#i have a much smaller list of drafts now ( that i keep staring at and then looking away from ghfgfhgf ) so i'm!! excite

[cloveroctobers]

RIO/OC/MICK — spring prompts 🦋

A/N: okay so I’m piggybacking off another idea that I still have in my drafts that was meant for the season of Valentine’s Day but…I lost all motivation to write during that time so here we are! Except I’m moving things further along, slightly this time in this piece and giving Mick a bit of a background so this is more mick focused.

Using this prompt list + numbers 21.) weekend trips + 29.) starting to heal & more prompts from [user: @corvase] 1. “how’s life?” “shut up we talked yesterday.” + 2. “you’re still on that?” “still on that..??? STILL ON THAT?????? I CANT STAND YOU???!!!(!;!” 3. “let me know now if this isn’t something you want to work through.”

S|N: Also featuring other characters from a few other shows that make a cameo here or are mentioned such as: BMF, The Have & The Have Nots, + The Cleaning Lady. + some slander on Beth, sorry!

Synopsis: Rio takes a weekend trip to the rural side to revisit a old friend who moved out of the country to further pursue her dream. What happens when Rio brings along open doors for the past?

︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶

Rio’s never been on this side of the town before (or rather this county) this was her showing him something new. He wasn’t much of a rural kind of person and he knew she wasn’t either but he was already aware that moving out of the country half of the year, influenced this new residence.

It was evident that she had company, with Rio finding two other parked cars beside her’s on the lengthy driveway. He hummed to himself, not thinking much of this as he made his way back to the front of the house, leaving him to think that the Tudor styled home could be featured in a “home alone” film. The man stood with his hands clasped in front him, lightly whistling as he silently surveyed the area around him.

The grass was still covered in frost but it was clear that spring would be arriving shortly, as the leaves on the hydrangeas bush caught his eye. His dark eyes drifted back to the front door which creaked open, revealing a smaller guy with caramel skin, curly hair, a tattoo on the side of his neck, and a blank stare.

He was confused as he pushed the question through his lips, “Can I help you?”

His tone was strong for someone who appeared so young. Something Rio was used to hearing himself way back when.

Rio dipped his head, getting a brief view of the brown almost golden entry way, “yeah, I’m sure you can. I’m a friend of Siobhán’s…she invited me for the weekend.”

The younger man’s eyes went into slits then, not liking the looks of Rio or his purpose of being alone with the mentioned woman, it probably had to do with the own tattoo on his neck and relaxed but sneaky demeanor, which Rio easily guessed his judgments. He could tell this kid was with the shits if needed and Rio didn’t need to take it there.

“That little red corvette yours? Or are you more of a Bentley kinda dude?” Rio tilted his head a bit, towards the back of the house where the vehicles sat, attempting to keep the convo light-hearted.

That’s when the shorter man sized Rio up menacingly, “who’s asking?”

Rio kept his hands clasped and let out a laugh, “I’m Rio man. I told you, I’m a friend of Siobhán’s.”

His lips curled at that, “Whatchu from Brazil or something?”

A smile broke out onto Rio’s lips at that, “Nah, I’m from here, Detroit. Born and raised. It’s just a name.”

That had that in common.

“Meech! Your cuz hooked us up with the good shit, so we don’t got to make this long ass trip back for leftovers.” A male voiced called out as he came up behind Meech.

This one was taller than “Meech,” possibly younger, brown skinned, sported a high-top, rocked some chains, he had more facial hair that sat above his lip and on his chin, and he was lanky compared in weight as he held onto two plastic bags.

He lifted his chin towards Rio, “Who the hell are they?”

Meech sighed as he leaned against the front door, “this dude says he’s a friend of Siobhán’s and he goes by Rio but he’s not from there…and I don’t know who the strawberry shortcake chick is beside ‘em.”

The lanky one was immediately suspicious as he shifted on his two feet, probably thinking about reaching for something. All he needed was the signal.

“I’m Mayor Elizabeth Boland,” Beth cleared her throat, holding her hand out for the two men to shake, “but you can call me Beth.”

“Look…” Meech started as he ignored her hand, “From what I gather, a dude like you who brings a snow bunny to my cousin’s door step ain’t no good news. So either you’re lying about what you’re really here for or you’re plotting and trying to get her involved in some shit—which she don’t need. So here’s my advice: don’t bother her with your bullshit or you’re gonna have to see me.”

Beth was lost for words at how quickly Meech was able to put that together. He was a complete stranger to her but once Rio heard his name, he put it together that this was Siobhán’s little cousin.

“That’s interesting because last I heard, Siobhán only sees you at family functions lately, which is strange since y’all used to be so close growing up…but now that you found new ways to make money too, you’re here at her house when she’s reaching the top of the fashion industry. That’s convenient huh?” Rio gave his perspective just as Meech read him and that angered the youngin quite quickly.

He was quick to grab at his belt making Beth inhale a sharp breath, “Ni—you don’t know me—

“Hey! What’s going on y’all?” Another voice boomed, making the lanky one nudge Meech as he sucked his teeth.

Meech let out a low laugh as he pointed at Rio in understanding. Before he turned sideways to reveal a bulky lighter skinned man, with a thick beard, oval eyes; muscular along with his arm tossed over Siobhán’s shoulders.

“Nothing,” Meech sent a gleaming smile at the pair, “Cuzzo, you got something at the door for you. He calls himself Rio and he brought a tag along that I’m sure you ain’t invite.”

The other man who held onto Siobhán glanced down at her, muttering something to her as she kept her eyes on Rio and Beth. She let out a soft sigh as she walked the rest of the length of the entry way, silently commanding that everyone watch her walk.

“How’s life?” Rio started, while Siobhán approached him.

The cocoa skinned woman with wide doll-like eyes immediately rolled them, “shut up, we talked yesterday.”

Which was true. She reached out to him on a Thursday afternoon to touch basis on when she would be expecting him the next day and she last saw him about a week ago for the first time in six months.

“Hi, Are you going to invite us in? It’s actually chilly out here so…” Beth let out a awkward laugh as Siobhán flicked her eyes back and forth between the two.

Siobhán bit her tongue as she let out a light laugh, her eyes saying just enough while meeting Rio’s eyes. His shoulders lifted innocently and before he could say anything else, Beth continued on.

“I’m guessing Rio didn’t inform you of my arrival…I can just go back to the hotel and let you two enjoy your time together.” Beth shifted the bag on her shoulder, ready to step back.

Siobhán hummed, “you’re here now so you might as well stay. It wouldn’t be very hospitable for me to kick you out right? so come in.”

Some more teeth sucking sounded but came from the man on the right. He didn’t agree with Siobhán’s method but he also didn’t know Beth Boland.

“Everyone this is Rio, a friend of mine.” Siobhán introduced him first before saying, “and his friend Beth.”

“Mayor Beth Boland.” The strawberry blonde boasted with pride.

“Yeah, we heard you the first time, Pippy longstocking.”

“Bryan!” Siobhán hissed, while Meech chuckled to himself.

That was a good one.

The lighter man scanned the room as he stepped forward to hold his hand out to shake the two stranger’s, “I’m Benny, nice to meet ya’ll. How’d you meet Siobhán?”

“Damn Benny, you staying for dinner to hear all that? Because Meech and I are about to slide.” Bryan told the older man who was keen on knowing this information.

Rio smiled, “Siobhán and I met at the park when I first brought my newborn son out in the next two counties over. It was my first day alone caring for him, while his mother had a self-care day and he wouldn’t stop crying until I rolled him out to the park. That should have been my first clue that boy loves the outdoors…anyways Siobhán was out there watching after some bad ass cousins.”

All eyes went to Meech who scoffed, “I know you’re not talking about me. Must of been Terry’s stupid ass.”

“Nah, it was you.” Bryan laughed.

It was actually all three of them but Siobhán didn’t want to burst their bubble.

“Shut up, B-Mickie.”

Beth added, “and we met through Rio…at a much later date when Rio’s son was able to run all over the place with a soccer ball. Just not through his son, however. Through much trickier terms?”

Siobhán didn’t miss the look Rio sent Beth’s way and wondered if that was a jab or not. Trouble in paradise? Who knows.

The raised brows she sent Rio was enough for him to realize that she was going to pry him later on that, for now they just had to get over this whole questionnaire.

“Trickier terms huh?” Benny crossed his arms, making Rio hum.

“Yeah man,” Rio stated, “we’re in business together.”

“You’re working with some mayor?” Bryan asked in disbelief before turning his attention back to Beth, “and what did you do before that?”

“I actually want to know that too since you’re giving me mini van mom vibes right now.” Meech asked, digging into his pocket to pull out a joint.

Rio snickered at that, making Beth carry on with a tight smile.

She redirected the conversation, “Well…How do you guys know Siobhán?”

“We’re family,” Meech stated the obvious.

Bryan huffed, “Friend of the family for practically my entire life.”

“And you?” Rio pried Benny who was staring at Siobhán who seemed much lighter than when he last saw her, not counting the week he saw her last.

“We’re also friends.” Benny stated but the smirk on his lips made Rio believe otherwise.

Beth perked up at that, figuring that tone also meant something as well, “oh, how lovely. For how long?”

“Damn she nosy,” Bryan coughed as he gave the signal to Meech, “let’s go.”

Meech removed the joint from his mouth to place behind his ear, “uh yeah not that this conversation is dry but it’s dry. Cuz, you seem comfortable with Rico suave and Mayor Beth so we’re gonna hit the road, we got some business to tend to.”

“Oh, okay. Let me walk you out.” Siobhán carefully spun in the entry way, leading the two boys away, she embraced them each at the door, lightly warning them to, “be good and to say hello to everybody else except cousin Charles.”

Meech snorted as he pulled away from embracing the girl, “you’re a trip, you know that?”

“I mean that.”

“I know you do.” Meech had his eyes burning on the back of Rio’s frame as he kept up the conversation with Beth and Benny, “if things get out of hand—

“They won’t.”

“You sure? I don’t know what they’re into but you don’t need to get wrapped up in their white collar shit. They’re gonna ruin your life when you’re already at the top and you don’t need nobody fucking with that.” Meech kept his voice low, however he wasn’t scared if anybody did hear this.

He already said his peace at the front door.

Siobhán smiled, “I appreciate you but there’s nothing to worry about. All I care about is mostly wedding attire…not the activities y’all like to get involved in.”

“So he is on that illegal shit too?” Bryan whispered-yelled at he got back in the conversation, “like what?”

“Dont worry about it,” Siobhán was firm, “I said I wanted you two to stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble can also lead to success tho, big cuz.” Meech winked while she scoffed, “let your friends know we may or may not be in touch soon.”

Siobhán gripped the twenty year old’s shoulders steering him away, “Bye Meech.”

“So you’re gonna kick your family out but not Bethany? I see how it is.” Meech joked before calling out, “Catch you later, Benny!”

Siobhán turned just in time to be engulfed by Benny himself, “I’m actually going to head out too unfortunately. I have a early morning at the shop tomorrow but I’ll be checking on you.”

“I know you will,” Siobhán gripped his forearms as he placed a kiss on her cheek before exiting.

She carefully watched as the men crossed the lawn towards the back/side of the house, climbing into their cars with a beep and wave as they pulled out of the driveway. Siobhán let out a soft sigh with a shut of the door before turning to the two guests awaiting her. Rio had a smirk on his lips that she ignored while she moved towards them.

“You two must be hungry, there’s plenty of food set up in the dining room.”

“You have a gorgeous house,” Beth trailed off as she followed after the host through a peach-painted sitting room, which contained some furniture, a piano and a huge sketch pad on a easel, “is this the room where you create your ideas?”

“Mainly yes. It’s one of the rooms that has the best lighting.” Siobhán informed as she took a seat at the table, followed by the two others.

Beth nodded, “I sense that. Do you mind giving us a tour later?”

“Theres not much to see, the house is dated and I plan on renovating it.”

“That’s a lot of work for one person.”

“I like keeping busy, I’m sure you know how that is.” Siobhán picks up a biscuit, drizzling honey onto it before taking a bite out of it with a mocking smile.

Rio cleared his throat, “regardless, I’m proud of you.”

“And I’m happy for you.” Beth told Siobhán as she reached for the tea pot.

Siobhán and Elizabeth weren’t the best of friends, in fact they didn’t have much of a relationship—which was fine by her. So Siobhán didn’t feel that statement was necessarily genuine. Mainly they were acquaintances that crossed paths because Beth, her sister, and their friend owed one of her best friends money and couldn’t cut ties with him. Elizabeth got a thrill out of this lifestyle and to learn that she was a mayor in the next two counties over was another power trip the housewife did not need.

Yet Rio still wanted her around.

Even when she put a bullet in him and she got one in return by someone Siobhán shared a personal relationship with.

However she knew when things needed to be let go of but she couldn’t say the same for her dear friend, Rio.

The doorbell chimed through the house making the thirty-two year old get to her feet. She figured it must have been one of the boys who forgot something. Which she kicked herself for as she yanked open the door to see Mick and a long haired Annie standing at her front door.

Together.

Again.

What the hell is going on?

“Hey,” Mick rasped, “…I take it you weren’t aware we were coming.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous! I’m sure Beth let Siobhán know. You know my sister, always planning.” Annie said as she quickly held out a bottle, “We brought Prosecco. Mick said it was one of your favorites.”

Siobhán took a large inhale and exhaled as a small smile appeared on her lips. She held out her hand for the bottle, “thank you. Why don’t you guys come in? we’re having a bite to eat in the dinning room through the left there, next to the staircase.”

Annie stepped in first as she spun around looking at the interior, “sick house! It’s almost like the inside of the titanic with the grand staircase! Perks of being a well-known fashion designer, am I right?” She clicked her tongue, sending finger guns Siobhán’s way before carrying on into the easier way to get to the dining room, loudly greeting the other two in there.

Shutting the door behind them, Siobhán paused at the door, realizing that Mick lingered back, not analyzing the inside of the house much.

“I wanted to talk more at the reunion but there was a lot going on that night. I didn’t want to press you.” His hands were in his pockets but his eyes stayed trained on the woman in front of him.

Siobhán remembered all the emotions she was feeling when she saw Mick enter the hall with Annie on his arm. It wasn’t her place to question what was going on there or when Annie got out of jail but it did send her mind wondering! There was plenty of time for Siobhán and Mick to hash out their old business…once she found out that Mick’s been working for Rio for quite some time, she just didn’t fight to make it a priority.

She needed to create distance and the least Mick could do was give her that. He picked up on that and gave her what she wanted, keeping his focus on what he was being paid to do.

“And now you’re here…at my house…uninvited.” The sarcasm did not go unnoticed.

Mick shrugged his shoulders, “you’ll have to take that up with Beth.”

“I think I will but first…is she gonna pull a gun out on you if you go in there?”

Mick thought about it, “she might. I hear she keeps one in her purse now. It’s not like I’m scared though.”

“Never that…” Siobhán slowly made her way towards the stocky man, “just don’t want to deal with the cleanup.”

Mick blinked, “The place can use some updating anyways.”

Was this the way it would be between the two now? Walking on eggshells since they were unsure where the other stood? There was so much history there. It was sixteen years maybe? since they last saw each other back in 2005 when Mick decided to up and join the marines a month after they received devastating news…

“Jackass.” Siobhán scoffed, walking by him to enter the dining room where eyes set on the pair.

Siobhán set the bottle on the table before plopping down, eyes locked on Beth who gave a sheepish smile.

“Don’t blame Rio for this, it was all my idea. I wasn’t totally sure Mick would be here.” Beth placed her hand on her chest in sincerity.

“I wasn’t sure if I would be here either since there’s this thing called range on this ankle monitor but Mick found a way around that so… shout out to you, mick!” Annie beamed as she popped grapes into her mouth.

Rio had his mouth pressed in his hand, not entirely agreeing with whatever Beth’s approach was.

Siobhán laughed, “you have a lot of nerve showing up here when I didn’t personally invite you and you also felt like involving two other people. Will Ruby be showing up too?”

“She’s in Nevada, so no.” Annie chatted.

Beth sat up straight, “yet she knows everything and will always know what’s going on.”

“So tell us Beth, what is going on?” Mick asked.

Beth glanced at Rio, which annoyed Siobhán.

“Well as the new mayor…I have a proposal for you. I’ll need some new attire for press conferences and events I’ll have to attend; also for my daughter and Annie too.”

Annie raised her brows at this.

“Mick has some business with a french man that you’re friendly with that can help with the shipping process.” Beth continued.

Siobhán folded her arms as she listened to Beth poke around the point of this conversation, “not only are you imposing but you’re also asking me to make clothes for you and your family but want me to get involved with some French man? Why?”

“You spent half of the year in France so it only makes sense that we expand the business.” Beth got excited as she talked.

“Business that you have with Rio?” Siobhán confirmed, “so what does a mayor really want from the French man and my designs?”

Beth rambled, “We need more funding of course. I have to be a successful mayor so that I can continue running and making this the best damn town ever.”

Siobhán failed to cover her laugh, letting out a cackle at the pure audacity of Beth that Rio and Mick thought she snapped. Once she got herself together, she wiped at the tears at the corners of her eyes.

“So let me get this straight, Beth. You ran this idea by one of my friends…which I’m sure he told you that you needed to find someone else to do it. Then you reached out to someone who used to be his right hand man, which so happens to be Mick and also has deep history with me to what? Persuade me? Because we know the same French man who also does illegal shit? Because I’ll be weak in the knees and take Rio and Mick’s word over yours? I’ll trust them? And then to have your baby sister back in your bullshit when she’s fresh on house arrest?! Whew!! you are a whole new level of a selfish cocky bitch.” Siobhán declared all of this to the older woman with a wicked smile.

She reached for the bottle, getting to work on the top as she awaited for someone to say anything else to her.

Beth swallowed as she looked at all the faces in the room, Annie shook her head at her sibling, not knowing this was her intentions on being here.

“Go on, tell us more on how you plan to fuck up my life since yours continues to spiral and you don’t even see it.” Siobhán encouraged as she poured the Prosecco into a teacup.

Beth pulled the sleeves down to her blazer, “I…believe with your sketches sent over to the French man, he’ll send the product back to us, we’ll wear the final product, make profit with a resell and do the whole money-switch-a-roo and give the French man his percentage back.”

“And when he comes after us, that’s when Rio and I come in.” Mick summarized what Beth didn’t say.

“Yes. We send him a little money to make the product, Give it some exposure, resell it, pocket the money for ourselves and the fake money goes to whatever I need to purchase to keep Detroit functioning. Everybody wins.” Beth explained in a chipper tone.

Annie let out a low-whistle, “that’s risky.”

“Oh and there’s also one more thing.” Beth kept on going, “Dawn Roslyn Parker wants in on it. We ran into each other at a conference yesterday and she says she actually loves your designs.”

“Huh? You didn’t say a thing about her.” Rio quizzed, knowing the heated stares from Mick and Siobhán were fair.

Rio was also in attendance as Siobhán’s plus one for her high school reunion last week, so he saw Dawn just for who she is with what she pulled. It was clear she was going overboard on poking the bear and hornets nest.

Beth rushed out , “she only wants a small cut. I’ve got it handled.”

“No, the problem is you think you do.” Mick shook his head, now taking a seat beside Siobhán.

“What do I look like working with the woman who used Mick and I’s dead daughter and her dead sister, who was my friend that she murdered out of jealousy! at the reunion for a slideshow presentation as a way to credit her revamped ways? And Why would I ever work with you? The woman who wants to take advantage of anyone to get ahead? Y’all are not my type of people.”

“Well that’s funny…” Beth almost puffed up her shoulders, “you don’t seem to mind Rio or Mick or even your family members…Meech and Bryan or B-Mickie was it? I’m still trying to figure out what Benny is into, besides you.”

Her eyes flicked to Mick’s then, almost seeking a reaction.

He simply didn’t give her the satisfaction.

“Beth Boland,” Siobhán leaned forward at the table, “I’m going to tell you this only one time since you seem to misunderstand me. I will never stoop to your conniving level of mixed up version of success that you’re looking for. You’ll never be happy that way. I am in my healing era and I’m not going to allow you to disrupt that so…You’re gonna take your things and exit the premises with your bullshit, before I have to get out of character and put a split right in between those pretty eyes.”

Annie gasped, appearing shook at Siobhán’s unexpected words.

Beth held Siobhán’s stare for awhile. It’s not like she didn’t think she was capable, despite the whole whimsical aura and poised persona she had going on. After all she was connected to Rio and Mick so that had to mean something right?

“Okay,” Beth was bubbly as she pushed back from the table, “Time is ticking and the offer expires by Sunday so if you change your mind, I’m sure you know where to find me. Come on, Annie.”

Annie sighed, “I didn’t get to enjoy this meal, Beth.”

“I’ve had better.”

“Not with your weekly unseasoned prep meals. Be forreal, girl.” Siobhán fanned her hand at Beth who just rolled her eyes with a snicker.

“Annie!” Beth called over her shoulder again, not wanting to do the walk of shame solo.

Annie grumbled to herself, scrapping the chair back as she met Siobhán’s stare, “sorry about Beth she’s—Beth. Do you mind if I take something to go?”

Rio rubbed at his face in aggravation, “just go tinker bell.”

Annie shoved some items into her coat sleeve and into her jean pockets muttering to herself, “tinker bell is a new one, is it because I decided to grow my hair out? Don’t know if i like that one, Ree-Oh!”

Once the front door slammed shut, the three sat in the warm dining room in deafening silence.

“You knew she was gonna bring that shit here when Siobhán has a lot to lose. What sense did that make?” Mick started the conversation, which surprised Siobhán—she couldn’t lie, since Mick was usually the sit back and watch type before or if he said anything.

“I think Elizabeth is at a level that can bring in better business for me. Us. If I would have known that you knew this Frenchman too, Mick, I wouldn’t have went along with this.” Rio admitted.

Siobhán snorted, “so you didn’t turn down this stupid idea for the sake of your so called best friend? Yikes, Rio.”

“I had your interest at heart too. Success looks different for everybody and when we all pulled it off, you’d be better than you are now.” Rio gave his perspective.

Siobhán rubbed at the tension in between her brows, “By having a target on my back? Something about her doesn’t have you thinking straight. The Rio I know wouldn’t want my hard work to be jeopardized…unless you’re desperate because if that’s it, you would have talked to me first, privately or you’re really being controlled by Beth.”

“I don’t get controlled by anything. I run this. I’m watching her do her thing from the side lines. She came up with the idea, I just wanted to see how well she executed it.”

“With no regard for my well-being?”

“Of course. I wanted to see how far you’re willing to go to keep things clean too.” He pressed his hands together.

Siobhán fired back, “is everything a test to you? Is it all tactical for you?”

“Nah, that’s just life. Look ma, I don’t mean to disrespect you—

“Too late for that,” Mick commented, resting his elbows on the table as he stared at Rio.

Who sent him a mean side-eye.

“You just have to be ready for these situations. Like how you met with…what was her name, you know her since you met up with her first husband right mick?” Rio tried to rope Mick in who puffed out a laugh in irritation.

What was he talking about?

Mick rubbed at his thick beard and sighed as he glanced at Siobhán who was frowning, “I met with Arman Morales who was with or still currently with—I don’t know their situation— a client that you worked with. Nadia. Nadia Morales. You created a piece for her and in return she gave you a significant sum of money and some jewelry right?”

“Where do you think that dirty money and emerald came from? She runs a casino doesn’t she?” Rio quizzed, “you may run a clean business but not a lot of people do. She’s one of us.”

Siobhán shouldn’t ask how they knew this because of course they had ways. Rio was supposed to be her friend and Mick was her past yet they were keeping tabs on her every move. Some might find themselves secure with that but Siobhan’s always been her own woman.

“So you can snoop around in my business but you couldn’t speak to me six months ago?” She grilled the man to the left her, first.

Mick licked his bottom lip, “you’re still on that?” He replied.

Wrong choice of words.

“Still on that?” She repeated louder this time with a scrape back of the chair as she placed the bottle she was cradling back on the table, “Still on that?! I can’t stand you!”

And walked off from the dining room.

“See what you started? You and Beth just dump everything on everybody else and expect people to go along with it when you know that’s not Siobhán.”

“Careful, now. You’re starting to sound like Nick.” Rio taunted as he nudged his chin outwards, “Siobhán’s a grown woman, she can handle her shit. Now ya’ll need to go get closure so we can collectively decide what happens next.”

Mick exhaled ignoring the insult the man threw his way, “You don’t get to decide that.”

“You’re right I don’t but the both of you will feel better once you do. And believe it or not Mick, I care. Even about you too.” Rio pulled out his phone, but held Mick’s stare who scoffed, pushing back from the table in search of the long haired woman.

He didn’t have to look far as he went to the right from the dining room, into the kitchen. Mick peered around the corner seeing her at the kitchen sink, scrubbing away at a pan that sat inside of it. Stress cleaning must still be her thing and he found himself taking a inhale as he went back to the glass door to the dining room and gently pulled it closed.

Silently he moved into the kitchen, actually taking the time to look around it. There was a small hallway from which he came, the first door was also left open revealing the path back to the entryway of the home, the door to the right held a tan almost orange small room with a flatscreen, a sofa, decent lighting, and some plastic containers shoved against the wall underneath the window. It was a spacious home but still felt empty to Mick, which made Mick question how happy was she? Yes Siobhán purchased this home a couple of months before she decided to come back to the states, however it didn’t feel homey just yet.

Maybe it was Mick’s ego but he felt like he had a part to play in that.

He decided to take a seat at the corner island that was built into the wall of the kitchen. He wasn’t sure if he really liked this set up but it wasn’t his place to comment on what he liked or disliked about this home. The dragging of the chair, caused her to stop scrubbing away at the pan in the sink, glancing over her shoulder with the loose strands of hair that framed her face floated with her movements.

“What did you come here for?”

Mick folded his hands against the counter, briefly thinking about how he should answer this. He knew she wouldn’t appreciate any coyness from him.

“You say you’re ready to talk but it ain’t feel that way back then. I gave you the space you wanted.”

She let the pan slip back into the deep sink and whipped around, her hands gripping the sink behind her as she laughed, “what I wanted? I didn’t think you care what I wanted. You didn’t back when I was seventeen, you eighteen and running off to be a marine. I had to hear that shit from your mother and sister instead of you. You didn’t even bother to leave a note or write a letter or pick up the phone and just try to talk to me. You up and decided what you wanted, leaving me alone to bury our daughter.”

