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aloysiavirgata · 4 years

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In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards.

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed.

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

***

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape.

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door.

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.”

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial.

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper.

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming.

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks.

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly.

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning.

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still.

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left.

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life. She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders.

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly.

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house.

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders.

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep.

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous.

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns. “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“ she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.”

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.

#xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #my fic #iwtb

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blairwaldcrf · 4 years

Text

The Kids are Alright (Are We?) - Nate/Dan/Blair

ao3... gossip girl au. chapter 1/?

summary: when two children get detention together they never expect to unlock a secret their parents have kept (both knowingly and unknowingly)

i.e. Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf are disaster characters but I love them and so does Nate.

......

Sometimes Dan Humphrey wished he had made his morning coffee an Irish more than others, and this is one of them. Having finally gotten halfway into an op-ed he was supposed to finish by the end of the week, he had thought the day was going great. A phone call from the Principal of his daughter’s private grade school didn’t agree. Clarissa, adopted daughter of Dan and Nate Humphrey-Archibald, was a beautiful tiny nine year old girl with terrifying intelligence and aptitude for trouble. Maybe it was in the name, the ones the likes of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Richardson had waxed poetic on, but she was the kind of force Dan was all too familiar with. It was why he had fallen in love with her at the agency before they had even decided on the age of the child to adopt.

When he and Nate had gotten her a place in this prestigious school Clarissa had been a model student for the first semester. Any layman who had read even just one article on child psychology would say she was trying to prove her worth to her new parents, but when she had settled into the easy enveloping love that both her fathers and the extended Humphrey family gave, she changed. She became more herself, arguing with teachers about the quality of their class material-- at nine-- which Dan’s father liked to remind him was the age Dan had as a child. Before the year had even finished she had tested well out of third and into fifth grade. No longer met with educational boredom, she had instead turned to social approval and pranks to win over her classmates who thought she was a baby in comparison to their ripe old age of ten and eleven years old.

So now, on top of writing op-eds and working on his second novel, he had to volunteer on the PTA committee and make donations about once a week so his daughter wasn’t kicked out of the school that cost him and his husband Nate as much as community college tuition.

This time it was a prank that involved the teacher’s bathroom that required him to drive to the school office and deal with Principal Pipton, quite possibly the most annoying and frustrating woman Dan had ever had the misfortune of meeting. If he lived a different life he would very much wish to have gone into education and ousted her from the school himself.

Nicole, the young front desk attendant for the school, was nice enough to give him a sympathetic smile as she waved him back into the larger Principal office when he arrived. Nate was standing on the side of the chair Clarissa sat in across from Pipton’s desk, but there was an unfamiliar presence of two more in the room. From the look of things, Clarissa had finally found herself an accomplice.

Instagram models would have been jealous of the probable mother in the room, her blonde hair longer and shinier than anything short of a celebrity could accomplish. She was tall even without the heels she was sporting or the fashionable outfit that went along with it, but her and her child looked nothing alike.

The kid was probably the younger side of third grade but had no air of confidence about him as he sat in the chair too large for his frame. Physically, he reminded Dan of a younger version of himself. Mess of brown curls, big brown eyes, and pale skin. He wondered how on earth his daughter had convinced such an obviously straight laced kid to pull off a big prank. God knew that there wasn’t anyone who could have done it to him back in the day.

“Sherry,” Dan greeted the Principal congenially. The woman gave a dazzling smile that betrayed the clear annoyance given in the tight way she returned his handshake. “Let’s get this through, shall we?”

Nate sent him a warning glare at the slight-- it wasn’t Dan’s fault he always came off sarcastic to Nate’s amiability-- but the corners of Nate’s mouth still flickered with the same exhausted acceptance they had reached. Unfortunately Clarissa had caught the exchange and smirked, dark brown hair pulled out of her braid and wild as it always was. Despite the hours Dan had spent learning how to do hair from both his sister and online tutorials. When they both gave her unamused looks she turned back around and ignored them, grinning as she did so with the same charming smile that seemed genetically similar to Nate’s.

“Well normally we’d go through the usual routine with Ms. Clarissa here,” the Principal began. “But this time there isn’t any way she accomplished the feat alone and her dragging one of our star students like Eliot into trouble just isn’t acceptable.”

“Clarissa scores in the top of her class,” Dan replied, the edge not quite out of his tone. “I understand that she can cause trouble but implying that she’s tainting--,”

“What Dan means--,” Nate interrupted. “Was that we agree that her pranks are immature and need to stop, but that everyone should be accountable for their own actions. It would be unlike Clarissa to bully anyone into going along with her.”

Now it was the mother of said accomplice’s turn to talk, and she had a warm voice and a gentle calming hand on her kid’s shoulder. Instead of looking at the principal-- Pipton looked offended by this-- she turned to her kid and gave a small conspiring whisper. “Please tell me you actually let loose for once.”

Staring at his feet instead of any of the adults, Eliot admitted, “Yeah, I helped her.”

The woman grinned, much to Principal Pipton’s dismay. “I’m sure his mother Blair would have something different to say about that.”

Even though it had been years, Dan found himself having a pull in his chest at the name of the first girl to break his heart. Luckily it wasn’t a common occurrence, the name not quite popular. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t also had almost ten years to get over it.

“And I apologize that she’s busy defending a client in court.” Was the suddenly serious response, even if it held a gentle quality. “But since she’s not here, I’m sure we’ll be fine with whatever punishment you deem necessary for a ten year old.”

Nate barely veiled a chuckle as a cough in his throat but Dan couldn’t quite manage to purse his lips enough to cover his smirk.

Principal Sherry Pipton sent them off with detention for the children and heavy disapproval for the parents, and as they walked out of the office and past the front desk Dan does the most impulsive thing he’s done in ages and asks Eliot’s guardian, “What’s Eliot’s mother’s last name?”

She regarded him with confused surprise as most people would, but tentatively answered, “Waldorf. Why?”

Throat tightening as he stopped in his tracks, he gave a fake and dismissive smile. “Just don’t hear the name often.” Nate narrowed his eyes now, holding Clarissa’s hand as they all stalled.

“Dad, come on.” Clarissa complained. “I want to go home and read Dickinson now.”

“You read poems?” Eliot asked her, both kids oblivious to the emotional storm Dan was on the brink of showing. “What kind--,”

“Let’s go, Dan.” Nate interrupted, picking up on the seriousness. “It was nice to meet you all.”

Blair Waldorf . The girl that shattered his heart into so many pieces he hadn’t been able to let anyone pick them up except for Nate years later-- and that was only because he had never expected Nate to begin with. He’s numb as he follows his family out of the school and into the cab, barely making small talk as Nate covers for him by taking Clarissa’s attention. Eleven years. Eleven years had gone by since he had heard her name and now their worlds were colliding again because of their school children? I mean how had Blair even managed to have a ten year old?

Oh.

#nate x dan x blair #nate x dan #dair #dan x blair #gossip girl fic #gossip girl #we really need a poly ship name for them #forgot to post here #my fic #mine #og show

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allieinarden · 4 years

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Hi Allie! I wanted to ask you about something that I don't usually see brought up in fandom discussions. Do you have any favorite fictional characters that are either members of a Christian denomination or implied to be Christians?

GREAT question! I’m gonna skip pre-1900s works completely because in many of those settings everybody is Christian by default (though some books emphasize it more, like Little Women or Jane Eyre: love that Helen Burns, by the way) and just go for some more recent stuff:

Lucilla Eliot, Eliot Family trilogy by Elizabeth Goudge: I don’t want to spoil much so let’s say she’s a somewhat atypical portayal of a devout Christian character and leave it at that.

Liza Hamilton (I know, I know!), East of Eden by John Steinbeck: Initially, and hilariously, described as having a “dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do,” this character stunningly turns out to be highly admirable in the strength of her character and in her genuine knowledge of scripture and its implications.

Sgt. Neil Howie, The Wicker Man: I saw this movie recently and I’m not exactly recommending it (it’s a “how about our attractive blonde female star is completely nude for an entire scene but it’s okay to dig it because we kind of disapprove of it in the story” situation), but holy smokes, I was not expecting to see such a genuinely inspiring and heartwrenching portrayal of a Christian (maybe Catholic, potentially Anglican) man trying to live by his beliefs under adverse circumstances in a 70s horror film about a murderous Scottish hippie commune. The thing has legitimate spiritual heft and I want an essay about it.

All Lisbon sisters, The Virgin Suicides (book and movie): This is another odd example because it’s not a very ideal portrayal of Catholicism in practice, but it’s very much a part of the atmosphere of the story and I was moved by the portrayal of a religious family in crisis.

Soos Ramirez, Gravity Falls: Cultural identity aside, if you’ve ever been in a Catholic grandmother’s house you’ll know instantly that Soos is living in one. (Also, his nickname is short for “Jesus,” enough said.)

Miguel Rivera, Coco: Big tight-knit Mexican family, icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall in his house :)

Sylvia, The Truman Show: In a universe where it’s perfectly acceptable for a corporation to own a man from the moment of his birth and manipulate his existence for the entertainment, comfort, and warm fuzzy feelings of the public, Sylvia is an activist tirelessly speaking out for his free will and his dignity as a human being and generally being a huge party pooper. She’s also shown praying in front of the television as she watches Truman make his final escape. It’s not a superficial connection—it particularly stands out in a character whose antagonist is a film producer named “Christof” that gains power from consciously playing God. This film isn’t on enough pro-life lists.

Tip Tucci, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex: Heavily implied Catholic, talks about going to Mass on Christmas Eve, saying the Hail Mary.

This is all off the top of my head and I’m sure I’m missing plenty of important examples, but there you go!

#asks #religion #Christianity #Catholic #movies #books #mademoiseli #I didn't include Steve Rogers because I feel like he's the free space in Christian Characters bingo but also: good for him

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tiliamericana · 3 years

Text

Muay Thai: 1.13

“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” said Agatha acidly as Nairi held the door to the pizza place open for her.

“I’m sorry,” said Nairi, no longer feeling particularly apologetic after a week of saying nothing but. “We’ll only be here for what, an hour? And then we can go.”

She didn’t love that she was already on edge. It was hardly the first time in her life that she was deliberately sitting down to spend a couple of hours with an unpleasant man, but it was still frustrating. She liked spending time with Agatha and Linden who were only occasionally frustrating, but they tended to get tense and catty with each other, and Nairi’s teeth were aching at the thought of dealing with that on top of Simon.

Well. They were usually catty, but when not talking about relationships they could be relied on to be friendly-catty rather than terse-catty.

Linden was sitting alone at one of the tall tables near the centre of the restaurant, and she waved at them as they approached, her smile wide. “Hey guys!” she said as Nairi sat down across from her, and if her smile was fake then she at least sounded pleased—or, well, relieved, at any rate.

“No boyfriend yet?” asked Agatha archly, sitting next to Nairi with a disapproving curve to her lips as their eyes met.

“He’s running late,” said Linden, clasping her hands together in front of her and making her bracelets jingle. “Promised he’d treat me to a nice big pie and dessert to make it up to me, though!”

“Nice of him,” said Nairi, snagging a complimentary breadstick, more out of habit than hunger.

“Very,” said Agatha, inspecting a menu without looking up.

Linden’s expression faltered. “Yeah,” she said anyway.

Nairi knocked their ankles together under the table in an attempt to reassure, and Linden flashed her a grateful look, the tension across her shoulders loosening a little. “Things are going well then?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of water and pushing the jug towards Agatha, who ignored her.

“As well as they can be,” said Linden, nodding a little too much, her bracelets jingling again. “I mean, things get bumpy occasionally, but we really haven’t known each other for long in like, the grand scheme of things. We already know we like each other, so we’re just feeling everything else out as we go.”

“Oh goodie,” muttered Agatha, pushing her glasses up her nose again before setting the menu down and joining the conversation. “Nick likes this one, then?”

Linden snorted. “Simon’s not that exceptional,” she said dismissively. “Nick thinks he’s too flaky.”

Agatha glanced at her watch conspicuously. “I wonderwhy.”

Linden gave her a sharp curve of a smile, darkly amused. “Look, that might be a dealbreaker for Nick, but he’s not the one dating him. I can handle a little flakiness, and besides, he’s working on it.”

“Is he working on anything else?”

“Yes,” said Linden, looking Agatha right in the eye. “Nick told me—I promise he won’t call you that ever again, I even slapped him around a little to make it stick.”

“Right,” said Agatha, unimpressed in the face of Linden’s humour. “Because if he does then I’m just going to leave. Why does he even talk like that in the first place?”

Linden wrinkled her nose. “It’s his masters, I swear, he spends his entire time with his nose up the ass of these old school poets, and then he like, forgets that language has changed in the last eighty years? It’s really annoying, he literally called me the ‘whore of Babylon’ the other day and then got offended when I told him to fuck off because I ‘didn’t get the compliment’.”

Nairi snorted.

“Oh! Such a catch! I suddenly understand why you’re so determined to make this relationship work,” drawled Agatha.

“It’s a better basis for a relationship than some I could name,” said Linden snidely, narrowing her eyes across the table.

Damn, Agatha’s last boyfriend must have been a real piece of work. “There’s always going to be worse relationships out there,” said Nairi diplomatically. “And I mean, people are even meeting and dating on the internet these days, everything starts somewhere.”

