#i just think they’re neat. i was sold as soon as i watched someone pull a rotisserie chicken out of one

[fingertipsmp3]

I love getting a proof of delivery photo from an Evri courier and there’s something judgemental about the way they staged the photo. Like I know good and well you’re trying to draw attention to how messy my greenhouse is. Why else is my package off-centre

[summonerscenarios]

hi juno, i just saw sugar cubes with cat motifs that could double as emergency snacks on twitter today and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen!! that being said, how would the feline transients (of your choosing ofc) would react to MC giving them those cat-shaped sugar cubes for their Valentine gift? thank you in advance! (´ ∀ ` *)

sdfghjgf yikes it’s like 1am but IT STILL COUNTS. HAPPY VALENTINES FOLKS hope ya’ll are treating yourselves with the love and appreciation you deserve!! and here’s a lil post for the day, hope ya like it~!

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Durga

With Valentines coming up, Durga wanted to be one of the first to give you a present for the holiday, which means of course she’s gotta be the first to get there and get you something to blow the rest of the competition out of the water. It looks like you had the same idea however, as the pair of you just about barge headfirst into one another right outside of the Yoyogi dorms, sending the pair of you, and your respective gifts, spilling across the floor. It’s a humorous flurry of asking why the other got there so early, apologizing for the collision as the pair of you drop to your knees and check on the packages, and in the mixup Durga ends up picking up your package instead of her own.

Thankfully, the contents haven’t spilled over but the packaging is more than a little ruffled, and as her thumbs move to smooth the wrapping back out she spots the little name scribbled into the top corner. Her name, to be precise.

Durga lifts her head up to look over at you as you hold up her package, and from the expression on your face as you look at the little attached tag that she’d scrawled your name onto, you’re just as surprised as she is. You can’t help but laugh - what are the chances that you both ended up running into each other after looking for the other? Durga finds herself laughing along too at the sight of your grinning, and once it dies down you start urging her to open up her valentines gift; you really wanna see what she thinks of it!

While Durga tries to avoid sugary stuff, she can’t really deny her sweet tooth when you’ve gone out of your way to get her something so sweet, and that, coupled with the cute little cat motifs make her cave before she even sees your face, hopeful that she’ll like them. Plus, it’s valentine's day, right? She can make an exception juuust this once...it’s a stroke of luck that they’re the perfect thing to snack on while watching you open your own valentine’s gift, hiding her face in the box seeing your expression light up once you’ve peeled the wrapping away to look at the present she got you as a show of appreciation (and maybe something more who knows…)

Tezcatlipoca

It was the little cat motifs that sold you on buying the sugar cubes - they were just too cute to pass up! And it didn’t help that as soon as you’d seen them the first person that came to mind is Tezcatlipoca, if anything it’s what convinced you to buy them just for him to enjoy with valentine’s day coming up! Wrapping them all up was fun too - it had taken a while to get the kind of paper you were looking for, along with getting it all wrapped up and looking presentable enough to impress. There was a lot of care taken into getting them all the way over to the base, including having to bribe some of the luchadores with treats to slip the box past with you (which you would have done anyways, it was fun seeing them bristling with excitement when you’d pulled out some chocolate boxes you’d got just for them), but you’re sure it would all be worth it once you actually got the gift handed off to the jaguar therian - he’s all about sacrifice, so maybe giving would be nice for a change~!

That ends up going about as well as one expects, and you realize that once you pull the gift out from behind your back and hold it out to him the moment he whirls around, flashing him a beaming smile as you present it to him. Deadass thinks it’s a trick at first - he stares down at the box like he's waiting for some kind of test as if you’ve got a hidden trick up your sleeve, which unless he’s expecting the trick to be those tiny little cubes of sugar (in which case someone spilled the beans on your gift), is completely unwarranted. In the end you have to explain that because it’s valentines day, a day where you share your affections to others in the form of gifts, you decided you’d get a little something for him, with it being a holiday and all. (that he of course knows...maybe...not.)

That’s when Texcatlipoca takes the box off of your hands, and you’re kind of anxious watching him peel away the wrapping and pull out the small container of treats. He flicks open the lid with ease, and is greeted by rows of small, finely decorated sugar cubes, with cutesy cat faces and small, paw shaped confections for good measure. Adorable is the best way to describe what you’d gifted the feline, and as his eyes flicker over the lid of the container to look at you, you find yourself giggling and sheepishly rubbing the back of your neck as you explain that when you’d seen them you’d thought of him, so who better to give it too, right? You’re quick to add that they serve as great emergency snacks in a pinch too, hoping the double use was as appealing an idea to Tez as it was to you.

He’s not one to be outdone by your gifting gesture, so be warned that upon accepting your gift Tezcatlipoca is going to see this as a chance to outdo the gesture tenfold before valentine’s day has come to a close - you’ve caught him off guard with your small gift, and he’s going to return that sentiment in abundance, excited to see how you’ll react to the surprise.

Sitri

Sitri’s opening up more to valentine's day this time around, though you still thought you’d twist up the gift from the typical chocolate that people give out and think outside the box in terms of valentine’s gifts. The only trouble was picking out what you were actually going to buy - you wanted something that would make for a nice gift, as well as something that Sitri would appreciate and enjoy, so you’d wracked your head thinking of the perfect gift for the upcoming holiday.

That’s when you’d come across the sugar cubes - you’d actually heard about them from Ryota when he’d gushed about a store specializing in cat themed treats and how they were coming out with a valentine’s line. It was the perfect place to start looking for a gift, and so as soon as you had a free moment, you’d stopped by and managed to snag yourself a box of the cute little cubes before they’d gone out of stock. You had the option to get them pre-packaged, but you’d instead opted to hand-wrap them yourself so that you could include one or two other little goodies that you’d gotten for the occasion. It took a bit longer than you thought it would have, but by the time you’ve got it packaged up and tucked neatly away in a little gift bag, it’s right in time for valentines day, so you’re eager to head out and deliver your gift to the feline transient first thing after school. 

Even though you’ve gotten him valentines gifts in the past, Sitri’s still surprised and a little flustered when you come up to him, holding out the gift bag to him with a warm smile and greeting of “Happy valentines, Sitri!” as you present him with the gift you’d picked out. That reaction is only amplified once he opens the lid and looks down at the cute cat cubes looking back up at him with adorable faces and whiskers decals to really seal the feline look the treats have got going on. Admittedly, they’re not usually the kind of thing Sitri goes for, mostly thanks to those years chasing the ‘cool cat’ ideal, but as he’s opened up more, as well as with your expression anxiously waiting for his response, he finds himself not minding the gift in the slightest. If anything, he’s more worried about the gift that he got you - you’ve put so much thought into his gifts, he hopes that your gifts can hold a candle to them as he fishes out his own gift to give to you.

Nomad

With valentine’s coming around once again, you were determined to get Nomad something this time around. Sure, you’d gotten him things in the past, but those had mostly been in the form of time spent together going out to eat places and such; this time you wanted to go out of you way to get him a gift from the heart, something that would help convey your appreciation for the gruff tiger therian. Even if it was just a small little gift, you were set on going out and getting him something, which is exactly what you do the moment the shops start setting up for the holiday in question...you just really wish you had a better idea of the kind of thing that Nomad would like to receive. 

You don’t really peg him as the chocolates for valentines kind of guy - he’s worked enough valentine’s gigs you’re sure he’d like an alternative gift for a change - so you’d sought out something you wouldn’t normally have picked. Which is what led to you finding those sugary treats, and the moment you looked at them in the little decorative boxes on the display stand, you just knew that those were the treats you were going to gift Nomad with.

You don’t end up giving Nomad his ‘gift’ face-to-face however. Something came up that pulled you away from being able to give them to him in person (because seriously, what is with you getting dragged into other people’s problems during the holidays? You need a break), so you ended up having to leave them back at his office. By the time that he finally returns to the office he finds the small, cutely decorated box perched precariously right in the middle of his desk, with a small note attached to the top. Confused, but interest peaked enough to approach, the therian plucks the note off with one hand and picks up the box as he settles into his desk chair, reading over your hastily scrawled message.

‘Sorry I couldn’t give this in person but I hope you like em! Apparently they double as emergency snacks, that’s neat,huh? - call me later and tell me what you think! xx’

Popping open the lid of the box, Nomad soon finds out what your message was talking about, and he plucks up one of the cubes between his claws as he holds it up, brows quirking as he takes in the cutesy cat motifs that have been meticulously molded with the sugar cubes to make an undeniably adorable design. He shakes his head a little at the thought of how much bother you must have put yourself through getting so worked up trying to find these little sugar cubes. With that being said he definitely ends up keeping them - after all, imagining how excited you’ll get is enough to make him pluck a few out to try as he fishes out his phone to give you a call.

[luninosity]

Okay! Time for @whumptober2020 Day 2!

The theme for this day was “in the hands of the enemy,” and I went with the “collars” option, with Chris and Sebastian. (Also @thebestpersonherelovesbucky told me to go ahead and be mean to Seb when I was worried about going too far, so....)

Warnings/content: sex trafficking, offscreen (prior to events) but obviously having happened non-con(*), some mental confusion, undercover agents, a successful mission but at a cost...but a hopeful ending, or I hope so, at least!

(* non-con in the sense of, Sebastian chose to be there for a reason, knowing what would happen, part of the mission, but...it’s not consensual, and it was awful) (again, all off-screen/prior to these specific events, though - things Seb’s thinking about now, as Chris shows up)

#

The collar’s rigid around Sebastian’s throat, tall and unyielding. He doesn’t look up, because he’s been well trained over the last weeks. He simply stands naked—except for the decorations, the gold at his cock, the plug inside him—and with his head bowed, with the rest of the docile submissives in line for sale.

 He does peek up through eyelashes, though. Sneaky. Watching as best he can.

 He can’t see much, but he can feel the presence as Chris Evans enters the room. Chris is flanked by bodyguards, and they’re powerful too but no match for that lazily assured crime-lord confidence. Sebastian doesn’t glance up but knows what Chris looks like: broad shoulders, strong thighs, rippling tattoos under expensive double-breasted suits. Beard and hair kept short and neat. Eyes like thoughtful oceans: taking everything in, weighing it, deciding.

 Sebastian’s feet, bare, are cold against the flat hard floor. The air’s icy; his collar’s not gentle. One of his fellow submissives begins to cry, softly; he wishes he could offer comfort.

 He does not move. Not allowed.

 And the confusion of it throbs and splinters in his head for a moment: anger and obedience and grief and an awful sweet pulse deep inside at the knowledge of his own capitulation, his being well behaved.

 Anger at the kidnapping and underground trafficking ring, where submissives like himself are bought and sold and traded and sometimes made to give in, through relentless pain and pleasure and overwhelming brilliant anguish that turns the world upside down and makes him want to be good and to please and to beg for a hand or a cock or an orgasm or a reprieve. Obedience to orders, on more than one level. Grief and sadness, bone-deep and silently raging, that they are here and he can’t even reach out to hold someone’s hand. Sweetness—

 He can’t think about how right it feels to simply do as he’s told, how his body and mind react to that now, how dizzying erotic heat threatens to empty out his head. His cock hangs collared too, in a way, between his legs: caged and bound, though he’s mostly been trained to pay it no mind in any case, as he’s here to be fucked and used. His buyer might choose to play with it on occasion, to indulge him, but it’s simply there, now: Sebastian can come readily, and does, from his hole being used.

 He’s been here longer than he’d thought. He’d known Chris Evans wanted him. Would be coming for him. He hadn’t thought it’d be—how long has it been? Three weeks? Four? Months? He’d thought—he’d had those messages, those exchanges, through third-party go-betweens—

 But Chris hadn’t come for him—but Chris has, now—

 Chris’s legs, Chris’s boots, stroll into view. They stop in front of the young man just before Sebastian in line, also dark-haired and pretty and younger than Sebastian himself; Chris pauses as if inspecting or considering options, then moves on. To Sebastian.

 Who can’t breathe. No air at all. Lightheaded.

 Chris puts out a hand. Lifts his chin. Grip assertive.

 Sebastian flinches. Looks down. He’s not allowed—eye contact—

 Chris’s voice holds a frown. “Shy, is he?”

 “This one?” The dealer laughs. “Not when he’s on the machine, or getting filled up by a train of guards. He’ll make noises if you want him to.”

 Chris’s fingers tighten, pressing into Sebastian’s skin. “He’s not too well used, is he?”

 “No, no. Just enough to break him in. Get him used to his place. You can have a lot more fun with him.”

 Chris touches the collar. His hand adds implacable weight, pressure, dominance. Sebastian shivers. “I see.”

 “He’s always very sweet,” the dealer offers helpfully, “with a leash on. He likes that, the leash and collar. Like he feels good with it on. Soothing.”

 He does. It’s wrong and right and bewildering. Somewhere around the second week he’d stopped being able to think about it clearly. The collar means he knows his place and his role, and if it comes off—as it sometimes does, for bathing and check-ups—he feels adrift. Lonely. Left without an anchor, bare skin unfamiliar and uncanny and not what his fingers should find, touching his throat.

 “He looks pretty responsive,” Chris muses. His thumb brushes Sebastian’s jawline; the touch is tender, surprisingly so.

 Something in Sebastian’s head sparks and tingles and wakes up. He looks up before he’s thought about it.

 Chris’s eyes catch his.

 Chris says, “All right. This one. How much?”

 The man names a price. Chris nods. Gestures to one of his bodyguards, who steps forward. A briefcase is offered. “Count it,” Chris says, waving a hand: a man supremely unconcerned, certain that no one will question him.

 The dealer nods, and one of his men takes the briefcase, so he’s taken it, and he says to Sebastian, “Be good, now, I hear you’re in for a rough time, he likes to use up his prettiest boys—” and he drops the key to Sebastian’s collar into Chris’s hand, just like that, and Sebastian’s Chris’s now—but Chris’s bodyguards are moving too—

 And the world spins, guns clatter, shouting happens, and the raid explodes into success: the whole team descending, deal caught and evidence secured, underworld traffickers rounded up and grabbed and held and taken in—

 And undercover agent Sebastian Stan takes a step forward and lets himself collapse for the first time in weeks, into Chris’s arms.

 Into his partner’s arms. His lover’s arms, and his dominant’s, because Chris is all of that: the other half of him, on a mission or in their bedroom, anywhere.

 Chris catches him, arms frightened and strong. Other people’re giving and receiving orders, handling clean-up. Chris is only holding him, searching his face and body, saying his name over and over.

 Sebastian can’t talk. Can’t even remember how to start. He clings to Chris. Lets Chris ease him to the hard expanse of the floor, sitting with him.

 Chris’s voice is scared. Getting more so by the second. “Seb? Sebastian? Come on, look at me, I’m here, you’re here—I’m sorry, Seb, I’m so sorry—fuck, come on, Seb, please—I’m so sorry, we should’ve pulled you out three days ago—fucking rescheduled time and place—Sebastian, look at me, say something, god, anything—”

 Chris, Sebastian’s mouth shapes. No sound. He’s shaking.

 “Please—” Chris touches the collar, moves to tug at it, to use the key he’s still clutching. “Seb—”

 “No!” Sebastian almost doesn’t recognize his own voice. Or his hand, flying up to stop Chris’s. To keep the weight, the feeling, the anchor, not letting Chris take it away. It’s been his constant for so long now, and he can’t, not so soon, not now; he can’t. “No, no, sir, please—”

 Chris freezes. Horrified. Color vanishes from his face.

 “No,” Sebastian breathes, thought slowly seeping back in, catching up to what he’s just done; but he doesn’t know how to think about it yet, and he can’t do that either, can’t give it a form and existence. His eyes feel hot. Burning. He’s crying.

 “Oh god…” Chris’s voice sounds hollow. “Oh god, Seb—I’m so sorry, Jesus, what’ve we done…I’m here, I’m here now, you’re safe, I won’t—I won’t hurt you—I swear I won’t hurt you…”

 The girl who’d been sobbing is now wrapped in a blanket, Sebastian sees over Chris’s shoulder. Medical personnel arriving. Taking charge of the other submissives. Taking care of them.

 He’s crying more. He can’t seem to stop. He reaches for Chris because Chris is large and warm and powerful and safe, and Chris bought him and will take him home, because Chris takes care of him…that’s right, isn’t it? Memories blur and hesitate, uncertain.

 Chris loves him. He and Chris live together. He and Chris have been partners for over a year now, and Sebastian loves Chris cooking dinner for them and loves bookshop and stargazing dates and himself getting on his knees for Chris. Which was why he’d been perfect for this assignment, why he and Chris had been exactly right for this assignment, Sebastian already naturally easily submissive and also sure of the love and commitment that binds him to Chris, that’ll bring him back to Chris, no matter what.

 He’d thought so, anyway. They both had. They’d said yes, and he’d gone in.

 “Sebastian,” Chris whispers. His voice cracks. “You—you know who I am, right? I’m Chris. I’m your Chris. I’m Chris Evans and you’re Sebastian Stan and I love you.”

 The words make sense but they don’t feel real. Sebastian hides his face in Chris’s shirt. Breathes. Nothing’s the way it should be, the way he’s used to.

 “We got your messages.” Chris rubs his back. Chris’s hands are trembling, terrified, too gentle. Not harsh enough. Sebastian doesn’t understand why; he’s crying messily all over Chris’s suit, and not doing what Chris requested, which is that he look up and talk and be okay.

 Chris tells him, “We got everything you sent out. All the names, everyone they ever dealt with, everyone you met, all the other—” He stops himself before saying victims, Sebastian knows. The word choice about people he’s met almost makes him giggle. Maybe Chris doesn’t know how many of them fucked him, or were at least allowed to handle him or fondle him, as part of his training. Maybe Chris does know. Maybe Sebastian doesn’t need to think about that, or anything much, if Chris doesn’t want him to.

 “The other people in there with you, when you talked to them,” Chris clarifies, obviously hoping this’ll get through. “We know who they all are. You saved them, baby. You did that. They’re safe because of you.”

 Sebastian nods because that part makes sense. He knows why he was there; he’d known he needed to send messages out with couriers. He’d done that. Obeying…earlier orders…doing well…doing what Chris asked.

 He’s so tired. He rests his head against Chris’s chest.

 “Oh god,” Chris whispers again, and then, voice louder, to someone else, “We need help—someone, some fucking medical attention—” Back to Sebastian. “Seb. Baby. Please. Please wake up. Please look at me. At least look at me. Please know who I am, god, Sebastian—please—”

 Chris sounds so afraid, Sebastian registers vaguely. Almost as if he’s crying too. That’s not right either. Sebastian’s here and safe and the mission was a success. Chris should be happy.

 He tries to look up, at that. The realization does something in the back of his head, somewhere underneath the collar and the cock-cage and and the plug inside him and the haziness, though it doesn’t unlock anything right away.

 He tries to reach up. He hasn’t done that for a while, initiating a touch; his hand’s clumsy. “Chris.”

 Chris grabs his hand. Cradles him close. Gazes down at him. “Sebastian—?”

 “I’m here,” Sebastian tells him. “I’m here. Don’t cry.”

 “Do you…you remember me? Us?” Chris gulps in a breath, fractured and frantic. “Seb…”

 “I think so. I…” He curls fingers slowly around Chris’s hand. “I love you. You…you own me. No. You say you don’t…you used to say I belong to you, but only because I want to, because I decide that. And you’d smile when you said it, and I’d laugh, because of course I belong to you…”

 “All of that,” Chris breathes. “You remember that…”

 “I think I do. I’m so tired.” Footsteps approach, running. Sebastian doesn’t stir. Chris—his dominant, still holding the key to his collar—will protect him. Will know what to do. “Please don’t leave me. Sir. I need—I don’t want to be alone.”

 Not good protocol. Not behaving well. Asking for things. Being needy. But Chris—his Chris, not the undercover persona—wants him to ask, wants to know what he needs. He thinks he remembers that—or does he? Maybe that was someone else. Someone who wanted him to beg.

 “I’m not leaving you.” Chris’s voice sounds odd again. Wet. Painful. “I’m not—not ever, never again, Seb, fucking never—I love you, I fucking love you, I’m sorry, I never should’ve said yes to this—to you doing this—should’ve said no, should’ve—I love you. I love you and I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m right here with you, okay?”

 “Yes, sir,” Sebastian whispers back, and holds onto Chris while medically trained agents arrive, while soft professional voices start asking questions and Chris’s voice answers, while hands begin to touch him with Chris’s permission, trying to see whether he’s hurt and how badly. Chris doesn’t let go of him, so that’s okay, this is okay, this is what Chris wants to happen to Sebastian and Sebastian’s body right now.

 Sebastian’s body, trained as it is, reacts as it’s been taught when touched and fondled: knowing medical inspections mean some attention being paid to his hole and maybe if he’s lucky his cock. Maybe they’ll even make him come, the way the doctors sometimes do. That would be nice, if Chris allows it: a hand or a tool in his hole, moving inside him until he feels that inevitable mindless tipping-over inside and fluid starts dripping out of his soft caged cock and everyone seems amused and pleased with how responsive he is—but, no, wait, that’s not these doctors, this team, this Chris…that’s not right, not the right version of himself…none of that should happen now, should it? Does it happen here too? He thinks not, but he’s still naked and collared and Chris bought him and he can’t recall…

 The world lurches. Spins. Fights to return to the recognizable. Chris’s arms stay around him. That feels nice. Chris’s voice, saying things to the doctors, is low and rumbling and tangible. Chris fills up the world and becomes everything.

 Sebastian closes his eyes again and breathes in and out. He loves Chris. Chris loves him. He’ll be safe again now with Chris. They’ve saved people and that’s good, he’s done something good, he’s been good, and everything’ll be all right. He believes that.

[chicgeekgirl89]

After the End: Chapter 12- The Shop

Fandom: Harry Potter

Characters: Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, George Weasley

Read Chapters 1-11 Here

                                         XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“George asked me to go into the shop today. The holiday crowds are picking up and they need all the help they can get,” Ron said. “I’m so sorry, but I’ll be back before dinner—“

“Can I come with you?”

Ron paused in packing up his lunch. “Come with me where?”

“To the shop.”

Ron looked at her blankly. “George’s shop?”

“Unless you’re working at some other shop,” Hermione said wryly.

“I er…why?” asked Ron.

“To see you work.”

“It’s not that interesting.”

She sighed at him impatiently and secretly it lifted his spirits. She’d seemed much more herself in the last day or two, enough so that he felt all right about going back to work. “You always downplay yourself Ron, you need to stop doing that. I haven’t been to the shop in months, I think it would be interesting to see you and George working.”

“Don’t you think you should stay here and rest?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well it’s not like I’ll be dancing ballet and using defensive spells all over is it? I’ll just sit quietly in your office.”

Ron snorted. “You have never sat quietly anywhere.”

She frowned at him. “I’m coming with you. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

He threw his hands up and called after her, “We don’t need to leave for half an hour!”

They apparated directly into his office. “It’s er…not very clean right now,” said Ron, as he hurriedly attempted to straighten a stack of papers on his desk. 

“Is it ever clean?” she asked with a knowing smile. “I know this is how you work. It’s not my preference but if it works for you then…that’s fine.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said.

“Ron, did you—oh, hello Hermione,” said George as he stuck his head in the office.

“Hi George,” she said.

“Feeling better then?”

“A bit yes.”

“Good. That’s good. Are you finally leaving that blasted school and taking a job here?” he asked with a grin.

“I think we can all agree my temperament isn’t exactly suited for a joke shop.”

“Too right,” George said. “Ron, did you get the invoices for that big order from last week?”

“They were supposed to owl them over last night,” Ron said. “I’ll check with Daisy.”

“Great, leave them on my desk when you’ve got them.”

“Will do.”

“Good to see you Hermione,” said George, tossing her a last smile before he disappeared back into the hallway.

“Come on then, I’ll give you the tour before we open,” Ron said, taking her hand and leading her onto the balcony hallway that overlooked the store. “So that’s my office, obviously. And then George’s is down there, he’s got the window, git.”

“Oi! It’s my bloody shop!” George yelled from somewhere out of sight.

“Yeah, yeah.” Ron rolled his eyes. “So then this is the workshop.”

He opened the door between the two offices to reveal an absolutely enormous workroom. Several long tables ran down the center with all sort of experiments and bits and bobs along them. Unlike Ron’s office this was extremely neat and tidy. “So this is where George works on new product. I wouldn’t touch anything,” he said hastily as she stepped closer to the first table.

“This is fascinating,” Hermione said excitedly. “George really is a genius, some of the things in here are absolutely incredible magic.”

“Yeah he spends a fair amount of time in here,” said Ron. “Loves fiddling around. I think he sleeps here sometimes.”

There was a touch of worry in his voice but he quickly moved past it. “Come on. I want to show you the floor.”

