#he just reached a chapter with constellations and such and this is already too 'astrology' for him.

[sygneth]

YES YES IT'S THEM AGAIN. I COULDN'T RESIST AND Y'ALL ASKED SO NICELY.

In this episode: messy haired Holmes

I have their story in my head up to the point of Victor's leave, and it's highly probable I will draw it all... I can roughly divide it into three chapters: 1st that is finished, 2nd concerning the events of the "Gloria Scott" and 3rd dealing with the mess afterwards.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2: part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

Holmes College Adventures Masterpost AO3

A couple more of my thoughts and headcanons on the topic that came up in the meantime (hopefully no spoilers?):

I wanted their relationship to be a queerplatonic one, so if you're here for romance, you'll be disappointed. Holmes has some things thought through (as I tried to show in the previous part), he does like Victor on a different level than he has ever experienced, but he doesn't know where his boundaries of being comfortable are, and, at least for now, this is all too confusing for him to experiment. So he's just enjoying the time that they have and doesn't dwell on in too much.

Second thing is, Holmes seems to be alright with thouch, at least the way I read him. (Honestly, the amount of touch provided by him, to Watson in the first place of course, but also to other, random people? That's a LOT to me. But my view may also be biased, I don't like touching at all.) Yes, so, Holmes is alright with casual touch, and the closer he is with someone, the more alright he seems to be. I can see him as a type who will start treating friends like furniture, if they're close enough.

Ah and the third thing. I believe Holmes to be the kind of student who did a lot of extracurriculars in his fields of interest, and barely passed or had to repeat all the rest. And I hc astrology to be his sworn enemy. Because what influence does it have on the results of his chemical research or crime? Exactly.

[silhouetteofacedar]

Fox Mulder, Closet Romantic Ch.3: Jesus Is A Pisces

Previous Chapter - AO3 - MSR, rated E

Mulder has forgotten Scully’s birthday every year but one. Actually, make that two now, since this year he’s determined to make the day special for her somehow. He’d asked her casually what her plans were, and she admitted that outside of a lunch with her mother and some church friends on Sunday the 22nd, she didn’t really have any intention to celebrate.

“It’s been a rough couple months,” she’d explained softly, and that’s all he needed to hear.  She’d gained and then buried a daughter within a few days’ time over Christmas, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t know how she managed to stay sane after that, and if he thought about it for too long the waves of powerlessness and guilt that rolled over him were debilitating.

So instead he focused on what he could do.

“You wanna do something after work on Monday? I promise to be as un-festive as possible,” he offered.

She looked uncertain, licked her lip. “Just us?” she asked.

“Just you and me,” Mulder assured her, the words giving him a tiny, shameful thrill.

She was quiet for a moment. “Sure,” she said finally.

Come Monday, February 23rd, it’s business as usual in the basement office. They finalize their reports from the previous week’s case, wrangle their receipts, argue over who broke the stapler (It was him, she insists; while he claims she jammed the staples in and made it impossible to use properly).

At three minutes to five o’clock, she clears her throat softly as she gathers her things, and he can feel her preparing to speak.

“Yeah, Scully?” he murmurs.

“We still on for tonight?” she asks, sounding almost cautious, and his heart fractures.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he confirms, leafing through a file. “Be sure to bundle up.” He looks up at her and gives her a reassuring grin.

She looks happy and… relieved? Huh.

“Well, I’ll see you then,” she says, shrugging on her coat as she leaves.

Mulder smiles at the door as it clicks shut behind her. He’s unusually giddy about what he has planned for the evening.

Over the weekend he had gone to the grocery store since his refrigerator was barren, then camped out in his building’s laundry room all day Sunday washing every blanket he owned. He even stopped at the little bakery around the corner from his apartment, purchasing a single chocolate cupcake and a loaf of rye bread.

After work he packs his car with a cooler, a duffel bag, a large thermos of coffee, and a pile of blankets.

He’s surprised to see that she’s waiting for him on the steps of her apartment, wearing a heavy jacket and thick turtleneck sweater.

“I got too hot wearing all this inside,” she explains, climbing into the passenger seat. She seems almost excited, and he strangely wants to cry. God, he’s so fucking glad he had the balls to invite her out again.

“Where are we going, Mulder?” Scully asks.

“It’s a surprise,” he replies.

Seven minutes and three wrong turns later, he reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out the map, handing it to her. “Rock Creek Park, please, Navigator,” he says.

“Aha! I thought the route we were taking seemed… circuitous,” Scully says with a smirk, unfolding the map.

“Just tell me where to go; I don’t need a running commentary,” he gripes, secretly relishing her needling.

In about twenty minutes, they arrive at the park’s nature center. Mulder pulls into the lot next to the field across the road and cuts the engine.

“We’re here?” Scully asks, looking around. “It’s deserted. Mulder, please don’t tell me we’re ghost hunting,”

“Ghosts? No,” he says, climbing out of the car and going around to the trunk. “Help me with some stuff?”

Scully comes around to the back of the car, where Mulder hands her the cooler and thermos. He slings the duffel bag over his shoulder and gathers up the pile of blankets. “Close the trunk, will you, Scully?” he says, walking towards the field. “My arms are full.”

They trudge out to the middle of the field, cold winter air biting their cheeks. Mulder stops abruptly and drops the blankets onto the ground in a heap.

“We’re here,” he announces, setting down the duffel bag. He picks up a heavy wool blanket and spreads it out on the grass.

Scully sits down on the blanket, cooler and thermos beside her. “What exactly are we doing out here, Mulder?” she asks.

“Well first, we eat,” he replies, reaching for the cooler. He opens it and pulls out two waxed-paper parcels, handing one to her. “Pastrami on rye,” he announces. “I went a little crazy with the mustard on one of them, we can trade if you want.”

“You made these?” she asks, unwrapping the sandwich and taking a bite. “Oh my god,” she groans. “Mulder, you’ve been holding out on me. This is delicious.”

The satisfaction in her voice makes him flush. “It’s pretty hard to mess up pastrami.”

“True,” she agrees, “but I was starting to doubt you could even make food. Your refrigerator is usually pretty sparse.”

Mulder shrugs, opening the thermos of coffee and pouring her a cup. “Cooking for one doesn’t hold much appeal,” he explains.

“Mm,” she agrees around a mouthful of sandwich, taking the proffered cup. “So Mulder, tell me; is there a reason we’re having a picnic in the dark?” She eyes the duffel bag beside him suspiciously.

“I’m glad you asked,” he replies, unzipping the bag and pulling out a tripod. “You know anything about constellations, Scully?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. He already knows.

“A thing or two,” she replies casually, clearly attempting to hide the smile sneaking across her mouth as she eats.

“Well that’s good, seeing as I lugged this telescope and a star map all the way out here,” he says, pulling the telescope case out of the bag.

Scully is enraptured, and Mulder thinks this might be the best thing he’s ever done for anyone.

“I haven’t done this in years,” she says, peering through the eyepiece as she adjusts the telescope’s position. “Not since…”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to. He remembers her telling him once, on a long car ride to some anonymous, unremarkable town, about stargazing with her father when she was a child. Captain Ahab and his Starbuck, navigating the night skies by way of celestial markers.

The temperature’s dropping, and Mulder drapes the ratty tribal weave blanket from his couch around her shoulders as she searches the heavens.

“You want a turn?” she asks, drawing back from the telescope for a moment.

He shakes his head, plops down on the blanket and gazes at her instead.

They could be astronauts together, sailors of the stars. Dropping anchor in pools of the Milky Way, swimming through constellations and running their fingers through glittering strands of nebulae.

“I’m good,” he replies softly.

“Mulder?” Scully says from under a pile of blankets.

They’re lying on their backs now, side by side, eyes on the sky. Waiting for a meteor, or a passing satellite, or for God to wave hello.

“Yeah, Scully?”

“Do you give any credence to astrology, or is that too close to religion for you?”

“I appreciate its historical and cultural significance,” he replies. “Beyond that, I can’t say I have much of an opinion on it. Aren’t you a Pisces?” he asks, as though he doesn’t already know that she is, and that he’s a Libra, and that the shitty magazine he picked up in the dentist’s office says they’d be a tumultuous but passionate match. Not that he gives horoscopes any weight.

Passionate, though…

“I am. And I’m inclined to agree with you, though astrology’s link with early Christianity is fascinating. For example, did you know that Jesus is linked to Pisces? His birth coincides with the dawning of the astrological Age of Pisces, which spans from 1 AD to the year 2150. There are many scriptural references to fishermen, and early Christians used the fish symbol as a sign of their faith.”

“Huh,” he says, tucking a blanket more tightly around his shoulders.

“I don’t believe that the stars dictate my temperament, by the way,” Scully continues. “But there’s something beautiful about having a constellation in the sky that corresponds with your own birth. Missy knew more about this stuff,” she say wistfully. “She’d read me my horoscope every morning before school while we brushed our hair or whatever, in the bathroom where Mom couldn’t hear. It was fun,” she says with a sigh.

“Do you think she’s out there, in the stars?” Mulder asks and immediately regrets it. He didn’t mean the question to sound flippant.

Scully takes it in stride. “Is it crazy if I say maybe? There’s… there’s things I’ve seen and heard, Mulder, that I can’t explain. Who am I to say how God operates? Maybe He’s laid the stars out like a map for us to read. That’s probably wishful thinking, but life would be a hell of a lot simpler if everything was dictated by heavenly bodies.”

“Better that than by governing bodies,” Mulder agrees.

Their eyes drift along the razor-sharp curves of the crescent moon.

“My mom wants to set me up with one of her church friends’ sons,” Scully says without preamble.

“Huh,” Mulder replies, tracing Orion with his eyes. “Let me guess; he’s a dentist.”

“Emergency physician, actually,” she replies. “He’s nice.”

Mulder suddenly feels the weight of gravity pressing him down to earth. He can feel the rotation of the planet under his back, spinning him at a thousand miles an hour. “You’ve met him?” he asks.

“Yesterday, at lunch,” Scully replies. “He’s a widower, with a six-year-old daughter. I think… I think my mom thinks we could help each other.”

Mulder’s stomach churns, a facsimile of seasickness rolling through his body. “What do you think?” he asks, voice oddly hoarse. “Do you… agree with her?”

Scully pulls the blanket higher under her chin and sighs. “I don’t know, Mulder. I’m thirty-four today, and my career runs my life. I’m not sure how many chances at a family will come my way in the future. It’s not ideal, but maybe I’m past the point of getting to choose.” She pauses. “I’m sorry, I’m being fatalistic.”

Despite the near-freezing temperature, he’s got a cold sweat forming on his back. “You can always choose, Scully. As far as I see it. It’s-it’s important to me that you know that.”

She rolls onto her side, snaking a hand out of the blanket to prop herself up on her elbow beside him. “Mulder, I know you blame yourself for the things that have happened to me. But they’re not your fault.” He opens his mouth and she interrupts him before he can speak. “Don’t argue with me. It’s my birthday.”

He’s grateful for a change of subject. “That reminds me,” he says, sitting up and reaching over to open the cooler.

He pulls out a small pink bakery box and opens it to remove a single chocolate cupcake with a candle stuck in the middle. He digs a lighter out of his coat pocket and gives it a flick, igniting the candle.

“Happy birthday, Scully,” he says sheepishly, holding out the cupcake.

The single flame shimmers in her eyes as she takes the dessert. “Mulder,” she says softly, in a tone that makes his heart turn to liquid. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say.”

“Just make a wish and blow the candle out before the wind does it for you,” he replies. There’s only a bit of a breeze but he’s not taking any chances. She deserves a wish.

Her eyes fall closed, and she sighs contentedly, no doubt formulating her request. Suddenly she opens her eyes and locks her gaze with his over the flickering candle, and Mulder feels a thousand words rumbling in him like an approaching avalanche.

Before he can say anything she purses her lips and extinguishes the lone flame with a breath.

She pulls the candle out of the cupcake and pops the end into her mouth, licking off chocolate frosting, and Mulder thinks he might die right there on a blanket in Rock Creek Park. He’s been so good, keeping his feelings to himself, but in this moment his only thoughts are that he loves her and wants her; no, needs her. He needs to touch her, taste the icing on her lips, map the constellations of freckles hiding beneath her sweater. Shake the winter chill out of his bones, letting the flames of her red hair lick across his skin and light his whole body on fire.

She’s saying something to him, biting into the cupcake, chocolate crumbs falling onto the blanket.

“Hm?” he asks, returning to terra firma.

“I asked if you wanted a bite,” she reiterates.

Yes, his body responds. Please please please-

“It’s yours,” he says as a declination.

“Therefore it’s mine to share,” she declares. She holds it out to him, and his stomach flutters as he leans in and takes a bite. He thinks of his parents’ faded wedding photos, of them feeding each other cake in black and white.

Don’t date the doctor guy, he pleads silently as he chews. Stay with me. Show me galaxies.