“Exactly,” said Linden, relaxing a little with a grin. “That’s a bad basis, we all know the internet’s for porn and arguing with strangers.”

“And LOLcats, don’t forget those,” said Agatha, nodding at her.

“How could I?” said Linden, her grin widening.

Nairi was saved from having to ask what the fuck a ‘LOLcat’ was by Simon’s arrival. “Hello ladies,” he said breezily, draping his coat over the back of the free chair with a waft of eau-de-cigarette over the table. He leaned in and kissed Linden’s cheek from behind before sitting. “Hello babe, sorry I’m late, transport was a bit of an issue.”

“You’re fine,” said Linden, smiling indulgently at him as he sat. “Just gave us time to work up an appetite.”

Thankfully, the process of deciding on pizzas and drinks, and then the conveying all of that information to the waitress meant that Nairi didn’t have to speak directly to Simon. It also meant that he didn’t try to speak with Agatha, who was coolly ignoring him from across the table with a total lack of eye contact that veered dangerously close to the border between ‘civility’ and ‘rudeness’.

Once the food actually arrived however, she was out of luck.

Pretty much every pizza on the menu that wasn’t explicitly vegetarian had some kind of bacon or ham or pork-based sausage in its toppings, so there wasn’t any quibbling or half-and-halfing on the one Nairi was sharing with Agatha. Simon, however, had ordered without asking Linden, which she’d ignored, much the same way she’d ignored Agatha’s quiet snort at him doing so. Nairi was about ninety percent certain Linden didn’t even like green peppers.

“So,” said Simon brightly, gesturing across the table with his wine glass. “How have you two been this week? Anything exciting?”

Agatha took an enormous bite of pizza and chewed loudly, glancing at Nairi. Nairi sighed internally and lowered her own slice to answer him. “Not terribly exciting. Work, mostly.”

“That’s right,” he said, chewing obnoxiously and giving Nairi a chance to start eating. Next to him, Linden was carefully tugging peppers off the surface of her pizza. “Lindy said you did some kind of fighting thing, right? MMA? Kickboxing? Sweaty punch ups in sports bras?”

“…I teach judo,” said Nairi eventually. “Early days at my dojo, I don’t have a lot of students yet, I’m afraid. Uh, Agatha’s working on a paper at the moment though, that’s a bit more interesting.”

“Really? What’s it about?” asked Simon, turning both his attention and his chewing maw towards Agatha.

“Diatomic elements,” said Agatha shortly. “It’s just about nucleics, I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything.”

Simon stared at her blankly. “Oh, of course. Uh, I’m afraid I’m not familiar, is your field—?”

“Chemistry,” supplied Agatha, turning her attention back to her dinner. “My PhD was on inorganic, but I’m still in the process of post-doc applications so I’m mostly twiddling my thumbs and writing contributions in the meanwhile.”

“Right,” said Simon, his face showing a total lack of comprehension. “Academia’s a lot like that, terribly stiff in the paperwork and appropriateness departments. The right body of work and all that—I know exactly how it feels, I was going to do my thesis on the erotic underpinnings of Virginia Woolf’s work and the reflection of her relationship with her husband, but my advisor was really very pushy about playing it safe and sticking to Eliot’s body of work in the immediate post-war era.”

“Oh yes, much safer,” said Agatha with no inflection in her tone.

Simon laughed loudly, leaning back in his chair and taking another long drink of his wine. “You know, Lindy said you had a sense of humour, and I must confess I didn’t quite believe her at first! Mistakes all around.”

He punctuated this with a conspiratorial wink across the table at her, though Nairi didn’t quite understand what was so funny about it. At a glance, neither did Agatha or Linden. Linden actually looked… embarrassed? It was only for a second, the expression gone almost as soon as Nairi noticed it, Linden covering the bottom half of her face with her glass as she took a sip.

“So how long have you two lovebirds been dating anyway?” Simon continued, not even glancing at Linden next to him with her small pile of peppers or his ignored slice of pizza on the plate in front of him.

“A few months,” said Nairi, her own dinner looking more unappetising by the second. “Since September, I think?”

“That’s about right,” said Agatha, the lines around the corners of her eyes easing as she glanced at Nairi. “Five or six months now.”

“Charming,” said Simon, polishing off his wine, smile bright and enthusiastic as he gestured. “You know I’ve always greatly enjoyed the figure of the lesbian, in real life as well as literature. Excising the men from the bed and the home—it’s always so representative of the purest form of womanhood, really illuminates the truth of femininity. And the politics of it! The ultimate commitment to the feminist ideal, the usurpation of the patriarchy from its most foundational stronghold in the home at the head of the family. Really brilliant stuff!”

Agatha’s eyebrows were somewhere around her hairline.

Linden laughed awkwardly, nudging Simon as she leaned in a little over her plate. “Well, I mean, it’s always gonna be a bit different from books, hun. People are people, real life is always more, uh—”

“Oh yes, yes, of course,” said Simon dismissively, nodding at her. “And writers have a tendency to exaggerate and eroticise that type of relationship as well.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that kind of relationship?” asked Agatha, tone sharp.

Nairi tensed as Simon opened his mouth and started bloviating again. Linden swallowed whatever she was going to say, giving up and quietly eating instead, leaning on one elbow.

Simon’s phone buzzed loudly, and he took a second to check it while Agatha sucked down on the straw in her water glass through her furious, pinched expression.

“Oh, I’m so sorry ladies,” he said, standing up as he punched a few buttons on his phone. “I have to run. I have thoroughlyenjoyed this discussion though, especially with you Miss Davids, we’ll have to do this again sometime—”

“Doctor,” corrected Agatha.

“Oh, that’s right, very good, attagirl!” said Simon breezily as he tugged his coat on, and a muscle in Agatha’s jaw visibly twitched.

“Oh, Si, really?” said Linden, frowning at him anxiously as he kissed her cheek. “But we were gonna go get ice cream af—”

“Really?” said Simon, with a piss-poor attempt at a surprised look. “I didn’t think so, babe, I had plans. There’s no need to end the night just because I’m leaving though! You should all have some fun, I’ll see you later, and I promise I’ll catch the next cheque!”

He was already walking away as he spoke, hand raised in farewell even as Linden opened her mouth in dismay. “Wait, Si, I can’t—and he’s out. Great.” She slumped in her seat as the door swung shut across the room and gave them a glum sort of smile. “Sorry guys, I kind of thought that would go better.”

“Really?” said Agatha under her breath, covering it with the movement of setting her glass down.

Nairi ignored it. “I mean, it’s not exactly your fault—” Agatha snorted “—do you want me to grab you a pizza you actually like?”

Linden gestured at Simon’s largely untouched pizza with an eyeroll. “No, I’ll live. Already gonna have to pay for this one.”

“I’ve got it,” said Nairi, tugging her wallet out. “May as well just pay for everything while I’m up. Do you want something a bit cheesier?”

Linden looked at her for a moment, expression unreadable, and then something in her relaxed and her mouth twitched into a wry smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Agatha turned her head as Nairi left the table, saying something she couldn’t quite hear. Her tone sounded dry rather than snappish, so Nairi didn’t think too hard about it. She got them another round of drinks while she was sorting out the extra pizza as well—it would probably go a ways to easing Agatha’s temper and cheering Linden up.

From the looks of things when she returned to the table though, they’d managed to have an argument in the few minutes she’d been gone.

“Better food and new drinks on the way,” she said, sliding into her seat and pretending she couldn’t see the angry twist in Linden’s lips, or the clenched tension in Agatha’s hands.

“Awesome,” said Linden, flashing her a sunny, fake smile as Agatha scoffed. “You know, I was just saying to Aggy that since this turned out to be such a bust that maybe we should try having a girl’s night instead, you know? Just us, maybe with Flo too.”

“Oh yeah,” said Nairi mildly, gently pressing the back of her hand against Agatha’s on the tabletop. “What did you have in mind?”

#serial fiction #series honey tree #book muay thai #113

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f1momentplease · 5 years

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are you still taking requests? if so, can you write a fic where Grizz and Sam are in school and are secretly dating, they haven’t seen each other for at least one period and once they meet up in the bathroom and have a full make out session in one of the stalls?

(sorry for length, posting on mobile. Hope this is okay, it's been a while ^^)

How is it that when one watches a clock, time slows down significantly? Grizz is almost convinced that the minute hand is frozen and he has half a mind to reach into his pocket to check the 'real' time if not for the disapproving gaze of his English professor.

One period. It had been one whole, excruciatingly long period. The most tedious and achingly painful fifty minutes of the teens life probably.

Okay. Perhaps he is being a little dramatic but apparently that is the Sam Eliot effect. Just thinking of the boys name warms his cheeks and Grizz glances around to see if any of his classmates had noticed. Thankfully no one appears to be looking up from their books, much less paying any mind to the pink hue his face had adopted.

They'd been dating for just under a month - three weeks and two days if he had counted. It's not something Grizz had ever foreseen and it happened in a blur of hormones and repressed emotions bubbling to the surface. Their first kiss was a clumsy clash of teeth but he wouldn't have had it any other way. It was perfect to Grizz and he didn't recall seeing anything quite as endearing as the deep flush that seemed to flood Sam's neck.

Oh come onnnnnn. One. More. Minute. Then he will see get to sneak into the upper west bathroom to spend a precious few minutes with his boyfriend.

Grizz bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself grinning. There's nothing about the textbook material to grin about for sure but Sam - Sam is his boyfriend. He is Sam's boyfriend. Okay, calm down Graham.

When the bell rings, he can't move fast enough, almost taking out Luke in the process and tipping his desk. Ignoring the the questioning look from his teammate.Grizz mouths an apology before ducking out of the room and jogging towards the stairs. He can't waste any time. Moments spent with Sam in school are fleeting and that is all down to the fact that Grizz hasn't found the courage to come out yet. Their relationship is secret - for now. It's not ideal and although he'd love nothing more than to meet Sam by the locker every morning and lunch with him, Grizz can't face the judgement of the football team.

Shoes squeak against the lacquered floor as he skids to halt outside the bathroom, the least used one in the school. It's their only chance of privacy and even then, it's still a risk. A series of kicks to each cubicle door ensures they'll be alone and Grizz is pleasantly surprised to find Sam already waiting for him in the last one. The redhead taps his watch with a teasing smile and reaches for Grizz, fingers curling into his shirt as he pulls him in and locks the door behind.

"Sorry." Grizz signs, his lips tugging up at the corners. Sam shakes his head in response, returning the smile with one that makes Grizz's heart flutter before surging up on his tiptoes to crush his lips to the taller boys, pressing him into the door. Sam's kisses never fail to take Grizz's breath away, nor does his display of playful dominance. When they break away, Sam lifts his hands to sign: "That was a long wait. I missed you."

"It won't be like this forever." Grizz clumsily signs back as he vocalises. "I promise."

The look Sam pins him with then just screams 'you better' and spurs Grizz into initiating another kiss, more desperate and longing this time. They're both reluctant to stop when the bell rings for next class - they'd be late again but it was totally worth it.

Exiting the bathroom seperately, the next wait begins...

#grizzam #grizz visser #sam eliot #the society #grizzam fic

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ameliajessica · 5 years

Note

Fic writer asks - 1, 11, 20! :)

harri! 💕💕💕

1. god like, RIGHT NOW??. Trying to finish reading on the sofa, late enough that she should be asleep, her hair fell into her eyes. It was the lack of the haircut she couldn’t afford and also couldn’t be bothered to actually go through with. There was something about a haircut. Like it meant something more than just a few inches closer to her jaw. Everything always meant something to her.

11. idk if this counts as weird, exactly, but i have written an awful lot of sex scenes for someone who’s never had it.

20. this really sucks because it turns out i write in super short sentences!!!

- “She must have perfected that disapproving look somewhere - but again: entirely possible Leia emerged from the womb, vaguely scathing that no-one lived up to her complete competence. - delicate

- “He looked down at Quentin and instantly, somehow, knew exactly how it would feel if he rested against his chest, and in the same moment craved it the way you would a phantom limb.” - i feel it in my body, know it in my mind

- “Maybe they hated themselves enough to love each other .” - UPCOMING CHAPTER OF I DON’T WANNA SAY WHAT I WANT FIRST

- “Quentin turned his head to press his cheek against Eliot’s heartbeat, and while he wouldn’t dare think anything as saccharine (read: dangerous) as you feel like home, in that moment, and later that night when they tangled together in the same way, holding Quentin to him, he thought, well, this place is actually pretty nice.” - upcoming (and very late) xmas fic

B-B-B-BONUS:

“It's a terrible thing, how beautiful Quentin looks when he tilts his face up at him, face streaked with tears.” - unrelatedly from an upcoming quentin as a fillory boy!AU fic

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dweemeister · 5 years

Text

2019 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (preliminary round)

Many of my longtime followers will know what is below. And yes, it’s that time of year again!

There are a few folks I wanted to extend invites to that I wasn’t able to get to in time (because of stuff IRL). If you are listed (and are interested), let me know so I can sort you into a group as soon as possible: @dansmonarbre, @dog-of-ulthar, @fredsbarandgrill, @loveless422, @shadesofhappy, @somequeerdistortion, @thethirdman8. Otherwise, you will still be tagged for the MOABOS final anyways because of your prior participation in previous years.