They walked down the spiral staircase to the main floor of the shop, which was even grander than Hermione remembered. Everything was bedecked in Christmas decorations; wreaths that twinkled and changed color, spinning Christmas trees on every counter, and a massive sign that flashed Naughty or Nice when someone stood underneath it. Hermione suspected it might be rigged when she walked by and it flashed “Very Naughty” at her and recommended some adult-only products. “You’ve moved the registers,” she observed.

“Yeah, I thought with the layout it might be better for traffic flow through the shop,” said Ron. “And it’s closer to the stock room so if we have to pull something from there for a customer it goes a lot quicker.”

“Seems like a good choice.”

The front door opened, letting in a blast of cold air and a young woman with curly blonde hair stepped inside. “Good morning Mr. Weasley,” she said, unwrapping her scarf.

“Morning Daisy. And it’s just Ron,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Hermione Granger. Hermione, this is our head clerk Daisy.”

“Oh it’s so lovely to meet you!” said Daisy brightly, shaking Hermione’s hand. “Mr. Weasley and Mr. Weasley have talked so much about you. Mr. Weasley the most obviously.”

“Er, right,” said Hermione. “Lovely to meet you as well.”

“Well I’ll just get on with opening procedures then Mr. Weasley,” said Daisy, scurrying away.

“Does that get confusing, her calling you and George both Mr. Weasley?” Hermione asked as they walked back upstairs.

“Incredibly,” said Ron. “We’ve told her to call us Ron and George but she just won’t. Personally I think she can’t remember which of us is which. But she’s really good with customers and keeps a cool head so we just let her go.”

As soon as the shop opened it was flooded with people. Hermione could hear the din from upstairs in the office as Ron worked and she sat quietly, sometimes reading a book, but mostly just watching him. It was mesmerizing. Never before had she seen him so confident, so sure of himself. A great lump of pride lodged itself in her chest as she watched him deal with bills, sort out a mess of an order form, and bicker with George about the price of a large shipment of Doxie dung.

“Mr. Weasley?” Daisy poked her head into the office. 

“You can call me Ron, Daisy,” he reminded her again.

“Right, well, Angus just sent an owl, he’s ill and won’t be in today, which means we’re short two clerks since Eloise already left for her holiday.”

Ron nodded. “I’ll come down in just a minute.”

Hermione closed her book. “You’re going to help downstairs?”

“Yeah sometimes when the shop is crazed George and I take turns running the front. What?” he asked when she continued to look at him.

“I’m just so proud of you,” she said, instantly making his ears go red. “I always knew you could do something like this and here you are just…doing it all so wonderfully.”

“Er, thanks.”

Hermione stood at the railing of the walkway and watched as Ron filled orders, took payments, and restocked the shelves even as dozens of customers continued to pour into the shop. “Ma’am,” he said calmly, “I understand that you don’t like the smell of the product your son bought, but he did buy it and it is intended to stink up your entire home in less than five seconds. It says so right on the packaging.”

“Well why was it sold to him in the first place?” the woman yelled. “He’s a child!”

“Ma’am we can’t control the products our patrons buy except for our items specifically labeled ages seventeen and up, which Weasley’s Fantastic Farting Fumigators are not.”

“My house has been stinking for a week!”

“Again, I’m terribly sorry that you don’t like the product. I’m just going to have you go see Daisy right there and she’s going to process a full refund for you, all right?”

“Well,” the woman grumbled, “that’s just fine then I suppose.”

“Excellent, right to the register then. Happy Christmas and all that. Daisy! Full refund! I’m heading back upstairs all right?”

“Candy cane?”

George leaned up against the railing next to her, the offered sweet in his hand. Hermione had been on the receiving end of enough Weasley pranks that she knew better. She raised her eyebrows at him. “What flavor is it? Liver or something?”

“Actually it’s dirty socks, but good guess,” said George with a grin. “Like what you see?” He nodded toward the floor where Ron was now helping a little boy reach something on a top shelf.

Hermione smiled as six boxes fell and Ron tried to catch them all at once. “He’s doing a brilliant job.”

“I don’t know what I’d have done without him all these months,” said George. “Without—“ he swallowed, “you know. It’s just been good that he’s here.” 

He looked sideways at Hermione. “Don’t go telling him that though he’ll get all big headed and think he deserves a raise or something.”

“You could just tell him you know,” Hermione said. “It might do you both some good to speak your minds for once.”

George’s gaze softened. “He knows.” He straightened. “I was kidding, it’s Christmas pudding flavored,” he said, handing Hermione the candy cane.

He walked away and she gave it a sniff. It certainly smelled all right, but heaven knew it would probably make her turn into a Christmas tree or something.

Ron bounded back up the stairs around lunchtime when the crowd died down a bit, stopping short when he saw Hermione standing at the railing. “I thought you were reading.”

“It was more fun to watch you,” she said. 

“All in a day’s work,” said Ron. “We here at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes aim to please or your money back.”

“Is that George’s idea?”

“Actually it’s mine. Got to give the customer what they want, even if they’re wrong. Besides, I’d rather lose a couple sickles than have raging customers in here all day. Not good for business to have people yelling about what a nightmare our products can be.”

“That seems very wise.”

“Well I have been known to do all right on occasion. Apparently I do a bit better when I can sort of be my own boss.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I always knew you would be brilliant. I’m glad I got to see it for myself.”

Ron’s ears turned red. “What’s that you’ve got?” he said, hastily changing the subject.

Hermione held up the candy cane. “George gave it to me.”

“You didn’t eat it did you?”

“No. I’m a bit smarter than that.”

“Good. It’ll turn your tongue green and make you do nothing but sing carols the rest of the day.”

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Black Coffee (chapter two)

Thank you so much for your response to this fic, I’m so glad people like it. Special thanks to @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian

If you enjoyed this, lease consider leaving a comment on Ao3 or donating to my ko-fi page! It really means a lot. 

Chapters: 1

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Percy hadn’t dressed for a date in a very long time.

In fact, when he thought about it, he didn’t think he ever had. He’d only ever had one relationship, back at boarding school, and he’d only had two outfit choices back then. School uniform or rugby kit. Somehow he didn’t think he’d still be able to pull that off at thirty.

He rifled through his wardrobe one more time, metal clacking reproachfully with each poor offering. Too boring…too stuffy…oil stains…oil stains…ripped…

With a noise of frustration he hiked his bath towel further up his hips, it had started to slip. The only clothes he seemed to own were either designed for a mansion’s ballroom or not fit to be seen outside his workshop. Maybe he had time to go into town and pick something new but even then, what sort of thing should he get?

Percy ran a hand through his hair. He probably wasn’t supposed to be thinking like this. This wasn’t a real date, it was a service. Why was he so concerned with looking good for Vax’ildan, when the half elf likely thought of this as work rather than anything recreational?

“This whole thing was supposed to help you relax a little,” he grumbled at his reflection, half visible in the full length mirror that hung on the back of the door, “Not stress you out more.”

His reflection didn’t seem to have an answer for that. It just stared back at him, eyes large and owlish without his glasses, hair sticking up after the shower. Living off takeaway food whenever he actually remembered he needed to eat clearly wasn’t doing him a lot of favours; where he wasn’t rail thin he was more round than he wanted to be. He was a very unhealthy kind of pale, everywhere except the very ill thought out tattoos he’d gotten when he was younger.

In short, he looked like no one’s dream date.

Part of Percy wanted so desperately to turn off the lights and crawl back under his blankets. Or maybe go to his workshop- the larger room in his penthouse that was really supposed to be the master bedroom- and lose himself in cogs and wires and screws. There would always be an answer there. There was always a way to make things fit, a solution he understood. He’d find no such certainty out there, stumbling awkwardly through a facsimile of a relationship.

That part of him was dangerously close to winning when he turned and saw his laptop, a sleek and black machine on his sleek and black sheets, still open, it’s glow reproving and impatient. Percy’s email was still open, the cursor blinking away on the still stubbornly blank message.

Cassandra had emailed him two days ago now. A short and to the point email, appearing cold to anyone who didn’t know his sister but Percy knew how to read the concern in those few words, asking how her brother was, what he was up to. He knew the words that weren’t written as plainly but were there nonetheless. I’m worried about you. Please tell me you’re at least a little bit okay.

She was halfway across the country now, studying at a good university though Percy could picture the horror on his father’s face if he ever heard his only remaining daughter had wandered outside of the Ivy League. But Cassandra hadn’t been concerned about prestige. She’d wanted distance.

She’d run from their parent’s city as quickly as Percy had become welded to it.

He hadn’t replied yet, hence the empty page. Because what the fuck was he supposed to say?

Hi Cassie, glad to hear you’re doing well and achieving all your dreams and making me so proud even though I’m too much of an emotionally constipated arse to show it. I’ve done absolutely nothing since you left, short of skipping counselling, talking to screwdrivers more than living things, moving like a robot through the activities I think our parents would want me to do and haunting our father’s penthouse like some depraved Phantom of the Opera. Keyleth’s still around though, I continue to be a shitty friend to her. Lots of love, your worthless brother.

Percy groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, where there were always two perfect red indentations from his glasses.

Admittedly, hiring someone to have sex and play romance with you wasn’t the sort of thing that he was going to put in an email to his sister. But he’d be able to say he’d left the house. He was meeting new people. He was doing things.

He’d be able to say he was getting a little closer to being okay.

Decisively, Percy closed his laptop but reached for his phone, lying on the nightstand where it had woken him up a full five hours before his date. It took less than two minutes to send a text to Keyleth.

Want to go shopping with me? Need a date outfit.

Vax woke up, as he often did, with a mouthful of fur.

“Urgh,” he groaned, shoving against the great weight on his chest, “Trinket, get off, you’re disgusting.”

Of course it didn’t come out as coherent as that, seeing as his brain wasn’t fully awake. But that was what he’d intended to say.

The large dog whined, not enjoying being evicted from the nice warm bed, landing on the floor with a thump after a dedicated shove from Vax. Neither of them were sure what kind of dog the enormous, dark brown ball of fluff was but all he knew was that he was a hell of a lot bigger than the shelter and his sister had promised he’d be.

“Don’t be mean to my dog!” his sister yelled from the next room, hearing the thump.

“Then tell your horse to stop smothering me in my sleep! If you’re going to try and assassinate me, be a little more creative,” Vax shot back, though he was frowning. His sister was still here? What time was it?

He clawed around for his phone, eventually plucking it from his many blankets, though not until he’d come up with a lipstick, a sock and a chewed up tennis ball. According to the screen, still perfectly functioning even with the hairline crack through it, it was nearly eleven.  

Not bad for Vax’ildan. He’d been averaging noon the last few weeks.

Still on his screen were the messages he’d been exchanging with Percy last night. Though it didn’t say Percy on the text windows, he’d decided to keep the name Orthax in a fit of romanticism and intrigue, with an emoji of a red flower beside it. It was very much a tulip and not a carnation but it was the closest he could get.

They’d been texting quite comfortably in the day since they’d first met up and had set their first proper date for that afternoon. Which, shit the bed, Vax now only had an hour and a half to get ready for.

Cursing, he jumped up, staggering a little when his legs momentarily forgot they were legs, surging forward into the room that was half their kitchen, half their living room and too small to be either. His sister was sitting on the sofa, not even dressed for work, reading a book while petting Trinket’s ear. The dog was whining and making himself look very hard done by, probably to get Vax even further in trouble.

“Why aren’t you at work?” Vax paused, “Did you burn the bakery down?”

Vex worked half a hundred odd jobs around the city, often going straight from one to the other, changing her uniforms in the subway bathrooms. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked the early shifts at a bakery a few blocks away, putting in the morning bread and folding croissants. Often she’d come home with some misshapen goodies for supper, making that Vax’s favourite of her jobs.

Not that he really enjoyed seeing his sister run herself ragged, coming in at ridiculous hours to snatch what sleep she could and still struggling to make rent, rarely having the time to do the one thing she really enjoyed- volunteering at the animal shelter.

Though maybe if she did spend more time there, she’d come home with more dogs. Vax could live without that.

Vex wrinkled her nose and swatted at him, “They’re installing new ovens. I’m not the one who put a fork in the microwave last week.”

Vax tried to look offended as only someone entirely guilty of what they were being accused of could, “It was a rare lapse in judgement…”

After a very pointed eye roll, Vex jerked her thumb in the direction of the kitchen counter, “A package came for you, by the way.”

Knowing he still had very little time to get ready but curiosity piqued, Vax wandered over to see a small, brown paper package with his address inked in a very neat hand. He unwrapped it, thinking how he hadn’t had any post for so long, feeling that nostalgic rush of excitement like a little kid with a birthday present.

Inside he found a bag of coffee. The kind Caduceus made and sold at his café. And written on a little post it, right on the front was the same handwriting as the address and suddenly the neatness of the hand seemed so perfect, fitting the voice that accompanied it.

Good morning! See you soon xx P

“What are you doing, you goof?”

Vax had been grinning ridiculously wide for a long time before he even realised he was doing it and his sister’s remark made him suddenly grasp what an idiot he must seem. And how he definitely hadn’t been planning on explaining his new situation this soon. Or with foggy, just-woke-up brain.

“Uh…” he looked up, “Just…a present. From a friend.”

Vex narrowed her eyes, “A friend? What kind of friend?”

“The kind that sends me coffee,” Vax tried to look haughty, “Do you want some or not?”

“That seems very…niche.”

“And?” Vax could feel his voice getting higher and more defensive and entirely less convincing, “Look, no time, I have to get ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Gods above, what’s with the third degree this morning? Tie me down and shine a line in my eyes, why don’t you?”

Vex’ahlia watched her brother storm off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him as if he had anything to be incensed about. She sighed and turned back to Trinket as he heavily put his head in his mama’s lap.

“As long as it’s nothing illegal…” she murmured to him.

The dog blinked large brown eyes at her.

“You’re right, it probably is,” Vex groaned.  

Vax reappeared a little while later, he never stayed in the shower for long. He marched past, towel cinched under his arms, going in front of the sofa so his sister couldn’t miss how he tossed his dripping wet hair and sniffed huffily. He slammed the door of his bedroom, leaving behind a scent that was unmistakably Vex’s favourite, treat day only shampoo.

She resolved to steal some of his coffee as soon as he was gone.

Vax had decided early on to meet always Percy somewhere other than his apartment.

There were a good long list of reasons for this. It would save Percy from being crushed to death under 250 pounds of affection starved dog. It would avoid him coming into contact with Vex, which would only lead to awkward questions and maybe Percy having an arrow fired at him if he startled her on her way to her archery class.

And, most importantly, Vax didn’t want him seeing his place. Not that he was ashamed or anything, he just didn’t want to feel like he had to defend it from someone who clearly lived in penthouses and country mansions. He and his sister had worked so hard to get the life they had now, earning their independence and freedom with tears and sleepless nights. It would always be sweet to them, even if it was poky, cluttered and had a damp problem they couldn’t get rid of.

Vax didn’t want to see everything they’d won look shabby and insignificant through someone else’s eyes; it would taste too much of Syldor. He didn’t think he’d be able to hold back his anger if that happened.

He’d never heard of the restaurant Percy offered to take him to, but he managed to find it and seated himself nice and obviously on the railings across the street. After two minutes of watching the place, Vax realised why he’d never been there. It was so far out of his price range, it may as well have been in a neighbouring galaxy.

He looked down at himself, his large boots and artfully ripped jeans (done by Vex after he put one of the knees through) and loose striped jumper in black and grey. His heart sank as he realised he really wasn’t dressed for this kind of place.

“Vax’ildan!”

His voice was full of warmth, he sounded genuinely delighted to see him. That alone would have caused the delicate, rosy blush on the tips of his pointed ears, if he hadn’t also looked drop dead gorgeous.

Their last meeting, there had definitely been handsomeness lurking under the exhaustion and nerves but this time Percy wasn’t hiding it, he was wearing it plain on his face. His hair was trimmed and smoothed over one side, everything underneath a white buzz that looked almost silver in the afternoon sun. His jaw was clean shaven however, taking years off him in an instant.

And he was wearing a suit. Vax suddenly realised he liked men in suits.

“Percy,” he stood, smiling, accepting the embrace that came his way. Gods, he even smelled expensive.

“I feared I’d imagined how handsome you were last time,” Percy dropped his voice to a more intimate volume as he pulled away, a smile pulling one side of his mouth up, “Apparently not.”

Vax’s ears coloured even more and he was suddenly glad he always styled his hair to cover them.

That’s how they were doing things, huh?

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he smirked, resting a hand on Percy’s hip, “You look lovely, by the way.”

Percy’s confidence suddenly slipped and he gave a bashful smile, “My friend helped me choose it. She’s way better at that sort of stuff than me.”

Vax’s smile became warmer. He found he liked self-assured Percy and awkward nerd Percy. They were less two sides of a coin and more a changeable day of weather in the same sky.

“Well my compliments to her for choosing it and you for looking so good in it,” he grinned, sliding his arm through Percy’s, “Though you’re going to look even better next to me. I forgot who I was going to lunch with…”

Percy stopped, dismay crashing over his expression, “Oh…Vax, I’m so sorry, I didn’t…I didn’t think, I’m sorry if I made you feel like that…”

Vax grimaced, “Percy, no…bad joke, sorry. It’s fine. Though…if there’s a dress code, we might not be getting in…”

“I, um…” Percy coloured a little, “I don’t get turned away from places.”

“Of course not,” Vax looked down at his boots, drawing away from him.  

“And…well,” Percy looked through the windows, into the warm exterior of the restaurant, “All those people in there are very well dressed. And I’d much rather spend an evening with you than any one of them. Funny, isn’t it?”

Vax lifted his eyes, so startled it took a few seconds for laughter kicked in, sudden and bright.

“Gods and I thought you were flattering me before…”

“There’s flattery and then there’s truth,” Percy smiled and for a moment, both kinds of weather could be seen in the sky like sun shining through drizzle. It was fairly beautiful.

Once enveloped in the warm, rustic Italian ambiance of the restaurant, the two of them began to talk, each of them surprised by how much they were sharing.

Vax learned that Percy also had a sister, though he didn’t live with her, younger than he was. Neither of them said a word about parents and both were happy with that arrangement. He learned Percy was thirty, had played rugby at his all boys school and would still like to but he didn’t know any teams nearby. He learned he had a mild addiction to video games, was allergic to shellfish and was kind to waitstaff.

Percy learned Vax’ildan preferred red wine to white, partly for the aesthetic which he happily confessed. He learned he’d been out as trans for three years, had been dancing since he was ten and thought tap was a criminally underrated art medium. He had just about every possible ear piercing going, which he shyly showed Percy after a little cajoling, always preferred the second act of a musical to the first and was a very fast eater.

“So…” Percy eventually broached, once he’d finished the last of his affogato, “What would you say to going back to my place after this?”

Vax stopped wondering if there was a subtle way to lick the last smears of chocolate off his plate and looked up, smiling easily, “Of course. Sounds lovely.”

He did a little internal check and found no lingering reservations. Have some probably average at best sex with a handsome, affable guy? He’d heard of worse ways to make rent.

As they walked to Percy’s car, Vax felt his phone buzz in his pocket, a message from his sister.

Are you okay? What do you want to do for dinner?

Vax felt a rush of guilt. He probably should have made sure there were leftovers to take home for her. That was the usual policy when one of them went on a date. The arancini had just tasted so damn good, he’d forgotten.

Sorry, I just ate with a friend. Don’t worry about me.

Less than two minutes later, a reply.

The same friend you mentioned this morning?

Vax narrowed his eyes.

None of your beeswax.

And yes.

“Okay, this is me.”

Vax knew nothing about cars but he could read luxury in the sleek lines of black metal, the silvered wink of axel and ridiculous hood ornament, “Woah…”

“Cars are kind of the one thing I let myself get a little crazy over,” Percy admitted, opening the passenger door for him, “Benefits of having money and being a bit of a nerd for engineering.”

“Yeah well,” Vax shrugged, “You should see my Metro card. It’s pretty swish.”

Percy laughed, sliding in behind the wheel and bringing the engine to life. Vax wondered quietly when the last time someone drove him somewhere was, when he wasn’t left to get wherever he wanted to go on his own two feet.

Of course it was impossible to get to any kind of speed, driving in a city as dense as this, though there was enough power in just the purr of the engine to make Vax anxious if Percy wasn’t such a methodical driver. His hands rarely left the wheel, flitting from here to there when they had to but always returning, blue eyes aware and fixed ahead.

He went to turn on the radio…though drew his hand back after a pause, “Actually…we should probably have a talk about this.”

“About what?” Vax tilted his head.

“Well…about what kind of things we like? About what we don’t like?” Percy bit his lip, “You know. In bed.”

“Oh right,” Vax waited for Percy to say more though none came and he assumed it was his turn first. Clearly Percy’s poised manner of speaking was struggling with talking about sex.

He thought for a moment, deciding to be a little more honest than he was anticipating, a little surer in getting a good reaction, “I don’t usually like being penetrated. Some days I’m down for it but they’re few and far between. Mouth down there is fine but if you’re careful about, you know, the words you use, nothing too specific…I’d appreciate that.”

Percy nodded, still watching the road carefully though he was clearly listening intently, “Okay. Well, that makes what I was going to ask you a lot simpler.”

Vax hummed curiously, prompting him with a look.

Cheeks now fully red, Percy managed to force out in a rush, “I was going to ask if you fancied fucking me?”

Vax gave a bark of delighted laughter, “Atta boy, that wasn’t so hard, huh?”

“Shut up,” Percy was still the colour of Vax’s wine but laughter was bubbling up, “Take this as a warning for the level of inexperience you’re dealing with. In fact, that’s part of the reason why I got in contact with you. Your job is to help me introduce a little bit of…variety into my bedroom. How does that sound?”

Vax grinned, tucking one leg up to his chest, “That sounds like something we can definitely do.”

Vax knew he should be impressed. How could he not be, after seeing the sheer size of the apartment block, a dizzying behemoth of glass and steel that warped perspective in a sickening way, and the opulence of the foyer, everything modern and styled with an effortless hand.

And he was, for a very brief moment. When the elevator doors slid open, right into Percy’s living room and he was shocked by the vista from the wrap around windows, the city wreathed in dusk like a watercolour painting that needed two glances to see was really real, he was too awestruck to speak.

And then all he could think was that this didn’t feel like a home. It felt unlived in. It was like an Ikea showroom, fun to imagine lounging around in but it was sterile and barren. Like a hotel room, like somewhere kept exclusively by a businessman for when he was in the city. Nowhere to really live.

And, as he took him on a tour that didn’t take very long because there was very little in the apartment, Percy looked so lonely. Everything around him seemed too big, making him look like a little kid playing at being his father. Vax watched him rattle around in the black leather, polished silver, exposed brickwork rooms, feeling a strange sense of pity that he couldn’t pin down.

“And this is the bedroom…” Percy pushed back the door, holding it for Vax.

Not my room. The bedroom.  

It did have a little more life to it, a good amount of mess that had clearly been hurriedly tidied away that morning. Books, a small TV clearly only there for the benefit of the games console resting against it, half-finished projects of cogs and soldered pipes, blue prints tacked up on the walls that were so detailed and covered in scribbled notes they were incomprehensible to Vax. There was even something living, a plant on the windowsill with brilliant white blooms that were jug shaped and gave off a wonderful smell, kind of like a lily.

“What’s this?” Vax asked, stroking one of its wide, shiny green leaves.

“Oh,” Percy took off his suit jacket, hanging it idly on the door, “A present from my friend, Keyleth. She’s a druid, spends all her time minding the wildlife in the national park outside the city, breeds her own new strains when the mood takes her. She named that one after me as a bit of a joke.”

“What’s the joke?” Vax’s ears picked up with interest.

Percy stopped in the middle of taking off his tie, looking like he wished he hadn’t said anything, “Oh, it’s, um…kind of an inside thing…”

“You are not getting away with that, absolutely no chance,” Vax raised an eyebrow, folding his arms determinedly.

“Gods, I wanted to wait as long as possible before I had to tell you this,” Percy pinched the bridge of his nose, knocking his glasses askew, “We haven’t even had sex yet…”

“I promise I’ll still have sex with you!” Vax wheedled, kneeling on the bed, leaning towards him eagerly, “Tell me!”

“It’s…I’m going to murder Keyleth…it’s called the Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III Lilium…I mean, the lilium part isn’t in my name obviously…that’s the plant…”

Vax paused, carefully controlling his expression, “Oh…”

Percy winced, “Are you still willing to have sex with me?”

“You said you’d pay my rent, right?”

“Yes.”

“We can still have sex.”

Percy looked abashed for a moment until Vax couldn’t maintain his composure and burst out laughing, soon catching his riotous cackling in spite of himself.

Once they’d caught their breath, Percy found himself down to his shirt and pants, the next step in undressing rather a major one, “Mind if I…?”

Vax gave an encouraging gesture, perching on the sheets, eyes interested. The being watched, the sudden irrefutable presence of another heartbeat in the room, another set of eyes on him that hadn’t been there before, had something inside him stirring.

