#juno dressed by the three graces

[7pleiades7]

Juno Dressed by the Graces by Andrea Appiani, (1811), oil on canvas, 100 × 142 cm, Civic Museum of Brescia, Brescia, Italy

[courtingchaos]

It’s Just a Question

A/N: Back on my bullshit. I’ve had some really hard times with my normal writing while also finding myself in some shitty circumstances. So this is how this came about. Just a lot of feelings. Technically plus sized reader but you can do whatever you want.

18+ NSFW No Minors

“Am I pretty?”

“What?” Eddie sprays toothpaste on the mirror, he’s so quick to ask.

“Am I pretty?” You scrunch your face up over and over, drawing your eyebrows down and crinkling your eyes. Purse your lips and frown deep and finally look over at him staring at you, toothbrush hanging from his mouth and arms braced on the countertop.

“Are you pretty?” He reiterates with a deep sigh. “Of course you are, you’re gorgeous. Especially right now when your hair matches mine and we look like two electrocuted cotton balls.” He’s not flippant but he’s definitely brushing you off.

You aren’t done though. “I’m serious, and I’m not asking if you think I’m pretty. Am I pretty like…Anne Hathaway.” You pull down on your cheek and watch it bounce back, albeit slower than it did when you were 20.

“Well…you don’t even look-no.” He stops quickly and spits in the sink and rinses his toothbrush, viciously shaking his head the whole time. “This is a trap and I refuse.” He says as he leaves you in the bathroom.

“Eddie it’s not a trap it’s an honest question!”

“This is like the worm thing and I’m not doing that again!” He yells over his shoulder before closing himself in the bedroom to get dressed for work. You sigh and turn to look at your tired reflection. Your perpetual eyebags answer your question for you, and your dusting of sun damage yells it louder from the mirror.

Not pretty, subliminally average.

Standing in line at the grocery store, Eddie slumped over the handle and picking at stray grapes, you ask again only this time with a visual aid.

“Okay, I mean like this.” You shove a copy of Rolling Stone under his nose, a new pop star gracing their cover in something sheer and tight. “I meant pretty like this.” You say quietly next to him. He chews on another free grape slowly, staring at the cover and tilting his head. He doesn’t move, just slides his eyes way over to give you the look.

“You’re prettier than her.”

“What about Juno Temple?” You quip back.

“She’s shorter than you. And British, doesn’t count.” He quips right back. You huff and shove the magazine back in its slot.

“You’re not understanding me.”

“No, I am. You’re just not listening to me.” He pushes the cart up a spot and continues his easy lean. “You’re pretty like…that.” He searches the newsstand by the register and points at a baking magazine, perfectly circled apple tart dusted with sugared cinnamon and you bark a loud laugh.

“A tart Edward?”

“Don’t twist my words. I said you’re pretty like that.” He smiles, pops another grape in his mouth and starts tossing things on the conveyer belt.

Pretty like a baked good.

He’s elbow deep in the shelf of succulents, looking for something called a ‘Black Rose’.

“I know it’s in here, there’s four dead ones up top.” He’s pushing little green teardrops to the side to find his prize, a loud ‘Ha!’ when he whips his hand out, holding the little plant by its little container.

“It’s so tiny.”

“Yeah and in like six months it might not be.” He gives you a cheesy smile and sets in the cart with your other potential house plant failures. Somehow he’s managed to keep a giant flat pot of succulents alive for almost a year and every time you go to the plant store, he adds another.

“Okay, what’s its name.”

You hum at him, tapping your finger along the cart when you get distracted. A willow of a woman walks in, hair shiny like water and flowing over her thin, petite shoulders. She looks like she’s on a mission, perfectly manicured hand pointing her in the right direction when she heads for a batch of bright zinnias. Her smile painted a bright coral like the plant she picks up and places in her cart, three more following and off she billows to the next aisle full of ivy. Eddie saw it the moment you stopped listening to him listing off names. The swivel of your head and then the tapping of your finger ceasing, knuckles going white around the cart handle. He watches you watch her and he knows the question is coming before you turn back around with that frown hewn into your forehead.

“Like this.” He holds up the small succulent, barely formed petals burnished a deep purple in the afternoon sun.