As is the year-end tradition on my blog, there is an Oscar-like ceremony honoring some of the best achievements from movies that I saw for the first time in their entirety this calendar year (the "Movie Odyssey"). I’ve always considered MOABOS a musical thank-you for your moral support on and offline throughout the year.

An unspecified number of songs have already advanced to the final round. Twenty songs will compete in this preliminary round. Like every year there has been a preliminary, there are two groups - Group A and Group B. Even moreso than last year, songs from musicals dominate and, after a year where personal time has come at a premium, it has also resulted in the most monolingual field we’ve had in a preliminary.

INSTRUCTIONS IN THE GROUP YOU HAVE BEEN SORTED INTO, please rank (#1-10) at least five of your group's songs. Please consider (to the best of your ability): how musically interesting the song is (incl. and not limited to musical phrasing and orchestration); its lyrics; quality of performance; context within the film (contextual blurbs provided for those who haven’t seen these films); choreography/dance direction (if applicable); and the song's cultural impact/life outside the film (if applicable, and the least important factor). Imperfections in audio and video quality may not be used against any song. The top four songs in each group automatically advance to the final round. I reserve the right to pick 0-2 songs from one or both groups that finished outside the top four in their respective groups to contest the final round. This was never a true democracy, as you all know!

The deadline for submission is Tuesday, December 10 at 11 PM Pacific Time. That's Friday, December 11 at 1 AM Central Time / 2 AM Eastern Time / 7 AM GMT / 8 AM CET / 9 AM EET. This deadline may be pushed back if there are a large number of people who have not submitted in time - but I would rather not have that happen, especially because more people are going to be called in for the final round. Feel free to send in comments and reactions with your rankings - it’s always fun to read reactions to individual songs, and it usually makes the process (for everyone) more enjoyable! Tabulation details are under the read-more.

Take your time, and and listen more than once if you wish. Please pay attention to which group you have been sorted into. The songs are (“Song title”, composer and lyricist, film title):

GROUP A

“Can You Imagine That?”, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Performed by Emily Blunt, Pixie Davies, Joel Dawson, and Nathanael Saleh

Shortly after Mary Poppins (Blunt) becomes the governess for the Banks children (Davies, Dawson, and Saleh), she draws a bath after the children have covered themselves in dirt. The bath, however, is infused with Mary Poppins’ signature magic, leading to a fantastical segment.

“Detroit”, music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

Performed by John Davidson and Lesley Ann Warren

(partial use in film)

Lovebirds Cordy Biddle (Warren) and Angier “Angie” Buchanan Duke (Davidson in his film debut) have been discussing their future together. Angie does not want to inherit his father’s tobacco business - instead wishing to head to Detroit to be a part of the automotive industry (the film is set in 1916, as the city was booming because of the auto industry).

“Gay Paree”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

Performed by Robert Preston

In this musical, Carroll “Toddy” Todd (Preston) is a gay performer at the Chez Lui nightclub in Paris. This songs appears shortly after the opening credits and a short introductory scene. The use of the word “gay” in this song may be interpreted however you wish.

“Honolulu Baby”, music and lyrics by Marvin Hatley, Sons of the Desert (1933)

(Initial performance) / (brief reprise) / (non-film version)

First performance by Ty Parvis; reprise by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; full non-film version by The Beau Hunks

Laurel and Hardy have tricked their wives into believing they have taken a Hawaiian cruise rather than attending the national meeting of a fraternity known as the Sons of the Desert - their wives disapprove of the latter for reasons that give away too many jokes in one of the best (and funniest) films I saw all year. The reprise is part of a joke that I’d also rather not spoil.

“I Dug a Ditch”, music by Burton Lane, lyrics by Lew Brown and Ralph Freed, Thousands Cheer (1943)

Performed by the Kay Kyser Band, Kathryn Grayson, Georgia Carroll, Harry Babbitt, Sully Mason, M.A. Bogue, and chorus

NOTE: An entirely separate song, “Should I”, is integrated from 3:04-3:36.

Apologies for the text overlaying the video. The second half of Thousands Cheer is essentially an elaborate revue musical performance for American World War II troops in which the film’s initial pretense of attempting a story is entirely dropped. “I Dug a Ditch” is one of the songs appearing in the film’s second half.

“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again”, music by Elton John, lyrics by Bernie Taupin, Rocketman (2019)

Performed by Elton John and Taron Egerton

This is the first song played over the end credits of this biopic of Elton John. This is John and Taupin’s (John’s songwriting partner through the 1960s-1990s) first collaboration outside the Sherlock Gnomes series for this decade.

“Into the Unknown”, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Frozen II (2019)

(end credits version)

Performed by Idina Menzel and AURORA; end credits version performed by Panic! At the Disco

Some years after being crowned Queen of Arendelle (which happened at the end of Frozen), Elsa hears an eerie voice calling out to her - a voice that will connect Elsa to her parents’ tragic fate. The voice’s melody will reprise throughout the film’s score.

“The Shady Dame from Seville”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

(Initial performance) / (reprise to be watched at your own spoiler-y risk)*

Performed by Julie Andrews; reprise by Robert Preston

*watch at your own spoiler-y risk because it gives away the film’s comical musical ending

Victoria Grant (Andrews), after making her Parisian debut playing a man named “Victor” who is impersonating a woman, has become the hit vaudeville act of Paris. This is one of her signature performances. Preston’s reprise - which appears near the film’s conclusion - was done in one take, hence his sweaty and fatigued appearance at the end.

“Trường Tương Tư”, music and lyrics by Leon Le, Song Lang (2018, Vietnam)

Performed by Isaac and Liên Bỉnh Phát

Lyrics in Vietnamese

English translation and context are in the link.

“(Underneath the) Lovely London Sky”, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns

Performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda

This is the opening song in Mary Poppins Returns. Lamplighter Jack (Miranda) is turning out the London gaslights as night turns into morning, as he bikes through the city’s streets - filled with indicators of the Great Depression, industrial pollution, and the general overcast weather that tends to be associated with England. Jack reprises the songs a few times across the film and the song is quoted in the film’s score.

Group A participants include: @addaellis, @cokwong, @halfwaythruthedark, @myluckyerror, @phendranaedge, @plus-low-overthrow, @theybecomestories, @umgeschrieben, @yellanimal. Between six to ten others will be participating in this group, including myself and my sister.

GROUP B

“Crazy World”, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, Victor/Victoria (1982)

Performed by Julie Andrews

Victoria Grant (Andrews) is a woman playing a man named “Victor” who is impersonating a woman. Victoria, as Victor, has become the hit vaudeville act of Paris. This is Victoria’s first performance as “Victor” not pretending to be a woman. Is your head spinning yet?

“East Bound and Down”, music and lyrics by Jerry Reed and Dick Feller, Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Performed by Jerry Reed

This is the theme song for this comedy, which also describes the plot somewhat. Smokey and the Bandit is about two truckers - “Bandit” (Burt Reynolds) and “Snowman” (Reed) - who have been offered $80,000 by a rich Texan to pick up 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana, Texas and return to Atlanta within twenty-eight hours. In 1977, Coors was only found in the Western U.S. and transporting it across Southern state lines was illegal (giving Coors a mystique in the Eastern U.S.).

“Fortuosity”, music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

Performed by Tommy Steele

Irish immigrant John Lawless (Steele) is one day off his Transatlantic ferry and is soon to take up a job as the Biddle family’s butler. This is the first song in The Happiest Millionaire, performed shortly after the opening credits. The song is also on the musical rotation for Disney parks’ Main Street and is reprised during the film and quoted in its score.

“Fun and Fancy Free (I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow)”, music and lyrics by Bennie Benjamin, George David Weiss, Ned Washington, and Eliot Daniel Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

Performed by Dinah Shore, chorus, and Cliff Edwards (as Jiminy Cricket)

Played over the opening credits; the main musical ideas are used a few times in the film’s score. This is Jiminy Cricket’s second appearance in a canonical Disney Animation Studios feature film.

“The Joint Is Really Jumpin’ in Carnegie Hall”, music and lyrics by Roger Edens, Ralph Blane, and Hugh Martin, Thousands Cheer (1943)

Performed by Judy Garland and Jose Iturbi

The second half of Thousands Cheer - where this song is found - is essentially an elaborate revue musical performance for American World War II troops in which the film’s initial pretense of attempting a story is entirely dropped.

“The Next Right Thing”, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Frozen II (2019)

Performed by Kristen Bell

Anna (Bell) has seemingly lost her friends and her sister at what is the lowest point in the film. Uncertain what to do, she recalls a small piece of advice that leads her forward.

“Nowhere to Go but Up”, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Performed by Angela Lansbury, Ben Whishaw, Pixie Davies, Joel Dawson, Nathanael Saleh, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Jeremy Swift, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, David Warner, Jim Norton, and company

On a sunny spring day, the Banks family and Mary Poppins go out to the local park to make a day of it. Certain non-lyrical inclusions in this song cannot be explained without spoiling the film. This is the final song of Mary Poppins Returns.

“Sương Chiều”, music and lyrics by Leon Le and Hoàng Song Việt, Song Lang (2018, Vietnam)

Performed by Isaac and Tú Quyên

Lyrics in Vietnamese

English translation and context are in the link.

“Trip a Little Light Fantastic”, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, Mary Poppins Returns

Performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emily Blunt, Tarik Frimpong, Pixie Davies, Joel Dawson, Nathanael Saleh, and company

After being scolded by their father, the Banks children are taken home by Mary Poppins (Blunt). Along the way, they encounter their friend, lamplighter Jack (Miranda), as they take a lengthy detour. The cycling skills seen in this number are probably anachronistic.

“Woodstock”, music and lyrics by Joni Mitchell, Woodstock (1970)

Performed by Crosby Stills, Nash & Young

This song appears in the end credits to Woodstock - the official documentary film for the eponymous August 1969 musical festival.

Group B participants include: @emilylime5, @ideallaedi, @introspectivemeltdown, @maximiliani, @mindo80, @themusicmoviesportsguy, @nazur, @stephdgray, and @underblackwings. Between six to ten others will be participating in this group, including myself and my sister.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the process or the songs involved, you may contact me at any time in any way you prefer. If you are having difficulty accessing the videos (especially if it is region-locked), please let me know as soon as you can.

Thank you all for being amazing followers and friends, and I thank you for your participation and support for the Movie Odyssey, this blog, and for me personally - no matter how long I’ve known you or in what capacity. I didn’t do as much outreach this year due to personal reasons, but I hope we have a healthy amount of participation. You will all be tagged for the final round regardless of your participation here. If turnout in one group is lagging behind compared to another, I may ask some of the more senior participants to participate in the other group, too. There is no pressure if you can’t do this, everyone. Thank you all again, and happy listening!

TABULATION

This preliminary round uses a points-based, ranked choice method which has been used since the first time I asked friends, tumblr followers, and family to help out. A respondent’s first choice receives 10 points, the second choice receives 9, the third choice receives 8, etc. The winner is the song that ends up with the most total points. This method, for the first time ever, will not be used for the final round. Tiebreakers for above: 1) total points earned; 2) total #1 votes; 3) placement on my ballot; 4) placement on my sister’s ballot; 5) tie declared

#2019 Movie Odyssey Awards

6 notes · View notes

notbang · 5 years

Text

that cat’s something i can’t explain

read on ao3

“Rebecca,” Nathaniel says in surprise when he spots his girlfriend weaving through the Mountaintop lobby, flour-dusted apron and all, making a very determined beeline in his general direction. “What’s going on?”

As soon as he says the words, he expects her haughtiness—an affronted why can’t a humble pretzel maker visit her lawyer lover on the top floor, perhaps, or something equally colourful. The closer she gets, though, he can see she’s vibrating with something other than deliberately cloying indignation.

“What’s going on,” she says emphatically, dropping her phone on the front desk with enough force that its momentum slides it towards him, “is that if I had to be subjected to this monstrosity, then so you do you.”

He stops the phone before it can ricochet off the edge of the counter, eyebrows raised as he unlocks the screen.

“Now that we know a love of the theatrical arts is something which we both share—”

“Wouldn’t say ‘love’,” Nathaniel interjects.

“—we can have these very important cultural discussions together.”

He makes it approximately twenty seconds into the video before he turns it off.

This isn’t the first time he’s found himself completely miffed by one of Rebecca’s outbursts, but even in his bemusement it’d be disingenuous of him to paint it as one of her qualities he considers skewed towards the negative. There’s always been something so captivating in the way her feelings tend to command the entirety of her tiny frame, expressing endlessly outwards, always making her seem so much more than what she is.

Still, he’s at a loss for what to offer her in return for her obvious discontent, and he settles for stating the obvious, well aware she’ll hand him precisely the response she was looking for soon enough.

“Don’t see it?” he offers, tone tentative and polite.

Predictably, she scoffs at him, jabbing two accusing pointer fingers in his direction. “Ha. Don’t see it. I wasn’t planning on it, was I? But then they had to go and make it terrible, which is how they reel you in! And not just plain old terrible, either—it’s, like, the uncanny valley, haunt-your-dreams kind of terrible that cancels out how terrible the source material already is, because that’s how negative integers work, for some reason, and now it’s like this… furry train wreck I can’t look away from,” she finishes, gesticulating wildly and scrunching up her hands into frustrated little cat claws.