He couldn’t say any more than that yet. Just something. But he wanted to chase after it.

He took his shirt off slowly, methodically, not yanking it off and tossing it to one side like he normally would. He was suddenly so aware of everything, every single movement he made, every inch of newly revealed skin.

“Nice ink,” was the only comment Vax made as he abandoned shirt and trousers. But there was a spark of hunger in his almost black eyes and his pupils were widening by the second.

“Thank you,” Percy smirked, hooking his thumbs under the band of his boxer shorts, “I hate them. Relic of my misspent early twenties.”

“You’ll have to tell me about them one day,” the half elf returned easily, somehow the epicentre of the charged, wanton tension in the room despite being fully clothed down to the boots, “Now the underwear. Please.”

Percy swallowed hard, feeling something not unlike fireworks in his chest. He slid down the last bit of fabric preventing him from being completely and utterly naked (though he wasn’t sure if glasses counted) in front of another person in years.

“Well well…” Vax’s voice was a murmur though it hit Percy like electricity, “You’re a very handsome man, Percival.”

Percy didn’t want to admit how good those words made him feel, his body responding in kind, electricity gathering low in his stomach and between his legs, “Now you, please?”

Vax hopped up happily. Whereas Percy had been shy, methodical, aware of every move he made, his partner was haphazard and eager as if this was all very commonplace.

Though he stopped when Percy blurted, “That’s a little small, isn’t it?”

Vax froze, looking down at himself, only wearing his flesh coloured binder and his boxers. He didn’t enjoy this transition period and stopping still during it was jarring, “What?”

“Your…sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Percy bit his lip, “Your binder. It’s a little too small for you?”

“Well…” Vax shifted, “Yeah, I could do with the next size up but…this one still does the job, I guess. How do you even know that?”

“My boyfriend at boarding school was trans,” Percy explained quickly, “I did my research back then.”

“Oh,” Vax’s defensiveness drained away and he relaxed into the unfamiliar but welcome luxury of not feeling like a novelty, “Well remembered, then.”

It came off shortly after, anyway, along with his underwear. The look on Percy’s face was flattering to say the very least.

Oh yeah, both men had the exact same thought at the exact same time, unbeknownst to each other, I chose well.

“I ordered it on kind of a whim so I hope it’ll fit…”

Vax gave himself a long, indulgent look in the mirror. The harness was real leather and steel, the metal excitingly cold against his flesh, all of it cradling his hips perfectly. The toy itself was black, as if to match the straps that held it in place and married it to his body, black as Vax’s hair.

There was a lovely synergy to the whole look.

“Wicked,” he grinned, not really having heard a word Percy was saying.

He turned and gently pushed him back onto the bed, stopping his anxious muttering, turning it into soft gasp, so soft for such an angular man. Percy looked lovely against the black silk of his expansive bed, so startlingly pale, like he was negative space in the middle of the world.

Vax personally thought the best angle to view a lover from was while pinning them to the surface you were about to fuck them on. And Percy certainly didn’t disappoint, pupils as dilated as an excited cat, red flush spreading down from his cheeks across his chest like ink dropped in milk. Vax could watch as the breath caught in his throat.

A perfect time for a first kiss. And so that’s what he did.

He tasted of wine, white wine, but Vax thought he could learn to bear that t when it came from someone else’s lips. Percy’s hand came up and held him just right, resting right there on the nape of his neck, thumb close enough to feel his racing pulse. His own hand moved down and Percy’s long legs parted so easily for him, letting him feel that softer, warmer skin, the more tender parts of him.

The sweet man was hard enough to be steadily leaking pre already. It must have been a while since he’d had someone. Vax gave him a teasing squeeze but continued down, he had a job to do right now and was determined to do it well.

“Easy, sweetling, I just need to…” Vax gasped, their kiss having left his lungs burning around the edges. He snatched up the bottle of lube helpfully left on the nightstand, though with the immense size of the bed it was a bit of a reach. It was cool against his fingers, thick, the oddly scentless scent of it catapulting him back to other places, other bodies, other faces. To realising sex could be a lot of fun, to rediscovering himself under the hands of others.

He would always love it.

“Just get you good and ready…” he murmured, voice breathy and soft. All Percy could do was moan.

Turns out Percy was tight in more than just personality. But Vax’s fingers knew their business well and carefully, so carefully, he made the man underneath him yield. Percy whimpered as Vax’s fingers breached him, slick and cold, igniting everything inside him that had been waiting anxiously for the spark it needed.

“Vax’ildan…” he gasped, fingers tightening in the sheets and the tightly curled hair at the nape of his lover’s neck.

“It’s okay,” the whisper came in return, “Relax, deep breaths…”

Percy followed his instructions, feeling the thrill of giving himself over to someone else’s control. Evening had stolen away when neither of them were looking and the room had quickly become dark so everything was down to just shapes, devoid of detail.

He felt, rather than saw, Vax’s heart beat faster, teasing his own, beckoning for it to follow. He felt their skin pressed together, growing hot. He heard the smile in Vax’s voice, he felt the creeping cold of more lube running between his cheeks, he smelt sex and sweat and something amber sweet in Vax’s hair. He felt his muscles loosen, melting, becoming Vax’s to reshape as he chose.

“Ready for me?” the half elf whispered in his ear, the hand that wasn’t half buried in Percy resting delicately on his chest, almost chastely in bizarre contrast to the fingers that still rocked inside him, coming achingly close to his prostate but very deliberately not getting there.

“I need you,” Percy moaned, nerves prickling at the neediness in his own voice, the pleading.

Vax caught it too, teeth flashing in the gloom as he grinned, “Good boy.”

Not finishing in that moment took all of Percy’s brainpower, leaving him only enough to whimper, hoping that brought across how much he really, really liked that.

Vex shifted, pressing the rounded tip of the toy a breath into Percy, giving a feather soft groan as the pressure brought the other end of the toy flush against where he needed it. Percy himself swallowed back another whine, feeling the sweet stretch of his entrance. Obediently, he hooked his hands behind his knees and brought them to his chest, leaving himself even more open and exposed, offering himself completely.

He got exactly what he wanted. Vax moved further into him, hips finding a comfortable depth then rocking back and forth.

“Gods, that feels good…” Percy’s eyelids fluttered, his voice a smoky rasp, “Deeper…”

“I’m getting there,” Vax sounded delighted, “Let’s not walk before we can run or you’re not going to be able to do either tomorrow.”

But his thrusts were getting deeper, more deliberate, hitting both of their sweet spots at the same time. Percy began to keen at the apex of each one and soon Vax was grunting and gasping along with him, arms starting to shake and fingers starting to claw at the sheets.

“Can you come just from this? Just from having me in your ass?” Vax panted, whole body taut as a drawn bow.

Percy nodded, fingers leaving white marks in his own legs, “Yes, gods, I’m there, I’m coming…”

Vax grinned, timing it perfectly as he leaned in and kissed him deeply, hitting his prostate directly, swallowing Percy’s loud, shaky moan of release as he shuddered through his own.

It was a while before either of them could marshal words but Vax got there first, “And how was that, Percival Frankenstein von Whatever Lilypants?”

Percy made a sound that probably would have managed to be a laugh if he had any breath, “Damn that fucking plant…”

Giggling, Vax drew out of him and rolled onto his back, the whole room tipping around him and settling a little lopsided but he didn’t care.

“So…” Percy rolled over, lying on his stomach, probably getting the sheets filthy but that was already done, “I think this is going to work out?”

“Me too,” Vax smiled, “That was good.”

“I did set up the bank transfer, of course,” he added quickly, “I haven’t forgotten. Before the 15th, right?”

Vax hadn’t realised how heavy the stress of making that month’s rent had been, not until it disappeared in that moment.

“Thanks Percy. And the coffee was really sweet of you, by the way.”

Percy smiled and shrugged, though clearly pleased, “I thought it would be a nice way to start, at least until I get a few more ideas.”

Vax thought for a moment, letting himself actually want, trying to remember how that felt, “I like…oh, I like knives!”

As soon as it was out of his mouth he realised how that sounded and he clamped his jaw shut.

Percy looked at him, “Wait…what?”

“Are you absolutely, positively sure?” Vax asked for what must have been the fiftieth time, “It’s going to leave a hole, you know that?”

Sat on the couch in a loosely cinched blue robe, Percy waved a dismissive hand, “I’ll repair any damage. Go ahead.”

“You might have to wave goodbye to your security deposit…” Vax warned, tossing the kitchen knife lightly from hand to hand, getting a better feel for its weight. Not a throwing knife by any means, a lot heavier and clunkier than his own set, but it would do for a demonstration.

“Vax’ildan, my sweet, if I’d ever had one of those it would have been gone years ago,” Percy arched an eyebrow, “But the company owns the building. Let fly.”

Vax laughed, taking aim at the square white pillar, part of the partition between the kitchen and the living space, immaculately painted and polished. And ideal to plant a knife in. He focused, drew in a long slow breath and then released it as his hand flashed forward.

Half a heartbeat later, the knife was buried half to the hilt in the plaster, a disapproving puff of dust and the ghost of a loud thud settling around it.

“Holy shit,” Percy sounded awed and when Vax turned to look at him, he couldn’t help but notice a now familiar blush in his cheeks.

He’d already texted his sister, giving her a heads up that he was sleeping out at a friend’s. It was only half a lie, Percy could probably be considered a friend at this point.

They just wouldn’t be doing a lot of sleeping.

[stylesgalaxy]

mastermind; chapter 9

"Now, turn. Turn, turn, turn! Julia, no! You're hitting the curb!" I yell.

"I'm sorry but I can't see!" she retaliates.

"You need to practise more," I tell her as I take off my seatbelt. We were all officially back from celebrating Christmas with our families. Everyone decided to meet up at the boys' house so we can exchange our gifts since we never got a chance to before Christmas, because of Louis' birthday preparations. And because Julia got that car she wanted for Christmas, we used it to drive here.

I grab my many bags from the trunk while Julia clutches her one bag that contains a gift for Harry and for me. She doesn't know any of the boys well enough to get them a gift but I told her she should at least get them small gift cards because I didn't want her to feel more left out then she already did.

We walk up to the door and Julia rings the bell. Harry opens the door for us and smiles wide before pressing a kiss to Julia's lips.

"Missed you, love," he says to her. She stares back at him lovingly and I feel an odd feelings growing inside of me. I didn't like this.

I think about pushing past Harry to get inside but it's then that he notices me.

"Aria!" he pulls me into an enthusiastic hug, that I can't reciprocate because of the bags in my hand.

"How've you been? It's been a while since I saw you," he says. He actually hasn't seen Julia for longer, but I don't point that out.

"Great! Um, I'm going to put these away, I'll leave you and Julia alone now," I smile and push past him before he can think of a way to keep me around for longer.

I got used to having Harry all to myself that now just seeing him look at Julia the way he always has, makes me sad.

"Aria's here!" Niall shouts and from somewhere behind me. I feel lanky arms wrap around my neck and Niall's head lean on mine.

"Niall," I giggle. "Let me go, I have to put these bags down."

He lets me go as soon as he realizes I'm carrying their presents.

"Let me help you with that!" he eagerly pulls the bags from my hands and runs towards the living room where I can hear Louis and Zayn playing a video game. Niall places the bags by the Christmas tree that they haven't taken down yet. I spot Eleanor sitting on the ground near the couch and watching the boys play with a bored expression on her face. Smiling to myself knowing I'll have someone around that's not a boy or Julia making heart eyes at Harry, I immediately pull my jacket off and leave it at the armrest, plopping down next to her.

"Great company you have there," I nod at Louis and Zayn, who still have no idea that Julia and I arrived.

"I know right, Louis is so attentive," she replies sarcastically. "To be fair though, he gets to see me all the time, he doesn't get to see Zayn as much." Her eyes flick up to someone behind me and she stands. "Oh, hello."

I glance back to see Julia walked in with Harry's arm around her waist. I stand up too.

"Eleanor, this is Julia, my best friend and Harry's girlfriend," I introduce. "Julia, this is Eleanor, Louis' girlfriend."

"Nice to meet you," Julia pulls a surprised Eleanor in for a hug. I know Julia generally doesn't like to touch people she's not close with, so I'm surprised at this too. I conclude that she probably feels left out and wants to make more friends in this house.

"You as well," Eleanor responds. "I'm—"

"Fuck YES! NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" Louis shouts, standing up. "Bring it in, lad!" he high fives Zayn who looks just as giddy. "Wait until the next match, those fuckers won't know what hit 'em!"

Zayn makes eye contact with me and saunters to give me a hug.

"Sorry, love, didn't see you there," his mouth moves against my hair.

"It's alright. You looked like you were having fun, I didn't want to bother you," I say shyly.

"Shall we serve pizza now? Everyone grab a slice before Niall finishes it all!" Harry announces.

We all crowd around the coffee table, piling pizzas on our paper plates. Louis passes the drinks around and Harry runs to the kitchen to grab napkins.

I find a spot for myself on the couch and as soon as my ass touches the cushion, Julia squeezes herself next to me.

"You alright?" I ask her.

"Yeah, I just don't want to be alone," she whispers. I roll my eyes at her.

"We're in a room full of our friends, you've known them for years."

She smiles sheepishly and starts nibbling on her pizza until Harry returns with napkins. He sees no space left for him except the floor.

"Harry, here!" Julia offers her spot. I wonder why she would give up a perfectly good spot for him but my question is answered when he takes her spot and pulls her down to sit in his lap.

Ugh. Now I'm stuck between them and the arm rest.

I finish my pizzas quickly so I can use the excuse that I need to use the restroom before coming back and changing my spot to the one next to Zayn on the floor. Luckily, no one notices.

"Who wants tea?" Louis questions loudly, after everyone is done. We all agree on some tea so he gets up to start on it when I remember the brownies and cookies in the car.

"Oh, I completely forgot the sweets!" I exclaimed. "I made cookies and brownies, but they're still in the car."

Julia stands to offer to get them with me when Eleanor speaks up.

"I can help you bring them in," she offers politely. I smile graciously at her while Julia sits awkwardly back down in Harry's lap. I wish Julia wouldn't feel so awkward because there was nothing to feel awkward about.

"Alright, is everyone ready to open some gifts now?" Niall asks, an excited grin stretched across his face after Eleanor and I return with the sweets and Louis serves his tea.

"Yes!" I shout in excitement. Eleanor laughs next to me.

We begin exchanging gifts. Niall and Louis went first, handing each of us our gifts and watching us open them. Louis got Eleanor a beautiful dress and some makeup and gave Niall a pair of old socks.

"What the fuck?" Niall exclaims. "I actually put some thought into your gift this year!"

We all laugh at poor Niall.

"I'm joking, I'm joking," Louis wheezes out in between laughs. "Here, this is your real gift."

He hands Niall a video games with a neat bow on top. Niall blinks at it then lunges forward to engulf Louis in a hug.

"This is too precious," Harry snickers, and snaps a few photos.

Zayn humbly announces that he wasn't sure what to get any of us so he hoped we liked the chocolates, while we all assured him that it was okay we all loved chocolate.

"Oh but I have something for you," he says to me and hands me a thin wrapped package. My mouth hangs open in shock for a minute, before I remember that he already told me he got me something.

I unwrap the package to reveal two cases of Tombow brushpens.

"Oh my God, you didn't!" I shout. "I thought we sold out of these! How did you get them?!"

"I bought the last ones," he laughed. I smile and engulf him in a hug much like Niall did to Louis. "Thank you!"

Julia wanted to go next. I could tell she was nervous but everyone appreciated the personalized gift cards she got. I was really happy about the makeup brushes, palette, and lipsticks she got me.

"Babe, this is amazing, thank you," Harry says holding the Ted Baker watch in one hand and Best Boyfriend mug in the other. He gave her a kiss on the cheek that had her blushing.

"It's nothing... I thought you would like it," she lies. Only I knew she "thought" Harry would like chocolate and socks.

It's my turn next, so I pass out the gifts I got for everyone. I got Niall a set of shot glasses with four-leafed clovers and drinking game card set. I got Louis assorted tea leaves from David's Tea but none of the fancy drinks, only the basic ones because he likes high quality tea. I got Zayn a magic card set complete with a hat and wand that I thought looked fun, along with a joke book on famous artists. Julia loved her jewelry and bath bombs. I wasn't sure what to get Eleanor but I didn't want her to be left out so I just got her a Sephora gift card and chocolate. Harry was the last to open his gift.

"Is this a Gordon Ramsey cookbook?" he exclaimed. I smile widely at him.

"You impressed me a lot with your vegetable chopping skills the other day so I thought you'd like this," I joke. He laughs loudly while Julia looks between us in confusion. "Oh, I showed him how to make your Beef Barley soup," I tell her.

"Oh," she answers quickly.

"A trivia game? And my favourite chocolates? How did you know?" Harry gushes holding the items up.

"Lucky guess," I shrug. "We'll have to play the trivia game because I'm determined to beat you."

"Oh, like you were going to beat me at Scrabble?" he rolls his eyes playfully.

"Hey, you got lucky!"

"I don't think so, Harry is the worst to play Scrabble with, he never loses," Niall chimes.

"Thank you, Niall," Harry said at the same time I said, "Shut up, Niall." We all burst into laughter as Harry reaches in for the last thing in his bag.

"No fucking way," he says slowly, holding the reusable Starbucks cups with the cute sayings on them.

"It's so you can save the planet!" I chirp, to remind him of the conversation we had about saving the planet.

He stares up at me blankly.

"Open your gift," he demands.

"What?" I ask in confusion.

"Open your gift!" he pushes his gift for me towards me and I quickly scramble to open it unsure of why he was so demanding. My hand closes around a cylindrical container and I pull the exact same Starbucks reusable cups that I gave him.

"No fucking way," I repeat. Our eyes connect and we both burst into laughter. The others join in.

"We're officially heroes," Harry says in a high-pitched voice, through his laughs and I nod firmly. The other realize there's some inside joke going on and don't question it. I notice Julia looking between Harry and I uncomfortably and decide to quickly move on and open whatever else Harry got me.

I pulled out a box of very expensive watercolours with my eyes bugging out.

"Harry, this is—" I sputter, unsure how to accept such a gift.

"For you," he smiles. I stare at him shocked. I glance at Zayn who is nodding appreciatively.

"Really good brand, really good quality," he comments. For once, Harry smiles at something Zayn says.

"Thank you," I say sincerely, trying not to show just how much Harry being supportive of my art and encouraging it, means to me in front of Julia.

"There's one more thing," Harry says. I stick my hand in the bag and pull out a cute little snow globe with a golden deer inside. My memory takes me back to the night I was stressed out and had my breakdown, and Harry was there for me and helped me with the deer idea. How he helped me find parts for it and even assemble it to it's final form. He told me that a deer was Artemis' sacred animal, Artemis who is my favourite goddess. He said I was like her and he admired how I was so independent and he found me hard to impress.

It's a small snow globe, not even the most expensive item in the gift bag, but it meant so much more to me than anything else did.

I think it was this gift that proved to me that Harry will never be just a "friend" to me.

I look up into his eyes with as much sincerity as I could and say, "Thank you." He nods back, being the only the person in the room who can understand what the deer even means to me.

"I don't get it, it's just a snow globe," Julia mutters uncertainly. She's realizing there's something between us that she doesn't know about and I think she doesn't like it.

"Yeah," I mutter. "Just a snow globe."

She doesn't drop her glare. Louis thankfully takes it upon himself to unwrap Harry's gift for him with loud commentary. I play with my new snow globe until I feel Julia's burning gaze off me.

The rest of the night is spent with us joking and laughing and Julia's awkward chuckles. Often times when she says something she looks straight at me because she knows I won't ignore, and I find that I have to explain something to rest of the group so they can be a part of the conversation too. I wish she would understand that all of these people are nice and they would never want her to feel out of place. She was the one putting herself out of place by not making eye contact with anyone but me and Harry.

It's really late when we all finally decide to go home. Julia fell asleep on Harry's shoulder and Niall was yawning every other second.

"We should probably leave now," I suggest when I notice tears in Niall's eyes from how much he was yawning.

"Fucking finally," he mutters. I scoff and throw the plush reindeer he got me at his face. He laughs and catches it throwing it back. "I'm joking. But not really, please leave."

I roll my eyes and start packing my things up. Eleanor and Louis say their goodbyes then head upstairs, so I assume she's staying the night. Niall does the same after giving me a short hug. I ask Zayn how he's getting home and he informs he he'll take an Uber.

"No, don't I'll drop you off. Julia lets me drive her car and I think she's mainly okay with it because I drive it better than she does," I chuckle.

"I'm out of your way," he argues.

"No worries," I assure him. I turn towards Harry to wake up the sleeping Julia and ask her if she wants to stay the night at Harry's or go back home.

"I'll carry her," Harry offers. "I don't want to wake her."

My heart tugs at his how considerate and caring he is. I nod and slip on my jacket. Zayn follows me out to Julia's car and I grab her keys from her jacket that Harry carefully tucked over her. Zayn sits in the passenger seat while Harry places Julia in the backseat and pulls her seatbelt on.

"You're okay to drive?" he asks me.

"'Course," I answer, tugged the driver's door open. He nods and begins to slide in the backseat next to Julia. "Wait, you're coming with us?" I ask alarmed.

"Yeah, I'm gonna stay over at yours tonight," he says casually then closes his door.

Well, fuck. It's a twenty-minute ride to Zayn's house and I hope the two will be okay with each other for that long. Well I know Zayn will, I don't know about Harry.

---

As anticipated, Zayn knew how to behave like a normal adult unlike Harry who had some stick up his ass. He kept asking Zayn weirdly random questions and just being very annoying. I think he was trying to come off as intimidating but it wasn't working very well.

"I don't know what you see in him," is the first thing Harry says to me after we drop Zayn off at his house.

"I don't know what you see in him that makes him so bad," I retort. "He's a nice guy and he's very cool."

Our conversation shifts on the drive back to food of all things. He tells me about some recipes he's excited to try out from his cookbook. We talk about our gifts and the gifts the others got, with chuckles here and there. Before I know it, I'm parking in our garage and he picks Julia up bridal style to carry her upstairs.

"How was your skiing trip?" I ask, holding all of our bags, while he carries a still-asleep Julia.

"It was okay," he says expressionless. I nod and open the door, giving him some time in case he wants to talk more about it.

He doesn't say anything, instead he just takes Julia to her room so I go to mine to change. We both emerge at the same time in much more comfortable clothes. I give him a soft smile then head to the kitchen to make some tea. I'd much rather drop and sleep but I want to be awake in case Harry wants someone to talk to about his trip.

He silently sits at the small table while I make both our drinks. I place the mug with the milk and sugared tea in front of him and keep my black one to myself as I sit next to him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask, bringing the mug to my lips.

He plays with his lips and thinks for a bit. It's like he wants to tell me, he just doesn't know what to say.

"Your sister was there, yeah?" I try again.

"Yeah," he responds immediately. "Actually she brought her fiancée."

"Oh that's nice! What was her fiancée like?"

"Pretty cool, to be honest," he says with a small grin. "I like him. He's funny."

"When are they going to get married?"

"Not any time soon, she said she didn't want to take the spotlight off my father and his girlfriend."

"Spotlight?" I say in confusion.

"They want to get married," he replies monotonously.

"Oh," I say, understanding how upsetting this might be for Harry. Still, I wanted to make sure. "How do you feel about that?"

He looks at me then shrugs.

"Dunno."

"Is she cool? What's her name?"

"Elizabeth. I guess she's okay," he mutters. "She's nothing like my mother," he says firmly. "And she's really young. She's just a few years older than Gemma."

"Well, that's the amazing thing about your mother," I start. His eyes instantly flit up to mine. "She was one of a kind. No one else is going to be like her."

He takes this in for a moment.

"Does she seem nice?"

"Yeah. She's very inclusive with everything she does. I think she just wanted me to want to talk to her. I don't think I was very nice to her," he admits ashamed.

"If she's as nice as she seems, I'm sure she understands why you weren't very nice to her. But you can always apologize or try to be kinder next time."

He sighs and turns away not liking the idea of there being a "next time".

"It's worth a shot isn't it?" I press. "Your father deserves to move on and be happy with someone, if this is the choice he makes then you have to respect that."

"But I don't! I don't respect this decision and I don't respect his choice!"

"Why?" I scowl. I'm struggling to see why he's so intent on making this so difficult for everyone.

"Because it's hard!" he exclaims. "She's replacing my mother. No matter what you say about her not being like my mother, she is replacing her. And I don't want anyone in her spot, no one else deserves it. She thinks she can just be kind and we'll accept her but I can't! She may learn to understand my father but she'll never know Gemma or I like my mother did. So what's the point in trying?"

He bites his lip and fiddles with his hands. His face is turned away from mine in shame for his outburst. Any second now he's going to leave to claim he needs to go to bed. I need to stop him.

