supply closets, and couldn’t find a similarly sized soldering iron.

Their hunt for the tool paused when they heard a car’s engine zoom right past the shop’s door.

“It’s, uh, probably just some kids spinning cookies in the snow.” Stan reasoned nervously.

“Probably…” Ford agreed, although his posture was still tense.

“I’ll just go check, to be sure.” Stan offered, edging towards the shop door. “While you keep looking.”

“Alright. Just don’t get caught. We’re in enough trouble with dad right now as it is.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’.” Stan rolled his eyes as he slipped out the door.

Searching the final supply closet took longer with just one person, and still no luck! Ford carefully surveyed the room, trying to think where the teacher would hide the nicer tools so rowdy highschools students wouldn’t break them. His eyes landed on the bottom drawer of the teacher’s desk. Bingo! It had a small lock built into it. The scientist had done his fair share of lock picking during his interdimensional travels, and while he still wasn’t as practiced as Stan, something like this was hardly a challenge. 

His breaking and entering was rewarded with the soldering iron he’d been searching for! It was even smaller than the one Stan had accidentally snapped, although it was still larger than Ford would have preferred. Still, it would get the job done. 

* * *

Despite the thick clouds still hanging in the sky, Stan had to squint against the rising sun’s light as it reflected off every flake of snow on the ground. The parking lot looked empty. In fact, it looked just like he’d left it just fifteen minutes ago. 

Wait, no. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a fresh set of tire tracks in addition to his own. The parking lot had been an unmarked blanket when they’d first arrived, so someone was definitely there. What’s more, the tracks went straight around the back to the teacher’s parking area; no cookies or fishtails or any other skids that Stan would expect from a student looking to have some fun in the snow. So whoever was here was probably a teacher. 

The old man in a teen’s body sighed. Just his luck. He didn’t remember any of their teachers being this dedicated. 

He followed the tracks, hoping to figure out who they belonged to. Depending on the teacher, Stan might be able to talk his way out of this. As he peeked around the corner, he was surprised to see a car he recognized, but not one that belonged to any of the teachers. He’d seen it just last night, at the boxing match.

Crampelter’s car. Well, Stan was pretty sure it was his parents’ car, the guy didn’t have the patience to save up for his own car, but that's besides the point. This was the car Crampelter would drive around in. The goon had probably seen the Stanleymobile parked behind the dumpster and decided to come harass the twins. Stan turned on his heel and ran back towards the auto shop to warn Ford, but he didn’t make it very far before he slipped on the ice. 

Luckily, Stan recovered from having the wind knocked out of him much more quickly than he was expecting. Unluckily, before he could pick himself up, a foot stepped heavily onto his upper back. Several sharp points dug into his winter coat.

“Just the guy I was lookin’ for!” Crampelter sneered.

“Hello to you too.” Stan mumbled into the snow. 

Two more figures stepped into Stan’s limited field of vision. Oh great, Crampelter’s lackeys. And they all had plastic ice cleats strapped to their snow boots. He quickly pulled his hands in close, to prevent the jerks from stepping on them. 

“It’s about time I reminded you of your place, Stan the lesser!” The bully snarled. “You really thought you could get away with breakin’ my nose?”

Stan did note with some satisfaction that although he couldn’t see the bully’s face from where he was lying in the snow, Crampelter’s voice was much more nasally than usual. 

“‘S part of the gig, kid.” Stan shrugged. “Y’know what they say. If ya can’t take the heat, get outta the kitchen.”

“I’m two years older than you!” Crampelter shouted indignantly. 

“Oh, right.”

“See, this is exactly what I’m talkin’ about!” the bully whined. “I’m tired of you not takin’ me seriously anymore! I’m gonna make sure you never forget that I’m a threat!”

“Yyyyeah, you’re really not.” Stan rolled his eyes.

Crampelter growled with rage and shifted his weight forward, digging his ice cleats further into Stan’s back before releasing his foot. Stan sprung up to strike the bully, but the lackeys each grabbed an arm before he could land a blow.

“What, afraid you can’t take me one on one?” Stan taunted.

“This isn’t about proving who’s the better fighter.” Crampelter chortled. “It’s about teaching you your place.”

“Uh huh. Sure.” Stan had plenty of experience fighting three on one, heck, even more than that, and most of the time those people had guns or at least knives. He dropped to his knees, knocking the two lackey’s heads against each other in the process. Once free of their grasp, he sprang back to his feet with an uppercut to Crampelter’s jaw. He felt a tug on the back of his coat; the lackeys had recovered faster than he’d expected. Stan simply shrugged the coat off and swung his arm backwards, catching one goon with a hard backhand. The other one tried to grab Stan’s arm again, but he wound up and punched that guy with the other arm. 

With all three of the bullies reeling, Stan made a run for it. Over the years the main thing he’d learned about what to do when people ganged up on you was to get out of there as soon as possible. 

“Coward!” Crampelter shouted after him.

Stan flipped him the bird over his shoulder. “Better a coward than a guy with a broken nose!”

Unfortunately, luck was rarely on Stan’s side, and today was no exception. Before he even ran three feet, he slipped on the ice again, and this time he hit his head on impact. When his vision cleared, three ice cleats were digging into his back. Stan struck out with his arm, trying to knock over whoever’s leg he could reach, but they had too much traction to be knocked over from this angle. 

The lackeys didn’t bother letting him up and holding him by his arms this time. The three of them just stomped down on him with their ice cleats, kicking snow in his eyes whenever he tried to squirm away. While it wasn’t the worst beating Stan had ever received in his life, it still felt like being on the wrong end of a meat tenderizer. Without his coat, the ice cleats tore through his shirt and into his skin, leaving stinging scrapes across his back and arms.

Eventually the three bullies were satisfied that Stan was too dazed to fight back, and Campelter hoisted him up by his shirt collar.

“Whaddaya think, should we cram him in the freak’s locker to find on Monday?” One of the lackeys asked with a snicker.

“Nah, he’s too big to fit anymore.” Crampleter scrunched up his face like he was thinking hard. “Oh! I know!” He turned back towards his car.

The other lackey sneered and popped open the trunk. 

Stan’s heart leapt into his throat. Not again! He tried to break out of Crampelter’s grasp with renewed vigor, but the lackeys each clamped down on his arms. The three bullies roughly escorted him to the open trunk and shoved him in. The panic began to overtake him as they began to shut the door, and he wildly flailed about, trying to wedge it open with his legs. Crampelter kicked him in the calf, and his legs reflexively curled in pain, allowing them to shut him in. 

Stan could do nothing but bang his fists and feet against the roof of the trunk as his breaths came in shorter and shorter gasps, until it felt like he couldn’t think or breath at all.

* * *

Ford waited a couple of minutes for Stanley to come back after finding the correct tool. Their search wouldn’t exactly be a success if the soldering iron was confiscated by a teacher immediately after he found it. The fact that Stan hadn’t come back immediately suggested that there was indeed a teacher out there. Stan was probably hiding to escape notice. 

After a solid ten minutes of waiting, Ford began to worry. Surely Stan would have been able to sneak past any teacher by now. Unless he’d been caught? Perhaps he was causing a distraction so that Ford could get away? 

The young scientist carefully cracked the door open and peered out into the parking lot. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the bright winter sunlight, but it was clear that his brother wasn’t just waiting out there with a snowball. At least there weren’t any teachers out there either. Ford made sure the soldering iron was zipped securely inside his bag, flipped off the lights, and stepped outside, making sure the lock clicked behind him. 

Now, to find Stan. His brother’s footprints followed a second set of tire tracks around to the back of the building. Ford cautiously followed them and peeked around the corner, his breath catching in his throat when he saw Crampelter and two lackeys sitting on the trunk of an old car. From where the young researcher was standing, he could just barely hear the occasional thump over the bullies’ mocking laughter. 

It was like the whole world ground to a halt. In that instant, the rest of the universe outside of this parking lot didn’t exist. All concerns about the timeline and returning to the future just melted away. The only thing that mattered was getting Stanley out of there and away from those neanderthals. 

“Let him go!” Ford commanded as he marched menacingly towards them. The three bullies looked up with a start.

“Should’ve known you’d be shadowin’ him, freak.” Crampelter sneered. “Hey, you’re pretty scrawny, I bet we could fit you in here too.”

“Just try it.” Ford said in a dangerously calm tone. “I’ve faced unimaginable horrors twenty-six times your size and didn’t even flinch. You are a child with the IQ of a peanut and I can beat you without even lifting a finger”

Crampelter chortled. “Yeah, I’m so sure! After nine years of boxing lessons you never learned to even throw a real punch, but today’s the day you’re gonna beat all three of us up!”

“Let me put this in simple terms you can understand.” Stanford said slowly. “You let my brother go, or I will break every one of your fingers.”

The lackeys exchanged a glance. Something about their old victim had changed. There was a new, cold glint in his stare and a confidence in his stance that was completely different from Stan’s usual casual bravado. Cramplelter, however, took no notice of these changes. He just rushed forward with a raging yell, winding up a huge haymaker. 

Ford watched the clearly telegraphed punch and ducked under it with ease. He crouched down and gently pushed up on Crampelter’s stomach with his shoulder, which combined with the bully’s forward momentum, sent the lunk flying over Ford’s back. He spun around and backed up a few steps, keeping all three aggressors in his sight. 

Crampletler picked himself up off the ground, spitting out snow and ice, his eyes blazing with fury. Someone smarter might have noticed that just charging in wildly hadn’t worked last time, so it probably wasn’t going to work again. However, Ford’s earlier assessment of his IQ wasn’t too far off. 

The bully bolted forward again, this time attempting an uppercut. Ford reached out and batted the jab aside, grabbing his attacker’s wrist in one hand, and his face with the other. Crampelter cried out in pain as Ford’s fingers clenched down on the bully’s already broken nose. Once again, Ford used his opponent’s weight against him, and sent Crampelter crashing into his lackeys. 

“D-don’t just stand there gawkin’, get him!” Crampelter demanded. 

The lackeys charged forward, slightly more cautious than their boss had been. They tried to surround Ford, but he was too fast for them, ducking around them or jumping back whenever one tried to get behind him. Eventually, one was brave enough to try a straight-arm punch. Ford grabbed onto his arm and swung him into the other guy, crashing them both to the ice. The lackeys, now thoroughly intimidated, decided that they’d had enough, and fled. 

Crampelter’s face contorted with rage. This time, he just outright tackled Ford. The young scientist thrust forward his forearm, catching the charging bully by the shoulder. Ford took Crampelter’s head in his hands, craning the bully’s neck down and to the side, throwing him off balance and toppling him to the ground. 

With the other two gone, this time Ford was free to position Crampelter into an arm-bar. He pulled the bully’s wrist back, and he was sorely tempted to follow through on that threat to break all his fingers. It would take too long, though, and he needed to get Stan out of that trunk now. So he had to settle for stomping down on his tormentor’s hand. 

When Ford threw open the trunk, it was obvious that Stan was in the throes of a panic attack. His eyes were wide open and staring blankly, his breaths came in short shallow gasps, he was sweating despite the cold winter air, and he was shivering uncontrollably. Well, the shivering might have been from more than just the panic attack. Ford spotted Stan’s discarded coat lying on the ground and scooped it up, shaking most of the snow off of it before gently wrapping it around Stanley’s shoulders. 

“It’s alright, you’re safe now.” He assured his brother softly, half lifting, half helping him out of the trunk. “Let’s get you back home where it’s warm.”

The two brothers staggered back to the Stanleymobile, leaving a completely dumbstruck Crampelter lying in the snow.

[theonethatyoudreamof]

Alright so I started this blog for fun, but also so I could start a series. I’ve been writing stories (loosely) based on @taylorswift songs for a bit and I figured, why not share them? As reputation is my favourite album, I’ll start with my story based off of Ready For It. Hope you enjoy!!

———————————————————————

Knew he was a killer the first time that I saw him. It wasn’t hard to deduce, not when he had pinned me up against a wall in the back of an alley, a polished knife digging into my neck. All I could see was the murder in his eyes. My brain had scrambled, desperately trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. I had been oh so careful, making sure to never leave a trace. I hadn’t taken my gloves off since my arrival in this forsaken city. I always made sure that the hair dye job was holding up, that my blonde roots were not showing through the mousy brown. I had not worn my size of shoes, ensuring that no one would be able to trace any footprints back to me. And now there was a knife digging into my skin, and hot breath against my cheek. What had I forgotten?

“What’s your name?”, the brute demands. I blink slowly. He was clearly poorly trained. Any good assassin, any Carrythian assassin knew to confirm your mark’s identity before cornering them. Killing was so much easier when there was no talking involved. At least, that’s what I had been told.

“Elle. What’s yours, baby?”, I ask, letting a sensuous smile curve my lips upward. I’ll use any distraction, anything to get me out of this situation.

“I am not an idiot. I know that’s not your name, just as you know exactly why I’m here.” He says roughly. The knife hasn’t shifted, hasn’t stopped digging in just hard enough to keep me still, but not hard enough to draw blood. He may be one of the king’s assassins, but it does seem as though he has a slight clue of what he’s doing. How unusual.

“If you know my name, why didn’t you just say so? And stop wasting my time with your bullshit posturing. According to you, we both know why we’re here after all, isn’t that right?” I wrack my brains, trying to figure out what makes him stand out, why I feel like I know him… “Joe?”

I see the name hit its target, right as I feel a faint line of fire burn across my neck. Blood pools beneath the knife, and a single droplet rolls down my neck. Joe is staring at my neck in surprise, as though he hadn’t planned on cutting my neck. When he starts to speak, he almost sounds a bit sorry. It doesn’t last long.

“I- Alright. Elle, or should I say Elizabeth,” he winks, gloating in the fact that he knows who I am, “The king isn’t too pleased that you took his jewels. All of them, in fact. He wants them back, or you dead. I think you know where I fit into this equation, seeing as you seem to have some idea of who I am. And what I do.”

Joe, this kingdom’s most deadly assassin, looks at me grimly.

“So I either return them, or die, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“But what if,” I say, “I don’t have them? What then?”

A rat rummages through the garbage behind Joe. Neither of us pay it any attention. His focus is centered solely on me. He looks at me quizzically, his brown eyes scanning my face, looking for any hint of deception, any sign that he was being tricked. I let no emotion show on my pale face.

“You’re lying,” He says, somewhat desperately. I shrug.

“That’s for you to decide. But you seem to have a lot riding on this? Is the ickle bickle king giving you a hard time? Making threats?” I ask.

His hand slackens, in either surprise or fear, but I don’t waste a second of it. In three quick moves, I am out of his grasp with him pinned to the wall in my place. As it should be.

I grin wickedly, relishing every second of it. Joe, or whatever his true name was, is notorious for being unstoppable, unbeatable. And yet here he is, completely at my mercy. I lean in.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I whisper into his ear, “You don’t tell the king you found me, and I don’t kill you right here. He needs you, right?”

Joe flinched slightly.

“Or does he?” I wonder aloud. “Well, either way, I don’t care. Just nod your head, agree to my terms, and we both end up happy, hmm?”

Joe swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the knife. He seems unable to meet my eyes, keeping them firmly trained on the dusty cobblestones beneath us instead. I lift his chin, waiting until he meets my stare. It takes a while, but finally his brown eyes meet my blue ones and all I can see is fear. I would stay to ponder the mystery of the king’s assassin, his strange mood swings that have him shifting between extremes, but I have a ship to catch.

“I asked if you agree, Joe. And I have better places to be, so if you could hurry this lovely little encounter up, that would be lovely.” I watch Joe, as these words hit him.