She falls asleep on the car ride home with one of his blankets tucked around her, the car’s heater cranked all the way up. When he parks in front of her building she stirs, likely awoken by the sudden cessation of warm air on her feet.

“Scully,” Mulder says softly, “We’re home.”

“Mmm,” she responds. “What time is it?”

“Almost eleven,” he answers, glancing at his watch. “Can you walk or should I carry you up?” The question feels faintly suggestive, and he’s only being so bold because she’s drowsy and likely not registering the subtext.

“I can walk,” she says, sitting up and removing the blanket. Her hair is a fuzzy red halo in the glow of the streetlights.

“I’ll go with you,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Make sure you don’t pass out on your way up.”

“Thanks,” she yawns. “I don’t know why car rides make me so drowsy,” she says. “It’s like I’m five years old again.”

“Or it’s hypothermia,” Mulder suggests jokingly. “It got pretty damn cold out there.”

“Winter night picnics aren’t the most practical, it’s true,” she says. “But the blankets and coffee were a good idea.”

When they reach Scully’s apartment door she turns to face him. “Thank you for this,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t realize how much I needed it.”

He smiles softly at her. “Happy birthday,” he replies.

He’s mentally debating giving her a hug when she reaches out and pulls him in gently, arms looped around his waist. He wraps his arms around her and drops a light kiss to the crown of her head.

It’s over way too soon.

“Goodnight,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”

If he says anything else to her before she slips into the apartment and closes the door, he doesn’t remember it. His feet are firmly on the ground, carrying him out of her apartment building and back to his car, but his head is far above the atmosphere, adrift in space.

He’s so in love he feels as though he’s running out of air.

[umbry-fic]

A Palette Full of You (4)

Summary: Glimpses into Colette and Lloyd’s lives as they grow up together, learn who they are, and fall in love with each other.

(Written for Colloyd Week 2021)

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Colette Brunel, Lloyd Irving Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving Rating: G Chapter: 4 of 6 Word Count: 5897 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 12/06/2021

Chapter Title: Stardust

Chapter Summary: The astronomy club holds a stargazing event on the school rooftop. As chairperson, there's no chance Lloyd isn't going to invite Colette. But as the night progresses, actually spotting the hard-to-find stars become the least of Colette's concerns.

(Colloyd Week Day 4: Stargazing)

Notes+Warnings: Chapter 4 of my multi chapter Colloyd week fic! Warning for some major internalised acephobia.

Chapter list Full fic Previous chapter Next chapter

~~~

16-years-old

Stepping out of the science lab into the corridor, Colette came to a halt, her schoolbag weighing on her shoulders, soaking in the warm air as other students filed past her. One of the most unfortunate things about attending practical make-up was that she wasn't guaranteed her usual seat by the lab window. Sitting right under the air-con was enough to send her into hibernation, and the test was hard enough as it was. She'd barely managed to finish on time.

Rummaging through the pocket of her navy blue pinafore, her fingers brushed past a packet of tissue and her wallet before successfully pulling her phone out. She needed a reminder of where the stargazing event was taking place, and who better to ask than Lloyd? She hoped he was reading his messages.

"7.23 pm, May 18th" blinked at her from her phone screen.

Wait, 7 missed calls? From Lloyd? What for?

Gah, she’d forgotten to tell him.

She dialled his number, placing the phone against her ear and waiting for his anxious voice to ring out. Which it did, just seconds later as he picked up.

“Colette? Where are you? I tried calling you so many times, and Sheena and Zelos wouldn’t pick up because they’re both at tuition!”

“I forgot to tell you the makeup got pushed by an hour. Sorry for making you worry, Lloyd. But I’m done now. Where’s the event at?”

"We’re on the school rooftop! Where we celebrated Sheena's birthday last month, remember?" Lloyd replied, his voice tinny in quality from the phone call. She could hear, in the background, the overlapping sounds of many voices.

“School rooftop, school rooftop, school rooftop…” she mumbled, beginning to scurry through her secondary school's corridors, head darting every which way to determine where she was and try to find clues as to where she was going. She didn’t often wander into this part of the school campus - block D, the science block - since she only took two sciences. Usually, she’d take the main staircase straight down to the canteen, but it would take forever to get back to the roof from there. She didn’t want to be too late.

“You’re coming from science lab 3, right? If I remember correctly, it’s one right, walk past the storage room to block C, and then take the first left down the bridge to block B. You should see the staircase to the roof. Do you need me to come and get you?”

“No, no, it’s fine! Just stay on the phone?”

“Alri - OI, MATTHEW, STOP MESSING WITH THE TELESCOPE! YOU DO NOT GET SPECIAL TREATMENT JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE MY DESKMATE! GET YOUR HANDS OFF AND LET ELLA HANDLE IT!” The yell was muffled, probably because Lloyd had taken the phone away from his mouth to avoid deafening her, though his raised voice was still enough to make her wince, tearing the phone away from her ear.

“Sorry about that,” Lloyd said, his voice lowered back to normal volume again. “Got to prevent property damage. You know how it is.”

“Right…” She laughed nervously, wondering how many people were up on the rooftop and what exactly they were up to. She was hoping to spend a peaceful evening stargazing with Lloyd and listening to him talk about constellations, the shining passion in his eyes rivalling even the stars above, not… getting distracted by people fooling around.

“How’s it going? Are you getting closer?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m heading in the right direction,” she assured Lloyd, taking the left he’d directed her to and running down the bridge connecting two blocks, her ponytail flaring behind her and her pinafore swirling around her legs. There was almost no one left in the school now. The hallways she’d run through had been abandoned, for the most part, the stragglers she passed by all heading in the direction of the main gate. The sky, visible from the bridge, was in the last throes of twilight, slowly bleeding into night as black seeped across the sky.

Colette skidded to a halt at the end of the bridge, gaze landing on a familiar door. She could recall this stairwell now, having taken it two months ago. She, Zelos and Lloyd had somehow managed to lead a blindfolded Sheena up it, whereafter they had surprised their friend with a birthday cake they had baked together. That birthday cake had been salvaged solely by Zelos, who was a surprisingly good baker. Or maybe they were just average, and weren't knocking over the baking tray every ten minutes like her.

“I’ve found the right staircase!” Colette said, hanging up and stuffing her phone back into her pocket and starting to take the stairs two at a time. She usually never did that (and was often teased by Sheena over it), choosing to climb each step carefully, for the risk of tripping was too high. But she was in a hurry, and so had no other choice. Her shoe-laces were coming undone, and her school bag seemed to be getting heavier with each step.

Everyone else who was attending the event was likely already on the rooftop - Colette could hear voices and the sounds of footsteps against concrete through the open door at the top of the stairwell. Grabbing the cold metal handle, she threw the door open, finally emerging onto the rooftop.

There were about thirty or so people milling around, everyone still dressed in their school uniforms, chatting with friends, holding cups of fruit punch or lounging on the mats that had come from the gymnasium. Not enough people to count as a crowd, but certainly respectable. Just a small event, one where she could relax and enjoy some peace and quiet.

Now she just had to find Lloyd...

"Colette!"

Speak of the devil! Or the angel, perhaps... Colette tracked the source of the voice and spotted Lloyd, making his way over from a group of students who were busy fiddling with a telescope, his hand gripping a red plastic cup. One side of his collar was flipped up, and the small shooting star pin that marked him as the chairperson of the astrology club was pinned to the other. Only one of the sleeves of his white blouse were folded like they were meant to be, the other way too long and leaving barely any skin visible above his elbow. His white long pants had been rolled up as much as possible - which wasn't much, honestly, the most it could reach was mid-thigh. It was one of those stuffy nights with no wind that was stifling and hard to fall asleep in.

"You made it!" Lloyd's grin grew wider as he grabbed her hand, only for him to flinch away instantly, vivid red liquid nearly sloshing over the rim of his cup. “Gah, your hand is really cold.”

"Sorry! You know how cold the lab is. Anyway, I only made it here thanks to your assistance." Colette laughed, feeling her weariness peel off her instantly. Lloyd always had that effect on her - his energy was infectious, like it was being injected straight into her veins whenever she was in close proximity to him. Especially now, with clear excitement alive on his face.

It was strange, though. He was the only one with that effect on her. Meeting her other friends never failed to make her happy, but Lloyd was the only one that could make her feel ten times more alive in an instant the moment she saw his smile. It had only started in the past year, this unknown, electrifying sensation that arose in her heart whenever she was with Lloyd. The desire to see him again after school ended got stronger with each day, but she couldn’t understand any of it…

“You’re staying for the afterparty, right?” Lloyd asked, taking a sip of the fruit punch. He said afterparty, but she knew it wouldn’t be much of a party. Just all the members of the astrology club hanging out in the tiny room the school had assigned to them, playing card games and chatting. Everyone in the club knew her by name, for she was the friend of their chairperson who somehow managed to turn up at every meeting. She was practically an honorary member at this point.

A homey gathering without any alcohol in sight. She much preferred it that way. The last time alcohol had come into play when she was staying overnight at a chalet with the rest of her class, sometime late last year. She'd avoided the cans of beer stacked on the floor, the smell not appealing to her. But alcohol sure made the rest of her classmates go wild. Running away from slightly drunk classmates trying to get her to play truth and dare was not fun. Normal truth and dare was already horrible, with questions like "who are you crushing on" and "who would you like to kiss". She didn't understand why it was a game that people insisted be played at every class gathering or orientation. No one ever believed her when she answered honestly with "no one", and she was fairly used to the reactions by now, the common ones being that she had to be lying, for everyone had someone in mind, or that she should stop acting so high-and-mighty, or just snickers of her being a prude.

Just because she was used to the biting words didn't mean they had stopped hurting, reminder stacked atop reminder of how she was isolated from everyone else around her. And as much as she hated answering "truth" whenever that accursed bottle landed on her, answering "dare" was even worse. There were the innocent ones like doing the chicken dance, and then there was having to kiss someone. She always did her best to leave as soon as the bottle made an appearance, but she could never say "no" when someone asked her directly to join, for she never knew how to turn people down. Neither did she want to give her classmates more reasons to treat her as a laughingstock for being too much of a coward to play. So now, whenever she was forced to play the game, she would give the least offensive answers possible - mostly girls, for she at least found them pretty, though she didn't think that was what attractive meant.

But the drunk version of truth and dare? That was hell on Earth. The questions got even more invasive. She could never understand how someone could ask "who would you sleep with here" with a straight face. And alcohol loosened the lips of her classmates, enough that she had heard snippets of some of the more adventurous ones describing their sexual escapades in sickening detail. She really didn't need the reminder that sexual activities weren't just a thing of fiction, but something that actually happened amongst real people and that people seemed to really want to do. She'd spent half of that chalet stay playing Uno with Zelos in a corner, because Zelos was way better at promptly rejecting offers to play truth and dare.

Only her friends had ever come to her defence, but it was not like they could help that much when they weren't in the same class, apart from Zelos. Still, they afforded much-needed safety, and they never pointed out how she was weird or strange or different, even if they must have noticed by now. But...

She was 16. Wasn't she supposed to get it by now?

“Yep, I'm staying. We can go home together,” Colette suggested, tearing her thoughts back to the present. "Dad already knows I'll be coming home late, and Aunt Anna can just pick us both up."

Colette reached out to fold Lloyd's right sleeve, straightening the wrinkles out, before reaching to flip his collar down. His uniform was always in such a state of disarray, and it was always up to her to get him looking neat before the teachers did their inspections during morning assembly.

"Yep, I'll let Mom know," Lloyd replied, squeezing her hand. "Let's actually get to stargazing, shall we? Come on, I reserved the mat with the best telescope. The..."

Colette let Lloyd ramble on about the specifications of the telescope as he guided her towards their destination. It was always endearing to hear him talk about the topics he loved, whether it be the ocean or the stars. His words would get faster as he went on, until he was barely intelligible as all the syllables clumped together, without him even noticing. She didn’t want to interrupt him, though, much preferring to just watch him as a smile inevitably grew on her face.

"Right! Get comfortable!" Lloyd said, having completed his spiel and coming to an abrupt stop. Colette stumbled a few steps forward, so engrossed in listening to Lloyd that she'd nearly tripped. He gestured towards the deep blue mat stuffed with foam, placing his cup next to it before crouching to adjust the sleek black telescope, nimble fingers flying from knobs to levers. His face was scrunched up in concentration, focussed entirely on his task.

Colette dumped her school bag down and kicked off her school shoes, leaving her feet clad in white socks, and scrambled onto the mat, lying down on it. Lloyd joined her soon after, having finished whatever preparations he was doing, sidling closer on the mat so that his shoulder pressed against hers as they both stared up into the night sky, now completely dark. In the distance, Colette could see the lighted-up M sign on the business complex.

“We can look at the stars first before we use the telescope to find the planets. What do you see, right now?”

"Um, well… I can only see one star in the sky," Colette muttered, pointing out the lone, twinkling presence. It was common knowledge that there was too much light pollution to actually see any of the vast galaxies and planets that were scattered throughout the universe. The most Colette had ever seen at once when looking out at the sky from the balcony of her apartment was three stars, dimly shining and far away from each other. They were hundreds of light-years away, unreachable and yet still shining their light for all to see.

"No, there's more. It's a really clear sky tonight, and we can see so much!" Lloyd replied eagerly. The starry-eyed enthusiasm had returned to his eyes, seeming to burrow straight into her heart. Pointing up into a particular patch of sky, he said, "There! Do you see the top of the Big Dipper?"

"Ah..." She tried to follow the line of his arm but didn't spot any hidden stars, shaking her head. "No...? The Big Dipper is the one that looks like a frying pan, right?" It was one of the many constellations that Lloyd had taught her while on his impassioned rambles about astrology. Ever since he'd picked up that one book on constellations from the library in primary school, he'd been obsessed with stars. She could still fondly remember the first time he had talked about it. She'd plopped down in front of him at the canteen table after school, asking what he was reading. He'd shut the book and told her about white dwarfs, planetary systems and the Milky Way for a full five minutes while she listened in awed silence. She'd rarely seen him this excited over anything. Lloyd had been about to continue before shutting his mouth abruptly, flushing as he realised how long he had gone on for and apologising for running her ear off. She'd told him that she didn't mind listening to him - there was something soothing about it, really, listening to his voice and watching his excited mannerisms.

"You remember?" Lloyd craned his neck so that he was facing her. There was something in the depths of those eyes that stared back at her. Something which, for the past two years, she would spot occasionally. And yet she still couldn’t put a name to it.

Somehow, how truly close they were hadn’t registered in her mind until this very moment. If she inched forward just a little, their noses would bump.

But they’d been this close so many times before. Why was this time so different?

Or, more accurately, what had changed in the past year? Why couldn’t she be this close without something in her clicking, filling her with a warmth that was both familiar but foreign? Why were her palms starting to sweat, her heart starting to race? It felt like she was about to give a presentation to a room full of strangers.

But that wasn't the case. She was just next to Lloyd, her oldest friend and the person she trusted most in the world.

Perhaps recently she had been noticing more tiny things she hadn't before, staring at him for just a little longer than she used to - how his hair fell into his eyes on days where he didn’t bother to comb or style his hair, how there was a dimple only on the right side of his mouth, how his hair could vary in shade under different lighting, from a golden brown to dark chocolate. It even appeared red sometimes.

She felt like she was at the cusp of a discovery.

"Of - of course I remember." Colette stumbled over the words, averting her gaze up towards the night sky. "You've been working on the notes for this club for so long, and I helped you with them! So of course I'd remember."

"That's true. We did spend a lot of late nights on those." Lloyd chuckled. "Remember all the pillow fights?"

"Yeah, I do. You always let me win, you cheater," she grumbled, glad for the light-hearted change in topic to distract from her confusing feelings. "But I'm happy everything worked out and you managed to get the club set up! You've worked really hard on all this. You deserve the success."

"I couldn't have done it without you, really," Lloyd retorted, taking gentle hold of her wrist. "And I know I've thanked you already, but let me just say it again. Thank you. In return, I'll do my best to show you as much as I can!" Lloyd pointed her arm towards a point in the sky. "There. Look closely. Do you see it now?"

She focussed on that spot, squinting in hopes that the secrets of the night sky would be revealed to her. "Oh!" Colette exclaimed. She could see it now, just barely - a faint source of light. There was a lonely little star, shining as brightly as it could, just enough to be noticeable but going unseen by the unobservant eye.

"You got it!" Lloyd cheered, beginning to slowly guide her hand to trace out a shape - that familiar pan shape he’d drawn for her so many times. His fingers, wrapped around her wrist, were so warm... "Now do you see the Big Dipper?"

"You're right," she said in amazement. The pattern had been there all along. How many more were waiting to be found, causing the sky to come to life before her very eyes?

"There are so many beautiful constellations to find in the sky." Lloyd grinned. Dimly lit by the gentle light of the night sky, far from the harsh fluorescent lights of the classroom and the often blinding rays of the sun, his features seemed softer than ever, and she had the urge to just... reach out and touch his face. Splay her fingers on his cheek, rest her forehead against his, let the strands of his hair fall through her fingers…

"Yeah..." She glanced back up at the night sky. She could spot the Little Dipper now, glimmering. Already, she was discovering new things.

When she glanced back, Lloyd was staring at her with a wistful expression, the arm not holding hers held stiffly against his side, like he was aching to reach out but was holding himself back.

The moment was gone, as quickly as it had come, and Lloyd's face once again sported a happy smile, like nothing of significance had happened. Perhaps she had imagined the whole thing. But in just a few seconds, the entire centre of her world had shifted, throwing her irreversibly off balance.

Her chest felt constricted, like she couldn't breathe properly, that strange sensation back in her heart again.

But it would be a lie to say she hadn’t figured out what it was. She had fallen into the unfamiliar pit of love, just as she had always wanted. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say she had fallen a long time ago, but had only just realised she wasn’t standing on solid ground any longer.

She had found The One. Finally.

So why... Why had nothing changed at all?

It was no longer possible to convince herself that she could be just like everyone else. Not when she was acutely aware of how stupidly immature she was compared to everyone else, always cringing away from the thought of sex. Whether it be skipping raunchy scenes in books or shows, avoiding popular pop songs with explicit lyrics, or promptly deciding to stop listening whenever her classmates decided it was a good time to talk about it. She couldn't rid herself of nausea that would roil in her stomach. But... that was wrong, wasn't it?

If she loved someone, she was supposed to desire them. That's what happened in all the stories - people fell in love, and then they happily had sex with each other. It was everywhere. In every book, in every show. Even the terrible sex-ed lessons had parroted that a happy relationship was one with healthy amounts of sex. Everyone was going to have sex at some point once they got into a relationship, to want to have it and to eagerly give it. But she didn't. She had never felt the same way. And that was her truth, the one that went unregarded by others.

Or maybe her truth was that she was just broken. That something had shattered inside of her a long time ago, and now she couldn't be put back together, couldn't feel what she was supposed to, what others did. And she didn't know what to do about it.

No matter how much she hated the idea of sex, someday she’d have to force herself to go through with it. After all, it was a requisite for a relationship. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be worthy of love, and she didn’t love her partner enough. She owed it to whoever her partner was, even if one day it ended up being Lloyd. This was her fault, after all. No one else was broken in the same way as her.

It would just be like… forcing herself to eat her vegetables when she was younger, wincing over the yucky taste until she got used to it. Nothing more. Easy.

Maybe then she’d finally get it.

Maybe then everything would magically fix itself.

Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes which she willed to disappear. She felt like the stars above. Shining alone, so far away from any other companion, looking down upon a world that was too far away to understand. All alone. Always all alone.

"Too bad we can't see more here in the city. One day, I promise, we'll see the real starry sky together! The galaxies, the planets, the suns... All of it. It'll be amazing," Lloyd continued, oblivious to her inner turmoil. Because even he could not read her mind.

Colette folded her hands over her stomach, closing her eyes. The enormity of the emotion beating in her heart absolutely terrified her, as did the thought of the future and what awaited her. Could she ever act on these feelings? Would she ever be deserving of acting on them, inadequate as she was? Did she even really love him?

There was no use in agonising over these thoughts, for no answers would ever be found.

"I'd like that," she whispered, squeezing his hand. She was more than willing to just enjoy his company for now. Her dearest friend.

“I’ll show you the rest of the stars that are visible today! Then we can look into the telescope and see the nebula. I’ve already pointed it in the right direction! You won’t want to miss it, it’s incredible! Over there is…”

So long as she could remain with him, everything would be alright.