“Did Nathaniel finally admit he’s a furry?” Maya whispers with conspiratorial glee, popping up unannounced on Rebecca’s immediate left.

“Ugh, Maya, go away,” she groans.

“You don’t work here anymore—you can’t just boss people around,” Nathaniel says, before straightening his shoulders and adding pointedly, “Maya, go away. Please.”

Rebecca raises her eyebrows as the office assistant pushes her glasses up her nose, pouts and scampers away. She leans across the desk to give him a blatant up-and-down. “Wow, look at you—dolling out pleases like you’re Oprah or something. So cordial, yet commanding. It’s kind of sexy, in a Miss Manners kind of way.”

“Don’t you have a storefront you should be manning?”

“I’d be able to hear the fire alarm from here,” she defends, then pushes up on her tip-toes to plant a kiss on his right cheek. Nathaniel pauses in his photocopying, ears pinking, then reciprocates with a brief press of his open palm to the small of her back.

He clears his throat. “I’ll see you at lunch,” he calls after her, but he’s certain she doesn’t hear him, already having summoned Maya back, strangely intent on correcting her opinions on something involving, if he’s heard correctly, Taylor Swift.

When he makes his way down the hall back to her bedroom, still towelling his hair, there’s a message notification waiting on his phone from Rebecca.

“What is this?” he asks, waving his screen at her.

She doesn’t even glance up from the novel she’s reading, a stray lock of her hair looping around her finger in an absent spiral. He watches the movement for a moment, transfixed, until she disengages the curl to flick the page over and finally responds. “It’s Hermione after she messes up her Polyjuice potion in Chamber of Secrets. Obviously.”

“Okay.” Then, after a beat, “Why am I looking at it?”

“Because Paula doesn’t understand musicals or Harry Potter or memes, so it had to go to you by default.”

“Do you understand memes?”

“Plus,” she says, ignoring him, “you’re, like, romantically obligated to find every message I send you entertaining.”

He plugs his phone into charge before joining her on the bed, shuffling as high up on the pillows as he can manage to keep his toes from skimming the end of the mattress when he stretches out. It’s not entirely successful, but if he bends at the knees a little and curls on his side, he knows from past experience he can make it work.

“Am I, just. Even the ones composed entirely of emojis?”

She grins. “Especially the ones composed entirely of emojis.”

Rebecca ditches her paperback in favour of wriggling into his warmth, murmuring her contentment when he slips an arm around her waist to draw her close and drop a chaste kiss onto the crown of her head. Her hair’s still damp and smells vaguely floral, like her shampoo, and he lets his lips linger there, breathing her in.

His phone vibrates twice on the nightstand.

When pulls back to peer down his nose at her, she’s not-so-subtle in her attempt to conceal what she’s cradling innocently between their chests. He sighs, feigning exasperation. “You just sent me a cat emoji, didn’t you?”

“I absolutely did not,” she says solemnly, then, dissolving into laughter under his scrutiny, confesses, “It was more like five. And I think maybe a llama by mistake?”

“It’s like they didn’t even try,” Rebecca announces loudly in the vicinity of Nathaniel’s ear, rudely jerking him back from the precipice of sleep.

“Oh good,” he sighs, blinking his eyebrows higher up his forehead in the darkness. “This again.”

He grunts out his disapproval as the bedside lamp clicks back on, casting half the apartment in dramatic shadow as it burns his retinas with its unexpected blinding light.

“And I’m just saying,” Rebecca continues, oblivious or in the very least unconcerned with his state of obvious discomfort, apparently immune to any such adjustment period of her own, “did anyone consult TS Eliot before reinventing his heartfelt poetry as a vaginal yeast infection in musical form?”

Nathaniel’s nose wrinkles to match the pre-existing scrunch of his face. “What?”

“Never mind, it was a whole a thing. My point is, no film is an island unto itself. People signed off on this. Multiple people looked at those designs and said, you know what’s gonna add a layer of appeal to a musical that already has no plot? Stripping it of its one redeeming feature—AKA the crazy 80s hair—and replacing it with horrifying, humanoid heads that somehow manage to look furry and bald at the same time.”

Even if Nathaniel felt remotely qualified to comment on the topic—which, for the record, oddly flattered though he is at Rebecca’s pervasive belief that he might be, he decidedly is not—it’s late, it’s a weeknight, and he really just wants to sleep.

“If you hate it so much, rewrite it,” he says before pointedly rolling away from her with a yawn and yanking the covers up over his shoulders.

She follows him, flicking him hard in the back of the neck where his nape’s still exposed above the blanket. “Not cute, dude. You don’t get points for that one anymore. And you can’t ‘rewrite’ CGI. Even if you could, a thousand rewrites isn’t gonna change the eyesore that I—nay, humankind—have been subjected to.”

Nathaniel buries his face in the pillow and groans something that resembles her name before it gets jumbled in its muffled pass through the cotton.

“Rebecca,” he says once he’s resurfaced, trying again, tone still undeniably clipped as he scrubs a palm across his face. “I have a deposition first thing tomorrow. Do we really need to have this conversation now?”

She wilts visibly, chagrined, eyes flicking to the clock at his bedside that may as well have ABSURDLY LATE splashed across its interface in red LEDs. “Sorry,” she says meekly, officially rebuked, sinking back into the sheets and switching off the lamp.

The room is blissfully silent save for the collective electronic hum of his appliances, but despite the stillness, Nathaniel finds himself unable to drift back off. Without opening his eyes he pats around beside him until his fingers connect with the phone he’d known with every fibre of his being she was still holding, confiscating and discarding on his nightstand, out of reach.

“Go to sleep,” he admonishes.

“I was just—”

“Sleep,” he repeats, voice gruff with exhaustion, enfolding her firmly in his arms as a preventative measure, practically able to hear her calculating the device’s retrieval in the dark.

“What are we dealing with, here? Minor song lyric alteration? Beloved song exclusion? Reinforced misogyny? Racially insensitive miscast?”

Nathaniel startles at the sound of the door opening, Paula spilling into Rebecca’s house like she lives there and depositing her bags in the entryway with a dramatic thud.

Rebecca, by comparison, is unperturbed by the intrusion, swivelling on a breakfast stool to look at her friend and shake her head. “We’re not talking misdemeanours here, Paula. We’re talking big league. Like, DEFCON-5.”

“Oh,” Paula says. She clucks in feigned sympathy and shoots a knowing glance in Nathaniel’s direction. “This is about the singing cats, huh.”

Even focused as he is on rinsing out her blender, he doesn’t miss the way Rebecca shrinks guiltily away from him in his periphery.

“Did you call an early morning emergency meeting of your girl mob to discuss a movie trailer you didn’t like?” he asks, careful to keep his tone light.

“It’s gurl group, but you know that, and no—Valencia is in town for her sister’s birthday and Heather’s working at this Home Base today and Paula’s new job means she has to like, actually do work now, so breakfast is the only time all of us were free.”

As if on cue, Heather and Valencia sidle through the open doorway.

“Oh, he’s here?” Heather drawls with an exaggerated grimace when she spots Nathaniel. “Looks like you’ve already found someone to rant about your dumb movie to, so I’m gonna just—”

Her attempt to pivot on the spot and leave is thwarted by the arm Valencia loops through her own, catching her before she can re-cross the threshold.

Nathaniel wastes no time in whipping his head around to aim an aha look in Rebecca’s direction, and she’s just as quick to defend, “Yeah, okay, so it’s on the agenda. Amongst other things.”

“Is that so. Like what?”

“Like… topics I don’t know about yet because nobody ever responds to my requests to send me their items for the agenda.”

“God, no more agendas,” Paula grouches, reaching for a mug from the overhead cabinet. “Or meetings. My entire life is meetings and agendas and scheduling conflicts. Can’t we just have a good old fashioned rendezvous? I feel like nobody ever rendezvouses anymore.”

“Ooh, or how about a tryst,” Rebecca suggests, waggling her eyebrows.

“Girl, you know I love you,” Valencia says, “but I’m not trysting with you. I have a fiancée.”

Heather hums, drumming her fingers against the countertop as she hoists herself up onto a stool. “So full disclosure, Hector and I saw the Cats revival with his mom last year, and I liked it. I think the lack of plot worked in Hector’s favour.”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” Rebecca says, wistful.

“You liked The Lion King,” Nathaniel feels obligated to point out. “That’s technically about digitally rendered singing cats.”

“I tolerated The Lion King because of my deep fondness of the original and because I knew I could bully you into seeing it with me because of its zoological themes,” she corrects. “Anyway, that remake’s issue was that it had no soul. This remake’s issue is that it’s, like, demonically possessed, or something. Which, to be fair, cats, as a species, generally are.”

“Rebecca,” Valencia begins, voice all saccharine and scathing, “need I remind you of one of the many occasions you broke up with this one—” She jabs a thumb in Nathaniel’s face, making him frown. “—with the intention of adopting an entire shelter’s worth of felines?”

“That was a different time,” Rebecca dismisses. “I was punishing a version of myself I wasn’t proud of by resigning her to the fate I believed she deserved.”

Nathaniel tilts his head, bemused. “Huh?”

“Oh, she wanted to be a crazy cat lady,” Heather translates, enunciating loudly, “because she couldn’t bone you in the stationery closet without feeling bummed about it anymore. Just, like. While we’re on the subject of trysts.”

“Heath-er,” Rebecca hisses, kicking her ex-housemate in the shin.

Parsing their less than stellar communal romantic track record with a group of women all too happy to gang up on him afforded the slightest opportunity isn’t high on Nathaniel’s to-do list for the morning, and a flick of his wrist to check his smart watch is all the excuse he needs to make a timely escape.

“On that note,” Nathaniel says, snatching his car keys off the counter, “I’m going to leave you ladies be.”

The conversation barely dips as he sees himself out.

“So in between your being typecast as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, you didn’t happen to don, say, a unitard and leg warmers, did you?”

“What?”

He knows he should be used to this by now—this tendency towards unexpected tack-changing that he’d liken to a dog with a bone, if the cliche didn’t feel somewhat inapt, considering. It’s not like he’s unaccustomed, after all this this time, to Rebecca’s one track mind. It’s just that up until this point, most of the tracks she’s been fixated on treading have usually, admittedly, served his own interests as easily as her own.

“Just checking, because for the record, it’s kind of a massive deal breaker for me.”

She flops into his side, not entirely-unpleasantly sticky, or in the very least, skin virtually indistinguishable from the slick of his own. Rebecca’s ability to pick up intelligible conversation immediately post-coitus is a talent he does not share, and as the golden fog of afterglow suffuses through his bloodstream he takes his time meandering back towards the realm where articulation is possible, content in the knowledge his bedmate will happily barrel on without him until he catches up.

“Just kidding,” she seems to feel the need to clarify, even in the absence of any protest on his behalf. “The knowledge that you were a theatre kid is such an aphrodisiac to me that it well and truly trumps any potential feline faux pas.”

“Wasn’t a theatre kid,” he corrects, the response so automatic he’s not sure it counts as cognitive function.

“Agree to disagree,” Rebecca says, earning herself an exasperated sigh.

Once the drumbeat of his pulse has slowed in his ears, he cracks an eyelid, suspicious of the lack of movement and sudden cease in chatter from the woman sprawled out across his upper torso. Rebecca’s gazing up at him as if she’s been patiently awaiting his full attention, chin resting on her stacked hands, a lazy, satisfied smile stretched across her features.

“You know, for someone who claims to hate Cats,” Nathaniel tells her with amusement after stretching to peck her on the mouth, “you kind of talk about Cats a lot. Some might even describe you as off-puttingly passionate on the subject. Not me,” he backtracks at her incredulous glare, tucking her hair behind her ear with affection. “I find your aggressive diatribe charming.”

Suitably placated, she drops her head back down against his shoulder. “They do say there’s a fine line between love and hate.”

He skates his hand down the bare expanse of her back, letting it settle in the dip between her hips. She undulates with the caress, thighs parting and sliding to bracket one of his. If she’s gunning for a second round he’s still got his refractory period to contend with, but there’s always other ways to keep her occupied, his loose-limbed lack of focus notwithstanding.

She doesn’t push it any further, though, apparently content for now in her own come-down, and he’s just about to give in to the pull towards sleep when it occurs to him what he’s neglected to ask.

“Did you?”

Rebecca’s even breaths, which up until now have been fanning rhythmically across the damp of his throat, catch and falter enough that he takes note of their telling absence.

“Hmm? Did I what?” she deflects, and his eyes narrow at the way she doubles down on the suggestive patterns she seems intent on tracing across his pectorals.

Determined not to be swayed, he shifts beneath her, laughter rumbling through him and muscle mass quaking like tectonic plates beneath the surface of his skin. “Oh, you so did,” he grins, pleased to have been on the money with his flicker of suspicion, eager to bask, as always, in any correct insight he’s managed to garner into his girlfriend’s endlessly multi-faceted brain. “This whole time there’s been incriminating photos of you somewhere wearing tacky fake-fur and an unseemly wig. There’s no hiding your shameful history, now—the cat is out of the bag.”