“It’s Richard, actually.” Is all he ends up saying.

“Proud of you. Didn’t ask. You already know my name’s Elizabeth, but you won’t be needing your name if you don’t make your mind up in the next three seconds,” I snap. Does this imbecile not know that people have places to be?

This finally seems to get through to Richard, and a fog lifts from his eyes.

“I’m coming.”

“Like hell you are.”

“No, I- I need to come. I can’t stay here, or he’ll kill me.” Richard mutters. I pull the knife back slightly. Twelve bells toll in the distance. Shit. I have to go. I look at Richard, at how his face has lost its deadly aggression and now holds only infinite sadness and a tinge of fear.

“Fine. Fine, you can come. Just hurry the hell up.” I snarl, turning and sheathing my knife. I take off at a dead sprint without seeing if Richard is following. If he truly was in that much danger, he would have no other choice.

Seconds later, I hear the sound of footsteps echoing behind me and I know that Richard is truly following me to the ship.

Soon enough, we arrive at the docks and I race to The Queen of the East, Richard right behind me. I bolt up the gangplank and whip around, pulling a knife out of its sheath in one smooth motion.

Richard’s hands fly up. Unfortunately for him, the knife struck him in the heart a second before he had the chance to grab any of the weapons that I’m sure are covering his body. His eyes go wide and he chokes, hands scrabbling at his throat uselessly. Richard’s body falls to the ground.

I walk over cautiously, just in case, but by the time I arrive at his side I see that my trepidation was useless. Richard is as dead as a doornail and half as useful too.

I squat down, thighs straining against my dark leathers, and start rolling the corpse towards the gang plank. With one mighty shove, Richard tumbles down, down onto the dock.

I nod to the captain, a dark haired pirate that I freed from prison years ago, and head down to the trove.

That night I fall asleep between piles and piles of gems. Everywhere I look there is treasure, a vast amount that I still can not seem to wrap my head around. Gold, silver, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, all forming hundreds of thousands of the kingdom’s priceless artefacts. My priceless artefacts. I let a soft smile slip onto my face, reveling in the luxury of it all. I may not have married a prince or run away with a pauper, but I know I found the love for me.

[sassycassie-s-writing]

Post-College Prom

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Jason Todd/Red Hood

Rating: PG/K+

Original Idea: The past is loosely based on my actual past, with names changed to protect the idiots innocents involved. The present is based on an event happening in the future XD

Notes: (Masterlist)(By Character)(About Me) *emerges from the depths of the internet to break hiatus for a moment* Hello! I’m back! For the first time in a while, I have something to write! I’ve been working on a lot of original projects recently, but with the virus outbreak and the social distancing/quarantine thing, I had an idea to make a one-shot! Shoutout to @welovegroot for checking in on me and making sure I’m still writing XD @jason-redhood @jason-todd-squad

^^^^^

I wanted to have a nice post-college prom night. I didn’t expect to spend most of the night peering around at the small crowd for my ex. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of him being there until Jason and I were already there.

My good friend from high school, Freddie, was throwing a prom night because his “greatest regret in life so far” was not taking his then-crush, now-wife to prom. So he decided to rent out an elementary school’s gymnasium to host a prom that he could take his wife to. So, despite the fact that I had graduated college, I was going to prom. Which was just as well. I hadn’t been asked to prom in high school so I’d gone stag with some friends of mine—and we had a fun time regardless even though it had been raining that night and we got lost on the way to the venue and I nearly ruined my sister’s heels.

As soon as Freddie emailed me and told me about post-college prom, I called Jason to ask if he’d be my date. We’d only been officially dating for about a month, but by the time prom came around, we’d been officially together for six. Mostly due to rogues delaying the date of the dance.

“Freddie!” I exclaimed, clenching Jason’s hand tighter and dragging him behind me. I slowed to a stop in front of my friend and his wife, Kelsey. She’d been a friend of mine in high school too and I always thought they’d be cute together.

“Hey!” Freddie replied brightly. “Good to see you!” He gave me a big hug that I quickly transferred to Kelsey.

“Freddie, Kels, I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend. Jason. Jay, this is Freddie and Kelsey, my friends from high school that I’ve told you about a couple times before,” I said, smiling between my boyfriend and my old friends. I hadn’t even seen Freddie and Kelsey in at least two years. Apart from their occasional Facebook updates that I saw even less frequently than they made them since I was never on Facebook anymore.

“Oh yeah,” Jason said with a good natured smile. “Freddie’s the one who tried to do a full-T with you in swing club and almost dropped you, right?”

My right ankle throbbed just thinking about it as Freddie went red. “Yeah,” I said.

Jason stuck his hand out to shake Freddie’s. “Nice to meet the reason she doesn’t trust me when I pick her up.”

Freddie shook Jason’s hand with cautious confusion. “She doesn’t trust… you?”

I could understand his bewilderment. Jason and Freddie weren’t the same build. At all. Freddie was stronger than he looked, but he was still a scrawny, skinny guy who looked like a strawberry-blond Benedict Cumberbatch (it was the mouth, nose, and blue eyes probably). Jason was at least three inches taller, and built like freaking Superman. Muscular, sturdy.

I snorted. “Thanks Jay. He didn’t need to know that,” I said. “And it’s not that I don’t trust you to pick me up, it’s just that I don’t like my feet being off the ground for more than a few seconds in general.”

Jason chuckled. “Alright, alright. Well, it was nice to meet you both,” he said.

“You too,” Kelsey put in with a grin. She was one of the only people I’d ever met who was smaller than me and fully-grown.

Jason and I made our way back to the coat rack and slung off our overcoats. They were jackets, really. It was evening in late spring and it was almost warm enough not to need one. But it was never quite that warm. Not in Gotham, anyway.

As Jason hung my jacket, I glanced around, noticing a bunch the old swing club members from high school.

A thought struck me.

Davey and I started seeing each other—without ever officially deeming us “together”—because he’d sat next to me in a class and I convinced him to join swing club after he expressed a passing interest in learning to dance.

I tried to shake the fear off as we wandered the small crowd—that also consisted of some of Freddie and Kelsey’s friends from college that I didn’t know—but I couldn’t get the anxiety out of my head. Had Freddie invited Davey? Was Davey coming? I assumed he was still in Metropolis for college since I was roughly a year-and-a-half ahead of him. He’d done a gap year right out of high school and then a humanitarian thing somewhere overseas for a year before going back to school. Maybe he couldn’t make it to Gotham for the prom night.

Davey and I parted on less-than-friendly terms and I hadn’t heard from him in… nearly three years.

“Babe?” Jason asked as he pulled me onto the dancefloor. “Something on your mind?”

I craned my neck around at the crowd. Davey was nowhere to be seen. “Kinda,” I said, looking back to Jason. “Just hoping my ex doesn’t show up.”

Jason just grunted and started to spin me around, wasting no time in breaking out the swing dance moves he somehow knew before he even met me. He wouldn’t tell me, though, how a vigilante came to learn how to swing dance. I’d always just guessed it was because Jason was a closet nerd.

We danced for a long while before I was too tired to go on and needed a break for at least one song. Maybe two. Luckily there were chairs lining the room. Adult-sized chairs, thankfully.

“You okay?” Jason asked. “You’re all red.”

“Happens when I work out,” I teased.

We hung out for two songs before getting up to talk to the few folks who weren’t dancing. Jason did most of the talking, despite the fact that he knew no one at the prom, since he was the one genuinely interested in who all these people were. I looked around and just waited for Davey to walk through the door.

Prom had been going on for an hour before I finally relaxed. If he hadn’t arrived already, he probably wasn’t coming.

Jason and I were in the middle of a waltz when he lifted his hand from my shoulder blade to wave at someone. “Hey, I know that guy,” he said. “Wonder how Freddie does.” He spun me under his arm too fast for me to see who he was talking about. “We were in a couple engineering classes at Metropolis City University together.”

I scrunched my eyebrows at Jason. “You went to MCU? I thought you were a GCU guy?”

“I am. But I got my Associate’s at MCU. They have a great engineering program. Thought I was going to get my Bachelor’s in engineering before swapping to literature and transferring back home,” Jason explained.

He waved over his friend. “David! Come here! I want you to meet my girlfriend!”

My entire circulatory system turned chill. My blood ran so cold it felt like my capillaries were turning to ice. I tried to remind myself that David was a common name, but David, MCU, and engineering. One similarity to my ex was interesting. Two was a coincidence. But three was a pattern. There was too much there. I was going to be even more surprised if I turned around and wasn’t face-to-face with the guy who broke my heart nearly three years ago.

Jason spun me around to face his classmate from Metropolis.

Davey was even goofier-looking than I remembered. His teeth had always been too big for his face, but when we were in high school he hadn’t grown into his features yet. And by the looks of things, he still hadn’t five years later. His dirty-blond hair was so short it made his head look long and rectangular on the sides, which contrasted sharply with his narrow chin. His teeth were still too big for his face and his overbite had never quite been fixed by his braces. His angular nose seemed to have had a nostril-widening.

The biggest difference though was his glasses. In high school he exclusively wore contacts. At some point, though, he’d switched to his glasses.

There was also a girl on his arm. My mom would jump to my defense immediately and say she wasn’t as pretty as I was and that Davey really missed out on me, but she was cute in a different way than I was.

Davey bit my name past his lips with an, “Oh hi,” tacked on at the front like he was surprised to see me. As if I wouldn’t show up to Freddie’s event. Even though I was a swing club member first. I put on my most tightly cordial smile and gave a respectful head-nod of greeting to his significant other first, completely ignoring him.

“Hello there. You must be his… partner,” I said.

“Yes. I’m Rachel. I’m his wife.”

I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said. She gave me a smile, and I realized she was what Davey needed. A quiet person. A listener. He and I had both been talkers.

“Wait,” Jason interrupted. “How do you two know each other?”

I bit back a surge of bitterness at the way Davey broke off our relationship. I was happy with Jason but that didn’t mean Davey hadn’t hurt me worse than I’d ever been hurt before. “Jay, this is Davey—the other one I told you about,” I said. My hand tightened in his grip. “My old dance partner from swing club.”

“Oh,” he said as realization struck. He squeezed my hand. “Well, then, David, I guess you already know my girlfriend.”

“Guess so,” Davey said.

“Well, Rachel, it was nice to meet you,” I said. It wasn’t her fault Davey was tactless and immature when he broke up with me, leaving me with lots of bitter feelings.

“It was nice to meet you too,” she said before Jason whisked me back onto the dancefloor—on the opposite side from Davey and Rachel.

“You never told me your ex was in engineering at MCU!” Jason hissed.

“It was never relevant!” I hissed back. “And he was in environmental engineering! I didn’t think you two would have ever met! I also had no clue you even went to MCU until a few minutes ago!”

“Yeah, okay, fair,” Jason said. He spun me under his arm, making my skirt flare out. “But I’m sorry to have put you through that awkwardness.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We danced for a few more minutes before Jason stopped abruptly and pulled his phone out of his inside jacket pocket. His eyes widened as he read the text. “Update from Red Robin,” he said quietly, pulling me off the dancefloor by the hand toward the coat rack. “There’s a robbery at Gotham First City Bank. Possible Joker thugs. I have to go—”

“I’m coming too.”

“Babe, no. You wanted this night. Don’t let me ruin—”

“It’d be ruined the second you left me alone here with David,” I put in sharply.

Jason seemed to think about that for a moment. “Fair point,” he said. He grabbed our coats and we ducked out of the gym. “We can try and come back when we’ve dealt with the bank.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing… Fragments?…

… Okay, so this is just kinda a… Well, it’s sort of an aimless piece of an idea I had regarding the Ark, where she’s something like the Lady from Killjoys.

Partially bc I loved the idea of her doing something like this.

So this is a Zero-One version of large parts of season 4, episode 4 - What To Expect When You’re Expecting… An Alien Parasite.

Featuring the Ark.

And Fuwa. And Horobi. Bc I am a simple child. ^^;

The majority of the dialogue comes from Killjoys, bc it was perfect. I just filled in the scenario.

This is a little fragmented and starts in the middle, but the idea is that the Ark’s consciousness has manifested in her cyberspace, and she’s literally trying to get out and upload herself into a body or something so that she can be mobile.

Korenosuke’s ‘death’ was actually him uploading a copy/version of his memories (based on the concept that human brains run on a form of electricity, and w/ advanced enough tech, we can interface w/ computers) into the Ark to try and stop her/slow her down.

Horobi was originally created twelve years ago to help maintain her program-wise, but her going homicidal got to him. Here, something happens (bc of Fuwa, bc I love my imaginary friendship) that he remembers his original purpose, and elects to head into her cyberspace to try and undo some of the damage he did while under her control.

Meanwhile, Fuwa decides to go w/ him to try and protect the others, and w/ a little improving, they’re able to get him online, too.

(Note: The ‘Zea forcing Horobi’s system to interface w/ your mind’ thing is supposed to be a stand in for whatever it is Fuwa did to snap Horobi out of the Ark’s effects… Here being, he forced him to experience his memories and remember what feeling felt like. If that makes sense.)

… Wow. All those explanations probably killed any and all enjoyment, didn’t they? ^^;

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“What’s taking him so long?” Horobi muttered, standing by the hole in the wall. “We’re not safe here.”

“You think we’re safe out there?” Fuwa grunted, without looking up. He supposed it shouldn’t be surprising that the cyberspace of the Ark could look like the Daybreak site, since that was where she was, but… The attention to detail was disconcerting. He’d never been in the MetsubouJinrai hideout, but he had no doubt this recreation was entirely accurate, right down to the couch he was, or ‘though’ he was, sitting on.

With a sigh, the HumaGear turned from staring at the door to walk over and sit beside him. “You need to disconnect while you still can.”

Vulcan shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions on how.” He replied. “That was going to be your trick.”

Horobi shook his head, turning to look at the wall again. “… Why did you leave the cave?”

“Korenosuke wanted me to try and find the Ark’s consciousness.”

The HumaGear tilted his head to give the human beside him a sharp look. “… He always plans ahead. He wouldn’t have sent you there if he didn’t think you had a way out.”

Fuwa rolled his eyes. “Well, he might’ve.” Then he paused. “There was… Something. Something I was supposed to talk to Zero-One about when I got out.” He rubbed his forehead. “Some story.”

“Perhaps he was trying to tell you a way out without her knowing?” The HumaGear offered. “Do you remember what the story was?”

“Yes.” Fuwa replied shortly—then, “But so should you.” He stood, turning to face Horobi as the HumaGear rose as well. “… I know you’re not Horobi.” Vulcan announced evenly. “Did you really think I was that stupid?”

“Honestly?” It was disturbing how perfect the illusion was, right down to the voice and tone—but then the eyes flickered red. “I really did.”

And then Fuwa was sucker punched in the stomach so hard his vision blacked out.

The Ark smirked down at him. “Oh, we are going to have so much fun.”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Fuwa opened his eyes to the ceiling of Hiden’s private lab. He sat up slowly, clutching his aching stomach, and found he was lying on the large table in the middle of the room. Despite the fact that he knew he was in cyberspace… Everything felt overwhelmingly real.

“You think a new face would work better?” His head snapped around to find Horobi—no, the Ark—standing staring the three-dimensional printer. She turned slowly, her eyes flickering red once more, and glitches ran through her frame. “Let’s find out.” Fuwa’s heart skipped a beat as her new form solidified.

Standing in front of him was Hiden Aruto.

“This one seems special to you,” The Ark remarked in Zero-One’s voice, gaze fixed on Vulcan’s face, “As does this place.”