Mick molded his lips into his mouth, carefully listening. This wasn’t news to him, he’s known what he’s done. He’s lived with it and he also knew how to numb it down. It was the best thing for him to do before he ended up doing something really stupid. He wished eighteen year old him knew how to communicate better but all he was surrounded with growing up was screaming matches and that’s not what he wanted to do with Siobhán…ever again.

“You weren’t ever alone, you had my mother and my sister. You had your dad and your cousin-aunt Lucille to rally around you—

“I didn’t want them I wanted you! Don’t you get that?! I wanted the guy I created life with to just hold me down like I would have done him. I know losing our girl was fucking painful and it’ll always be…but I never thought you would have hit me with nothing but white noise. Our relationship was never like that.” She sniffed.

Seventeen year old Siobhán and eighteen year old Mick happened to be very vocal towards one or another. They shared a class with each other, goofing off and everyone knew they liked each other but they always had to one up the other. Mick was the first to ask her out but she declined all because she wanted to be the one to ask him first.

“I hear you,” Mick said, “I’m sorry I put you through that, truly.”

“Then why did it take sixteen years?” She was accusatory, “did you know Rio and I were friends before you decided to work with him?”

Mick felt his eye twitch at that. He understood where Siobhán was coming from but his actions had nothing to do with her.

“…let me know now if this isn’t something you want to work through.”

“What, Michael?” She used his government and that was something she rarely did.

Mick toyed with his beard as he spoke what he was feeling, “I can’t ever make up for that time…especially if you’re always going to feel a way about it. I was acting off hurt emotions and I know you’re still hurt too but I can’t be face to face with you if it’s going to be the same story on loop. I want better for us.”

“I can’t keep up with you anymore,” Siobhán placed her hand on her chest, feeling her heart thud rapidly against its cage, “one minute you’re telling me you’re trying to give me what you think I want, then you’re telling me you’re sorry, and now you’re telling me that you’re assuming that I’ll be unable to forgive you, just like that.”

“It’s okay if you don’t, I can learn to respect that but what I won’t do, is take you blaming me for our daughter’s death. I won’t be that punching bag, I gotta heal too.”

Siobhán felt her lips tremble, “I-I don’t blame you. Did you overthink that while you were away from me?”

“…it’s crossed my mind.”

“Well you’re a dumbass!”

Mick chewed on his lips, a bit vulnerable now.

“This is why I wished you just talked to me even if you couldn’t face me. A phone call, a letter. I would have told you that I never blamed you for what happened to her.” Siobhán expressed.

Mick rubbed at his face, feeling the weight of it all circling back around when he’s shoved it away for so long. “Kadene Solina Peraza…she would be fifteen this year. That’s crazy.”

“It is isn’t it?”

“I talk about her often with my therapist,” Mick pinched at the bridge of his nose to get his emotions together, “what she would be into, who she would look more like as she aged, since we all know she looked exactly like her fine daddy.”

Siobhán rolled her eyes, “you know what that means right? You’re the person that got on my nerves the most during the pregnancy.”

“Nah don’t try to downplay my genes.”

“Don’t want to hear anything else surrounding that,” Siobhán rolled her fingers around in Mick’s direction, making him snort out a laugh.

A actual comfortable silence filled the white once stuffy kitchen.

“You should come to one of my sessions with me…to fully close this chapter with some guidance…if that’s what you want?” Mick suggested.

Kadene wasn’t the only one he talked about and he was sure his therapist wouldn’t oppose to this as she already knew the tale of Mick and Bhán.

Siobhán scooped her strands of hair behind her ears as she exhaled, “I’d like that. Just let me know when.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah.”

“So…can we hug it out or is that pushing it?”

Siobhán let a small smile crack onto her lips as she held out her hands, taking steps to meet Mick at the bar stool he sat on. He got to his feet, arms reaching up to lock around her shoulders as her hands crept to latch onto his back. Being in his arms again felt like how it always did, safe and warm.

And if he held on any longer she might have cried.

“I’ve missed you for a long time, Bhán.” He whispered as the side of his head rested against hers.

She did too, Mick meant a lot to her. He’s been in her life since she was fourteen and him fifteen back when he had wavy thick hair, one chest tattoo, and loved listening to big pun, Jay-Z and had the biggest crush on Ashanti…you just don’t get over someone like him.

Siobhán thought about mentioning Annie, not to stir things up but to get that curiosity to shut up. Yet she just wanted to enjoy this moment for what it was, before she had to get in Rio’s ass about this plan to cater to the new mayor.

“What a cute Kodak moment, so everything good in here?” Rio’s smooth voice interrupted, causing Siobhán to pull away and look over at the thin but tall man who leaned in the doorway.

Mick didn’t rush to let go of Siobhán, which Rio noticed as his eyes flicked to the position of Mick’s hands resting on the small of her back.

“It will be.” Was Mick’s response.

Rio pushed off the doorway, “Good, good. Love to see it. Shall we discuss business back in the dining room? Food’s getting cold and I’m getting kinda lonely back there.”

Siobhán sent a look to Mick and moved from his grasp as she roughly patted Rio on his chest, “you’ll survive. You always do. Also just to let you know, I’m starting to regret inviting your ass here.”

“I bet but let’s talk about it,” Rio was all high cheek bones and smiles as Siobhán walked by him, followed by Mick who shook his head at him, “I’m told putting your feelings all out on the table is a healthy approach.”

And so the three sat down at the dining table, facing each other, ready to say what must be said.

︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶︶ׂׂૢ ︶︶

Continue along with my spring anthology prompts here.

[shiningstages]

Okay, I’ve got queued up stuff ( that I mixed up a little bit oooh will the next thing be a reply or a prompt who knows~? ) that should last through the weekend. Might will myself to do a bit more, but I’m also honestly proud of how much I have written so maybe now I’m on weekend break!! Next week I’ll be working on final projects for school and internship, but I’ll try to pop in here and on Diantha when I have the energy for it~

[geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde]

My Wildest Dreams

Howdy Howdy! This is my fourth (of five) prompts for my 500 follower raffle (and it’s taken me so long to write it I’m at 600, sorry) 

This is for the oh so talented @julek for the pairing Geraskifer and the trope truth potions! I hope you like it!!

Shout out to @selectivegeekwithstandards who was my sounding board and helped me fix what was a verifiable disaster of a first draft <3 <3 

-

Jaskier wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was annoyed at the way Geralt and Yennefer were behaving but it certainly was exhausting.

The sorceress had met up with him and Geralt two towns back and had been travelling with them since. It wasn’t uncommon for the three of them to travel together, Yennefer popping in and out of their lives as she saw fit. But this time was different for some reason. Normally she would arrive and her and Geralt would disappear to fuck like bunnies for a while while Jaskier yearned from afar. This time, however, they’d had a hushed conversation and then… that was it.

And they had kept having those conversations, sending furtive looks toward Jaskier each time. The bard decided to pretend like he didn’t notice but honestly it was getting a bit too weird. Normally when Yennefer was travelling with them, Jaskier spent the entire time pining, wishing they were paying him attention… inviting him into Yennefer’s impressive tent for… whatever it was they did.

Jaskier sighed as he noticed the look Geralt sent him from the other side of the room. Geralt didn’t normally sneak looks at him or, if he did, he was normally sneakier about it. They were in an herbalist’s shop, Geralt and Yennefer having both needed ingredients, so Jaskier was just wandering around and looking at the various things and keeping his hands to himself.

Jaskier suddenly noticed something strange on the highest shelf of jars in the shop.

The jar was smaller than all the others and it wasn’t labelled either. It was filled with a brilliant purple powder that shimmered in the low candlelight.

“It’s not for sale.”

Jaskier jumped, not having heard the old herbalist walk up behind him. He cleared his throat, “What is it?”

The herbalist ignored his question. “Are you with them?” the man gestured to where Geralt and Yennefer had their heads close together and were muttering to each other.

“Yes.”

The man hummed thoughtfully, eyeing Jaskier, “You can have it.”

“What?” The man had pointed at the small jar when he said it but he had also just said it wasn’t for sale.

The man grabbed the jar off the shelf and held it out to Jaskier, “It’ll solve your problem.”

“What problem?” Jaskier asked as he reached out and took the jar, staring curiously at the contents.

The man nodded toward Geralt and Yennefer, “With those two. Just add a spoonful with their wine, they won’t taste a thing.”

Right, yes. Just mix a strange substance in their drinks. That’ll work brilliantly. “And what exactly is it supposed to do.”

“It will make them tell the truth.”

Well… that would certainly be a nice change. But still...

“I can’t pay for this.”

The man waved a hand, “I told you, it isn’t for sale. And trust me, it will help.”

Jaskier pocketed the powder hesitantly and watched the herbalist cross the shop to where Yennefer was inspecting a bundle of herbs.

How strange. But the truth would be nice. He needed to know what was going on, why the two were being so secretive. 

No. He couldn’t.

-

It took another week travelling with Geralt and Yennefer’s weird behavior before Jaskier put any actual consideration into using the powder. The pair had just kept on with their whispers and their staring, making Jaskier uncomfortable at every turn. Honestly, he had listed after the couple for years but now he was getting rather put off just looking at them.

Desperate times and that...

Jaskier waltzed through the door to the inn room they were all sharing, three mugs of wine in hand. 

“I need you two to tell me the truth,” Jaskier declared, standing just inside the doorway of their room. It was time for him to put his foot down and get the answers he needed.

“What are you talking about?” Yennefer asked sharply. She was frozen, loose herbs held in one hand, lingering over where she had been bundling them over the table.

“You two,” Jaskier gestured at them, sloshing wine in the mugs he was still carrying, “have been keeping something from me for weeks and I am sick of it.”

Geralt opened his mouth but Jaskier shushed him, “No, listen. I need the truth. Either you tell me now or, if that’s too difficult, you drink these.”

Geralt grunted, “What would drinking wine have to do with anything?” The witcher had set down the dagger he had been examining in favor of staring at Jaskier, directing his full attention at the bard.

“The drinks are drugged,” Jaskier responded matter-of-factly. “A truth potion. So, if you don’t think you can be honest with me without help, you can drink this. Otherwise, I’m leaving, and I don’t want to see either of you again.”

The silence in the room was stifling and suddenly Jaskier was horrified. What if he was being too forceful? What if they just… left?

Yennefer and Geralt shared a meaningful look before finally Geralt stood up and walked over to Jaskier, taking the mugs of wine from him. He handed one to Yennefer silently before taking a drink from his own. 

Geralt looked back to Jaskier, “You’re right, you deserve the truth.”

Yennefer stared at the wine in her hand for a moment and Jaskier suddenly felt incredibly nervous. What if this was something he didn’t want to know after all?

Finally, Yennefer took a long drink and hummed slightly, “You are right, Jaskier.”

“Do you feel any different?” He asked hesitantly.

Yennefer shook her head, “No, we’ll need to finish the drinks for it to work properly. And I think I would like to wait until then to have this conversation. It won’t be easy for me.”

“Okay,” Jaskier responded quietly, sitting on one of the beds in the room as he worked on his own wine, waiting for… something to happen. 

Geralt and Yennefer had both returned to their previous tasks, both absentmindedly sipping at the wine.

There was a knock at the door.

Jaskier hurried to open it and accept the three plates of food, “I hope everyone’s hungry” he said brightly.

“Always am. Never get enough to eat.” Geralt said, reaching out to take a plate from Jaskier.

Geralt’s brow furrowed suddenly as Jaskier looked at him curiously. He had long suspected that the witcher needed more food, but he had never said so.  Jaskier set the second plate across the table where Yennefer was sitting, “and for the lady”.

She simply nodded in thanks, a small smile on her face.

Jaskier sat upon the bed again, digging into his plate. “So,” he started in between bites, “do either of you have anything you would like to tell me?”

“I enjoy your company.” Yennefer said suddenly, her face reddening.

Jaskier was taken aback, “You… what?”

“Enjoy your company.” The sorceress was staring at Jaskier with emotion shining in her eyes that Jaskier never thought he would see. Not directed at him.

Jaskier looked at Geralt, unsure of how to respond. Geralt’s lips were pressed together tightly, his brow furrowed, “Is… something wrong, Geralt?”

“I…” Geralt hesitated, “am sorry if we made you uncomfortable.” The witcher didn’t apologize easily, always saying rubbish about not having feelings, so the statement meant a lot, particularly under the circumstances.

Jaskier nodded, feeling bad he’d given the two the ultimatum, but glad he would get answers now, “I just couldn’t handle the weird tension and the whispering and the looks anymore.”

Yennefer sighed, “We were talking about you.”

“Why were you talking about me?” Jaskier suspected as much with the looks but he couldn’t think of a reason they would be talking about him.

“Because we’re both in love with you.” Geralt responded quietly, his eyes downcast.

Jaskier was certain his heart stopped, “Ahhh… that doesn’t sound right.” They couldn’t possibly have feelings for him, not more than a fond friendship. It didn’t make sense.

“Well, we can’t lie thanks to you.” Yennefer said, staring Jaskier dead in the eye. The earnest look on her face left Jaskier breathless.

He nodded, breaking the eye contact, “Right. Sorry about that. I was just at my wits end.”

“We really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Yennefer said, her voice softer this time, drawing Jaskier’s gaze back to hers.

“Do you… mean it, though? That you both love me?” Jaskier couldn’t remember ever feeling more vulnerable. 

“Yes.” Geralt said simply.

Yennefer nodded, “Yes. We do. We just weren’t sure what to do about it.”

“Well… telling me would have been preferable. Not acting like… you were plotting against me would have also been a good alternative.”

Geralt stood and walked to where Jaskier was sitting, kneeling on the ground in front of him, “We… were worried you didn’t feel the same.”

Jaskier set his plate aside and rested a hand on Geralt’s face. He took a deep breath, tears pooling in his eyes, “Geralt, I’ve been in love with you for a decade. And Yennefer, I care about you. I do. And I’m not opposed to… trying for more. With both of you. If you’ll have me?”

Yennefer stood slowly, walking across the room to sit beside Jaskier, setting a gentle hand on Jaskier’s shoulder and reaching out to hold one of Geralt’s hands with her other. “We would be honored to call you ours,” she said, placing a gentle kiss on Jaskier’s cheek. 

Jaskier beamed, tears finally spilling over. Geralt reached up and wiped them away with a tender caress. 

Jaskier stood quickly and cleared his throat, “I’ll be right back.”

Geralt frowned from his position on the floor, “Where are you going?”

Jaskier laughed lightly and smiled back at the witcher, his heart fluttering madly with how happy he was, “I’m going to get you another plate of food.”

Yennefer chuckled, “That’s a good idea. We’ll be waiting for you.” She leaned back on the bed and smirked at Jaskier.

Jaskier knew in that moment he was living out his wildest dreams and he couldn’t be more thrilled.

 -

Check out my masterlist!

Tag list: @stinastar​ @feraljaskier​ @bastardofmothman​ @hailhailsatan​ @moonysourenza​ @its-onions​ @elliestormfound​ @dapandapod​ @geraskier-trashh​ @jaskierswolf​ @fontegagrilledcheese​ @negativenuggetz @veritasrose @feral-jaskier @kozkaboi @kueble @selectivegeekwithstandards

[greatbigbellies]

New anonymous commission story! This is another hyperpregnant slice of life piece, about a couple of boys who find out that they can conceive additional babies mid-pregnancy which will grow to catch up to the largest sibling, resulting in rapid growth for one of the husbands! Contains hyperpregnancy, tmpreg, some weight gain and lactation, mild belly worship, and allusions to sex.

Leo sat in the passenger seat of he and Marko’s sedan, his boyfriend behind the wheel. The pair sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. They’d received some… rather shocking news from Leo’s most recent doctors appointment. All three babies were fine, all perfectly healthy... but that was precisely the point, all THREE were healthy. At three months in, Leo was at the tail end of his first trimester, and when he started, there was supposedly only one in his womb. Then a few weeks ago, they were suddenly expecting fraternal twins. Then finally, today, triplets, all inexplicably at the same stage of growth.

“What’s going through you mind, hon?” Marko finally asked, breaking the silence. Leo brushed a few brown, fluffy hairs out of his face with one hand, and held his tummy protectively with the other. “I’m just… I’m floored we’re having three kids! I’m just… confused I guess? Like we were set with one for a while… and then two… and now…” Leo trailed off. Marko squinted in concentration as he thought of how to word his theory. “I… think I know the pattern… I don’t think it’s a matter of the doctors just mysteriously being unable to count…” Leo could tell where this was going. “You mean…” Marko nodded. “Think about it? There was the night we conceived after the party… that’s one. Then there was minigolf night...” Marko began listing off. Leo nodded, “Yeah, Minigolf was fun, we need to do that again sometime,” Leo smiled. Marko raised an eyebrow, “Like… just the minigolf, or what came after too?” 

Leo turned to him and batted his eyelashes, “I dunno, can you get another hole in one?” Marko felt himself start to blush. He was typically the more dominant one, but Leo knew how to push his buttons. “Besides, I wanna test your theory. See if I wake up with four tomorrow,” Marko was now no longer ‘starting to blush’ and was instead outright blushing. “Are you teasing me, or are you serious? Cause our turn to go golfing comes up in two blocks,” Leo put his hand in Marko’s shoulder, leaned over, and said “put another baby in me,”

Marko smiled mischievously, eager to relive their minigolf date. “But! If I win you gotta buy me a sundae. The babies want hot fudge,” Leo teased. Marko’s grin widened. “Nah hon, I’m gonna get a hole in one, beat your ass at minigolf, buy you TWO sundaes, watch you eat them, then we’ll fuck like there ain’t no tomorrow,” he said, wearing his confident smile proudly. Now it was Leo’s turn to blush, turning away and putting his hands over his mouth and cheeks. “Fuck, I hate it when you get all assertive like that,” he said through his hands. Marko laughed. “No you don’t, you little bottom!” Leo erupted in laughter himself, his adorable, irregular laugh like music to Marko’s ears.

“I mean… in fairness, you’re too competitive to lose on purpose, but too much of a gentleman to let a pregnant guy go hungry,” the praise elicited another more subtle blush from Marko, two ran his hand through his short, black undercut. “I mean… you need lots of calcium for the babies. There’s milk in ice cream so, like… it’s good for you right now?” Marko stumbled to his point. Leo chucked and lifted the hem of his beige sweater up to his chest, exposing his tiny first trimester tummy, looking ever so slightly pudgy from being 3 months along. Marko’s blush shifted to a deeper red and he tried to focus on the road, but was a sucker for Leo’s belly. “You’re going to get so big with four babies,” he said, his voice just slightly quivering in anticipation.

“Why stop at four?” asked Leo. “Are you serious?” replied Marko. “100%. We’ve talked about this before. We both love…” he gestured to his bare tummy, “THIS. We both have decided to take on fatherhood, why not just… shoot for the moon?” he put his shirt back down. Marko pulled into “Albatross Minigolf” and put the car in park, looking very seriously at Leo. “That’s going to be really hard on your body,” “I know,” “We’ll need a bigger car,” “I know,” “We’ll need a bigger APARTMENT!” “Marko… we’ll be fine! We only get to really do this once, lets make the most of it!” said Leo reassuringly. Marko wasn’t sure if “this” meant pregnancy, parenthood, or life in general, but he didn’t care. He kissed Leo on the lips, beyond excited to watch his boyfriend grow huge with his babies.

He got out of the car and ran around to the other side to get the door for Leo. He was more than prepared to dote on the man, already deciding he’d get Leo THREE sundaes after minigolf. After all, they’d need some calories to burn.

3 months later

Now six months along, and swollen with large sextuplets, Leo was solidly what one would call ‘very, VERY pregnant’. His usual button up flannel shirts had grown tighter and tighter until they wouldn’t button. While the pair did like the belly out, unbuttoned shirt look, Leo preferred to be more modest when in public. As the temperature dropped due to the coming of autumn, Leo had switched to his larger sweatshirts to remain covered, and even those didn’t really do the job anymore. Now looking overdue with quads, he waddled through the Willowbrook Square Mall wearing that same beige sweater he wore during minigolf night, once two sizes too big, now pulled tight over his bump and only reaching just above his navel.

To cover his lower belly, he wore a supportive belly band to help redistribute the weight of his womb and provide some modesty. Unfortunately for Leo, but much to Marko’s delight, the top hem of the belly belt and bottom hem of the shirt couldn’t quite meet, resulting in a cheeky strip of exposed tummy, complete with his popped navel peeking out.

Leo’s belly swayed slowly back and forth as he waddled next to Marko, squeezing his hand. He absolutely loved being so pregnant, but he tended to get colder feet in public. He was a sight to behold, and people weren’t shy about staring at his impressive bump. “I think that lady has intentionally hopped from store to store to keep me in view,” whispered Leo meekly, “She just keeps watching me, it’s weird,” “Bet she’s jealous of how great you look,” chuckled Marko. “Marko! I’m serious!” Leo hissed, “I like being this big but I don’t like being the center of attention!”

Marko raised an eyebrow, not liking his boyfriend being nervous. “I can talk to her if you’d like?” Leo shook his head, “Nono, I don’t want confrontation, I just want… honestly I just want a milkshake…” he said as cravings shifted his focus to his empty stomach. With each added baby to his womb, his appetite grew stronger, even as the amount of room in his smooshed digestive system grew smaller. Marko swiftly steered the pair toward the food court, knowing exactly what to get him.

Leo wasn’t much of a foodie before pregnancy, but getting knocked up had not only expanded his palette, but increased his appetite to the point Marko was constantly feeding him. He had actually become something of a good cook, and really enjoyed feeding Leo. As a result of his new caloric intake, Leo has began to physically soften with time, his thighs and ass become pillowier, and for the first time in his life, he had love handles. Marko took this as a point of pride, that his cooking was good enough to make someone a little pudgy. Of course, the constant flow of ice cream treats certainly didn’t hurt either.

“Any preferences, dear?” Marko asked as he helped Leo ease into a chair, which had to be pulled away form the table to make enough room for the belly. “Where you buying?” He asked. Marko tilted his head toward one of the chain restaurants in the court, “Sonic has the biggest shakes here, and I know you like car-” “Carmel oreo please,” grinned Leo. Marko’s heart flittered a little bit at Leo’s innocent smile, still in the honeymoon phase even after being together for so long. He nodded and made his way toward the Sonic, leaving Leo to sit and rest his aching feet.

He placed his hands on the top shelf of his belly, and scanned the food court. He was semi-used to being stared at by this point. Being visibly trans, being in a visibly gay relationship, hell, even his nose ring got glares from older folks. But this felt different, it wasn’t him they were stealing glances of, it was his belly. He felt a draft blow across the sliver of exposed skin between his sweater and belly belt, and felt a little self conscious. To make matters worse, the woman who had been stalking him made a b-line and was actually approaching him. He considered getting up and moving, but knew he’d reached the point in size and weight were he really needed Mareko’s help to do anything quickly.

“Excuse me!” she said, Leo braced for the worst. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve been following you around, we’ve made eye contact like 4 times, but I really need to ask you something,” she continued. Poor Leo grimaced and prepared for the worst. What invasive question would he have to answer this time? She took a seat at his table, sitting across from him. She made eye contact and seemed very direct, something Leo wasn’t super crazy about.

“So my friend is pregnant, and she’s carrying decuplets, and she’s really starting to struggle with her size… where did you get that tummy support thing?” Leo blinked, feeling like an overhyped bandaid was just painlessly torn off. “Oh, uh, there’s a place across town that sells maternity wear, called ‘twins n’ up’, and the owner makes their own stuff. They, uh, they custom made it for me,” he answered. The lady nodded intently and made several notes on her phone.

“Is this lady bothering you, hon?” asked Marko as he returned with 32 ounces of creamy milkshake. “No, actually she was just asking me about this!” Leo pulled the hem of his supporting belt, letting it snap back against is belly. “I swear I’m not trying to harass your husband, he’s just the first person i’ve seen who is as pregnant is my friend and I wanted to know where he got his clothes. I’ll leave you guys alone now, thank you!” she said to Marko, offering her seat to him. Marko’s protective nature made him a little cautious of the woman’s intentions, but she seemed harmless enough. “Take care!” smiled Leo as she left. Marko sat across from him, and handed him the milkshake.

Marko chuckled, “I guess we look like husbands now?” Leo took a long, indulgent sip of his shake, basking in the sugaryness of it all. “I mean, we are growing our family quite a bit,” he patted his tummy, “I think it’s a fair assumption we’re married,” Marko considered the situation for a moment and realized, yeah, it WAS a fair assumption they be married, or at least engaged… maybe it was near time he brought assumption to reality…

3 more months later

Marko and Leo were currently no longer boyfriends. Rather, they were fiances! Marko popped the question privately after a very fun and successful baby shower, and Leo immediately said yes. Some tears of happiness were shed, celebratory cake was consumed, and more babies were added to Leo’s ever swelling womb later that night. Things were progressing smoothly for the expecting couple as they’d moved from their old smaller apartment to a larger, open floor house. 

Now 9 months pregnant with thirteen babies, Leo was a sight to behold. His belly was permanently bared, no wardrobe in the country able to cover his bump. Through some luck, good genes, and lots of cocoa butter, he’d managed to avoid any stretchmarks, but his navel was thoroughly popped. While he’d started the pregnancy off on the skinny side, Marko’s endless flow of food had made sure baby weight accumulated, and now everything from his legs to his chest was growing. The only part of him that didn’t seem to gain any weight was his face, which was still lithe and adorable. His fluffy brown hair had only grown fluffier and fuller with the prenatal vitamins he was taking. He had to lose his blonde highlight though, as the babies could absorb chemicals through hair exposure, strangely enough.

Marko had been hard at work unpacking their whole life into this new house, as Leo had grown too large to really do much besides be doted on, which Marko was fine with. He’d set up their bedroom, and taken the doors off their hinges and removed the doorframes to buy Leo just a few precious weeks of being able to travel through doorways. At the rate they were going, they would need every inch of their open floorplan just for Leo’s titanic tummy.

Leo’s belly now held not only tredecuplets, but enough amniotic fluid to stay full and spherical. He was clocking in at around 300 lbs, and just under half of that was belly. Through the help of Marko, Leo could still walk… but getting up and down was a challenge. Leo’s belly was beyond bigger around than he was tall, and there were substantial portions where he could no longer reach. That didn’t stop the couple from conceiving more though. Even at thirteen full and pregnant beyond words, the couple still had plans for more. Call it some kind of hedonism, but Leo loved being bred and growing ever more massive, and Marko loved to watch. 

Even now, well into January, large snowflakes lazily falling outside, the pair were together, warm and happy. Leo had basically outgrown the couch at this point, his belly more wide than the cushions were deep. Instead, they had splurged on an electric recliner which was situated facing slightly to the right of the television, so that Leo could lay back in a reclined position, but only had to turn his head to see the TV, since he couldn’t see past his own tummy straight on at this point. Strong visible kicks could be seen occasionally poking out of his tightly stretched skin, often in places out of view from Leo himself. 