~~~

“Bye, Lloyd!” Ella said, waving as she sprinted out of the club room. “Have a safe trip home!”

“You too!” he called out after her, as loud as he could without waking up Colette. Her head was resting on his lap, the hair she had freed from her ponytail forming a golden sea that swallowed his legs. Her arms were still wrapped tightly around the huge penguin plush that acted as the club’s unofficial mascot. He couldn’t for the life of him recall where it’d come from.

How did he always end up being Colette’s pillow? Not that he was complaining…

Lloyd ran a gentle hand through Colette’s hair, making sure not to awaken her. Mom would take another 20 minutes to arrive at the drop-off point, so he might as well let Colette continue to sleep. After all, he still had to clean up and lock up the room. At least Colette had helped him with most of it.

He moved his hand rhythmically, watching her minute facial movements. What dream was she having right now? Was it a happy one? He hoped it was. He wanted nothing more than to see a truly happy smile on her face every day, and that was the root of the feelings that had built up over years.

In the ensuing silence, he couldn’t help but think back.

What had happened while he was showing her the stars? There had been a period of time when she had seemed to withdraw into herself, becoming far quieter than she usually was. Almost contemplative. Even a little sad.

She had been back to normal afterwards, cheerful with her large smiles and bright laughter. He didn’t know how to question her about it, didn’t know how to even start the conversation. He wanted to find out, so he could help, in any way he could.

But… No matter how much he hated it, he could only wait. After all, if whatever was weighing on her was simple, she would have told him already. He could only hope she’d be able to tell him about what was troubling her, someday.

And he would wait. For as long as needed…

~~~

26-years-old

Lloyd set the rental car in reverse, slowly backing it up into the empty lot in the mostly deserted car park, the wheels crunching against gravel. Turning off the engine, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. Glancing over at the seat next to him revealed that Colette was peacefully asleep, head lolling onto her shoulder. Somehow, the abrupt bump in the road some ten minutes ago hadn't woken her up.

This was their second day in Melbourne to celebrate their honeymoon. Dad and Mom had come here for their honeymoon too, but maybe some things become a tradition for a reason. He and Colette had followed a strict itinerary, taking some advice from his parents when planning where to go. They had visited the fisheries for lunch yesterday, where Colette had sung the praises of the fish fillet, absolutely delighted at its freshness, which could never be experienced at home. Following which, they had driven to Phillip island to catch the nightly penguin parade, Colette cooing over all the little penguins waddling home. It was a cute sight - both the penguins and Colette.

It was the middle of winter, the temperature just shy of needing actual winter gear but cold enough that they were both wearing turtlenecks, not accustomed to the winter winds. A bit of a shame, actually. He would have loved to witness the adorable sight of Colette in a beanie that covered her ears, cheeks flushed from the cold and fingers housed in fluffy gloves. But alas, that sight would only remain in his imagination until they travelled to a country with much colder weather.

The car journey had been silent, Colette alternating between staring at the rare car that passed them on the narrow dirt roads, or doodling on her phone with a stylus, occasionally letting out a tiny giggle. As they had agreed upon, she had stopped looking out of the window for the last leg of their journey, which was close to a whole hour. At some point she had stopped making conversation with him, soft snores replacing the sound of her voice as the quiet night and hours of travelling had finally taken their toll.

He reached out a hand to hover over her shoulder, hesitating. He didn’t want to disrupt her rest, but she wouldn’t be seeing anything if she didn’t wake up, and that would render all his effort to transport the two of them into the remote meaningless. He had no choice.

“Colette.” He called her name softly, gently shaking her shoulder until she let out a tiny sigh. Her eyes fluttered open, still filled with sleepiness.

“We’re here. It’s time to get out of the car,” he said, grabbing hold of the strands of her hair that had fallen into her face during her sleep and tucking them behind her ear.

“Oh. Thanks for waking me up.” Colette yawned, covering her mouth with her hand as she stretched, trying to shake the sleep out of her system. “I need to cover my eyes while I get out, right?” she said, covering her eyes with her palms and giggling, doing exactly as they’d discussed without question. “I can’t look until you say so! Can’t spoil the surprise now, right?”

“Perfect! I’ll help you out of the car. Wait there.”

Lloyd stepped out of the car, shutting the door and running over to her side. He opened the passenger-side door, grabbing hold of her bent arms.

"Carefully now," he muttered, slowly helping Colette out of the car and steadying her when she stumbled slightly onto the gravel. Taking a stronger hold around her arm, he began to guide her across the carpark towards a small hill, walking backwards and taking the occasional peek behind his shoulder to get a gauge for where he was going. With each step they took, the loose bits of gravel under their feet were kicked aside.

The grassy hill was a little harder to go up backwards, but he persevered. The grass was wet with dew, starting to wet the hem of his jeans as they brushed the skin of his ankles. Colette was completely silent, seemingly holding her breath in anticipation of the big reveal.

The trip out here had been exceedingly long, for this place truly was off the beaten path. He could count the number of people here with the fingers on one hand. But he could certainly say the trip had been worth it. Just sneaking a peek upwards was enough to make up for everything. This place really lived up to all the praise it had been given online.

Making sure they had a wonderful view of the sky, Lloyd came to a stop, turning Colette by the shoulders so she was facing the right direction. "You can look now," he whispered into her ear, tapping her shoulder and stepping back.

Colette uncovered her eyes and let out an audible gasp, transfixed by the night sky. They were far from civilization, so distant that there were no artificial lights to interfere with the natural dance of the stars. Laid out above them were millions of stars, clustered together and twinkling in unity. Swirls of pink and purple denoted the galaxies, resembling little bits of cotton candy painted onto the black canvas of the sky, interspersed with tiny dots that represented planets. The entire universe was spread out before their eyes to witness, splendid and magnificent.

He watched as she raised an arm, tracing the skies slowly. It almost seemed like her index finger was trailing stardust. He wouldn't be surprised if she actually was, since she was already pure magic in every other way.

She turned to face him, the starlight reflecting in her wide eyes and off the ring on her left hand, painting her as a more beautiful sight than even the gorgeous skies above him.

"You remembered!" she exclaimed, running over to throw her arms around him, knocking him back slightly as she smiled up at him. Thankfully, they were nowhere near the edge of the incline, or they would have gone tumbling down a long way. This close, he was even more reminded of her untouchable beauty: her shimmering blue eyes were breathtaking. "You kept your promise."

Colette moved her arms so they were wrapped behind his neck. She was practically hanging off of him; his gaze focussed on her smiling face.

"Well, I wanted to see it too." He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer to press a kiss on her forehead. "And I always do my best to keep my promises."

I promised that I would never leave you, and I will keep that promise. No matter what.

“They’re all together now. They’re not alone anymore,” Colette said, "Thank you." She rested her head against his shoulder, his hands automatically shifting to her back, holding her close. "I love you."

She said those words so easily now, without the hesitance that had bogged her down at the beginning. He knew not all of her fears and insecurities were gone - maybe they never would be, and all they could do was reassure each other. There were the terrible nights where she would sob next to him and admit she felt like a fraud for being unable to give him sexual intimacy, crying that she wasn't enough and that he deserved so much more. All he could do was hold her in his arms and whisper into her hair that it was alright, that he loved her, that he didn’t care. But as time went on, those nights became less frequent, until they were few and far between. Besides, she did give him pieces of that intimacy, whenever she could - the gift he cherished, for it truly meant the world coming from her.

"I love you too. Picture?" he offered, holding up his phone. He wanted to create a physical memory of this magical moment, one that they could preserve forever.

Besides, if his parents didn’t get a photo, they would probably murder him. Mom, at least. So would Sheena, with Zelos’ snickering as an accompaniment to the crime. He wouldn’t live to see another day once he got back home.

"Of course," she replied. And he hoped the picture would be able to capture her bright smile, that which was most precious to him.