Rebecca smacks him on the chest, unimpressed, and he can see every telltale corner of her mouth at which the scowl fails to conceal the twitches of her laughter. “So what if my vendetta is somewhat rooted in past trauma? It doesn’t change basic fact, which is that the mere existence of Cats—animal, musical or movie—is a plague against mankind. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t need the wig—my early adolescent frizz was unseemly enough all on its own.”

Where late-night exhaustion-fuelled irritation existed only a few evenings prior, Nathaniel finds himself suddenly capable of only overwhelming fondness. “I think you would have made a very fearsome cat,” he tells her seriously. “All feisty, and nimble.”

He takes two locks of her hair, twisting them up into faux-ears on the top of her head until she bats his hands away, failing miserably at stifling her giggles.

“Stop that. You’re one adjective away from me adding myself back into the Mountaintop text chain just so I can make Maya’s week.”

“Uh-huh. Because I’m the one between us whose levels of preoccupation are concerning.”

He rolls her beneath him, nuzzling his nose against hers in an exaggerated way he can tell irritates her to no end given the context, but muscle memory wins out and she melts into it, the frown lines easing from her forehead as she moulds her mouth against his.

It’s only a matter of time before she’s pressing insistently against him, appetite predictably reawakened, and every sordid pun he could torture her with right now tingles at the ready on the tip of his tongue. But then she sighs into him with a kind of giddiness that sends his mind shattering into static, and as he nips and noses his way down past her belly every teasing thought disintegrates into the ether as he touches her until she’s arching, unraveling, drawing out his name in what can only be described as a delighted purr.

#crazy ex girlfriend #rebecca x nathaniel #rebecca bunch #nathaniel plimpton #and a dash of #gurlgroup4evah #my fic #so this was meant to be a series of drabbles in an attempt to combat writer's block #and i feel like it's still a little stiff in parts but it's already way longer than it was supposed to be #(a victory i guess!)#and ultimately just a bit of silliness #alternate title: five times rebecca yelled about cats (2019) and nathaniel was confused about it #originally this was gonna be gen but sometimes when you just wanna WRITE you gotta indulge the id #ya feel?

24 notes · View notes

official-mermaid · 5 years

Note

............ can I request some sick!queliot fluff in these trying times?

You can indeed, my love.

not to me, not if it’s you (on AO3)

Eliot was in the kitchen, drinking his morning coffee veryslowly as he sat at the counter. It was his day off—he’d managed to sign up forclasses in such a way that Mondays were free, which was truly his saving gracefor the week. He could recover from the weekend enough to make it to classes, atleast.

Well. Make it to as many classes as he usually madeit to. His attendance was not perfect.

He was enjoying the luxury of a slow morning, using a simplecharm to keep his coffee at just the right temperature and the steamed milk withjust the right amount of foam. Because it was late morning on a Monday, most ofthe people living at the Cottage were either asleep or out.

It was a nice little routine for Eliot. He appreciated thebits of time he managed to find for himself.

It was somewhat startling when Quentin shambled in, lookinglike a zombie.

He didn’t seem to register Eliot’s presence, going straightto the fridge and pulling out the orange juice, immediately chugging itstraight from the carton.

Eliot watched for a few moments, his head tilting to theside.

“Quentin,” he said casually, “are you aware that we do, infact, have glasses here?”

Quentin jumped, spilling a bit of juice on his shirt.

“Fuck,” he muttered. He turned to Eliot. “I, uh, I didn’tsee you there.”

Eliot nodded sagely. “Hm. Do you make a habit of drinkingstraight from the carton when you believe you’re alone?”

Quentin shot him a sour look. “No,” he said. “But even if Idid, it’s my orange juice, so like. The only people who would care are thepeople who’ve been stealing my groceries.”

“Glossing over youraccusatory tone,” Eliot replied with a wry smile. “Why do you look like youcrawled out of your grave?”

“Woke up with a fever,” Quentin said, putting the juice backand closing the fridge.

Eliot looked him over. He did look rather pale. And tired. “Isyour solution to hope that orange juice, in all its magical healing properties,will cure you?”

As if to prove the flaws in that logic, Quentin startedcoughing. “Um. Maybe,” he said when he caught his breath again, his voicescratchy.

Eliot feigned horror, getting to his feet. “Quentin MiddleName Coldwater. Honestly. You should be in bed, with tea, andsoup. I am shocked by how poorly you’re handling this.”

Quentin blinked. “How poorly I’m handling this? Uh. Okay.I’m, like, the one who’s sick, you get that, right?”

“Yes, and you are being entirely too cavalier about thewhole thing.” Eliot walked over, putting his hands on Quentin’s shoulders. “Thisis unreasonable, Q. You should be complaining theatrically and fainting like adelicate Victorian lady. Where is your lace fan? Where is the wet washclothmeant to be draped over your forehead?”

“We can’t all be you.”

“I’m mildly offended.”

“Yeah, well, I have a headache.”

“Unacceptable. I am officially taking care of you.”

“Uh, I have to get to class—”

“Class?” Eliot said, putting all the shock and disapprovalhe could into his tone. “You can’t go to class.”

“But I—”

“Class is absolutely not worth it.”

“I mean, I, um, I don’t wanna, like, miss anything—”

“What are you going to miss, Q? Professor Sunderland goingover the chapter you already read for homework?” Eliot waved his handdismissively. “Trust me, I’ve missed enough classes to know. You’ll be fine. It’sjust one day.”

“But, like, I don’t wanna get behind or anything. I mean,uh, I just—like, I’m not that sick, it’s fine.”

“You have to go back to bed, and you have to whine.”Eliot shook his head. “It’s like you’ve never been sick before. Don’t youknow the rules?”

Quentin groaned. “God, El, it’s not that big of a deal.”

Eliot put a hand over his heart. “How dare you. You are ill,you are dying, it is important that I solve this at once.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “I’m not dying. You’remelodramatic.”

“I won’t argue with that, but honestly, Quentin, do youreally think you can win this one?”

They stood like that for a few moments, staring at oneanother. Seeing who would blink first. They were pretty easily matched instubbornness, but to be fair—

Eliot had the advantage of not being sick.

Quentin rolled his eyes again. He started to turn to thestairs. “Okay, whatever. Yeah, I get it, you win. I’ll, like, lie down orsomething.”

Eliot raised an eyebrow. “Oh, no, Quentin. You think this isover?”

Quentin hesitated, glancing back, his brow furrowed. “Um.”

“Darling, little Q. Lucky for you, I happen to have theentire day free.” Eliot gestured to the stairs. “Now, hurry on up, I’ll be therein little bit.”

“I’m locking the door.”

Eliot grinned. “No, you’re not.”

Quentin sighed. “Whatever,” he replied. Eliot caught aslight smile on his face as he walked up the stairs.

Eliot prided himself on his cooking, but really, feverscalled for simplicity. That didn’t mean he had to shirk on presentation,though.

He made a cup of mint tea and two pieces of buttered toast,arranging it on a breakfast-in-bed type tray. He also added a glass of waterand a glass of orange juice, as well as a small box of tissues. It’s possiblehe also put a small vase with a single daisy on the tray. Presentation, itwas important.

It didn’t take all that long. He carried the tray upcarefully. He didn’t really need to be all that careful, because he wastelekinetically holding everything in place, but force of habit.

He got to Quentin’s room, placing the tray on the bedsidetable.

“Now, I’ve charmed the tea so it stays the righttemperature, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

He looked over, feeling a jolt of real sympathy. Quentin washuddled in the covers, looking truly, truly miserable.

“Oh, Q,” Eliot said, sitting down at the edge of the bed. Hepressed his palm to Quentin’s forehead, feeling the heat.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Quentin mumbled, leaninginto Eliot’s hand, seemingly on instinct.

Eliot couldn’t help the warm, earnest smile that grew. “Iwant to,” he replied.

Quentin looked up at him, frowning a little. “I mean, you,um… You’ve gotta have something better to do.”

Eliot shook his head decisively. “Absolutely not. I am exactlywhere I should be.”

There was a moment of quiet, and Eliot felt a stab ofanxiety that he’d revealed too much, that he should deflect, say something self-aggrandizing,or make a sardonic, selfish comment, but—

“Oh,” Quentin said softly. “Um. Thanks.”

Eliot smiled. Unguarded for the time being, at least. “Ofcourse, Q. Whenever you need it.”

And he meant it.

#<3 #trying times indeed #have some fluff #the magicians #my fic #lavender-riot-grrrl

16 notes · View notes

callunavulgari · 5 years

Text

Scrapbook 2020 | Pt. I

Reminder:

Normal font - Indifferent/Neutral Italicized font - Enjoyed bold font - Loved with an asterisk* - All time favorite (bracketed titles) - Re-watches/Re-reads strikethough - Disliked

Goals are: read seventy-five books, finish five video games, write something novel-length and write something original. These last two goals CAN be combined. So you know, nearly the exact same goals from last year.

MOVIES

January

My Neighbor Totoro

(Matilda)

(The Mummy)

The Pacifier

(Moana)

Lion King (2019)

February

Hereditary

(The Lion King 2)

Kiki’s Delivery Service

March

(Tangled)

(Zootopia)

(Lilo and Stitch)

(The Swan Princess)

(The Swan Princess: Secret of the Castle)

(The Swan Princess: The Mystery of the Enchanted Kingdom)

April

Onward

(Your Name)

(Frozen 2)

Happy Death Day

Promare

May

(Free Willy)

(Star Wars: The Last Skywalker)

(Free Willy 2)

(The Road to El Dorado)

(Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron)

(Prince of Egypt)

BOOKS

January

The Secret Commonwealth | Philip Pullman [Fin]

The Great Hunt | Robert Jordan [Fin]

Wanderers | Chuck Wendig

The Dragon Republic | R.F. Kuang

February

Wanderers | Chuck Wendig [Fin]

The Dragon Republic | R.F. Kuang [Fin]

Runebinder | Alex Kahler [Fin]

The Book of M | Peng Shepherd [Fin]

Call Down the Hawk | Maggie Stiefvater [Fin]

(The Diviners | Libba Bray) [Fin]

(Lair of Dreams | Libba Bray) [Fin]

(Before the Devil Breaks You | Libba Bray) [Fin]

King of Crows | Libba Bray [Fin]

Gods of Jade and Shadow | Silvia Moreno-Garcia [Fin]

The City of Brass | S.A. Chakraborty

March

The City of Brass | S.A. Chakraborty [Fin]

Legion | Brandon Sanderson [Fin]

Taproot | Keezy Young [Fin]

Mooncakes | Suzanna Walker, Wendy Xu [Fin]

Loki: the God Who Fell to Earth | Daniel Kibblesmith [Fin]

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow | Natasha Pulley [Fin]

The Hazel Wood | Melissa Albert [Fin]

The Black Tides of Heaven | J.Y. Yang [Fin]

Gideon the Ninth | Tamsyn Muir** [Fin]

Loki: Where Mischief Lies | Mackenzie Lee [Fin]

American Royals | Katharine McGee [Fin]

River of Teeth | Sarah Gailey [Fin]

We Are Okay | Nina LaCour [Fin]

Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens [Fin]

A Memory Called Empire | Arkady Martine [Fin]

April

The Dream Peddler | Martine Fournier Watson [Fin]

The Dragon Reborn | Robert Jordan [Fin]

The Glass Hotel | Emily St John Mandel [Fin]

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous | Ocean Vuong [Fin]

The Unhoneymooners | Christina Lauren [Fin]

(Captive Prince 1 | C.S.Pacat) [Fin]

(Captive Prince 2 | CS Pacat) [Fin]

(Captive Prince 3 | CS Pacat) [Fin]

The Flatshare | Bath O’Leary [Fin]

A Study in Brimstone | G.S. Denning [Fin]

May

Sky In the Deep | Adrienne Young [Fin]

House of Salt and Sorrows | Erin Craig [Fin]

The Sparrow | Mary Russell [Fin]

Here and Now and Then | Mike Chen [Fin]

Burn for Me | Ilona Andrews [Fin]

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms | N.K. Jemisin [Fin]

Mister Monday | Garth Nix

PODCASTS

January

King Falls AM, Eps 35-75

February

King Falls AM, Eps Live Special-84

The Penumbra Podcast | Juno Steel and the Tools of Rust

(Zero Hours - Ep 7)

March

King Falls AM, Eps 84-100

April

(The Magnus Archive, s1)

The Magnus Archive, s5

Welcome to Night Vale

The Bridge

The Adventure Zone

May

The Magnus Archive, s5

TV SHOWS BY SEASON

January

The Great British Baking Show, s7, s6

Lost In Space, s2

The Magicians, s3, s4

The Untamed

February

The Untamed**

The Terror, s2

March

Guardian

Haikyuu

Westworld, s3

April

The Great British Baking Show, s6

Westworld, s3

Jeopardy

The Guardian

May

Motherland: Fort Salem

(Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural

Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime

Watcher Entertainment

She-Ra, s5**

The Guardian

(Avatar: The Last Airbender)

VIDEO GAMES

January

Pokemon: Shield (30 hrs) [Fin]

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (10 hrs)

February

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (30 hrs)

Transistor [Fin]

Plague Tales: Innocence (15 hrs)

Civ VI (France- FIN, Victory)

Assassin’s Creed: Origins (20 hrs)

March

Kingdom Hearts 3

Luigi’s Mansion [Fin]

(LoZ: Breath of the Wild)

April

(LoZ: Breath of the Wild)

The Outer Worlds

Oxenfree

May

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Shadow of the Colossus

DELIGHTFUL FIC

January

A Miracle in Thunder by LazyBaker | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 4.5k | Christmas morning, Steve’s pulling into a nearly empty parking lot to open Family Video on his own.