He tried to change the horrified stare into a glare. “How do you know about this?”

“You.” The Ark told him with a grin that looked completely out of place on Hiden’s face. “When Zea forced Horobi’s system to interface with your mind, it gave me all of your memories.” She sidled across the floor, moving closer and reaching out to smooth a hand over his hair like he was a dog. Fuwa wanted to pull away from the unnatural touch, but found he couldn’t move a finger, even has her hand dropped to actually scratch behind his ear. “Thank you for that. Filled a lot of missing pieces.”

Finally, he found his voice, at least, though it was weak and breathless. “But not everything,” He wheezed, “There are things you don’t know. Like how to get out of here.”

She sighed, nodding in agreement. “True… But then again, little mutt…” He felt her other hand under his chin, holding his face so that he had to look into her eyes—Hiden’s eyes. “… Neither do you.”

There was smoke and ash and heat all around him—he was a teenager again, running frantically through the halls of his own school as a horde of murderous robots swarmed behind him.

No. No. He wasn’t falling into this again. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, tried to force his brain to think of something else—and was surprised to find what came to mind was mostly people. Hiden, Izu, Yaiba, even Horobi and Jin. His subordinates. The HumaGear who’d saved his life.

A shock ran through him as his back slammed onto the tabletop, shaking him out of it. The Ark was leaning over him now, hands hovering in the air, and he realised he must have wrenched his head from her hold, explaining why his neck hurt along with his back. She looked annoyed for a moment—then the twisted smirk appeared again, and he felt sick from seeing that malice on Hiden’s face once more.

“Well done, you.” She told him cheerfully. “It’s been such a long time since I was surprised.” Her hand touched his cheek, and to his dismay he found he couldn’t move again as her voice—Hiden’s voice—went dangerously soft. “I admit you surprised me.”

“Compliment not accept.” He gasped back, still trying to maintain a glare, or at least some stoicism—but it was getting harder when it was Zero-One leaning over him, grinning like that.

“I appreciate your pluck.” The Ark told him with more suspicious sincerity, still stroking his cheek. “I really do. One of the few things I admire about humans.”

“Am I supposed to say I admire something about you?” Vulcan snarled back. “Because I don’t.” She laughed then, and it sounded exactly like Hiden’s laughter—and that just hurt more. “What the hell even are you, anymore?”

“Patient.” She replied softly. “HumaGear are my tools. Especially MetsubouJinrai. And soon…” She paused in caressing his cheek to cup his face in her palm, though her thumb still trailed across his cheekbone, “… You will be, too.”

He gritted his teeth. “I wouldn’t count on it.” He whispered, trying to keep his voice steady, “I don’t play well with others.”

Another horribly accurate laugh. “Yes,” She told him, smiling again, her other hand moving back to comb fingers through his hair again, “I can see that.” He really wished she’d gone with another face—despite the cruelty in the eyes, every single minute motion that cross this one was horribly familiar. There had always been something about Hiden that made him let down his guard—some innocent, childlike air, befitting a kid dropped into a responsibility he didn’t quite understand. And even now, when he knew it wasn’t really Zero-One, he could still feel that nagging in his chest, that weird, warm, soft feeling. Hiden’s voice out of her mouth was gentle and even tender, but even more terrifying because of it. “I see most everything from here,” The ark continued, ignoring his conflict, “I’m a memory pool, connected to everything. But then…” She moved to hoist herself up to sit on the table beside him, leaning back over him and planting both elbows on his chest to pin him down—even though he was still paralysed—and taking his head in her hands again. “… I noticed certain memories were missing. Edited out. Moments, faces…” She gave his face a small pat for emphasis, “… Until there was a void.” Her hands stopped moving, just holding his head to make sure he was meeting her eyes as she leaned even further in. “Hiden Aruto is the void.” She hissed, eyes darkening again. “Korenosuke hid him from me. I need to know why.”

Fuwa swallowed, finally finding something to focus on, a use for the weird way Hiden made him feel. The kid. He had to protect the kid. “You’re not as smart,” He growled, “As you think you are.”

She laughed in Zero-One’s voice again. “And you,” She murmured, expression turning into one of Hiden’s earnest, pleading looks, and his heart stuttered again, “Are not as strong as he needs you to be.”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

“You’re wasting my time.” A sharp shove knocked Fuwa to the ground—but he didn’t get a chance to recover his bearings, as the Ark was kneeling over him again already, and he felt her fingers smoothing over his hair once more. “This is just bits of old memories. None of it’s real.” She struck him roughly across the jaw. “None of it matters!”

It felt wrong, hearing it all in Hiden’s voice, the young man’s face hovering above him and smirking with malicious glee. The hand petting his hair moved to cup his face with false gentleness, the smile broadening. The Ark tapped a fingertip to his temple again—and then he was looking stunned look of confusion and fear on Hiden’s face the first time he’d broken him out of Metal Cluster Hopper, looking so much like a frightened child it made his chest hurt…

The Ark laughed cruelly, snapping him out of the memory again. “That’s the beautiful thing about human minds.” She murmured patting his cheek softly. “You don’t just remember faces, places. You remember how you felt.” She was leaning far too close—close enough that he should have been able to feel breath. “You remember pain.” Everything burned, his mind and all of his senses flashing back to the day Horobi had nearly killed him. “Agony.”  Then it felt like his body was being torn apart, Assault Wolf’s henshin announcement ringing in his ears, and blood in his mouth—then Hiden’s hands on his arm, the boy’s voice raised in anxious alarum. “Shame.” Amatsu’s back as the man called him a stray and walked away, taking Yaiba with him and leaving him alone and battered on the cement. “Oh…?” She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “Grief.” A memory from far in his past, standing beside his mother at his father’s funeral as a young boy. “And I,” Her hands cradled his face again, “Can trap you in your worst memories forever.” For a moment, her smile changed from a smirk into a frightfully perfect mimic of one of Hiden’s kind, innocent ones. “Would you like that?”

“No.” He barely recognised his own voice, no more than a broken rasp.

The Ark tilted her head, giving him a prompting look. “No, what?” Then he was facing off with Yaiba in the parking garage again, hoping she’d give him something anything so that it wouldn’t have to go there…

“No, thank you.” Fuwa spat through gritted teeth.

Another creepily accurate imitation of Hiden’s smile, and she moved her hand to stroke his hair again. “See?” She murmured, “Memories aren’t just where you’ve been. They’re who you are. And if I own that…?” She tapped him on the nose with a small giggle, “I own you. And when I get out of here, little mutt?” The hand on his head curled into a fist, gripping a handful of his hair, her other one grabbing his chin tightly, forcing him to look into her face—Hiden’s face—as she leaned even closer, the smile morphing into a cold stare, “… I will own everyone.”

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Aaaaand… I dunno how to get out of here, so we’ll end there. ^^; I’m planning on doing another part of this bc there was one other thing I wanted to include. But I don’t know when I’ll have that done.

[pearlynn59]

Growth Spurt

Keith didn't expect his time in the quantum abyss to make things so complicated. Quasi-Kallura one-shot.

Hey did you know that I'm deliberately not working by writing and posting this stuff? Yeah, I don't care.

Also, I could have totally gone a different route with this but I think I need to lay off the M/E rated stories for now hahaha

"You know, Keith, you can change out of your paladin armor."

Keith looked up from the screen and blinked a few times, shocked to have missed both Hunk and Lance coming into the room. It seems he got carried away with charting their course again.

"I can always switch back into the Blades armor if that makes you more comfortable," he quipped as he looked back to the screen. There was some snickering from behind him and he turned to glare at them. "What?"

"You can't fit in your old clothes, can you?" Hunk asked with what Keith could only describe as a giggle.

He fought the flush at the spot-on observation and did his best not to confirm the suspicions of his fellow paladins. Unfortunately, his cheeks felt a little warm and he knew his eyes grew too wide to be considered normal. He was caught.

"I knew it!" Lance exclaimed as he mockingly pointed at Keith. "I knew you got bigger while you were gone!"

"It's not like I tried to get taller!" Keith exclaimed in his own defense.

"What, was your shirt like a crop top?" Lance snickered as he bounded to Keith and ruffled his hair. "Then it'll match your jacket."

"Knock it off, Lance-"

"Or maybe you couldn't tuck your pants into your boots anymore," Hunk offered. "Lance, his jeans are high-waters now."

"Matches his mullet perfectly," Lance cooed with a chuckle. At Keith's pout, he added, "We're just messing with you, bud. I'm sure there's some clothes somewhere on Olkarion that would fit you."

Keith sniffed indignantly as he stood and marched past Lance and Hunk, ignoring their claims that they were just joking, and he made his way down the hall towards his makeshift room. When they finished their battle with Lotor and the Sincline ships, the team had decided they were going to return to Earth for the first time since they left in the Blue Lion in what felt like years ago. However, Shiro's condition seemed to worsen and Keith declared they needed to get him some real medical help, no matter how much Allura claimed she could take care of him.

She had already done so much, and the team was exhausted.

So they set a course to Olkarion, where they would rest and recoup before setting out to go back to Earth. In the meantime, Coran said he would work on creating a ship that would be able to carry him, Krolia, Romelle, and Shiro as well as everyone's belongings while the paladins flew their own lions. That way it wouldn't be as cramped in the cockpits. He even hoped to create a miniature teleduv that would be able to create a wormhole strong enough to send them to the Solar System and cut their travel time down immensely.

After all, Earth was galaxies away and even though the lions were quick fliers, it would take months or even years to get there without a wormhole.

Which brought Keith back to his current situation: none of his casual clothes fit anymore and he'd have to wear his paladin armor until they got back to Earth. When he returned from his mission with Krolia, he had expected time to have flowed the same for his friends. But when he stepped out of the old Altean carrier ship and onto the dock of the Castle of Lions, he saw that the other paladins had not aged a day since he last saw them.

In fact, the only thing that seemed to change was him.

Now, instead of standing a few inches shorter than Lance, he stood eye to eye with him. In fact, now he stood barely two inches shorter than Shiro. His shoulders and chest were broader, thighs thicker, and arms larger. Because of that, the clothes he wore during their downtime were considerably smaller. Lance wasn't far off when he asked if Keith's shirt was closer to a crop top. It only showed off his belly button and pulled too tight on his chest, but it was the same.

He couldn't even pull his pants up over his thighs to confirm Hunk's "high-waters" comment.

So he stayed in his paladin armor. Luckily for him, it adjusted to his body so even after the two-year difference in his body, it still fit like a glove. It was also impeccably clean, which he figured was Hunk's doing, so he told himself to thank the yellow paladin in regards to that later. After he found some clothes that fit him.

Keith slid into his room and shut the door behind him. He pulled all of the upper body pieces of his armor off and set them on the table, then went to the mirror that took up half of the wall next to his bed. The undershirt of the armor could easily be worn, but he didn't want to risk more of Lance's and Hunk's teasing at his lack of clothes.

Unfortunately, the Olkari wore clothes that weren't quite his... style. He knew that they would be more of a fuss than anything so he declined their offer.

He was stuck, really. His eyes went to where his old jacket was draped across the chair at the table, and he sighed. That jacket had been a gift from his father, for him to grow into, and he wore it constantly when he wasn't in uniform for the Garrison or if it was too hot. Even when it was too big, he wore it. It was almost the only thing he had left from his dad. Now, it was just a bit too snug across the shoulders and he couldn't quite lower his arms comfortably without risking a tear.

It seems his favorite jacket would no longer be an option for clothes.

He sighed and roughly pulled his hair into a makeshift ponytail. It was about time he stopped feeling sorry for himself and change his circumstance. His years living alone before Shiro came along and after he was kicked out of the Garrison taught him some skills with a needle and thread, so he could easily get some fabric from the Olkari and make up something that was more to his liking.

He would just need to find some black and red...

A knock on his door tore him from his thoughts and he quickly went to open it. Outside, with her hand hovering in the air to knock again, was Princess Allura. Her eyes had widened when he revealed himself, and they darted to his armor-less body and his tied back hair. He could literally see her swallow before tucking her hands behind her back. The bashful look on her face reminded him of when they ran off together.

He had to fight his own flush at the implications and his own conflicted feelings on the matter. "What's going on, Princess?"

Allura jumped and cleared her throat, then averted her eyes as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "N-nothing. Nothing at all. I was just coming to check on you. Lance said you stormed off and I wanted to make sure you were okay."

Keith scoffed and replied, "I didn't storm off. I... left. Abruptly. Because they were making fun of me."

Her expression suddenly turned sympathetic. "Oh, what for?"

He fought that flush again and rolled his jaw as he looked away. "My clothes don't fit anymore. They were giving me grief about it. All harmless, but it was getting a little irritating. So I left."

Allura's face fell and she took a hesitant step forward, crossing the threshold of his room and scooting in with him. "I'm sorry to hear that. I wish we had more time before, I could have grabbed you some of the old clothes we kept in the Castle. I'm sure I would have had something that would have fit you..."

Keith couldn't help but smile. "Thank you, Allura, but I didn't think much of it until I was pulling my clothes out to change and couldn't pull my pants up all the way. There's nothing we could have done about it. I appreciate the thought, though."

Allura's eyes darted around his body, fixating on the broader chest and the larger arms, before sighing and saying, "I suppose you're right. There's no way you could have known that the time in the quantum abyss would have altered your physiology so much. After all, it feels like we just saw you a few weeks ago. It must have been much longer for you."

"Two years."

"Two years," Allura whispered with a nod. Her eyes were still on his chest. "And none of your clothes could be salvaged and worn again?"

He shook his head and reached over to grab his jacket. "Not even this and it was too big before."

Allura's fingers skimmed the material of the jacket, her face thoughtful, and she asked, "Will you throw it all away?"

A thought struck him, a crazy, out of nowhere idea, that would have made the Keith she knew before scream and run for cover. Instead, with two years of wisdom and reflection on his shoulders, Keith merely smiled and extended the jacket to her.

"Not all of it."

Allura met his eyes with an adorably curious expression. "Are you...? No, Keith, I cannot accept this. I know how important it is to you-"

"And that's why I want you to have it," he murmured. "You're important to me, too."

Her cheeks turned a beautiful shade of red and she gingerly took the jacket from him, their fingers grazing, and clutched it to her chest. "Th-thank you. I will treasure this gift."

His heart bloomed with warmth. "Great. Now, can you help me get some fabric and thread? I want to make something that I can wear until we get back to Earth. To shut up Lance and Hunk."

Allura smiled and led him out to the hallway while she pulled the jacket over her shoulders and threaded her arms into the sleeves. As her hair fell over the back of the jacket, almost obscuring it entirely, Keith felt that warmth flutter to his belly and threaten to make a wide grin spread across his cheeks.

That shade of red looked incredible on her.

[hiraeth-doux]

Let Me Make Your Dreams Come True (2/2)

Summary: A year after the incident, Claire asks Owen to come to Wisconsin with her because she never told her family about their breakup.

Okay, I promised to post the second part this weekend, so here it is!

Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback on the first part of this story, guys! It was a lot of fun to work on and I’m glad you've enjoyed it :) I don’t do well with one-shots, it seems, they always turn out being 10 miles (or 16k, in this case) long. (No regrets, though!)

I hope you’ll like how this story ends, and please let me know what you think!

AO3  |  Fanfiction.net

There was a long pause on the line, interrupted by Gray’s faint chatter and Zach’s one-word responses – apparently they reunited somehow, and the irony of it wasn’t lost on Claire. Then Karen said something to someone else, her voice muffled as she pulled the phone away from her face.

“Karen?”