He sat, laid back in his large, cushy recliner, eating some chinese takeout Marko had picked up for him. He set the styrofoam container on his chest, idly scooping noodles into his waiting mouth. A chow mein noodle fell into his cleavage, something he didn’t have 6 months ago, and he picked it out with his chop sticks, hoping Marko didn’t notice him miss his mouth.

Marko didn’t notice, too enarmored with his future husband’s massive midriff. He got to see it every day, and yet every day he somehow loved it more. His hands were almost always touching it, only off of the bump when cooking or otherwise doing housework. He knew this had to be hard for Leo, being so massive and carrying so many, so Marko worked hard to do his part. Anything Leo wanted, he got. Specific foods, foot rubs, new clothes, a bigger belly… all of it was hand delivered by Marko himself. For being the more dominant of the pairing, he’d become something of a servant as Leo grew closer to immobility.

Right now, Marko had a dining room chair pulled up next to Leo, and was working cocoa butter into the side of his tummy, working slowly to both be gentile and maximize his time spent touching it. It amazed him how no matter his size, or how many were in there, his overburdened belly still had just a little give to it. Leo smiled, watching his partner be just engrossed with his tummy. “You have such a hopeless belly kink,” he chuckled. “Hmmm? Me?” Marko said, almost missing the question cause he was staring at the belly. “Yes you! Even before I got knocked up you liked touching me there! Who’s hands were on my tummy when we made out the first time?” Marko blushed. “I mean, yeah mine... but also who was so eager he got close enough that our glasses hooked on themselves? Who was so willing he whispered how he wanted a ‘baby in him right then and there?’,” Marko teased. 

Leo was the one blushing now, thinking back to one of their first dates. Little did he know just HOW MANY babies would be put in him later in life. “Is it… bad I still want you to put a baby in me?” he said, embarrassed by his own words and avoiding eye contact. Marko set aside the cocoa butter and stood up, taking a good look at the tummy that lay before him. “No… I don’t think it’s bad… but I wonder if there’s room in that belly for any more?” he teased, pressing the tips of his fingers into Leo’s exposed tummy.

“Oh come on Mark, don’t make me beg, you said you’d take care of me?” Leo teased right back, deepening his finance’s blush. “Hmmm…” he rested the side of his head on the front end of Leo’s belly, listening to the ambient, living sounds from inside. “It SOUNDS pretty full, can one guy get any more pregnant?” Leo crossed his arms and mock-pouted. “I won’t ever find out if you keep talking...” Marko leaned over Leo, casting a shadow across his face. “So you’re ready for number 14?” he grinned. Leo wrapped his hand around the back of Marko’s head and pulled him in for a kiss before whispering, “Why stop there?”

Another 3 months later

Marko had needed to make some calls. He had a few contacts with the fabrication industry, and knew some guys always willing to help him out. Now a year pregnant, and full of 20 babies, Leo no longer fit standard furniture. He was simply too large and heavy for traditional couches and chairs. Instead, Marko’s friends had put their heads together, and fashioned him a special, form fitting lounge chair, with a sturdy metal frame and soft, satiny cushions. They even thought ahead and made certain parts of it adjustable to accommodate for his growing size. And growing he was. Now beyond overdue, the growth of his still healthy brood pushed his body to new maximums. Leo often joked about how his womb would need its own zipcode soon.

Leo buttoned his shirt back up, setting the pumping apparatus on the table next to him. He’d had to start pumping his milk, or his breasts would begin leaking on their own, and frankly, he didn't want colostrum on his plaid flannels. “Hon, could you put that in the fridge?” he asked, pointing at the bottles of milk he’d produced. Marko ran his hand along the circumference of Leo’s belly as he moved past him, slightly tickling Leo in the process. He took the bottles and placed them in the fridge before circling back. “How’re you feeling honey?” he asked. “Big. Pregnant. Massive, really,” Leo answered. “Just how you like it?” Marko replied. Leo grinned, “Yeeeaaahhh,”

Marko placed his hands firmly on the expanse of pale, pregnant skin, and started kissing. Leo squirmed on his throne of pregnancy as his husband moved slowly up his belly toward his face. Marko gave him a deep, passionate kiss on the lips, causing Leo’s breath to shake slightly. “You love me so much,” he said in his quivering voice. “I”m so massive and pregnant and huge and round and you adore me like this.” he continued, getting a little emotional. “Of course I do,” replied Marko, giving his lovely husband a side-hug. “You’re my person, and you’re carrying a lot of persons, just for me, and that’s not easy. And I appreciate it. And I want you to know that I love you, both for doing that and for just being you!” Said Marko tenderly. Leo teared up a little, reaching out for another hug. Marko obliged, Leo wiping a couple tears on Marko’s 80’s style denim button-up.

“I couldn’t do all this without you, y’know… all… THIS!” Leo gestured to his astounding belly, which nudged with movement slightly in response. “You shouldn’t ever have to, babe. That’s why we have each other,” The two shared a tender silence, Marko rocking back and forth slowly. Leo sniffed and shook his head, “Augh, sorry. Pregnancy hormones… y’know… make me all emotional.” he said. “You’re allowed to be emotional, babe,” reassured Marko. “I know…” nodded Leo. 

Leo’s tummy rumbled and Marko chuckled, “You also get emotional when you’re hungry…” he pointed out. Leo laughed his bubbly, infectious laugh. “Yeah, I can’t argue with that… lemme see… the babies want…” he paused, “Potato soup!” Marko nodded, making his way to the kitchen to cook a huge batch. “Anything for you, my love,”

[the-most-slytherin-hufflepuff]

Wildcards

Hello peeps. So I found this little thing in my drafts and decided to post it. It was supposed to be the start of a coffee shop AU that I started writing ages ago and forgot about. So here you go, I may write a part 2 at some point. 

cw: mentions of food and some cursing

Finn was walking towards his favorite bookstore, because he somehow had already finished reading almost all the books on his shelf and, like the nerd he is, needed to go buy more. 

He arrived at the store without any idea of what he wanted to buy, he never did. He just went and looked for pretty book covers and hoped they were good, infallible logic if you asked him. By the time he finished looking around he had found five books, two of which he already had on his reading list but had never actually bought, the other three were wild cards since he had never heard of them before. He sent a quick text to Logan that he would be home soon and went to the register to check out. 

Finn was not someone that got caught off guard by people’s looks easily, except for his boyfriend who looked like a god, in his humble opinion, but the boy behind the counter was really testing that fact. He had curly blonde hair and baby blue eyes and— Finn needed to stop staring because staring is weird. 

“Hi, did you find everything you were looking for?”. Finn cursed all the gods, demons and deities in existence for giving the stranger such a nice voice.  A fact that did nothing to help his panic over the cute boy. 

Finn realized he should probably answer since a few seconds had passed, “Yeah, I wasn't really looking for anything, just walking around to see if I found something interesting.” 

The cute boy hummed in acknowledgement before responding, “ Do you come here often, I don't think i’ve seen you before”, he paused for a second before adding, “then again I have been working here for about two weeks so maybe that’s why”.    

“I come here a lot actually. Books and coffee,  what more could a college student need”, the cute boy looked at Finn with an unreadable expression before answering. “Money, sleep, and the will to live”.

 Finn burst out laughing at that and the cute boy soon joined. When the laughter subsided to light chuckling the cute boy continued. “I’m kidding, but yeah this place is pretty cool and I get free coffee so win-win” They talked for a little longer since the bookshop side of the store was pretty much deserted. Finn finally managed to ask for the guy's name. 

Leo. 

*~*~*~*~*

By the time Finn got back to the apartment he shared with Logan it was almost dark outside. He opened the door and walked to his and Logan’s room. He put the bag with the books near his shelf, he would have to organize them later, and walked out to the living room. 

Logan was sprawled on the floor staring up at the ceiling, tapping out the beat to the song he was listening to with his fingers. Finn came into Logan’s line of sight, waiting for his boyfriend to pause the song. 

“I’m going to make dinner.”

“Do not burn the kitchen O’Hara, we don’t have any fire extinguisher in the apartment”, Logan yelled, from his place on the floor. 

“Shut up Tremz”, Finn yelled back, a bright smile taking over his face when he heard Logan’s laugh. 

Finn went about preparing dinner, his mind going over his day. He woke up early, got ready, kissed Logan goodbye and went to class. He and a few classmates discussed whether or not Patroclus and Achilles dated, Finn would die saying that they had and no one would ever change his mind or history. Remus and Lily helped him with his homework for creative writing and then he left for the bookstore. 

The bookstore with an incredibly cute cashier named after his favorite constellation with the most beautiful blue eyes Finn had ever seen. That had thrown him for a loop, Finn had a boyfriend that he loved more than life itself, and yet Leo had taken his breath away. 

“If you think any faster you’re going to get a headache.” Logan hugged him from behind, wrapping his arms around Finn’s torso. He placed a kiss to the top of Finn’s spine. “What’s wrong?” 

“What makes you think something’s wrong?” 

“You have your ‘life is confusing me right now’ face. So tell me”, he moved so he could look at Finn’s face, “what’s going on.”

Finn sighed, putting the temperature of the stove at medium so the pot wouldn’t boil over and dropping the pasta in the hot water. “Nothing is really wrong. It’s just that”, he took a breath, trying to force his mind to put his feelings into words. “I just thought that having a boyfriend was supposed to stop me from having gay panics when I see cute boys in public.” Logan snorted amusement dancing in his green eyes. “Alas, there was a cute cashier in the bookstore. And I am very gay.” 

Logan let his forehead drop to Finn’s shoulder, trying very hard to not laugh. “You’re such a disaster, love”, Logan’s voice shook with barely suppressed laughter. He looked back up at Finn, who turned to face him with a small pout. 

“It’s not funny Lo. I literally stood in front of the poor guy for like five seconds staring like a fucking idiot.” 

Logan couldn’t hold it in anymore. He burst out laughing, standing on his tip toes to kiss Finn’s pout away. “So basically, exactly what happened the day we met?” Logan said after the last of his laughter faded away.  

“No”, Finn responded indignantly. “Maybe”, he conceded when Logan raised an eyebrow at him. Logan nodded, gave his boyfriend another short kiss and left the kitchen so Finn could finish making dinner.  

After dinner they sat curled up on the couch. Logan turned on the TV, the episode they had left unfinished last night began playing. Halfway through the next episode Logan spoke up, “So, a cute cashier huh?”

Finn blushed lightly at Logan’s teasing tone. “In my defense, he was very cute and funny.” 

“What, like, Remus cute or me cute?”  

“The word cute is losing all meaning to me”, Finn said. “But to answer your question, it was more you than Remus.” His nose scrunched up, “Remus is adorable the same way puppies are adorable.” 

 Logan nodded in agreement. They settled into comfortable silence. He had laid his head down on Finn’s lap who was playing with Logan’s soft curls. The words from the TV had stopped making sense and Logan found it very hard to keep his eyes open. He heard Finn whisper something, but he couldn't make out the words. 

When Logan managed to open his eyes again Finn was standing in front of him. “Sit up baby.” 

Logan whined in protest. “I don’t wanna walk.” 

Finn laughed softly. “I’ll carry you if you want, but you’re not sleeping on the couch.”

Logan sat up with a tired groan, making grabby hands at Finn. The red head lifted him off the couch and began walking towards their bedroom. Logan had let his head fall on his boyfriend’s shoulder, pressing lazy kisses to Finn’s jaw. “I love you”, he murmured sleepily. 

“I love you too”, he said, laying Logan down on the bed. He went to the dresser, chuckling when Logan whined sleepily at him to come back. “I’m just looking for something, don’t worry.” He threw one of his hoodies at Logan, who gave a huff of indignation when it hit him in the face. 

“Rude”, Logan muttered, pulling the hood over his face, pulling on the strings and laying down with his back to Finn. He smiled when he heard his boyfriend’s bright laugh echo through the room. The bed dipped and he felt a warm weight settle in front of him. Finn pushed the hood from his eyes and looked at him. He grabbed the back of Logan’s neck and kissed him. “I’m sorry”, he whispered. 

“You have to make it up to me.” Logan kept his voice low. 

“What do you want?”

“Cuddles,'' Logan answered. 

“I can do that”, Finn said, opening his arms so that Logan could scoot closer. He wrapped his arms around the smaller boy and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. “Good night my love”. 

“G’night”, he murmured sleepily. Finn held Logan a little closer, falling asleep minutes later, lulled by Logan’s soft snores. 

[illyrian-lover-flower]

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! (It is already in my country)  

So, like you can guess, this is a new year's note - in which I wanted to thank each and every one of you guys!  

Thank you all so much for the likes, rebloggs and follows.

If I would have the chance to, I would come through whatever screen you are looking at right now, and hug dear life out of all of you.  

This year, as shitty and stressful it had been for nurses, doctors, bus drivers, teachers Kindergarteners' and students (you can imagine, the list goes on and on) was to me at least a good year.  

Though I don’t want to talk down Covid at this point, but look at the bright side of it. Perhaps some of you have been able to write more due to the new free time or have found a new hobby, etc.,etc.  

It had been a shit year, yes, but just think about it - I am not aware how much Tumblr means to all of you, but in the little time I used it, it made me feel more comfortable with myself.  

I might have gone out of the house even lesser than I originally do, but all this kind feedback of you guys had me always giddy to write something new and I am thrilled to share my new chapters with all of you.  

Also, I think some New year’s resolutions will be interesting for you guys:

1. I will correct ‘The life I once dreamed of’

      Here on Tumblr, I have already prove read most of the Chapters I posted,            but I haven’t on AO3, which is the reason why this is my very first New          Year’s resolution - oh, I’ll also do my very best to upload the Chapters from AO3 here.  It is quite a difference😅

2. There will be more chapters of ‘The chosen forest keeper’

        I feel so sorry for all of you that sit there waiting for a new Chapter and it really pains my heart to know how little I have already accomplished of where I want to go with it. So, there will be definitely more updates of it in 2021.  

3. I am taking prompts  

  There won’t be a prompt list, perhaps I’ll upload one in July but I am not sure about it. If you guys have a prompt in mind that could be cute for Elriel - feel free to send it in and I’ll do my best to work on it as soon as I read it.  

4. There will be a writing break from May to July!  

I know, it is contractionary to all my points above, but I will write as much as I can till May, after that there might be some smaller chapters, but it is my final year of school so I am having exams coming up. I know there are many authors here that can do both, write and study, but I don’t want to mess things up. I tend to work long into the night and I don’t want to accidently post my Biology essay or something or write some gibberish about math in my fanfics.  

I hope you understand that.  

I know I am rambling at this point, but I want to explain my situation as best as I can to you (damn were that many ‘I’s😅) So, I will use this break mostly for studying, but the break will also allow me to spend more time with looking at flats. Because I will be in the need to move for my apprenticeship and until now everything I got were ‘No’s. So please understand that.  

And again, all I can say, thank you guys for sticking till now with me!  

You all don’t know how happy I have been to have the first feedback from one of you and it really let’s my heart bloom that you liked my fic’s already when my English was still pretty bad.  

I am just thinking of the first chapters from ‘The life I once dreamed of’, boy had it been prickling in my fingers to take at least the first six chapters down and write anew. But I won’t do that, because I think then I will never finish it, so prove reading has to do😅  

Also, I just wanted to say thank you to @ladynestaarcheron for organising the secret snowflake project. I absolutely had my fun during the project and the hundreds of drafts I had really helped to improve my writing skills.  

So, it was through and through a success. Also, I am happy you liked your gifts @autophobiaxx😊 and since we are already at gifts – I just have to thank you again my lovely snowflake @darlinminds. I just loved your gift and I am a complete puddle of goo for it.

And keep in mind 2020 had been a shitty year, but 2021 can only get better! (And I don’t want to hear you pessimist, like my entire family, say now ‘But it can!’ - perhaps think of the little success you can make through the year)

And for last (I swear this is my last point!) I want to thank:

 @thefangirlofhp, @tswaney17, @verifiefangirl , @elriel-incorrect-quotes, @rhysanoodle, @julesherondalex, @theshadowsinger-and-thefawn, @chococannolii, @elriel-oblivion and all of you amazing other people out there that have been publishing elriel content! (from incorrect quotes to theories and drawings and fic’s)  

I swear all of your cute fluffy, heartbreakingly angsty, funny and smutty fics have made my goddamn year! I always love to see notifications of you on my feed and I couldn’t help myself as to include this in the note (I am so sorry if my rambling annoyed you at this point) Also @ncssians I am thrilled beyond believe to read about the Acotar characters as gods!  

Happy new year and a splendid 2021 everyone!  

And for those who are interested here is a little snippet of ‘The chosen forest keeper’ Seed three: The sun arose each day with your smile, now darkness shall claim me :

Vomit dreaded to spill from her rosy lips as she saw the red liquid. Fersia, as well as the other three females looking unbothered at the display of shed blood.  

Whose blood was it?

Was all Goldenrod could question herself, as Fersia spoke to the female on the throne of nightmares and fire. Bloodred painted lips moving as she answered the wish of the forest green eyed female, that bowed her head in respect. Tugging lightly at Goldenrods white sleeve, but she couldn’t move.  

Couldn’t do anything as she stared at the deep, red puddle.  

“Who are you?” echoed a mighty voice through the grand hall. Vibrating even in the farthest corner of the room as her blazing blood red eyes assessed her visitor, that stood with a shaking body and sweat covered skin in her throne room.  

[fandomsonrequests]

𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓..? [𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙 1]

fandom: ATEEZ

characters: prince! park seonghwa

reader: fem! knight

word count: 1.7k+

summary:  It was time for another Selection. No- not a Selection for a bride but rather a well-trained knight to keep Prince Seonghwa safe after a failed assassination attempt. You, a blacksmith’s daughter, manage to make it to the elite group of knights worthy and skilled enough to protect the crown prince after months and months of training. This alone catches Seonghwa’s eyes- in more ways than one

a/n: so the first part! mind you this is unedited so im sorry if there are any spelling errors or if it sucked. ;^; i’ll try updating every week but please bear with me- class is about to start soon for me :(( Also- I hope you catch the two cameos of two other kpop idols in here ;) 

Please message me if you want to be tagged for the future updates! <3 

↞previous  ♛   next↠

You were always full of surprises.

You surprised your mother with your first kick in the womb while she was tidying your father’s workbench. You surprised your whole family when you came out of the womb as a girl- not as a boy like a village’s midwife predicted. You surprised your father with the first sword you crafted, showing that the gift of smithing didn’t stop at your older brother.

So it wasn’t unexpected when you expressed your desire to open another smithy in town.

“Now why would you want to do that, my dear?” Your father asked with a gentle smile, wincing at the injury his leg sustained during an accident in the workshop. “Are you not satisfied here with us?”

Your younger self momentarily glanced at his injury, shaking her head before answering him with a hopeful grin. “I am papa. But we will be able to earn more for the future. And you don’t have to tire yourself out in the smithy anymore, papa…” Your voice trailed off at the end, your smaller hands reaching out to hold her father’s.

Your father smiles gently although there was almost a sad glint to it. He raised his calloused hand to your cheek, caressing the skin there softly and pinching it afterward. He laughed quietly when you swat his hand away with a tiny pout on your rosy cheeks.

“My dear, you never fail to brighten up and think of the loved ones surrounding you. For that, I’m grateful.” He grunted as he stood up from his seat, leaning on the cane that was made for him. He gently cupped the back of your head and pulled you forward to kiss the crown of your hair.

“But don’t worry too much about me. I’ll be able to manage.” He flashes you one of his reassuring smiles before limping away to his workbench to continue his work.

You looked over to your father, brows furrowed together as your hands gripped at the apron that hung around your waist. One day- you’d make him proud and he’d never have to suffer again.  

Forward to many years later. Here you are now, a young woman of twenty-two, ready to start the day.

You yawned behind your palm, looking over to the window in the corner of the room on the right. There was no light creeping through the cracks on the shutters which was a telltale sign that the sun was still asleep and that the town was still in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t uncommon for you to wake at this ungodly time of the day. You always had to start early because as soon as the sun rises the whole town comes to life.

Another yawn escapes you as your hand flies across the bedside table, finding the small box of matches and candlestick that you kept. You pull back your hand and hiss quietly as you feel a tiny splinter on your palm. You ignore the pain for the moment and continue searching for the candle and matchbox.

As soon as you find it, you light the candle and make work of removing the splinter in your palm. You set the candle into its respective holder and glanced over to your brother’s side of the room. His back was to you, shoulders going up and down as he breathed steadily. You roll her eyes in half amusement and half exasperation, a quiet sigh escaping you. He always stayed up late.

You get up, bringing the candlestick with you, and proceed to head to the kitchen in your small house. You grab your shawl on the way there as a draft blew through the house. It was always cold where you lived- especially since it was near the mountains- but it was even colder in the mornings.

As you move about the kitchen, you can hear footsteps approaching. “What time did you sleep last night, Christopher?” You ask your brother, not looking up from slicing the hard bread you had.

“Earlier than usual..” He yawns, running his hand through his dark hair. He assisted you in making breakfast, bringing out the earthenware jug of goat’s milk and pouring it into the clay mugs you each have.

“But late as always.” You counter back as you set the slices of bread onto the table. You proceed to return the jug of milk to the cupboard but sigh when you realize how much lighter it was than before. “Looks like we’ll be out of milk soon.”

“Then it’s another week without it,” Christopher adds as he cleans up the crumbs and cuts some slices of goat cheese to go with the bread. “Oh well… we’re used to it anyway. You know how most of what we earn goes to papa’s medicines. Not to forget his ointments.”

“I know Chris, I know.”

You two eat in silence, letting the topic pass by quickly. It’s been a decade since your father had the accident and twelve years since your mother passed from an illness. Since then, it’s just been the three of you. You and your brother worked hard from sunrise till sunset- anything to get your father to rest. You both hated to see how he limped as he walked from one place to the other. You both never told him this but you both saw him sitting on his bed one night, seemingly cursing himself as he stared at the cane he had flung across his room. It pained you to see your father, who usually held his head high, look so defeated.

“I’m off to open the smithy.” You announced as soon as you were done with your meal. “Take care of papa will you, big-nose?”

Christopher nodded, cheeks full of bread and cheese. “See you later stinky-breath”

“It’s just morning breath..!” You refute as you head back to your room to change into your work attire.

After changing into some pants, you threw on your boots and grabbed the worn leather gloves that hung by the doorway. You waved goodbye to your brother and crossed the street to your family’s little smithy.

Few people were already out and about. The delicious smell of fresh bread from the baker’s wafted through the air, thankfully overpowering the nasty odor of goat dung that your neighbors were shoveling out. Probably to be used for the farm they had, or, what little of farmland they had. It was hard to grow things around this area- especially with the altitude and type of soil but the townsfolk managed.

The few shops that were in the village started to open up and the faint sound of the quarry-workers’ song drifted up from the mountain and down into the area, their voices carried by the gentle morning breeze.

“Morning ____!” Magda, your elderly neighbor, greeted as she dusted her carpet from the window.

“Good morning Magda!” You greet back as you head into the smithy. Your boots squelched in the mud created from the dust that floated down from the mountain that mixed with the moist atmosphere created in the early morning.

The smell of heated leather, coal dust, and molten iron greeted your nostrils, burning your lungs with familiarity. You light up the tiny lanterns in the corner of the smithy and your workbench, illuminating the once dark area before grabbing the bucket beside it to fetch some water used in cooling the metal. You hum along to the quarry worker's song, having picked up the tune from having to hear it daily as you work. By the time you were finished with setting everything up, the sun was high in the sky and the town was once more bursting with life.

Your father and brother soon enter, making you smile. “Good morning father.” You greet him with a kiss to his cheek.

“Good morning my flower.” He greets in return as he limps his way over to his workbench.

You tried not to stare after him but you couldn't help it. It seems as if his limp grows worse day by day. You hoped that it the worst will never come- it was a lingering thought but you chose to keep it that way: a what-if scenario. It'll only crush your father's heart if he had to stop crafting and blacksmithing altogether- all because of his injury.

The day continued as usual. The usual customers, both kind and impatient; long lists of requests varying from a specific type of blade and scabbard to the most standard and basic ones. Soon, the sound of a mallet hammering against metal or the hissing of something hot meeting the cool water filled the area. It was practically music to you by now. Time seemed to just flow past the small family of blacksmiths as they worked hard, sweat forming on their brow and skin.

“Careful big-nose,” You tease Christopher when you catch him slipping. You saw how his eyes drooped from his lack of sleep, causing him to trip. Lucky for him- he didn’t drop the mallet he was holding onto his foot.

Lord- he needs to rest.

Chris only laughed dryly and stuck his tongue out at you to which you mirrored quite childishly. Your father only shook his head in amusement, pushing back the spectacles that sat on his nose as he engraved delicate markings into the sheathe a customer ordered a while back.

You were about to throw another playful jab at your brother when the sounds of brass trumpets echoed throughout the village. The people around you grew confused as it continued. There were horns in your village, yes, but this was different. It sounded more regal and official compared to the somewhat brash sound of the village horns.

You threw a rather quizzical look to your brother who shrugged in response. Many of the townsfolk around your area left their place and started moving towards the source of the sound, causing you to do the same. You went over to your father, handing him his cane as you three walked towards the exit of your smithy.

“Oi!! Chris! ____!” A voice called out.

You turn your head to see your friend Siyeon come running towards you. Her steps slowed down to a jog beside you, greeting your father as she did. “What do you think is happening?” She asks you, resting a hand on your shoulder.

“I have no idea.”

[zmwrites]

tag: 20 first lines

I was tagged by @teasenpaiwrites! Thank you!

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20 stories just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag others!

I was tagged in a similar game LITERALLY forever ago by @scmalarky PRE-BLOG MOVE, which makes it the oldest tag game sitting my drafts. It came with the following rules:

Rules: list the first lines of your last ten published stories. note if there are any patterns yourself and see if anyone else notices any! tag ten friends!

I put it off bc to date I’ve only published two stories over on Wattpad. So doing the first lines from the last twenty projects is somehow...easier? I suppose? 

I’ll be putting the opening paragraph or so of each piece, and will only be using WIPs that I actually started at the beginning. Anything that doesn’t start at the actual beginning will be skipped.