I place one hand gently over his, which instantly stops any movement from him. He glances at our hands then up at my face in confusion. My heart is beating a mile a minute and I'm so terrified of his reaction but I continue by wrapping my other hand over his other hand.

"Your feelings are valid. I need you to know that first," I say softly. "You're the only one who can decide how you're feeling. I can't make you feel anything else. I can't understand your position or situation, either. So I apologize if I crossed any line or boundary or offend you in any way. All I can understand is that you don't like the situation."

The more I talk the stupider I feel. Oh god, am I even making sense? Blood rushes to my face and I almost wish I never said anything because if he rejects what I say next, I'll be so embarrassed.

"But it's out of your control. So shouldn't you try to make the best out of it?"

He exhales through his nose and turns away again, shaking his head. I feel shame course through me, but I'm somehow determined to keep trying. I squeeze his hands to make sure he doesn't leave.

"I'm sure if you honestly told your father everything you felt and why you hate this, he would break it off with her. If you seriously sat down with him and told him everything you told me he would reconsider this marriage because you're his son! She's not more important to him than you are, right?"

I honestly don't know Harry's relationship with his father but if it's anything like Julia's then maybe I can make a point.

"No, she's not," he croaks.

"Then is that something you want to do? Explain to him how you're feeling and hope he breaks it off with her?"

I try to sound as unaccusing as possible so he doesn't get offended and so he comes to a conclusion himself.

He's silent for a while, and I almost lose hope. I wish I hadn't said anything because now I may have lost one of the best friendships ever.

But then he turns his palms up under my hands and wraps his fingers around mine. He squeezes my hand back and says, "No. I-I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the mirror ever if he broke off his engagement with Elizabeth for me."

Relief courses through me and I stroke my thumbs over his hand, waiting for him to continue.

"He would do it," Harry says confidently. "He feels bad that he wasn't there for us that he would actually do it if I asked... But I think I understand what you mean now. I shouldn't dictate what he does for my own selfish reasons."

"You're not selfish—"

"I am, Aria. You're too kind, I know you won't agree. What I wanted was very selfish. But you are right, he deserves to be happy too. I would hate myself if I took that away from him."

He smiles sadly at me with tearful eyes. His smile falls and I barely catch his bottom lip shake before he pulls his hands away and immediately stands up to leave.

I don't know what force is driving me right now but I stand too.

"Harry—" I pull his arm. He looks back at me in surprise, and I shock us both when I slowly wrap my hands around his neck. He's tense for a moment before he reciprocates, and I feel his arms snake around my waist. I hold him tightly—tighter than I've hugged him before and I feel him do the same. Teardrops land on my shoulder so I start rubbing a hand on his back.

"It's okay, you're okay," I keep repeating until he lets out a sigh and his crying stops. He doesn't pull away so neither do I. I cherish the moments I can hold on to him like this before they're taken away from me.

Harry removes one hand from my back to wipe his eyes and then pulls away so I can see his slightly red face and red-rimmed eyes. I keep my hands on his shoulder until I know he's okay.

"Do you feel a little bit better?" I ask.

He nods and gives me a genuine smile. "I don't think I've ever done that before," he says.

"You've never cried?" I ask tilting my head. He laughs.

"No I have. I've just never had, like, a heart-to-heart with anyone. It felt good. Thank you for listening," he says ducking his head. "And for saying the things you did. It really helped."

"My pleasure," I grin shyly. And more seriously, "You can talk to me any time you want. I know its probably hard to do it, but I'm here and I'm always willing to listen."

He gazes at me earnestly before forcing a smile. "Thank you," he croaks not breaking eye contact. I start to feel intimidated by his intense stare and I think he notices. "See you in the morning?" he asks with a crooked smile.

"Yeah, see you," I whisper.

We each head over to our respective rooms before giving each other one last wave and shutting our doors.

***

Whew, lots to unpack here!  So now:

- Christmas happened ✓ - Zayn got Aria the gift she wanted, Harry got her something expensive she would like ✓ - Julia is noticing things ✓ - Harry opens up to Aria ✓

Which was the most exciting thing to happen for you?  If there wasn't anything that excited you then hopefully the next few updates will! As always please let me know what you thought <3

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[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 12

So I was going to write more sacrificecup before this but I woke up yesterday morning like like...18 jokes in my head and had to get them all out before I lost them, so here is this.  

Ao3

Hiccup tried valiantly to talk Mr. Grisly into a Grimborn book containing actual information but all attempts were brushed off repeatedly with the insistence that he’d been given a budget to hire experts for that.

Hiccup didn’t miss the dig that he is not considered an expert at the level of A. M. Mildew, but he wanted Grisly out of the library more than he wanted to argue. He knows Astrid doesn’t need his protection, but the way Grisly looked at her was uniquely sinister and the lopsided kind of glee in his voice when he talked to her is stuck in the back of Hiccup’s mind like a popcorn kernel in his teeth.

By the time he finally gives up and watches Grisly leave the library with a single beloved but largely sensationalized book, the archives are closed, and Hiccup finds himself suddenly completely underwhelmed. Given that he has not shifted his schedule back while his tours are…temporarily postponed, he texted Astrid pretty soon after waking up.

All in all that was a pretty landmark start to the day.

He starts the long walk home, glancing wistfully into alleys as he crosses them. He can’t help but feel disconnected and exposed on the main streets, surrounded by false modernity made out of plywood with a million percent markup. He knows Snotlout is right. He does look suspicious and he’s hiding enough by not telling Eretson where Dave’s prosthetic came from, but he’s sick of it taking so long to get everywhere.

Plus, assuming a Grimborn copycat working backwards, doesn’t he just have to stay away from the second murder site?

Unless the order of the two murders was a fluke and he should be staying away from the first site, a stomach clenching thought that’s categorically impossible. He couldn’t stay away from Astrid now if she lived in a volcano or had a loft in Atlantis, not after she told him that she likes him. Him. She likes him. Astrid. The beautiful, violent toothbrush assault artist who makes sure he sees what she does likes him.

His phone buzzes with a slow to download text message, lagging from the library’s thick brick walls.

Astrid (5:21pm): how’d that go?

He stops short and a man in a suit slams into his back, glaring at him for interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. Hiccup would thank the guy for restarting his heart, except talking is a little hard with it pounding in his throat.

How’d that go? Does she want…a review of some kind? Should he inform her of her 10.0 perfect score kissing skills but deduct a half a gold star for startling the hell out of him? Not that he minded being startled, really, but Astrid seems like a tough love type.

“On your left,” a bike whizzes by and he stumbles, still staring at his phone and barely snapping out of the haze with the insult that follows, “fucking tourist!”

“No bikes on the sidewalk, asshole!”

If he critiques her, does that mean she’s going to critique him? She doesn’t let him get away with anything else, after all. If he weren’t so giddy about her kissing him, he’d be more confused that she still wanted to after all that murder site sex idiocy that fell out of his mouth at Gruff’s.

Hiccup (6:04pm): I thought it was nice

He settles for neutral or something like it.

Astrid (6:05pm): I meant the creepy guy making you find a book for him

His heart drops. Of course she meant the whole Grisly thing, not—why would she be asking him how kissing was? She was there.

It’s a twisted kindness that he knows he’s said and done dumber things to and around her, so this probably won’t be the instance that scares her off.

Hiccup (6:06pm): right that makes more sense than you asking me to critique your kissing Hiccup (6:06pm): which was top notch by the way no comments, don’t change a thing Hiccup (6:07pm): so I do it anyway, fuck, anyway grisly is creepy as hell and I really hate that he’s investigating murders, it’s not fair because his breath’s death count is probably higher than any small time grimborn copycat

None of that made it better.

Astrid (6:07pm): I thought it was nice too Astrid (6:08pm): so you really think it’s a copycat then?

The morning’s roller coaster of emotions repeats in miniature and Hiccup pauses to unlock his front door and set his stuff down inside. Maybe his dad’s old chair has enough common-sense energy left to keep him from making more of an ass of himself and he flops into it.

Hiccup (6:11pm): no, we aren’t talking about grimborn, I forgot sorry

Astrid (6:12pm): it’s fine

Hiccup (6:12pm): no, we said we weren’t, let’s…talk about the next time we can not talk about grimborn

Astrid (6:14pm): is that a euphemism?

He blinks at that text for a second, trying and failing to shove his comprehension of it back into a neat little cube that will let him think or breathe or do anything but burn remembering how she felt against him.

Hiccup (6:15pm): Tomorrow?

And he has no money. Very minimal money at least. Not the kind of money that adults have for dates when there are euphemisms involved. Not that he’d pay for them like Viggo Grimborn luring some unsuspecting woman into an alley—this is why he’s single.

Astrid (6:16pm): Sure, what do you want to do?

Everything. Nothing. Ask questions and actually let her talk, for once, but that would require a personality transplant apparently and he doesn’t have time for one of those. Plus those probably cost money. Maybe he could pay for it with that frozen yogurt gift card, hell using a frozen yogurt gift card would practically be a personality transplant in and of itself—

Hiccup (6:16pm): frozen yogurt!!!

Astrid (6:17pm): so you’re…adamant about frozen yogurt, alright

Hiccup (6:17pm): oh no, I hate frozen yogurt, but I have no money and a gift card

Astrid (6:18pm): you know I can pay, right? This isn’t the middle ages, you don’t need to demonstrate your chivalry to me.

Hiccup (6:19pm): oh, I know, plus I’d cry if you expected me to put my hat down on a puddle so you could cross it Hiccup (6:20pm): I guess…this sounds weird but bear with me

Astrid (6:20pm): I think you just defined every interaction we’ve ever had

Hiccup (6:21pm): In a roundabout way, getting frozen yogurt sounds like a good idea because taking you places that I love has had really weird and complicated results, so maybe the answer is to take you somewhere that I hate

Astrid (6:22pm): it’s a date

00000

“Anything for me?” Hiccup yawns on his way out of his bedroom the next afternoon when they wake up, watching Snotlout juggle a shoebox sized cardboard box and a handful of envelopes through the door.

“Looks like a credit card offer and a student loan notice,” Snotlout holds out the box for Hiccup to take his mail.

“Two of the four horsemen of the adult apocalypse,” he tosses the credit card offer and opens the loan statement with a grimace.

“You know you can get those online right?” Snotlout sits down on the couch with the box in his lap, using the butter knife from his morning toast to open it.

“Hey, I sold my soul to the devil for an Art History degree, I want the hard copy receipt.” The number on the notice looks worse than normal though and it takes Hiccup a second to put together why.

It’s not about being able to pay for Astrid, she’s obviously not someone who cares about stuff like that. It’s about not…dragging her down. It’s different when Snotlout is the only one who sees him survive on ramen in the summer when tour interest goes down, Snotlout has seen worse. It’s different when he has a pocket of cash too.

He started doing tours for his own entertainment, he helped Heather start her company when it was all about the mystery for both of them. It was the notoriety that bugged him and that only amped up when the crime scenes got a fresh coat of caution tape.

But right now, staring at that number that really does keep growing when he doesn’t pay it, he’s reminded full force that he also does tours for the money.

“I’ve been thinking, I should start tours up again,” Hiccup sticks the mail to the fridge and nods to himself, “yeah, that’s a good idea, Berserker tours must be booking months out by now, I could get full share of the spontaneous customers. Any idea if there’s any issue at the crime scenes?”

Snotlout doesn’t mock him, which should be his first clue that something isn’t right, and when he turns around, Snotlout is staring into the open box on his lap with a pale face and wide eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t my self-tanner.”

“You ordered self-tanner?” Hiccup raises an eyebrow and crosses the room to see what is so offensive to receive in self-tanner’s stead.

It’s not skin bleaching cream, which would have been apt.

It’s a foot.

A foot standing disembodied in the shabby cardboard box, almost waxy in appearance, harmless except for the dread emanating off of it. Hiccup’s never seen an unattached right foot before, and he can’t say it was on his bucket list. There’s a note taped to the lid of the box and smeared with streaks Hiccup doesn’t want to think about, so he tries to focus on the letters. They’re blurry either from damp paper or his struggle to keep his eyes still on them, but he can see they line up in neat rows.  

It reminds him of a letter he saw in glass in a collector’s museum. A letter that had been delivered wrapped around a victim’s finger and sent to Deputy Detective Ryker over a hundred years ago. A letter that had led to his eventual stint in custody.

“Is that a poem?”

“It’s a foot!” Snotlout jumps up, holding the box at arm’s length and shuffling towards the kitchen, “I know you only have one but you should still recognize it!”

Hiccup leans over the box when Snotlout sets it down, squinting at the writing and willing his heart to slow down enough to let him read, “is that in comic sans?”

“It’s a fucking foot,” he starts pacing, pulling his phone out and presumably dialing the station. “Yeah, I’ve got human remains in a fucking box—no, they were shipped here, are you crazy, Johnson? Yeah, maybe send a car, that’s a fucking brilliant idea, great job!”

Thoughts of Grimborn letters, fingers, Snotlout’s badge, and disconcertingly, of Astrid wondering what he’d do if the murders continued rush through Hiccup’s head as he fumbles with his phone, snapping four or five quick pictures of the box, as close as he can to the message.

“What are you doing?” Snotlout snaps as he hangs up and Hiccup holds his phone up.

“Oh, you mean—”

“Yes, I mean, are you taking pictures of evidence for your creepy collection? Because it’s bad enough that I touched the box,” he shudders, “oh shit, I set it on my lap, did I get dead foot juice on my junk?”

“No—”

“Are you sure?” Snotlout is more preoccupied with his lap than Hiccup’s phone now, but it’s still better to pad the lie.

“No, I’m not taking pictures of for my creepy collection.” He’s taking pictures for another reason, so it’s not technically a lie, “I’m texting Astrid that I doubt I’ll be able to make our date today.”

Hiccup (4:00pm): I don’t think I’m going to be able to do anything today, do you want actual reason or wild excuse?

“Yeah, they’re sending a car over,” Snotlout huffs, “goddammit, I thought I had one day without Eretson’s smug face—but no, some creep had to send us a hacked off foot, great.”

Astrid (4:02pm): actual reason

Hiccup (4:02pm): snotlout received a package that he thought was the self-tanner he ordered, but actually was a disembodied foot, and there’s a blurry message with it in a font I believe to be comic sans

Astrid (4:03pm): I had to read that three times to make sure I didn’t accidentally say wild excuse

Hiccup (4:03pm): raincheck?

Astrid (4:04pm): Don’t go spending that gift card without me

“Dude, put your shoes on,” Snotlout throws Hiccup’s shoes at him, one of them hitting him in the side.

“Hey!”

“They’re outside,” he points at Hiccup’s plastic left foot, “that’s a secret, remember?”

“Shit,” the rush to yank his shoes on is a perfect capsule of the anxiety that multiplies over the next hour or so as a forensic team takes the box and swabs what feels like every inch of the apartment. Snotlout isn’t happy to be in the back of a police car, even if he knows the officers in front, and he’s less happy to be plopped in Eretson’s office on the wrong side of the desk.

It doesn’t help anything that they’re both still in pajamas.

“About the self-tanner, dude,” Snotlout clears his throat, looking out the office window and presumably checking if Eretson is on his way, “it’s going to be really natural and gradual, you weren’t even going to notice.”

“That’s what you want to talk about right now?” Hiccup’s phone burns a hole in his pocket, and he hates how much he hates Heather. He needs to show it to someone. Then again, Heather wasn’t trustworthy when he trusted her.

“I watched a video on how to apply it—”

“Yeah, did it include directions to the jersey shore?”

“You mix it with your moisturizer for the first week and the color grabs slower, plus I have black chest hair, it was going to blend!”

Eretson opens the door somewhere between jersey shore and moisturizer, as stony faced as Hiccup has ever seen him.

“Mr. Haddock, Jorgenson,” he sits down and starts typing efficiently, not so much avoiding eye contact as metering his attention where he sees fit.

“It’s Officer Jorgenson to you, thanks,” Snotlout crosses his arms, flexing too obviously, and Hiccup elbows him. Officer doesn’t make anything seem better right now. The whole reason Deputy Detective Ryker spent two months in custody as Grimborn was because they could blame the bungled case on him.

“You’re not on duty, Mr. Jorgenson, in fact I believe I overheard you planning a beach vacation, don’t let my investigation interrupt it.” When he does look up, it’s at Hiccup in particular, “at five o’clock this time?”

“I know how you love your job?” Hiccup shrugs and Eretson sighs.

“So, Mr. Jorgenson, you received a package of unknown origin—“

“I thought it was from Amazon,” Snotlout tries to kick his feet up on the desk but they don’t quite reach and Hiccup rubs his eyes to avoid seeing Eretson’s reaction.

Hiding his eyes doesn’t help, every ounce of repressed irritation comes through in the detective’s pinched voice.

“Was the package addressed to you?”

“I was expecting a package so I opened the package,” Snotlout scoffs.

“You didn’t check if your name was on it?” Hiccup hisses at him and he flings his arms up, still trying to look bigger.

“I ask the questions,” Eretson doesn’t quite pound his hand on the table but the intent is there, and Hiccup tries to mentally will Snotlout to behave but his skull has always been too thick for that. “The package was addressed to an SG Jorgenson, is that you?”

“Those are my initials.”

“And they stand for?” The detective readies himself to write it down.

“My names,” he deflates, “Snotlout Gary Jorgenson, but—wait, someone sent me a cut off foot? That’s super fucked up.”

“Yes, you’re getting it, murder is fucked up” Eretson sets down a picture of Dave, or his body, coroner sheet thankfully pulled up directly under his chin. “The foot was an exact match to Dave Ralston.”

“Well I don’t know that guy,” Snotlout lies semi-convincingly, “I definitely don’t know why anyone would send me his foot.”

Eretson turns to Hiccup, “I understand you knew Dave Ralston from the homeless shelter.”

“Are you saying I mailed Snotlout a foot of a homeless man I knew in passing?” Hiccup’s fear manifests as it always does, a reason to be indignant and loud. He thinks of that leg and how he can remember having it fitted, learning to hobble on it and imagining toes. “Because no, that didn’t happen.”

“Your alibi for—“

“I was at the archives, you can talk to Astrid, you can talk to Fishlegs—“

“The package was mailed from the archives yesterday in the last package pickup at 4:30,” Eretson glances out his office window and Hiccup does the same, trying not to wince when he sees Mr. Grisly, talking to someone he can’t quite see.

He can’t lie.

“I was—“

“With Astrid,” the detective fills in, “of course.”

“I have texts,” he fumbles with his phone, but of course his camera is still open, the bloody note tiled in the corner as the last picture he took and he shoves it back into his pajama pocket. If he starts tapping his foot, it might creak, he didn’t fully tighten it down before they had to leave. “I can send them to you or something. To keep the um…encrypted dates for official—“

“Well Grisly was there too, right?” Snotlout trusts the office’s soundproofing far more than Hiccup would. “Who says he didn’t do it? It seems like the kind of creepy shit he’d do—“

“That’s enough,” Eretson booms, the sound reverberating like a ghost off of the walls. Snotlout opens his mouth to continue and Hiccup smacks him in the arm, shaking his head.

“Guess that beach vacation is cancelled, huh?” He nods at Eretson in understanding, “good thing you can get the same golden glow from a handy bottle that won’t take us out of town.”

“I’ll be following up.” Eretson gestures at the door and Hiccup leans carefully on Snotlout’s shoulder to stand, making sure his leg doesn’t creak or buckle or give itself away when it takes his anxious weight.

“Sure thing,” Hiccup drags Snotlout from the room before he can decide to go back onto tiptoes or something equally stupid.   Of course, that means it’s Hiccup’s turn to be stupid and he balks outside the door, eyes widening when he sees who Grisly is talking to, “Heather?”

“Hiccup,” Heather cocks her hip, holding a thick, official looking file that isn’t labeled with her usual red sharpie. Someone else’s file. A police file. “Nice…jumpsuit.” She looks down at his plaid pajamas and he knows her too well to ignore her concern. It’s deeply buried but there and he glares at Grisly. Not even Heather deserves to deal with Rasputin’s mangy ghost.

“Miss Berserker is the Grimborn expert we hired, she’s already been explaining the concept of Trader Johann to me,” Grisly grins and maybe he’s exactly what Heather deserves, “very concise and articulate.”

“Yeah, easier to feed conjecture in small bites—“ Hiccup starts, but Snotlout grabs his arm. “I don’t know though, ‘Zombie Trader Johann’ is a little hard for anyone to swallow.”

“When solving a mystery of this magnitude,” Grisly chuckles, “we must consider all angles. Right down to resurrection.”

“Hiccup, let’s go,” Snotlout tugs and speaks a little too loud, clearly for Heather’s benefit, “don’t you have that date to get to?”

“Are you still doing tours?” Hiccup ignores him.

“Dagur’s taking over some of them,” she tries to sound professional and he remembers her wide grin when he showed her the ‘All Safe’ wall for the first time. Astrid’s picture is a piece of proof she doesn’t have, and it doubles his compulsion to get it out there. “Are you still—“

“I will be,” he nods, “I’ve got some new evidence.”

“I’m sure you do,” Grisly cuts off the conversation and points at the door, “official police business, I’m sure you understand.”

“He does,” Snotlout grumbles, glaring up at Grisly as he shoves Hiccup along, either barely remembering to mind his leg or getting lucky that he’s not causing a limp. “When we get home, I’m going to take a shower, because I swear I got dead foot juice on my lap, and then I’m going to look up ‘how not to be weird and morbid’ in your freaking office, and shove whatever book I find that definition in up your—“

“Gobber?” Hiccup once again stops short as Snotlout tries to forcibly drag him from the police station yet again. Eretson must have snuck around while they were talking to Heather, because he’s at the front desk with Gobber, discussing some notes.

“Can’t say I’m glad to see you here,” Gobber chuckles, “but I’m always glad to see you. And oh, you have Snotlout with you.”

“Yeah, I know, you must be thrilled to see me too,” Snotlout grins, apparently finding a new thing to hold over Eretson.  

“Eh.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m glad to be here, not really my choice,” Hiccup glances at the detective.

“Oh, I’m sure you look guilty for something,” Gobber leans sideways and whispers loudly to Eretson, “it’s his specialty.”

“No, assuming I’m guilty is everyone else’s specialty,” Hiccup crosses his arms, leg feeling shaky like it never does.

“Aye, cops especially, so it’d be fastest if you let the handsome detective do his job—“

“Handsome?” Eretson isn’t used to being caught off guard and it doesn’t last long. “Of course, you were making a pass at me, and here I thought you were the only one in this damn town trying to help.” He collects his files, mumbling under his breath as he stalks back towards his office, clearly further from leaving the office than ever.

“Can’t it be both?” Gobber shrugs and Hiccup shakes his head.

“Twenty five years of friendship and you sell me out for a hot piece of ass?”

“I don’t think it counted as friendship when you were a baby.”

Snotlout scowls back towards the offices, “who cares about friendship? I’ve been working out just as much as he does, why does he still get everything?”

“For the best probably,” Gobber shakes his head, “you couldn’t handle me.”

Hiccup blinks at his father’s best and oldest friend, “you know, Gobber, thanks for that. Now I won’t have nightmares about mutilated body part mail.”

“Anytime.” He nods and this time it’s Hiccup dragging Snotlout outside.

Snotlout wasn’t kidding about the immediate shower, and he must have been serious about the ‘dead foot juice’, as he put it, because he throws his pajamas in the kitchen trash on the way back to his room to get dressed. Hiccup doesn’t like thinking about them in there and Snotlout agrees as he ties up the mostly empty trash as soon as he’s dressed, looking around at the ghost of forensic swab marks on almost every surface.

“Yeah, no, I don’t want to hang out in the foot-mail apartment right now,” he shudders, “Gruff’s?”

“Uh, sure,” Hiccup glances at his dad’s office door, wanting to print out one of the pictures he took and start deciphering it, but knowing if he wants to research right now it’ll be suspicious.

“I’m sure a girl as hot as Astrid already has another date lined up, you can talk to her tomorrow.” Snotlout sighs, “just put on some actual pants and come hang out until I stop thinking about…saw marks and—”

“Yeah, ok,” Hiccup doesn’t make him say it, swallowing hard against his own repressed memory as he changes. For the first time ever, he avoids looking down at his right foot and trips a little getting into his jeans because of it, but he shakes it off to engage full scale Snotlout distraction mode. “So, did you notice Eretson had a mustard stain on his shirt?”

“What? Where was it? Was it on his tie?” Snotlout snorts, “I bet he eats sandwiches like an idiot.”

Hiccup makes up enough details about the imagined stain to preoccupy Snotlout the entire walk to the bar, even throwing in a few fake laughs at a very bad impression of a British accent. He’s not quite cheerful by the time they’re sitting at the bar, but he’s cheered enough to start his version of the standard cop lecture.

“As little as possible actually means as little as possible in this situation,” he gives Hiccup a disappointed look, “like if you want to make Heather jealous, just tell her you have a date like a normal person, don’t say you’re going to start your creepy tours back up, especially at a time when that Grisly dick thinks Venison Greenland has something to do with the murders.”