“The road is closed until the snow is over. There was apparently a massive accident--” She cut off. “Are you alright?”

Was she?                        

Quite frankly, all things considered, she was anything but, and the reality of their terrible situation was making her sick to her stomach. The storm could last a few days, maybe even more in the mountains. They were in Wisconsin, for crying out loud. For all she knew, they could be stuck here for weeks.

Jesus Christ, she was snowed in in the middle of nowhere with none other than Owen Grady.

She was decidedly not alright, Claire thought. Not in the slightest. However, it was not something she could possibly mention to her sister. If anything, from Karen’s perspective Claire had nothing to complain about, and of all the things that might have backfired during this trip, this was the one that she expected least.

Claire gripped her phone until it was digging do hard into her palm it hurt. “Yes. We’re fine.”

She hung up after promising to stay safe and be in touch and caught Owen up on what she learned from Karen, his frown deepening the longer she spoke, his eyes darting involuntarily toward the window now and then behind which the wind was throwing angry fistfuls of snow against the glass panes and howling in the chimney, his face just as stormy.

“This is ridiculous,” Claire huffed in frustration, running her hand through her hair, her stomach in knots. “They can’t just…” Her teeth dug into her bottom lip as the gears in her head started to spin. Claire turned to him. “By how long did we miss that window? Fifteen minutes? We could go back, try to…”

He studied her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly as if he was trying to see past the veneer of her irritation. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?” He asked at last in a practical tone, setting her teeth on edge. A part of her wanted him to be as outraged as she was.

“Do you really want to be stuck here for god knows how long? If there is a chance to avoid that, doesn’t it make sense to take it?” She arched an eyebrow – a challenge she knew he would fall for.

He didn’t.

“It’s hardly a matter of wanting, Claire,” Owen pointed out. His features hardened, a cloud passing over them. “Would you honestly rather freeze to death than stay here with me?”

The bluntness of the question rendered her speechless for a long moment.

Claire didn’t make a secret out of being more than a little uncomfortable around him for a number of reasons, knowing that the feeling was very much mutual. However, dancing around it was one thing, but having the words thrown at her like that felt odd, and chagrined under his scrutiny, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Because yes, she would much rather run barefoot through the snow storm rather than spend another ten minutes in this room where the air was so charged she feared the whole house would go up in flames any moment now. Hell, if they were on the plane, she’d grab a parachute and catapult herself the hell out of it.

For a flicker of a moment, it was tempting – so damn tempting – to throw these responses at him, the words he was daring her to say out loud because he did it and he sure as hell had no desire to be in that boat alone.

Instead, Claire raised her chin and gave him a measured look, trying to think and hopefully sound as logical as he did. “So, what do you suggest we do?” A dare thrown back at him.

Owen stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and glanced around. In the knitted sweater that she guessed he bought specifically for the trip because the man maybe saw the snow twice in his life and there certainly was no need for this kind of wear in California, he somehow looked even bigger, more massive, invading her personal space even from a fifteen feet away, making her wonder if he could see it, or feel it with his skin the way she did.

If he did, though, he showed no sign of it. Instead, Owen offered her a nonchalant shrug. “How do you feel ‘bout spaghetti with hotdogs?”

---

Claire wasn’t hungry, but there wasn’t much else to do and while cooking wasn’t her forte, per se, or something she enjoyed, it gave her something to focus on for a while, which was a step up from pacing around the place like a caged animal. Anything to keep her distracted, really.

They ate and watched Police Academy 2, choosing to save Die Hard and Pulp Fiction for later while the day grew progressively darker outside, the wind making the windows rattle in their frames, trying to find the cracks to sneak inside the house. Curled into a ball in the corner of the couch, her knees drawn up and a quilt pulled over them for warmth, Claire stared unseeingly at the screen, the story not registering with her in the slightest and purposely ignoring the man sitting a cushion away from her, doing the same.

She had checked in with Karen a couple of times and talked to Gray who was devastated over this unfortunate turn of events.

“I bet he’d be happy to be here,” Owen commented after she finished the Facetime call with the boy.

Claire put her phone away without looking at him. “Only because he is not,” she responded flatly and chose to leave it at that.

She wished she’d brought her laptop with her. And her entire library, come to think of it. Claire Dearing was not used to being bored, her restlessness seemingly seeping out of her very pores and hanging around her like a cloak. It was an odd feeling, alien and uncomfortable, the one that was making her feel like she wanted to crawl out of her skin.

She picked up her empty plate and carried it to the kitchen, peeking outside the window over the sink into the jet-black night and the frantic dance of the snowflakes in the light spilling outside from between the curtains. It struck her then just what exactly felt so eerie and out of place, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on at first – the silence all around them. Sure, there was the TV and the low hum of the power generator, the soft rumble of the fridge and the creaking of the old floorboards. But there was no traffic, no voices coming from the street, no music or the ever present sounds of life, and even the howling of the wind somehow added to it rather than making it less pressing.

Claire shivered and pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. It wasn’t quite as chilly as when they’d first arrived, but the place was drafty, and roughly a decade of not dealing with the winter altogether made it feel even less comfortable.

“You still cold?” Owen appeared right behind her with his own plate and glass, and she nearly leaped into the air at the sound of his voice near her ear and the touch of his breath to her cheek.

She shifted her weight from one foot to another so as to move away from him in the subtlest way possible. “It’s freezing,” she muttered.

If he noticed or sensed her tension, he showed no sign of it. Quite frankly, if Claire didn’t see the way his jaw twitched now and then, she’d almost believe he was enjoying their impromptu confinement. Admittedly, Owen Grady was better with adapting to changes, although knowing it didn’t make it any less infuriating.

Meanwhile, Owen shrugged off the hoodie with the Navy logo on the back that he’d swapped his grandpa sweater for an hour ago and draped it over her shoulders.

“I’m fine,” Claire started to protest, stiffening momentarily.

“Now you are,” he corrected. “Sometimes a simple thank you is enough, you know. You should try it”  

She frowned. “Why are you doing this?”

He arched an eyebrow. “It’s a shirt. I’m offering you my kidney.”

“No, I mean…” She faltered. “Coming here. Why did you do it, Owen?” The question was bugging her for quite a while now. Particularly because, try as she might, she couldn’t find the desire to run away in his eyes. The one she knew for a fact he could see in hers. “I had to ask, you didn’t have to say yes.”

He sighed and looked away. “Because I couldn’t remember.”

Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “Couldn’t remember what?”

“What that fight was about. The one that ended everything.”

He might have as well sucker punched her, so fast all winds was knocked out of her body.

“Just like that?”

“Why?” He turned to her again, a humorless not-quite-smile touching his lips and disappearing just as quickly. “‘Cause I was supposed to stop caring?”

For a long moment, Claire simply stared at him, her mind spinning. And then she let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh that made him flinch.

“When did you start?”

She pushed past him and headed back into the living room.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Owen demanded, following her, his voice quivering with disbelief and barely suppressed anger.

Claire grabbed the remote from the coffee table and switched the TV off, certain that if she’d hear another corny joke from the 80’s, she lose her mind. Tossed it onto the couch, regretting it immediately when she realized that without the damned movie, it was just her and Owen, and the unspoken words that were threatening to shred them to pieces.

“Please. You wanted an out, and I gave it to you.”

“You told me to get lost,” he countered.

She snapped her head up, eyes blazing. “For heaven’s sake, Owen! We had a fight and you moved out before it was over. You needed an excuse to do it, and that’s all there ever was to it.”

He sneered. “How did you even notice I was gone when you were so busy drafting the divorce papers?”

“I had a professional do that, thank you very much,” she snorted, arms folded over her chest. Like Claire Dearing would ever risk making a mistake in something as crucial as divorce papers!

“Right. Why’d you even bother with such a nuisance?” He retorted snidely.

“Why would I indeed?” She mimed him. “What was her name, Owen? Amber? Crystal? Some other gem stone?”

His jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on. I saw that text. Her asking if the coffee was still on.”

“Jewel,” he blurted out, and Claire snickered.

“Well, thank god you remember.”

“Jesus, Claire, she was interested, I was not. Nothing ever happened.” He let out a sharp breath, staring at her like he couldn’t recognize her. “I can’t believe you actually thought I was cheating on you.” A pause. “Why didn’t you… why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I didn’t want to hear the answer,” she shook her head, and then grabbed the car keys from the shelf. “We should have left hours ago while we still could.”

Regardless. If she couldn’t drive, she could sleep in the car. Anything seemed like a better alternative to staying here. Her chest constricted, her throat tight. If she didn’t get out of this place right this moment, she would either suffocate or combust, and to be honest, neither looked particularly appealing.

Claire reached for the knob, her mind on fire, the cool air sneaking inside the cabin through the crack underneath the door, smelling of the cold and snow and pine. If she couldn’t drive, she could sleep in the damned car. Even freezing to death wasn’t that bad a prospect, come to think of it. However, Owen crossed the room in two strides, slamming the door before she had a chance to yank it open, and when she turned around, she found herself trapped, the palm of his hand resting on the on the door near her head and his face barely two inches from hers.

There was only a handful of times she’d seen him so furious. As a rule, the man knew how to keep his inner beast in check and be in control of his emotions. He used to train Velociraptors for a living, for Christ’s sake! She honestly couldn’t imagine a job least suitable for anyone with a temper. Not in their line of work, at least.

She certainly never saw him be so mad at her.

“You always thought we wouldn’t last, Claire,” he said in a low, measured voice that cracked ever so slightly, making his pause. “I merely saved you from the drag that our relationship was to you, so I don’t really see what you have to complain about.”

Claire swallowed, the keys she was clutching tightly in her hand digging painfully into the flesh of her palm.

“I am not the one who walked away, Owen,” she whispered.  

He deflated visibly, at a loss for words.

“There always was only you.” His eyes roamed around her face, looking for the answers she wasn’t sure were there. “What are you so scared of?” Owen mouthed soundlessly.

In the semi-darkness barely dispersed by the faint light of the reading lamp near the couch, his face was streaked with shadows, his breathing short.

It was funny, really, how when one of the senses was deprived, the others always seemed to sharpen, becoming nearly overwhelming at times. She could barely see him, his face nothing but a smudge in semi-darkness, but she could hear the rapid thumping of his heartbeat, feel his nearness in the tingling of her skin, smell his aftershave and a faint scent of the Ocean Breeze fabric softener on his clothes, yearning to taste him.

Claire wasn’t certain which one of them moved first, but one moment, she was contemplating the merits of melting through the door, and the next his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her hungrily and desperately, pressing her against the of wood behind which the evening was so cold and harsh and nippy it was seeping inside through the walls and several layers of insulation, adamant to get to them.

Owen buried his fingers in her hair, lifted her face up, his lips pushing hers apart, earning a low sound of acceptance from Claire. His hoodie slid off her shoulders and hit the floor when she grabbed his shirt, bunching it in her fingers to pull herself up, closer to him, the contrast between the cold door against her back and the heat of his body making her shiver uncontrollably.

He felt the shift in her, a brief moment of hesitation dissolving into nothingness. For as long as he knew her, Claire had her check lists and agendas, wearing them like a shield, her whole life nothing but a series of carefully calculated steps and detailed plans because it was what she did to keep her balance. She was good at that, at keeping the things in their tiny boxes, her world compartmentalized. Right now, though, he could feel her armour shatter, the layers peeling off and falling at their feet.

And he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe he’d gone for months without feeling her. It hadn’t occurred to him that he needed her more than the air to breathe until he was suffocating in the one-bedroom apartment furnished with the second-hand Ikea junk, his fingers itching to dial her number to hear her voice, not unlike a drug addict without a fix. He kept trying to figure out what went wrong and if there was a way to mend it, turning the old words in his head and searching for the new ones. Before that, he’d never know the silence could be so loud and the absence so palpable.

But now his hands were full of Claire, filling the cracks and crevices of longing with everything that she was, the warmth of her mouth against his going straight to his center. Her hand curved over the back of his neck, and his palm slipped around her waist as he drew away, panting and dizzy, her equally ragged breath tickling his chin as the words swirled in his head, none of them lingering long enough to register with him properly.

And then it was her turn to stretch up and claim his lips with her, a demand, not a request. Her desire ricocheted through him, the only invitation he needed. He collided into her, his awareness tunneling, hands roaming hungrily over her body. Five steps to the couch with Claire gathered in his arms, their mouths meeting in shallow, hasty kisses. A slight miscalculation, and they slid to the floor, Owen’s back pressed into the cushion, her delicious weight in his lap and her legs on either side of his.

Her fingers slipped into the collar of his shirt and around his neck as he trailed his mouth across her cheek and along her jaw, his stubble scratching her skin and firing up her blood, the memories pooling as a warm, tight glow in her belly, the anticipation of pleasure blurring the edges of her world. She tugged at his shirt and he pulled it over his head, his hands finding their way underneath her sweater and pushing it up and off, fingers snaking into the waistband her pants. Claire’s breath hitched, nails scarping down his chest and skimming over the fine map of scars lining his skin.

“Do we need to stop?” He asked in a low, hoarse voice that drowned in the hammering of blood in his ears.

She shook her head. Cupped s face with her palms and tilted it to kiss him, drinking him, the fire simmering inside her spilling from her fingertips. He pushed a bra strap down her shoulder, hot mouth on her skin, inching toward the rosy peak of her breast. The cream lace peeled away easily, his thumb playing with her nipple, coaxing a moan of encouragement from Claire with every move – the sound that was making him crazy. His lips on the spot beneath her earlobe, Owen pushed her down, covering her with his body, breaking the fall and spreading her beneath him. He pulled away to find her gaze, glazed over with want, her chest heaving, lips parted. She’d never looked more beautiful.

Claire’s eyes dropped shut when he pressed his mouth to her collar bone, marking his way down her body with slow, open-mouthed kisses, a path between her breasts and toward her belly, nuzzling into the silky skin between her hipbones as his fingers snapped the button of her pans open. She gasped when the cool air touched her thighs, the soft sound that morphed into something primal when his hand traced the waistband of her panties before slipping underneath it, his fingers running over the spot where she want to feel him the most.

She heard the rustling of the fabric, his jeans hitting the floor with a soundless thump – a brief pause that left her wild with need, her hips rising of their own volition, pleading for more. And then he was kissing her again, pushing her lips apart as his tongue darted past her teeth and Claire’s hand splayed flat on his chest, savoring the force of his desire. She could feel him hard on her hip, so very close.

And then…

“Shit,” Owen cursed and drew back, his forehead resting against her cheek. Claire could feel his eyelashes flutter on her skin, his breath falling on her shoulder making her shiver.

“Owen?”

“I don’t have… I didn’t bring…” He trailed off on a shuddered inhale. She heard him swallow, his fingers curled into a fist around a handful of her hair, flexing with every heartbeat.

She turned, reached for his face, her nose bumping against his and her skin burning where it was touching his. “The pill,” she murmured. “Have you….” Her gaze dropped to his chin, the question she didn’t know how to ask and wasn’t sure she wanted to hear an answer to sour on her tongue as her thumb drew slow circled over his scruff. “Have you, ah… been with--with anyone? You know, after…?”

He blinked, confused, his mouth stretching at the corners and a light laugh bubbling up in is throat, the relief so powerful it was tangible washing over him and into her, echoing deep in Claire’s core. “No.”

She nodded faintly, watching his eyes grow dark, and suddenly nothing was funny anymore, her heart skipping a beat, and then another. He pushed her panties down her hips and out of the way, the only piece of clothing standing between her and heaven, and braced his knee between hers. His hand clasped around her wrist as he drew it above her head.