Anyways, this is going under a cut bc I know it’s going to be ridiculously long. In order of ‘last modified by me’ as per Google Docs:

Remnants

Radka had been a seamstress in a previous life. Trained from childhood on the most delicate stitches, the most intricate embellishments. She had worked for royalty, sewing crystals and spun gold into skirts for the biggest social events of the year. Her steady hand and attention to detail had earned her a job in the palace by fourteen, and a spot on the queen’s personal seamstress team by fifteen. But that was years in the past. The girl she had been then, demure and innocent, wouldn’t recognize the woman she had grown up to be.

Open Seas

Theresia Bowen sat in the back of one of her family carriages, forehead pressed against the window as she watched the countryside fly past. The sky stretched on forever above her, interrupted only by the occasional wispy white clouds, and the spring sun had melted the snow from the hills to her left. The grass was still struggling to grow but was scattered in patches across the mud. To her right, the sea rolled and waved to the horizon. Ships dotted the deep blue, their sails bright and full with wind. Most were trading ships, a few navy, and the smallest of them all were pleasure ships. It was how she knew they were close to her destination.

Indigo Wars

Violet Colby sat cross-legged on her narrow bed in the room she shared with her two sisters at Osbrick Estate. The name was a holdover from the property’s previous life as a stately home, though not much else had carried over. The walled compound was nestled in the eastern sands of Edristan, less than two kilometres west of the capital city, with sun-bleached buildings that housed several dozen orphans and foundlings.

Pine Hollow

It was a miserable Monday morning, with dark, heavy clouds masking the rising sun and a steady rain pounding the town of Pine Hollow and the surrounding area. The dirt trails through the dense forest were slick with mud, the tire ruts becoming puddles and the puddles becoming proper ponds. It was as far from ideal body hunting conditions as possible without snow, but Virginia Crane had a job to do and she wasn’t about to let some adverse weather stop her.

Rochester WIP

The wedding was supposed to begin in five minutes and the bride was nowhere to be found.

Evelyn Rochester, for her part, was not surprised. Her sister Dorothea had claimed a headache a week earlier to get out of a family outing and had been gone by the time they’d returned. A small chest and a collection of her clothing had been gone as well. Their parents had made inquiries to some family friends but no one had seen Dottie, and at twenty-six she was allowed to do as she pleased, so they’d been left to wait to see if she’d return.

Just Jane

Jane rolled over in the narrow bed, pressing her face into the pillow as though it would make it any easier to sleep. Even as she breathed in the warm, sweet scent of the bed owner’s favourite perfume—myrrh, rose, styrax, and marjoram—a new sound made her ears prick to attention.

UNSS Spectre

The spacecraft glided through the void, following its prey silently. It was using its minimum operating power, leaving the two inside to perform their duties without overhead or emergency lighting. Only the glow of their instruments illuminated the interior of the craft. 

“Cloaking device operating as normal,” Ensign Graecyn Ramsey said. She didn’t need to provide verbal updates since Captain Mezei could see everything that she could see and there was no one else aboard the tiny stealth class craft, but it was habit and she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

Fissures

Katherine Delacroix was seething. It was hard enough trying to get a gaggle of thirteen to eighteen year old girls to focus under normal circumstances but having the #1 most eligible bachelor of the school just hanging out at the back of the auditorium was making it nearly impossible. To make matters worse, the attention paid to the blond was bruising the egos of the boys in the group and she was painfully aware of how desperately the musical needed them not to quit. They already had a female Cogsworth and Le Fou; they didn't have enough girls with deep voices to play Gaston or Lumiere or, god forbid, Beast.

Snapshots

“Are you still looking for a roommate?” Misha asked, voice muffled slightly by whatever she was doing on the opposite end of the phone.

“You mean since you stole my last one? Yes,” Micah replied. He was stuck in traffic on his commute home from work, something his twin sister Misha knew, which was why she’d called when he had no excuse not to talk to her. It wasn’t that he didn’t like talking to her, he just wasn’t much of a talker.

“You’re gonna have to get over that,” she said.

The Tournament

The coin spun in lazy circles on the table, defying every law of physics. Izora Graham watched it with one hand held in a claw-like position over it. She didn't need to but it made it easier to cover the coin should anyone watch it too closely. The bar was still fairly empty so early in the evening and she was tucked away in the back booth away from the few early birds sitting at the counter, however any displays of magic would bring unwanted attention. Especially something that could be useful to any of the Upper Houses like her telekinesis.

Noyama Contest

Earthens had spread across dozens of galaxies once they’d perfected faster-than-light travel, and hundreds of solar systems within those galaxies. PT-759 was one of the galaxies they’d colonized only to find that it was already inhabited. It had ended up working out alright though, as the native species had radically different planetary needs and also happened to find Earthens downright adorable.

Naetov was a smaller planet at the edge of Federation-controlled space in PT-759. It had a few key cities where government funding was funneled to keep them perfect for non-Earthen tourists. Those cities were clean and friendly, open spaces and carefully maintained flora making up the downtown cores, streamlined designs and shiny surfaces giving the impression of a planet on the cusp of significance.

Gossamer Girl

It was the first day of winter and things were already looking bad. Even though the cold weather had held off for an extra two weeks, the harvest had been poor. A mold had festered in their southern field during the wet spring and had spread quickly. They’d razed the infected sections as soon as the fungus had been discovered but it had already destroyed a large swath of plants. They’d lost nearly a quarter of their usual yield and the troubles had only spiralled from there.

Knotted Strings

The room was just a bit too cold to be comfortable. The walls were wood panelled with some sort of reddish wood that matched the flooring. Rows of chairs with collapsible desks filled most of the lecture hall, with the front of the room dominated by a whiteboard and a table. The professor, hawkish in appearance, was perched on a bar stool facing the students and overlooking the table.

Tess lounged in her seat at the table at the front of the room, notebook open on the table in front of her and pen moving deftly across the page. She watched her competition critically as he spoke. His argument was solid enough to cast reasonable doubt on her case, or it would have been had he bothered to address a small piece of evidence she found to be damning. He finished his conclusion to a spatter of applause and returned to his seat across from her. 

“Well done, Mr. Wynn. Miss Kinney, would you like a few moments to prepare your rebuttal?” the professor asked.

“No, I’m good,” Tess replied. She sat up, scribbled a note in her book, and then pushed the book across the table.

Oh, Ophelia

Alexis lounged in the shade next to the pool, sipping a daiquiri and considering her next move. She’d been using the same identity for nearly fifteen years and the neighbours were starting to get suspicious. With all the new beauty products and surgeries available to people of her wealth it was easier to convince people she was nearing forty when she was in the body of a twenty-three year old, but now she had to deal with people asking for her skincare routines and her doctors and the identity wasn’t worth all of the research she was having to do. She was getting sick of Malibu anyways, what with the yearly forest fires that got closer each year. She missed the deep-rooted history of Europe, the memories she had in all of the major cities, the people like her who were still living in their castles and manors pretending like the world hadn’t left them behind.

Bloodlines

Ten of Wands. The Tower. Two of Swords.

Morrigan Keeling sat on the floor of her bedroom, chewing the end of a pen and staring intently at the tarot cards spread in front of her. It was a simple three card spread to indicate how her day was going to go: a card to describe herself, one to indicate what was going to greet her, and another to show the outcome of the situation. She’d gotten into the habit of doing it every day while living at home, and even five years after moving out she found it a relaxing routine to start the day.

The day’s cards, however, were not very relaxing.

PerDeA

The backseat of the car was dark, only illuminated for short intervals by the orange glow of the streetlights. Two figures sat across from each other in the shifting light. In the backwards-facing seat on the driver’s side was PerDeA. Her dark hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail, lips slightly parted as she stared unblinking out the back window. Shoulders square, back straight, chin up, hands folded neatly in her lap, her breathing perfectly rhythmic; she would have looked human if not for the faintly glowing cybernetic blue rings superimposed over her black eyes.

Westhaven

Her eyes were open but she couldn’t see anything. There were mechanical sounds ‒ beeping, whirring ‒ all around her, and voices too far away for her to understand. The sharp smell of antiseptic and the softer detergent scent beneath it.

“Initiate optical system,” a muted female voice instructed. Between one breath and the next she started processing visual information: bright white lights above her, the featureless ceiling beyond, her own nose and eyelashes. She couldn’t move her head to see much else. Walls that matched the ceiling so well it was hard to tell where one became the other, bits of the bed she was on with its bleachable white sheets and side rails.

“Increase tactile responsivity by fifty percent and disengage the motion inhibitors.”

Pro Patria Mori

She sat on the narrow bed with her packed suitcase next to her. Her blonde hair was pinned back, her blue eyes fixed on a spot next to the door, her hands folded neatly in her lap. The winter chill clung like burrs to the house, helped by the heavy spring rain that beat against the window in a staccato rhythm. Outside, trees bowed under the charcoal sky. The old house creaked and groaned around her, the wind whistling and wailing as the storm continued to batter the country estate. She waited.

At any moment there would be a knock on the main door of the house. Godfrey, the aged and shuffling butler, would answer. Standing on the other side would be some men in crisp uniforms, holding up her picture and asking if he knew her. She had seen them in town the evening before, and it wouldn’t take more than a day before someone pointed them in the right direction. They looked like military men but there was something different in their manner, something sharper. Godfrey would lead them up, and up, and up, until they reached her third floor apartment. The butler would introduce them, she would smile politely, and she would leave with them without a fight.

The Clocktower

Astra hated Capperham. The way it sprawled its squalor from border to border, from the sea in the west to the battlements in the other three directions. The harbour reeked of dead fish and unwashed human, the slums of sickness and stale beer. Even the neighbourhoods of rich merchants and factory owners lay under the thick smog of black soot the mines and mills spat out day and night. The grit and dirt was part of everything, so deeply ingrained that even the most rigorous scrubbing couldn’t make something clean.

Stars Incline Us

The Christmas gala was in full swing. The entire ballroom was full of people Pippa didn’t know, all wearing fancy clothes that probably cost more than her rent. Her own dress was aubergine and a simple V-neck, form-fitting enough to be attractive but loose enough to not draw too much attention.

She and another girl who didn’t seem to know anyone at the event were chatting with Antero and Mr. Rabinoff near the edge of the dance floor. Antero was already antsy to leave despite the dinner having just ended, but Mr. Rabinoff had trapped him in a debate he was too proud to back down from. The other girl was from legal and either found them hilarious or had had a little too much to drink because she kept giggling, leaving Pippa no choice but to laugh along while adding the occasional remark to the back and forth between the men.

That brings us all the way back to October 2016. Which tells me that I need to start at the beginning of more stories haha. If anyone has questions about any of these, please feel free to ask. Also, if you read all of that, you are a saint and a hero and have my eternal friendship.

I tag @the-writing-avocado​, @radiowrites​, @pigeon-hold​, @sleepyowlwrites​, @akindofmagictoo​, and anyone else who wants to share their projects!! As always, no pressure (to play or to read this whole post lmao).

[k7l4d4]

Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 6 Part 7

And here we are, the final section of Midnight Striga, episode 6! Everybody Clap Your Hands!!

“Well, well, the piggy came through after all.” A deep voice growled out, cutting through the haze of pain in Eda’s mind. Thudding steps crept closer, before a kick lashed out, catching on Eda’s ribs. “And here I was thinking I’d have to waste my time hunting my target down.” He laughed.

Forcing her head up, Eda squinted at the figure before her. The first thing that came to mind was ‘Dang he is TALL!’ Which was true; her attacker was a hulking figure, easily towering even Eda’s own impressive height. His skin was a dark, almost bloody, red, stretched tight against a chiseled musculature. If Eda had been told he didn’t actually have skin, she’d believe it just due to how defined his physique was. His arms were just slightly too long for his body, hanging just short of his knees, with his legs being highly animalistic, with backwards joints and two pad-like toes. A harsh face stared down at her, eyes marked by prominent tear canals, short-cropped hair, and just plain freaky ears, basically looking like hollowed-out boxes hooked to his skull. He grinned down, carnivorous teeth bared to strike. Eda resisted the urge to shudder.

“I have no clue who you are,” Eda started, covering up her nervousness with a helping of bravado, “But I don’t have time to waste on some muscle-head!” She shouted, casting a trio of fireballs into her opponent’s face, leaping backwards to make distance between them. To her shock, he easily swatted her attack aside, closing the distance in a single leap, his arm swinging down. “GAH!” Eda shouted, pain flaring as her attacker slammed her into the ground.

“Way too slow.” He almost gloated, gazing down inscrutably. Without turning, his arm lashed out, catching King by the throat during his sneak attack. He looked at the struggling demon incredulously. “Did you actually think that would work!?”

“S-Silence peasant!!” King cried, struggling as much as he could in the larger warrior’s grasp. “As the King of Demons, I must act in the defense of my people!” He shouted. The figure blinked, cocking his head in confusion, before bursting into laughter. “What’s so funny!?”

“You!” The enemy laughed. “You, a King of Demons!? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!!” His chuckles subsided, giving King a side-eyed glance. “Go play with the pig.” He said dismissively, casually chucking King behind him towards a giggling Tibbles. He cracked his neck. “Now, where were we?” He asked, only to blink at Eda disappearing from her previous position. His ears honed in on a sound from the left, prompting him to whirl around to defend, catching the pillar of stone in his fist. “Ha! You think that’s enough to-” Further words were cut off as a bolt of lightning crashed down on him, a pair of thorn-laden vines whipping out to pull his legs out from under him. “GURYAH!!” He screamed, pain rushing through him at the energy surging through his back, mitigated by the surge grounding out through his arm to an extent.

Scowling, he slammed his remaining arm into the ground, holding himself parallel. With a roar, he whipped his torso around, ripping the vines holding his legs out of whatever was anchoring them, slashing them through the environment. Market goers ran in panic, instantly recognizing the danger of the raging warrior before them. With a force of effort, he called on the unique magic of his body, warping his legs into scythes, cleaving through the spells Eda launched from the underbrush during his rotation. With a savage grin, he launched into the air, cackling in glee at the potential challenge.

Groaning, King picked himself out of the rubble he had crashed into, embarrassed at the ease of his dispatch. “That impudent punk just made my list.” He growled. Breathing deep, he allowed his spell to build up some more, perfectly willing to risk blasting his throat to bits to hurt his enemy. His reckless action was cut short by the raucous laughter echoing from his left. Turning sharply, he glared at the sight of Tibbles howling in laughter.

“Ohohohoho!! That was a good one! You, challenge him!? That’s hilarious!” Tibble cackled, uncaring of King’s mounting temper. Tibbles clapped his hands, leering menacingly at the smaller demon. “But I must say, you would most certainly catch a tidy profit if I sold you to recoup my… losses.” He hissed, glancing in anger at the damage done to his stand/shop. “Whether you are alive or dead during the sale is honestly irrelevant, there is a buyer for everything.” He tacked on as an afterthought.

“How dare you contemplate selling your King!!” King shouted, his spell unraveling at his shift in priorities. Marching forth, heedless of Tibbles greater size and menacing attitude, he defiantly pointed at the Pig-like demon’s chest, leaning forward in what was probably meant to be a menacing gesture.

Tibbles blinked, dumbfounded, before his laughter resumed, louder than ever. “You actually are serious!! And here I just thought you were a little twerp with a superiority complex! But no, you’re just crazy! A King? You!? King of what?” Tibbles taunted, looming over King, who was still oblivious to his position. Tibbles pulled out a coin, flipping it in his hand, a mocking girl on his face. “You’re as much a King as this coin is edible.” Catching the coin on its descent, he pointed it at King, a sickening leer on his face. “Money Magic: Loan Shot!” The coin became encased in a golden glow, much to King’s alarm, before firing forth like a rocket, slamming into King and into the background. Chuckling at King’s undignified slump against the tree ahead of him, Tibbles calmly pulled out another coin. “Who knew reading that little book would grant me such a fun toy?” He muttered to himself, relishing the power he now wielded.

“How did a punk like you get access to this kind of Magic!?” King yelped, scrambling to his feet, yanking at the coin sticking to his chest from where it landed. “And why won’t this stupid thing come off!?” He demanded, wincing at the sting his struggles were causing.

Tibbles grinned, relishing the loud-mouthed demon’s discomfort. “Why, I loaned it to you!” He cheerfully explained. “With my Money Magic, I can completely control any form of money, so long as it’s mine, of course! And you can do oh so many wonderful things with money; you can spend it, hoard it, invest it, or even… loan it.” He stated, a bevy of coins floating into the air behind him, encased in golden light. “Speaking of… Money Magic: Loan Rush!” He shouted, his spell crashing into King again, pinning him against the tree. “Loan Pressure!” He commanded, grinning as his coins constricted around King’s body, drawing a harsh cry from the little demon. “Now what was that you said about being King?” He taunted, smirking at King’s pained glare.

“Demon King’s Rocking Roar!” King shouted, his spell ripping through his metallic bonds. Tibbles' eyes widened in shock, before he leapt clear of the blast of solidified sound. “Like I said, I’m the King of Demons!” He screamed, his spell shifting direction to bear down on Tibbles again.

Recovering from his shock at the spell, Tibbles snorted, already prepping another spell. “Well, for a King, you aren’t much of a strategist.” He commented, his coins linking into a chain. “Loan Shackle!” With a flash, his chain whipped forward, catching around King’s leg, slamming him against the ground, tossing him skyward, before pinning him against the ground. “A spell that renders you immobile isn’t very tactically sound. Loan Coiling!” His coin whip crawled across King, tightening around his torso and throat, choking him off. Tibbles waddled over, staring down at the smaller demon in disappointment. “And here I was hoping you’d be interesting enough for me to sell you to Oroboros. A pity.” He shrugged, unconcerned at King’s frantic struggles for air.

“I can’t believe you knew the Conjuring was going to fail.” Amity grumbled, giving a cheekily grinning Luz a weak grin, who merely shrugged. Amity sighed. “Well, at least now we know better for next year.”

“Yeah, it could’ve been worse.” Skara commented, shrugging in disappointed acceptance of the situation. At the questioning looks she received, she explained, “We could’ve ended up accidentally directing the spell into something outside, like a corpse or something. Icky, right?” At her explanation, nods went up around the group. Nobody enjoyed dealing with the risen dead, not even Oracles. Especially not Oracles, actually, as they were usually the ones who got drafted to deal with them, as Selena’s frustrated scowl indicated.

“Yeah, moving corpses are so annoying,” Luz grunted, her nose scrunched up at the thought. She glanced at Amity. “Are you sure you can convince your parents to let Neon and her guards stay?” She asked, pointing a thumb at the group in question, as Neon frantically shoveled the left-over treats into her gullet even as her guards tried to get her to slow down in case she choked, Bo and Cat joining them in convincing the flighty girl, trying to pull her away from the treats manually.

Amity rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I know how to handle my parents. As long as I keep them on the back foot, I can control the flow of the discussion, and browbeat them into agreeing, which they’ll be honor-bound to hold up.” She explained, oblivious to the concerned glances her casual explanation as to how she planned on negotiating with her parents, and of the implications that she had to resort to such measures with her relatives, stirred up.

“Okay.” Luz dubiously agreed, packing up the leftovers for King and Eda. “If you’re sure.”

“I am.” Amity assured her, a small grin on her face. “Now, it’s getting late, so I think we should all head to our own homes, don’t you think?” She asked rhetorically, facing the group. At the slightly nervous whispers of her friends, not counting Willow and Gus, Amity added, “And I’ll have my family’s abomination servants accompany you all to your homes to ensure your safety.” This seemed to convince them. And with that, the party ended, the guests bidding their farewells and making last minute plans for the immediate future, Amity personally seeing them all out the door.

With a sigh, she turned to her remaining guests, hopefully to soon be long-term guests under her and her family’s hospitality. She lightly clapped her hands, drawing the attention of Neon and her guards. “Now then. Let’s see if I can convince my family to let you stay here, shall we?” She asked, a pleasant grin on her face, amusement dancing in her eyes.

Eda clicked her tongue, frustrated at the durability of her enemy. “What does it take to keep this muscle-head down?” She muttered, twirling up a pair of spells to catch him between. With a smirk, she launched them, laughing as he smashed into the fireball, only for the ice blast to clip him from the side. Her smirk faded, however, as his arms warped, distended, and stretched, lashing out at her hiding spot from several meters away! Tucking into a roll, she called up one of her owl pillars, launching the writhing, hooty-inspired spell at her persistent foe. The good news, her spells managed to pin his arms. The bad news, he just torqued his body, ripping himself free in moments, crashing into the ground before her. He grinned ferally.

“This is fun!” He exclaimed, his eyes alight with genuine amusement at the brawl. “What’s your name, Witch?” He demanded, eyes narrowing in focus.

Eda blinked. “Wait a minute, you’ve been fighting me… and you don’t even know my name!?” She shouted incredulously, her annoyance rising at the simple nod he gave her. With a growl, Eda dragged her hand down her face. “It’s Eda Clawthorne, also known as Eda the Owl Lady.” She bit out, scowling in anger, hands tight around her staff.

“Eda… Eda…” He mulled over, almost tasting the name. “Ah! Now I remember! You were on the example list!” He exclaimed, a pleased grin crossing his features. “That’s honestly a relief, I really didn’t want to kill a fighter as clever as you. Not many people can give me this good of a warm-up.” He stated, oblivious to the wary shock and indignant anger bubbling inside of Eda. “My name is Menthuthuyoupi, captain of the Chimera Tribe Royal Guard.” He stated, giving a shallow boy.

“Mentuthoo-whatnow?” Eda said blankly, her mind uncomprehending of the bizarre turn this fight had taken.

“Eh, you can just call me Youpi.” He stated with a shrug, unbothered. “Anyway, my orders are to demonstrate to you the difference between you Boiling Islanders and we of Oroboros. Since I’ve already shown that I can shrug off your spells without much hassle, the next part is for me to give you an example of the carnage I can induce when going all out.” He finished, putting a finger into the air in emphasis.

“What are you-?” Eda began, only to stop at what happened next, going pale. In a blur, Youpi whipped his way through the remaining crowds of the Night Market, uncaring of who or what got in his way. With a scream of blood-crazed rage, he bodily ripped his way through each and every witch and demon to cross his path, physically tearing them in half without a care, tossing their mangled corpses to the sides. As he continued to rage, his body pulsed and swelled, shifting and growing in step with his temper and his screams. As he grew, vents opened up along his arms, flames and heat lashing out from the rips in his body, incinerating any poor fools caught in his wake. With a scream of unbridled hate and anger, Youpi leapt into the air, his distorted body twisting around him, before slamming into the ground, an earth-rattling explosion ripping out from his form. Eda dropped to her knees, shaking. The Night Market… was gone. The entire street razed to stone, the bodies of all those in it either gone or seared into the walls as shadowed outlines. She froze, unable to move, as Youpi returned to their spot.

“Well, that was boring.” He lamented, lazily stretching himself out. “But what can I say, carnage and destruction are things I can do pretty easily, especially when my targets don’t fight back. Welp, I’ll be seeing you around, Owl Lady. Try and get rid of that curse of yours, that way we can have a good-old battle to the death.” He casually stated, walking off into the night.

“My, he certainly doesn’t know how to hold back, does he?” Tibbles stated, standing not even four feet from Eda. For some reason, she couldn’t marshal the effort to attack him. Glancing towards Eda, Tibbles let out a taunting tisk. “What’s this? The big bad Owl Lady too scared to move? Well, I suppose it makes sense when confronted with something of that sheer force.” He mocked.

Partially snapping out of her daze, Eda’s arm whipped out, catching the smug demon by the throat. “Where’s King?” She growled, unconcerned for her own safety at the moment.

Tibbles flailed, desperate to move and get away from the angry, and not-at-all-cowed witch before him. “I left him tangled up in my spell back by my shack!” He squealed, desperately grasping at his throat to unblock his airways. “Please! Let me go! I can’t breathe!”

Eda was very tempted to just strangle the little sleaze, but she had bigger things to worry about. With an annoyed sigh, she dropped him, running off for King’s location. Tibbles' eyes narrowed. “You will pay for that indignity, Owl Lady. So swears Tibblet-Tibblie Grimm Hammer III.” He whispered, slinking off after Youpi. The powerful demon genuinely didn’t like Tibbles, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep Tibbles from harm, even if only to potentially get a nice fight out of whoever or whatever Tibbles managed to piss off.

Scanning the area, Eda zoomed in on King, eyes widening in panic at his slowing struggles against the coins constricting around his throat and chest. “King!” She shouted, rushing over. With a shout, she slammed her staff across the coins, scattering them. King bolted up, gasping for air, his eyes wide with panic at his near death. “How you feeling buddy?” Eda asked, concern etched across her voice.

“I think I need some more training.” King wheezed out, eyes roving the destruction surrounding them.

“Yeah,” Eda muttered, scanning the ruined market around them. She slung King over her shoulders, noting his lack of protest for the warning sign that it was, and hopped onto Owlbert, taking off before the Coven Guards and Scouts could catch them, “I’m thinking I might need some too.”

With a deep breath, Amity pushed her way into her father’s lab, where he was still tinkering away at his latest project, her mother perched next to him, enjoying some tea, and looking far more composed than before. “Mother, Father.” She stated, calmly announcing her presence.

“Mittens, dear!” Odalia stated cheerily, patting the spot next to her. “Come, come! Your father and I were just discussing what to do about Miss Nostrade and her companions.” She said, a gleam shining in her eyes.

Amity’s own eyes widened, before narrowing in consideration. “I see.” She stated noncommittally. Walking up next to her mother, she sat down next to her, grudgingly accepting the drink she was offered. “I came here to request that we offer refuge for Miss Nostrade and her guards.” She said, gaze level.

“Why, what a wonderful idea!” Odalia cried, eyes bright with amusement. “Your father and I were discussing the exact same thing.” She added, lightly patting her daughter’s head, prompting Amity to flush. “I must say, the idea of that poor girl out there on the streets, unable to procure shelter and reliable food and water, is truly heartbreaking.” She sighed, Amity rolling her eyes at the theatrics. Odalia clapped her hands. “Plus, having such capable fighters around to defend not only their charge, but also our property and persons would most definitely be a fine boon to us!”

Amity growled, frustrated at having been outplayed so rapidly. “Yes, indeed, Mother.” She bit out, causing Odalia and Alador to send her slightly disapproving looks. Forcing herself to calm down, Amity continued in a more even tone. “I will inform them of this development at once.” 

“Of course dear, of course! But before you do…” Odalia smirked, flipping the switch for the Panic Room. In a flash, the twins exited, Emira instantly rushing for Amity, and Edric rushed for the bathroom. Odalia chuckled at her youngest child’s borderline profane shouts to be released, even as Emira insisted on holding her forever and never letting go. It was simply adorable!