~~~

The picture they took would become a cherished memento, to be displayed on their nightstand forever - Colette pressing a kiss to his cheek, even as she gave him bunny ears, both of their faces lit up with large smiles.

~~~

Next chapter

[artificialqueens]

Something Just Like This, Chapter One (Trixya) - Calliope

a/n: hello hello hello, this is cal, the writer of cirque d'amour and I'm back back back again! (with a slightly different pseudonym)

this fic will be the slowest of slow burns if y'all can handle that, with the beloved friends to lovers trope; however, that friendship will always be a little blurred...

I'm actually quite nervous to post this! I do hope you enjoy it.

*TW: MILD MENTIONS OF UNDEREATING/OVEREXERCISING

---

Trixie is sweating.

Trixie isn't quite used to the sensation - the fire on her skin, the rush of blood throughout her veins, the protest of every single sinew - and to be beetroot red in front of a wealth of fit strangers.

Trixie could hardly care, though; her mind was in a thick fog. She'd force-fed her thick thighs into some loose leggings, had pulled a baggy t-shirt over her head, and lost herself in arguably the healthiest form of self-punishment. Trixie was by no stretch interested in becoming a gym bunny - but today, she needed the release.

Trixie cranked the height of her treadmill up higher, feeling her muscles screaming in protest. She ignored their pleas, puffing out laboured breaths as she increased her speed. Her neighbours, all buff and beautiful, paid her no attention, and that is exactly what Trixie needed - to be ignored, whilst she punished herself.

Her music was cranked up as loud as her broken iPhone would allow, and she pitifully replayed Ed Sheeran on a loop as she climbed. Every time her mind dare wander to the forbidden fruit she had just tasted, she would stubbornly shut her thoughts down.

Trixie was not a home-wrecker. Not, of course, on purpose, anyway.

But despite telling herself on a loop that this was the truth, Trixie couldn't help but feel like she was, at the very least, being white-lied to.

A bead of sweat trickled from Trixie's pounding temple, which she quickly dashed away with a feeble hand. Her insides felt weak, and she couldn't quite decide whether that was from lack of food and forced exercise, or because she couldn't help but think about what happened only two days before.

***

4 years earlier

K: hi :)

Oh for the love of all things, what am I doing?

Trixie rubbed a weary hand across her face, pressing sharply into the cheeks that poked out from under her skin. Her phone vibrated a second time, a new message waking her phone from its momentary sleep.

Trixie glared at it as though it was betraying her, and she silently turned her phone face-down against her desk.

Trixie had joined a dating site. A dating site named Brenda, no less. She uploaded her cutest photos; where her tiny cat Kim were pressed against her cheeks, or the one where she were her skinniest; make-up painted and hair in perfect ringlets.

This was not her current reality, though: Kim had stubbornly ignored her all night, probably judging her every move, and Trixie had gained a little weight. It was okay, though, because who wanted to date someone who had their spine on show? Damn, fuck. Be friends with . Not date.

The thing is, Trixie wasn't looking for love.

A third buzz from her dormant phone jumped Trixie from her fervent haze, and she snatched it into clawed hands.

Pearl: I can't come this weekend - gotta work. sorry

Trixie's baited breath shuddered from her lips, the familiar feeling of upset creeping at her insides. This was the very first message she'd received from her long-distance girlfriend all day, and hardly a pleasant one at that.

Trixie lay her phone flat against the desk where she was perched, and drew her legs up onto her computer chair. She hugged her knees tightly to her chest, her chin resting somberly against the soft fabric of her Disney pj's that were littered with tiny grey thumpers.

No, Trixie wasn't looking for love. Her heart was occupied; occupied by someone far away, someone who had stolen her heart at a time she thought she needn't have one. Someone who was now so distant, not only in a physical sense, but miles apart emotionally.

Trixie couldn't understand it. Her and Pearl were a match made in heaven; even their astrological signs had aligned, making Trixie think that the very stars wrote out their love in ageless constellations. Pearl would smoke a short blunt, her arm wrapped tentatively around Trixie's small shoulders, and they'd play old runs of GTA on her dusty PlayStation 2. Pearl would cook beautiful dinners for her, vegetarian of course, and let her watch reruns of Barbie's Dream House, despite her disdain for its childish backdrop. Pearl would fuck Trixie into oblivion, tending carefully to all of her kinks and indulging full-heartedly into every single fantasy that Trixie had ever had.

Would. Pearl would do these things. But not anymore.

Trixie carefully plucked her phone back up, turning it over in her hands for a few hesitant moments before finally unlocking it.

T: hey :)

Trixie felt a prickle of guilt gnaw away at her bones as she pressed a thumb to the "send" button on the Brenda messenger. No, she thought. I am doing nothing wrong. I'm just making friends.

She turned her attention to the pitiful thread of texts from Pearl.

Trixie: okay… I could come to you? I don't mind hanging out at your flat while you work.

Trixie knew that Pearl's reply may not come for hours, days even. She heaved a shuddering sigh, forcing herself to her slippered feet in search of her grumpy cat.

Her phone buzzed against the thick of her thigh from her pocket, and she snatched it up immediately, hoping desperately for Pearl's response.

No, it was the girl from Brenda.

K: how are you doing? I'm not very good at this malarkey, but you seem cute, so… here I am

Trixie snickered slightly, deciding to inspect this person further.

She thumbed at her profile picture to get a closer look - she was butch, but softly so, with dirty blonde hair that was religiously scraped back throughout all of her profile photos. She seemed cute, though, Trixie thought. She had piercing green eyes and Trixie swore she could spy a chiselled abdomen beneath her plain t-shirts.

T: thank you, that's sweet! you seem cute too, is that a guitar I spy in one of your photos?

Trixie knew this game she was playing was inherently dangerous. She knew that she was projecting dissatisfaction from her current relationship, and seeking some form of, well, anything , from anyone . Still, she couldn't help but feel a thrill when a second message - from a different girl, no less - brightened her dormant screen. Another butch, with thick, jet-black hair, and piercings on her lip, offending her with the opening line of "hey there ;)".

Still, this fruitless back and forth with cute, eager bachelors certainly beat her usual evenings of misery; overeating, overthinking, and waiting for a call from Pearl that would never come.

"What's up?"

Trixie nearly flung her phone from her palms with fright, her hair whipping her pink cheeks as she spun on her heels to greet the intruder, fist raised with a warning.

Of course, it was only her roommate, Blair - a boy who, despite creeping past the age of 20, looked like he belonged in a primary school. His deer-like legs stretched below him, and in his tiny arms lay a bag of what could only be Chinese takeout.

His sculpted eyebrows raised in wonderment at his roommate's defensive stance. "Trix, hun - - - are you alright?"

Slowly, deliberately, Trixie lowered her raised fist, choking back a fit of laughter. "Jesus, fuck, Blair. You scared the living daylights out of me."

Blair carefully laid the takeaway bag onto the dining room table. "I was singing as I came in. How did you not hear that?"

Trixie audibly groaned. "Show tunes?"

Blair grinned, all teeth. "What else?"

"What did you bring me?" Trixie asked, trotting excitedly over to the dining room table towards the source of the delicious smell.

"Sweet and sour tofu," he shrugged, heading for the kitchen to retrieve some cutlery. "I figured you could use some cheering up."

Trixie could've kissed him right there and then. "You are the best housemate ever."

"I know!" Blair sing-songed in response from the kitchen, the tell-tale sound of clattering telling Trixie he was picking out plates. Trixie thought for a moment.

"Wanna watch Chicago?" she called out, already knowing the answer.

Blair's boyish face appeared in the doorway at once, his cheeks flushed red and his bright blue eyes wide. "Of fucking course! "

Trixie chuckled. Blair was the pinnacle of the gay stereotype, she thought, listening to her friend hum along to an 80's power ballad she had forgotten the name of.

Trixie was in such high spirits that she almost forgot the back-and-forth she was having on Brenda, and the reason for it. That was, until part-way through the film, and a mouthful of crispy tofu, her phone buzzed angrily against the countertop.

Both Blair and Trixie startled, and Blair's carton of seaweed went flying across the room, littering the hardwood floor with tiny, crispy sprigs.

"Fuck sake!" Blair exclaimed, throwing his hands up and staring with dismay at the mess.

Trixie shot him an apologetic glance, before throwing herself at the vibrating phone.

Pearl.

"H-hey, baby!" Trixie babbled into the mouthpiece, clutching the phone as if it were a precious gemstone. Blair rolled his eyes to the heavens with great exaggeration, and Trixie promptly gave him the finger.

"Hey," Pearl's voice, deep and soft and laced with sleepiness, was like music to Trixie's ears. The mounting unread messages from Brenda now evaporated into nothingness.

"How are you doing, I---" Trixie stumbled around the coffee table in her haste to reach her bedroom, the spilled seawood crunching beneath her bare feet. Mouthing another "I'm sorry" at Blair, Trixie managed to reach her bedroom, and collapsed onto her bed, clinging the phone to her ear with desperation. A smile crept against her dainty lips. "How are you?"

"Tired," Pearl muttered, though Trixie could hear the smile in her voice. Trixie's heart fluttered.

"All done in the studio?"

"Just about," Pearl mumbled boredly. Trixie's heart sank at the pause that followed; hollow and vast.

"Listen," Pearl's voice was slightly muffled, and Trixie knew immediately that she was rolling a cigarette between her perfect teeth. "I got your message, and I appreciate the offer, but I'm doing overtime at the bar. There'd be no point in you coming down this weekend. By the time I get back home, it's late, and then I'm back in at 10 in the morning."

Trixie nodded somberly, feeling utterly stupid for allowing herself to feel a flicker of hope that she might see Pearl this week. Or this month.

"Trixie? You there?"

"O-oh! Y-yes, I'm here…"

"Oh, come on, Blondie," Pearl's words were blown out in exasperation, and Trixie could visualise the tendrils of smoke rising from her nostrils like a dragon as she smoked. Trixie wasn't sure why Pearl had christened her with the nickname "blondie", when she herself was also a pale, silver-blonde. "Don't give me that sad, sad voice. You know I have to work."

Trixie could feel pricks of upset choking up her throat at the bemused tone from her girlfriend. She shook herself slightly, forcing a shaky smile despite it not being visable. "No, no, of course. I get it, it's fine. What about a call? A video chat?"

Pearl hummed against the cigarette in her mouth, and Trixie knew at once that she was to be further let down. "Probably not, babe. I'll be tired. I have music to make."

Trixie nodded again against the handset. At least, she thought with a tiny glup, at least Pearl had called tonight.

"Well---" Pearl blew out smoke again, and Trixie swore she could taste it. "I need to go… love ya."

The call went dead in her hands, but Trixie still cradled the phone to her ear, as if in doing so would bring Pearl's voice back. She thought bitterly about how they used to spend hours on that very phone, talking about everything and nothing at all. Trixie continued to listen to the tone of the terminated call, and she couldn't help but think it sounded like a flatlining heart.

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 13: no seriously we are finally at the end of this Tenma Taro thing we finally are seeing the last of it.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

-

Isabella’s trial ends with her acquittal, and no indictment of another culprit. How could they? In the light of day, it’s that much harder to argue that the photos Athena has of scarred-up trees are evidence of a monster and not, say, a bear. (Apparently bears are pretty common out in the Vale and further north around Kurain Village. Who knew? Not Apollo, but Sebastian does, and he uses that fact.) They can argue it, and they do, and they succeed, but it’s a hell of an uphill slog with no real closure.

What could they do, anyway, to the real thief? Tenma Taro is trapped in a hollow iron statue inside a cavern warded with charms, and in a fae-induced coma. They can’t exactly bring it into court. And that’s even if a judge would let them. Maybe this one - a woman of indeterminate age, older than them and that’s all Apollo can guess, the way he couldn’t really at first place how old Iris was supposed to be, who looks like she was carved out of granite, stony and stern - would accept it. Maybe she wouldn’t. She gives no real indication either way through the trial, listening to all of their arguments with an impassive expression, and she asks sharp, cutting questions that throw both sides off-balance. If the judge who Apollo is used to generally trails behind the defense and prosecution, then this one is in line with them but a step to the side, considering a different angle. 

When court is dismissed, Isabella thanks them profusely in the lobby, cries some more, and hugs Athena. She's been terrified since they told her yes, they could personally confirm her suspicion was correct and Tenma Taro truly was the culprit, but with the most difficult parts behind them Apollo assures her she won't have to worry about the yokai running about the valley any longer. She stares at him wide-eyed, clutching at the wooden bead necklace she wears - surely another sort of lucky warding charm - and she tells him she believes him.

What does she think he is, he wonders, touching his eye. 