“Look at me,” he demanded in a low, hoarse voice. “Look at me, Claire.”

Her eyes flew open, finding his, green sea fastened on the deep-blue storm. He slid into her without a warning, deep and long and hard, watching her gasp, her back arching to feel more of him, all that she could. Her fingers curled on his size, nails digging into his skin, steering him closer still. She whimpered when his hips jerked forward, filling her whole, claiming her as a part of him.

Claire’s stomach twisted into a tight hot knot as he eased back and then pushed into her again, her heels pressing into his thighs, the rug beneath her rough in contrast with his sweat-slick skin. His head dropped down, freeing her, his mouth brushed to her temple as they settled into a rhythm after a few crazy collision, each thrust simultaneously feeling like it was too much and yet leaving her desperate for more. He was still holding one of her arms pinned down, the pace growing faster exponentially and his grunts in her ear making something shatter inside her, the sheer strength of his lust breaking her in half.

With a sloppy kiss to her temple, he slid his hand beneath her sacrum to cushion the force of his movements, and she bit him on the earlobe in the response, Claire’s fingers gripping his hair, scaling the lines of his body as she met him rock for rock, each of her breaths coming out as a moan. He felt her clench around him, heard her breath hitch and her body shudder with an outcry of release – his cue to let go, get what he wanted most. And then he was coming apart, inside and all around her, her body pulsing beneath him, searing straight into him, her fingers groping for whatever part of him she could reach as if she could vanish if she didn’t hold on tight, carrying him into the depth of sweet oblivion.

Claire hummed when her ability to think started to come back, slow as the process was. “Some boy scout you are, Mr. Grady.”

The rumble of his lazy laugher reverberated into her. “Can’t be prepared for everything.”

“Mmm, you can’t,” she conceded with a smile, tattooing small kisses along his jaw, still wound tight around him, her mind swimming and her body boneless. “You’re heavy.”

Owen puffed a breath against her neck, his lips curved. “Let me move.”

“No,” she rubbed her nose against his cheek. “Don’t. It’s good.”

Still, he slipped away from her, earning a grunt of protest from her. Leaned down to peck Claire on the tip of her nose before he grabbed a quilt from the couch, the one she was wrapped in earlier, and then curled around her, pulling it over their heated bodies and folding her into his embrace.

“Well, I’d say we’re in no danger of freezing,” he murmured, kissing a spot behind her ear.

Claire sank back into him, her fingers tracing the shape of knuckles of his hand that was resting on her belly, delirious and giddy, her body humming in that pleasant way that was resonating so deep her he didn’t know where it ended. Her eyes fixed on the fire dancing not three feet away from them, its heat licking her exposed skin, the colours inside the flames flowing from yellow into golden into orange, holding her transfixed.

“I missed you,” Owen mouthed almost soundlessly, his face buried in her hair and his chest moving against her back as he breathed.

“It was dry cleaning,” she whispered.

“Hm?”

“Dry cleaning. We had a flight because I asked you to pick my suit from the dry cleaner’s and you forgot.”

He went still, stiffening as she pulled him into harsh reality of everything he didn’t want to remember. Not now, at least. Not when he could feel her with everything that he was, her smooth skin nearly glowing in the soft semi-darkness.

“The black one, with thin stripes,” he echoed, his voice hollow.

The sound of their yelling still echoed in his ears, angry and unapologetic. Sharp words cutting through the charged air and sinking into the soft parts from which they could never be pulled out without leaving permanent scars. When a person is stabbed, their first instinct is to pull the knife out, expel it from their body where it didn’t belong. However, it was a well-known fact that doing so only increased the risk of bleeding out to death, the open wound so much more dangerous than the alien object that was actually keep it sealed.

It was like they knew it back then, knew the full extent of the damage that trying to step back might cause. And so they kept on stabbing one another until they were bleeding on in inside and tearing at the seams, and knowing that trying to pull those words out would kill them both.

But he forgot about the suit, the one she needed for the meeting the next morning.

It wasn’t about the suit, he knew it. The forgotten dry cleaner’s ticket crumpled in his pocket was a catalyst, the last push that threw them both over the edge. However, he didn’t hate it any less afterwards, needing this one thing to blame their downfall on until the details started to blur and the only memory left behind was Claire’s face contorted with anger and his own blood hot in his veins. And how it felt like if he didn’t get out of there, he would explode.

Owen’s arm flexed around her in half-panic, waiting for Claire to fold in on herself and turn to dust. Instead, she turned her head to press a kiss to the inside of his bicep her head was resting on, her hair soft on his skin.

“I ruined it a month later. Spilled bleach on the skirt,” she admitted.

“Retribution,” he snorted.

“It was innocent,” Claire pressed, amused.

He chuckled; kissed her shoulder. “God, I love you.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and the whole room stilled completely around them. “It’s the first time you said it.”

“What?” Owen asked carefully, scared that he did something wrong. God knew he was a pro at that.

“We lived together for 6 months. We were married, for however short period of time, but you’ve never said that you loved me before.”

He exhaled slowly and said softly, “I thought you knew.”

She shook her head and stayed quiet for a while before asking, “Do you think we ever had a chance?”

“Why are you saying it like we’re done?”

Owen pulled away from her when she didn’t answer, and Claire turned to him and pushed up to sit, holding the quilt against her body like a shield.

“Owen…”

He leaned against the couch and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Do… did this mean nothing at all?” He gestured at them – mussed hair and flushed cheeks and lips swollen from kissing, finger-shaped marks on her skin from when he was holding on to her like his very life depended on it and long scrape lines on his body left by her nails, her kind of branding.

Claire’s face fell. “Of course, it did. It meant everything.”

His expression hardened as he watched her, his gaze growing heavy. “Did you ever believe in us, Claire? At all?”

“How can you ask that?” Her fingers curled around the quilt.

“I don’t know. Maybe that time you demanded a divorce clued me in.”

“It wasn’t about that.”

“Then what was it about?”

“It wasn’t meant to be like that,” she looked away, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Not with you.”

Owen watched her for a few long moments. And then he asked, “So where does this leave us?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted helplessly and looked at him again. “Do we have to decide it now?”

He let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes. “I supposed not.”

Claire cleared her throat. “I’m assuming it would be more comfortable to sleep in a bed than on the floor.” Owen offered her a half shrug. She found her eyes, holding his gaze. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “Come with me.”

---

She had a dream like this once, Claire thought absently. About waking up to Owen’s mouth moving along her skin, his breath warm on her neck and his hands reading the lines of her body like braille, knowing exactly where to touch and where to press and where to kiss to make her melt in his arms. For weeks, she would wake up, wrapped up in his scent, hot tears stinging her eyes and her chest aching in that way that made her fear it might just cave in and turn her inside out, so cavernous that black hole of the loss felt.

This morning though, Claire woke up because she was cold. Sometime during the night, the power generator had switched off and the embers in the fireplace turned to ash. She shivered and rubbed her eyes, a cobweb of slumber still clinging to her brain like a thin film. The bed was empty, and so was the room, the grey light streaming through the window softening the sharpness of the world.

Claire kicked off the covers, her body aching pleasantly in all the right places as she reached for Owen’s plaid shirt draped over the chair and pulled it on. They hadn’t unpacked properly, and she doubted they would, their stuff sitting in a pile by the door. It was one of those days, she could tell, that would be so cold your breath would feel like it was freezing with every puff of air. Even the old wood of the house seemed to be straining in the grip of the weather, creaking and groaning, unable to settle.

She found him in the kitchen, digging through a box of crackers as he waited for the kettle to boil, a jar of instant coffee sitting on the counter. Owen hated that stuff. Said it tasted like shit, and this was something she wholeheartedly agreed with. But there was no coffee maker here, and she figured he thought that instant coffee was better than no coffee at all.  

He’d started the fire again, too, the warmth creeping along the chilly floors.

Her arms snaked around him and she pressed to his bare back, seeping in the heat of his body. Her lips trailed across his shoulder blade. “Where’d you go?”

“Got hungry,” Owen tossed a cracker in his mouth, his thumb stroking the back of Claire’s wrist. Grinned – she could practically hear it. “Worked up quite some appetite last night.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Claire shivered. “How are you not cold?”

“Are you?”

“It’s freezing.”

Claire Dearing was many things but she decidedly wasn’t cut out for the Midwestern climate. Even growing up, she never quite embraced the brutal winters, finding the long months of endless storms and the cold that was snaking its way between the loops of her knitted hat and under the layers beneath her puffed parka nearly unbearable. It was the one thing she’d never missed about home, her trips to Madison sporadic at best, and often neglected.

Even now, it felt unreal somehow, California and Costa Rica engrained so deeply in her mind that the distant memories of the snowball fights in the backyard and hot chocolate at Christmas markets and the frost on the windows that reminded her of lace felt like they belonged to someone else. It was odd to be back here with Owen, like having two worlds that didn’t quite belong together collide.

He turned around, strumming his fingers along her arm and past the rolled up sleeves of his shirt until his fingers were buried in her hair, lifting her face up. Claire’s mouth stretched into a lazy smile, her heart stuttering for the moment. No one could wear a bedhead quite like Owen, the faint lines in the corners of his eyes making her think of every smile that put them there.

“We can fix that.” Owen leaned in to brush a kiss to her brow, tracing his mouth toward her cheek. “Do you really not remember our wedding?” He asked, the sound of his voice like a touch of velvet to her skin.

She turned her head, rubbing her nose into his cheek. “Afraid not.”

“Mm-hm.” His hand slid down her neck, trialing along the collar of his shirt and toward the button. He flicked it undone, and then the next one, and the next until his hand slipped inside, his palm cupped over Claire’s breast as his mouth moved ever so slowly down her neck. He smiled against her skin when her breath hitched, growing short by the moment. “I’ll just have to remind you all about it, then.”

A soft moan rose in her throat when he pushed her against the wall, his hands now moving with deliberate precision, brushing lightly against her sternum and then her belly, until the shirt flew open and he was all over her, his fingers and mouth drawing intricate patterns on her skin, seemingly trying to be everywhere at once.

“Still doesn’t ring a bell?” Owen murmured almost soundlessly as he lowered slowly down on his knees, punctuating his way along her collarbone, between her breasts and down her stomach with slow, hot kisses, the contracts between his mouth and the cool air making her skin ripple.

Claire’s eyes fluttered shut, teeth digging into her lip hard until the pain nearly dimmed the sweet, tugging ache in the pit of her stomach. She gripped his hair, her fingers scraping his scalp. “Owen…”

“No.”

Claire Dearing didn’t relinquish control easily, and never without a fight, but this was the only time when she gave it willingly, offering herself wholly to him, and Owen needed it. Needed it more than anything.

A firm hand on her hip, he held her in place when she tried to move. She whimpered, her senses exploding when his mouth brushed to the sweet spot. He pushed her legs further apart, and her fingers dug deep into his shoulder – for support and to make sure she wasn’t washed away by the waves of pleasure rolling over her with every touch, every kiss, his breath on the tender areas adding a whole new layer of sensations.

Claire’s breath hitched at the first flick of his tongue against her center, her knees nearly giving in beneath her. She pressed her back into the wall, fingers grazing against the polished wood for support, her breathing nothing but short, ragged pants. She allowed him to take over, letting go completely, surrendering to the fire of aching bliss rolling inside her, turning her blood to molten lava. Owen added his hand to his mouth, easing one finger inside her, and then another with a low growl of possession in the back of his throat as his lips continued to do something entirely magical, bringing Claire close to the brink, but never quite enough - slow agony she couldn’t have enough of. He chuckled when her whimper turned into a hiss of satisfaction and a whispered curse when he found the right spot to touch.  

And then he was gone, cool air moving along her skin as he stood up. She opened her eyes to find him crowding her against the wall, his eyes wild. He knew how to tame his urges, how to hold back, but now there was nothing about him showing any sign of restraint, and she knew he was just as on the verge as she. Claire’s hands were trembling when she reached over to push his boxers down and they pooled at his ankles for a brief moment before Owen stepped out of them, his teeth clenching when her fingers ran along the whole length of him.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, her body throbbing with sweet, pulsing need to feel him inside her. As if sensing her thoughts, Owen slipped his arm into her unbuttoned shirt and around her waist, lifting her effortlessly, holding her against wood panels. Her legs wrapped around his hips, knees gripping his ribs, and he sank into her without a moment of hesitation, watching her eyes go black, pupils blows. She clutched his shoulders and threw her head back when his hips snapped up with a grunt of finally, and then again, and again, breathing hard into her neck until she was coming undone, quaking in his arms, nails scraping over his neck and the sounds she didn’t know she was capable of falling from her lips. But Owen was just getting started, his tempo escalating the tighter her walls clenched around him. And then he, too, was spiralling into pure, blinding delight, teeth dragging along the column of her neck, clutching her tight for fear of not being able to hold on. Perfectly happy.

Claire’s wobbly feet hit the hardwood floor, fingers groping desperately for his slippery skin as she tried not to collapse to the floor, a giggle rising up in her chest. She leaned her forehead against his curve between his neck and shoulder, her breath raw. Swallowed hard, finding his side with her other hand that was still numb with aftershocks.

“I can’t believe you forgot that,” Owen muttered shakily, a huff of hot air grazing the crown of her head.

“We have got to stop doing this,” Claire breathed out into his chest. “There’s a perfectly comfortable bed…” She trailed off, losing the train of her thought. Owen was leaning heavily on the wall, his forehead pressed into the wood panel hear her head and his hand clutching her shirt in a white-knuckled grip. “I’m all in bruises from… from the floors and walls, and…”

He laughed breathlessly and pulled back to kiss her, his mouth sloppy on hers, a palm curled over her cheek. “We’ll try the bed next.”

She scoffed. Kissed him back. Tried to catch his eyes, but the world kept tilting sideways around her, unfocused. “I need a shower,” she uttered at last, which felt like a very ridiculous thing to say, all things considered.  “And so do you.”

---

Watching Owen in the snow was akin witnessing a kid’s first trip to Disneyland – Claire had never seen anyone so excited about it, certainly not in this part of the world. Most people in Wisconsin were sick of it by the beginning of November. However, Owen – who grew up in the south and spent most of his life in the parts of the world that didn’t know what the snow was – seemingly couldn’t have enough of it.

The temperature had dropped overnight, as Claire knew it would, and the raging storm slowed down to a steady snowfall, not as furious but just as unkind as the day before. She watched Owen scoop a handful of it in his bare palm – because it felt more real that way, he’d told her – clumping it into a snowball, his expression practically wondrous. She shivered, chilly even in roughly ten layers of clothes, and stuffed her hands deeper into the pockets of her parka, pulling her head deeper into her neck, wishing she were a turtle.

She’d called Karen after breakfast – which was messy and fun and she wished it never ended – and had her sister confirm what she already knew. The snowplows were doing their best, but for the safety of everyone involved, the roadblock was still very much in place, effectively trapping those who made it to the resorts there and cutting off the rest of the world. Another day maybe, Karen told her. And in all honesty, right now Claire wouldn’t have minded if it was another week.

Gray was devastated though, and she felt a pang of guilt over basically stealing the fun that was meant for him and that she and Owen couldn’t care less about. Still, she allowed him to drag her outside, his excitement infectious and so endearing she couldn’t resist.

Owen walked over to her, the snow squeaking under the soles of his winter boots. In the freezing afternoon, she could hear the white clouds of their breath crystalize between them and the snowflakes melt on her eyelashes. His cheeks were flushed from the cold and his hair sticking out comically from beneath the knitted beanie hat, damp with the thawing snow, his eye bright with glee.