“Hey guys, I’m home and- WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED!?” Luz shouted, dropping the leftovers to the floor. Crashed onto the couch were King and Eda, both battered and bruised with distant gazes. Rushing over, she frantically fussed over the two, pulling out her emergency aid kit, bandaging wounds as needed, applying antibiotics, and even forcing the two to chug some internal cleansing potions for good measure.

“*Cough, hack!* Yeesh, kid, don’t blow your top!” Eda exclaimed, breaking out of her stupor at Luz’s frantic antics. Forcing Luz back, she insisted, “I’m fine, kid. Just had a run-in with some of Oroboros’ goons. Turns out the guy me and King were going to buy from was a sellout and the whole thing was a trap.” She finished glumly, slumping downward.

Luz bit her lip, understanding their frustration. “Did you at least get the potions?” She broached, hoping that it hadn’t been for nothing.

Wordlessly, King pointed to the counter, where a crate of Potions sat, ready to ingest. Luz sighed in relief at that. She turned back to Eda, “So, who was it you fought?” 

Eda shrugged, wincing at the motion. “Some red-skinned guy. I can’t remember his name, but I think he was some kind of demon, and he was REALLY strong. Wiped out the entire market in seconds when he got serious.”

Luz whistled. Not many in Oroboros had that much raw, destructive power, not that she knew them all, and even those that did weren’t necessarily the strongest, merely the best at causing chaos in terms of damage. “Yikes. What’s up with King?” She asked, hoping to shift the topic.

Eda snorted. “Apparently that Grimm Hammer guy, who prefers to go by Tibbles for some insane reason, got some magic when he signed up and whipped King’s butt with it. He’s been like that ever since we got back.”

“Training.” King piped up, focusing. He turned to Luz, an intense light burning in his eyes. “I need it. More training. Can you help me?” He asked. Luz gulped, caught off guard by the intensity, but ultimately nodded. King relaxed a tiny bit, staring forward. “Good.” He looked down at his paws, clenching them into fists. “That’s good.”

[corpsentry]

behind the taylor swift gundam was in fact another, smaller gundam: a brief inquiry into the events of june 2020

so back in june this year june and i got together and we made this motherfucker of a story with this motherfucker of a thread to keep track of it all. but you already know that! and i’ve already got one foot and three elbows in my grave, so i’ll spare you the long-winded stuff. you wanna know how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks? i’ll tell you how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks-

-by linking you guys to copies of my planning documents because i feel like those words speak louder than any words i can offer in the present day. these are long documents. but they are also historical artifacts. very interesting. very weird. very, uh, full of cussing. so anyway, here’s

BIG DADDY: THE ORIGINAL PLANNING DOCUMENT

for those, like me, who have no motivation left in life to do anything and rely on summaries from others to acquire new knowledge, it all started with a single line.

prince of a fallen kingdom atsumu tries to kill hinata but falls in love with him instead

june, april something, 2020

with that in mind i tested the concept out with a few paragraphs of text, which you can find at the bottom of the Big Daddy document in the graveyard segment, accidentally sold my soul to the image of hinata with epaulettes, and then worked backwards, structuring an entire plot around two images:

a) hinata getting the shit beat out of him, with snark b) hinata and atsumu dancing in an empty ballroom under the stars

if you want a betrayal, you have to have something worth losing. if you want to fall in love with someone you don’t know, you have to meet them. if you have to meet them, there has to be a reason for that meeting, and so somewhere in between atsumu became a sword instructor and hinata the prince with daddy issues. june and i used this method of glancing anxiously over your shoulder to see what you’d missed to fill out the blanks in the story, after which i tacked up a bunch of post-its, typed out the plot, consulted june, typed out the plot again, and then broke the characters down into a bunch of questions, like ‘what do they want?’ and ‘what do they have?’ and ‘what are they afraid of?’

with the plot more or less ironed out, i decided it was time to start writing, and then i decided that i was actually too scared to start writing after all, so instead i set a couple of timers using classroomtimers.com (15-20 minutes long) and i sat down and i wrote about the world that hinata and atsumu inhabited.

each warm-up was 300-500 words long, and for the first few days, i’d write one before getting into writing the story proper. later these evolved into simply picking a scene from the story and launching straight into it, which became useful for opening those scenes later when i got to them organically.

then i got lazy! so i stopped. but these shitty little exercises were really useful for me because, unfettered by plot, convention, or any kind of tradition hovering over my shoulder, i was able to fuck around loosely enough to realize what i wanted this story to be. it was a very contrived kind of trial-and-error, an exploration of the characters, the story, but most importantly, the tone.

RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND VICTORIAN BOUGIE FASHION

this is a loose map of the castle and Important Locations within it, which i drew up at the start so i could keep track of where everything was and how i could get my characters from point A to point B. i wanted the story to have Some kind of internal logic, you know, even if that logic amounted to ‘a compass would function normally in this world whereas kageyama tobio would not’.

99% of my planning and organizing within those five weeks took place in this lovely dotted cat journal which my sister gave me for my birthday and i repurposed into a metaphorical Diary of Suffering while working on juno. i used it for everything from keeping track of narrative threads to clothing consistency checks, but the main purpose was this: each day at about 10 pm i’d crack open the cat book to a fresh page, stamp the date and the day of suffering at the top, and then write down a list of things i wanted to write, address, or fix today. then i’d sit at my laptop and write like a madman until about 7 in the morning. with breaks, of course, for sitting in the bathroom and staring at the wall and sitting in the kitchen and staring at the wall, but mostly i was writing. and complaining about writing. you were there, you probably remember that.

anyway, here are some pages from the cat book.

aside from the fact that my handwriting is complete shit, you can see that i made zero effort for any of this to be presentable. it was mainly a way for me to keep track of my thoughts because i have the attention span of an ikea wardrobe and tend to forget things as soon as i think of them. the lack of structure also mirrored the way that i went about writing juno. while i did proceed, for the most part, in chronological order, i had a lot of weird and useless revelations during lunch, which by this point was happening around 2 am, and in the 5 minutes before the exhaustion finally hit and carried me down to hell. i changed A Lot. again, to understand exactly how much the story evolved from day one onwards, please consult the big daddy document.

in the meantime, here’s something else.

once june sent over hinata and atsumu’s character designs i sat down like the fucking fool i am and spent 2 hours poring over a document about victorian and other fashion movements of the past so i could assign a noun, adjective, and verb to each element of their outfits. i don’t know why i did this. i certainly could have not, but i attempted to make sense of their ‘fits from a logistical perspective and that went into the cat book too. everything went into the cat book. the cat book is a relic of the past now, stuffed with artifacts such as the birth of oikawa tooru, and also his demise.

MEDIUM DADDY: EDITING, PROOFREADING, AND CREEPY MURDER CATS

i finished writing on june 26th, 2020, approximately a month after i’d first started planning, somewhere around may 27th or 28th. at that point i had about 90,000 words’ worth of story and no sanity left whatsoever, so i took a day-long break to stare at a wall and listen to taylor swift’s enchanted on loop.

and then i made a new document, which you can look at using the link above, and i laid out everything i had to do. i’d discovered a fuck ton of plot inconsistencies and general errors while writing and lying awake in bed at 9 a.m., sleepless in seattle, and now that i was free of the demon egging me towards the first finish line, it was time to Deal with them. i speed-scrolled through the draft, which was 200+ pages compressed into one google doc, because i like to tempt god’s wrath, and fixed up all the plot issues over the course of a few days. this was the fun part.

the actual, hard editing was the extremely un-fun part. i reread the entire thing, paragraph by paragraph, line by damn line, from start to finish, paying especially close attention to awkward phrasing, incomplete dialogue, and moments which had fallen flat in my haste to get on to the next one. this was really fucking terrible. i spent more time lying facedown on the floor than actually editing anything, but after a long time (about a week), that, too was done.

SMALL DADDY: TITLES, SUMMARIES, AND GOOD FUCKING BYES

i spent a good eighty days thinking about the title, though hilariously enough we ended up with something that was a blend of our names. june + elmo = juno, which is, all things considered, pretty perfect, but the process of picking the title was Hell, and i Did Not Come Up With The Title until about 2 hours before posting. you can take a look at the haphazard clusterfuck of my title-selecting process in small daddy, which is linked above.

so the title was a last-minute choice. so was the summary. and the chapter divisions. and actually all the songs in the playlist for juno. the day we dropped juno onto planet earth like a newborn baby pitched out of the sky, i spent an hour hunched over my laptop, cutting my 213 page google doc into chapters based on nothing more than a Vibe. two days before that, i also attempted to voice-act the entirety of juno, an affair which ended at the 20,000 word mark with a sore throat and the kind of exhaustion one typically wants to sleep in a coffin for 23 years to get rid of. so in all honesty, i did very little editing, which is why there are definitely minor typos and/or mistakes hanging out somewhere on that chunky ao3 webpage. but whatever.

my attitude by july 5th (was it july 5th? or 4th? somewhere around there) was basically whatever. anything so i could get finish this damn thing, chuck it out of the window, and never see another google doc until the next century. i’ve been asked a few times how exactly i wrote at a rate of roughly 2000-3000 words per day for four weeks straight, and my answer has always been this: i died. what died, you ask? my soul. my spirit. my Will To Live. i’m a creature of fixations, and juno was my fixation for june. will i ever be able to do this again? would i recommend this experience to anyone? is god real? the answer to all of the above is probably no. juno was a fever dream, and so is my cat book. and so are all the lattes i had. and so was my 9 am to 4 pm sleep schedule.

but what we made is real. the research, oikawa tooru, the 4 am conversations in which i was like ‘how the fuck do i end this’ and june was like ‘jade proposal’ (the proposal was her idea. all rise for twitter user atsuhinas. she is the mastermind behind all of the Inch Resting moments in this story; i just flapped a korok leaf in her direction and made sure the air circulation was working properly) are real as fuck, and looking back, there’s a lot i’d change, but i’m lazy. and college is starting. and anyway, i did write 93,035 words in just under five weeks, four if you don’t count the week of Editing Hell, so i think that’s pretty cool.

thank you for reading this to the end, and for following us on our journey through the enigmatic taylor swift gundam fic which quite literally consumed my entire twitter account for the five weeks i spent working on it. retrospectively speaking i really was butt-obsessed so i am frankly incredibly impressed with everyone around me for putting up with a Husk of a Man for a month. thank you for doing that. thank you for indulging my vague tweeting, and our butterfly dns, and for reading 93 thousand words of gay fanfiction set in a high fantasy world with epaulettes and galettes. on behalf of june, once again, we are incredibly grateful for all your support.

if you have any questions about specific aspects of the writing process, or anything you’d like to know in general with reference to JUNO, feel free to drop me an ask through my tumblr inbox, or through my curiouscat over here. i’m aware i didn’t cover everything, but there’s frankly too much to put in a tumblr post without passing away somewhere around the 56% mark, so let me know what’s on your mind, and i’ll try to answer that to the best of my abilities. but anyway, before i go, here are some

TAKEAWAYS

one: don’t try to write 93,000 words in five weeks. seriously don’t fucking do it you will end up jittery and sleep-deprived and you will leave all your friends on read for a month. pace yourself. set realistic goals. you wrote 2k this week? that’s fantastic. you wrote 4k in a day? you absolute motherfucker. i hope you’re taking a long fucking break tomorrow. your story will not run away from you, but if you run too fast, you will get tired, and then you will pass away.

two: you don’t have to know everything about your story before you start writing. in fact if you have a single camera shot of two characters holding hands under a rose garden awning, i think that’s fucking wonderful. if you look at big daddy, you’ll realize that my initial plot draft, and all the ones following that, are not perfectly aligned with the final version of juno. i improvised over half of the scenes in this motherfucker, and to be completely honest, some of the improvised scenes were the best. fucking oikawa tooru was improvised out of nowhere. he only got written in way later, around chapter 8 or something, because i realized i needed a plot device and a source of information to keep the playing table from toppling over. i Sat Down one day and was like ‘okay, it’s time to write oikawa into the introduction. because he matters now. he didn’t matter last week but now he does, and soon he’s going to be the fulcrum of the entire story, because it’s like that with oikawa tooru’. it’s okay to change your mind halfway. it’s okay to go back and rewrite entire scenes or segments. it’s okay to highlight 4 pages of fresh, sentimental writing, and hit delete. writing is a fluid process, and you Will make discoveries as you progress through your story alongside your characters. be understanding of that iterative process. be kind to yourself.

three: You Are That Motherfucker. you, me, your dog, your dog’s friend, your dog’s enemy, all of us are that motherfucker. i never thought i’d be able to write anything longer than the great big map, which was a much simpler, linear story in which the other main character did not appear in the current timeline until like the eighth chapter. juno was different. juno was the motherfucker, and i was scared shitless of it, and to cope with that fear joked constantly while writing that it’d never see the light of day.

but it did. it was a rocky process, and i was awake for 48 hours after posting it because of the sheer adrenalin stuck in my skull, but i got through it. and i wouldn’t have been able to do it without june, who stepped in when i flopped over facedown on the floor and dragged me to my feet like the badass friend she is, and without everyone else in my life, who put up with me talking about The Thing that i couldn’t really talk about, but juno’s up there now. forever, or until the internet collapses and civilization goes extinct. and if the nineteen year old clown with the attention span of an ikea armchair and an a level certificate from hell wrote the 93,000 word long thing, so can you. i mean this completely unironically and with every ounce of genuine emotion i can summon from the cracked asshole of my heart.

writing is hard. writing is scary. writing is an investigation of the world around you and therefore, by extension, yourself, and that kind of honesty is freaky. it’s like going skinny-dipping next to the president’s mansion. who’s going to see you? what if they take a photo? what if you lose your spot at university?

but don’t think about that. our world is overrun with stories the way cereal bowls are full of cereal, but it’s those stories that keep us all sane in the disgusting day-to-day muck of reality, so think about your story. what’s haunting you today? what message do you want to leave printed in font size 666 comic sans across the southern hemisphere of the planet? what will you be tomorrow?

a writer. you’re going to be a motherfucking writer.

[teriwrites]

NaNoWriMo: Wrap Up!

I can’t believe another November has come and gone. I can’t believe something that I started doing in 8th grade just for fun has become such a big part of my life that, nine years and 10 nanos later, I’m still already excited about next November. It was through NaNoWriMo that I finished my first ever first draft of a novel (it was when I was 13, and it was absolute trash, and I love it). I’ve met countless friends, collected countless WIPs, and really driven home how important writing as a medium is for me. 

Now that the sappy stuff is over, here’s some more fun stats and things:

End Word Count: 50,563!!

I did it! I hit the 50,000 mark yesterday, and then finished up the chapter I was on this evening. I knew going in that this month was going to be particularly hard on me - moving all my stuff home, exams, big research paper, all on top of trying to write part of a novel. And I was really nervous about how I was going to manage to keep up.

Somehow, I actually was more consistent this year than I’ve ever achieved before? 2020 was the first time that I ever managed to write every single day of November (even if one of those days was only 5 words and doesn’t even show up on the site’s little daily chart). And honestly I might be more proud of that than I am of actually hitting the big 50K. 

It helped that my project was really fun this year. I haven’t always loved every moment that I’ve been working on Beneath Alder Creek - the usual bouts of loathing anything I put down on the page showed up as normal - but even when the quality itself was in question, the actual story never stopped being something I wanted to write. 

I can’t possibly go through the whole thing and pick out all my favorite pieces right now (sometimes, prioritizing nano means falling behind on hw lmao), but here are a couple more recent snippets.

Excerpt 1:

The throne room was far smaller than Winnie had expected, especially coming from the front hall. It was strikingly similar in size and setup to a chapel, with rows of pews all facing a central pulpit. Only, rather than a lectern for a preacher, a platform was raised to draw focus to a large, golden throne. The throne itself was intricately beautiful, but Winnie hardly noticed it, too concentrated on the figure sitting upon it. Queen Ceridwen, Enid had called her. She was at once both divine and grotesque, white skin with dark veins that stitched themselves into a tangle of smaller lines, like the splitting of branches as they extended from the trunk. Her eyes and lips were black, or near enough to create a stark contrast, and matching, sleek horns stretched out from where her hairline ought have been. A golden crown jutted down to the tops of her cheekbones and tucked back behind her ear, extending up in spikes that shot out like a sunrise, each one longer than Winnie’s hand. Perhaps even more chilling than her appearance were her eyes. There was a fathomlessness to the darkness, the depth of shadows that brought with them the fear of the unknown. Though the Queen’s expression remained passive and detached, as Winnie stared at her, she had the feeling that the matriarch was not actually with them but making her observations from somewhere within those cavernous eyes. “Speak.”

Excerpt 2:

The music was still playing, but its calm, ambling tempo had quickened with Winnie’s heart rate, and its soothing, entrancing melody broke into a high, panicked frenzy, piercing through the forest. Birds that had been resting on branches took flight. The fish dashed through the water, twisting and thrashing. A line of ants at Winnie’s feet broke formation as they hurried away from the lake. But for all their terror, Winnie was drawn in all the more. One step. Her foot was beneath the water, but she no longer felt the cold. Two steps. The hem of her dress was wet, quickly taking on more weight. Winnie felt none of it. Three steps. Winnie was halfway up her calf in the lake, and the ground beneath her feet was steadily sloping down. Four steps. A sudden plunge up over her knee. The splash could not be heard over the urgent pipe. Five steps. Suddenly up to her waist. Winnie struggled to keep her balance, raising her arms to hold them above the surface. Six steps. It was more of a slide than a step, as Winnie hit the end of the decline. Only by lifting her chin could she keep her face out of the water. She had made progress, nearly halfway to the island. Seven steps, and a sudden tug at the back of her dress. Winnie was dragged backwards out of the lake, choking against her collar.

Excerpt 3:

Winnie paced silently between two large trees, hands clasped tightly behind her back. She had been doing so for several minutes, ever since discovering Taliesin’s abduction, and though Enid had begun by patiently watching, her claw-like nails drummed against her sleeve as she waited for the human girl to say something. Just as Enid took in a deep breath, preparing to interrupt Winnie’s clouded thoughts, the young woman stopped, turned to her companion, and asked, “Did you see which way they went?” “What are you planning to do, track them?” Enid asked teasingly, but her smile faltered at the solemnity in Winnie’s eyes. “You can’t be serious. You’d have no chance against a scout, they’re meant to move without a trace.” Winnie’s earnest gaze deflated into disappointment. As she stared down at the ground, past Enid, her eye caught Taliesin’s pack, still lying where he’d left it. A rush of hope filled her with renewed optimism. “Perhaps Taliesin left some kind of trail for us to follow! Something small, like breadcrumbs. That’s always how they mark their path in fairytales.” Enid leaned against a tree, examining her nails with disinterest. “Of course he doesn’t expect us to follow him. What reason do you have for helping him out, anyway?” The callousness in her voice was unexpectedly brutal. Winnie knew that Enid and Taliesin did not seem to get along, and likely that what little tolerance for each other they displayed was purely out of respect for the deal that had been made. But to show no care for his capture was a level of apathy that Winnie hadn’t expected. “I still have a deal that needs to be fulfilled.” It was true, and better, something that Winnie knew Enid might understand. The woman’s expression remained cold. “As I see it, you can cut him out of the deal. Our aims both lead us to the Dusk Court. You find your brother, I get help dethroning an advisor, and we go our separate ways.”

Excerpt 4:

Back into the bog. Winnie no longer worried herself with her skirts, allowing them to drag through the stagnant water. It was a mistake, she soon discovered, as the drenched fabric weighed her down and made the progress even slower. With an exasperated groan, she stomped at the ground, kicking up a spray and lodging her boot into the mud. Taliesin appeared at her side, having turned back while she was distracted. “Having trouble?” “Just tell me how much farther we have to go before we reach these all-knowing Three,” Winnie said darkly, glaring at him from beneath strands of hair that had come loose from the lopsided bun she’d attempted. “I think I have a better idea,” Taliesin offered. He reached out his hand, and Winnie let hers drop into it, clutching at her skirt with the other. Taliesin’s eyes closed, and Winnie felt the boot free itself from the mud. She breathed a sigh of gratitude, but quickly realized that her foot had not stopped there. She was no longer eye-level with Taliesin, but looking down at him slightly. The droplets from her skirt and shoes hitting the water below revealed that it was not the golden man who had sunk, but she was levitating a few centimeters over the ground!

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[delldarling]

lost things | pyx

This was Faebruary’s story of the month over on Patreon! I gave the time between posting this a bit of a break because of the plethora of fae tales I’d been writing in February, but hope you all enjoy!

female fae x gender/body neutral reader 2500 words sfw | fluff, sweetness, holding hands, dancing, adventure note: here’s a story that is rather close to my heart <3

Lost is scrawled in a nearly empty diary, tossed in a plastic milk crate full of books. The word is messy and traced twice over, just above a small splattering of ink. The ink drops remind you vaguely of dot-to-dot pages and a smile slips onto your face as you trace them. When you flip it over, a small pink sticker reads: .25 It’s older and weathered, but the paper is clean except for that single word. Twenty five cents feels more than worth it, so it comes home in your pocket.

The word sticks with you throughout the day though, caught fast in the back of your mind like it’s important, even though you’re fairly sure you haven’t lost anything. Maybe you saw a poster somewhere for a lost animal? But even after silently recounting your day in your head, you’ve got nothing.

“Lost,” you mutter, going outside to sit on your back porch in the early evening. You’ve repeated the word so often now that it’s lost its meaning, which has you shaking your head in exasperation. Maybe you can ask- Movement in the corner of your eye makes you pause.

At first, you think it’s just a shadow, caught on the edge of your vision because of the evening wind blowing through the yard. You ignore the movement, elbows on your knees, trying to figure out exactly what has you feeling so strange.

It’s the light that finally catches your eyes. Fine, gleaming pinpricks of light, like a swarm of neon bright fireflies, draws your attention to the woman standing in the corner of your yard. Your heart chokes you, pounding desperately in your throat as you jump to your feet, but she’s still there, even after you blink, repeatedly. Trying to convince yourself that she’s nothing more than a figment of your imagination doesn’t make her go away either.

“I haven’t heard a Calling in an age,” she says in a low, smooth voice, walking through the grass. The fine pinpricks of light dance over her skin as she moves, mirroring… mirroring the stars overhead. Your gaze darts up and then back down to her face. She smiles when she gets close, but it's one born of polite confusion and it isn’t until she stops in front of you that you feel like you can draw breath again. “What have you lost?” She asks, less than a foot away, hooking her thumb in the cloth belt wrapped around her waist. She tilts her head, chin length, lavender colored waves brushing over her shoulders, revealing the pointed arch of one dark ear. The mirrored stars make it look like the drop of her earring is a shooting star, gleaming strangely against her skin.

“I- Where did you come from?” You glance at the fence, wondering if she hopped it - her exposed forearms are rather muscled, but then you see the trees in the corner of your yard. Towering, sprawling things that most definitely were not there ten minutes ago. “And who are you? And did you just say-”

“Lost,” the strange elf woman repeats, and a chill crawls up your spine. “I came because you asked for aid, of course. And you may call me Pyx.”

“Pyx,” you repeat, focusing on her eyes. The entire sclera is black, or as dark as, in the fading light of evening, but it’s her irises, like pale silvery moons, that make your jaw drop.

Pyx lifts her head, breathing in deeply and searching the sky. When she turns, you catch sight of small protrusions near her temples. “Yes. Now, what have you lost? I cannot move as swiftly in your realm during the daylight hours, so if we must leave-”

Lost, she’d said, just like the diary, and then you can see, clear as day in your minds eye: The ink splatter.

“Okay, so. So I’m not sure uh.. What it is that you do to help find lost things, but I haven’t lost anything? And I think this was all a mistake. There was a book - a diary, journal, thing - and sure, the word lost was in it, and I’ve been thinking-”

Pyx stares while you ramble, until you mention tracing. Then she laughs. Throaty and full, clutching at her middle until someone a few houses down, or maybe on the street? Shouts “What the fuck is so funny over there?”

“You cannot Call me by mistake. You say you’ve lost nothing?” She finally asks, catching her breath. Her grin grows smaller, but is still sparkling in her gaze.

“T-that doesn’t mean nothing. Everyone has lost something, but I’m not- Actively looking? I’m missing a few socks-” You startle as she takes a step closer, erasing the distance between you so she can lay a strong hand on your shoulder. She’s tall, you realize, and has a good five inches or so on you.

“Your way,” she corrects you. “You’ve lost your way,” Pyx says, like she’s sharing a secret, like it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

“Maybe motivation,” you mutter, frowning, but then Pyx is curling her hand around your wrist and nodding her head towards the trees.

“Come with me,” she insists, tugging you away from your porch. When you don’t resist, when your eyes simply widen, she drags you towards the trees, stars whirling over her skin dizzyingly fast.

The trees are bent into an arch towards one another, branches interlocked at odd intervals, and it looks like nothing so much as some kind of black hole, caught between the branches. Apprehension has you tempted to drag your feet, to put a halt to this, but before you can do more than open your mouth, Pyx is pulling you through the arch.

Darkness closes over you like cool water, and then dissipates into a fine mist that you suck straight down into your lungs, leaving you coughing as you come to a stumbling stop against Pyx’s winged back. You jump away, tearing your hand out of hers to stare at the pitch-black insect wings tucked in tight down her spine.

“You have wings?” Is the first question out of your mouth, though there are more crowding your brain for attention. What the hell was that portal, where did she bring you, is she- “What-”

Pyx stretches them out and you notice the line of buttons on her shirt over the top of each wing - the buttons look like precious stones. She flutters them, laughing quietly and then lays them against her back once more. “I take it that Fae are as rare in your realm as humans are in mine?” She asks, taking your hand and lacing her fingers through yours. Reflexively, you squeeze her hand, speechless as she starts walking. “Most are Court bound after all,” she continues, though you can’t say you completely understand what she’s talking about, “so if you don’t frequent a Court-” Pyx stops, a small little smile appearing as she nods her head to the side.

You follow the gesture, still trying to catch up with your rambling thoughts about Faeries, and then your mouth pops open in astonishment. Golden light is spilling out from a shop front, just barely reaching over the toes of your shoes, but then you have to look up. And up. And up.

The shop - the bar, you think, with raucous tunes drifting out the door - is nestled underneath the roots of a redwood that looks like it was planted by giants. It’s then that you realize you’re surrounded by those massive trees on all sides. The sky looks… Much farther away than normal. You squeeze Pyx’s hand again, gaze darting back to the open doors and the roots draped over them like a curtain. “The best thing to do when you find you’ve lost your way,” Pyx explains, stroking a thumb over your hand as she walks you both towards the entrance, “is find a bit of fun.”  