“Ok, I’ll work backwards on that,” he numbers on his fingers, “Venison Greenland isn’t even clever, I am going to start tours back up, and I don’t care about making Heather jealous. And my date was cancelled by a surprisingly efficient postal shipment, which makes me wonder—”

“You can’t start tours back up right now, dude.”

“As I was saying, it makes me wonder if the person behind all of this has some sort of government sway,” Hiccup nods importantly.

“I can’t tell if you’re bullshitting me to avoid talking about Heather or not.”

“I don’t know why you always want to talk about Heather.” Hiccup stares at the row of dusty bottles above the bar and tries not to think about their comfortable nights at the Ripped Tavern, before things got contentious. Heather’s pet theory was Ryker before it was Johann and it makes his stomach churn.

“Because she was my friend too and I always thought shit would get weird in the group because you two paired off to have a murder themed wedding or something,” he shrugs, “not because you disagreed about research.”

“Snotlout, my issues with Heather are with her, if you want to be her friend that’s between you guys.”

“Are you kidding?” He snorts, “even before she teamed up with Mr. Grisly she screwed you over. Not a chance.” It would be sweet if Snotlout didn’t punctuate it by punching him in the shoulder so hard he almost falls off of the stool.

And if that package didn’t neatly line Snotlout up with Ryker.

“I’d have way better luck getting back at her by restarting tours than by making her jealous with some cancelled date.”

“You know what sucks? I used to be able to explain to you that girls care more about you moving on with another girl than they do about hundred-year-old murders, but now you’ve got Astrid whispering Grimborn in your ear—”

“Oh god, don’t go there,” Hiccup winces, “not today, haven’t I been through enough? Didn’t you hurt me enough by hitting on Gobber—”

“I wasn’t hitting on him, I just don’t know why he was hitting on Eretson when I was right there.”

“Probably because he’s known you literally your entire life.”

“Yeah, and so has your mom—”

“I’m restarting tours,” Hiccup cuts that off, “I need the money, for one—”

“Amen to that, Hiccup,” Gruffnut leans on the other side of the bar and glares at Snotlout, “it’s tough not being employed by the government to be a narc, isn’t it?”

“Just because I’m the only one with a job that makes money doesn’t make me a narc.”

“Oh, I do plenty for money,” Gruffnut numbers off, “I dress up as my dumb boy cousin and scam people, I wipe the counters, I pour beers for people, I sell alcohol for way more than I pay for it—”

“Except for the first thing, those are all just part of being a bartender,” Hiccup points out and Gruffnut shakes his head like it’s heavy with exhaustion.

“I know, right? I go above and beyond and I still barely make rent,” he whispers conspiratorially, “all the toilet paper in the bathroom is stolen from McDonalds.”

“I can hear you,” Snotlout shoos him, “so if you don’t want me to tell McDonalds—”

“See? Narc.” Gruffnut shuffles off to the other end of the bar.

“You could get a job, you know, with a boss and a paycheck and insurance that you don’t have to pretend to be my domestic partner to get.” Snotlout doesn’t need to know how much he sounds like Hiccup’s dad sometimes, it would go to his head.

“Yeah, I’m sure the five-year gap in my nonexistent resume would be great for that.” He sighs, “I guess I’m worried about…if I’m not giving tours, Heather’s basically controlling the whole Grimborn narrative in Berk and now she’s apparently working with Grisly, who—I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t think it mattered but he came by the archives yesterday—”

“I know,” Snotlout rolls his eyes, “Astrid told me.”

“Anyway, Grisly wanted a copy of that Admiral Haddock book, which means that the so called ‘experts’ at the station aren’t exactly people I trust with the truth.”

“Just a couple of weeks ago you were saying how shitty Heather was to be giving tours to active crime scenes.” Snotlout orders another beer, foot tapping against the rung of his stool, and Hiccup still never knows how to act when his cousin is worried about him.

It’s even harder when the feeling is mutual.  

“I guess I was really hoping that this wasn’t connected to Grimborn,” Hiccup shrugs, “but now with the modern equivalent of the Ryker finger showing up at your—our door. Our door. I guess that me not doing a tour didn’t prevent the body part mailing, but maybe I could calm down the hysteria a bit while Heather is too busy to dump gasoline on the flames.”

And he can see what kind of information is spreading. Call him paranoid but this is all starting to circle a little too close to home.

“That’s stupid.”

“Well, I’m stupid,” Hiccup is at least keeping his promise to Astrid with that one.

“Yeah you are, given you’re actively deciding to harass Astrid’s apartment nightly when she’s your alibi for a bunch of sketchy shit.”

Hiccup opens his mouth to tell him that Astrid doesn’t mind, but then he remembers something she said when he thought she wouldn’t read a book, let alone go on a private tour with him.

“Can I borrow fifty bucks?” He stands up, “and I mean borrow, I will pay you back when this all works out.”

[blodreina-noumou]

6x01, in quotes, emojis, and tiny rants

aka me liveblogging in one post as I rewatch for the first time since the leaks. it’s long so check under the cut.

(this episode was full of so many cute moments)

I know this show seems to take issue with letting characters grieve, but I cannot be the only one who was a bit disappointed with the way the news of Monty and Harper’s deaths landed on spacekru. “take an hour”? an hour?? and we don’t really get to see anyone’s emotional response other than Raven’s, and she immediately sublimates with some good old-fashioned space sex. I just wanted to really feel how important Monty and Harper were to spacekru. There’s a lot of acknowledgements of what they did, but they’re almost already being immortalized/deified by their friends, instead of seeing them process it on an emotional level

“now we get our humanity back” “some of us never lost it” 👏👏

“spending a lifetime alone with someone you love sounds pretty damn good to me” 😭😭

now that I’m rewatching this, I wish Shaw and Raven had gotten a chance to talk about anything but backstory. I always appreciate shout-outs to Becca, and they didn’t know it was their last few moments together, but still. there was so much build-up for them last season. that scene of them walking back in, hand-in-hand. something sweet and pure, gone too soon. 😰😰

“I’m told it doesn’t taste very good, but since it’s all I’ve ever eaten...” 😁😁

Jordan is pure and perfect. Shannon Kook is doing such an excellent job of adapting Harper and Monty’s mannerisms. The resemblance is so uncanny.

“I trust Monty”  😭😭

I know a lot of people are really upset that everyone is snapping at Clarke, but I’m just so relieved and satisfied to see them actually talking about things, not just plunging headfirst into more trauma and drama. These first few lovely moments of calm and recollection are very welcome, even if everyone is real cranky after their long nap. 😇😇

Echo knows the way to my heart and it’s unwavering loyalty and faith in spacekru

Raven’s curly hair with her little side braid 😍😍

🤩🤩🤩 PLANET ALPHA 🤩🤩🤩

“you should go first this time” “no, we go together. all of us” “anyone got anything better than ‘we’re back bitches’?” “monty would know what to say, he should be here” “he is” RIP MY GODDAMN HEART OUT

Does anyone feel like Raven’s stern but kind attitude towards Jordan is her evoking the same dynamic she and Sinclair had?  😭😭

The Raven/Abby dynamic so far this season is I C E COLD. I think Raven has every right to be angry. I also think she will have to forgive Abby eventually, once Abby proves she can stay sober and be a good person again. On the other hand, “what I did to you with the collar was unforgivable”

 “My mother may have been a drunk who sold herself for booze, but she never hurt me, she never used me, and she sure as hell never tortured me.” YAS RAVEN TELL HER  👏👏👏👏  but also I’m sad

The close-up shot of Octavia’s eyes and Niylah saying, “happy resurrection day” is a neat and sort of juxtaposed parallel to the 4x13 shot of Clarke’s eyes which reveals she survived Praimfaya - aka when Clarke was “resurrected.” the first of what I imagine will be many parallels drawn between Clarke and Octavia. but while Clarke and Octavia are both experiencing a certain isolation from everyone else, Clarke has Madi. 

❤️ ❤️ ❤️  THIS LAKE SCENE. STOLE MY HEART.  ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

“WHO KNEW COCKROACHES COULD SWIM” 😂😂

Bellamy’s little nod and smile to Echo like, “wanna jump in the water with them?” Becho is so strong and so good  ❤️ 

“We’re the aliens, by the way.” “Heh. ...oh my god! We’re aliens!” uhhh adorable, how did Mackson get even cuter??

Echo is the wisest damn person on this whole show. “Miller kept your sister alive, one day you’ll thank him for that.”

“Salvation comes from faith and good works. What you do, not what you say. You haven’t done anything yet.”

we all knew it wouldn’t stay peaceful and happy for long lol 🤷🤷

Okay I am going to write a separate post about Shaw’s death because I’m really pissed about it for a lot of reasons. I know it was likely due to behind-the-scenes reasons but from a story perspective, I’m really, really pissed about how it goes down.

ugh anyway moving on

Niylah ❤️ Niytavia ❤️ Niylah being the best ❤️

“The faster you fall off the wagon and kill yourself, the sooner we can move on” okay while I agree with and relate to how Raven feels, this was way harsh. she’s definitely got zero empathy for Abby at this point. it’s a tough balance.

I really love the spooky and fantastical atmosphere of the Sanctum reveal. like perfectly preserved abandoned theme park. colorful castle? check. cute and well-furnished homes? check. weird worship of the founder? check. it’s like disney land but dead. 🏰🌃🌑

they really went all out with the colors and geometric designs. this is a culture that values aesthetics. and the aesthetics seem to complement the murky, breathtaking atmosphere of Planet Alpha. I’m really, really into it.

“destroy the world, 200 years later they put you on a flag. see? hope for us yet!”

*Murphy finds some cuffs* “kinky” he really said that!! 😂😂

“All named Lightborne. They sent families.” “Nice to be remembered.” “Or worshiped.” In the business we call this foreshadowing!!

ugh okay on some level I do appreciate that Kane and Abby have been struggling and sacrificing for something like stability and peace for most of their lives, and they’ve had to make terrible choices and decisions,

but on the other hand hearing Octavia read them the riot act for their hypocrisy and their betrayal was the single-most satisfying moment of the premiere. she berated him back into a coma!! she’s that powerful!! 😍🤩

on the other, other hand, Kane also has a point. “you’re lost. you’re still lost.” y’all are gonna see just how lost she is next episode. 😔

I’m gonna have to write a separate breakdown of that scene, because even the placement of Kane’s blood splatters on Abby and Octavia seem significant. I’m probably over-analyzing it, but given how little screentime Octavia got this episode, I’m really impressed with what it does.

Raven’s little moment of hope, holding onto that bottle of pills that Abby gave her... 😔😔

🤬🤬 honestly, if Abby doesn’t pull through this season and hurts Raven even more, I’m gonna be campaigning for her untimely end 🤬🤬

things with the eclipse psychosis really ramp up next episode, so I’m going to reserve my theories about who is affected first and why

“The Murphy Show” while mildly unsettling, is also incredibly entertaining and it’s a huge treat to watch Richard Harmon ham it up 🎤❤️

“I wish Madi could’ve gone to school.” “I wish Octavia could have.” further cementing the validity of both Clarke and Bellamy as Parents!! 

“a little pathetic maybe, but it’s not crazy” “ha!” okay kids, joke it out, joke it out

THAT ENDING. okay it was somewhat tempered for me the first time around because I immediately started watching 6x02, but now that I’m gonna wait a week to rewatch the next episode...that’s a fucking intense cliffhanger 😵😨

this is SO long, if you made it this far please feel free to dump your theories/reactions/etc in my inbox or in the replies or in a reblog

in short

WE’RE BACK BITCHES!!

[shreyamistry]

Tickets And Kissets - Ajay x M !MC (Connor)

Title: Tickets and Kissets

Prompt: So Kiss Me

Summary: Connor asks Ajay to meet him after their drama club party for a special Christmas gift. With gift in hand and confession in heart, can Ajay put aside his restraints for Connor?

Word Count: 1300+

Tagging: @mlmichaelharrison

A/N: Hey yall! This is a Christmas gift for my good friend Seth! Merry Christmas @dorkus-maximus ! Here is your Christmas fic! I hope you like it and happy holidays! 

Thanks for reading! I hope you like it!

Mr. Olsen begins packing up the remaining treats leftover from the holiday drama club extravaganza, packing an arrangement of cookies he prepared into neat piles in a fancy Christmas tin. Nearby Rory helps him pack away macaroons, a smile on his face as he makes idle conversation with his teacher. Clint and Natalie watch him dreamily as they absently pack garbage into one of the trash cans in front of them. Danielle and Erin organizing chairs and tables back into place, Erin doing most of the work while Danielle complains to her, checking out her nails.

Ajay nods to himself as the preparations to clean up run smoothly as he places his clipboard down to help Connor with the drinks. Connor smiles at him as he approaches, a blush creeping up his cheeks that Ajay can’t place why. He shakes his head spinning the cap onto the top of the bottle.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” Ajay asks, placing the drink into the cooler between them. He looks over at Connor who runs a hand through his hair, “You laughed a lot.” Ajay doesn’t entirely know why he brought that up, but he glances away pretending he didn’t spend the entire party watching him.

“Yeah, it was!” Connor smiles, “Skye kicked mine, Rory’s, and Erin’s ass in some DDR.” Ajay nods in response, putting the last drink into the cooler looking back over the party. Danielle leaving with a goodbye and a glare in Connor and his direction. He turns back to Connor who stands silently. “And Rory and I were having-”

“Are you and Rory dating?” Ajay asks absently, turning to survey Connor. His eyes settling on his face with a stern expression in his eyes a hint of annoyance settling in his voice at the thought of Rory and Connor together. Connor deserves better, Ajay thinks to himself. “I know you both signed up for the Spring play, if you make it awkward Cam, I will personally-”

“We’re not dating,” Connor reassures, motioning for him to settle down. “I’m not into Rory. I’m into someone else.” Connor blushes against as he fiddles with his fingers. Ajay doesn’t pay much mind turning to check the clock on his phone, one of the few things he knows how to do with this damned device.

“Good,” Ajay replies, relief in his chest. “I would hate for the stage to be awkward.” Connor simply nods in response. The both of them surveying the party again. More and more people leaving, Skye and Rory talking as they walk out. He never would have pegged them as the friends type.

“Are you heading home?” Connor’s voice breaks Ajay from his thoughts looking at the boy before him. Cocking his head to the side at the look on Connor’s face that he couldn’t quite explain. “I’m just curious.” Connor quickly follows up.

“I have a few things to take care of party related.” Ajay responses, shoving his hands into his pocket, “How about yourself?”

“I uh…” Connor trails off, taking a heavy breath. “I wanted to know if you wanted to hangout for a few minutes. I got you a gift.” Connor’s cheeks burn red again, as he places the lid onto the cooler.

“That sounds, adequate,” Ajay replies, a hint of a smile pulling on the corner of his lips. “Mr. Olsen, your cooler is ready. Have a delightful break.”

“Leaving so soon?” Mr. Olsen calls out to them, getting a nod from the both of them in response, “Have a fun and safe break, guys! Don’t do anything stupid and practice your lines for the role you play to audition for.”

“You too! And Don’t worry, I will.” Connor reassures as Ajay places a hand on his back guiding him towards the stage. Connor quickly picks up the pace walking besides Ajay towards the stage steps, working their way to the back of the stage. Ajay directions Connor to help him with the curtains to start unworking the other side to close them. A few minutes later both of the curtains fall close, mainly due to Ajay who had to Connor.

Ajay walks over to the remaining item from the play on the stage. He takes a seat on the couch in the stage living room, Connor sitting across from him. Connor stares at his hands, as Ajay goes through his clipboard before setting it off to the side.

“Here,” Connor produces a wrapped present from his pocket placing it in Ajay’s hand. Ajay smiles softly at him, before flipping over the wrapped gift, delicately undoing the tape holding the wrapping together. He pulls out the sleek silver envelope balling the wrapping paper in his hand before setting it on the floor in front of him.

“You wrapped an envelope?” Ajay asks, quirking an eyebrow at him.

“Yes.” Connor blushes, “Just open the envelope.”

Ajay nods quickly, before flipping over the envelope, using his fingers to snake under the paper, sliding up the tape with a quick motion. Reaching inside to pull out two silver tickets with black print on top of it. His eyes scan over the tickets reading them over to himself. He looks back at Connor his mouth falling open in surprise.

“Connor..” He trails over, flipping over the two tickets. “How did you afford this?”

“I won them in a radio contest. Or Casey did, I made her help.” Connor laughs nervously, pushing some of his hair off his forehead back into place. “I just thought you deserved it. I hope the seats are okay, I know they’re not center and-”

“Thank you, Connor. Seriously. I’ve never had a friend who cared this much about me to win tickets to a sold-out play on the radio,” Ajay cuts him off with a grin, pulling Connor into a tight hug leaning back to look him in the eyes, his eyes glossy with tears. “I’m so happy I could literally kiss you.” He laughs softly.

“So kiss me,” Connor whispers softly, almost so softly Ajay didn’t hear it. He glances back at Connor seeing the sincerity in his eyes, his breath catching in his throat as he looks at him with intrigue. “I mean- If you want to. I’m sorry this is weird I-”

Ajay leans in before he can continue, his lips brushing softly against Connor’s. Connor basically swoons into his touch, his hands moving to pull Ajay closer to him, letting himself kiss Ajay back. The moment rushes to Ajay’s head for the first time unable to come up with a protest to letting himself fall for Connor. He pulls away to catch his breath, the both of them letting out a breath with a soft laugh.

“Jeez… If I knew it was that easy I would’ve bought your tickets to this show a while ago.” Connor grins, his cheeks burning redder than they ever have before. Ajay laughs in response shaking his head despite himself.

“I don’t know how you do it, Connor, you make me feel like breaking all of my rules to be with you.” Ajay shakes his head, ducking his eyes down suddenly feeling overwhelmed with feelings he’s been trying to repress. “I - just - can I kiss you again?”

“Please.” Connor lets out a breathless laugh, wrapping an arm around Ajay as he presses his lips to Connor’s. The moment lasts forever, a warmth he’s never felt before shoots from his head to his toes his mind melting into one with Connor. His lips soft against his own, the first kiss he’s ever shared with anyone in his entire life. When they break apart he rests his head against Connor’s. “Merry Christmas, Ajay.”

Ajay laughs, “Merry Christmas.”

[cottonwren]

A Well Dressed Woman | T.S. | Part Three

Summary: Don’t anger the gods - heed the warnings you’re presented with

------------------

“Ms. Pine. I thought you were going to send someone to make the deal?” Tommy asked as she walked over to him, taking his cigarette out of his mouth and letting the smoke slip gently from his mouth. He had gotten no sleep, and it was the way his head was plagued by two people, none that he’d met before, that kept him awake and made him turn to the poppy seeds once again. Two adults, one woman and one man. The woman, he could identify as Jamie’s mother. Dark chestnut hair like hers, almost a replica, except this woman did not smile. She did not smirk. She glared and snared and Tommy had almost been scared. The woman told him to betray Jamie to further his own business, she told him it was right. The man, he was nothing like either of them. He had blonde hair and chestnut eyes, and he told him that he’d regret hurting the Pines.

It didn’t take a second more of  thought to wonder who he was, but he blocked them both out. It was business, and he was sure that he would be at the business end of Polly’s shotgun if he didn’t go through with it. At least with this option, he had a chance of getting away clean and with more than enough snow to enterprise upon, with a ‘missing’ storage container on his hands.

“And let someone mess it up? Nah. Plus, Tommy, this could be the start of a good partnership” Jamie smiled, folding her arms around her chest and holding out her leather gloved hand “So, you’ve got the documents?” She had remembered to insist on documents for Linn, though she knew that they would be of no purpose.

“I have” Tommy nodded, passing her them from a worker “When does the protection clause end?” He asked, watching her slide the envelope into her coat pocket, looking him dead in the eye with the same eyes that had haunted him all night. God, his dreams were getting really out of hand.

“When you screw me over, Thomas. So hopefully, it won’t end” Jamie told him, a jovial smirk on her lips, the same that had taunted him many times before and he hoped would continue to in the future. “Unless you don’t heed my warning” She reminded him.

“You can trust me, thought you’d have gotten that by now” Tommy told her, leading her to the docks “Come on then, let me show you around. Unless you’re satisfied and ready to piss off and leave me?” He teased, beginning to walk across the dirty path with her, the dirt imprinting on the bottom of her oxfords.

“No, no, I think I can handle a few more minutes away” Jamie told him with a smile, forgetting to be snarky. For a second, Jamie was just happy to be with him, and as soon as she realised that, she put her walls back up. “Can’t have anything going past my nose, can I?”

“Of course not” Tommy shook his head, heart palpitating as he saw her smile - toothy and full of life, Tommy regretted the actions he was about to take before he took them. He had her sold, though, and it was imperative for the plan that she was completely sold.

Tommy gave her a tour of the docks and showed him her large shipment container, branded with Shelby and Pine. Jamie liked the way their names looked together, but made no comment. Tommy did too, and he had toiled over the order of the two names but wouldn’t tell her. No chance.

“If that’s all, Tommy, I shall be on my way.” She told him, standing only a few inches from him, the cold biting into her cheeks, making them pink. Tommy had a strange urge to take her face into his hands, holding her and pressing his lips to hers until the warmth had returned to her skin. Thank god he could resist his urges.

“I look forward to our partnership, Ms. Jamie Leanne Pine” Tommy nodded, shaking her hand. “Give all my best to your sister”

“I will.” She smiled, then turned and walked away from the docks, getting into her car and driving back to her office in Small Heath, doing her best not to speed back. An unfamiliar feeling was settling in her stomach, and if anything had happened to even slightly threaten Linn’s life, she would be driving into Small Heath with the fury of a thousand men to kill all of the Shelby brothers single handedly. What’s worse was, she wouldn’t lose an ounce of sleep over it.

She parked and got out, entering the offices through the back, happy to find Linn sitting at her desk, a smirk on her face as she removed her glasses.

“Did it go well?” Linn asked, setting her glasses on her desk and setting her papers aside for a second “Well?”

“It did. I have a dreadful feeling, Linn, that I’ve made a slip in my judgement. I don’t think he’s going to betray us.” Jamie admitted, closing the office door behind her and sitting down.

“Our man on the inside said he would, and he told us how. He overheard, Jamie, and you know that he wouldn’t dare slip up. Not with your reputation, and your pay. He won’t get a job like this ever again from anyone else. I know you don’t want him to, but he will betray us. We have done the right thing” Linn assured her, putting her glasses back on once Jamie handed over the envelope. “You’ve checked it, I assume?”

Jamie was silent - she’d forgotten to check the fucking papers. There could be pictures of Karl Marx in that envelope and she would have been none the wiser. Fuck.

“Right, you didn’t check it, but it’s obvious that he expected you to” Linn sounded relieved as she opened the envelope carefully and opened up the documents “They’re legit. Jamie, you need to be more careful - the next deal, he’s going to expect you to not read them”

“Which I won’t” Jamie considered “But I know what I’m looking for”

“You do - and, Jamie, you have me reading everything. Nothing goes past me - the council thinks we sell feminine products and medication, and has never been any the wiser. Present yourself as both of us, remember? Take the best bits and turn into Ms. Pine. Not Jamie, not my big sister, not the person who read me bedtime stories up until I was thirteen. Ms Pine, who has sold more drugs than anyone in the world and holds her customers under a razor blade with her brain. Ms Pine, who Tommy Shelby can wank to and lose to”

“Who are you and what have you - Linn Bonnie Pine, is that blood on your palm” Jamie screeched, taking her hand and examining it “It better be someone else’s”

“It is. A peaky blinder watched you leave the office, so I went through the back, as you usually do, and I wrapped myself up in my overcoat, and I asked him where I was. Like a lost little lamb, and he said the exact location. Which meant he wasn’t from around here, obviously. So, I knocked him out and hauled him into the alleyway. He’ll recover soon enough” Linn told her, giving her account of the affair, eyes alight with menace and excitement. Jamie wanted to run for cover. She herself had never enjoyed the dirty work, and she had hoped that Linn never would. A hitman only existed in dirty trades like theirs, but an accountant could go anywhere. If Linn had a taste for fighting, then it would only be so long until she began doing it for fun, and then word would get out, and then there goes her little girl’s future.

“I know you don’t want me fighting, so I’ll only do it when it’s necessary, I promise!” Linn giggled, filing the papers away in her drawer “So, what are you going to do about Tommy?”

“Well, I’m going to go to the races, as planned, to talk to that MP and make a deal, but also to sit near him and see what he does” Jamie told her “The peaky blinder that you decided to bludgeon will no doubt remember your face, meaning that it’d be dangerous to put you in the same place as fifty of them.”