"I actually feel pretty good about what we've done these past two days," Athena says, flinging herself backwards into the lobby couch, slumping halfway off it like she's melting down to the floor.

"'Actually'?" Apollo echoes. 

"Well," she says, "considering what we made of it the first go-around, but we pulled it together okay. With help, and some bruises." She plucks at her tights and the material snaps back against her leg. "Ow."

"Maybe don't do that, then," Apollo says, vividly sure that some or another time he has had a conversation just like this with Trucy. Less and less coworkers and more the annoying younger sisters he's never had - was he this annoying to Nahyuta? He knows he wasn't, so this doesn't even make sense as karmic justice.

"Eh, it kinda hurts even when I don't do that," Athena says, sticking her legs out straight in front of her and bouncing her heels off the floor. "It's just the tightness of it, but what else am I gonna wear?"

"Slacks?" Apollo asks.

Athena snorts. "You know how hard it was to find a facsimile of a jacket, and skirts, in this color?" she asks, gesturing at her cropped jacket, which Apollo wasn't ever going to comment on to say that she looks like a high school student trying to shirk the dress code when Prosecutor Gavin still comes to court looking like that. "How am I getting slacks?"

"Mr Wright and I manage," Apollo says. "Try shopping in mens?"

"And just hem it, hm." Athena taps at her earring, sending it swinging back and forth. He hasn't ever yet seen her wearing an earring in the other ear, just that crescent, and he wonders whether the other hole closed itself up, she lost the matching piece, or it's a clip-on. "And there'd be pockets to start with, too! Magnifico!"

"You have pockets already," Apollo says. "I've seen you stash food in them."

"I sewed them in," she explains. "One of my - my best friend when I was young, before I moved away, her grandmother taught her how to sew practically from birth, and I picked it up from her, how to modify stuff. Haven't learned to make my own clothes, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just—" She reaches into her skirt pocket and pulls out a granola bar.

"Clever," Apollo says. "All I've learned from my best friend is tracking salt all across the apartment floor when you step in your own salt circle" - or really it's just a line across the threshold - "and a lot about constellations." And astrology, but that wasn't learned so much from Clay as it was learned to annoy Clay. Okay, maybe that's why these annoying younger sisters are happening as comeuppance, even though Clay is four months younger than Apollo (by the guesstimated birthday Datz picked out) and is generally much worse to Apollo on a regular basis. "Yours is more practical."

"Is the salt circles because he's trying to summon a demon or keep the demons away?" Athena asks. 

"The latter."

"Could we theoretically just have gotten a salt lick and tossed it at Tenma Taro?" Athena asks. She grins to herself, and Apollo rolls his eyes at the image. Like that would work. "Or a bowl of Eldoons? But I guess there's probably someone out there somewhere you can impress with space facts." Like Ema, the few times she and Clay have crossed paths, but Apollo watches the smile fall off Athena's face. He glances around the lobby, surprised to find that it's empty still, that no one has entered, that there's no apparent catalyst to why Widget's blue has darkened. "Someone who thinks it's neat and not - deathly cold and empty and lonely."

"The ol' existential dread hits hard when you think about infinity, huh?" And yet looking up is still less terrifying than even considering what it would be to look across to the Twilight Realm, glean what the world of the fae is like. He asked Klavier; he's sure he can say that it's just as cold, and just as lonely.

"Oh yeah," she says. "Something like that. I'd rather take the ocean; it's still a cold abyss you might die in but you get anglerfish and giant squid with it." Widget lights back up to neutral blue and a second later flashes past it to cheery green. "And penguins! Does outer space have penguins? Check and mate!" 

"I am not going to argue to the existence of space penguins, no," Apollo says. He doesn't know of any penguin constellations; off the top of his head, there's a swan, and an eagle, and one summer Nahyuta charted a warbaa'd that Apollo no longer remembers how to find.

"Man, what kind of a lawyer are you if you can't even do that?" 

Kay announces her arrival with the nonsense she's made herself known for. She proved herself a detective as competent as any other on the stand today, self-assured as she always is but with seriousness she didn't even muster in their life-or-death struggle against Tenma Taro. When called on a contradiction, she swings back with ferocity, without waiting for the prosecution to square it away himself. She forced Apollo to stay on his toes, kept the case moving, up until Sebastian had to make an explanation that didn’t quite mesh with what Kay had argued, and there Apollo drove the wedge to split open the case. They sit almost on the same wavelength and work well together, miles better than Fulbright and Blackquill or Ema and Klavier, but Kay can lunge forward impulsively and Sebastian hesitate to overthink; Apollo remembers being forced to object to one of Athena's conclusions and sympathizes with the way they fall out of sync.

But the trial is over, the verdict passed, and Kay is Kay, off-hours, Detective Faraday no longer.  "Yeah, yeah, we handed that one to you," she says with a sharp grin that suggests she might not be speaking seriously, if the red flash of light that frames her lips doesn't give Apollo that hint. "Next time, we'll kick your ass." Competitiveness lingers, though. "Next time, when we're all not partying it up with the actual monster behind the thing and getting con-cu-ussed!" Her voice pitches into a sing-song at the end as she points at herself with both thumbs. "No biggie, really. You got a job to do so you do it, y'know? Like I investigated a crime scene while concussed and amnesiac, once."

"You what?" Widget yelps, and Athena is too shocked to try and stifle it. Apollo lets that stand as the only response. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap his head around Kay, especially because he knows she’s not lying.

“It wasn’t even your job then,” Sebastian says. Apollo isn’t surprised by his arrival, only that he wasn’t immediately beside Kay when she came bounding in. “It wasn’t even her job then.” He directs his statement directly at Apollo and Athena now. “She was just tagging along with Prosecutor Edgeworth.”

“And I was born to investigate, my dudes,” Kay replies, tipping herself backwards onto the couch, next to Athena. “Though maybe not any more today. I’ve got a headache.”

“You’d better be planning on going home and taking a nap after this.” 

Apollo jumps; Kay flinches, sitting up forward, and so does Athena, who loses the last of her tenuous balance and slides to the floor. Apparently none of them had been warned that Phoenix would be in attendance. 

The surprise now passed, Kay sinks back into the couch. “Yeah yeah, sure thing, Dad.”

Phoenix sighs and presses a hand across his eyes. “I’d tell you someone should talk to you about your lack of professionalism, but I don’t think anyone we know could give that speech without being a hypocrite.”

Apollo thinks himself plenty professional, but the trouble is no one - not Trucy or Klavier or Kay - responds in kind. 

Kay gives Phoenix a thumbs-up. “I didn’t know you were planning to come, Boss,” Athena says. 

“It was more a whim than a plan, really.” Phoenix gives them a small smile. “Had to make sure you were all keeping up the good work in the courtroom, too.” Kay shoots him another thumbs up. Sebastian fidgets like he doesn’t know if he should take Phoenix seriously, if he really did doubt how the trial would go. Apollo wishes he had some advice about understanding Phoenix to offer. After nearly a year, he does not. 

“If it isn’t Phoenix Wright, the man of the hour.”

Apollo knows that voice only because he spent the last several hours hearing her speak: the judge, still with her gavel in hand, tapping it against her palm. Her black hair sits immaculately braided into a crown atop her head, and her layered white cloak flutters delicately for several seconds after she stops moving. “Hello, Judge Courtney,” Phoenix says. Of course he knows her by name too; doesn’t he know everyone in the legal world? “Long time, no see.”

“Indeed it has been,” Courtney agrees. “I expect to see you soon again behind the bench, yes? Having made your latest turnabout last year.”

“Is there anyone who hasn’t been told that I’m retaking the Bar?” Phoenix asks, turning his eyes and hands pleadingly ceilingward. 

“Oh yeah, that’s really soon, isn’t it?” Athena asks. “Next week? You should probably be panicking more.”

“If that’s your official analytical psychology-based advice…” Phoenix shrugs again. Athena frowns, apparently considering whether she wants that to be her actual stance on the matter. “Anyway, Courtney, can I assume that you were put on this trial for a reason?”

“You may assume whatever you like,” she replies. “Though I do wish to speak to you about this entire matter, if you have the time.”

“I do have to run pretty soon,” Phoenix says, “but if you’re heading out too, then yeah, sure.” He turns toward the door, stops, and adds, “Why do I have this horrible feeling of dread already?”

“That’s your problem, not mine,” Courtney says. Her next words are directed at Apollo and Athena. “Mr Justice, Ms Cykes, I’ve heard promising things of you both. Forgive me for brushing you off in this moment, and for not introducing myself properly. You may call me Justine Courtney.”

A part of Apollo that considers itself both weary and savvy thinks that he should have expected it. 

Outside of a trial he’s surely allowed to address a judge by name. He knows this. “It’s very nice to meet you, Your Honor,” he says. Nailed it, but has anyone ever had problems born of being too respectful of the fae?

(Actually, probably. He’ll ask Clay if he’s ever heard of that one.)

“Oh!” Athena jumps like someone just hit her in the ribs. “Nice to meet you!” She flashes a nervous smile, having now remembered basic manners. 

Courtney smiles. It’s almost imperceptible; Apollo wouldn’t consider the expression on her face a smile if he hadn’t just watched the corners of her mouth twitch upwards a minuscule amount. “Sebastian has told you of me, I see.”

“Huh?” Athena asks, her fearful grin still frozen in place. “Why would you think that?”

“Those expressions of terror on both your faces tell me you surely know something of me.” There, more obviously a smile. “I assure you, unless you commit a crime, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Athena’s shoulders sag with relief. “Oh,” Apollo says. “Um. Thanks.”

“Good day to you all.”

She has barely left with Phoenix when Athena rushes over to the lobby doors, putting her ear up to the crack between them. “What?” she asks Apollo’s glare. “They might have something interesting to say! This isn’t a crime!”

“Just horribly impolite,” Apollo says. And fae society is founded on a thin veneer of politeness, with terrible consequences for its breaking. He might have thrown some eighty percent of his self-preservation instincts to the wind with Tenma Taro, but Athena is extra ridiculous. 

A minute passes. Athena’s forehead creases, her eyes narrowing. “Well?” Kay asks. 

“They’re just talking about their kids,” Athena says, and her disappointment couldn’t be more obvious if both she and Widget screamed it. 

-

“And what’s John up to, then? Shit, how old is he now, even? Nineteen?”

“Twenty-one, actually.”

“Where’s the time even go?” Trucy turned sixteen early in the spring and since then he’s had the nagging feeling that the world is ending. Isn’t she still the baby in his locket? Sometimes he thinks about how that little girl in pink, her round face and the eyes too big for it, is the last memory Zak had of her; he never got to see her grow up. (Never bothered to.) And here’s Phoenix, the one who gets to, dreading it. Funny thing, fatherhood. 

“I have no idea,” Courtney replies. And they say it’s only in the Twilight Realm that time works differently. “He’s taking a bit of a hiatus, you could say, from acting, considering what he wishes to do next. He’s concerned if he doesn’t do something he’ll be typecast for life in kaiju movies as the one human who the monster finds fondness for.” With a chuckle and a shake of her head, she adds, “Though I suppose there is some art imitation of life in that.”

“I wasn’t gonna be the one to say that,” Phoenix says. Think it, certainly, but say it? No. “Though you’re up to maybe half a dozen humans now?”

She raises her eyebrows but smiles and accepts the joke for what it is - a joke, and not Phoenix counting up her family, acquaintances, and coworkers and deciding which she presumably likes enough to spare when she smashes up Los Tokyo, which Phoenix would swear is a city name he once heard in one of those movies when he and Trucy went. “Something close to that, perhaps.” She smacks her gavel into the center of her palm and her long nails, even now reminiscent of the claws Phoenix could see if he looked at her through different eyes, curl around it. “Now. Mr Wright.”

He’ll probably never get used to hearing his name from her lips; she’s like Mia in this regard, a creature of the Court so determined to perform humanity that she overcomes their cultural hangup on names - somewhat. Mia still tripped, and Courtney has her own particular patterns. It makes her sound like an extremely polite person, he’s come to notice: it’s Mr or Ms and a surname to everyone, first-name basis reserved only for John and Sebastian. 

“Why was I not informed of everything that was planned to deal with the monster Tenma Taro until after the fact?”

“Sebastian didn’t tell you?” Phoenix asks.

Courtney levels a cold stare at him. “Do not shift the blame. He did not, because, as he explained to me this morning, he was aware that I had dinner plans with John last night and thus he didn’t want to bother me. You, however, Mr Wright, have no such knowledge of my schedule but do have my contact information, and therefore, had no reason to not have kept me abreast of the entire situation.”

“That I think Sebastian is a competent kid who’s more than capable of handling this? Is that not a reason?”

Her expression darkens into a scowl, her fingers tightening a little more around her gavel. “If you think him so, then, pray tell, why you also called upon one of your... ‘friends’ to deal with the beast?”