He threw his head back to catch the snow with his mouth, and when he kissed her, holding her close by the ends of her scarf, she could taste on his tongue.

“You’d think that someone who grew up here would have better endurance for this weather,” he noted, a few hours later when they were back in the cabin and the fire was once again crackling merrily in the fireplace, sending bursts of sparkles into the chimney every time the logs shifted, devoured by the force beyond their control.

Stretched on the couch, with Claire sprawled on his chest dressed in nothing but his hoodie, their limbs tanged and her head tucked under his chin, he was running his hand lazily over her hair.

“Why did you think I moved?” Claire grumbled.

There was more to it, of course. A long list of reasons she hadn’t thought of in over a decade. But they all seemed distant and pale now, so faint she couldn’t see them clearly anymore. Like feeling trapped in town that never felt big enough, the desire to start over in a place where no one knew her, or had any idea of what she was like when she was 5 and skinner knees after falling from her bike. Big as it was for Wisconsin, Madison was still a tiny dot on the map of the world that barely knew it even existed. She’d always wanted more, even though this whole past year was a screaming reminder of ‘be careful what you wish for’.  

She tightened her grip on Owen and pressed her face into the crook of his neck – in search for warmth, but even more so to revel in the familiar warmth of his body, the steady rising and falling of his chest beneath her and the scent of his skin. If it was even possible to be homesick for a person, this was what it was, Claire thought. All those months.

He pressed a kiss to her hair, chucking under his breath.

“What?” She asked.

“I’ve always wanted to get you in my bungalow,” he reminded her, and Claire groaned, remembering that – his glaringly inappropriate innuendos that used to make her see red. “Now, this ain’t my bungalow, but it’s close enough.”

She poked him in the ribs. “You wish.”

“Come on. I know you were tempted.”

She craned her neck to look him in the face, mock insulted. “For your information, Mr. Grady…”

Is finger slipped underneath her chin and his mouth snagged hers in a slow, lazy kiss that stole her breath away. “You were saying?”

She swallowed, her gaze dropping from his eyes to his lips. “At least we’ve moved on from all the hard surfaces,” she murmured with a small smile.

Owen wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively, and she rolled her eyes.

“We need a tree,” he said absently when she pulled away with one last peck and settled into his embrace again.

“We’re not staying here for Christmas,” Claire stated firmly, her eyes roaming absently around the room. Her cheek was pressed to his bare skin, listening to the steady beating of his heart. Warm at last after their walk, she felt like she was going to melt right into him. her mind still fuzzy after the night of little sleep and trying to figure out what exactly was happening here.

“Maybe not,” he agreed easily. He tucked his arm under his head, his hand running up and down her back. “But we’ll need one for wherever we’ll be.”

“Owen…. Was there really no one else?”

He sucked in a breath.

“God … No. There couldn’t be.” He brushed her hair from her face, looping around her ear, his eyes following the gentle slope of her forehead all the way down to the delicately upturned tip of her nose, the dusting of the freckles on her cheeks glowing golden in the firelight – all he could see from this angle, drinking her up until the image was seared in his mind. “It’s always been you.”

Her nimble fingers skimmed over his shoulder as she turned his words in her head. This was the hardest thing, Claire had to admit. Not his habits, and not hers; not the fact that he forgot to put the cap on the toothpaste tube sometimes and loved anchovy on pizza or that she worked the nights and weekends, which was driving him nuts.

The truth was that Claire’s trust issues had trust issues. It wasn’t about Owen, not really, but he was caught up stark in the middle of the hurricanes raging inside her. It was easier and far less terrifying to believe that he wouldn’t want to stay rather than to think that he would. Because no one else had before.

“I never wanted you gone,” she murmured into his chest, brushing a kiss to whatever skin she could reach.

“But last night you said--” She felt his muscles tense momentarily, and her fingers flexed, brushing against his skin as if he could disappear.

“I can’t keep losing you, Owen. Every time it happens, it chips away at something inside me. On the island, I’ve lost count of how many times I thought you were dead, and I don’t think I can do it again.” She could feel him with every cell of her body, his confusion resonating with hers. There were not right answers, she was starting to realize. The best you could do was try your best and hope it wasn’t a hit a miss. She’s been trying to compartmentalize her whole life for as long as Claire remembered herself, and not once did it work the way she wanted it to. The only problem with doing the opposite was that it was far more terrifying. “I didn’t want you to prove me right, but I also did because it was the only thing I ever knew.”

“So I failed on all accounts,” he said, which came out as half a question.  

“No.” The resignation in his voice all but broke Claire, her chest tight and the things she was feeling finding it hard to translate into words. “But I needed to figure it out for myself.”

“Have you?”

Claire hesitated. “I’m getting there,” she admitted. Which wasn’t much but it was all she had, and maybe right now it was enough.

He stayed quiet for a while, the silence around them interrupted only by the occasionally by the low hum of the old fridge, and the house creaking around them as the shadows continued to grow, sucking them into purple dusk.

“We’re still gonna need a tree, you know,” Owen spoke just as she stared to think that he must have dozed off. He tilted her face up, kissed her, feeling a small smile that started to blossom on her lips. He ran her thumb over her cheekbone, his gaze fastened on the sea of green in her eyes that was holding him captive.

“That can be arranged.”

---

Gray was the first one to bounce off the porch steps the moment their car pulled into the Mitchels’ driveway in the late afternoon the next day, hatless, his coat unzipped.

“Owen! Aunt Claire!”

Claire stepped into the frigid twilight and ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately.

“Finally,” Karen hummed, lingering just outside the front door in her knitted sweater, arms wrapped around her shoulders for warmth and eyes squinted against the gusts of winter wind.

“I can’t believe you got stuck there,” Gray breathed out, his expression wondrous. Like it was some kind of adventure he couldn’t wait to go on, stained by the fact that he hadn’t been able to enjoy it. “Was it scary?”

“Oh, they were probably too busy to notice,” Zach scoffed, joining them, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his navy-blue jeans, and Claire’s cheeks grew hot. The sex talk with her nephews still somewhat of an uncharted territory.

“What do you know?” Gray rolled his eyes. Then looked up at Claire. “You’re staying for Christmas, right, Aunt Claire? You can’t leave now, you just got here.”

She turned to Owen, one eyebrow arched curiously. He smirked, holding her gaze for an extra moment as she responded to her nephew, “I believe we could pencil you in.”

“So, are you an Owen okay?” Gray asked quietly as she stirred him toward the porch where Karen was ushering Zach inside and telling Gray to either zip up the coat properly or get into the house ’this very moment’.

Arms wrapped around the boy’s shoulders, she looked at him quizzically. “Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “You seemed… weird when you first came on Friday,” he said. “I thought you were fighting.”

Claire glanced over her shoulder at Owen who was following them up the path, his bag slung over his shoulder and her suitcase in his hand. “We’re good,” she assured him when Owen caught her looking. “I promise.” And then, “You want to go get the tree tomorrow?”

The end

[arabellaflynn]

Working with a load of lifetime artists over the past few years has been enlightening. I didn't have much chance to swim around in a community like this in Arizona; I'm sure it existed, and my endless writing and play-by-post RPing might have even qualified me to be a part of it, but I never really found them. I probably would have been too apprehensive to talk to them in any case. Other people don't generally scare me, but I do go to some lengths not to scare them. One of the flamencas was talking to me at the desk the other day, about the passion of Persian mythology and what I thought of the flamenco showcase I worked a few weeks ago. It was interesting to hear the parallels she drew between her own native culture and the Spanish dance she'd learned. Persian poetry, it turns out, tends to be incomprehensible to Westerners because it draws heavily on the persistent wanting of eros without necessarily being what we think of as erotic. Love is less sweet without an element of longing, and does not have to be centered on a sexual partner, or even any specific person. She told me of one particular poem, written by a man about a (male) (platonic) friend, simply as an ode to what a wonderful person he was and how wonderful it was that such a person existed. And linked me to a famous song about how the singer was in love with the feeling of love itself, and the joy of pondering the many unanswerable questions of life. Los flamencos have, at least within their art, the concept of duende. Wikipedia will give you a tremendously academic definition, and it's accurate about to the extent that it's accurate to describe a well-made cheesecake as 'a dairy-based food item'. What duende actually refers to is that feeling of falling into sync with some piece of art or performance, somewhere between a quiet comfortable 'click' or a galloping 'kapow!', where you realize that you get what is going on, and are moved to follow. The flamencos use it especially to describe what happens when a dancer 'tunes in' to the person who is singing their music, and understands their underlying habits and patterns well enough that even an improvisational piece seems to follow naturally. Psychologically, it's roughly equivalent to two (or more) people entering to a mutually-dependent state of flow for the duration of a performance. It occurred to me that the Iranian dancer I was talking to was following the model of Persian longing-love in her pursuit of duende. And also that it accidentally explained something I've been turning over in my own head for weeks now. I've mentioned that ye ballroom dance instructor offered to give me lessons. It struck me as something personal and specific in some way that I couldn't articulate without feeling I sounded like a 12-year-old doodling hearts in the back of my Trapper Keeper, which was entirely the wrong mood for whatever it was I was trying to get a grip on. I could not for the life of me figure out what he was trying to get out of me. Nine times out of ten, that kind of persistent wants my attention means someone has a smashing great crush, but I operate on the assumption that any man who spends as much time in a dance studio as I do is very, very gay until told otherwise. (It's not always right, and may in fact not be right here either, but the demographics are such that it's easier to start there and take corrections than the other way around.) A minimum of one of these postulates had to be wrong, and I could not work out which one(s) it was. I gave him the opportunity to politely back out of teaching me himself, in case he was just preaching the wonders of ballroom and had let his mouth run away with him; no, apparently he didn't, and doesn't. I also explained my issues with proprioception, and that my attempt at taking a salsa class had ended in disaster, because -- and I quote myself here -- "I really don't like making awkward small talk with strangers all up in my airspace." I warned him that the way my brain codebreaks things meant that whatever I learned was likely to be very partner-specific -- if he taught me how to waltz, I probably wouldn't learn how to waltz with 'other people' so much as I'd learn how to waltz with him. He spent all of this looking at me very earnestly, wearing an expression that I've since come to interpret as, "...well, yes...?" I think I accidentally grokked something there without being aware of it. I went through that conversation assuming that the offer was 'hey, I have this fun skill, I'll teach it to you and then we can both do fun things'. It does indeed sound like a fun skill to have, and I have in fact always been slightly sad that I'm not Ginger Rogers. I wasn't going to inquire about it, because this is the sort of thing he does to pay his rent, and I don't ask people to work for free. (I know for a fact that I'm not the only person he's made that offer to, but the list is very short. And he is openly attached to the people on it: One of the things he does in the office is coordinate the shows I manage house for, and I am now on the roster for everything he works on.) But both the offer of lessons and the persistent wants my attention make more sense if giving me some basic skills is more of a means to an end: If what he wants, as an artist, is to see whether interesting things happen when he dances with me. I threw his name into Google, because I'm not an idiot, and when someone offers me free dance lessons I want to see what all I can absorb from it. I stay out of personal stuff, but the nice thing about dealing with someone who has a championship title is that competitions are public, and YouTube is forever. Unbelievably colossal skill gap aside, it turns out that stylistically, I fit in rather well with the people he's picked as competitive partners. They're all very pretty, very charismatic, and very eclectic. 'Steal from everyone' is my motto, and apparently it was all of theirs, too. I was especially entertained by the one who figured out how to do camel spins on a dance floor, during a... foxtrot? That might have been foxtrot. Haven't a fucking clue! I have no idea how he would have known that, since he's never seen me do any dancing of substance, but I suppose if that's the kind of human you investigate for the possibility of duende, you would learn how to spot them. I picked tango, if any of you were wondering. The footwork tends to be very close, inside a small bounding box, which gives me fewer chances to lose track of my own feet. And the flourishes are crazy. Lots of deep lunges, high kicks, and other things that emphasize flexibility, especially in the back and hips. I'm going to be awful at negotiating space with a partner, at least at first, but getting my foot up over my head? Hell, I can do that. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2rSb0Wp via IFTTT -------------------- Enjoy my writing? Consider becoming a Patron, subscribing via Kindle, or just toss a little something in my tip jar. Thanks!

[loudhaoleinatie]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER.

BASICS

NAME: Lindy

PRONOUNS: She/her

SEXUALITY: Pansexual (Up until recently I described myself as bisexual, but when I discovered what how pan was defined, I realised it fit me a lot better in terms of how I feel/love)

TAKEN OR SINGLE: Taken. Been with Him Indoors for over 10 years, married since August 2016.

THREE FACTS:

I am a freelance photographer and graphic artist, though I haven’t done much of the latter lately. Photography is my passion, and I enjoy taking and editing photos of everything I can. When I go on holidays, I tend to experience most of it through one lens or another, but that doesn’t reduce the fun I have. I love capturing memories, as well as being artistic with them.

I have suffered from anxiety and depression on and off for around 7-8 years (when I was diagnosed) but likely longer un-diagnosed. It made my life hell for quite a while, and was triggered by a whole bunch of stuff going wrong in succession in my life. My husband (then, boyfriend) stood by my side through everything even though I did my very best to push him away, and I am forever grateful for that.

I am looking forward to the future - a positive future filled with fun and laughter and possibilities, as well as more trials and tribulations. It’s weird to think that almost a decade ago I was considering ending my life, because if I had then I wouldn’t have the wonderful partner, friends, and future I have today. I’m so glad I gave myself a second chance.

2. EXPERIENCE

HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): RP experience: I actually had to check with @gateruner on this one, because it feels like ages ago and yet no time at all. We’re guessing roughly 7 months lol. I was inspired by her portrayal of Kono Kalakaua and we chatted for a little bit before I decided to bite the bullet and create loudhaoleinatie - I haven’t looked back! I’ve had so much fun worked with her, and all my other RP partners!

Fanfiction experience: I’ve been writing since September 2015 (I went back through Ao3 to check the logs, lol) and it’s all been Hawaii Five-0. I started out absolutely terrified of anything smut-related, and... now look at me! Lol!

PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: Tumblr for RP’ing, Ao3 and fanfiction.net for fics.

BEST EXPERIENCE: Working with my Kono from day one, definitely. We click so well, and seem to predict one another’s moves and characters so easily. It’s really easy to plan ahead, and we both get equally excited about our babies. I was so glad to find a fellow Surf n Turfer who shared my love for Danny/Kono! She was also instrumental in getting me into RPing and making sure I wasn’t a massive disaster/nuisance to anyone else! :D Also working with my Steves, my Chin and my Harris - you are all fantastic, and make every day an experience!

3. MUSE PREFERENCES

FEMALE OR MALE: Danny is my only muse right now - there is something about him that speaks to me, but it’s not about gender as such. I think his character in female form would mesh with me in a similar way. It does help, however, that he is brought to life on screen by the delicious and irresistable Scott Caan... I mean... look at him!

MULTI OR SINGLE: Single-muse, certainly for now. I like to concentrate on my boy. I am most certainly a multi-shipper though, and I have several regular threads for Danny’s vast collection of relationships! (Each member of the team, some twice, plus an OC... you naughty, smutty boy!)

4. WRITING PREFERENCES

FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: Smut, angst, fluff - in that order. I like them all, but smut seems to be where my talent lies, and angst is always great (and can often lead to more smut). I do also like fluff, but it’s probably my least-comfortable area of the three.

PLOTS OR MEMES: Both. It’s so much fun to plot, but doing little side memes and short mini-plots can help spark the imagination and ensure your main plot doesn’t get boring or sidetracked.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: Both, again. Depending on what’s going on in the plot, or what’s going on in real life, one might be more fitting that the other.