“I’ll hit him again” Linn shrugged, setting her glasses on her head “He went down fairly quickly”

“That’s because you punch like a fourty year old brawler, love. You can’t punch bullets, and the idea of you even close to danger makes me feel sick” Jamie rolled her eyes, then continued “As I was saying - if Tommy hasn’t betrayed us, he will ask about the next shipment…. And, if he doesn’t say anything, he will have stayed silent.”

“Someone’s going to be tight lipped then. The deal with the MP, it’s just a regular trade, right?” Linn asked, pulling out the list “Fifty Grams of coke. Usual rate, plus a hundred to ensure confidentiality”

“Yes. Personally, I don’t know where he thinks that one hundred pounds is going to get him in bribery, but there we go” Jamie shook her head softly “I will be going in my three piece - no man will make deals with anyone wearing ruffles. Sexist and a shame, but there we go. Truth sucks”

Over in Small Heath, Tommy was exhilarated. The shipment container was being opened, standing proud in his warehouse. He stood back with Arthur, who had told Linda that he was doing paperwork. As Isaiah and Finn pulled back the door, they stepped back and let Tommy take over. Inside the container were crates upon crates, but what was more interesting was the note on top of the first crate they pulled out, marked out with a P and a little tree logo. Pine Pharma.

Slipping his nail under the wax seal, he opened it, passing the envelope to Isaiah and unfolding the parchment.

‘Hello there, Thomas’ read the neat handwriting. Ah, fuck. Tommy let out a loud sigh and then carried on reading.

‘I expected you to do this. I knew you wouldn’t heed my warning, and I have tried to memorise your pretty face, for when it gets ruined. For all of your brilliance, how have you not accounted for this? Enjoy the flour, sweetheart.

Lots of love,

                   J. L. P.’

Tommy threw the paper down onto the floor, running his hands through his hair “Fuck me” He groaned, pacing “Isaiah, get one of the fucking crates open” He barked, his world falling to shit.

His chest burned and he wondered how the hell she had managed to do it. She had fallen for him, hook, line, and sinker, hadn’t she? Tommy could forsee most things, but this was something else. She was something else.

“Tommy, this ain’t snow” Isaiah told him with a wince, opening yet another crate of self raising flour “Unless you wanna make a cake, this is useless” He added, having dabbed a bit onto his tongue and been sufficiently disappointed.  To be fair, he should have realised that it wasn’t cocaine from the looks of it, but he was still allowed to be hopeful, right?

“Fucking hell” Tommy groaned “Fucking woman. Fuck. How the- fucking hell. Isaiah, Finn, Arthur, get rid of the flour. I’m going for a fucking drink. Fucking hell” He grumbled as he stalked off, lighting a cigarette. How he’d break the news to Polly was another thing. He could hear her now ‘How did you let her do this, Tom?’. He could hear his own reply, defensive and honest. God, he needed a drink.

As he practically stropped through the lane towards The Garrison, it started to rain - not the light rain, either, but the heavy kind that thunders on you and bruises slightly. Tommy really wandered what god he’d pissed off some days, and he laughed to himself when he realised that she was.

[monabela]

Day two of ship dominoes, where I write twelve ships using their members as domino stones, each set in a different month, over the twelve days of Christmas. I’ve never actually finished a fic with this pairing before! I remember starting to ship them during the time I wasn’t much into Hetalia, somehow. Purely for the Aesthetic(TM) I think. But they’re also just an interesting duo!

Message to Me

February

pairings/characters: Luxembourg (Noah)/Romania (Dragos), Moldova (Luca), Portugal (Simão), Netherlands (Maarten), Belgium (Manon)

word count: 3102 summary: It's Valentine's Day, Noah Krier keeps receiving mysterious letters over the course of the day, and his assistant seems to be hiding something. What is going on here?

<< Bulgaria/Romania || Romania/Luxembourg || Luxembourg/Seychelles >> [all parts]

also on AO3 

“Luca, what’s this letter?”

Luca’s head pops up around the corner of Noah’s office, pencil wound tightly into his hair as always and expression inquiring.

“This letter was on my desk.” Noah waves it at his assistant. “It’s, ah… Pink.”

“It is Valentine’s Day, Mr Krier,” Luca offers, but he looks confused by the presence of the letter as well, and sorting through Noah’s letters is part of his job. “I definitely would have remembered seeing that, though, and I didn’t.”

Noah eyes the soft pink envelope, on which his name is written in an unfamiliar, spindly longhand. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything in it but paper, so he reckons he could open it without risk.

“Thank you anyway, Luca, never mind it.”

The man is definitely pulling an amused face as he turns and walks back to his desk just outside. Noah shakes his head after him before leaning against his own desk, crossing his legs at the ankles, and grabbing the letter opener to rip the little envelope open.

Out comes a letter in the same handwriting on thin, plain white paper, with an elaborate, honestly quite beautiful, pen drawing of thorny roses around the words.

Noah—

I should forewarn Though you surely see Not unlike me These roses have thorns

The day is still young There’s much to be seen Places to be And rhymes yet unsung

Noah stares at the poem, reading it three times. It doesn’t make it any clearer. The loops on the letters are long but neat, and the lines themselves are perfectly straight, and none of it helps. Is this a prank? It must be a prank, mustn’t it? Surely, no one would go through the trouble of writing a poem for him seriously?

He’s still busy doing that, when Luca pops his head in again.

“I hate to interrupt, but we should get going if we want to make the ten o’clock, Mr Krier.”

“Yes—yes, of course.” Noah quickly fumbles the letter back into its envelope and shoves it into his briefcase.

“Love letter?” Luca asks teasingly as they walk to the elevator, because for all that he’s great at being a professional assistant, he’s also Noah’s friend and a horribly nosey person.

“I’m not actually sure,” he replies. The poem isn’t necessarily romantic, but Luca was right, it is Valentine’s Day, and then there’s the pink paper… The roses… “It’s strange. I think it’s a prank.”

Luca nods, pulling a quasi-impressed face, and Noah smiles.

They reach the ground floor of the building, and after quickly checking with the receptionist that there aren’t any more messages—or poems, as it were—, make their way to the car waiting outside.

The driver, Simão, nearly jumps against the roof when Noah opens the passenger side door. He raises his eyebrows, shaking his hair out of his face.

“Alright there?”

“You scared me. Good morning, Noah. Luca.”

Luca flashes a smile from the backseat. Simão rakes his fingers through his dark hair a couple of times, fidgets with the clutch.

“What is it?” Noah asks, watching him with half an eye. “Do you want to leave earlier because you’ve got a date? Because I’ve told you before, I’m terrified of your girlfriend, so you can leave whenever you want.”

“What, no—I mean, I appreciate that. I think.” He blinks, finally starts the car, and pulls away from the building. Luca types busily on his phone. Noah, who can’t do anything useful in traffic because of his motion sickness, watches Simão with suspicion.

He’s known him for a long time, and his driver has always been a bit of an odd one, but this is strange even for him. He doesn’t say anything else about it, though. Who knows, maybe the guy’s planning to ask his terrifying girlfriend to marry him or something like that, and he’s nervous about that.

However, when they reach the house Noah is supposed to look at and see if it can be sold, and Luca has already leaped out of the car as if he’s twelve and not 23, Simão tells Noah to wait a minute.

“Hm?”

“There’s something… Uh, check the glove box.”

Frowning, Noah does so, and there’s another pink envelope in there, lying innocuously on a box of mints. He looks back at Simão, who holds both hands out defensively.

“It’s not from me! This dude came up and handed it to me, said to give it to you. It just seemed so weird.”

As he examines the envelope—same paper, same thin handwriting—Noah considers this information.

“What did that man look like?”

Simão shrugs apologetically. “He was wearing a scarf and had his hood up. Tall, though, maybe even taller than you. He had a red bike.” He shivers. “Way too cold to bike.”

Luca knocks on the window of the car, jumping up and down outside and pulling an impatient face. Simão laughs, and Noah quickly stuffs the envelope into the inner pocket of his woolen coat.

“Thank you, Simão. We’ll be back soon.”

The driver wink cheerfully, apparently not nervous anymore, and Noah shakes his head while opening his door and walking over to Luca and the current owner of the house.

“Apologies for the hold-up, ma’am.”

A while later, having gotten lunch down the street and walking back to the company’s building, he remembers the envelope, and then it suddenly seems to be burning a hole through his coat.

“Are you okay, Mr Krier?” Luca asks from next to him, somehow eating at the same time. It’s kind of morbidly impressive.

“I got another one of those letters,” he says faintly. “Simão gave it to me.”

That does make his assistant look up.

“What does it say?” he asks, sounding almost excited.

“I… Don’t know.”

That makes Luca halt his step in the middle of stairs to the doors of the building.

“I haven’t looked yet!” Noah says defensively, in response to his almost accusing look.

“Well, look,” Luca urges.

“In a minute!”

Luca is laughing at him, Noah’s sure, as they walk to the elevator and ascend to Noah’s office, and then he’s sitting down on Noah’s desk, thin legs swinging back and forth.

“Sometimes I don’t remember why I hired you,” Noah tells him, but Luca just grins, so he fishes the envelope out of his pocket. It’s a little wrinkled, but the text on the paper that comes out is perfectly legible.

Noah—

Don’t be alarmed I mean you no harm I just want to say On this certain day

I am fascinated And often captivated In more than one way You make me gay

Noah reads the text again, eyes the little envelopes drawn around the edges of the paper. No, this is too bad, it has to be a prank. That, or someone actually really likes him and isn’t afraid to be embarrass themselves like this. Himself, probably, if that’s what the gay line is referring to.

“Well?” Luca asks, and Noah is speechless, so he just hands his assistant the letter, watching as his eyes widen.

“See?”

“Well, that’s… Something,” he says, seemingly unable to stop looking at the piece of paper. “What do you think?”

“Honestly, Luca, I don’t know.” He takes the letter back, smoothes it out, and puts it on his desk, laying the first one down next to it. “If it’s genuine, it’s… It’s so weird it’s sweet, really, but Simão described the man who gave the second one to him, and it could very well be my brother, so it could also be a prank.”

“Your brother plays pranks?” Luca seems surprised.

“Don’t all siblings?”

“Well, I mean, my brother definitely does, but you know Dragos a little, and he’s just weird. Your brother always seems so serious.”

Noah smiles, because he knows that’s exactly what Luca thought of him at first, a couple of years ago.

“Believe me, Maarten and Manon are a terrifying team.”

“That’s definitely true,” Luca says faintly.

Unsure how to proceed with this, Noah claps his hands and announces that it’s about time they got back to work, giving Luca a push when he lingers by the desk, chewing on his lip. That’s odd, really. Luca is a forward person, which Noah deeply appreciates about him, yet now it seems he’s hesitant to tell him something. He figures that he’ll find out if it’s important. For now, he works through his normal messages, and it isn’t until three in the afternoon that the routine is disrupted again.

“Mr Krier?”

Noah looks up at Luca, who is standing in the doorway to the office with his hands clasped behind his back and his hair escaping from its ponytail as if he’s been messing with it.

“Yes?”

“Message for you.” He steps into the room.

The emphasis on the word message alerts Noah, and he stands up to take the pink envelope from his assistant.

“The receptionist said a woman handed it to her downstairs. Tall woman, she said, with light hair.”

That could be Manon, Noah reckons. His whole family is tall, and although her hair is darker than his, it could still qualify as light. Light brown, at least.

He opens the envelope nonetheless, as Luca hovers curiously.

Noah—

You must think me strange To have this arranged And that may be true But that’s what I do

I think it could be More than a dream If you give me a chance This could be romance

“That’s it,” Noah says. “I’m calling my siblings.”

“Why?” Luca, who has read the letter from next to him and huffed an exasperated laugh at the text and the tree drawn in the background in sure pencil lines, asks. Noah knows nothing about trees, but it looks like one you could sit under without getting wet even in a storm. It looks certain, steady.

He dials Manon’s number, then presses his lips together irritably when she doesn’t answer and the call goes right to voicemail.

“Maarten, then,” he mutters, ignoring the bemused look Luca is giving him. He needs to get to the bottom of this. Somewhere, he wants it to be a prank, but he also really doesn’t, flattered that someone would go to such lengths for him.

Maarten picks up the phone with a hello. “Noah.”

“Yes, Maarten, I’m—”

“Before you go on, I got… Well, I got a message for you, apparently.” He sounds bewildered. Noah blinks.

“A message?”

“Yeah, I got a letter delivered at work addressed to you. I think it’s a poem?”

Luca is now obviously trying to stifle laughter, muffling snorts into his hands. Noah swipes his hair out of his face brusquely and glares at him.

“That’s what I’m calling about, actually,” he tells his brother, aware that he sounds just as confused now. And, when his brother makes a confused noise, barely audible over the background noise of his workshop, “Never mind that. What’s the message?”

A rustle of paper. Maarten clearing his throat. Luca snorts into his hand again.

“Noah—

If you hear this You must have doubts But nothing’s amiss You’re what I’m about”

Noah blinks. “That’s it?”

“Yes. Were you expecting more?”

“Kind of.” He shakes his head and swipes his hair away again. “Who did you say delivered it to you?”

“I didn’t. And I have no idea, one of my employees handed it to me.”

“Right. Alright.”

He sounds honestly confused about the situation, and Noah likes to think he’s known Maarten long enough to tell when he’s acting, even when he can’t see him.

“Well, do you think it could have been Manon?”

Maarten laughs. “Sure. It wouldn’t be the first time she pulled something like that. We still have to get her back so much.”

Noah shoots Luca a significant look, at which the man rolls his eyes, and then he thanks Maarten, saying he’ll call their sister and hopefully find out more about this.

“You know, I believe you now,” Luca comments while he scrolls through his phone to find Manon’s number. “Your siblings are just as weird as my brother.”

“Maybe not quite that weird,” Noah replies, because he’s met Dragos Bălan, and the guy was great but also the most eccentric person ever.

Finding Manon’s number, he tries it again, and this time, she answers quickly, cheerful as always.

“Hi, Noah! I saw you called just now, but this telemarketer was trying to talk me into getting a subscription to razors or something. What’s up?”

“Razors? Why would—sorry, I’m calling about the poems, Manon.”

“The poems? There’s more than one?”

Confused, Noah doesn’t reply, and Manon continues.

“I got an email to my blog address. It said to relay a message to you if you called. It’s a poem.”

“Of course it is,” he sighs. “Well, let’s have it, then.”

A laugh, then, “And if you feel That way about me Let’s make a deal Under the linden tree”

“The linden tree?” Noah groans. It just keeps getting weirder. Manon just laughs again, teasingly, and he can just imagine how she looks, with her mouth pulled up in that familiar mischievous smile.

“Have you got a secret admirer, Noah?”

“Shut up,” he replies, and then he hangs up when his sister just keeps laughing at him. He pushes the hand still holding his phone through his hair, now just even more confused. If it isn’t a prank, at least by his siblings, then what? Someone evidently knows a lot about him, and, “Isn’t this creepy?”

“I don’t know,” Luca replies. “Not necessarily. You’re a public figure, you know, and everyone knows your family.”

Noah sits down heavily on the edge of his desk, trying to figure out if his ‘secret admirer’ has left any clues as to his identity. He’s a man, apparently, and what is that about the linden tree?

“Luca, you know things about poetry. What connotations does the linden tree have?”

“Many.” He shifts from one foot to another, turns his phone over between restless fingers, and grins awkwardly when Noah frowns. “Noah, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course?” It must be something personal if he’s calling him by his first name during work hours. He’s always maintained the weird distinction between Noah and Mr Krier.

“What do you think of the person who wrote these? Are they creepy?”

Considering this—with some amount of suspicion, because what is Luca getting at?—Noah chews on his lower lip. Like his assistant said, all the information used wouldn’t be terribly hard to figure out with some determination, nothing untoward was written in the poems, and the writer seems aware that he’s being strange, but that’s just who he is, apparently.

“No, I think he’s sweet, in some odd way,” he replies, and Luca’s expression shifts to the strangest mix between relieved, pained and amused.

“I guess that’s one way to describe it.” He laughs a helpless laugh. “Figures.”

Noah shakes his head at him in confusion.

“The linden tree is an important symbol in many Slavic countries,” Luca explains. And, with a deep breath, “As well as in the Romanian-speaking ones.”

“The Ro… Luca, for god’s sake, you’re the only Romanian-speaking person that I know! Don’t tell me you—”

“No!” He holds both hands out. “No offense, but no.”

“Then who…”

It dawns on him when he searches Luca’s guilt-stricken grey eyes.

“Your brother? Did you know?”

He shrugs in apology. “Not until I saw the handwriting.”

Groaning, Noah collapses onto his back on his desk, swinging his legs out in a manner unbefitting of his position or his age. Luca’s brother. He must have gotten his schedule for the day from Luca somehow, without Luca knowing. True, Noah liked Dragos when he met him, but he barely knows the man when it comes down to it, and he’s sure Dragos barely knows him in turn. And yet, and yet. He’s genuine about this, if Luca is to be believed.

“What do you think he expects me to do?” he asks the man, sitting up.

“Who knows with him, really. He’s way too impulsive for his own good.”

“Maybe not.” He swallows. “Give me his phone number?”

“You’re both as bad as each other,” Luca says, but he sounds thoroughly amused and turns his phone screen towards Noah so he can copy Dragos’s number. “I hope you’ll be very happy. Also, can I leave earlier? I’ve got a date.”

Noah just stares at him.

An hour later, Luca has gone home to prepare for his date, and Noah is staring at the new contact in his phone. He’s tempted to send the elder Bălan a poem back, but, maybe fortunately, Maarten used up all the poetic talent in the family, and he isn’t that shameless even if Dragos is.

In the end, he receives a message from the number.

Luca is a traitor. I hope I didn’t creep you out, but he says it’s fine. Dragos

Deciding to act on his impulses for once, Noah presses the call button instead of texting back.

“Hello?” comes the voice he vaguely remembers, with the hoarse note to it and the same lilt that Luca has.

“I’d say Luca is a very good assistant,” Noah says, and smiles at the skyline of the city outside of his office when Dragos laughs at that, easily and openly.

“He’s a great kid, but a terrible brother.”

Noah wets his lips, takes a deep breath, and tries to think of something to say, but he’s forestalled.

“I really hope you don’t think I’m creepy.” Some creaking and rustling. Noah imagines Dragos fidgeting. “I mean, a lot of people would argue that I am, but not in the stalkerish way, I promise.”

“I don’t think that,” Noah assures him. “Maybe a little strange, but aren’t we all?”

A chuckle. He smiles.

“Dragos,” he says, the name sounding like a thrill.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not sure if there are any lindens around here, but I’d like to meet you somewhere.”

A pause, then a reply in a tone that sounds more unsure than anything so far.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Noah smiles, glad he’s not the only one out of his depth. “Yeah, I’d really like that. You seem like an interesting man, I’d like to get to know you. Plus, I know from experience embarrassing one’s siblings is a great pastime, and I happen to know where your brother is now. He’s on a date.”

“I knew I made a good decision,” Dragos says, grin obvious in his voice. “I can’t wait.”

[codename-bewareofthefangirl]

I decided to go w/ akamomo for the Hunger Games AU, also I'm a huge Cato/Clove fan so there's a reference. Aka/Momo are both Career tribs. from D2, they're vicious, ruthless, prepared & more than ready to kill (yes OOC and let's trade Momoi's sweetness for badass girl while Sei's always been Bokushi all his life) they team up with the others knowing they'd eventually betray each other later. For them it's all about becoming a victor and pride but in the end Momoi gets caught by another trib.

and she screams for Akashi but the other tribute attacks her and when Akashi comes it’s almost too late, and they both realize they’re not entirely unemotional because they have always looked out for each other in the arena, and probably have come to care deeply for the other too.

Hi dear!Finally I’m here! I really hope you’re going to enjoy this, because I lovedwriting it. Well, it broke my heart in a millions pieces but…that’s okay. Letme know!

AkaMomo,Hunger Games Au, Angst, Major Character's Death, Depiction of Violence

Dead Inside

“AKASHIIII!” her desperate, pained scream pierced theair and crashed onto Akashi like a sword sinking into his heart.

His red eyes widened in horror.

For the first time in his life, he regretted being sobrilliant. Maybe if he hadn’t been so smart, he would have moved, he would havetried to save her. Yet he already knew it was too late for that. It would havebeen useless. And his body remained still under the pouring rain, eyes on hispartner.

Akashi enteredthe Training Arena of District Two. He was only eleven, yet his eyes werealready empty. He looked around like a fox, taking in as much details as he could.At some point, a lonely girl caught his attention. He had long pink hair gatheredin a neat braid and a sweet, cute face. What was even doing an angel like herin that place? She was going to be meat for the other tri-

Then the girl lookedup and he froze. Her pink eyes were calculative and sharp as a hunter’s, acunning malice swirled at the bottom, and her lips were graced with a smugsmile.

Only then, herealized she had been cleaning two short swords all that time. One was stilldripping with blood.

A smirkappeared on Akashi’s face. He had found her.

He had sold his soul for victory.

He had sacrificed his heart and any lingering emotionsin order to win, years ago.

He was already dead.

“So we manageduh?” Momoi trilling voice called Akashi back from his thoughts. He was lookingfrom the window of their luxurious apartment and she had now reached him.

“We’re goingto be the tributes.” He replied with an excited yet cold smile.

Momoi laughedsort of…hungrily, impatiently.

“We’ve preparedfor years, this is our chance.” She chirped rocking on her heels and clappingher hands, like she was just a normal, naïve girl of the city. She seemed one.Yet, Akashi had never met anyone more deadly than her. Her predictions werenever wrong. Her aim never missed. She was the best strategist ever existed.And, Akashi was the only one who could match her.

They were amatch made by heavens.

“It’s going tobe an easy victory.” He commented, locking eyes with her. In his voice vibrateda well-known threat, the one that from the start had been the base of their…”friendship”.

“Yeah, I can’twait,” she hummed giving him a sly smirk.

The day oftheir final fight was near. The day that was going to decide who was the realbest. The day they were going to kill each other.

They wereready.

So why?

So why his body was trembling and his mind was white withanger and fear?

Why he couldn’t breathe?

Why he felt like crying? He had forgotten how to cry whenhe had entered The Training Arena, hadn’t he?

He and Momoiwere in a cave, preparing for the night. It had been a long, first day in theArena, yet they had come out unscathed. They couldn’t say the same for those whohad the stupid idea to fight them.

“Going solowas really the best idea in the end,” she whispered to him, lighting a smallfire. “I still can see the face of that idiot from Three when his twocompanions betrayed and killed her off. Not that it matters, we slaughtered theother two soon after it.”

He nodded witha satisfied grin and continued to count his arrows. He hand enough to kill allthe other tributes left. Regarding Momoi, he hadn’t decide yet how to fight her.She wasn’t going to be killed by a simple arrow. She was better than that.

“You can’ttrust anyone,” he murmured, before flashing her a smirk, “Except the one youalready know they’re going to betray you.”

Momoi let outa laughter, sitting down with the back against the wall of the cave.

“True,” sheagreed giggling and combing the long hair with her fingers. She always did whenshe was thinking about something. They were the same colors of cherry flowers,so pretty that they made her look like a sweet princess. So misleading.

Slowly, her cheerfulnessfaded into a thoughtful scowl.

“…true,” sherepeated to herself.

It startedraining, a sudden, cold downpour.

Akashi snortedat the sight, happy that the rain was going to conceal their traces, andshifted near Momoi.

“And nowsuddenly it’s cold!” she whined with a childish pout and Akashi chuckled. Withouther asking, he put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against hischest.

“Try to notcatch a cold, I need you able to think lucidly,” he said to the girl, whogrinned satisfied and snuggled against him.

“Yeah, yeahyou Emperor,” she stuck out her tongue and then whispered in his ear, “I betthe audience is gonna love this…” she alluded in a soft voice.

“Do you wantto show them more?” he replied in an alluring murmur.

Momoi was warm for someone dead inside like him.

Now, Akashi felt cold.

He should have been used to feeling cold, but he had beenmistaken.

He should have been the one killing Momoi in the end.In an honest, quick fight. She had earned it, that was the right thing. She deservedan honorable yet quick and painless death. She was the only one in the worldwho deserved it.

Akashi watched as the tribute from District 1 finallymanaged to reach Momoi. He grabbed her hair and pulled back harshly, making herfall face down on the ground.

Momoi called him again and stretched a hand. Her eyesfound him and screamed for help.

For the first time, Akashi saw her scared of something.

Scared and regretful.

Why her eyes were apologizing to him?

The tribute stuck his spear in her back and pierced throughher ribcage. The point came out from where should have been her heart with a spurtof dark blood. Her pink eyes went wide and then cold. Her pretty face fell inthe mud.

Momoi Satsuki, Tribute of District 2, was dead.

Akashi’s body moved on his own. In a swift movement,he lifted the bow and took an arrow.

He aimed, coldblooded.

The arrow perforated the head of the tribute who had killedMomoi.

“Bullseye!Your skills are crazy, Akashi!”