As soon as you spot more Faeries and beings of various stature inside though, you dig in your feet. “You just said that humans were uncommon around these parts? Is that- Is that going to be a problem?”

Pyx blinks and then purses her lips as she thinks over her answer. “They might be more willing to buy you a few rounds?” She says, like she isn’t entirely sure how they’re going to react. “But if you’re worried about safety-” Pyx pats her thigh, giving you just enough time to catch sight of a silvery blade, and then a shadow is stopping in the doorway, hands on their hips.

“Pyx!” A short, bearded man calls out. “My favorite tracker! Made a new friend, have you?”

For the next thirty minutes, it feels like you’ve been pulled into a whirlwind. Pyx introduces you to a slew of Fae, and you can barely keep up with the list of names. You do remember Kolin though, the dwarven man who insisted you try a cup of raspberry wine. And the two men who can near fade from your sight like ghosts, leaving nothing behind but an unearthly light where their hearts should be? They’re wisps and their dancing is lovely and haunting.

Halfway through your second drink though, you frown and Pyx leans an elbow on the table, arching a lavender brow. “They didn’t slip you a draft of Tears, did they?”

“You drink tears?” You can’t help asking, setting your cup down with a clatter. The sound doesn’t reach much farther than your table though, before Pyx starts laughing again.

“Thrice brewed tears with a twist of moon-fruit,” Pyx teases. Or.. You think she’s teasing. You’re in a Fae tavern and you were brought here because you found a diary with the word lost written in it’s pages. You’ve met people that you’ve only ever read about or seen on TV screens - and yet you’ve seen nothing like them either. “Time for a dance, I think,” Pyx decides, taking another sip of her drink before she gets to her feet. She sets down her cup and offers you a hand, nearly doing some kind of clip with the heels of her boots that reminds you of bowing. For a moment, the stars on her exposed skin - her face, hands and forearms, seem to burst, to fizzle out like fireworks before they settle back into place.

“Are you alri-”

“Uh, yes,” Pyx says, clearing her throat. “I just- we’re not in Court. Anyway! Would you like a turn about the room?”

Regardless of how overwhelming some of the evening has been, you… You kinda do. Pyx is tall and looks fierce when she isn’t smiling, and her skin is peppered with the stars, flying somewhere over the giant tree you’re sitting in. This is most definitely a moment to seize all the experiences you can.

“I think I would,” you agree, laughing when she pulls you to your feet and spins you out into the middle of the floor. You let her lead, not caring overmuch that you don’t know any of the steps - none of the Fae seem to care, and even the wisps start clapping along, urging you and Pyx to move faster, to keep dancing. Everything in you, from your toes to the top of your head, feels light. Alive.  

"How are you feeling now?" Pyx asks after you’ve danced around the entire room at least twice. She leads you back to the doorway so you can grab some air, smiling brightly at you as you catch your breath. Standing here, staring out at the enormous trees, part of you wonders if you shrank to get here. Faeries are supposed to be small, aren’t they? Ah, it doesn’t matter.

"Better," you confide, because it's true, because you feel at ease in a way you haven't in quite a while. "Is this what you do?" You find yourself asking. “Taking random humans - or Fae, I mean, out for a good time? Helping them find- Fun? Motivation?”

Pyx shrugs a shoulder, wings arching with the movement before they settle against her back again. “I pursue. I track lost things. We all do - not Faeries,” she corrects, “but my people. We’ve been called Navigators, Compasses - Star Followers, because we’re never lost.” She lifts her hand and splays her fingers, displaying the glittering stars mirrored on her skin. “There aren’t many of us who roam, as we’re in high demand,” she says. Her lips quirk, though you’re not sure whether she was trying to smile or frown, it’s gone before you can blink. “We can track down any lost thing. For a hefty price.” She does smile then, though her nose wrinkles when she sees the startled look on your face. "Your price was my company. We don't see many humans here these days, and fewer still have Called for me in.. quite a while. Where did you learn?" She finally asks, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

Your explanation is likely much shorter than she expected it to be, but Pyx nods. "It's meant to be passed on, you see,” she explains. “Find another who is lost, send them to me. Of course you're free to keep the knowledge - I've led a human or two out of the woods! But it is hard to share such things in this day and age, is it not?"

“The diary? Or-”

“The ink!” She clarifies, smiling as she traces a shape in the air. “It was the constellation I was born under. It Calls me when you trace it. It was given to an old friend. A… A very long time ago, I imagine.” Pyx sighs. “I’m afraid I’m a bit terrible with time. Seeing as I haven’t seen the state of it, it could be something recent, passed down to their kin.” She sounds so terribly… lost, and then she freezes when you slip your arms around her. You’re careful of her wings and to keep your hands in considerate places, but- as soon as she melts into it, you shiver.  

"...are you lost?" You can't help asking. Because it’s a valid question, and she seems like she’s missing something, or perhaps someone, the way she’s been talking about her people, about finding things.

“Less so, after this evening,” she teases, hand stroking down your spine. She sighs again, but this time it holds a sweet note and then she’s pressing a kiss to your temple. “But I think it’s time I took you home. I’m not in the business of whisking humans away permanently.”

That… Makes you pause. Not the thought of permanence, but the thought of going home. Pyx notices the way you’re starting to worry at your lower lip though.

“I’ll be back,” she promises, lacing her fingers through yours once more, “perhaps even before you feel lost, you have my word.” She starts to walk, away from the tavern, away from light spilling out of the doors. Hand held fast in hers, you follow.

[eury--dice]

history, huh?

chapter 4: proxime

check the notes for links to other chapters and ao3!

(also would like to note a general cw for alcohol and child abuse in this chapter - see ao3/message me for more detail and please be safe and avoid if necessary)

Adam kind of wanted to go back and slap his former self before he could announce anything was “perfect.”

It was only once the turkeys were deposited in his room by blank-faced handlers that he began to regret his decision. The turkeys stared ominously at him, eerily silent for all of five seconds before they started to move and gobble.

And they didn’t stop.

SOS, he texted Ronan simply, receiving a lone question mark in reply. 

  iMessage chat to HRH shitty bird boy

Resumed 28 November, 2019, 12:36 am

  It’s the turkeys. I saved taxpayers needless expense and now they’re going to peck me to death. 

  told you to stop playing the hero, Parrish. 

  NOW IS NOT THE TIME

CORNBREAD IS EYEING ME

Some support would be appreciated here

  i’m going to assume that cornbread is one of the turkeys and not a sentient loaf of cornmeal?

  No, Your Highness, I’ve been performing a complicated experiment involving a snack to see if it can gain intelligence. The crocheted eyes appear to be working.

No shit, Sherlock, good assumption. 

And excuse you, in the South, we make cornbread with real corn. 

  if you’re going to jest don’t include hobbies that seem plausible

  The science experiment or the crocheting?

  both. 

  When would I do either of those?

  fuck if i know, that’s your business. 

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit

Meatloaf is gobbling again.

Is gobbling a precursor to attack? 

Would google it but I’m too afraid to take my eyes off of the dinos.

  gobbling is widely known as a war declaration amongst turkeys 

i’m surprised a smartarse like you wouldn’t know this.

  Oh, fuck it, Adam thought, and before he could talk himself out of it and resign himself to a night of gobbling, the dial icon had been tapped and the glass of his phone felt cool against his hearing ear. 

“Have you ever shared close quarters with a turkey?”

Adam could feel Ronan’s unimpressed silence through the phone. “No, I have not. Why the hell would I?”

“Privileged,” Adam muttered. “You don’t know how sadistic these turkeys are.” 

Cornbread chose that moment to gobble rather loudly and antagonistically. Adam’s eyes snapped to the bird, his muscles freezing in pure fear. “Sorry,” he whispered. 

“Christ,” Ronan said, and his tone had softened somewhat. “Did a turkey make that noise?”

“Yep,” Adam breathed. 

“That is not natural,” he insisted. “What the fuck?”

“I told you!”

A squawk sounded on Ronan’s end, and when Ronan spoke his voice was a great deal gentler than it had been. “Good baby, your noises aren’t demonic…”

“I’ll assume you’re not speaking to me.”

“Fuck no. Every word out of your mouth comes straight from hell.” There was a muffled rustling nose, something that was probably feathers against skin. 

“Your bird?”

“Raven. Keep up, please.”

“Ravens are birds,” Adam said, but it was probably futile. “What’s its name again?”

There was a brief pause on Ronan’s end. “Her name is Chainsaw.”

Adam’s voice fell flat in response. “Chainsaw.”

He heard a kerah. “Something wrong with that?” Ronan said, his accent drawing out the o in ‘wrong’ like it was already a guilty verdict .

“It just doesn’t seem very...royal. Or bird-like.”

“It’s a good cry better than cornbread and stuffing.”

“I didn’t name them,” Adam defended. “Blame the American people.”

“But I already blame them for so much.”

“Add it to the laundry list.” Adam flinched back as the other turkey squawked deafeningly. 

It was the first time he and Ronan had spoken on the phone, and until then, he hadn’t even realized it. All it took was Cornbread’s evil gaze to snap him into reality. 

Silence settled between them for a moment. Adam barely dared to breathe between the awkwardness of his conversation with Ronan and his clearly impending doom at the hands of something only distantly related to dinosaurs. 

“If you get mauled by those turkeys, may I give the eulogy at your funeral?”

Adam snorted, drawn back to the feeling of the phone clenched in his hand. “Ignoring the fact that I’m the son of the President and you’re the Prince of England, absolutely.” 

“Good. I’m already drafting turkey-related jokes.”

“Don’t you dare dishonor me by bringing up the cause of my demise.”

“It’s a good thing Cornbread will have clawed your esophagus out and you’ve no possible way to object.”

“Jesus.” Adam shivered. “Now I have a third part to my nightmare.”

“I would trade you Chainsaw, but she goes for the eyes and I have the feeling you’d rather keep those.”

“Your feeling is correct.”

“Also, I would fucking die for her.”

“...Strong feelings, apparently, for a bird that doesn’t seem royal-approved.”

“That’s half the reason I love her,” Ronan admitted. “Most definitely not approved.”

“Just like your tattoo?”

The line went quiet for a moment. “Yes,” Ronan finally said. “Just like my tattoo.”

That line was back, and Adam inched ever-closer to touching it with his toes.

“No trade, then. I’ll just slowly perish alone in my room. If this causes a fiasco in the press be sure to make fun of me properly.”

“Of course,” Ronan said, just as Stuffing let out a deafening gobble. “Can’t you get Sargent to intimidate them into silence? Or, wait, is it charming them into liking her? I can’t figure her out from your description.”

“Knowing Blue it could be either,” Adam admitted. “And she’s...busy.”

“Busy how?”

“Back in Virginia busy.” Adam stretched out his shoulder, keeping a wary eye on the turkeys. 

“Virginia? With family?”

“Most of her family is Maura, and she’s still here,” Adam hedged, weighing the little he knew about the Sargent family with what he could say to Ronan. “But yeah, of a sort. Thanksgiving’s a rough time of year. She’s trying to help out, even though it’s not technically where she’s from. Raising money, ensuring shelter, I think she’s even got a protest planned.”

“Different shade of Sargent, then.”

“Same shade,” Adam corrected. “Different circumstances.”

Ronan hummed on the other end of the line. Adam scrambled for words, trying to lighten up the air. Stuffing squawked as though to mock his tied tongue.

“She’s been busy for the last few weeks, anyway.”

“What type of busy would this busy be?”

"Just start a new sentence. You sound ridiculous." Ronan stayed silent to his jab, clearly electing to ignore him. “...Date busy.”

“Good for her,” Ronan said, but he must have heard something else in Adam’s silence because he continued. “Wait. No. No fucking way. Not with Gansey?”

“Yes with Gansey.”

“Wow, third wheeling’s gotta be even more fucking awkward, huh?”

“God, I hope not.”

“The way you described them I thought they’d never wake up to it.”

“Me too,” Adam said. “And I’m thrilled for them, but I’m also very offended that their feelings are getting in the way of saving me. Gansey went with her.”

“Oh, you drama queen. Just sleep in Gansey’s room if the gobbling is that bad.”

“They can escape, Ronan, I swear to you. They’re like the raptors-”

“They’re named after fatty foods. You’ll be alright. Go the fuck to sleep.”

“...Yeah, alright. But you need to sleep too.”

“Wouldn't dream of letting you sleep alone,” Roman replied, his tone dry. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

As Adam let his phone fall onto his pillow, Stuffing chose to bash her wings against the cage. After almost falling out of his bed in fright, Adam quickly decided that Ronan might have been onto something about sleeping in Gansey’s room. 

If he made it through the night, he owed Ronan a thank you.

  ***

Christmas rolled around with a mighty fervor.

It felt like one moment, Adam was sitting back down in class after Thanksgiving to crack down on some new essays, and the next he was watching evergreens and pine decorations get thrown up along White House walls in perfect synchrony. 

The normal White House Christmas was an ordeal, one that did its best to stress family but mostly stressed political strategy. Nothing changed that year to make it different, but they did have a smaller affair in addition to all the festivities. Christmas Eve was, in many ways, the eye of the storm. An extreme amount of chaos was behind them, and a deluge to follow come Christmas morning, but Christmas Eve dinner was dependable, private, and blessedly relaxed. Adam, somehow, found himself looking forward to it. 

He sat on one of the staircases - it really didn’t matter which one, as they all blent together, only distinguishable by where they could take him - with the decorations hanging around him and a book in his lap. For once, there wasn’t any work, and even the most work-centered version of himself was forced to concede and enjoy a few hours of pleasure reading. He had grabbed the first book he could find off of his shelf and set off. Apparently, his hand had gravitated towards Fahrenheit 451. Not exactly light enough to match the twinkling reds and golds he spotted in his periphery no matter how he turned, but a personal choice all the same. 

“If you keep sitting on staircases, someone is going to walk into you,” came Gansey’s voice from behind him. 

“It’s their fault for not watching their way,” said Adam. “I’m sitting with my back to them. How am I expected to know?”

“By not sitting on staircases,” Gansey repeated. The air rustled as Gansey lowered to sit on the step next to Adam. “Some nice, light reading?”

“Yes. Everything okay?”

“Grand. Mostly just avoiding Helen unpacking and my parents stressing over napkin rings.”

“Gansey Christmas sounds wonderful,” Adam said dryly. “I assume they’ll all be here tonight?”

“Of course. They’d never miss it.”

“Helen is well?”

“Fantastic, apparently. Primed to get engaged soon, she says, and the helicopter’s got a new paint job.”

Adam could almost forget how much the Ganseys looked like a new Kennedy-like dynasty, but their swarming every year always reminded him. Their Christmas photos, too - always at DC landmarks, bleached teeth and ghost-pale skin and all-American born and bred grins. And the occasional snap stories from Helen of her mid-piloting a flying vessel didn’t help. 

“Glad to hear it,” he said, not surprised to find the words genuine. 

He got to see the Gansey family anxiety for himself only a few hours later, donned in an ugly Christmas sweater Blue had insisted on. Mr. Gansey cast a discerning eye around the room while Mrs. Gansey smiled tightly at his side, dressed pristinely. Helen chatted idly with Blue, though Blue looked prepared to bolt at a moment's notice. 

“Ho-ho-horseshit?” Maura questioned, snapping him away from his reverie and gazing around like a caged animal. Her eyes traced over the pattern on his shirt. 

“Blue’s homemade gift,” he said by way of response, to which Maura only sighed heavily. Her sudden appearance reminded him he had a task to perform, the small handled bag digging into his palm suddenly given a purpose. He held the bag out to Maura with a small grimace, watching one of her eyebrows quirk. “I was told to give you this.”

Maura withdrew an identical sweater from the bag. “Sending you to do her dirty work, hm?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hm,” was all Maura replied, until she lifted her analytical gaze to him. “Thanks, Adam,” she said, and in one of the greatest surprises of the night, slid her arm over his shoulders and drew him into a quick hug. “Now sit down. We’ve gotta start wrangling dinner if we want this to end before midnight.”

Adam took his place next to Gansey at the smaller table, unfolding a napkin and laying it across his lap. The gals at the table slowly began to fill in as Gansey chatted about the recent tabloid conjectures. 

“The youngest is back in the tabloids, you know, trying to get him on drug use again.”

“Oh, really?” Adam muttered, eyes scanning idly over the periphery of the room. His eyes snagged on the Christmas decorations, simpler than the majority of the White House decor. A few string lights here and there, hanging baubles, the occasional pile of fake snow. His finger tapped at the stem of his empty wine glass. 

“Last time he disappeared for public for a while. Heaven knows if that’ll happen again.”

He felt an itch inside his deaf ear, one he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach. “Disappeared?” 

“Yeah, just...gone, no public appearances…”

It was a vague memory, or perhaps a memory of a memory.  Just a snatch of something that made the hairs in the back of his neck stand up. He tried to focus on Gansey’s words, but all at once they started sliding around, unclear and blending with the too-loud noises of dinner being served. A cacophony of clacks and laughs and voices. His head burned. 

Gansey’s voice lowered. “Are you alright, Adam?”

He scooted his chair backward quickly, muttering something like “back in a minute” to Gansey before rushing away. He felt eyes on the back of his head, but he didn’t pause or slow until the door to his bedroom shut firmly behind him and he leaned against it, completely alone. 

“Parrish?” Ronan’s voice said in his ear, low and urgent, and oh. Adam hadn’t even realized his phone was in his hand, much less that he’d managed to press Ronan’s contact or raise it to his ear. He did briefly remember the ringing, but then words were falling out of his mouth and he didn’t waste any more brainpower on how he reached that position.

“I don’t want to…to bother you,” Adam said, and only someone who had known him for a long time would know how much it took Adam to say those words despite the fact that it was a mantra in his head repeating infinitely. Blue, who had known him since the age of five, had heard him say it only a handful of times. Gansey had heard it perhaps a handful more, though that was mostly because Adam felt strangely indebted to Gansey no matter how much he tried to change it. Ronan should not have known, but Adam had a feeling he would anyway. “You hate phones and it’s Christmas Eve and-”

“Adam,” Ronan said abruptly, and the use of his first name stopped him short. “It’s two in the morning. I’m just with Matthew. Talk.”

“Hi, Adam,” came a cheerful voice, somehow sounding like an even better picture-perfect British monarchy member than Ronan or Declan. “Ronan’s told me everything about how he-”

Adam missed Ronan’s ensuing muttered comment, something that most likely resembled a threat, but soon the voice that Adam assumed to be Mathew let out a trailing laugh, the sound growing fainter as he likely moved away from the phone.

“And fuck you!” Ronan called, with his mouth moved away from the receiver, before his attention returned to Adam. “He’s gone now.”

“It’s okay,” Adam said. “I didn’t mind.”

“I know,” Ronan said simply. “But I thought it might be easier. Now go.”

“I-I just,” Adam fumbled with his words for a moment, his free hand curling into a fist on his thigh. He felt, strangely, like he was back in Aglionby PE class trying to participate in a football scrimmage. He’d always come just short of catching the ball. He’d known what he was supposed to do, where his hands were supposed to go, the sequence of events following the initial contact, even the proper footwork. But whenever the ball reached him, he felt the disconcerting motion of closing his arms around nothing, always a second too early or too late, leather slipping from his arms like butter in a hot pan. “Couldn’t be at that dinner any longer.”

“Why?” Ronan asked, and it was a good question, a good question that Adam had avoided so many times over he barely knew how to respond. He almost deflected like he always did, but Ronan asked the question differently than everyone else. There was no expectation in the question, no real drive to know the answer other than making Adam feel better, no guarantee of hearing the full truth or any version of the truth at all. Why. Why respond now?

“I was little,” he said, and fuck why did he go down this road at all? “And everything was overwhelming when I was little, and everything is overwhelming now, but it’s even more overwhelming at Christmas.” Ronan didn’t say it again, but still, it traveled across an ocean to hover over Adam uncertainly. Why?

“I don’t remember a lot about it. I don’t know if that’s because of...how it was, or just because I was so small. Younger than three, I think.”

“I barely remember anything from then,” Ronan said, the closest thing to reassurance Adam had received from him.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Yeah. I guess. But I remember...I remember the double-wide. The great American double-wide in the great American trailer park with the great American alcohol and the great, raging American father.”

Ronan’s breath shifted ever so slightly.

Adan screwed his eyes shut. “I don’t...my mother wasn’t there. But she was the one who put the Christmas lights up. I couldn’t stop staring at them. I can still remember...they made the tan wall look almost golden. Just where the lights touched it, of course.” His voice trailed off, realizing how tangential it sounded. Softly, he added “I don’t know why I remember those lights.”

“Our minds remember random things,” Ronan said, perhaps to bring Adam back to the story.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, blinking quickly. “Yeah. He didn’t...he didn’t like that. Me looking at them, I mean. So he...he took them down.”

The silence pressed in at his ears, threatening to close in on him just like walls. 

“I see,” Ronan said. 

“And he…” Adam swallowed, feeling his Adam’s apple scratch tightly against his neck. He pressed his free hand to his deaf ear. “I don’t remember a lot after that, either. But the bulbs were...hot. It was freezing inside, so they should have been, too, but they were lightbulbs, I guess, and so they were hot. At some point, I fell into a railing. It burst my left eardrum.” At that moment, he could feel that second in startling clarity - pinpricks and needles and blood vessels dancing on his skin, sharp, pointed, wild attacks, and the loudest noise he’s ever heard in his life, making him collapse to the ground and forget everything else. Pain, bright and white and flashing and throbbing in time with his heartbeat until he wanted to melt into the floor. Adam was the better part of two decades removed from it, and still, the thought of that moment made his stomach turn over and over.

Adam knew he didn’t imagine Ronan’s intake of breath then.

“And my mother got home, and when she saw we left and never came back.”

The walls pressed closer to him until Ronan said “Well, shit. Fuck. Jesus.”

Adam brought his hand to his mouth, pressing it until the pressure began to ease up in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, muffled against his fingers.

“No, shit, Parrish. Don’t you dare apologize.” There was a quick exhale, something that sounded like leather sliding down a headboard. “That’s what you remember of Christmas?’

“Yeah. I don’t - I don’t remember a whole lot.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

Not even Blue and Gansey knew that story. They knew the vague details, of course, how his smiles turned tight around the White House decorations and he preferred to slip into his room early on holidays. And that Robert was the reason for his being deaf in one ear. He could just never get the entire story out around them.

Telling Ronan about it was easy, though, in a way that it shouldn’t have been. He was supposed to hate Ronan, even if it became more clear with every passing day that he was far from hatred. 

“I guess I should. It’s not like I’ve done any of that in a long time.”

“You don’t have to.” A slight pause. “I can.”

Adam tried to keep the doubt out of his voice. “You can?”

For a brief moment, Adam thought Ronan might hang up on him. But then he said, “Can I tell you a secret, Parrish?”

After everything I just put on you, you could tell me a thousand secrets. You know I’ll keep every single one. I’m trusting you with a story that no one else knows, that no one else will ever know. I could do nothing less than keep your secret. 

All he said was “Of course.”

“You know my Irish father? My Irish storytelling father? My Irish-Catholic father?”

“Right.”

“He passed down more to me than just his Irish stories.”

It took Adam’s brain a moment to catch up. “I...see.”

“All three of us...well, behind closed doors, that’s what we practice. Believe. Whatever shit you want.”

“Right. So no… C of E.”

“On the record, of course. Off the record...no. None at all.”

Adam hummed in response. He couldn’t think of what else to say. 

“So...I will. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah. Of course.” A knock sounded on the door, sounding suspiciously like Gansey’s familiar tapping. He rose slowly, crossing to fall onto his bed. “I should probably let you go. Don’t want you to have too prolonged contact with any screens.”

“Disgusting,” Ronan said. A beat passed. “Are you a bit better?”

Adam shut his eyes, feeling the tension coiled in his chest ease up slightly. The line between the two of them materialized at his feet, on the backs of his lids, and he could nearly touch it with the toe of his shoes. “Yes,” he admitted. “Thank you.” And of all the words for Adam to say, they were the easiest and hardest to accomplish.

“Thank you,” Ronan said, and if Adam didn’t know any better he would think the words sounded harder to say for Ronan than Adam. But the line clicked and fell dead before Adam could say anything. He stared at the phone for a moment until the screen switched off from disuse, leaving him in the dark. Only then did he stand and cross the room to perch on the edge of his bed.

Gansey’s head poked through his doorway. He hesitated as though asking for permission, and Adam nodded. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything."

“It’s fine,” Adam hedged. “We were wrapping up.”

Gansey fell heavily into Adam’s desk chair just as he always did. “Everything alright?”

“Now it is, yeah.”

He seemed to be trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. “That wasn’t Noah, was it?”

“No, of course not.”

Gansey nodded once. “So it was Ronan.”

“What?” Adam sat up a little too quickly, blood rushing to his head. “Why would you say - how do you-?”

“You don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends. Guessing is easy.”

“I hate your knowledge of my loneliness.” He swallowed roughly. “And we’re not... friends.” 

Gansey cocked one eyebrow. His thumb raised to run over his lower lip. “Really?” He challenged.

And, well. No. Not really. Adam thought of their strings of messages, the trade of information between them so easy and simple. He couldn’t pretend that they were enemies anymore, or that their general feelings weren’t positive.

“Really,” He said, launching himself up off of his bed. Smoothing out the wrinkles in his pants, he glanced back over to his friend. Gansey was studying him with a distantly memorable expression, as though trying to discern a difficult Latin translation but determined not to ask for help. 

“Well,” Gansey said, blinking once, twice. He stood abruptly, noting Adam moving towards the door. “Let’s off, then.” “You’re not British, Gansey, don’t say that.”

“Mm, you’d know all about their phrases, wouldn’t you?”

“Do not.”

Before Adam reached the door, Gasney stopped him, saying his name so lowly Adam almost missed it. He turned and waited for Gansey to speak.

“Are you sure you can go back?” Adam mustered a smile. No, he thought, but Ronan’s voice echoed in his head. Don’t apologize. Maybe he could make it through after all, have a slightly better memory of Christmas. “Yeah, I am.” And he turned the doorknob to let them spill out into the hallway.

  ***

iMessage chat to HRH shitty bird boy

Resumed 29 December, 2019, 5:17 pm

  Look. I’m just saying.

Ignoring the fact that bearer bonds haven’t been legally in use since 1982

That henchman says that they’re valued at $100,000 USD

(£75,700 for your British ass)

and then Alan Rickman says they earn 20%

When the interest rate on corporate bonds was 9% when Die Hard came out??