Something got lost in the telling, but it’s a relief if this is all she wants to chew him out for. “No, I didn’t call on anyone, beyond, y’know, the kids - it was a decision they made, no input from me.” Trucy had said that she was glad for Iris’ help, though, and also that Iris was terrifying, and Edgeworth gripped the steering wheel hard enough that his knuckles went white.

Courtney’s brow does not relax. “And that does not concern you? You may be content to place your child into the hands of one of Them, but do not expect me to be so nonchalant about mine.”

“I’d argue that Sebastian isn’t your child, but you have that look that says you would argue that on a technicality.”

“I in fact could,” she replies. “But you know as well as I that you are arguing on a technicality yourself, rather than address my concern.”

Phoenix glances back up the stairs. He doesn’t know how far Athena’s hearing ranges, but he does know that she’s damnably curious, and when it’s that easy to eavesdrop, he wouldn’t put it past her. “I’d need to fully grasp your concern to make an actual rebuttal. I mean, I understand in some capacity - they’re the royalty.” If he remembers the timeline, which he’s not sure he does, Courtney would have left the Court before Morgan’s incarceration. She would have known it as the nightmare it was under Elise’s absence and Morgan’s ambitions, and he can’t fault her for being wary of the next generation of women to rule over that den of vipers. 

“No,” she says. “That is not why. Mystics or no, I do not trust any of my kind who claim to love humans but then return to those frigid halls.”

How many stolen children had she known - disregarded, perhaps, back then - before John came into her care? She without a doubt knows what would have become of him had she raised him in the Twilight Realm. Thalassa and Klavier have gifts not worth the scars. Even a kindly fae guardian couldn’t protect a human child there. 

“I’d tend to disagree there, because they’re the Mystics,” Phoenix says. The courthouse doors swing closed behind them and they step into the bright sunlight and the noise. It’s easier to talk out on the street, their voices drowned out by the rest of the bustle. This is Los Angeles, crowded and noisy and the background radiation of Kurain, the fallout that drifted here, makes the city so damn weird that this conversation can’t be breaking the top ten of most bizarre conversations happening within this hour. “If they were just anyone, like you, I’d say yeah, leaving is best. But they’re at the top of the food chain - don’t they owe it to try and change things from up there?”

Had Elise and her fondness for humanity kept the throne, what then? Where would the Court be, anything or nothing changed? Or if Maya and Pearl left now, if Iris had kept to her self-exile, what would become of it? At the end of their bloodline, who would take their place as Mystics, on the throne, as Queen? How much worse can it get? (Better not to ask. Don’t tempt fate.)

“Would you tell Edgeworth to abandon the title of chief prosecutor because half the office is corrupt?” Phoenix adds. “That’s exactly why we need him there.”

On the sidewalk, Courtney stops to face him. “And I find that a very imperfect analogy,” she says.

“It’s an analogy - if it were perfect, it would be—”

She holds a finger up to her lips. Sometimes Phoenix would swear it’s more than just intimidation in that motion and that she puts magic behind it to make him or anyone trip over his tongue when she has a point she wants to make. “We need a justice system; we need prosecutors. We need to reform, to shine light on the shadows, for all our sakes. We do not need the Winter Court.”

“So you’re an advocate of fae anarchy?” Now there’s a sentence he didn’t expect to say. While he, and even Maya and Iris and Pearl, use it also to mean fae society as a whole, “the Winter Court” should, pedantically, refer only to their governance. He doesn’t know which Courtney means: that the fae hierarchy is unnecessary, or that they are.

“I am an advocate of us intermingling with humanity enough that we fade away entirely.”

The latter, then. “You might get that wish,” Phoenix says. He’s heard from Maya that they kill each other faster than they have children, and then those children that do happen get swapped for human ones, and every decision is one of impulse, a whim in the moment, no forethought, no concern for the repercussions, the inevitable societal collapse. And Maya has never sounded grieved by this. It’s a simple fact. Their dynasty will end with a whimper: that is their prophecy, and a self-inflicted one.

“I look forward to it. In the meantime, though, I must as of your ‘friends’ - do they think change is needed in the Court? Do they understand what it is that is so wrong there, or do they humor you and our morality as one would humor a child or a favorite pet?”

“If it’s getting a cat that makes you get rid of the toxic waste in your backyard, that’s still a good thing, right?” he asks irritably. If it ends at the same damn place— “You aren’t something different from them either, you know.”

“Of course I know.” She straightens her back, drawing herself up even straighter, and her cloak rustles, its movements continuing independently of her body, belying the two pairs of wings that under glamour pretend to be a garment. So far as he knows she can’t support herself to fly with those wings. They’re an aesthetic, part of her self-styled position as an avenging archangel of the Goddess of Law. “But that means I know how they are, as I once was. A question for you, Mr Wright, that I mean in the kindest way possible.” Part of him doubts that. “Do you believe, truly, that you have made enough of an impact on them that when you are gone, they will continue to respect the morality that you currently ask them to live by?”

“I—”

Iris would. Pearl - might. But he hasn’t seen Maya in years because he was afraid that even with him present, here, alive, she would go against his wishes and enact bloody vengeance on Kristoph. She offered it as a gift for free, like a cat would turn up a dead mouse on the doorstep. He can answer half the question, that he’s made an impact. She loves him. That isn’t what Courtney wants to know.

“We’re a bit off-track from your main concern, aren’t we?” A feeble redirect, but she doesn’t look smug so much as sad that she’s tripped him up here. “You wouldn’t trust them yourself, fine, but the question of what happens when I’m gone doesn’t have that much in common with you currently being angry that Sebastian was around them, now, when I’m still in the proximity.”

“I am what they are, of the fae. Sebastian is a witch - is my witch, you might say. In the Court, we hardwire ourselves into a particular way of thinking, whether we mean it or not. To survive, you learn that all others are threats, now or soon to be in the future, and if you cannot get at the threat itself right away, you wage a proxy war and strike against their resources, their tools, and their humans - who you would consider within the first two categories.”

Implication: obvious. Sort of. Part of it. “Why would they see you as a threat, though? You exiled yourself. You’ve said yourself you’re never going back.”

“It’s an instinct. Even I struggle with it.” Courtney steps closer to him, allow the sidewalk traffic to flow around them. Maybe they should start walking again, get out of the courthouse vicinity before the kids catch up. “Seeing another of my kind, or a changed child - my first impulse is to lash out. I find it incredibly unfortunate, not to mention distracting. I presided over a case the other day that Prosecutor Gavin was in charge of, and I believe we both found that profoundly uncomfortable, no matter how we reasonably know that we are very removed from that life.”

Profoundly uncomfortable is a decent way to describe how Phoenix feels at this thought, too. “Oh,” he says. “I see.”

“Yes. You understand, then, my concern that Sebastian will come to harm? You friends may protect your daughter and your proteges, because they are yours. But Sebastian…”

Those two are Edgeworth’s, not mine. He said it himself, shifted responsibility for their lives, because he’s already failing to convince himself that Athena and Apollo aren’t his responsibility, aren’t his kids. Didn’t he tell Iris they were, or at least implied it?

(And then Iris implied that Kay was right, that she and Sebastian were Phoenix’s too, by saying that Kay had decided for him. Of all that happened last night, that’s an inconsequential piece, and he remembers it vividly.)

(Which, actually, even if Iris hadn’t agreed, there’s still another question raised.)

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees. “But, they know Edgeworth. My friends, I mean. They know he’s my friend. And they know who his - his people are, Kay, Sebastian, whoever else. That he wouldn’t be happy if anything happened to them, and I wouldn’t either.”

“Believe me, I do like to hear that,” Courtney says with a tiny smile. “But that is a chain too long for me to fully place my trust in. Understand where my concern comes from, and tell me in advance whenever you need the assistance of Sebastian the witch as much or more as Sebastian the prosecutor. Can we agree to that?”

“Absolutely,” Phoenix says. He could’ve agreed to it without the passive-aggressive shaming but - well, she probably thought she needed to do that to properly make her point. To make him understand, she would have thought it best to make him doubt first. How could she trust his fae when he isn’t certain that he himself does? Courtney’s won every hand this round. Probably time to step away from the table.

She smiles. “Good. Best of luck to you; I hope the Bar goes well.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, thanks.”

And then he winces, and she raises her eyebrows. The whole damn conversation, he was reminded, he was extra aware, of what she is, and then he slipped anyway. One of the first bits of advice Mia gave him, to never say thank you to Them. It’s an admission of owing a debt, however slight, and thank you does not fulfill a debt. “I hope you haven’t lost your touch,” Courtney adds, and it means double now. “I’ve wanted to someday see you in court, given how highly the chief prosecutor has spoken of you all these years.”

Implication: she can’t believe that the man Edgeworth so highly respects is the man standing before her. (Or maybe she does, and the one here who doesn’t believe such is Phoenix.)

“Well,” Phoenix says, “if you aren’t the judge on my first case back” - presumptuous to say he’ll be back, but confidence is a key point, though he’s pretty damn confident that Courtney wouldn’t be the judge, because he thinks he probably sealed some sort of accidental exclusivity pact with the one judge a long time ago - “you can come watch. I’ll let you know when. Or Edgeworth will.” Edgeworth might make a damn party out of it if Phoenix isn’t careful.

“I will look forward to it.” Courtney nods at him, one last acknowledgement. “Until next time.” She spins on her heel and weaves her way through the people on the sidewalk, a most mundane exit. Phoenix turns his eyes from her back, stares up at the courthouse behind them. Always something new to ponder, always another issue.

But dragging Sebastian out anywhere isn’t in future plans, so most of what he needs to concern himself with vis-à-vis Courtney is to extend to Trucy her offer that, if Trucy is interested in performing on the big screen and not the stage, Courtney will smack John into being in a good enough mood to accept any inquiries Trucy might have. 

Small mercies, that among everything else, Phoenix’s teenager has never been a moody teenager. He’s not sure how he would handle that.

-

Trucy arrives at the office after school, beaming once they tell her of their victory, and promising them that they are becoming the go-to law firm for the people of Nine-Tails Vale and Tenma Town. How is one supposed to feel when told that he might be the lawyer on retainer for a haunted valley? Word-of-mouth advertising is just about all the Wright Anything Agency has, and Apollo decides he’s going to skip thinking about this unless it becomes a problem again.

In a way that’s becoming a habit, the girls tear out of the office when the clock strikes five like their horses are going to turn into rodents again. “I’m too busy on weekends,” Trucy says, and she is, often, as a real magician trying to reintroduce stage magic to a city culturally wary of both, “but I’ve gotta show Athena all the coolest places around town as soon as possible!” 

“Didn’t you grow up here?” Apollo asks her, and Athena shrugs, and she and Trucy clamber into her car and honk and wave at him and are gone from the lot before Apollo has even unlocked his bike from the rack. 

Takes some getting used to, still, the new routine. Trucy going home with Athena even though Athena’s found somewhere to live that isn’t the Wright family couch. Since Christmas, Apollo and Trucy would bike part of the way home together - she had gotten hers as a present from “Uncle Miles - er, Mr Edgeworth, he’s awkward about me calling him that in front of people that he works with, I think it’s like a professionalism thing?” - but now—

Well, he can’t resent Trucy if she’d rather hang out with another girl her own age, and Athena’s a nice kid herself, and he doesn’t know where this thought is headed. Athena had offered to give him a lift, too, but accepting a ride from his coworker five years his junior, for more than heading to a crime scene, definitely feels undignified. What little dignity he has left.

Trucy never bothers to lock up her bike when she leaves it here, saying that Mia would make sure it wasn’t stolen. And it hasn’t ever been, yet - the only thing ever stolen from this office, far as Apollo knows, were Trucy’s magic panties; maybe Mia shares Apollo’s disdain for those things. But Apollo would rather trust something solid, and he still meticulously locks up his bike, and he still locks the office door behind him when he’s the last to leave.

About ready to go, sliding his lock into his backpack, someone behind him speaks. “Little dragon.”

Apollo whirls around, reflexively raising the lock in his hand like a weapon, letting his bicycle clatter to the ground. Iris flinches away, her hands coming up to protect her face, as though she couldn’t flatten him without touching him if she really wanted. Would she look more or less frightening if it was in the light of day that he saw her charcoal skin and red eyes? Kristoph under the clinical lights of the courtroom simply was.