Akashi had been wrong all that time. Maybe, when he hadarrived at the Training Arena he hadn’t been already dead inside. Maybe he hadn’ttraded completely his soul and heart for the victory yet.

But now it was too late.

Whatever had survived into him until that moment, hadjust died with Momoi.

Akashi prepared another arrow and started walkingtowards the middle of the Arena, ready for the last battle. Ready to give chase,like a predator. He passed Momoi’s body without even a last glance.

For the first time in his life, he wasn’t thinkingabout the victory, nor about the fame or the money. Nor about being the numberone.

No.

He just wanted to kill.

[artificialqueens]

Katya and The Space Barbie (Trixya)- Squeaky

Number one reason not to buy a sex doll from a sketchy, space shop— she might come to life.

(AN: really short, smutty one shot)

The galaxy is infinite, and Katya’s horny.

Those two thoughts aren’t related, but they occur to her at the same time. The spaceship is lightly vibrating because Katya’s running low on fuel; the vibrations aren’t helping her growing state of arousal. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to think. The safety straps around her waist and chest are tight, and the reminder of how she’s strapped down makes her squirm against the hard leather.

Katya’s sure she took a left turn at the milky way before hitting accelerate. Or…did she? The directions blur together, and her navigation system took a hit. How am I going to make it back to Mother Ship now? Ask?!

“Uh, this is Captain Zamo from Sputnik reporting in to Headquarters. I’m operating a craft without navigation. Do you copy? Over?”

“Yes, I copy. Are you lost, Captain Obvious? Over.”

Katya internally groans at the sarcastic drawl of Alaska’s voice. Great, if she wanted a tongue lashing, she’d have dialed up her mother. Now, she needs to ask for Alaska Thunder’s help. God, there had never been any other girl at Ru’s Space Academy who gave her shit like Alaska.

“I’m not lost, ‘Lasky, just not…spatially coordinated. Over.”

“That’s the definition of lost. Over.”

“I’m lost when I say I’m lost, which I’m not. Lost that is. And aren’t we all existentially lost in the scale of this never ending universe splattered with stars and sperm? Over.”

Silence.

Katya sighs and presses the voice command: “I’m lost.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Captain. Hmmm….says here you’re approaching Planet Booberella. I’m sure you’ve been there before? Over.”

“Never,” Katya lies and then flushes as she realizes she forgot to say ‘over.’

Wow, way to be obvious, Katya.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a, uh, first time for everything. Pull over for fuel and directions. Over.”

She types in the coordinates for Planet Booberella. It’s infamous for well…boobs and bombs. The women and men there are just as likely to blow you for a copper piece as they are to blow you to pieces for the wrong word.

Katya hesitates before pressing the intercom: “Bets on if I’ll get fucked or sold into space slavery? Over.”

“Bet you’ll meet an alien girl and fuck her over so bad she’ll sell herself. Conversation- OVER.”

Katya bites her lip.

Is Alaska still mad about that whole date thing? Probably. They’d ditched the food and went straight back to her Cube for ‘dessert.’ Katya remembers how she’d pushed Alaska onto her knees. God, Alaska looked so pretty, still in her spandex uniform, with her face buried between Katya’s thighs. They’d fucked on the bed and couch and table. Alaska had come apart so easily under her fingertips. While Katya hasn’t been back to her Cube in months, she bet that Alaska’s ripped up uniform is still there.

“Thanks for the help, Coordinator Thunder. Any chance for another dinner when I get back? I can’t cook, but I could microwave us some popcorn…think about it? Watch the Cult Classic Contact? Over.”

Silence.

Well, losing friends and herself in space is kind of Katya’s specialty. Sputnik’s sput-sputtering down, and Katya’s not going to bother legally landing. She zooms down to one of the Black Market Pods to get herself situated in Tittington. Fuck, why is this whole planet a bad sex pun? It’s the biggest joke in the cosmos.

Katya jumps out, breasts bouncing in her shiny suit. It’s skin tight. Just the way that she likes it. All five of the mechanic’s eyes trail down to her chest as she slides him her platinum card.

“Oi, I’d be careful going out with ‘em bullets on yer chest,” he drawls.

“You want one less eye, huh?” Katya asks as she runs her hand down her thigh to grab her lazor gun and then presses it to his throat.

The mechanic puts his webbed hands up: “Peace, peace. I’ll be done refueling and patching up in an hour. Looks like the engine’s on its last leg.”

“Do a good job, and I’ll give you a tip,” she promises, and Katya regrets her words as soon as she turns. She can feel all five eyes against the curve of her ass. Katya leaves in a huff. Doesn’t anyone in this galaxy have a heart?

“Hearts! Hearts for sale! Buy three and get a kidney for free!” An old lady, porous skin covered in green ooze, wheezes up at Katya.

She flinches. Ugh, it’s like Miss. Fame used to say back at the Academy- ask and the universe will give.

Katya amuses herself by stopping by a hologram store and flipping through the intergalactic net. She gained six new followers on her travel blog. Then Katya goes next to the local, seedy sex shop.

It’s full of gadgets and gizmos that have been scattered all over and somehow filtered down here. The shopkeeper, a cute drag queen named Violet, winks at her when she enters. They’d met and fucked the first time she’d got here, and Katya had never been held down so tightly or fucked so thoroughly as she had with Violet. Katya leans against the counter-

“So what you got in stock, V?”

“Oh, possessed butt plugs, ancient dildos, and…I shouldn’t be showing you this but…” Violet bounces to the back and comes back with what looks like a Barbie Doll box. Katya’s spent enough years in her childhood watching reruns to recognize it. But what’s it doing in a place like this?

“I’ve heard of a lot of fetishes, doll…but never any involving barbie dolls?”

Katya takes the package in her hands. This doll has big blonde hair up in a pigtail and a Judy Jetson hooker-like costume. What is even supposed to be? A flight attendant? Katya turns the box over and reads ’Here To Satisfy Your Wildest Fantasy- it’s Trixie! Your favorite sex Barbie proves that life in plastic IS really fantastic.’

“It’s small for travel convenience,“ Violet explains. “But press the button in the back, and it blows up. She’s got interchangeable parts for maximum pleasure- since Barbies don’t have any. I just got it in stock, so I don’t know what the reviews are.”

“So I’m like…your test rat?”

“Mm, more like a sexual experiment,” Violet says with a wink.

Katya is horny, but she’s never tried out a sex doll before. From what’s heard of online, they usually come with a remote control, but the Trixie doll doesn’t have any. 

Violet puts her hands on Katya’s: “What do you say? Buy it now, leave me a sweet review on Yelp, and I’ll give you 50% discount, Kat.”

Katya does like the novelty of getting a souvenir from Booberella. Maybe Alaska will get a laugh out of it too…if she ever speaks to her again.

“You know what? I’ll take it." 

Katya pulls out a couple gold coins from her back pocket. She’s glad Booberella is part of the galactic union. It makes buying sex toys all the more convenient. Violet bites down to check that they’re not fools gold and then sends her off with a wink.

Katya’s pleased to see that five-eyed-creep has taken good care of her Sputnik. He leers at her and then the doll pressed up to her chest. God, I’m horny but not blind. 

She salutes the planet with a middle finger as she zooms off. 

Then she’s back on course for the Mother Ship. Katya sets the ships destination and leaves it for auto pilot. She’s still tightly strapped into her seat as she swivels her chair around to inspect the doll she bought. Katya gently runs her hands across the plastic casing. 

"Hello, there, Trixie,” she whispers. “Now, let’s see how you look outta the box.”

Katya tries to be neat, but she ends up tearing it open. Looks like a Barbie that she saw in the kiddie holograms. She never had one when she was little, so Katya takes a moment to run her hands through her soft, blonde hair. Skin’s tight and plastic. Katya flips up the white skirt, but it’s smooth- neither cunt nor cock to be seen. 

She undoes the velcro of the back of doll’s dress to find a switch. It’s OFF right now. Does she really want to do this? Maybe just to say that she tried it.

Katya slowly undoes her seat belt, sucks in her breathe, and presses ON. 

There’s a mechanical 'whirring,’ and the doll gets so hot in her hands Katya drops it.

Fuck!

There’s a bright white flash, smoke, and Katya’s bent over, coughing. 

“Thank god someone got me out of that box,” comes a voice from the mist. 

“W-who are you?”

“The voice of god- who the fuck do you think it is? I’m the sex doll you just bought and turned on. Though gods know why considering my line’s been recalled,” a humanoid figure parts the white. “Name’s Trixie. Mattel. Trixie Mattel.”

“Uh, Katya. Zamo. Captain of Sputnik and- what do you mean recalled?”

If Katya was low key aroused before, now her nipples are pressed against the tight latex of her uniform. Trixie’s got thighs like woah!, flirty eyes, and lips that should be illegal. There’s something eerily android-like about her movements, but the thought only turns Katya on more. 

“Mhm, seller musta ripped you off.”

Fuck Violet.

“W-what do you mean? Are you broken?”

“Rude,” Trixie simpers as she stands between Katya’s spread legs. “I mean that’s why they say- our line is prone to uh…malfunctioning?”

“In what way?” she gasps as Trixie drapes herself on her lap. Katya runs a hand up her smooth thighs, admiring how shiny they are. When Trixie giggles, her silicone breasts bounce. They may be fake, but Katya really wants to slide her hands up and squeeze them. But even with Trixya leaning forward against her chest, Katya feels strangely shy. That’s new. 

“We’re self conscious. Can pass the Turning Test. Hate to be turned off and put away….and,” Trixie dramatically pauses as she leans in. “Known to have something as horrible as feelings.”

“Are you telling me a planet called Booberella accidentally created sentient life before anyone else in the galaxy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But,” Katya gulps as Trixie cups her face in her cold hands. “H-how’d you know all this? I just took you out of the box?”

Trixie’s lips are pressed up to Katya’s lips as she whispers, “This isn’t my first game of make believe.”

Of course Katya ends up with a sentient fucking sex toy. Trixie smirks at her horrified expression as she straddles her lap. Those thick thighs have a rubbery texture, and Katya’s not sure what to expect when Trixie impishly raises up her skirt. There’s…nothing?

“Tell me which you prefer,” Trixie demands. “I’m trying to follow the steps I was programmed with- one, assess owner. Two, satisfy needs. 

"Both? Either? Uh….”

Trixie rolls her eyes: “Problem with assessing is when people don’t know what they want. Let’s start slow and then I’ll give you what you need, baby.”

Baby? The words make Katya flush and squeeze her legs together as Trixie pulls her in for a kiss. Her lips are glossy and soft. She tastes like cherry lip gloss. It doesn’t feel much different from kissing Alaska. 

Trixie unzips her uniform, so Katya’s heavy breasts are revealed. Then her wet tongue is lapping at them. Katya squeaks and clenches at the sudden pleasure. Everything’s gone from 0 to 100 real quick. Trixie’s pink tongue slowly circles her nipples, and Katya flushes as she runs her hand through Trixie’s soft hair. 

“A-ah, Trixie, fe-feels-”

“Good?” Trixie finishes for her, pulling back so a strand of saliva still connects her to Katya. “I’m state of the fucking art. Just filled with crippling, existential dread.”

Katya gasps- “Me too!”

Trixie tilts her head, confused, as she leans back. Her eyes are filled with a curiosity that doesn’t seem natural to the rest of her. Katya didn’t know what she expected, but it’s not this. This is straight out of a TV show. Straight out of a science fiction novel. Straight out of a poorly set up porno. 

“So you don’t mind the idea that I’m filled with anxiety and neurosis and could disobey you? Put you over my knee and spank you just because I wanted?”

Katya bites her bottom lip and gasps, “S-sounds kinky to me.”

Trixie smirks: “You’re a fun one, huh?”

Then she sinks down onto her knees, and Katya hasn’t had anyone since Alaska. So the sudden tickle of Trixie’s fingertips against her still covered thighs makes her gasp. Katya’s wriggles out of her uniform, flushing under Trixie’s eyes. She’s not wearing any underwear.

“Such a good little captain, aren’t you?” Trixie demurs as she presses a fleeting kiss right above Katya’s wet desire. She’s been on space Odyssey for a month, so she’s not as neatly shaved as she’d like to be. But Trixie doesn’t seem to mind. Why would she?

“Oh, so how do I, uh-”

“Open your legs,” Trixie orders with a snap of her fingers. 

Fuck. Katya’s eyes flutter at the direct command, and it sends a sudden shiver up her spine. She loves to be told what to do like that. She’s always commanding her ship, so it’s nice to have someone else take the control away from her. Katya never thought a recalled barbie doll would be the one to do it for her. 

Then Trixie’s burying her blonde head between Katya’s thighs. Her tongue’s lapping at Katya’s wet folds. She whimpers. Katya runs her hands through Trixie’s hair again, and, wow, this feels real. It is real, isn’t it?

“I-I’ve ne-never met someone like you,” Katya gasps.

“You’re not really the type who usually buys a sex toy.”

“I’m glad I did,” Katya admits, flushing at the vulnerability, as Trixie looks up at her through her long lashes. The wetness of Trixie’s tongue has her leaking all over her Captain’s chair. Her toes curl in her space boots, waiting for more. 

“Your better than the last one,” Trixie says, and her eyes are softer than before. She leans up to press a kiss against Katya’s lips. She squirms in her seat, and Katya needs something more. 

“Trixie,” Katya gasps, unsure what’s she even asking for.

“Shhh, I got'chu, baby,” Trixie whispers. 

There’s a soft whirring and when Trixie lifts up her skirt again, there’s a toy strap there. Katya wants to try out all her functions, but she bites her lip at the sight of the phallic toy. Trixie roughly pushes her around, so Katya’s turned and pressed up to her chair. She holds the safety straps, arching her back in anticipation. 

Then Trixie’s pushing inside of her, and Katya mewls in pleasure. She’s been on edge, humming with low arousal all day. Finally, Trixie’s got a hand wrapped in her hair and is moving into her just like she needs. 

“There you go, Captain Zamo,” Trixie whispers in her ear as she fucks her, speeding up her pace. 

“A-ah,” Katya moans.

It’s the position in her chair, and the way Trixie’s pulling her hair as she fucks her that pushes Katya over the edge. With a whimper, Katya squeezes her thighs together. The liquid spills down her shaking thighs.

Oh, god, she loves how helpless she is. 

Trixie pulls out of her and whispers: “Again, Captain?”

“F-fuck yeah.”

Katya’s horny, and the universe is so wonderful. This is exactly what she wanted. 

[arcanistvysoren]

finally knitted my scattered thoughts about ryders together into a neat one-shot while waiting for early access to finish downloading.

 • In 2176 the big news is: the Jon Grissom Academy finally opens its doors to young biotics—and the twins part ways for the first time as Jo leaves for a place her brother cannot follow—to hone gifts she hasn’t asked for.

(They’re twins. It’s unfair. It should be both, or neither, not this.) 

Other news coming in is still angry, reeling in the aftermath of the Skyllian Blitz. Their father keeps a stoic front, but his fists clench whenever he listens to it too much. There’s an uncomfortable stretch of emptiness in Jaime’s stomach, now that Jo is gone, that he can’t quite find the name for. But he sees the news, and the clenched fists, and fills the empty space by enlisting.

• Somewhere else in the galaxy Jien Garson takes a job on a project that will change the course of history and both of their lives.

• We stood together, staring into that bright blue light, not knowing where it was going to take us or if we’d even make it through alive. It was the hardest step I’ve ever taken…

Their father tells them all kinds of tales of his glorious mission. Or maybe just the one tale, but they listen to it with voracity and pride. They learn not to share it quickly enough: it turns out not everyone’s father is a famous war vet; not everyone’s family gets to live in the heart of the Council space; and people might viciously begrudge you your father’s high standing.

• One day Joana gets into a scuffle at school and sends a classmate flying into a wall with a sudden eruption of blacks and blues and purples and magic. Afterwards, the thing she is most afraid of is not that she has hurt someone, nor the principle, nor their father—(not even this sudden thing tearing her up, although heavens know she never really gets a handle on it)—but that her brother will hate her.

Years later, she will still reflect from time to time that it should have been him that got it. He doesn’t disagree: it would have made life a whole lot easier for her—but he doesn’t mind it either. He doesn’t need biotics to feel plugged directly into the infinite expanse of space.

• His fate is written in his bones long before Jien Garson claws the right for humanity to be included in the Initiative from the stringently crossed arms of other aliens. It has always been thrumming through his heart whenever he looked outside and saw the stars, and a new planet below, and the endless spinning void. And his ribs would expand with the almost-painful awareness that they are floating through the unfathomable. The most beautiful terrible thing.

There is a particular sort of victory in standing on the surface of a new planet and being able to pull your helmet off. Where the air here hasn’t been made with humans in mind, and yet here they are, existing, and the breeze brushes against his skin, leaving dust specks of an entirely alien ecosystem on his tongue.

It’s a longing, he finds, universal of all living things: they’re a space-faring civilization, this is it, the future, and they’ve made it. But they still long for more uncharted depths and new horizons, and still shiver at the sight of stars.

• “Stay safe out there,” Jaime tells her the day she leaves for Grissom. His tone is light, teasing: they don’t really believe in wars yet.

“I promise,” she says. It’s a new territory, this separation, but it’s not like it actually severs them.

(Him signing up for the Initiative however…)

• “It’s a little bit like you’re dying,” Robert tells him after Jaime explains the whole thing. They’ve been roommates for two years, and he sounds wary and at a loss.

“You’ll get onto that ship, and go to sleep, and wake up the next day, only it’ll be 600 years from now. In that time I’ll get married, and have kids, and die, and my kids will have kids, my blood will distill. I’ll be thinking about you for years, wondering if somewhere in the future you’re missing me, even though you’ll be still asleep on your Ark. And when you do wake up enough to remember me, I’ll be a footnote in a database of ancient military obituaries. Not that you’d know. If you ever get back here, you won’t recognize a thing.” He shakes his head with a frown, trying to wrap his head around it. “That Ark is like a coffin. As soon as you step on board, you’re gone.”

• Come find me, Andromeda says.

It doesn’t seem like dying to him.

• Space is not something that Jo Ryder chose, the way her brother has. Space has called for Jaime and enveloped him. She has to wrestle against it like an elastic band, trying to fit it around herself, uncooperative and resistant.

Jaime looks at the stars with a smile and anticipation. Dreams of things bigger than she even, and she worries where it might lead him. But at least he knows what he wants. She lacks, and envies him this surety.

• It was the hardest step I’ve ever taken. Their father continues to rehash the same story, in private and in public. Joana isn’t dazzled it with anymore.

“I don’t want our last name to be dictating who we are,” she tells Jaime matter-of-factly, and sounds tired.

In another life, where they have not surrendered to the life of the military, she might have been a programming engineer, or a quantum mechanic, or an astrophysicist. (Numbers light up for her the way stars sing for him.) She might have been a CEO, or a broker, and he might have been a researcher, an explorer, a scientist—and in that life neither of them would get to go on the Hyperion.

He wonders sometimes how those Jaime and Joana are doing. If they’re any happier; if they’re happy at all.

• She graduates third in her class and promptly runs away to learn piloting from aliens: it’s glorious, because no one cares she’s a Ryder. She’s a human, she’s a gnat—more breakable than a turian, less biotics than an asari, all hormones and fire in her blood, still a new thing, an unproven thing—she loves it.

She has soft skin, a vulnerable artery in her neck, messy hair the likes of which they haven’t seen, and to the aliens she’s a novelty.

She has a brusque tongue, inhospitable eyes, an unpalatable roughness, and to the humans she’s objectionable.

(No one ever takes her just for the whole of her.)

Watching over a team of scientists she finds herself fiercely missing her brother.

• “I decided to go Andromeda,” he tells her merrily. His smile fades when he notices her face. “You will come with me, won’t you?” he adds carefully.

And she has to shut her eyes, to not see him, or maybe to commit him to memory, the whole of him. Because he’s leaving. Going where she can’t, or maybe doesn’t want to try and follow after all. (When she opens her eyes again, they are bright.)

“We do everything together,” he insists helplessly. “Say you’ll come with me.”

She shakes her head, and doesn’t say it, cannot say it. Looks at him askance, terribly betrayed, and still pulls him into a wordless hug. Clings to him, and he to her, but it doesn’t help at all.

• Being a Ryder is a legacy. Not as much as being a Grissom, she supposes, but in the military circles their name carries weight: her father, the right hand man, stepping into the maw of the unknown, dashing and unafraid. Girls and boys in her class swooning over the photos of the alpha strike team that first stepped through the Charon relay to Arcturus. Girls and boys asking utterly inappropriate questions about her father.

That’s how she discovers the first thing different between her and Jaime: when she is just too mad, when it is bursting out of her, too full, too much, splitting out of her spine with a spike of something violent and unfathomable. And she cannot feel her body, and cannot understand its signals, and it’s awful from that very first second, and she never really learns to cope with it.

• In the wake of the Battle of the Citadel, Joana meets Commander Shepard, briefly. Spots her on the Presidium, sitting out of the way, half-concealed from the passers-by. She doesn’t want to bother her, but knows she’ll be kicking herself later if she doesn’t.

“Commander?” she gathers enough gusto to approach her. The women turns her head, unsurprised—the way people who are used to strangers approaching them are never surprised anymore. (Joana’s seen the look enough times on her father.) She lets out a nervous exhale and steps closer. “I just wanted to thank you. For all that you did. Saving our asses.”

Shepard smiles around a humorless chuckle, her eyes trailing down below, to the chasm in the Presidium’s floor, where you could see parts of the ravaged Tayseri Ward and the keepers skittering about.

“Doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment these days, does it?” she says. “We lost a lot of men.”

It’s been a few weeks. The news are still full of fire and death tolls, and the adults send children off to play while they huddle around monitors, listening to reports of more deaths and destruction that keep coming like ripples. It was one attack, and then it was over in a matter of hours, but they keep cleaning out debris, finding bodies—Flux has been unearthed last night; dance floor full of dead things; you can only hope it was quick—it is only now that the weight starts gravely settling in.

The Commander’s eyes look old on her face. She feels that weight acutely. So does Joana: so much that she cannot breathe. The memorial wall deep in the guts of the Citadel is full of names of her former shipmates, former classmates, and she feels her skin crawling because hers isn’t on it.

• She slammed the door on her entire relationship with her father when she left their Citadel apartment for good. It ceased to be a home that day, but it still felt like losing a pieace of herself when the geth armada tore through that part of the Citadel, making rubble out of her childhood. The home they could have had on Earth was lost the moment their father put his career first and sold it off, choosing to juggle his carious postings instead.

The closes thing she has to a home she loses because she’s on leave, but the ship she’s been assigned to isn’t, and the geth ships blow it to pieces. All that’s left of them is a wall of names mourned, and names unmourned, and names nobody will soon remember.

So she comes back to her father, still angry and rigid, and says she’ll go. Because there’s no more homes to lose. Because the shadows of the dead are standing on her shoulders, and the guilt is unbearable, and she can’t look up because of the choking shame and terror and so yes she’ll go.

• “I signed up for the Initiative yesterday,” she tells Jaime calmly over lunch. Nothing’s been formally approved yet, but it will be in no time if her father has anything to say about it.

Jamie is caught off guard only for a moment, before pulling her into a hug with a wide smile, both of them saying nothing. He doesn’t say he’s relieved, and she doesn’t say she’s sorry. That she almost abandoned him, or that he’s almost abandoned her, or both of them were nearly abandoned together.

He tells her of his posting at Arcturus instead, and that joke he heard the other day in the mess hall, and she laughs, that little snorting laugh she’s been embarrassed of since she was fifteen. And he smiles; and he’s glad; and he will get to hear it for the rest of his life.

• “I’m a soldier,” Robert tells him when it is the final good-bye, and Hyperion stands ready to depart. “So I don’t really get it. But I get that you’re not one. And maybe you’ll find whatever you’re looking for there. Whenever you do decide to wake up.”

“So, tomorrow then,” Jaime smiles crookedly, and hears his roommate’s laugh for the last time.

600 years later, tomorrow, he’ll think back to that moment when the realization will dawn on him that he might be in love. That it took him going to another galaxy for it to happen—amongst all the other brilliant things.

600 years later Joana will stop running from her demons, and fall onto an alien soil, and she’ll finally look her past in the eye and cry over it and finally bury it.

• Jaime lies on the floor of not-really-grass—only sort of grass, everything-here-is-different kind of grass. Maybe they will plant their own some day soon—but not tonight. Tonight, he lies on the surface of a no-name world and looks up into the sky where the Milky War streaks far across, a thin vague brush stroke.

They’ll have to build hubs to begin tracing where’s Sol, and Iera, and Widow, and Aralakh, heart wistfully looking back. Other stars are occupying his vision now. He doesn’t know the name of any constellation. He will stretch out his hand and draw lines through the stars, through the spinning solar systems. And he will make up the shapes for them himself.

• A good story ends with a homecoming.