And also there’s never been a US bond worth more than $10,000??

  stop letting sargent force you to watch die hard

for the love of god stop

it’s a MOVIE

  It’s not Blue, actually.

It’s your best friend.

  henry??? how??

  Netflix party

He got my number (thanks for that)

And wouldn’t stop texting insisting we watch it

Or he (as threatened) will “release the bees??”

I’m not sure what he meant but here I am. 

Accidentally desecrating Alan Rickman’s legacy.

Blue’s here too but it’s not her fault, at least.

  that asshole

how dare i not be included in everything he does

  “Why the hell is Ronan on the guest list?” Adam demanded, casting his eyes over their virtual list for what felt like the hundredth time. Planning for their New Year’s Eve fundraising event/PR dream/blowout party had been well underway since before Christmas, but crucial developments always occurred in the weeklong stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. Like the inclusion of the Prince of England on their exclusive invitation list of all the most famous and powerful twenty-somethings from around the planet.

Blue, seated sideways in an armchair and eating a container of strawberry yogurt at a glacial pace, said “I thought you added him?” 

Adam wouldn’t put it past her to add him and feign innocence - she had some hidden agenda with him and Ronan, anyway, one he wasn’t quite sure of - but her ignorance seemed genuine. At once, they both turned to Gansey. He kept his face blank.

“Good question, Adam,” he said, refusing to back down under their stares. “But the real question is why didn’t you invite him?”

Adam, too, did his best to look passive. “Why would I?”

“He’s your only friend that’s not currently in this room?”

“Plus he’s great for the press,” Blue chimed in.

Adam just looked between them, and Gansey sighed.

“Look, Adam, it’s - it’s great that you actually get along with him. Like him.”

“Do not,” Adam retorted automatically. His phone buzzed, and he felt his cheeks darken a little with the knowledge that it was probably Ronan. Gansey and Blue were probably staring at each other and having one of their silent conversations, but he didn’t trust himself to look at them without giving anything away. Not that there was anything to give away. “You invited Cheng too, right? Ronan won’t come if he doesn’t.” “Thought you didn’t care?” Blue asked, and he shrugged.

“They’ve both RSVP’d yes, Adam, so I’m sure your best friend will be there.”

“Lovely,” Adam muttered, ushering them along the rest of their planning.

Just before eight PM on the thirty-first of December, Adam curled into his desk chair with a textbook perched on his bent knees. Blue, already dressed and made up while laying spread-eagle on his bed, fiddled with the hem of her shirt. She’d managed to convince PR that a self-designed outfit would make a splash, and Adam had to agree with her - she really did have a knack for design and upcycling. 

Technically, they should have been heading down to play host to all types of young, influential people, buttering them up for cash and future favors. But much as the media loved their wild parties, none of the White House Trio were particularly fond of them. They preferred a quieter scene, but quiet didn’t raise money and make headlines. 

That didn’t mean they couldn’t hole up and enjoy the peace and quiet before then.

Gansey, who by far had the greatest social battery, was therefore left to field early attendants and the press on the lawn. He’d come and drag them out of Adam’s room soon enough, of course, but before that time came there was relative peace.

“I guess we’ll get one more of these,” Blue said. “At least.”

Adam lifted his eyes from the book and looked at her. “Yes,” he said softly. “I think I’ll miss them?”

She laughed, a deep laugh that eased a bit of the pre-party anxiety in his chest. “I won’t. I hate this party.”

“But don’t you like flirting with all the daughters of Oscar-winning actresses?”

Blue hummed. “That is fun. They’re never ready for it.”

“They never are.”

“I’ll be doing less of that this year, though.”

“And hopefully forever?” Adam teased. The sudden air of wistfulness descending around Blue gave him a hint of pause. She took a moment to respond.

”Maybe,” she muttered. “Shut up.”

Adam let it go for then, sensing genuine distress in Blue’s stiffened shoulders.

“They wouldn’t be so bad if everyone didn’t get so blacked out.”

“Well, we have liability waivers now. And I think you mean it would be worse.”

Adam sighed. “I guess no one would show up without the promise of alcohol.”

“Exactly.”

Contrary to how Blue and Gansey made him live, Adam really didn’t enjoy drinking that much. When he did, he preferred to do so quietly - sitting in the music room with the rest of the trio, celebrating a good grade with his family, breaking out something to make a night-in a little more exciting. Events like the Royal Wedding were a one-off, where he needed distraction and alcohol presented itself. 

He didn’t want to think about the need for distraction just then, with Ronan and Henry Cheng most likely en route to the White House.

A few quick, precise knocks came at the door. Gansey. He popped his head in.

“You two need to show up soon or it’s going to look suspicious,” he greeted. Blue made a tiny noise of discontent and made to turn her face into Adam’s pillow, but must have remembered her makeup and decided otherwise.

Adam heaved a sigh and stood, smoothing one hand over his hair. He’d straightened and smoothed it down for the event, knowing the cameras preferred him in all of his polished glory. He glanced between Blue and Gansey, but their gazes didn’t flicker from each other. Something about the hunger in their eyes made Adam ache, a tight knot settled in his chest. Gansey moved into the room and Adam out of it. He cast a glance through the doorway over his shoulder, trying to gauge if he should wait for them. By the low, urgent whispers carrying between them and Gansey’s hands rested on Blue’s elbows as they stood nearly flush, his presence was no longer necessary. 

Adam trailed down the hallowed halls until he reached the mingling mass of people in the East Room. He turned on his smile, trying his best to become invisible. It didn’t work. At every turn, another person grabbed his shoulder to catch up, another drink pressed into his hand, another question hurled his way. At some point, he started to feel a bit numb in the fingers, tiredness and giddiness from the schmoozing seeping into his bones.

Blue appeared at his side. Her smile had dampened somewhat, but he could tell she was enjoying herself from the set of her brows. Something, however, was off at just that moment. She inclined her head behind her, and that was all the explanation Adam needed. 

Ronan often had that upsetting effect on people. 

Adam took a moment to observe the scene. Ronan and Henry Cheng stood several feet away, engaged in conversation with Gansey, who walked backwards tidily through the crowd as though herding them towards Adam. Ronan’s face remained passive, clad in his black-leather best. Adam’s skin felt hot and itchy under his shirt, and he looked instead to Cheng. In his Madonna t-shirt, Cheng drew attention to himself in waves. Between his eccentric origin story and absently friendly expression, not to mention the excited manner in which he partook in whatever Gansey was saying, Cheng would surely be the hot commodity of the party. 

“Making friends?” Adam asked Blue, pulling a face at the same time she did. 

“He’s your best friend,” she replied just as Gansey reached them. Blue reached out a hand to stop him from colliding with them, stretching her arm so that it was almost straight, and he caught her hand easily with a squeeze.

From what Adam could tell, their conversation centered around some vague school memory from Eton, but it dissolved as soon as Blue and Adam broke their circle. The brief silence was broken quickly by Henry Cheng, who announced, “Well, if it isn’t the man with the worst opinions about Die Hard.” 

Against his will, Adam felt the corners of his lips twitch. “And the man who cried over Alan Rickman dying in Die Hard.”

Henry shrugged. “I wear my emotions proudly.”

“We fucking know,” Ronan said, breaking his silence. Adam hated how nicely the tight leather jacket accented his pale skin and high cheekbones, looking almost regal in his rebellion. “You monologued about the unbridled joy in your heart over the Madonna song playing when we first arrived.”

Henry grinned. “I will not apologize for being stable in my masculinity, Ronan, unlike all you repressed British types.”

“I need a drink,” Ronan declared loudly, plucking one from the closest tray and downing it in one graceful motion as one might serve a tennis ball. Henry did not appear phased by the sudden dramatics. 

“Now, let’s see if I get everyone.” He turned his head to Gansey, moving around the circle. “We’ve got King Ganseyman, of course. Adam Parrish, the least valid person I can think of for purely petty reasons. And of course our dear Periwinkle.”

Adam cocked a brow and subtly shifted his eyes to look at Blue. She looked fit to claw out someone’s eye even though her own eye scars were obscured in makeup; her hand had tightened significantly around Gansey’s, and he gave no indication of pain from the movement beyond the barest twitch of his mouth. 

“Clever,” she said at last, sparing him a tight, sarcastic smile. “I’ve also read the labels on nail polish to pick up a few new words. It’s nice to know you can read.”

“Yes, well, you have to start your journey to literacy somewhere,” Henry said grandly. “I appreciate your support, of course.”

Adam caught a flicker of amusement pass of Blue’s face. He had a sinking suspicion that maybe Blue wasn’t as averse to Cheng as she put on a show of. 

“Are you literate enough to read off a drink order?” she said. 

Henry grinned, white teeth lining in rows in his mouth. “I suppose I can string a few words together.”

Without letting go of Gansey, Blue surged forward, looping her other arm in Henry’s. The three of them trailed off towards the drinks, Blue and Henry moving determinedly and Gansey, bemused and grinning at their sudden acquaintanceship, lagging a step or so behind. Adam gazed after them for a moment, but Ronan took a step closer to be heard over the music and he turned his head to look at him. 

“She’s gonna have them wrapped up all night.”

Adam raised a brow. “You can read her that well?”

Ronan gave his head the tiniest, nearly imperceptible shake. “No. I know Cheng and Gansey.”

The heat of the room was starting to cling to Adam’s skin; he rolled one shoulder uncomfortably. “Of course. Eton gang’s reunited.”

“For better or worse,” Ronan agreed lowly. 

Adam meant to ask what he meant by that, but he never received the chance. A hand tapped Ronan firmly on the shoulder, and Adam watched as he turned automatically. His face broke into an uncharacteristic grin at the sight of the person behind him. Adam felt his forehead crease as the figure wrapped their arms around Ronan’s shoulders and he hugged them back almost as enthusiastically. For a moment, the only sight was the overlapping of pale and dark skin, the stranger’s feather-pink jacket contrasting with the black leather Ronan wore. 

Then the two separated, and between the black bralette, exuberant eyeshadow, and tight-coiled hair shining under the strobe lighting, Adam recognized Hennessy - up-and-coming London artist, an occasional nuisance. and precisely the type of person that thrived at these parties. 

“You bastard,” she said to Ronan. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here.”

“Henry was live-tweeting the whole flight.” 

She scoffed lightly, rubbing at an invisible spot of dirt on Ronan’s cheek. “I've had him muted since uni.”

“Don’t let him hear that you haven’t been keeping up on his page.”

“Aww, it’s sweet you worry for me, little fox, but I can take that pissant any day of the week.”

Ronan pulled back slightly. “Of course you could, but Henry goes more for psychological violence.”

“Yes, well, I can get him in that too.” Neither acknowledged Adam standing nearby. Hennessy shook her head, curls bouncing with the movement and picking up all kinds of strobe lighting. “Where is he, that shadow of yours?”

“Cheng could never be anyone’s shadow. He’s too out there.”

“And you’re the one he chooses not to abandon, hm? How sweet.” When she smiled, she looked very much like a painting, striking and set and venomous enough to burn at the slightest brush. Ronan appeared impervious.

“He’s making friends.”

“Hm. How boring.”

Ronan’s voice lowered, but Adam thought he could hear him say “Jordan’s not here?” 

Hennessy’s lips, the same vibrant shade as her lids, pulled a little tighter. “Nah,” she replied, casual enough. “Working on some deadlines, poor thing.” Her eyes flitted away from Ronan’s face for the first time, landing squarely on Adam instead. Her grin widened. “Well, there’s our treasured host. Late to your own party?”

“I have learned a few things from you over the years, Hennessy,” Adam replied, slipping a hand into his pocket in an attempt to appear more casual than he felt. 

“Fuck, I guess you have,” she admitted. Compared to Ronan’s accent, her voice sounded slipperier and rounder, sliding through the air until it reached his ears. She lifted a hand to land one last pat to Ronan’s cheek before gliding on to land a similar one to Adam. She paused briefly in front of him, lowering her hand. 

“You look happy,” she noted. Waggling her fingers in a wave, she turned back so both Adam and Ronan could see her. “I need a drink to get through all these boring political types. Ta, darlings,” she said, before disappearing back into the crowd as quickly as she had arrived. 

Adam exchanged a look with Ronan. “So you know Hennessy?”

“I’d hope so, yeah,” Ronan said, but he didn’t elaborate. “You?”

“We've met a few times.” 

“Pity,” Ronan said, standing like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. 

Adam rolled a few words around on his tongue - questions, mostly, infused with the sudden jealousy he felt simmering low in his gut - but instead all he said, so out of character, was “Do you want a drink?”

His shoulders seemed to soften slightly. “Can’t let Sargent have all the good ideas, I guess.”

“I’ll tell her you thought it was a good idea.”

“Fuck off.”

Ronan appeared a little more at ease with a drink in hand, and eventually, Adam lost him to the crowd. He stood stranded for the briefest of moments before Henry Cheng appeared, for the second time that night, at his side.

“Adam Parrish,” he said, handing off a drink that looked clear and deadly. It took his fingers a moment to remember to grab it rather than letting it splash to the ground. 

“Cheng,” Adam said, letting the déja vû wash over himself. “Thought we already had our introductions.”

“Of course,” Henry replied, tone too even and pleasant for the chaos around them. “Just wanted a chat with the movie critic, is all.”

Adam cast a skeptical eye around the room. “You’re sure this is the best place?”

“No time like the present, my friend.” Henry threw an arm around his shoulders, guiding Adam towards the dance floor and obscuring his own voice further. “How about you down that there drink and enjoy yourself? You look positively coiled and ready to strike.”

“I’d really rather not. What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“Well, if you’re so connected to sobriety, so be it,” Henry said, stealing the drink back. He nodded over Adam’s shoulder as he lowered his head back down from the drink, and when Adam glanced he saw a flash of Ronan’s leather among the crowd. “Our Ronan is looking fit, no? I’m proud of him for getting out of the house.”

“Some house,” Adam muttered, not expecting Henry to hear. All the same, his companion let out a startled laugh.

“Could say the same to you. But yes,” he said, leaning closer, “between you and me, the palace is always quite disarming.” Straightening and throwing a wave over his shoulder, Henry added, “Perhaps you have more reason to get used to it than I do, however.”

“More reason?”

Henry smiled, then, and somehow it appeared as menacing as Hennessy’s had earlier. Maybe he’d learned from her. “Friends of the royals make quite frequent trips, I’m afraid.”

“What, you’re not approved enough?”

“‘Fraid not. Heir to a fortune is not the same as First Son, Parrish, and I believe you’ve a wonderful slip of parchment ensuring just how approved you are.”

“I can’t find it in myself to be surprised you know.”

“Well, imagine being me if I didn’t!” Henry exclaimed, drawing the attention of a few popular influencers as he splashed a drink in their direction with his aggressive gesturing. “I was only on the receiving end of the HRH’s rants for three bloody years before you wrestled each other in frosting at the greatest wedding of the decade-”

“We didn’t wrestle-”

“And then you turn up a week later, acting all buddy-buddy for every camera you find - well, it would look suspicious had I not known!”

“Mhm,” Adam drawled, cutting his eyes back to Henry. “I bet Ronan can’t keep a secret from you.”

Henry grinned again, baring his teeth. “You’ve read him so well, McClane.” He sighed theatrically barely a moment later. “And debunked my argument succinctly.”

“That’s the price to pay for knowing all of Ronan’s thoughts, I suppose, Gruber.”

“Among many others. I’d expect his Niamh to know that well enough, though.”

Adam felt himself freeze as Henry’s hand came in contact with his shoulder, a friendly pat. His Niamh. As if that meant anything, as if those words fit together in any logical pattern. His Niamh, and his mother’s voice - almost golden. 

“Or you will soon enough, mate,” Henry said. “Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

And Henry Cheng disappeared into the crowd, popping up laughing with Blue a few feet away.

Adam surrendered gaining any grip on this night right then.

At some point, Hennessy found him, pressing a drink into his palm - what was with all his friends and acquaintances plying him with alcohol? - and said, “Well, I’d think you were avoiding me as you have at the last two of these parties.”

“Never avoiding,” Adam defended, mustering a smile as he lifted the drink to his lips without thinking. “Just generally indisposed at events.”

“You’re making some good choices, then.”

“What’s done must be done.”

She raised a single eyebrow. “Rather defeatist of you, Golden Boy. Don’t remember that from your time on the campaign trail.”

Adam grinned. “I’m a fully realized creation. I have the capacity to change.” “There he is, bringing out the philosophy at parties.” She nodded to something that might have been Ronan if Adam focused his eyes and squinted enough. “Don’t remember him, either.”

“Have I mentioned you look fantastic?”

“I know, darling, and I note your deflection.”

“My point stands.”

“And it’s valued.” She slid an arm over his shoulders, uncomfortably warm, to lean closer to his ear. “But we’re gonna have a conversation when you’re not overwhelmed at a party you don’t want to throw. I’m serious about the ignoring.”

“I know you are.”

“Mhm. And if I were you, I’d go check on your boy. But I’m not you, so I’m going to enjoy myself.”

As quickly as she’d appeared, she slid off into the crowd, joining the numbers of people Adam had completely lost to the mob. Everyone seemed able to navigate it but him.

As the clock neared midnight and another drink disappeared from Adam’s hand, leaving his blood buzzing pleasantly through his veins, he slipped out one of the ornate double doors. He breathed in fresh air like a man coming across water in the desert, the haze around his mind clearing with every breath. He ambled to a free bench, his legs still stiff and straight from overuse. The stone bit into his long fingers as he curled his hand around the bench seat, but he welcomed the feeling because it was so far from the thriving mass of bodies indoors.

At some point, he opened his eyes again. His eyes had briefly registered another figure outdoors by the statue when he first exited. Only once his eyes were open and scanning did he recognize the figure, a silhouette of black leather cut harshly from the ethereal white exterior of the Residence.

“Everything okay?” He called to Ronan.

“Yeah,” Ronan replied without turning to face him. “Just...getting some air.”

It was easier to associate this Ronan with the one he heard on the phone - so far from that royal persona projected everywhere, a voice in a face with no expectations on it. Ronan could have been anyone, his accent lax and his posture eerily straight in a contrast that made Adam feel a bit winded. 

“It’s loud in there,” he admitted.

Ronan didn’t respond, but Adam’s statement wasn’t one that required response. 

“I thought this would be more your scene,” Adam finally said, challenge creeping into his voice. He wasn’t sure if it was a genuine challenge or if he was just falling back on old habits instead of saying something he might regret.

“And I didn’t think it would be yours.”

“Fair enough, since it’s not.”

Ronan threw him a glance over one shoulder at that. “Makes perfect sense to throw this function, then.”

“Well, the media doesn’t exactly eat up overpriced textbooks and econ calculations, so I do what I can.”

“Mm,” Ronan hummed in something that sounded like agreement. “They do love the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, even in places it’s not happening.”

Adam stood, placing his hands on his knees like he had bad joints. “Unless if you actually went to 239 parties last year, I’d guess you know all about that exaggeration.”

“Do you stalk my tabloids, Parrish? The fuck?”

“No, Gansey does. With everybody. He just reads all his findings to me.”

“Terrifying,” Ronan muttered. “If I die of mysterious circumstances, you’ll both be on the shortlist of suspects.” “What?” Adam challenged. “You’ll keep it in the breast pocket of your blazer?”

“Sure,” Ronan replied. “I have to keep it folded up close to my heart, of course. Keep your lovers close but enemies closer.”

Ronan tilted his head in the direction of the statue, silently beckoning Adam to stand by him. It felt a bit like a confession, like his permission implied passing some silent test.

Briefly, in his buzzing brain, he wondered what side of that spectrum he fell on. 

“Did you get sick of watching Blue and Gansey?”

Adam shrugged, pulling to a stop just next to Ronan. He kicked absently at the ground with his toe. “A bit.”

“That has to have been a weird development to get used to.”

“A bit,” Adam repeated.

“Still, it hasn’t been too long.”

“I think they’ve been a thing for longer,” Adam admitted.

Ronan turned his head, and suddenly Adam felt the icy cool of his eyes trained on Adam’s face. “Why?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems obvious, looking back. They’ve clearly been together for a while. August, at least.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the December-January chill suddenly settling over him. “I think they were...protecting me.”

Ronan snorted, the gesture not a bit princely. “Protecting you?”

Adam fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt.

“I’m damaged goods, Highness,” he said at length. “I’m fragile.”

Even though Adam didn’t turn to him, he felt Ronan’s eyes probe deeper as though imploring Adam to look back to him. “That’s a fucking lie,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

Adam snorted, but Ronan was not deterred.

“You’re not fragile,” he repeated. “If you’re fragile, the world is being held up by - by dental floss and craft glue. No, a weak person couldn’t do what you do. Bullshit for the cameras at least once a week, keep up your grades, work on policy with Czerny, keep up your ratings so that they never dip - that’s too much for someone who is fragile.”

“Oh, then you must be superhuman, with all the bullshitting you do.”

“Of course I am, Parrish,” Ronan said, turning his eyes up and away from Adam.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, elbows rested on the cold metal fence guarding the statue. The night sky hung above them, pale in all of the light pollution of the city, but if Adam strained he could see the faint points carving themselves into the sky and drawing themselves into pictures and promises. Ronan’s heat radiated next to him, leather almost snagging on cotton. The fact that this was their first time seeing each other in person since the hospital photo-op did not escape Adam’s notice, but neither did the easy way in which they managed to coexist despite the time and distance removing them from that point.

When the moment grew too heavy, he said, “Did you look at my Wikipedia page?”

“No.”

Adam arched an eyebrow.

“...Matthew may have done some light Googling.”

Adam laughed. It wasn’t his carefree camera laugh, the ones that kept up his ratings, but it was a laugh nonetheless, one that dispersed through the air as though worried it could be stolen away at any moment. Ronan’s face shuttered abruptly. His expression became inscrutable, and Adam didn’t realize he’d looked happy until he no longer did.

All at once, Adam remembered the line separating them, and he felt certain they were touching it with their feet almost overlapping, face to face and chest to chest.

“You didn’t have to come,” Adam said softly, his normal voice suddenly feeling far too loud for the little bubble forming around them, devoid of anyone else. “Not if you didn’t want to.”

Ronan didn’t speak for a moment, by choice or to gather his words, Adam didn’t know. “I did.”

Adam just shook his head, choosing to stand in comfortable silence. A star winked in the sky.

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via,” Ronan whispered, his lips barely movin g. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

“Itaque imus ad astra, per aspera,” Adam replied, barely thinking about it. So we go through hardships to the stars.

Ronan visibly started at his use of Latin. Adam smirked as if you say you’re not the only one with a posh education.

“Shooting for the stars, Highness?”

Rona turned his eyes back to the sole bright star. “I might as well be.”

“I’d doubt whatever it is that’s bothering you is as hopeless as that.”

Adam couldn’t take his eyes off of Ronan, noting the way his lips thinned. “Oh, but it is. In my position. In my life.”

“Non ergo qui in vobis sunt terminum tibi.”

Ronan turned his head toward Adam again, and Adam felt a spark of fear over what he might do if he turned his head to meet Ronan’s eyes, blue as a never-ending lake stretching on and on until he drowned against the sand.

He turned his head anyway. The stars suspended above them, the leaves ceasing to rustle and shuffle, the party inside fading away until everyone disappeared into nothingness. Ronan lifted one hand from the railing and slid it along Adam’s cheek, his skin heating and jolting at the touch like Ronan himself was made of electricity and stardust, like the galaxies that Adam had once been were meeting their long lost particles in Ronan’s hand. In Ronan’s eyes, he could have sworn he heard words turning over and over.

Adam heard him whisper, then, the words that must have been bouncing in his head. “Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death,” he muttered, the tail-end of something Adam couldn’t quite place. He parted his lips to speak just before Ronan kissed him.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, he didn’t worry that he was kissing someone - kissing Ronan . For once in his life, he forgot about everything else. He didn’t worry about anyone inside or what anyone might think. That would come later.

Ronan’s lips pressed to his, and he tried to string a coherent thought together but was instead met with abstract, overjoyed ideas floating aimlessly in his brain instead. 

The press of Ronan against him was hard, sharp lines and corners poking into his chest and his hips and his legs, but his lips were soft and Adam tasted whiskey and powdered sugar on Ronan’s tongue and Ronan’s teeth flashed against his lip and he thought he might die, that the feeling may kill him if he did that again.

He didn’t have a chance to test that hypothesis, because Ronan pulled back and stepped away so quickly Adam almost fell forward onto his face. And then he hurried away, leaving Adam standing like an idiot outside of the White House ballroom at a party he was supposed to be hosting after just kissing a male member of the monarchy.

His only thought was, absently, if they’d kissed at midnight.

[plague-of-insomnia]

5 and 16 for an OC of your choice!

Tysm, Chrome 💕!

From this [ask list].

I’m going to answer for Jackson Santoro, the MC of my WIP OW M/M romance novel Love UnSeen.

5. What is a secret they have?

He has a kind of big one but it’s a spoiler!!! It’s revealed fairly early and then explained/developed as the story unfolds so I guess I can put it here, without any explanation 😈 (font to hide it in case people want to skip over it):

Jackson killed his father.

16. What is the most romantic thing someone has done for them?

Jackson is blind, and has been his entire life, so when he realizes the guy he’s crushing on (Dan) is a photographer, he feels like they’ll never be able to relate to one another. But Dan finds plenty of methods of proving Jackson wrong.

One of these is when he brings Jackson to the darkroom with him and asks him to help him develop some film, explaining the entire process, and giving Jackson the ability to touch. The experience is surprisingly erotic but also sends the powerful message that Dan wants Jackson to know this essential part of who he is, and is willing to do what he can to make the seemingly incomprehensible understandable despite Jackson’s limited vision.

This is actually the last full scene of the newer draft I have, and one of my favorites (condensed here for tumblr):

[[MORE]]

After letting Jackson cautiously explore the second room, Dan asked, “Have you ever held a roll of film before?”

“No.”

“Here,” Dan said as he pressed something small into Jackson’s hand. “It’s one I use for demonstration so you don’t need to worry about ruining it.”

Jackson nodded absently as he explored the object, cradling it in the palm of one hand while the fingers of the other explored. It was small, shorter than Jackson’s thumb and even narrower in width, rounded, with an lip that stuck out on one side of the cylinder and a smaller tube that jutted out on top and spun when Jackson turned it. With his nails he could feel a ridge at the top and bottom, almost like a tin can, but more prominent. It wasn’t like anything he’d felt before, and he was curious how the developing process worked.

Jackson stiffened as he suddenly felt Dan’s warmth from behind him, inhaled sharply when the larger man’s arms wrapped around him and draped over Jackson’s hand, guiding his fingers along that seam.