The White Wolf by norgbelulah | Castlevania | Alucard/Trevor/Sypha | 6k | Trevor and Sypha travel back to the Belmont Estate and Castle Dracula, unsure of what they will find there.

Stainless by Fahye | The Untamed | Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian | 6.5k | "I'm starting to feel," says Lan Xichen, "that this was a counterproductive suggestion."

sleep in your bed by copperwings | The Untamed | Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian | 12k | or; Wei WuXian has a tendency to fall asleep in places where he shouldn't. Lan WangJi disapproves.

by the grace of a ride along by brawlite | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 5k | They shouldn't so often find themselves in situations like this. And yet.

this line bisects by adspexi | The Queen’s Thief | Attolia/Eugenides/Costis | 1k | The rumors around Costis' status as a royal favorite haven't quieted down. The king doesn't seem to mind.

Be kind by longnationalnightmare | The Magicians | Quentin/Eliot | 10k | It was absurd how much Eliot meant it— you’re cute—so cute Eliot wanted to swallow him whole.

Reclaimed by betts | Star Wars | Reylo | 14k | Or: After the passing of new legislation, Rey and thousands of other omegas are rescued from the abusive grasps of their alphas. She gets adopted by a new alpha and braces herself for the cruelty she’s grown used to. But Ben isn’t like other alphas, and Rey slowly warms to his kindness.

Make a list of things you need by longnationalnightmare | The Magicians | Quentin/Eliot | 10k | “Whose wedding?” he asked, and only stopped assessing the room when Eliot failed to answer. “El, who’s getting married?”

seldom all they seem by Fahye | The Untamed | Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian | 24k | or, one hundred and thirty-three principles of the Gusu Lan, pertaining to the state of marriage

love is touching souls (surely you touched mine) by ToAStranger | Harry Potter | Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | 34k | Voldemort is dead. It's Christmas, and Harry's just opened a gift from Fred and George Weasley.

back to back by serenfire | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 13k | (Or: If Yennefer gets to be improbably naked in canon, then I am making Jaskier equally, if not more, naked. It's equality.)

You're a Story (I Can Follow) by Page161of180 | The Magicians | Queliot | 20k | The Monster's been defeated, Quentin is dead, and Eliot has a quest of his own--if he can trust himself to complete it. An Orpheus and Eurydice remix.

Lover's Touch by Rizandace | The Magicians | Queliot | 25k | Q gets cursed, and Alice can't help. Magic forces Q and Eliot to cuddle and talk about their feelings.

Possession by yaskween | The Magicians | Queliot | 9k | “Honestly? I don’t mean to be rude,” Eliot started, having trouble meeting Quentin’s eyes again. “But I don’t think I can handle being this close to you right now.”

You In My Head by stele3 | The Magicians | Queliot | 5k | Apparently, the Monster hadn’t cared much about hydration. Eliot hasn’t been this parched since Ibiza 2012.

fall through by sarcasticfishes | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Shane/Ryan/Sara | 8k | “Sorry man, our flights are grounded because of some freak storm. Waiting to see if we can get one out tomorrow,” Shane reads aloud, and Sara pouts down at the screen.

with them indiana boys (on them indiana nights) by ToAStranger | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 5k | The thing is, when Billy first saw Steve Harrington, he knew.

The Genius of the Western River by Siria | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Shane/Ryan | 14k | Shane’s totally working on being flippant about all those times he joked about Ryan’s godlike physique, never suspecting how true those jokes might be—the two of them just have to defeat a supernatural serial killer first.

I was born to blanket you in flowers by MyFandomCausesHanaji | The Untamed | Wei Wuxan/Lan Zhan | 5k | “I have folded a thousand paper flowers for you.”

A Temporary Favor by oxymoronic | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 30k | It’s barely three days since El closed the gate when Hopper tells him he wants to rip a hole in space and time to rescue Billy Hargrove. Steve thinks it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard.

February

it’s a long way forward (so trust in me) by suzukiblu | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 25k | “Does that stop heat?” Jaskier asks curiously, absentmindedly tuning his lute as he speaks. He hadn’t thought anything could, but, well . . . witchers and their potions.

Love as You Are by thisgirlsays22 | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 16k | Jaskier didn’t want to marry just any noblewoman--no matter how comely she may be--he wanted adventure and many loves, but most importantly his biggest, greatest love of all.

GERALT'S A SOFT BOI send tweet by relenafanel | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 2k | WIP | “Hey, so this is where you ended up,” Jaskier said, sliding into the chair across from Geralt in the sad truck-stop diner 50 kilometres outside of the backwater swamp-dump reporting an infestation of drowners.

The Rule Of Opposites by entanglednow | Good Omens | Aziraphale/Crowley | 6k | In which they are opposing forces, not designed to touch, anathema to each other. Crowley refuses to accept it.

have you noticed I’ve been gone? by suzukiblu | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 12k | Jaskier is a very good kisser, and almost kisses Geralt often enough, which is a damn sight closer than most people get. Even when he’s paying for it, he doesn’t get kissed enough. Jaskier gets close, though.

Chattoter Trending by DragonBandit | Pokemon | Leon/Raihan | 2.5k | Neither Raihan or Leon have told the greater public about their relationship. Then Raihan posts the wrong picture to Chattoter.

from me to you by Ceta | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 14k | Wei Too Cool ✓ @wei-wuxian correct me if i’m wrong but i’m pretty sure that’s a love song @LanWangJi #AtFirstSight

Do it Again by thisgirlsays22 | The Witcher | Geralt/Jaskier | 7k | By the twentieth time Geralt has gone through the loop, he decides to just throw himself off the cliff’s edge after Borch.

March

The Absolutely True Story of the Yiling Patriarch: A Manifesto in Many Parts by aubreyli | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 20k | “Love?” he croaks, then clears his throat and tries again. “Lan Zh— uh, Hanguang-jun, in love?”

bend all the rules by brawlite | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 14k | Billy knows that it’s a bad idea to hook up with his old high school rival and certified Straight Guy™, Steve Harrington -- but Hawkins is real bleak during the holidays, and Billy’s just trying to make it through winter break without dying of boredom.

April

Probability Engine by @kaikamahine | The Watchmaker of Filigree Street | Keita/Thaniel | 22k | The worst part about knowing you will have to shove Merrick Tremayne into the path of an oncoming cannonball is that you genuinely enjoy the man's company. Unfortunately, this becomes something of a recurring theme.

rare the man who'll hold to faith by Fahye | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 13k | "There is the mark of our bargain, and here is the challenge," said the Yiling Patriarch.

a stone to break your soul, a song to save it by rikke | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 180k | When the entire cultivation world turns against Wei WuXian, Jiang Cheng comes up with a plan to save him and arranges a marriage between his brother and the Second Jade of Lan, Lan WangJi.

a prize for rotten judgement by sarcasticfishes | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 10k | “You’d drive each other crazy. You sit together at your office all day, and then you’d be commuting home together, eating dinner together, watching TV together, going to bed — well, not together, but you get it, right?”

Linger in the Sun by etymologyplayground | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 39k | "Tell Lan Zhan that I'm weeping uncontrollably," Wei Wuxian says to the juniors. "Tell him I'm truly pitiful and he needs to do everything I say until I'm well again."

Every ridge hand-picked by the late sun’s slant light by wildestranger | The Guardian | Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan | 7k | “Long time, no see,” he says.The Black Cloaked Envoy blanches.

If Life Was A Movie We’d Have A Better Soundtrack Than This by galaxysoup | The Guardian | Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan | 46k | The first time Shen Wei meets Zhao Yunlan is when he innocently steps out of his Monday morning office hours and is immediately slammed into by 180 pounds of cop pursuing a suspect on foot.

Sex, Science, and True Love: A Rigid Analysis of the Practical Applications of Dual Cultivation by aubreyli | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 24k | WIP | “The Lans are far too boring and repressed for something like this,” Wei Wuxian said, with the authority of one who had been resoundingly ignored by a Lan for the past month. “Can you imagine Lan Wangji dual cultivating?”

and so my heart beats wildly by lily_winterwood | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 106k | “You know, you’re the one to beat this year,” Jiang Cheng offers helpfully, having seen the glare from right next to him. “Hanguang-jun’s been through juniors with the rest of us, he knows all of our tics. You’re an unknown variable, since he’s never competed against you before.”

Weird and/or Wonderful by beethechange | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Shane/Ryan | 12k | Or: During the filming of an episode of Weird and/or Wonderful World, Ryan tosses a shoelace and a wish in an ancient magical wishing well. Mistakes are made.

one good thing by Yuu_chi | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 26k | Wei Wuxian has been haunting his childhood home for three years. He's perfected the fine art of scaring away all the tenants, and has grown used to living with the dying flowers in the garden as his only company.

stay with me, go places by beethechange | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Shane/Ryan | 16k | “Never have I ever,” Shane says, feeling his way delicately around the syllables, making nice with all the consonants and vowels, “hooked up with a friend at a wedding.”

once more with feeling by sarsaparillia | Oxenfree | Alex/Jonas | 26k | Alex, stumbling through the time-stream.

hey boy, take a look at me by weakspots | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 17k | Ryan is 27, for Christ’s sake, and he’s not exactly hideous, so there’s really no reason to spend his money on a dude — a dude — whose face he’ll never see but whose livestreams he��s been jerking off to for roughly 4 months now.

Warm Blanket by surveycorpsjean | Promare | Lio/Galo | 19k | He wonders if Lio remembers.

spend some time with me (i really like your company) by fencer_x | Promare | Galo/Lio | 73k | Galo Thymos is the worst hostage ever, and Lio regrets kidnapping him with every waking breath.

times that are broken can often be one again by sarcasticfishes | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane/Sara | The moment the lights come on, Shane senses that something is wrong.

my age has never made me wise by idrilka | The Untamed | Wei Wuxian/Lan Zhan | 63k | “We hear that His Excellency might be married by summer’s end,” the merchant’s wife says and Wei Wuxian freezes, his heart in his throat. “The Gusu Lan sect has been buying enough red silk and brocade that the merchants in Caiyi can’t satisfy the demand.”

May

The Shops on Morning Street by mikkimouse | Castlevania | Alucard/Trevor | 7k | Trevor Belmont, former monster hunter and current florist, is tasked with looking into the proprietor of the new tattoo parlor across the street, much to his annoyance.

Sarva by rageprufrock | Guardian | Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan | 5k | Or, 一切. At work, in public, Shen Wei is meticulously, seamlessly polite. In bed, he's something else.

Heartbeat by quackers | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 66k | So the guy Ryan sits next to at work is a vampire. That's no big deal, right?

Soup-pocalypse and The Great Curry Cataclysm by SquadOfCats | Harry Potter | Draco/Harry | 104k | Eleven years after the war, Draco Malfoy leads a quiet, boring, and perfectly respectable life, thanks very much. Or, at least he does, until a sudden and very unexpected veela awakening causes him to throw soup all over Harry Potter in the middle of the Ministry cafeteria.

until you fit beneath me (and you’re breaking like a wave) by beethechange | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | In which Shane Madej succumbs to the mortifying ordeal of being known—but not before being a real butthead about it for many thousands of words first.

there is no such thing by gh0stly | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 10k | A simple investigation turns serious as Ryan suspects the black dog of Hawthorn road isn't the only demonic entity to have followed him home.

oracle bones by orphan_account | Avatar: TLA | Zuko/Katara | 3k | The foreign, pictorial characters that bracelet Zuko's left wrist have never been covered in any of his lessons. He cannot read them.

Third Time's A Charm by quackers | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 31k | Shane can't help but fall for the hot young lifeguard that stars in his Baywatch inspired daydreams, but he has a secret that no one can know. Not even Ryan.

Milk and Honey by quackers | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 18k | Sure, the fae were real. Everyone knew that.Ryan being fae? As likely as ghosts existing.

Technically-Terrestrial by quackers | Buzzfeed Unsolved | 60k | Nearly forty years ago, the disgraced group of an alien race found refuge amongst the population of Earth.And now Shane Madej, who is more-or-less human, kind-of-actually-an-alien, has to convince his terrified best friend Ryan that he's not about to abduct him.

play me like a love song by sky_somedays | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 10k | Shane is Ryan's beleaguered history TA. Ryan won't stop suggesting insane theories.

one word from you by mme_anxious | The Untamed | Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian | 5k | Wei Wuxian manages to get himself cursed and Lan Wangji just wants to be helpful.

DELIGHTFUL FANVIDS

January

A Tribute to 2019 Cinema

Geralt & Yennefer | Wicked Game

chaos | Yennefer of Vengerberg

Yennefer of Vengerberg || SURVIVOR

The Multifandom Mashup 2019

Multifandom Mashup 2019

Natural ][ Multifandom

Yennefer Of Vengerberg | Here I Am

destiny [The Witcher]

star wars || war pigs

THE WITCHER || IN THE END [Happy New Year!]