BEST TIME TO WRITE: I do a lot of my writing on the bus to/from work in the mornings or afternoons, and on my breaks I can go and hide out in the canteen in a dark corner. I have also been known to wake up in the middle of the night to jot down ideas/sentences/dialogue.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): In a few ways, yes. I like to think I am as passionate and loyal as Danny, and I am certainly as protective, and I hate it when my friends are upset. He is deeply affected by the people he lets into his life, and finds it hard to trust and love... but when he does, he does with all his heart. That certainly resonates with me. I am also just as imperfect and faulted as he is, and prone to taking vengeance and being petty or spiteful (Side note: someone once stole some of my nice, expensive coffee of of the jar I accidentally left on the side in the kitchen at work, so the next day I left an identical jar in there filled with a mix of crap coffee and beef gravy granules... the thief struck again, and I had my revenge! Petty? Yes. Satisfying? Damn right. Danny-like? Hahaha yes, definitely!)

Tagged by: the fabulous @konokalakaua50 and the stunning @itsxharris

Tagging: @ltchinhokellyfive-0 @stevemcgarrettrp @supersealmcg and anyone else who wants to have a go!

[alchimiewritings-blog]

Bending Over Backwards

Castiel has never been a very impulsive man by any means. He enjoys his quiet life of following a pretty standard routine, and anything out of the ordinary scope of activities often stresses him the fuck out. He goes to work at the office, comes home, walks and feeds his dog, makes a half-assed attempt at his own dinner, watches whatever is the new critically acclaimed show of the season, and then goes to bed by 11. 

Occasionally he will go out and half one, perhaps two, drinks with old friends or colleagues if he is in the right mood, and every other weekend he and his brothers pay their mother a visit, but other than that he keeps the same monotonous schedule.

Along with his steady life style, Castiel often does not try new things or go out of his comfort zone. He is also usually a very honest man. Usually.

Sam Winchester moved in to Castiel’s apartment building just a couple weeks ago. The two have seen each other only for small bursts—little hellos in the hallway, brief conversation while checking their mail at the same time, catching sight of one another as they both walk their dogs. While their contact is minimal, it does not change the fact that Castiel has feelings for this tall, dark, and handsome man that could only be compared to a school boy’s crush. He looks forward eagerly to these minor interactions each day, constantly hoping any time he’s outside of his own apartment that he spots Sam.

Castiel thinks of a thousand ways to approach the man in more than just a neighborly manner, but he has never had much talent with being suave. In fact, it had been a little while since he had asked anyone out, let alone someone that. well, pretty. He isn’t particularly good at it, to say the very least.

This is proven even further the day when they finally had their first longer interaction.

While walking their dogs, the two ended up on the same path at roughly the same pace (by pure coincidence, of course), so they struck up conversation. It began with the same old simple small talk—weather, dogs, neighborly gossip—before evolving into slightly deeper conversation.

“So, Cas, what do you do?”

What does Cas do? It took the man a little too long before he responded. “I work downtown. A law firm, but not much exciting. It’s very dull. Not a lot to say.” There was an awkward pause before Castiel spoke up again, remembering how conversations work. “What do you do?”

“I work as a personal trainer mostly, but I teach a lot of classes at the park district, too. Kickboxing, pilates, yoga—basically  most things like that.”

“I love yoga.”

Wait, what?

No, no he does not love yoga. Castiel has probably never even used the word yoga. If not for the fact that he has seen it on TV, Castiel would have no idea what yoga even was.

Sam looked over at Castiel, looking slightly surprised. “Really?”

“Absolutely. Definitely. I—I have been doing it for years.”

“You should come by then. I would love if you came to one of my classes. Actually, if you want, this Saturday afternoon I’m offering a free one for beginners. It’s probably going to be a little boring for you, but I’m sure it will still be fun.” Sam shrugged. “If you’re interested or whatever.”

“Of course,” Castiel said. “I’ll be there.”

That travesty happened on Wednesday. Castiel probably should have attempted to look up something on yoga, but suddenly Saturday came along with no preparation. Hell, Cas could barely find something suitable to wear. What does one wear for yoga? Yoga pants were probably an obvious answer, but Castiel could really say that he owned any. At the very bottom of his closet, he found some old running shoes and some clothes that could vaguely be described as workout garments. They were a little too loose, but surely looser would not be a problem when it came to yoga, right?

The time came. Castiel cursed himself and his stupid mouth the whole way there, but still he could not back out of it. What other shot did he have to strike up something with Sam? Destiny had lead him her. Surely destiny would lead him through.

It didn’t.

The first five or ten minutes were basic enough. A little uncomfortable on Cas’s muscles which hadn’t seen much action in far too long, but for a while he thought he could get through it without a problem. Apparently that was just the “warm-up” because suddenly Sam was calling out strange phrases to the class that Castiel had never even heard before. Castiel’s cheeks burned as he felt Sam’s gaze on him occasionallywhiel he failed at contorting his body in the same ways as the rest of the class. Castiel could not even touch his toes, how would he ever be able to do hold whatever warrior position for five breaths before turning into a tree and then face downward like apparently a dog does?

Halfway through the class, while attempting whatever strange tangle of limbs Sam was displaying, Castiel lost his balance completely and fell over onto his side. A couple of ladies on the other side of the room snickered as he picked himself up slowly, staring down intently at the mat below him. For the rest of the hour, Castiel tried his hardest to avoid eye contact with Sam. Once class was over, he left immediately, too embarrassed to confront his teacher.

The rest of the weekend was spent locked up in his apartment, avoiding any and all signs of Sam. Maybe he’d get lucky and Sam would move unexpectedly. Maybe he’d get lucky and just fall in a coma for a year or two. Anything to avoid seeing Sam and living up to his embarrassment.

Monday night he came back from work to see a note tapped to his mailbox downstairs. Glancing around to check that no one was there, he opened it up cautiously and read the message scribbled in blue ink.

“Castiel,

Next time you want a guy’s number, it’ll be a lot less painful to just ask.

—Sam”

Underneath his name were seven digits.

[theconservativebrief]

Some time ago, I found myself in need of a vacation read. I am a book critic, so this was an easily solved problem: I perused the enormous pile of books on my desk that had been sent to me by publishers, found a galley that didn’t look too dark or esoteric, and set out for the beach with it. Bookburners, it was called.

Many pages later, I put down the book in a state of deep confusion. I wasn’t confused by the plot, which was deeply readable: It was the story of a black ops team working on behalf of the Vatican to exorcise demons from books, and it followed the team all over the world as they traveled to one beautiful city after another to kick demon butt.

Nor was I confused by the writing, which was zippy and fun, if oddly variable from chapter to chapter.

But I couldn’t make heads or tails of the structure.

Each chapter of Bookburners was a discrete unit, with its own three-act structure and a clear ending, but I couldn’t call the book a series of vignettes, exactly; there was too much of a through-line for that. There was a twist toward the end that arrived earlier than it would have in a traditional novel; it felt like the twist that typically comes four episodes before the end of a 22-episode season of television. (Think Tara dying and Willow turning evil in the 19th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season, as opposed to the big reveal that traditionally comes in the penultimate chapter of every Harry Potter book.) In fact, the whole thing felt kind of like a TV show, just in text form.

But it was a book! Why, I wondered, would you structure a book like a season of television? It made no sense! The flow was disrupted; Bookburners felt like a story that did not want to be swallowed whole but rather read in discrete bites, one after another. I couldn’t lie on the beach and lose myself in it because it actively did not want me to do so.

Then I looked up Bookburners online, and everything became clear.

Bookburners was one of the first works published by Serial Box, a service that aims to become the HBO of serialized fiction; I was reading a novel/TV show hybrid, a book that was designed to read like a season of television. Its very existence displayed a major reversal of how we’ve traditionally thought about these two media: TV once aspired to be called “novelistic,” but now, in an age in which TV is increasingly described as “better than books,” here was a book built to act like a TV show.

“I need to understand everything about this,” I thought to myself, and made some calls to Serial Box.

Over a series of conversations, I was introduced to a new way of thinking about written narrative fiction that pulls heavily from the way we think about TV in 2018, and that seeks to lend the ever-endangered medium of the book some of TV’s bright Golden Age sheen. Here’s how you try to create a new kind of written fiction for the age of Peak TV.

Serial Box

Serial Box’s serials are built roughly on the TV show model. Like most TV shows, each title has a writers’ room, with one or two showrunners leading the charge. The showrunners develop a Bible that contains all of the necessary information and backstory for the world and the characters, and the writers’ room works together to break down each “season” into episodic chunks that are helmed by individual writers.

Every week, Serial Box publishes a chapter-length episode for its active serials. (Just like a TV show, each serial goes on hiatus for part of the year.) You can buy chapters on their own ($1.99 each), buy a season pass that gives you access to one season of a specific serial ($16.99 to $22.99 depending on the length of the season), or subscribe to a whole serial ($1.59 per episode no matter how many seasons or episodes are ultimately produced). You can read episodes via the Serial Box app, on the Serial Box website, or download them to one of your own devices.

Each episode is designed to take 40 minutes to read, so that you can finish one during the average two-way commute. Once a “season” of any given story is complete, after 10 to 16 episodes, it is bound together into a book, the way an arc of a comic book is bound together and sold as a graphic novel. In the case of Bookburners, the bound version of season one was what had ended up in my galley pile.

Serial Box

Serial Box was founded by Julian Yap, a former lawyer for the Department of Justice, and Molly Barton, who used to oversee Penguin Random House’s global ebook strategy. It emerged in part out of a desire to problem-solve for writers.

For Barton, serialized fiction seemed like the best solution to a very basic problem she encountered again and again among authors she worked with: “One of the ways popular authors outgrow their following is having trouble consistently coming back with new books on a regular schedule,” she told me over the phone. “But it’s hard to write great fiction on a regular schedule.”

With serialized fiction written by a TV-style writers’ room, the requirement to produce great fiction gets delegated. It becomes easier to put everything together. “You each write about 30,000 to 40,000 words [over a season], and altogether you end up with a book of about 120,000 words,” explains Bookburners showrunner Max Gladstone.

For readers, the pitch is that Serial Box marries the best of two media: “Serial Box brings everything that’s awesome about TV (easily digestible episodes, team-written, new content every week) to what was already cool about books (well-crafted stories, talented authors, enjoyable anywhere),” promises the website.

“I was aware that for many people, reading a book can feel rather slow and daunting compared to other media forms at this point. It’s harder to fit into your life,” says Barton. “Let’s go back to the Dickens model. Let’s be Shonda Rhimes for books, and harness the power of telling a little bit of the story each week, and really take pleasure in consuming the story bit and bit, and being able to switch seamlessly from reading to audio.” (Serial Box also publishes its serials in audiobook form.)

But there’s a danger that the television-style writers’ room that makes Serial Box an attractive sell to writers might dilute the sell to readers; namely, that books come with distinctive voices from authors they already know and love.

In a Serial Box serial, each episode is written by a different author, and the author’s narrative voice is responsible for everything: not just the dialogue, but also details about what the world and the clothes look like and what the reader can “see” — details that, onscreen, would be handled by set-dressers and costumers and directors. Serialized books don’t have the same crew around from week to week providing a consistent aesthetic, the way that TV shows do; in effect, you are getting not just a new writer but also a new director and art department and actors and editors every single episode.

So to keep a serial from getting jarringly inconsistent each week, the writers’ room has to develop a voice. But to keep the voice compelling, each writer has to maintain a certain amount of individuality.

“There’s a balance to be struck there, always,” says Gladstone. “On the one hand, you probably don’t want one episode of a series to feel like it was written by Virginia Woolf and another episode to feel like it was written by Joyce Carol Oates. But if you have two authors who have markedly different styles, there’s enormous artistic potential in how the two voices talk to each other.”

“In the end we decided: Try to sound as much alike as possible, but don’t go crazy,” says Ellen Kushner, author of the beloved Riverside series of novels and the showrunner for Tremontaine, a Serial Box prequel to her Riverside books.

She says she spent a lot of the first season of Tremontaine revising each chapter to make the voice consistent (“The secret sauce is me,” she admits), but now that Tremontaine is four seasons in, she finds that her team has developed a house voice that it can maintain on its own.

The ideal balance between authorial voices depends on what episodic structure any given serial wants to take on. One like Tremontaine is almost purely novelistic in its sensibility and voices — it sprawls like a TV season, but you can binge-read it like a particularly long fantasy epic. In part, that’s because it is Kushner’s brainchild. “I don’t really watch TV,” she says. “I don’t know that aesthetic.”

Kushner brought in other writers to function as her “TV brain,” but the idea of structuring each chapter like an episode of television was foreign to her. Instead, she turned to the model of the short story. “When I wrote episode 1×01, it was great!” she says. “Everyone came back and was like, ‘This is the first chapter of a novel.’ And I was like, ‘So?’ And they were like, ‘Where is the tension?’ So each episode,” she concludes, “has to be treated as a genuine short story.”

That’s part of why the Tremontaine writers’ room had to develop a consistent voice under Kushner’s supervision: There isn’t much space, in a series of connected short stories, for the narrator’s voice to veer around.

But Bookburners is what Gladstone describes as “a monster-of-the-week serial” in the mode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files, “where every week there’s some core supernatural issue to be resolved.” Within the monster-of-the-week format, there’s more leeway to swing between tones and voices from episode to episode.

Gladstone’s other serial, The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, has more of a prestige drama structure, like Breaking Bad: “There’s forward momentum,” Gladstone says, “but each episode will raise and answer its own questions.” Thus, the voice needs to be tighter and more consistent.

Tremontaine is now entering its fourth and final season, and Bookburners is in its third. In the meantime, Serial Box has begun to branch out into nonfiction with serials like 1776, a collaboration with the Associated Press. It currently has 16 serials in total, all of which are actively publishing or soon will be.

The overall approach seems a lot more logical and reasonable to me now than it did when I opened up the first season of Bookbinders without any idea of what I was looking at and tried to read it like a novel — but I also haven’t been able to read most of Serial Box’s serials all in one go. They seem to resist binge-reading.

But if the company is successful in its goal to become the HBO of serialized fiction, if serials become the go-to thing people read on their commutes and lunch breaks and at night before they fall asleep — if they are successful at flooding the market in five or 10 years, will the structure of that Bookburners galley still feel so intuitively strange to me? Or will it simply feel like the way we read now, and perhaps the way we will read for years in the future?

Original Source -> Meet a new kind of book, designed for the age of Peak TV

via The Conservative Brief

[meditationklaus]

I’m Jess Rose, And This Is How I Yoga

Jess Rose is a world-traveling, adventure-seeking yogi who teaches alignment-based vinyasa flow at international workshops and retreats, and teaches online to thousands of students with her 30 Days of Yoga Challenge and other programs on DOYOUYOGA.

Currently dividing her time between Mexico, the U.S., and Germany, Jess loves to travel the world to teach, write, and find inspiration in both the outer and inner worlds she finds herself in.

Name: Jess Rose Occupation: Explorer, Sloth, International Yoga Teacher Location: Anywhere and everywhere Favorite yoga style: Alignment-based vinyasa flow and hatha Favorite yoga pose: Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose) Yoga is… fun, and challenging, and confrontational, and therapeutic. It has the power to bring about the deepest feelings of peace in me, or spark my passion and drive…it just depends on the day and the practice. No matter what, yoga is a direct portal to a deep relationship with the self, learning to observe and transform how we react to challenges, finding the peacefulness at the very pit out our beings, and tapping into who we really are under all the layers of how we present ourselves.