“You feel that? The canister has a top and bottom that you can pry off. The top is the part with the tube that juts up and the bottom is flat, but you can feel the hollow center right here.”

Dan continued, “This one’s been opened and re-closed several times for my classes, so you could probably do it with your bare hand, but normally we use a bottle opener to pry the lid off, just like you would a bottle top.” Dan pressed something else into Jackson’s other hand, again using his fingers to help guide Jackson as to where he needed to align the opener.

Once it was in place, Jackson twisted his wrist and he felt and heard the top pop and go flying, clattering on the floor nearby. “Whoops. Sorry.”

Dan was chuckling as he moved away, presumably to retrieve it. He took the opener back. “Now do you feel that? Inside? Normally, this would be looped around the spool and threaded through this part here,” Dan said, again standing behind Jackson and guiding his fingers to the appropriate areas in turn. Dan’s touch was unlike any Jackson had experienced before. He wasn’t entirely sure he could articulate how amazing he felt as Dan’s long fingers glid over Jackson’s skin, sliding along knuckles and stopping to massage the space between the blind man’s right thumb and wrist for only a moment before moving on. Erotic and yet so much more, leaving Jackson dizzy and struggling to focus.

This negative—which felt slick and plasticky and foreign and far longer than he expected—had simply been stuffed loosely into the can, but with Dan’s direction Jackson could understand the way it must normally be, wound around that spool and threaded through that strange lip. The negative was narrower on the end, perhaps to make insertion easier. Damn, he really didn’t need to be thinking of anything inserting anywhere while Dan was touching him like this, the larger man’s chest brushing against Jackson’s back with each breath. It was heavenly and serenity and security, and part of Jackson wanted to drop the roll of film in his hand and grab Dan’s arms to hold them tight around his body.

“When you load your camera, this tab here,” Dan explained indicating the narrow portion Jackson had just been wondering about, “threads into place so the negative can be pulled through frame by frame. We also use that to load it on the spool for the developer canister, which is the next step I’ll walk you through.”

Jackson clung to Dan’s wrist to keep him from moving. “Thank you. For this.”

Dan’s arms shifted so he was hugging the smaller man, just as Jackson had been imagining only moments earlier, their heads leaned against each other. “Eh. I just need the free labor. I’m developing four rolls of film today and processing negatives is a pain.” But Jackson could tell Dan was joking, happiness evident in his voice. His nose brushed along Jackson’s ear. A second later, Jackson startled when he felt Dan blow gently on his neck, though the larger man kept a firm hold to prevent Jackson from losing his balance. Before Jackson could speak, Dan kissed the side of Jackson’s throat, working his way down along the blind man’s neck toward his collarbone. “I want to mark you here,” Dan purred, his voice lower than normal, raspier, and the tone and the meaning of the words sent a jolt straight to Jackson’s cock. Especially when Dan laved the skin, a long, warm, sensual lick.

“Don’t you dare,” Jackson struggled to say, reaching back as if to push Dan away, even though truthfully that was the last thing he wanted. “Class starts for me soon. Last thing I need is a giant hickey everyone will be staring at throughout my entire lecture.”

Dan snickered, kissed the spot, nipped at it teasingly, but backed off. “If I start things, I’ll never stop, and we have work to do. I’ll teach you how to insert the extracted negatives into the developer canister and then I’ll give you a couple rolls of film to do it for real.”

“Are you sure you want me to do this? If I mess up—”

Dan kissed Jackson’s temple. “You won’t. You can see light, right? So you’ll be able to tell if the door is closed properly. Then it’s simply a matter of getting the film out like we just did and loading it into the developer. Just triple-check the lid is shut properly—you’ll be able to feel it and hear it, and I’ll show you—and then you step out. That’s it.”

“You can relax. I trust you.”

[clintbartonswife]

singing softly

Pairings: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes Summary: 5 times Bucky sang to Steve + one time Steve returned the favour Notes: (minor) character death, mentions of illness, Made for @panicfob anniversary challenge, with the prompt “Tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt.”  List of songs at the end:) masterlist

1. (1925)

Wet coughs were muffled with small, pale hands. 

Bucky had been there since early morning, ever since the news had spread that the Roger’s boy was sick again, only ever letting go of Steve’s hand to wet the rag that he gently wiped across the blond’s sweaty forehead. 

Sarah looked in on the two silently from the doorway, eyes creasing in concern for her only child. He had caught the flu again, the cold weather outside grating on his fragile lungs more than he could handle.

But Bucky, the boy was a mystery to Sarah. Ever since they had met two years ago, the eight-year-olds had been inseparable, much to her surprise. Bucky was a tall, strong boy, and most like him had shunned Steve for his small and sickly nature. Not Bucky. No, that seemed to make the brunet almost more protective of Steve than he was his sisters, always saving his from playground fights.

“Of all the money that e'er I spent, I spent it in good company”

Sarah blinked out of her thoughts as Bucky’s soft voice broke the silence, the boy focusing solely on Steve as he stroked his hair out of his face, one pale hand moving to rest over Bucky’s chest.

“And all the harm that ever I did, Alas it was to none but me”

He was feeling the vibrations, Sarah figured, a small smile pulling at her lips as she watched them. A bond that close was all she could ever wish for her child. It would outlast her, that she was sure of.

2. (1933)

The funeral was a quiet affair.

Sarah Roger’s friends from church attended the ceremony, along with a few of the nurses who shared her shift and - of course - the Barnes family. Steve was sure they had been giving him their regards, but he heard none of them. 

He just stood there, staring as the coffin was lowered gently into the grave, yearning to hold Bucky’s hand.

Later that night, back in the too-empty apartment, Bucky held him to his chest as they lay together in bed, running a soothing hand up and down the smaller man’s back.

“She’s gone”

He sounded so desolate, so hopeless, that it almost made Bucky cry. The brunet just murmured his acknowledgement, tightening his hold even more.

“It hurts. I - Tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt”

Bucky’s heart squeezed painfully, his hand moving to cup the back of Steve’s neck, “Just keep breathing” he eventually said, “It doesn't ever go away but I’ll be here to help lessen it every day - I promise”

Steve just nodded, letting silence fall over them again for a few more minutes.

“Buck” Steve whispered, forehead resting against his collarbone, “sing for me?”

Bucky huffed a laugh, pressing a kiss to the top of his head before clearing his throat, 

“Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling-”

As Bucky’s soothing voice filled the room, Steve began to gently sob, the Irish melody easing the pain in his chest, even if only for a moment. He stayed wrapped in strong arms the whole time, the feeling of safety and protection only growing as his crying began to fade out. 

Bucky watched him with soft eyes, hands moving upwards to stroke through his hair as the younger boy began to doze off to the sound of his voice.

“For you shall bend and tell me that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me”

The tell-tale sounds of Steve’s relaxed breathing made Bucky smile, glad that the distraught boy had finally managed to fall asleep.

3. (1937)

“C’mon Stevie” Bucky groaned, collapsing onto the sofa, “it’s your birthday, we gotta do something!”

Steve smirked at the bratty behaviour, crossing his arms, “We don't gotta do anything, Buck”

“But it’s your 21st!” Bucky said, waving his arms around as if the notion was ridiculous, “It’s a special one! Anything you want - just say it and we’ll do it”

Steve raised an eyebrow, steeping in-between Bucky’s legs, gaining the brunet’s attention.

“Anything?”

Bucky nodded hesitantly, eyes darkening as he watched Steve lean down so that their faces were mere inches apart.

“Dance with me. Just us, in this apartment” he said simply, “That’s what I want”

“You’re a tease Steven Rogers” Bucky grinned, jumping up off of the sofa with joyful exuberance before offering the shorter boy his hand, “Would you do m the honour of dancin’ with me?”

Steve chuckled, quickly walking over to set the needle on the bust-up grammar phone before heading back to Bucky, accepting his hand.

The two swayed gently to the soft tones of Billie Holiday ‘If You Were Mine’, Steve’s head moving to rest gently on the dip of Bucky’s collar bone, a place Bucky had secretly reserved for him.

Roughly halfway through the song, Steve closed his eyes, the vibrations of Bucky singing along to the music creating a unique comforting sensation that he wished he could save forever.

“If you were mine, I would live for your love alone” 

The atmosphere changed as Bucky’s cheek moved to rest against the top of Steve’s head, the words resonating with the two young men more than they thought was possible.

“To kneel at your shrine, I would give up all that I own”

Steve moved then, tilting his head up so that their noses were only a breaths-width away from touching.

“Buck-”

Before he could voice his thoughts, Bucky’s lips were connecting with his, soft and slow, their bodies still swaying slowly in time to the music.

“Even my life, I’d trade it all for you, And think I was lucky too, If you were mine”

4. (1940)

“Buck?”

The apartment was quiet - too quiet for Steve’s liking - especially as Bucky should’ve come home from the docks an hour ago. Frowning, Steve carried on walking to the kitchen, only to find an ashen-faced Bucky clutching a letter in his hand.

“Buck?” Steve repeated, his voice seemingly snapping the brunet out of his stupor.

“Oh - sorry, doll. I didn't hear you come in” Bucky said, shoving the letter in his pocket and standing up to pull Steve into a hug, hands still shaking slightly, “Must’ve overworked myself today at the docks”

Steve accepted the hug, trying his best to soothe his boyfriend, before pulling back just enough to see his face.

“What’s this really about?”

The older man’s face dropped, releasing a wavering sigh before sitting down heavily on one of the dining chairs, gesturing for Steve to do the same. He pulled out the letter from before and passed it to Steve, eyes full of barely-restrained dread.

“I don't understand -” Steve said, looking over the letter, before a icy dagger of fear went through his chest, “Oh Bucky”

“I’ve been drafted” he said, voice tight, “Sargent Barnes of the 107th”

“I - I’ve got to - to sign up. I’ll come with you” 

“Steve no-”

“I’ll go to the pop-up, down by the bakers - tomorrow. We can - we can figure this out”

By now he was sounding hysterical even to himself, Bucky moving out of his chair to kneel in front of Steve, taking his hands in his own. 

“No, Steve. No. I need you to be safe. Please. At least when I have to go I’ll do it knowing I’ll be keeping you safe”

That finally ripped a sob from Steve, who shook his head madly and gripped onto his hands even tighter.

“How long?”

“Two weeks and I’m off to England”

Another sob was torn from Steve’s throat, Bucky quickly moving to wrap Steve in up his arms, cradling his small body and rocking back and forth. At a loss of what else to do, Bucky wiped his own tears from his eyes before shakily beginning to sing one of their favourite songs.

“Till the end of time, long as stars are in the blue, long as there’s a spring, a bird to sing, I’ll go on loving you”

Steve shifted in his lap, pressing his cheek firmly to Bucky’s chest as his sobbing died down slightly, moving his arms to wrap around Bucky’s waist.

“You promise?”

His voice was quiet, almost reluctant, muffled against the scratchy material of Bucky’s work shirt. Nevertheless, Bucky caught it, immediately halting his singing and moving Steve so that they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Promise Stevie, no one’s ever gonna replace you”

“And you’ll come home?”

“I’ll fight like hell to”

5. (1941)

“We can take a break here for a few hours, tend to the wounded” Steve announced, “We should be far away enough by now”

Bucky felt like he was going insane. He should be dead, strapped to that medical table, yet here he is, following Steve - his Stevie - out of hell, while he looks like he’s been pumped with a thousand different kinds of steroids.

A light pressure on his back moved him away from the mass of soldier’s, the smell reassuring him that he was safe, that it was just Steve.

“You okay Buck?”

He scoffed, looking up - he had to look up - to meet his eyes, “I don't think I’m the one who should be answering that question right now”

“Buck-”

“You promised me you’d stay home, Stevie”

“If I had you could’ve died in there -”

“At least you would’ve been safe!”

The blond dropped his head in defeat, his whole body radiating his silent apology.

“I couldn’t live with myself knowing you were fighting out here while I was just sat at home”

A bitter chuckle, hand reaching up to cup the side of his neck, “You’ve never been able to do that, huh”

“I knew I couldn't let you fight alone, Buck” Steve admitted quietly, still looking down, “And I’m glad I didn't. Seeing you on that table-”

“I know” Bucky breathed, pulling the blond into a firm hug - the most he could do while they were this much in the open, “we’ll talk more when we get back to base, okay?”

Steve just nodded, straightening his posture before stepping out of the hug, his Captain persona firmly back on.

“I can wait”

Roughly 12 hours later, the rag-tag group arrived back to camp to cheers of ‘Captain America!’, a very pretty brunette (that Bucky was not jealous of at all) greeting Steve with a proud smile.

By the time they were allowed to go to the barracks - ‘Bucky’s staying with me, sir, he was in bad shape and I’d like to keep an eye on him’ - the older man was well and truly exhausted.

“So - Peggy”

Steve sighed, running his hands over his face dramatically, “It’s not like that”

“Sure pal”

“No. Really” Steve insisted, grabbing Bucky’s chin, forcing their eyes to meet, “It’s not like that”

Bucky hummed, climbing into the bed with a well-practice air of blasé.

“Buck, I swear it” Steve said, voice quiet, “I missed you so much”

“You wouldn’t have to hide with her” 

“What?”

“Peggy. You wouldn't have to hide with Peggy”

A small sad sound came from behind him, followed by a sudden shoot of movement as Steve climbed on to the bed with Bucky, his newly-enlarged form swamping the man with his hug as he was pulled into a strong chest.

“But I don't love her. I love you, you know this”

As soon as the first tear escaped Bucky’s eye he knew he was fucked, his hand reaching up to gran on to Steve’s arm.

“I don't know what they did to me Steve. I don't - I don't know what they did and I don't know if I can protect you anymore”

“You don't need to protect me anymore” the blond said, truthfulness radiating from every pore, “I can help myself now. We can protect each other”

Another muffled sob. Bucky wiggled around in Steve’s arms so that they were face-to-face, his hand resting on his cheek.

“I love you so much”

“I love you too”

“Punk”

“Jerk”

The two of them lied there, entwined in each other’s arms as Bucky’s cries slowly died down.

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed your singing” Steve admitted, “the apartment was too quiet without it”

Bucky huffed a laugh, readjusting himself so that he was facing Steve head-on.

“If you wanted me to sing all you had to do was ask, you punk”

Steve let out a soft giggle, tears welling in his eyes as Bucky began to sing, his voice softer than normal.

“How much do I love you? I'll tell you no lie, How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky?”

+1 (2015)

Steve had finally found him. Bucky was home.

Well - not home - both of them had lost their homes years ago, but together, as bruised and broken as they might be. And for now? That was enough.

“Steve?” 

Bucky’s monotone voice broke the heavy silence that had fallen over the apartment, the blond’s head whipping around to face him. Seeing he had his attention, Bucky continued.

“Did you ever sing to me?”

The question sent Steve’s stomach plunging, a small flicker of hope blooming in his chest at the slightly wrong memory.

“No, but you used to sing to me all the time” Steve said, shuffling slightly closer to Bucky, watching as his eyes lit up with the confirmation, “you used to do it to calm me down when I was stressed or upset”

Bucky nodded, biting his lip thoughtfully.

“Could you - could you sing something for me?”

His voice was soft and unsure, the timid expression something Steve was reluctant to say he was now used to seeing on Bucky’s face.

“If you really want me to I will - but I’m nowhere near as good as you” 

“I’m sure that's not true” Bucky said, smiling as he relaxed marginally into his seat.

Steve fidgeted in his seat as he wondered what to sing, his mind going back to the first time Bucky sang to him. A small smile flitted across his face at the memory, deciding the on the old melody.

“Of all the money that e'er I spent, I spent it in good company“

Bucky let out a soft noise, peacefulness oozing from him as he completely relaxed in his seat, letting Steve’s voice drown out the rest of his thoughts.

“And all the harm that ever I did, Alas it was to none but me”

Steve watched Bucky raptly, searching for any spark of recognition.

“And all I've done for want of wit, To memory now I can't recall”

Steve’s next words died in his throat as Bucky opened his mouth, the smooth voice he had been yearning to hear suddenly filling the room.

“So fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all”

The two men fell silent, seemingly at a standstill while Bucky digested the new memories. Steve held his breath, hope now beating ceaselessly against his ribs.

“Stevie”

It was just a breath, no louder than an feather falling to the ground, but Steve knew.

Bucky remembered.

_______________________________________________________________

@patzammit​  @geeksareunique​   @xxloki81xx​  @bangtan-serendipity​

Songs:

1. The Parting Glass 

2. Danny Boy by Frederic Weatherly

3. If You Were Mine by Billie Holiday

4. Til the end of time by Les Brown

5. How Deep Is The Ocean by Irving Berlin

+1 The Parting Glass

[wardofwinters]

Hey I have a request for creators chosen, if u feel like writing a mini scene! Can we see Marinette bringing in Felix something like his favorite treat form the bakery or a specialized scarf or something because he's been really stressed by deadlines or family or something? If you feel like it or have time for it it would be pretty cool :)

HI! I’m so glad you asked. You absolutely inspired me for a little in-between chapter.

I hope you like it, it’s a bit off of what you asked for but it is canon for my story and leads to the next chapter.

Chapter one Chapter two Chapter three

-----------------------------------------------

Plan F

 Marinette was glad that there hadn’t been any more akuma’s since stoneheart. With how exhausted she was in the last week from the cure and purification she didn’t think she would have been any help.

Tikki said it was likely Hawkmoth was similarly exhausted. The things he did weren’t supposed to happen and would exact a heavy cost from him. That was a relief.

Over the past week she and Alya had grown closer, though she was a bit uncomfortable with Alya’s obsession with the hero’s identities. She and Felix had also grown closer over the past week.

She’d given Felix one of her extra binders, she made It with a planner built in and plenty of folders. It was one of her’s so customized to her needs but she’d give him a new one later.

He’d also started going to art club with Nathaniel. Apparently, they’d bonded over their dislike of people and like of art in the back. Marinette was glad, neither of them were good with people. She was really happy that she got to spend time with them too, turns out that Felix was a bit of a designer as well.

Adrien apparently took after their mom, modeling the clothes and standing in the spotlight. Felix took more after his father, a designer and content to stand behind the scenes.

He didn’t make any clothes mind you, wasn’t much of a seamster, but he did design some. And what Marinette had seen so far showed that he was rather skilled at it as well.

And so Marinette got used to seeing him fairly often.

She recognized his moods; how he despised the mornings and always forgot breakfast; how despite him always forgetting breakfast, he never forgot his assignments; how he was always dressed neatly and cleanly; how his tone was generally polite but he held a biting tone to use on those that annoyed him; how he was never ever bothered by anything.

So, when she was back to full strength and working on a dress in club she noticed how his mood was shifting. He was hurrying his work, losing papers, snapping at people quicker and quicker for things he used to ignore. When he came to school without his vest today, she knew something was wrong.

She worried about it all through morning classes. And when class let out for lunch, she checked on him, only to be assured that he was perfectly fine. She frowned but moved to lunch. She was half-way there when she realized she forgot Tikki’s extra cookies in her locker. She murmured a soft apology and turned to go back to the lockers

“It’s fine Marinette, just grab them quick so you can get your lunch.”

She hurried to the locker room and slipped in, only to pause when she heard the arguing.

“You’re only going to get us both in trouble! Father said that you had to go home for lunch and now you’re trying to sneak out again? I vouched for you! I vouched for you and you’re ju-“

“Oh come on! Father is never mad at you, it’ll be fine. I’m just having fun, it’s not hurting anyone. I just want my freedom!”

She slid down the wall, sneaking to peak around the lockers.

“You’ll get your freedom when you pass the probation. Honestly Adrien, I don’t know how you’ve been sneaking away but it stops now.”

“Well, that’s my secret. I’m not telling. And I’m not stopping either. Father won’t give us a birthday party so I’m gonna have fun while I can!”

The Agreste brothers?

“This is-… this is about the birthday party. This whole mess. You’re doing this cause Father said no to a party!”

“Mom would’ve let me! It’s not fair, I just want to be a normal kid!”

“Mom always said no to the parties, every year. She and Father stood together on that Adrien. Or did you forget so quickly?”

“Felix-“

“No. You will go to the car and go home right now. I’m not dealing with this anymore. Let’s go.”

Marinette shrunk back as Felix dragged Adrien out of the locker room.

“Well that was interesting, looks like they’re having a fight.” Tikki slid out of the bag to hover in front of Marinette.

“Yeah, and it sounds like something happened to their mom. And Adrien is getting Felix in trouble. This must be why he’s been so stressed!” She straightened.

“You’re right! Poor Felix, his brother certainly isn’t making things easy for him. Though it’s a shame they can’t have the birthday ceremony, I hear it’s very important.”

Marinette nodded, “Mm, let’s get the cookies, I have planning to do.”

There wasn’t much Marinette could do about Adrien. He was a pain, but she had no control over him. Felix stuck his neck out to get Adrien into school and he was throwing it back in his face. As Chloe would say, ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. She could help Felix in other ways though.

The twins birthday was just over a week away. She would use this time to help Felix relax, and then she’d make sure they got to celebrate.

Marinette made it so her cousin could have a party after that kidnapping attempt, M. Agreste was fairly famous himself. It wasn’t out of mind that he could be worried about something similar.

And thus Plan F was born.

She prepared her supplies. Six morning alarms, one palmier, one cheese Danish, one plain croissant, and that days specialty coffee.

She got up early and gathered her supplies, then took off, making it to school with more than enough time for her plan.

She quickly moved up to Felix, sitting in his normal seat.

She drew a bright smile up, “Morning Felix, how’re you doing today?”

He peered at her, “Well, and you?”

“I’m doing great, thanks for asking!” She plopped the bag of pastries on the desk in front of him and placed the coffee, black with sugar and cream packets on the side.

He blinked, “What’s this?”

“I noticed you’ve been a bit stressed lately. So, I thought I’d bring you a pick me up. They’re from my parent’s bakery, freshly made. And a coffee since it’s so early.”

His eye’s widened, “I see… Thank you Marinette,” he took a glance into the bag and swallowed, “I appreciate the gift, but you didn’t need to.”

“It’s fine,” she chirped, “I wanted too. I hope you like them.”

She hurried down to her seat, satisfied with her success.

The next day she brought a new coffee, and some assorted croissants.

Felix thanked her once more, his gaze sharp as he watched her.

She simply smiled and turned back to her seat, he seemed a bit more put together today.

That day passed quickly. Her plans for a small party drafted with the editing to be done.

Felix also seemed to be watching her that day. She noticed that he finished the coffee quickly and hummed, so he liked Café Crème. Good to know.

She brought assorted danishes the next day, and another Café Crème.

Her party plans were nearly finalized. Now she needed to schedule a meeting.

Felix stopped her the next morning, “You really don’t need to keep giving me food Marinette.”

“It’s fine Felix, I just want to help,” She smiled brighter when his gaze flickered, his brow furrowed slightly, “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to.”

He sighed and nodded, “Thank you, I really do appreciate it, but really, don’t keep doing it. It’s too much.”

Marinette frowned but agreed.

That night she called her aunt for advice, backups it was.

Then next morning she cheerfully walked up to his desk, coffee in hand, and gave him a set of sketching pencils. She placed the coffee on his desk and hurried off before he could stop her.

She’d scheduled her meeting for that afternoon. She had work to do.

She quickly changed after school, putting on neat black slacks with cherry blossoms patterned on the side, a faded pink shirt, and a black blazer bearing more cherry blossoms. She threw her hair up in a ponytail for extra affect. Dress to impress.

She hurried off to Felix’s house as quickly as possible, he was at art club and Adrien had a photo shoot so no one would interrupt.

She was ready.

“Enter”

She quickly smoothed down her pants and straightened her blazer before stepping inside. She needed to look professional.

“How can I help you mademoiselle… “ Her idol stood in front of her, one of the king’s of fashion. He stared at her coolly, eyebrow raised in question.

“I’m Mari- Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Don’t stutter, come on, she could do this, “I’m here to talk about Felix and Adrien’s birthday.”

His eyes narrowed, “If this is an attempt to get them a party I would suggest you leave now.”

She took a deep breath, rubbing her cherry blossom bracelet, “It is sir, but please he me out. I understand you don’t want to put them in danger, but I have an offer that could help.”

“You have three minutes,” his gaze was like ice, staring into her and peeling back her layers. Deep breaths Marinette.

“I understand that as you’re rather well known your sons may be in danger, especially with a large party. So I am proposing a smaller party of less than ten people in the park near the school.”

She pulled out her tablet and swiped to an image of the park.

“All food would be provided from my parents bakery,” She swiped to an image of one of their order platters, “My dad and aunt would be at the party to supervise.”

She eyed him warily, his expression gave nothing away, “I’ve prepared a possible guest list for the party with three friends for Felix, from our class and art club, and two for Adrien, both from our class. This can of course be adjusted as you feel.” She felt Tikki press against her reassuringly.

She flipped to the page with names and pictures of the students, along with contact information.

“All the music is age appropriate, I have a list as well. I suggest the date for the party being the Saturday after their birthday. This would leave the day mostly free for any time to schedule the party, and it would act as extra protection being four days after their birthday.

She hesitated, “All of this can be adjusted to your preferences… Ah… Any questions?”

He studied her, completely silent for a moment, “You planned all this out yourself?”

“Yes sir.”

“For… Felix?”

“Yes sir, he’s my friend.”

He tilted his head, gaze on her tablet now, “Very well. I will allow this party. Three other bodyguards will be present as well, to insure safety. The date you picked is satisfactory.”

His gaze lifted back to hers, “Email that to Nathalie, she will coordinate with you after looking it over.”

Marinette resisted the urge to cheer, “Yes sir. You won’t regret it.”

“I’d best not,” His gaze lingered for another moment, then he turned back to his computer. “Don’t inform them yet, it will remain a surprise. Nathalie will send out the invitations.”

Marinette was dismissed. She paused in the hall to send the powerpoint to Nathalie and then left the mansion.

She had enough self control to wait until she got outside and turned the corner before she squealed, cheering as she spun around, “I did it!” She did a little victory dance.

“That was brilliant Marinette, I’m very proud of you.” Tikki poked her head out the purse to grin at Marinette.

“Thanks Tikki, I’m really glad it worked.” Marinette calmed herself, there was still a lot to do. Best get started.

She hurried to the bakery, her success and Tikki’s praise buoying her.

Plan F was a success.

---------------------------------------

No picture for this one, I’ll post one Saturday since I don’t have the next chapter done yet.

Tags: @zebrabaker @anonymouse-thoughts @miraculous-of-salt @blackirisposts @yin-390 @unabashedbookworm @whatamessofwords @fairyjinxed @protect-marinette @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @psychixx