Sucker [Jaskier & Geralt / Humor]

The Witcher || War Pigs

Lee Scoresby ][ Rebel Just For Kicks || HDM

Jaskier & Geralt || Hold on

February

The Art of Cinema

Jaskier & Geralt || Hold on

Jaskier || Oh No!

The Witcher || River

Geralt Of Rivia || Old Town Road

Multifandom | Glitter & Gold

Everybody knows | Multifandom

Merlin | Survivor

March

xue yang & xiao xingchen (the untamed MV) | hold on

Wei Wuxian | The Yiling Patriarch

The Untamed | Devil from Heaven

陈情令-The Untamed (2019) | but I'm only human | Yiling Patriarch

wei wu xian & lan wang ji (the untamed MV) | they don't know about us

Wangxian || Us Against the World (The Untamed)

Wei Wu Xian & Lan Wang Ji | A Thousand Years (The Untamed FMV)

hannibal || the way you are

Wei Wuxian & Lan Wangji | Bury our Love《陈情令 The Untamed》

The Untamed FMV | Wei Wuxian & Lan Wangji | 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁𝓎

The Untamed MV - Rule the World

𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘺 || wei wu xian 陈情令

陈情令 | The Untamed - I Will Carry You

wei wu xian & lan wang ji (the untamed MV) | beautiful mess

The Witcher | Geralt Of Rivia

Kylo Ren & Rey | I Know You

Miles Morales | Whatever It Takes

EGO - Wei Wuxian

Wei Wuxian | Rebel Just For Kicks

Geralt of Rivia // Glitter and Gold

Glitter & Gold ][ TUA

Eliot Waugh - Let It Happen

Jaskier ❤️️ Everybody Loves Me

April

DJ Earworm - YouTube Sings Dance Monkey (100 COVERS)

Khan ][ Believer

Roman Sionis | Black Mask ][ Bad Guy

(Star Wars) Kylo Ren | Redemption

(The Witcher) Geralt of Rivia | The White Wolf

Sirius & Regulus | Black Flies

The Marauders | HOME

(Marvel) Thor | The New Path

(Marvel) Tony Stark | My Legacy

A Song of Ice & Fire

(GoT) Daenerys Targaryen | My Reign is Over

Harley Quinn ][ Feeling Good

Multifandom II You'll Always Be A Monster

Haru & Rin || Deep Blue

Star Wars - Anime Opening 1 (A New Hope Arc)

It's hard

Severus Snape

Marvel || BLUE MONDAY

never surrender

May

[AMV] In The Name of Love [Yuri!!! on ICE]

Catra & Adora | I love you, I always have (+S5)

Sherlock ][ Bohemian Rhapsody

(Marvel) Avengers | Catastrophe

DELIGHTFUL MUSIC

January

There She Goes - Sixpence None the Richer

Don’t You Forget About Me - Simple Minds

Devil Side - Foxes

Medhel an Gwyns - Anna Dudley

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square - Tori Amos

Toss A Coin to Your Witcher - Witcher OST

Smile For the Camera - UPSAHL

Fail We Must Sail We Must - Unloved

It’s Not You, It’s Me -Unloved

Bill - Unloved

Cry Baby Cry - Unloved

Sigh - Unloved

Teeth - 5 Seconds of Summer

My Dear - The Castros

Us - Regina Spektor

Houses - Great Northern

Beautiful Dreamer - The Magicians Cast

Graveyard - Halsey

Imperfections - Celine Dion

Premonitions - Vaults

Jagwar - Shells

Nice To Meet You - Niall Horan

Handsome and Wealthy - Migos

Thunder - Shaed

6 Underground - The Sneaker Pimps

February

Land of Yesterday - Anastasia Original Broadway Cast

You’re Somebody Else - Flora Cash

Masterpiece - Vargas & Lagola

Everybody Knows - Sigrid

Fly Me to the Moon - Frank Sinatra

Cringe - Stripped - Matt Maeson

Black Out Days - Phantogram

You Don’t Get Me High Anymore - Wakey!Wakey!

Pep Talk - Judah & the Lion

Ag Bruach Dhun Reimhe - Eithne Ni Uallachan

Grave Digger - Matt Maeson

Hidden Lakes - Shearwater

Maker - Anjimile

The Untamed sountracks - vocal and instrumental

Cut My Lip - 21 Pilots

Cancer - 21 Pilots

Strawberry Fields - The Beatles

March

Infinity - Jaymes Young

Chadelier - Sia

No Time to Die - Billie Eilish

South of the Border - Camila Cabello & Cardi B

Moondust - Jaymes Young

April

2020 playlist

May

2020 playlist

POSTED FIC

January

a different kind of danger in the daylight | Shades of Magic | Kell/Lila/Holland | 6,930 words | Sleeping with Holland was never part of the plan.

February

love will have it's sacrifices | Teen Wolf | Sterek | 7,719 words | “So,” Allison starts, biting her lip. “You’re telling me that you think your roommate is a werewolf.”

March

Teeth | The Witcher | Jaskier/Geralt | 2,368 words | “You wrote a song about my teeth,” Geralt says.

April

Lithium | Kingdom Hearts | Axel/Roxas | 378 words | The grass is cool and faintly damp, still springy under your palms.

the thrill of knowing how alone we are | Stargate Atlantis | Rodney/John | 1,077 words | “Right now, I really don’t know if I want to kiss you or shove you off the damn bridge.”Rodney, who is, in fact, on a bridge right now, has never had the best sense of self preservation, because he snaps right back, “Oh good, can I pick?”

i hope you lose your way | Kingdom Hearts | Sora/Riku | 1,725 words | The last summer that he and Sora were together, truly together, before the inexplicable pull of adulthood drew them further and further apart until that thread finally snapped, they went on a road trip.

ephemeral | The Untamed | Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian | 2,353 words | “Composing is what suits me now,” Lan Wangji says, his voice like a shrug. “In a year, it may be dancing.”

May

fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 4,108 words | As Steve watches, the man arches one of those eyebrows and asks, “Are you trying to get eaten by a shark?”

WIPS | UNPUBLISHED | ORIGINAL

January

N/A

February

N/A

March

N/A

April

The Untamed, ephemeral, 2148 words

May

Untitled Mermay Fic | Stranger Things | Harringrove | 3.367 words

FANMIXES/GRAPHICS

January

All the 8tracks imports

February

N/A

March

N/A

April

N/A

May

Writing Playlist

#heather says what #heather writes #scrapbook #2020

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teatraysandtypewriters · 5 years

Text

These Hands Are Meant To Hold

(read on AO3)

The questers are all gathered in the Cottage living room, trying to plan their next steps. They’ve found all seven keys, but now they need to figure out how to use them, and the book is as unhelpful and cryptic as always.

They’re mid-argument—Quentin pacing and gesturing as he tries to explain what he thinks the chapter means—when suddenly there’s a flash of light and Quentin is just—gone. Except he’s not, because before Eliot can properly freak out, there’s a second flash of light and Quentin is standing there in the middle of the room again, stumbling a bit and looking dazed.

Except it’s not quite Quentin. Not the same Quentin at least. There’s something different about him—his hair is shorter, and he’s wearing different clothes, and his shoulders are somehow even more slumped, and that’s all Eliot has time to take in before Quentin catches sight of him and, with a strangled “Eliot,” launches himself at him.

Eliot hugs back tightly, reflexively, because whatever’s going on here, Eliot could never just not comfort Q when he’s like this. (And honestly, would never pass up any opportunity to hug Quentin in general.) Quentin’s hugging him like he’ll disappear if he lets go, and something is so terribly wrong.

“What the fuck?” he hears Margo demand, but Eliot is too focused on Quentin to really pay attention. Quentin, who doesn’t answer her, just burrows closer to Eliot as if any tiny speck of distance is too much. There’s a hitch to his breathing and it doesn’t take a genius to connect it to the tiny pinpricks of moisture seeping into Eliot’s shirt.

“No, seriously,” Margo continues, sounding closer. “What the fuck just happened?”

There are murmurs of agreement from the others, but Eliot can’t tell who’s making them.

Quentin finally pulls back a little and says, valiantly ignoring the fact he’s kind of crying, “I think there’s time travel involved, but honestly? I have no fucking clue.”

Time travel. Okay, why not? Honestly not the weirdest thing to happen this week.

“Well where’s our Quentin, then?” Julia asks. Right here, Eliot wants to say, because every version of Quentin is his Quentin, even if he’s not really his.

He doesn’t say it though, because he knows what she’s asking, and he’s pretty concerned about that too. It doesn’t mean he’s any less concerned for this Quentin, he just wants to know they’re both okay.

All signs, however, seem to be pointing to definitely not okay.

Quentin takes a deep, shuddering breath, and steps away from Eliot. Eliot’s body sways forward, not ready to let go. But he does—let go, that is. And gets his first good look at this future Quentin—because he must be from the future, Eliot knows the past versions too well to think otherwise—and oh god he’s a fucking mess.

His clothes are rumpled like he’s been in them for several days, and he’s thinner than Eliot’s ever seen him, and definitely not in a way that looks healthy. The dark circles under his eyes might as well be black holes, and—

“Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?” Eliot demands, stepping forward. Because there are bruises around Quentin’s neck, bruises shaped like handprints, like someone tried to strangle him, and Eliot fucking sees red. He lifts one hand to hover over the bruises, all his instincts screaming to make sure Quentin’s okay, but—

Quentin flinches.

Oh.

Because Quentin’s never rejected his touch like that before, but Eliot understands, because, because—

Oh.

Oh, Q.

Eliot takes a step back. Then another. Because he’d seen, hand hovering over one of the bruises, in that spot on Quentin’s neck he loved to hold when they kissed and—

The bruise is in the exact shape of his hand. His hand. And Quentin had flinched.

“No, wait, Eliot, it’s not what you think!” Quentin says, suddenly looking panicked and, and fucking broken and what the fuck kind of monster has Eliot become in the future?

Nothing you weren’t already, his mind whispers to him, flashes of memories—Logan, Taylor, Mike—he desperately shoves back to the dark corners of his psyche.

“Eliot,” Quentin says, stepping forward, hand outstretched, like he’s trying to comfort Eliot, like Q’s not the one with strangulation marks etched with Eliot’s fingerprints. “It wasn’t you.”

Eliot laughs harshly, and it sounds kind of like a broken sob. “So what, I was on another drug spiral or something?” It sounds like something he would do. Hell, it’s something he’s already done. He’d almost gotten all his friends killed last time and doesn’t even remember much of it. “Don’t make excuses for me.”

“No, Eliot, it literally wasn’t you.”

“Okay, can someone tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Penny cuts in, and Eliot had kind of forgotten that the others were there.

“Seconded,” Kady adds. Julia is glancing between Eliot and Q with confusion edging quickly towards horror. Alice looks disapproving and upset, but that’s also been her default expression lately, so Eliot can’t really tell what she’s thinking.

Quentin gives Eliot one last pleading look before reluctantly turning to the others. “Like I said, I’m not really sure. But, I mean, this is definitely the past. For me, I mean. I remember this, or, well, if this is the time I think it is then I remember it, and it’s after the Beast was killed so it’s not one of those other thirty-nine timelines, but I’m definitely from your guys’s future. Probably by like a year. And, well,” he glances back at Eliot, who is still standing stiffly to the side, eyes magnetically drawn to the handprints on Q’s neck however much he tries to look away, “there’s a lot of shit we’re dealing with right now.”

Shit that apparently involves Eliot trying to kill Quentin.

He thinks his fingers might break from how tightly he’s clenching them into fists. But he would gladly break his own fingers before he lets them get anywhere close enough to hurt Q like that.

Julia takes a deep breath. “Okay, that’s a lot to take in, but we’ve dealt with weirder, so let’s figure this out. Do you have any idea how you got here?”

“Um, maybe?” Quentin fidgets under everyone’s stares. Eliot wants to soothe him, wants to hug him, wants to stay far, far away from him. “I was researching, and it was some really old stuff that I didn’t understand, and I was kind of tired, and well, I might have read one of the spells out loud? Like I can’t really remember, but I think that might be what happened?” He trails off.

In any other circumstance, Eliot would make some fond remark about how that does sound like something Quentin would do, but, well, these aren’t normal circumstances. His mouth feels welded shut and he thinks if he were to pry it open he might start screaming and never stop.

Quentin keeps glancing back at Eliot, even as he explains, and his eyes are pleading for Eliot to understand something, but what is there to understand other than Eliot’s hands put those bruises there?

(Eliot’s hands—the hands that killed Mike, that hit Taylor. Hands that escape the guilt of Logan’s murder simply because it was Eliot’s fucking mind instead. Hands that had held Quentin through grief and joy, sickness and health. Hands that had held Quentin’s neck as they kissed, held him like Quentin was the most precious thing in this world because to Eliot he is. Those hands. Those hands that line up all too perfectly with deep, angry bruises ringing that throat he used to kiss.)

He tries closing his eyes, but his mind just pulls up the image of Quentin flinching on a loop. Which isn’t better.

Someone is talking but it’s not Quentin so Eliot isn’t sure who it is or what they’re saying. Quentin, however, twists his head to look at whoever it is, stretching the bruises on his neck taut in the process.