[askblainedwarbler]

Less Gel; More Muffins || A Jeff/Blaine Para

Who: Blaine Anderson and Jeff Sterling ( @askjssterling ) What: Jeff comes over for muffins and hair styling with Blaine When: Sunday, February 5th Where: The Anderson Household Notes: None

Jeff texted Blaine that he was heading to his place as he walked out of the house, getting into his car and pulling it out of the driveway. He was more than willing to help Blaine finally get rid of the amount of hair gel he used daily, but the moment he mentioned freshly made muffins, Jeff was more than sold. He drove to the house he had been once or twice, parking it outside before walking up to the front door with the help of his crutch. He rang the doorbell, waiting for Blaine to open the door quickly before Jeff froze outside.

Blaine had to admit that the thought of doing his hair any other way than using copious amounts of raspberry scented hair gel made him extremely nervous. Nerves made him bake and this time it had been muffins. Which he'd promptly offered to Jeff in exchange for help and opinions about his hair. He had to admit, he truly valued the other's opinion and he was excited when the doorbell rang. "Jeff!" he greeted, a huge smile on his face as he pulled the door open and ushered the blond inside and out of the cold. "I just pulled the muffins out of the oven, so the chocolate chips are all melty." He almost skipped at the excitement of having a friend over- he really needed to get out more.

Jeff smiled as Blaine opened the door, getting inside before hugging Blaine quickly. "I arrived at the perfect time, then." he chuckled, taking off his jacket and hanging it up before following Blaine into the kitchen. He had spent most of his time since he came back at home, and that was slowly driving him mad. He missed Blaine, too, and he promised himself he would get back in touch with all of his friends from back home, so visiting him was the perfect excuse to get out of the house and keep that promise. "They smell amazing, that's for sure." he pointed out as soon as he could smell the muffins.

Blaine pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and gestured for Jeff to take a seat as he went over to the counter and pulled hot muffins from the tray. He carefully arranged them on a plate and turned around happily to set them all but in front of the other on the table. "Okay, so tell me what you think," he said, sitting down and watching Jeff expectantly. He nodded in encouragement; it was his favorite thing when people enjoyed the things he baked. Baking was so new to him, but making people happy was not a new thing, and he'd never seen anything that came out of an oven make people unhappy. His hands clasped under his chin and he nodded.

Jeff thanked Blaine with a smile as he gestured for him to sit down, pulling up a chair and sitting down with a soft sigh, stretching out his hurt leg. He wanted to believe he was getting better, but even if he could walk with just one crutch now, it didn't mean his knee stopped hurting. Today wasn't a good day, his knee hurting as soon as he woke up. Jeff turned to watch Blaine as he got everything ready "It smells great, so I doubt it would taste bad." he said honestly, smiling widely as Blaine placed a plate in front of him "Chocolate could never taste bad." he winked playfully before picking up a muffin, taking a bite with a hum, giving Blaine a thumbs up as he chewed.

Blaine knew that Jeff was right. Chocolate could never taste bad, but he still liked the validation that he got when someone enjoyed what he'd made. Satisfied, he grabbed a muffin for himself and took a bite, smiling to himself. After a moment, he raised his eyebrows. "So, YouTube tutorials are really going to help, you think?" he asked, bringing up the real reason he'd asked Jeff to come over. He reached up to feel his hair, which was currently smooth and glassy, full of gel, and very solid. He couldn't imagine letting his curls loose. It was sure to be laughable and he wasn't sure he wanted that kind of attention.

Jeff joined the chat 18 seconds ago

Jeff should be embarrassed about how quickly he devoured that muffin, but he was still young, he could do that sort of things. "Did you really just bit into yours after I was half way through mine? Were you trying to poison me, Blaine?" he laughed, shaking his head fondly before reaching for another one, this time breaking pieces off and eating like a normal person and not a starved teen boy. "Yeah, I think they will." he nodded confidently "If you still aren't comfortable with it, you just have to promise me you will use less hair gel." he compromised. He knew Blaine wouldn't be comfortable to go out with his hair completely untamed on the first try, but he could work through it. "You didn't wear this much back in our freshman year, you had some waves."

Blaine laughed a little and shook his head, still eating pieces of his own muffin. "Okay, maybe I didn't devour this one because I didn't wait for you to get here before I ate one, so I'm already one down and you're catching up," he said, keeping the air light. "Less gel means all of the curly mess that the gel is hiding will be all out there fore everyone to see. Freshman year I just hadn't learned how to control it yet. I didn't have the right gel and I didn't know that I had to style right out of the shower. I know better now, but... I guess I can try. If it looks okay..." He was obviously uneasy but not against trying something new. "What do we search for?" he asked, pulling out his phone and bringing up YouTube.

Jeff laughed, eating another bit "You're the worst. But they're so good, I can't really blame you." he winked playfully. "If you want my honest opinion, I think your hair looked great back then. Totally not a mess, it was all tidy and didn't look like a literal... helmet." he said honestly, biting his lip and hoping he wasn't too harsh. He didn't want Blaine to feel bad, and his quest of getting him to use less hair gel wasn't something he was doing to change him, but he remembered his hair from freshman year, and it looked so much more like the Blaine he knew than the way it did now. "I'm not being a dick, I promise. I just think your hair a bit looser would fit you more. You're so bubbly, it would look more like you. Can you imagine me with dull brown hair?" he pointed out, before pulling the chair closer to Blaine, so he could watch the screen "How to tame curly hair sounds like a good start?"

Blaine made a face at the word 'helmet.' Did his hair really look like that? He thought it was nice and neat like everyone else's hair was- the people who didn't have super curls anyway. Unconsciously, he touched his hair, nodding at Jeff. "I know you're not. I trust you. I'm going to try and change it up," he said, thinking about how the way he looked was suddenly coming into play with more than one person in his life. He smiled a little. "No, no I can't imagine you with dull brown hair. You wouldn't be Jeff. I guess I see your point." He cleared his throat and searched in the app for pertinent videos, and clicked the first one that had someone with short, curly hair. It should have been obvious, how to tame his own hair, but it wasn't really. The step by step that the video featured was helpful, and Blaine hoped he remembered all of it. When the video was over, he took a breath and looked at Jeff. "Okay are you ready for this?" he asked, mostly asking himself.

Jeff smiled a bit as Blaine said he was going to at least try to change it up "And if you still don't like it, I guess I'll have to admit defeat." he shrugged playfully. He didn't know what the obsession with hair gel came about with the Warblers, but he remembers all the times he went around and tried to hide the bottles from everyone. He always thought everyone looked so much older than they really were, and with most people, the hair style didn't fit their personality. "Yeah, I would be boring. Not saying you're boring, far from it, but maybe you just didn't find the perfect style yet. I used to use hairspray back at Dalton, but I dropped it as soon as I moved to California." he shrugged softly "Maybe hairspray will work with you? Who knows." Jeff watched the video along with Blaine, slowly making his way through his second muffin before it ended "Do I get to see curly Blaine in his full glory?" he asked with a wide smile. He was a little bit excited to see Blaine without any hair gel on.

Blaine thought about how most of the Warblers were obsessed with their hair. It it wasn't hair gel, it was hair glue, hair spray, shine spray, mousse, or any other trendy hair product that they sold in stores. Maybe it was because of that that he'd fallen into the gel trap. Or may it was because it was so much easier to avoid the comments about his poofy hair than to accept that people would talk about it. "I... don't know if just hairspray will do anything. But I'll try it," he said, nervously. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, if you're ready, I'm ready. Curly Blaine in his full glory." He nodded and smiled and swallowed his nerves. "You want to come with me or should I bring stuff here," he asked, trying really hard not to glance at his friend's knee.

Jeff was also guilty of being a little bit obsessed with his hair. He liked it to be all neat, so that his hair flip would look cool, but now that he was out of Dalton, he didn't have that need anymore. Maybe it was the change from a preppy school to a place as laid back as San Diego, but Jeff didn't care about his hair as much. He let it grow out, just trying to keep it as blonde as he could. He didn't think he could ever let the brown take over. Maybe Blaine was just still used to it like this. "I don't know either, but it's a possibility." he grinned widely, nodding excitedly "I was born readt." Jeff smiled softly at Blaine's suggestion, glad he wasn't flat out pointing out his injury, but acknowledging it "I can go with you, I'm not invalid." he smiled, reaching for his crutch before standing up, leaning against it "Lead the way, Mr. Blaine." he moved his arm like a butler would do, with an exaggerated accent, trying to lift up the mood.

Blaine smiled at Jeff, realizing that he'd missed the way the other was like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day-- even if he hadn't been blond. He led the other through the house the way they'd come through to the kitchen, and then up the stairs, which had been the main reason for Blaine asking if Jeff wanted to come along or not. He hated that his friend was hurt, and especially that he wasn't sure exactly how badly. But he led him through nonetheless and arrived at a too-large bathroom that was too fancy for anyone's tastes (except Blaine's mom), with a massive whirlpool corner tub and double sinks with a huge mirror. He opened a small cabinet and pulled out a towel. "Okay, I'm going to wash this out," he said, pointing to his hair. "Promise me you won't laugh." He didn't think Jeff would laugh to be mean, but Blaine looked seriously weird with curly hair, he thought.

Jeff looked up at the stairs. On a normal day, he wouldn't look at them as if he was climbing Mount Everest, but today wasn't a good day for his knee, so he took a bit longer to get to the top. Once he reached Blaine, he gave him a smile, showing him that he was okay, before following him to the bathroom. "Oh wow, this is fancy." he pointed out dumbly as he looked around the bathroom. His parents where well off in life, but the bathrooms in his house certainly didn't look like this. He walked to the toilet, putting the lid down so he could sit down, "I like to joke around, but I wouldn't laugh at you. Promise." he crossed his heart with a smile.

Blaine felt like he was about to go over the first drop on a massive, super tall roller coaster. He liked roller coasters enough, but he didn't like having this feeling when he wasn't actually on one. He laughed nervously at Jeff's comment about his mom's decor in the bathroom. He was right, but Blaine forgot to respond out loud to the comment. Why in the world was he so nervous about washing the gel out of his hair? He nodded and pressed his lips together and got down on his knees in front of the tub, keeping the towel close and turning on the hot water. After a few seconds his hands were in his hair and the familiar raspberry scent was washing down the drain. He used a little shampoo to make sure all of it was out, and nervously rinsed the rest of the stuff from his hair before turning the water off and reluctantly pulled the towel over. He rubbed the towel over his wet hair and stood up, facing away from his friend. His heart was beating so fast; he knew that his hair was a curly mop on his head now and it took all of his bravery to turn around to face the other. There was a blush on his cheeks and he pointed to his hair. "So, this is what we have to work with."

Jeff fixed his knee brace as Blaine started to washed out the gel, sighing contently as he managed to make it feel a little bit better. When he looked up, Blaine was almost done, and the smell of raspberry finally hit him "At least it smells really good." he chuckled, watching as he dried his hair, waiting expectantly for Blaine to turn around and finally show him his hair. Jeff always thought that Blaine was over reacting before, that his hair really wasn't that curly, but even if still damp, Jeff could see how his hair formed tight curls around his head. It was much more curly than he was expecting, but it wasn't that bad, and he wasn't going to laugh, having promised him or not. "It is very curly." he pointed out with a smile "But it's not that bad, really. I'm sure we can work with it. Now come here, I'm an old injured man who can't get up." he motioned for him to come closer.

Blaine watched Jeff, trying to see if there was any maliciousness in his eyes. He knew there wouldn't be any, but he was scared, so of course he assumed the worst in everything. But Jeff didn't have anything bad to say. It was relief for Blaine, and when asked, he walked a little closer to Jeff. He was concerned about the other's knee, especially after the stairs. He tried not to frown, and instead let out a chuckle. "Jeff, you're not an old man. If you're old, then I'm old. You're definitely not old," he commented, reaching out his hand for the other to take. Jeff made him feel at ease. "Do you really think we can do something with this mess?"

Jeff knew he teased Blaine, and any of his friends that used too much hair gel, but he never did it to hurt them. He would hate knowing that his joking around actually hurt the people he cared about. He could joke now, because that's what they did, but he knew Blaine would feel worse than he already did, so he wouldn't do that. Jeff was very good at joking about serious thing, specially when it was about himself. He hated the fact that he was hurt, but it was easier if he joked about it and made others laugh, it took his head out of the dark place it normally did when he let his thoughts take the best of him. "I'm super old, I need a walking aid. I'm older than you, probably." he joked, taking Blaine's hand and hoisting himself up, nodding softly "I'm sure we can. Now, I really want to run my fingers through your hair, just once. It's so curly." he asked with a smile,

Blaine actually laughed this time, shaking his head as he helped Jeff up. "Yeah right, when is your birthday?" he asked, immediately regretting asking that, since today was his own birthday and he didn't really want to have to tell anyone about that. He hated having so much attention drawn to himself. Suddenly, he felt shyness creep over him, remembering Jeff saying that he'd run his hands through Blaine's hair, and now hearing him say that he wanted to right then made him think about the last time someone had run their hands through his hair. "Are you sure?" he asked, biting his lip and looking up more shyly than he had earlier.

Jeff fixed his hair as Blaine let go of him "November.... Okay, maybe the odds are against me." he laughed. Jeff nodded "What if you never let your hair out again and I lose the opportunity?" he sighed dramatically, before running his fingers through the curls, watching them bounce back with a smile. He was careful not to run his fingers along his scalp or anything, just through his damp curls, thoughtful about what he had confessed before. As much as he would love to tease him, he didn't want to make this awkward. "That's so cool, seriously, why do you hide it?" he asked honestly.

Blaine smiled a little. "Okay, you're older than me, you win, old man," he said, obviously joking. "Okay, okay," he said, listening to reason. It was quite possible that he'd never let anyone be in his presence with his hair not full of controlling gel ever again. He was very thankful that Jeff only fluffed at his curls instead of fully running his finger through his hair. It would have been very awkward if he'd tugged at them or something. He watched the other's face as he did it, and glanced down when it was time to reply. "I don't really want to stand out too much, I guess. And I hated when I was a kid and my parents always wanted to shave my head because curls weren't manly. So, I got to keep my hair if I made it look flatter." He hadn't confessed that to many people before, and glanced up and laughed nervously. "But mostly because I just don't know how to do my hair."

Jeff laughed, shaking his head "I actually feel horrible that I don't remember your birthday, What is it, December? For you to be younger than me." Jeff smiled as he let go of Blaine's hair, taking a step back. Now if Blaine never listened to him and would never get rid of the hair gel, at least he could say he touched the mythical curls once. Jeff frowned softly as he heard Blaine. He hated how familiar all of that sounded, but he never let what his parents said get into him, at least not enough he would start doing something just to please him. It wasn't fair Blaine only started doing that because his parents never bothered to help him with the hair they gave him. He gently squeezed Blaine's shoulders, making him look at him "Your hair is fine, okay? No matter what they say." he said firmly, getting serious all of a sudden. He defied his parents, kept doing the things that made him happy no matter what opinion they had, and Blaine should have the chance to that, too. "We're going to learn how to do it so you like it but don't have to wear so much gel all the time, okay?"

Blaine shrugged. "Dude, it's totally okay. Not important," he said, not wanting to admit that it was his birthday today. "I'm not one of those guys that is going to get really angry that someone doesn't remember something like that. You're good." He smiled lightly as Jeff got his attention with a little squeeze to his shoulders. He knew the other was right, but it was just something he'd always done. Or maybe something he'd just never learned because he'd found a solution and it no longer mattered. He reached up and felt his hair, which was starting to air dry and get poofy. "I believe you but the evidence is overwhelmingly opposite." He smiled a little. "I think I need at least ​some​ gel."

Jeff pouted "Birthdays are always important. And I like knowing my friend's birthday. If anything, just to see if our signs are compatible." he joked, hoping it would make Blaine finally tell him. He really couldn't remember his birthday, and he didn't know if it was because he forgot or because Blaine never told him. "That's because you never learned how to deal with it. But we'll find something today." he squeezed his shoulder one last time before leaning back, nodding with a small smile "Some gel. Not a full container of it every morning." he compromised with a laugh.

Blaine pressed his lips together. "I mean, I don't think they're that important," he said, debating for a second before blurting. "It's today." He quickly tried to change the topic by pulling out a huge bottle of gel and holding it up in his hand. "So, how much should I be using here? More? Less? Do you think I should get out some of my mom's shine booster stuff?" He opened a cabinet and started pulling out more bottles of different sprays and hair products. "There's mousse here too," he added, pushing them over to where Jeff could see them.

Jeff shrugged softly "It's not a big deal, but they're important. A whole day just for yourself were you can just get away with anything? Sounds pretty awesome. And there's cake. You gotta love the cake." he chuckled, before frowning deeply "You're birthday's today?" he looked at Blaine, and from the way he was reacting to that, he didn't seem like he was lying. He always acted extra serious when he was trying to pull his leg like that "Your birthday's today and you didn't say anything? Blaine! I could have taken you out to get cake, instead you're the one baking." he shook his head softly "Why didn't you tell me anything?" he asked, reaching for his crutch to walk to where Blaine placed all the products, picking up a bottle of mousse, reading the back of it, hoping that would give Blaine the time to explain why he didn't mention that it was his anniversary.

Blaine knew that he was going to get caught. He should have planned it a little better, honestly. He shrugged and pretended to look at a bottle of gel. "I didn't tell anyone about it, it's not just you. And I like baking. It's one of my favorite things to do, so it's not really that big of a deal. Kurt is taking me for dinner later." He shrugged again. "It's really not a big deal. It's just a birthday." He didn't know why he was so anti telling people about the day. When Jeff knew him, he'd definitely have been all over making sure that everyone knew it was his special day. But since breaking up with Kurt, he just wanted to stay out of the lime light. "So, I should just use a little bit of gel then?" he questioned, trying to segway back into his hair.

Jeff had no idea why Blaine didn't say anything before, but he looked uncomfortable, which was something, if he was trying to get the attention back to his hair. He wasn't going to ask, either, he was sure Blaine would eventually tell him something if he wanted to, but it didn't mean Jeff wasn't going to try to make this experience a little bit nicer "Still, it's supposed to be a special day. I would have got you something, like a bow tie, or something." he pointed out, nodding as he talked "You and Kurt... You managed to stay friends?" he asked instead, picking up the gel and giving it to Blaine "Okay, you can have your gel, but let's start with like... a quarter of what you normally wear and work it from there?" he raised a brow with a smile.

Blaine smiled at the fact that Jeff would have gotten him a present. He didn't expect gifts from anyone, and honestly just being to hang out with his old friend was more than enough of a present. "It's nice to just be able to hang out with you. And yeah, we did. I mean we weren't at first. He was in New York and I was here in Lima and I was sort of... depressed for a long time. That break up was really hard. Till I got the job with the Warblers I had no direction." He cleared his throat. "But when he came back he apologized and he's been really nice to me since then. And he asked me to go for dinner tonight. So, I said yes." He was looking forward to having dinner with Kurt, though he still wasn't sure if it was because Kurt was familiar and it was comfortable, or if he really did want to be with Kurt in every way again. He blinked out of that thought. "Only a quarter? Wow. Okay..." he said, squeezing the gel bottle, using way more than a normal person would. "Are you sure?"

Jeff smiled, pulling Blaine into a quick hug "I know I'm awesome, but not as awesome as a birthday present. I'm still going to give you one. Just not today." he promised. He was back home, and he was going to get back all those friendships he left behind when he went to California, starting with Blaine. It wasn't like they stopped being friends, but they grew apart, and that was normal, but Jeff was going to nurture his friendships better this time. "But now you have /one/ direction." he made finger guns at him with a laugh, before shaking his head at himself, "But I'm glad you two are better. Never thought you'd break up, but things happen sometimes, you can't control them." he shrugged, watching him taking too much gel into his hand. It seemed too much for Jeff, but if that's only a quarter to him, he was keeping his promise. "Yes, I'm sure. If you need a little bit more, then we'll add it."

Blaine returned Jeff's little hug with a smile. "I promise that you don't have to do that, Jeff," he said, though he didn't really mind all that much, he supposed. He nodded. "I didn't think we would either, but he just decided one day that he wasn't happy with me anymore and we broke up. I guess that's how it works. We're too young. Everyone's told me that. I guess everyone was right. But yeah, he's a good friend." Blaine bit his lip and looked at his face in the mirror, trying to tell himself that the frizz was going to look okay when he was done, and started to work the gel in. It wasn't nearly as gooey as when he normally did his hair, but the curls were at least sticking together a little. Enough that it wasn't like he had a bush on his head anymore. He looked to Jeff. "Okay, what do you think?"

Jeff shook his head "I want to give you something, even if it's just to make up for the years I didn't." he listened to Blaine, nodding softly "Yeah, relationships end, it's not the end of the world. I'm just glad you are still friends, because it would suck to lose your boyfriend and your friend all at once." Jeff watched Blaine through the mirror as he started to style his hair, nodding approvingly as they locked eyes in the mirror "I think it looks good, but how do you feel? And don't say you hate it because it's not the normal amount you put in." he warned with a smile.

Blaine could tell that Jeff wasn't lying about the way his hair looked. Now he just had to figure out if he liked it. It felt more breezy than normal. Lighter. Curlier. He did kind of like the way you could see the curls; it was like they were highlighted. His hair was still smooth and definitely not frizzy. It was different, that was for sure. As he stared in the mirror, his face was completely untelling. He smiled back a little. "Actually. I don't hate it. It's just... it feels weird," he said, reaching up and touching it. He was surprised to find that the thin edges of the curls were already drying a little, which was completely different from when he coated all of his hair in the stuff and plastered it to his head. That took at least an hour to be dry to the touch. "I look so different..."

Jeff watched Blaine expectantly, hoping that he would at least not hate the new look. It wasn't that different, really, it was clearly gelled down, but now Jeff could see waves in his hair, and even if it wasn't as curly as it would naturally be, it was still a bit looser than the full head of hair gel he normally used. Jeff smiled widely as Blaine seemed to at least enjoy it "Well, your scalp is used to be drowned in too much gel, it's just learning how to breathe again." he said playfully, nudging their shoulders "It's still you, so it's not that different. Just curlier...and lighter." he nodded in approval "I think it looks awesome."

Blaine listened for any clues of Jeff not telling the truth when he spoke, and there weren't any at all. He cracked a little smile, turning his head at all angles to try and get a really good look. "Okay, it wasn't ​too much​ gel, just a lot. I go through a whole bottle of this stuff in a week," he said, holding up the large bottle of raspberry scented hair gel to make his point. "I guess... it's been kind of a safety net, you know? But... if I want things to change, I have to start making changes, right? And you have to start somewhere." Mostly he was thinking out loud, and maybe it was the fact that his hair was weighing him down less, but he felt so much lighter than before.

Jeff wouldn't be able to lie to Blaine. Yes, maybe he would have rather convinced him to wear it natural, but he got it, Blaine was so used to his hair gel that it would be too much of a shock to just wear it naturally. But this was a nice compromise, and it fit his personality so much better, in Jeff's opinion, it almost reminded him a bit of Blaine in their freshman year at Dalton. Jeff picked up the bottle "I wouldn't need this much gel in my life time, and you go through it in a week. It's /too much/." he chuckled, placing it down on the counter "At least you'll save a lot of money." he pointed out with a playful shrug. "Exactly, that's the spirit. And if you're too focus on your safety net, you won't be able to enjoy life fully. We're adults now, safety nets aren't that safe sometimes."

Blaine didn't like that Jeff was right. Doing away with his safety net was a very scary thing for him. Even when he'd had noting else, he still had his classic look, and to change that meant that everything was different. It was almost terrifying, but he wanted this chapter of his life to end and to start the new one. "I'm trying really hard here, so you should be proud of me," he said, leaning down to wash the remaining gel from his hands. "And also... thank you," he added, drying his hands and turning around. "This was a birthday present that I wasn't expecting, and it kind of gives new meaning to ​birth​ day, being philosophically reborn and whatever." It was a typical Blaine ramble, and he was glancing at the ceiling as he thought it through while saying it. "So, thank you," he said, looking back down and smiling at his friend.

Jeff chuckled "I'm sorry, you know me. Just trying to make it less dramatic." he smiled, waving it off as Blaine thanked him "You seriously don't have to thank me. If anything, I'd be the one thanking you for actually listening to me this one time. And for the delicious muffins." he listened to him silently, letting him say everything he wanted before laughing softly "That was very deep. I'm glad you like it, it wouldn't have worked out if you weren't comfortable with it." he pulled Blaine into a tight hug "You're more than welcome, Blaine. I'm glad I ended up helping and not making it worse."

Blaine shook his head as they hugged. "You did help. You did. I promise," he said, squeezing tightly as a thank you. "I'm really glad you came back from California. I mean, not that you got hurt and had to have... everything... and the crutch thing and... yeah I mean it's just really great to have you back." He nodded as he pulled back. "You want some more muffins?" he asked. "Change makes me hungry."