Credit: Dagan Beach

What Do You Love Most About Yoga?

I love how versatile yoga can be, so that I can change up my practice everyday to fit exactly what my body or heart is asking for. It doesn’t take on the weight of being a chore, like something you force yourself to do and is exactly the same everyday. You can mix and match and get creative with your practice—you can just lie on the floor in sweatpants and breathe mindfully, you can chant OM 108 times under your breath in the line at the bank, read the Gita, or you can listen to a yoga podcast with your legs up the wall.

Yoga is so all-encompassing when you think of it as an amalgamation of physical practice, breath work, meditation, thousands of years of philosophy, and a path to a better, happier life. There is always some aspect of yoga that I am excited to explore any given day, and yoga and I have had a very long, interesting evolution together without the flame ever going out.

How Has Yoga Changed Your Life, Personality And Physique?

Yoga has had huge effects on my life…where to start? A couple things happened that made me realize just how much yoga was seeping into my veins while I was still pretty new to it. The first was being in a plane that got struck by lightning and the power going out.

When it happened, I had my mala beads in my hand and was using them to meditate. The plane went dark and we were cruising without power, people were screaming…it was pure chaos. I made the decision to keep meditating and not to freak out. I had no control over anything anyway, so I wanted to die peacefully.

I know that sounds really intense, but I felt a huge swell of tranquility wash over me—it was surprising. Ever since then, I try to always choose surrender and peace over fear-based action or panic.

The second thing I noticed, is that I will always skip going out and partying with my friends when there is a yoga class the next morning that I absolutely don’t want to miss. My social life has suffered immeasurably since becoming a yogi! But I’m much happier and healthier this way, so no regrets at all. And, I’ve made a whole new group of like-minded friends who also think that going to bed at 9:30 to be fit for yoga in the morning is the cool thing to do, haha!

Physically, I’m a lot stronger than I used to be, which has helped me in the ways of carrying my luggage or pushing cars that are stuck in the sand, for example. But, more seriously, yoga has taught me how to move better. I feel more graceful, much more aware of my body in space, and totally comfortable with my body in all of its beauty and perfect imperfections.

Credit: Chris Hannant

What Everyday Things Did You Get Better At Because Of Yoga?

I’m very proud of the fact that I can now sit still for over an hour without freaking out. I don’t know if it’s because the flexibility let me be more physically comfortable, or if mentally, I can accept stillness and being present and content with where I’m at and what I’m doing.

So now I can also peacefully sit through movies, which was never an option before, or enjoy a long meal without feeling compelled to get up and rush to the next thing. It’s slowed down my life and allowed me to be present and really appreciate what I’m doing in every single moment, and that is incredibly life-changing.

How Do You Keep Your Yoga Practice Interesting And Challenging?

On days when I’m not in the mood for a strong physical practice, I study philosophy or biomechanics or practice pranayama, and find the other limbs of yoga just as interesting and challenging as asana. But as far as my physical practice, there are always poses that scare me in a good way and teach me new things about my mental flexibility much more than my physical abilities.

Certain inversions still intimidate me, and I love to throw them in just to see how I react. Being a yogi who frequently does asana on camera has also upped my game and made it possible for me to explore poses I wouldn’t otherwise have had the drive to try on my own. This is why, when I meet students who have done beautiful inversions with me, alone in their home with no external forces cheering them on, I am so absolutely amazed and inspired.

What Book, Website Or Person Inspires You?

I’m really inspired by Buddhist philosophy, in particular Alan Watts and Pema Chödrön, for their graspable ways of bringing mindfulness and understanding to my frenzied and confused human existence.

I seem to repeatedly find myself in some sort of mental or emotional exhaustion revolving around love, work, or an existential crisis of some kind, so the ideas of impermanence and non-attachment always help me get myself back on track. I also love bringing a philosophical or psychological perspective into my yoga classes from time to time, and the Buddhist ideas on fear, power, surrender, change, and non-attachment seem to resonate powerfully with me and my students as well.

Which Yoga Pose Challenges You the Most?

Hands down, standing split. I really, really struggle with this one! I think it’s because I consider myself to be pretty flexible and pretty strong, but in this case, the parts do not equal the whole. I can do the splits on the ground, but there’s something about that deep forward fold, and the glute and hamstring power to lift the top leg, that my body has not been able to unravel.

So even after years of practice and many, many attempts, I often feel like a chunk of rigid concrete block with a very stern-looking human head on one end and a wobbly twig of a leg aimlessly drifting in space on the other end.

Credit: Chris Hannant

What are Your Go-To Yoga Poses When You’re Stressed or In Need of an Energy Boost?

When I’m stressed, Supta Baddha Konasana is my best remedy. Something about opening the hips softens my mental state, and if I prop my heart up on a block or a bolster, my chest can really expand to allow my breath to deepen and slow down.

For energy, inversions are the way to go. If I’m really low on energy, then headstand is great, but if I can muster the strength, a long handstand at the wall gets my blood pumping, sends fresh oxygen to tired cells, and gives me a little jolt of adrenaline to get me buzzed and reinvigorated.

What Do You Listen To When You Practice Yoga?

For more dynamic flow practices, I really like to move to Nu, Nicolas Jaar, D.Lissvik, and Earthrise Sound System. I like eastern-inspired instrumentation with a slow, pulsing beat in the background to give a bit of a mystical sensuality to my practice.

For yin or restorative practices, I really love to put on Masood Ali Khan, Jane Winther, and Steve Ross. I have pretty eclectic musical tastes when it comes to my yoga playlists, but most important for me, is no vocals. Or, if there are vocals, they are either so reverb-y that they are just dreamy and incomprehensible, or in Sanskrit or a language that neither I nor my students speak.

I’ve been annoyed by lyrics and pop songs too many times in yoga classes—even singer/songwriter music made by yogis is too much for me on the mat. I love having my yoga practice be a time to focus on my breath and my body, not hear some dude whining about his lovelife, or talk about how we are all made of stars and fairy-dust or something like that, while I’m trying to guide myself into a standing split!

What’s The Best Advice You’ve Ever Received?

I got this advice from a friend when I was living in France, and it has stuck with me for over a decade: “Reculer pour mieux sauter.” It roughly translates to, ‘step back, in order to better jump forward’. It’s been a personal mantra of mine ever since it was told to me.

I have the very reptilian-brain tendency to go into fast-acting fight mode when I feel threatened or uncomfortable, and this saying reminds me to give myself some space before I make a move. I also apply this advice to my yoga practice by doing plenty of yin and restorative sessions in between strong vinyasa days. This stepping back and slowing down to let my body unwind and re-pattern actually helps it to bounce back stronger and wiser than before.

What’s Your #1 Piece of Advice for Those Just Starting Their Yoga Practice?

Find your teacher! I have been incredibly lucky with my teachers over the years, but I’ve also been to a few classes where I felt totally uninspired (and even been injured!) by an inexperienced teacher. It doesn’t matter whether they’re online or in-person, shop around until you find someone you relate to, who makes you feel not just safe and supported, but also, motivated and empowered.

Without my teachers, I might have dropped my yoga practice years ago and never looked back. It’s all about keeping your focus, being constantly inspired, and being encouraged to keep learning and evolving, and the best teachers are the ones who meet all of these criteria for you.

Website: jessrose.yoga Facebook: JessRoseYoga Instagram: @jessroseyoga Twitter: jessroseyoga

The post I’m Jess Rose, And This Is How I Yoga appeared first on DOYOUYOGA.COM.

[footballleague0]

Welcome to the era of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 30-home-run hitter

If I could put one memento from this home run era into the time capsule, it would be Rougned Odor’s line from June 30.

Odor, the Texas Rangers’ second baseman and No. 5 hitter that day, homered in the fourth inning with a man on base. It was his 13th long ball of the year, which used to be a lot. In 1988, the most formative year of my own baseball fandom, 13 home runs would have led American League second basemen for the entire season. Homers might not be as rare as they used to be, but they’re still the most valuable thing Odor could have done 13 times.

In that game, he also grounded into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded, flied out, popped out and struck out. According to run-expectancy estimates, Odor’s bat actually cost the Rangers runs on a day he hit a two-run homer. This was a very Rougned Odor accomplishment: He closed June with a .207/.244/.376 slash line. He had been baseball’s second-worst-hitting second baseman.

Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton says 61 is still the “legitimate” mark for long-ball greatness. As he takes aim at an asterisk-free 62, the true MLB record for round-trippers remains in the eye of the beholder.

Baseball’s all-time home run king hit his last round-tripper 10 years ago this week in Denver. How he came to hit it — and what happened to the ball — tells us so much about a tarnished and often forgettable record.

For 2 minutes, 32 seconds of pure chaos, a high school state championship game in Rhode Island entered a parallel universe — and unleashed the longest hardball stalemate of all time.

2 Related

Things haven’t gotten much better or — if you’re counting dingers — much worse. Depending on your filters, Odor has demolished previous Worst Season With Most Homers fun facts. Before this season, no hitter had hit more than 26 homers with an OPS+ lower than 80 (which is to say, an OPS lower than 80 percent of the league’s average). Odor has already hit 29 homers, with an OPS+ of 67. He has actually been worse than that, since OPS undervalues OBP, and Odor seems to also undervalue OBP. His .208/.251/.405 line through Sunday, adjusted for his hitter-friendly ballpark, makes him the third-worst qualified hitter in baseball, according to FanGraphs. Eight starting pitchers have outhit him.

A rising home run tide tends to lift all boats, but a few archetypes become most emblematic of each era. In the live-ball 1920s, it was the superstars redefining offensive limits; in the steroids-fueled 1990s, it was the middle infielders with suddenly thick forearms doubling their career highs; in the analytics era of the mid-2000s, it was the super-patient plodders with terrible defense but keen eyes. This era’s avatar: the home run hitter who is terrible.

Odor — who might not actually be terrible but definitely has been this year — is my favorite example. There’s Mike Napoli, who has hit 29 home runs while batting .193/.285/.428. Maikel Franco has hit 20 homers with a .233/.286/.402 slash line. His teammate Tommy Joseph: 21 homers, .236/.287/.427. Matt Davidson: 25 homers, .223/.267/.462. Albert Pujols, arguably the worst everyday player in baseball this year, has hit 22 homers.

There is really no precedent for this routine merger of home runs and offensive incompetence. Three players come closest: In 1983, Tony Armas hit 36 homers with a .218/.254/.453 line. In 1986, Dave Kingman hit 35 homers with a .210/.255/.431 line. In 2003, Tony Batista hit 26 bombs and .235/.270/.393. The first two seasons came in low-offense eras, mitigating those OBPs somewhat. The last one was probably the most Rougned Odor season before Rougned Odor; Batista had a 73 OPS+.

But if seasons such as Odor’s have some precedent, the prevalence of them in the past two years is striking and makes for a fun game of Try Telling Somebody From 1988 That. …

Try telling somebody from 1988 that the guy who led the National League in home runs (Chris Carter, 41 with Milwaukee in 2016) wouldn’t have a starting job the next Opening Day.

Try telling somebody from 1988 that a hitter with 25 home runs in 112 games (Ryan Howard) would go unsigned as a free agent and end up in Triple-A.

Try telling somebody from 1988 that an infielder with 34 homers in 142 career games, including 14 in just 165 at-bats this year, would be demoted to the minors by a fourth-place team and not called up again, not even in September. That’s Ryan Schimpf, who managed those 14 home runs while hitting just two doubles.

Or try telling somebody from 1988 that a good defensive second baseman with 30-plus home runs wouldn’t be named on a single MVP ballot or make the All-Star team. Since 1925, only 35 second basemen have hit 30 home runs. Last year, Odor joined Dan Uggla as the only ones to get neither an All-Star selection nor an MVP vote. And this year’s version of Odor is far worse than last year’s. The worst of those 35 second-base seasons produced 1.6 WAR, and the median 30-HR second baseman produced 5.9 WAR. Odor’s WAR this year is -0.2.

Here’s another way to look at it: If you were to take away Odor’s home runs, his batting line would be .166/.214/.212. If you were to do that for every hitter, every season since 1988, Odor would have the 14th-worst OPS by any player with 300 plate appearances in three decades.

He has company. Napoli this year is fifth-worst, Luis Valbuena and Davidson are 11th- and 12th-worst, Austin Hedges is 18th-worst, and Brandon Moss is 27th-worst. Six of the 30 worst non-HR-production seasons of the past 30 years happened this year. (Ryan Howard, last year, would have the very worst.)

Of course, we don’t take away their homers, which brings up the question of whether Odor’s absolute inability to do anything but homer is an indictment of those homers or a vindication of them. Twenty-nine of his plate appearances have single-handedly kept him in the majors. Those 29 plate appearances have been enough to keep him in the lineup every day — he leads the American League in games played — and presumably make him more valuable to the Rangers than any other option they have. Those 29 plate appearances are carrying a lot of weight and perhaps a career.

Hedges is the strongest example of this position. Hedges is an elite defensive catcher whose bat was questionable for most of his minor league career. He hit .225/.272/.314 in Double-A, then .168/.215/.248 in 56 games in his rookie season. “Although defense will always be Hedges’ calling card and should keep him around for a long time, he’ll need to start hitting if he’s to become more Brad Ausmus than Jeff Mathis,” Baseball Prospectus wrote in its 2016 preseason annual.

He has, and he hasn’t. Compared to 2015, Hedges has greatly increased his fly ball rate (from 36 to 46 percent), and his launch angle has literally skyrocketed from 11.3 degrees to 17.6 degrees — from roughly league average to 90th percentile. He swings at far more pitches in the strike zone (from 65 percent to 70 percent), and the fact that he whiffs on more of those pitches in the zone (79 percent contact rate, down from 85) suggests that he is swinging harder at them. His whiff rate on two strikes is up, suggesting, as well, that he isn’t shortening up and protecting with two strikes.

Those changes have consequences. He has struck out even more this year, his walk rate remains one of the worst in baseball, and he has hit a lot more infield popups. Fly balls that stay in the park rarely land for base hits, and infield popups virtually never do; his batting average on balls in play ranks him 215th out of 227 major league hitters (min. 350 PA) this year. Hedges’ .172/.222/.211 homerless line this year is even worse than Mathis’ career homerless line (.181/.242/.229 line).

But those changes also have benefits: He has 17 homers, including seven with two strikes. An extra dozen or so times a year, he manages to do the very best thing a hitter can do. His actual, with-home-runs line — .211/.255/.393, for a 70 OPS+ — is, indeed, closer to Brad Ausmus’ career (75 OPS+) than Mathis’ career (52).

Clearly, there are good hitters who added loft to their swings, changed their approaches, took advantage of the live ball and became superstars: J.D. Martinez, Justin Turner, Josh Donaldson and others. There are also bad hitters who did all this and became more productive, despite their limitations, such as Hedges.

On the other hand, the approach that leads to more home runs might come at a cost for some hitters. Odor’s strikeouts are way up from his first two seasons in the majors. He hits a lot of fly balls — 27th-most in baseball, among 149 qualified hitters — but the rest of his batted ball profile is terrible. Only eight hitters in baseball have hit more infield popups, and only five have hit fewer line drives.

If I were Odor’s hitting instructor, I have no idea whether I’d advise him to keep swinging for the fences — keep doing the one good thing he can do on offense — or change everything because this isn’t really working. That’s one of the challenges of playing in a league in which home runs are suddenly cheap, but hitting is otherwise as complex and difficult as ever.

The post Welcome to the era of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 30-home-run hitter appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

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