Eliot thinks he might throw up.

But before his body can make good on its nausea, another person appears in the center of the room. There isn’t a flash like when Quentin appeared; he’s just suddenly standing there. Someone inhales sharply, loud as a gunshot in the sudden silence, and it wasn’t Eliot but he understands the sentiment, because the person standing there is—it’s . . . Eliot. Except it’s not, because something is clearly, deeply wrong.

Eliot’s hair is long and unkempt, his jaw is covered in stubble, and he’s wearing a blood-stained graphic t-shirt that makes Eliot—the real, current Eliot—shudder with horror.

“Quentin!” the not-Eliot says with a child-like glee. “I found you!”

Everything about Quentin shifts in that moment. He visibly retreats into himself—face going blank, shoulders slouching, eyes hovering anywhere but on not-Eliot.

Oh.

Eliot thought his stomach couldn’t sink any further but somehow it does and takes his heart with it.

The . . . thing closes the distance between itself and Quentin, one hand patting his hair and one hand settling on his shoulder, dangerously close to the bruises ringing his neck.

Oh god. Eliot really might be sick.

“You’re getting better at hiding,” not-Eliot says, and the real Eliot’s head spins with the unpleasant implications of that, “but I found you anyway.”

“Yeah,” Quentin’s voice cracks. Eliot feels an echoing crack in his own chest. “You did.”

The not-Eliot frowns suddenly, the hand patting Quentin’s hair sliding down to grip his arm tightly. “I’m bored of the hiding game. You’re supposed to be helping me.”

“I was,” Quentin says quickly, “I mean, I am.”

Not-Eliot’s fingers brush against the bruises on Quentin’s neck.

It wasn’t you, Quentin had said. And it wasn’t. Eliot wants to feel relieved about that but he can’t. Because it was still his hands. Because this is somehow so much worse.

That thing hurt Quentin with Eliot’s body. It’s touching Quentin with Eliot’s hands. Absentmindedly. Familiarly, as if it has the fucking right.

Eliot has no idea what’s going on but it’s so wrong he wants to scream. As it is, he can’t stop the choked off noise that escapes him.

The noise attracts the attention of not-Eliot, who turns to real-Eliot with curiosity that quickly turns to contempt. (It’s still clutching Quentin’s arm possessively and Eliot wants desperately to pull Q away, preferably into his own arms.)

“Eliot,” it snarls, stepping forwards.

Eliot is self-aware enough to know it’s not a good sign that the first time he thinks this creature truly looks like him is when he sees his own face staring back at him, filled with loathing.

Not-Eliot raises a hand threateningly and Eliot isn’t clear on what exactly it is inhabiting his body, but he has no doubt it can do magic despite their own currently magic-less circumstances.

The suspicion is really only confirmed when Quentin practically lunges forward, throwing himself between Eliot and not-Eliot. “Stop!” he commands, all traces of his former meekness gone. “You promised not to hurt Eliot, and that counts for this Eliot too.”

“Q,” Eliot pleads, because whatever deal Quentin’s struck with this thing can’t be worth it. But Quentin doesn’t even acknowledge him and Eliot has to watch as not-Eliot takes a menacing step towards Quentin, glaring.

Quentin doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move at all. Just stands there and stares down not-Eliot unblinkingly. Eliot holds his breath, bursting with the need to drag Q as far from not-Eliot as possible but knowing that’s probably a really terrible idea. The second it tries to hurt Q, though, all bets are off.

There’s a tense pause, and Eliot thinks in the back of his head that everyone else in the room seems to be holding their breath as well.

“Fine,” not-Eliot spits out, sounding more like a petulant child than anything. But before anyone in the room can relax (or not, because Eliot thinks he may never truly relax again), the thing reaches out, grabs Quentin’s shoulder, and—disappears.

It’s like the disappearance—as silent and sudden as when not-Eliot appeared—breaks some sort of spell over the room. Julia and Margo both rush forward to where Quentin had just been, Margo cursing up a very creative storm. Everyone starts speaking at once, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

But Eliot doesn’t move. Can’t move. He still feels frozen, unable to even let out the breath he’s holding.

Where did they go? Is Quentin okay? Stupid question—of course he’s not okay. Not when he’s with that—that thing.

Bruises ringing Quentin’s throat. Eliot’s fingers brushing against them. Eliot’s face, snarling at Quentin. Eliot’s hands, wrapped around Quentin’s throat, cutting off his breath.

Eliot’s lungs burn but he can’t seem to draw in air.

Where is Quentin? The current Quentin, that is.

What if not-Eliot taking future!Quentin back had messed up the spell and now Quentin is stuck somewhere in the limbo of an unfinished spell?

As if in answer to Eliot’s panicked thoughts, a light flashes in the middle of the room and when it fades, Quentin (current Quentin) is standing there, mid-sentence, his arms gesturing wildly, exactly as he’d been when he disappeared.

Eliot can breathe again. Not well or anything, but just enough he’s no longer about to pass out.

God, keep it together, Waugh.

Julia beats everyone to Quentin, hugging him tightly and looking like she’s never planning on letting go. Quentin humors her bemusedly.

“Um, what’s going on, Jules?”

Eliot ignores whatever explanation Julia gives, because all he can think of is his handprints around Quentin’s throat. The currently unblemished state of Quentin’s neck isn’t really doing a whole lot to dispel the mental image.

He meets Margo’s eyes and she nods sharply. Right.

Eliot straightens his shoulders and pushes everything to the back of his mind to fester alongside his previous fuck-ups. They’re going to stop it. They’re going to fix whatever the fuck was wrong with the future before it has a chance to come.

Whatever the fuck that was in his body, he’s never going to give it a chance to hurt Quentin. He will hunt it to the end of the world and destroy it if he has to.

But first—magic. His gaze falls on the keys gathered on the table and he lets the image burn away all other thought.

They have a quest to complete, after all.

#the magicians #queliot #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #my writing #fanfic #mine

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blairwaldcrf · 4 years

Text

The Kids are Alright (are we?) - Nate/Dan/Blair

ao3. gossip girl au. chapter 2/?

-----------

Long days were usual for Blair as a private attorney, but ones that ended with her arriving home to a son that had gotten in trouble was not. Eliot was the most well-behaved child she knew for ten years old and that wasn’t her bias speaking. More than once she had to tell the kid to lighten up at least a little-- partly out of fear of being her mother-- but he never stepped a toe out of line. Until today, apparently.

When she arrived home, Serena was there looking over her son in the living room. The beautiful blonde best friend had some kid friendly Disney movie on the television that Eliot was pointedly ignoring with a book. While he was perfectly polite about it, he had started to tell everyone he was “too old” for anything animated or on a kids’ network. Blair had no idea what she was going to do with him.

She gave a tired wave to them, and Eliot sheepishly slinked further into his book. Serena gave a warm hello back, but Blair turned the corner and went upstairs to change out of her business formal suit. She was surprised when Serena followed her.

“Don’t be too hard on him, B,” the woman told her when they arrived in Blair’s room, Serena leaning in the door.

They had met in boarding school in Europe the last month of their senior year, both of them the only Americans there at the time, and had been fast friends ever since. When Blair had chosen to finally move back to New York with Eliot, Serena had followed, and the single mother could not thank her enough.

“You followed me alone to advocate for a smaller punishment?” Blair asked, eyebrow arched. She removed her suit jacket that felt all too stuffy at home where she was safe.

“No,” Serena admitted with a hesitant pause and then an innocent enough question. “You said you know everyone at Eliot’s school, right? Even the parents?”

Blair paused as she took off her earrings. “Why? Is there a celebrity child in competition now?”

“No, not that I recognized.” Serena laughed, before turning serious. “One of the fathers asked about you. He seemed really spooked when I gave him your last name.”

“Well, what was his?” Blair asked impatiently, her anxiety spiking. Throughout her career she had made enemies, it came with the territory of winning cases and taking money, but why would someone be spooked versus intrigued?

Serena frowned. “I think his husband called him Dan?”

Blood feeling as though it had stopped flowing through her veins, she dropped the earring she had been holding. Flustered, she tried to find it while also trying to calm herself into focusing on the fact that this had to be a coincidence and nothing else. When Serena found it and handed it to her, she looked a little too deeply into Blair’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Blair abandoned undressing, settling for wearing only her silk blouse and suit pants and went a little too quickly back down the stairs. “Eliot? Sweetie? What was that girl's name that got you in trouble?”

“Clarissa?” Eliot replied, peering over the top of his book with caution. He could tell the tense mood his mother had no control over hiding.

“No.” Blair said, trying to sound pleasant and patient. “Her last name.”

Eliot bit his lip. “I don't know, she has two. Please don’t call her parents, it was my fault too--,"

“What are they?” She doesn’t sound pleasant anymore, and Serena chides her. “Blair….”

“Archibald.” Eliot answered. “She doesn't like the way the other sounds. She said it sounded disapproving and that's why she didn't like it even though she liked that family better.”

“Disapproving sound?” Blair asked, not wanting to know the answer anymore. Surely her life had been enough of a rollercoaster hadn’t it? “Like humph? As in Humphrey?”

A small amount of fear and resignation fell on Eliot’s face. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Her voice cracked a tiny bit when she said, “Thank you, sweetie,” but she cleared her throat and became firm as she told him, “Stop reading Dickinson and go finish your homework. Auntie Serena is going to babysit you.”

“Okay,” Eliot listened, even though she could tell he wasn’t quite happy about homework as he left the room.

“Blair, what is going on?” Serena asked, looking extremely concerned at this point. Perhaps she shouldn’t have thrown Serena into babysitting without question.

“I just need air,” she barely managed, ready to throw up. “I’ll be back.”

--------

Three Gin Martinis only make her sadder. Weightlessness usually accompanied Blair’s drunkenness, and she wishes desperately that she could find that instead of this sharp pain in her chest. The bartender had tried to flirt with her at the beginning, but one stern look from her and he made her drink in seconds.

Serena appears halfway through Blair debating on a fourth Martini and her heart stops. "Where's Eliot?" she panicked, but there was a slur to her words that didn't belong there for a Wednesday evening. Desperate times…

The blonde’s eyes gleamed with worry as she eyed the martini on the bartop. "I called Eric to watch him. I’m worried about you, Blair."

"I'm fine," Blair lied, pushing her drink away. Cutting herself off was painful, but she didn't want things to get any worse than this.

"Blair, come on." Serena pushed. "Who is he that you're this upset? A former case?"

"Nothing work related," she replied bitterly, almost wishing it was. That sort of danger she could handle, but this….

"Then who?"

"Who do you think, Serena?"

The hitch in Serena's breathing gave her surprise away, even as she tried to stay calm for Blair, who was starting to tear up. A gentle sunny day to Blair's stormy night. Still, Serena asks, “He’s Eliot’s father?”

“I searched everywhere before putting him in that school.” Blair broke, her anxiety peaking with her inhibitions down. “Everywhere, Serena. And now he has a kid? In Eliot’s grade? How?” Now she’s crying, barely holding back sobs, wishing to hell that she had left the Martinis alone. “He’s going to take him. He’s going to get custody and give him a real home with two parents and attention and--,”

“Blair,” Serena interrupted, pulling her into her arms and glaring at the bartender who was looking at the scene. She didn’t even care at this point, her chest so tight she wanted to scream. “Blair, he has his own child and husband. He’s not going to steal Eliot from you. He can’t.”

“He can.”

“Not if you or Cyrus have any say in the matter.” She reassured, bringing Blair’s attorney step-father up in a smart move. Blair hiccuped, thinking of the custody battles she had handled during her pro bono hours.

With her face in her hands, she eventually dried her tears and tried to wipe the mascara under her eyes away. “He’s going to hate me. They both are.”

“Eliot will always love you.” Serena said, squeezing Blair’s arms with a supportive smile as she pulled away. “And as for Dan-- you’ll have to take that a step at a time.”

“Tell me you’ll do whatever it takes to help me,” Blair asked her with sudden force.

“Of course,” Serena agreed, “but what--,”

“Pretend to be my wife?” She said with a pleading smile, ready to break. “If he thinks Eliot is safe and has two parents who are also gay maybe he’ll back off, I mean--,”

“That makes no sense, B.”

Blair strongly disagreed. “No, it’s perfect. That way no romantic feelings can be involved and we’ll be evenly matched, and--,”

Serena scoffed. “Whose romantic feelings? Because it kinda sounds like yours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Blair snapped. “Anyway--,”

“You’ve avoided this man for ten years and never seriously dated once after,” Serena interrupted, an eyebrow arched. “Are you really telling me that this is just some pragmatic but deeply flawed scheme?”

“Of course.” She said, but definitely with weaker strength. Regaining momentum, she pettily argued, “And I was a single mother attorney, there was no time to date. Will you help me or not?”

With an extremely exasperated sigh, Serena then pursed her lips and looked Blair dead in the eyes. “Only if you sit down and have a conversation with him about this. I’ll be sitting right next to you, but Blair you owe him the truth.”

“Fine,” she agreed, wanting to drown in a few more Martinis. Instead she’s dragged home and put to bed with aspirin and an impending hangover. Fuck.

------

#nate x dan x blair #blair waldorf #dair #dan x nate #gossip girl #gossip girl fic #my fic #mine

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