“Why are you here?” Apollo asks, slowly lowering the lock, because it’s steel, not iron, and is not going to be of use. Hell, even iron doesn’t feel like enough, right now, not when he almost asked what do you want, a question that could surely be extorted into wrenching something away from him. What do you want, inches from, what can I give you, and the fae, tangling the lines.

“I have a piece of advice to offer,” Iris says. 

Apollo leans down to lift his bike from the ground, not breaking eye contact with her. Not enough eye contact is probably an offense. Too much is also probably an offense. The winning move is to not play and it’s far too late for that. “Am I allowed to refuse it?” he asks, and then he wants to stick his entire foot in his mouth, because advice doesn’t imply something binding, and he could disregard it without telling her that. Because this definitely is an offense, and Iris’ dark eyes narrow. He’d swear they flashed in the light, not red, but a white shine. He curls his hand around the handlebars and squeezes until he can feel the iron ring digging into his finger. 

“Yes, but I don’t believe you are so selfish, are you?” She scrutinizes him with a hard stare, wide eyes and a slack, blank face. 

“Er,” Apollo says. If he wants to ignore advice from dubious sources and gets ruined for it then that’s his problem, no one else’s. “Selfish?”

“Perhaps ‘advice’ is not the way to term it,” Iris says. She leans on the bike rack and her nails when they hit it make the soft tink of metal on metal. “An assurance, perhaps? And not only for you.”

“O...kay?” Do the fae enjoy being cryptic, or is it not on purpose and simply an impulse hardwired, a manner of speaking they think nothing of? Or is it for the sake of dramatics - it would explain a lot about Klavier if needless dramatics are a key cultural aspect of living among the fae. “For who, then?” If it was for anyone else - Trucy or Kay or Sebastian - she could have just said it last night, when they were all together. Why just ambush Apollo?

“Your friend,” she answers. That means nothing despite Apollo’s very limited number of friends. “The changed child, the lost boy. He is far from mad, I assure you - he is not twisted only in his own head, and he is not the only one who have ever seen through a looking glass a life that could have been.”

“Oh,” Apollo says. He hadn’t lent much credence to Klavier’s thought that his visions were just a psychological coping mechanism, honestly, but if Iris has insight then he won’t pass up the chance to learn more. “So, who else, then, has had that happen? If you can say,” he adds hastily. Maybe she can’t, or won’t, the way Klavier clams up.

“Little dragon,” she says, and Apollo doesn’t know if she’s teasing him or scolding him with that tone; it’s something almost in between, and a strange uncomfortable familiarity. “You have an eye for the Truth and a brick for a brain.”

“Eh?” Definitely not the best objection he could make to refute that. Even yelling “Objection!” might have been better. 

“Dense,” she says. “It’s me.”

“It’s - ah.” Right. Should he have guessed that? She knows about Klavier without - surely she hasn’t met him? She knows about something he only ever told Apollo. If she knows that, she might know anything, and she could be talking about anyone. “Why - why’s that happen, then? To you and Prosecutor Gavin but not - not—”

Not me, when I could very easily have lived several lives unfathomably different from each other? 

(Not that he wants to see it. Not that he envies Klavier at all. He doesn’t know if his heart would hold together at a glimpse of a life beside his brother.)

“I cannot say with total certainty, but he and I share something,” Iris says. “A complex, unfortunate entanglement with the name and life of another. His twin stole his life and name, while I borrowed both from mine.”

He feels like an echo in this conversation, adding nothing, just standing here in bewilderment asking for constant clarification. “His twin?” Apollo repeats. That’s - one way of putting it. Technically they are the same age, or supposed to be.

Iris nods solemnly, lowering her eyes, her lids heavy and hiding them entirely. “It is not quite the same. My sister was as fae as I am - we were born together, she the last red rays of a setting sun, and I the shadow of the horizon when the light sank away.” She pushes herself up off the bike rack, no longer leaning in toward Apollo but withdrawing into herself. “And I was indeed her shadow. We were not the daughters our mother wanted - my sister was powerful but not malleable, and I was weak and loved her more than I ever would our mother. She cast us aside and my sister set her sights on power among humans, not within the Court. I followed, because I was sure I would not live without her.”

My sister was, she said. Was. And that’s enough to know before Iris continues, lifting her chin and shaking her hair back out of her eyes. “But she is dead and I am still here, because her cruelest deeds caught up to her and I, all she had for a heart, could not shield her. All she knew was how to shed more blood, and she meant to, and instead I asked her, would she please not dirty her hands further, would she let me try to fix this my way; she allowed me to, and for the better part of a year our places were switched. Our name was Dahlia Hawthorne.” She tilts her head, studying Apollo intensely again, like she’s checking to see if the name means something to him. He isn’t sure that it doesn’t. 

“And I failed,” Iris continues, “and she acted her own way as she had wished to from the start - and then she failed, was judged and sentenced and taken from me and then from the world of the living, and I was left behind an echo. For years after that, I saw - not quite like your friend, not the one simple life that would have been, but many. A diamond, and its every facet a different alternative. A different possible life for Dahlia.” 

She lifts up a hand, her palm facing the sky, her fingers curled just slightly around a beveled gem that appears in her hand. Its clear body sparkles in the sunlight and Apollo sees flashes of movement inside of it, colors and shapes and people. “In one lifetime,” Iris says, and the gem, the diamond, floats in the air a few inches above her hand, “I never was her at all. I stepped aside and let my twin do what she would and never cared about the darkness we damned the legal system to languish in.” She twists her wrist and the diamond turns with it. “In another, I was Dahlia and after I did what I meant to I stayed, and then my sister killed him anyway because she could not bear for me to love anyone but her.”

“So your sister was a monster too,” Apollo blurts. He hopes she realizes the “too” refers to Kristoph, not to Iris. 

“Oh yes,” Iris says. “She was a demon; she was selfish and cruel and manipulative and she would have been an archetypal fae queen had she decided to fight for the throne. From the day we were born until the day she was executed, she cared about no one but herself. And from the day we were born, I have loved her, and until I die I will love her still. She is my sister and she is me and I was her - it’s a knotted mess, is it not, when there is someone else who is and isn’t you, and a name that is and isn’t yours.”

Apollo nods mutely. Did your sister care about you? he doesn’t ask, because while Iris has been open so far about her life story, and it’s a valid question given the way she talks about herself and her sister being one person, there’s got to be a line somewhere and he doesn’t want to meander across it. 

“I never did see a life where I did what I meant to and escaped without incurring an unpayable debt, nor did my sister ever choose a way to hide damning evidence that was not pawning it off on a naive boy who has since willed his heart to turn to stone because he loves so strongly that time and again it breaks.” Iris snaps her palm closed into a fist and the diamond vanishes, but her eyes hold a far-away look softer than the sharp movement. “It’s hard to believe in destiny when I’ve seen so many disparate possibilities, but I suppose it must exist in some form, and he always destined or damned to cross paths with the faes of Kurain.”

She isn’t talking about Phoenix, is she? “Do you still have visions?” Apollo asks instead. “Or how did you stop them?”

“For myself,” she says, and that sounds like a veiled warning that this isn’t going to help Klavier, that this is all subjective guesswork, and the fae’s prying eyes don’t have much help, “I needed a certain amount of closure. To see again the man I had most wronged, to tell him the truth, and that to see in spite of myself and my twin, he had survived and found people who loved him better than I ever could.”

He can’t not ask. The question is going to eat him otherwise. “So, erm, is this Mr Wright you’re referring to?” 

Iris stares at him with lifeless eyes. Apollo rubs the back of his head and decides that the best way to play is this is to make a plea deal by naming his co-conspirators. “And we were wondering, uh, me and Trucy and - and Athena, and Detective Faraday and Prosecutor Debeste - we were wondering, are you in love with Mr Wright?”

“No,” she says curtly.

“Oh.” He’d still sort of believe that single word, sharp and clipped as it was, to be a lie if she wasn’t fae. (And if he couldn’t see when humans are lying, sometimes. Most of the time. Whenever Blackquill isn’t involved.)

“Why did you think so?” she asks, studying him, her head tilting back and forth. Apollo regrets everything that brought him here, his bad choices and his friends who are bad choices themselves. “A moon rabbit heard something she thought was that?”

That has to mean Athena, “rabbit” an epithet commenting on her ears, though why “moon rabbit” in particular? (Apollo knows that some Asian cultures call it a rabbit in the moon, not because it was a Khura’inese story too - it’s not - and definitely not because he and Clay spent all of middle school and half of high school intensely into Sailor Moon - they definitely, totally didn’t.) What’s that got to do with Athena? Trucy a firebird, Apollo a dragon - what does Iris think she knows about Athena?

“No,” Apollo says. “It was just a kinda vibe that all of us felt?” He expends too much effort stopping his voice from cracking into a fearful squeak. “Can we forget that I asked that and just move on?”

“No,” Iris answers. Apollo’s heart sinks. “If I agreed, little dragon, that would be a deal, and a debt you owe to me.”

Shit. He’s done it again, said something wrong to her again, and he’s lucky that she’s - kind? Has a steep debt or her own and sympathizes? Or is she hoarding his missteps even while she points them out, waiting until there’s something she can get from him? 

“Didn’t your father teach you to better watch your words?”

Apollo tries very, very hard to pretend it’s just random that she said father over mother or parents - tries to pretend past the sticky dryness in his throat that she’s not fae, not of a habit of knowing things she has no way to know and not of a disposition to select every word with intricate care. And he tries to pretend that the most he learned from his father wasn’t the shapes of magatamas and mitamahs, an edict to hold his soul close, but that the people he loves are going to let him down sooner or later, or later. 

(Kristoph and Phoenix just reemphasized that one.)

“Entirely different question,” Apollo says. Better to move on. “Why did you tell me all this and not Prosecutor Gavin when he’s the one who actually…”

Actually is living with it and isn’t just Apollo, on the sidelines, the one who knows so many secrets, about Klavier, about Trucy and the Gramaryes, and now about Iris. (One of the fae, and he knows something so - so - about her.)

“And just how much do you suppose a man who was so stolen and changed wants to hear, unsolicited, anything from a royal creature of the Court that did this to him?”

Royalty, monsters, and Iris’ twin, the monster, who would have been the classic image of a queen. What’s their relation to Mia? How many are part of this royal family, and does Phoenix know all of them?

“Ah,” Apollo says. “Right. But I don’t really think he’s going to be much more receptive to me coming up to him and telling him what I’ve heard from one of the fae who impossibly knows things about him that she’s got know way of knowing!”

“Everyone you meet who’s magic brushes something off on you,” Iris explains. “Distinct traces, and one can learn a lot about someone else if she knows how to read it. And I am very familiar with your friend’s particular problem to recognize it.”

(If she sees all this about Klavier, could she tell Apollo what Dhurke is? And Nahyuta? If he wants information from her, what payment would she demand in return? Does he even want to know this?)

“It’s still creepy,” Apollo says. “And I’m not—” Not what? Equipped to handle any of this bugfuckery? Responsible for Klavier in any way? He’d like to be able to help him, sure, but this is - how much would it actually help?

Iris waits for him to finish the thought. 

“We’re barely friends,” Apollo adds, because she really looks like she’s going to stand there silently until he can stumble though some more words. “What am I supposed to do? Say ‘hey, I have it on good authority from one of the Fair Folk that you haven’t lost your mind, no she couldn’t tell you how to stop it, said some vague thing about getting closure’—”

“Come to think of it,” Iris muses, and dread coils up again in Apollo’s chest, “another factor in my visons ceasing may have been that at the same time of my gaining closure, or immediately after, I spent several years locked up in the iron hell that is prison, as an accomplice to covering up an act of voluntary manslaughter.”

“I - I’m sorry, you what?” 

With a tight, pursed-lip smile, Iris shakes her head. “That one is not a story that needs telling now.”

So her experiences are even less applicable to Klavier’s situation, then. Fantastic. “Why are you even telling me anything?” he asks. “I know you said it’s reassurance, for peace of mind, but, why?”

Why does she care?

“I believe that last night I assured Feenie that I would look after his children, yes? That I would not let them come to harm?” She sweeps her hair away from her face, back over her shoulder. “I am doing so.”

“I’m not - Prosecutor Gavin definitely isn’t - I don’t think that’s what Mr Wright meant.”

Her black eyes fix on him, stare straight through him. He’s pretty sure he knows what she’s saying. Do you think I don’t know that? 

But he’d rather think that she’s misunderstanding than consider the prospect that one of the fae has taken a kind of maternal interest in them. She’s still fae. Their families don’t function well, do they? She’s got to be expecting something in return, see something useful in them.

And Apollo’s not going to be anyone’s human weapon. 

“At any rate,” she says, finally ending that chilling silence that can’t have been more than ten seconds but also felt like it lasted about a thousand years, “you have more information now. Use it if you see the opportunity, as you judge fit and deem best. You know him better than I do.”

That can’t be hard, and doesn’t mean much. Apollo still doesn’t know how he’s supposed to say anything. It would be nice to give Klavier some reassurance that he isn’t cracked in the head more than any man who makes those deliberate aesthetic choices has to be, but this would probably just make him more paranoid. It’s making Apollo more paranoid, to begin to know the scope of what the fae can know, like he wasn’t freaked the hell out and has been ever since Iris called him a dragon. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

“I regret that I know no better way to help than to put this on you,” she says. “That I ask you to be so responsible for someone else’s pain.” At least she acknowledges it. “You have enough troubles of your own to be concerned with.”

Coming from one of the fae, that is the single most ominous statement Apollo has ever heard. He decides like so much else, he’s going to ignore it. “It’s fine,” he says. Not the trouble part, but Klavier. It’s sort of like Phoenix asking him every so often - less frequently as the months pass and October is further away - if he’s heard from Prosecutor Gavin lately, how he’s doing. It’s the same concept, just with more mad fae magic. 

Iris scrutinizes him again. He doubts her eyes could be any more piercing when they’re glowing red. “It’s a difficult thing, to care so much for someone who has the same face as someone who so hurt you,” she says. “And a harder thing to see in a mirror.” Again, she sweeps her hair back out of her face, and the glossy red that hides in it the black catches the light. “I suppose I probably will see you again sooner or later, little dragon. Best of luck to you in the meantime - and if there could be any words that he might accept from a faery monster such as myself, I hope one day he will hurt less than I do.”

She’s fae. If she says it, it has to be the truth, in some way or another, but this one seems plain. 

Iris scuffs at the sidewalk with her sandal. “I wonder,” she says, “if one of my cousins purposely cracked this so circular.”

And without glancing at Apollo again, she vanishes instantly. None of the pomp of leaving the manor, no flowers left behind. Nothing but a gust of cold air. 

-

Apollo has been home for half an hour when he realizes something else he did wrong. Like a note that would have been left in the margins of one of his clunky middle school essays, reminding him to watch his tenses. What he should have asked Iris was, have you at any point been in love with Mr Wright? 

[orphanbrigade]

Colours

Orphan Brigade [Baby Years]: The story of how an infamous crime lord became the guardian of three children and a teenager.

This chapter is all responses to the colour ask

Orange/ Ray Orange:what makes you feel warm inside? what’s your favourite Halloween tradition? what’s the last thing you learned? when’s the last time you felt obsessed? what’s your favourite article of clothing?

As dorky as it sounded, what made Ray feel warm and content was time spent with his family. He had gone from being completely alone, to being surrounded by people who loved him. It could get over-bearing at times, as he often needed time to himself to recharge. But spending time with his family always made Ray feel loved.

His favourite part of Halloween was after the trick or treating was done, and the boys would climb onto the couch and watch a cheesy (kid friendly) horror movie. Rays personal favourites were Halloween Town 2 and the Haunted Mansion. Geoff would laugh at how absurdly bad the effects were while Jack would fuss over the boys, wrapping them in blankets to keep them warm and making them cocoa. More often than not, the boys would fall asleep there, cuddled into each other after they’d had their fill of candy.

Ray had always been obsessed with games. Every time a new game came out, he would be desperate to give it a try. But after being used to poverty, Ray never asked for anything from Geoff or Jack. However, whenever he did well on a spelling test or got a good report from school, one of the games would appear for him and Ray would spend hours totally consumed by the digital world.

Ray would never admit it, but his favourite article of clothing was his onesie. Geoff had gotten all of the boys (including Ryan) one for their first Christmas together. Ryan was a skeleton, Michael was a bear, Gavin was a creeper and Ray’s onesie looked like a tuxedo. He always thought he looked pretty cool in it.

Blue/Ryan Blue: what do you do when you’re sad? what are some things you do when you can’t sleep? what was the best (non-romantic) night you’ve had? what kind of covers do you have on your bed? who is the last person you told a secret to?

Whenever Ryan was upset, he would sneak out of his parent’s home and make his way over to Geoff and Jack’s apartment. No matter what time of day it was, he would be happily received with open arms. If the lads were awake, they would rush to include him in whatever game they were playing. If the boys had gone to bed, then Geoff and Jack would watch a film with him. Geoff would always offer alcohol even though Ryan had refused countless times in the past. If it was so late that everyone had gone to bed, Ryan would simply fall asleep on the couch, content in the knowledge that things would be better in the morning.

If he couldn’t sleep, then Ryan would often walk aimlessly around the town. He would often wear his mask to disguise his age. If anyone spotted a young teen wandering the streets after midnight then there would probably be questions. When he wore the mask, he was left alone. He liked walking around when the streets were totally abandoned, the serene quiet helped to calm him after hectic days.

Ryan’s fondest memory was one night, shortly after Geoff had amassed all of his orphans, when Jack insisted that they go on a camping trip to get to know each other better. It wasn’t exactly Ryan’s idea of a good time, but he relented after some intense pleading from Michael, Ray and Gavin. The small group sat around the campfire, toasting marshmallows while Geoff told ridiculously exaggerated stories about his and Jacks adventures, presumably in an attempt to impress the kids. It was the first time that Ryan had felt like he was part of a warm, loving family (unlike his biological one).

At his parents’ home, Ryan’s sheets were a plain blue. His mother liked a minimalistic look and hated any kind of pattern or unnecessary decoration. When Geoff made a bedroom for him at the apartment though, Gavin had been tasked with picking the bedding while shopping with Geoff. Gavin had decided that Ryan needed Spiderman sheets. When Ryan asked him why Spiderman, Gavin simply replied that Spiderman was cool, as if that should be reason enough.

If Ryan had a secret that he felt like he needed to share with someone, more often than not he would tell Jack. Jack had a special way of listening without interruption or judgment that made Ryan feel like it was safe to tell him anything. He didn’t share many secrets, but when he did it was always with Jack.

Blue/Michael Blue: what do you do when you’re sad? what are some things you do when you can’t sleep? what was the best (non-romantic) night you’ve had? what kind of covers do you have on your bed? who is the last person you told a secret to?

When Michael was sad, he would distance himself from everyone. He didn’t like them to see him upset. He was perfectly content expressing rage and anger in front of everyone, but sadness felt like it should be private to him. His solitude never lasted long though, as Gavin would quickly notice his absence of his “boi” and go find him. If Michael looked upset Gavin would hug him and pull him back to their bedroom so they could play with Ray for a while to distract him from whatever was making him upset.

When Michael first stated to live with Geoff and Jack, he found it very difficult to sleep. He was always listening for the creak of floorboards, the door being pushed open and the violence that usually followed. It never happened at Geoff’s apartment, but that didn’t mean Michael could relax. There was no knowing when things would go back to normal. So he would sit on his bed, staring at the door until he eventually passed out from exhaustion. This went on for months until Michael finally started to trust his new guardians and felt confident that he could let down his guard in order to sleep.

Michael’s favourite night as a child followed one of their Sunday driving adventures. Geoff had decided to take them out of the city and had gone so far out that he had gotten them lost. When the car broke down, they had to hitchhike to the nearest motel (Geoff, Jack and Ryan each carrying one of the lads). Michael gazed up in amazement at the stars in the sky, grinning as Jack explained the stories behind all of the constellations. When they finally reached the motel, Jack bundled the boys up in a double bed and let them watch cartoons until they passed out.

Michael’s bed covers were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or Hero turtles as Gavin insisted).

Michael told any secrets that he had to both Gavin and Ray. They were a team and would tell each other everything. Even when they couldn’t tell the grownups.

Yellow/Gavin yellow: if you could have any view from your bedroom window what would you choose? what’s your favorite thing to do on a sunny day? what do you consider lucky? what made you smile today? what makes you happy?

Gavin missed England. If he could have any view, then it would be London. He wanted to see the towering landmarks and the British flag waving in the breeze. He thought it would make him feel less like an outsider. He knew he was different from his American family. They teased his accent playfully but at school it could be a lot less playful (luckily Michael was always there to defend him). However, as much as he missed England, he was content with the view that he had. Los Santos was just as beautiful in its own way.

Gavin loved to be outside, exploring the city. So when the weather was nice he would barrage Geoff and Jack with requests to go somewhere new. More often than not, Geoff was overcome with work and planning, so Jack would take the boys out, finding them new and exciting places to explore. Gavins personal favourite was anywhere that had ice cream.

Gavin had a lucky pound coin. It was the only British currency he had left and he considered it to be a precious treasure. He kept it hidden in his pocket and never told anyone about it. Whenever he was feeling homesick for England he would take it out and look at the Queens face, making up stories about the monarch and her life in his head.

His family made Gavin happy. He often wondered if he was being too clingy, but he couldn’t help it. Having a happy family had seemed impossible for Gavin, but now he was safe, comfortable and above all insanely happy.

Yellow/Michael yellow: if you could have any view from your bedroom window what would you choose? what’s your favorite thing to do on a sunny day? what do you consider lucky? what made you smile today? what makes you happy?

As far as Michael was concerned, he already had the perfect view from his bedroom window. He had always lived in big, bustling cities and loved to see the city skyline, especially late at night when all of the windows shone yellow with the lights.

Michael loved going to parks on sunny days. Especially ones that had equipment for him to climb on. He would excitedly climb anything he could, testing his strength and agility, constantly pushing himself to do better. Which more often than not resulted in him falling off and ending up with scrapped knees and elbows. Luckily Jack always brought a first aid kit with them, knowing that Michael would inevitably injure himself through reckless behaviour.

The only thing Michael ever considered to be lucky were shooting stars. Every time he saw one, he would close his eyes and make a wish. Most of the time, he simply wished for things to stay the same. Occasionally he would wish for a new bike. Regardless he would never tell anyone what he wished for (no matter how much Gavin asked). That was bad luck and would therefore invalidate his wish. Michael liked games. Especially ones that the whole family would play. He loved family game night and was at his happiest when all of the family (Ryan included) were playing together. Unless it was monopoly. Which all of the lads hated with a fierce passion.

Ryan/Purple purple: what’s your astrological sign? what’s the best piece of advice you ever received? when’s the last time you followed your instincts? what’s your favorite food? what’s your secret dream?

Ryan was born early in December which made him a Sagittarius. He had never held much belief in astrology though, the idea that distant balls of gas could determine his fate was laughable to him. He was far too scientifically minded for that.

Surprisingly, the best pieces of advice Ryan received normally came from a very drunk Geoff. Ryan’s favourite piece of advice came shortly after his college graduation, where he was slowly cutting off ties to his biological family. “Fuck ‘em.” Geoff had shrugged casually when Ryan had mentioned it. “They don’t make you happy? Cut them out of your life. Do whatever you need to do to make you happy.” After consideration, Ryan took Geoff’s words to heart. He knew it would disappoint his parents, but it was his life. He could afford to be selfish.

Ryan’s favourite food was sushi. It had to be fresh though, he couldn’t stand the pre-packaged stuff from convenience stores. He much preferred to make his own and would spend hours in Geoff’s kitchen preparing it. He often thought that if circumstances would have been different, then he would have made a great chef. It was a private dream though and certainly not one he would be telling anyone about. He knew that the teasing for it would be relentless.