“What.”

“Pretty like this.”

“You don’t even-“ You scoff and cut yourself off, heavy eye roll directed at no one while you turn away and sulk by the snake plants.

He doesn’t tell you, but he names it after you.

The Big One happens during the summer. Chrissy is engaged, and her new belle and her decide to have a joint bachelorette party, everyone invited. You know Eddie’s people, all these random characters drawn together through something you don’t quite understand. You meet Chrissy fiancé and she’s just as bubbly and sweet as Chrissy herself. Eddie gives them your gift and drops a kiss on Chrissy’s cheek and it barely bothers you.

They’d dated just out of high school. 15 years ago and before Chrissy had realized why men just never hit the spot. She floats around her party and you hang around behind Eddie while he walks the two of you around in conversation. At some point you’d gone past your standard three (3) drinks and the mango seltzers are starting to make you a little resentful.

Thankfully you catch it, excuse yourself to the bathroom and give yourself a stern stare in the mirror.

It’s not your party.

They’re just friends.

It’s not about you.

…Is it ever?

There’s a reason you stop at 3 lately, that rolling black pit of self loathing feeds on bubbly things and it’s feeding on a blonde tonight.

So when you come back you sit at a table by yourself. You tuck your hands under your thighs and admonish yourself for how wide they are. There’s a tug of war happening between your self pity and your self depreciation, a tear balancing on your lashes while you roll the wet eyes under them. Eddie finds you bent over your phone and all you can think about is how wide your shoulders must have looked from that far away.

“Hey, where’d you go?”

“I had to uh, go to the bathroom.” Your pause gives you away, just south of tipsy, and Eddie smiles, his big hand sliding under your chin to hold it between his fingers. A move that usually has you melting into his palm, but tonight?

You tug your head away and he frowns. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t think I need to be here anymore.”

“You feeling okay?”

“I’m just fine. I’m gonna get an Uber home, you stay.” You stand up and hate the feel of your clothes on you. Your hair feels too heavy and the makeup you spent an hour on is suddenly sticky and tacky and wasted on you.

“No, we’ll leave together.” Eddie has concern all over his face. He tries to give you a hand when you obviously stumble and you slap it away.

The fight only starts when you start crying, unable to control your emotions anymore. You spend the whole ride home feeling sorry for yourself, saying the most inane shit Eddie’s ever heard.

“You can’t ask me to compare you to Chrissy. That’s not fair!” He laughs humorlessly when you ask him who’s prettier. “One, it was 15 years ago! Two, I’m not doing this anymore!” He yells and it shuts you up. He can hear the click of your jaw with how quick you stop yammering on drunkenly about your thighs.

“If you want to play that game, let’s look at your past relationships, huh?”

“What relationships Eddie?!” You scream back at him. There’s a part of his being that can feel the backslide into the terrible habit of yelling to get his point across. Picked up from his father and quelled at every turn, but today you drag it out of him.

“Oh don’t start with that shit again.”

“You mean all the guys that fucked me in the dark?! Or do you mean the ones that pretended not to know me in public?”

He gets to your apartment in record time, slamming the car in park and scrambling to hold your seatbelt buckled before you can run out.

“Let me out.” Your face is red from crying and from hatred and from loathing.

“No.” He says quieter but with finality. You stare at him, waiting for him to move his hand but he won’t, keeps his fingers locked around yours.

“You’re drunk, and you’ve been in a bad mood lately.” He knows he knows he knows that was the wrong thing to say. It spilled out of his mouth before he could throw the net out for those errant words and you give him the meanest smile he’s ever seen on your face.

“A bad mood?” You nod your head like you’re agreeing but he’s bracing for impact. “A bad mood. Tell you what, when I have a fucking roster of groupies and easy boys behind me, then we can talk about my bad mood.”

“You’re mad because of people I’ve slept with?”

“Look at me Eddie!” You scream and it breaks on his name, the sob you’d been swallowing for an hour finally surfacing. “I don’t fucking look like Chrissy and I sure as fuck don’t look like Steve! You still have that picture of that stand in drummer on your profile you fucked around with! Every single one of them is-fuck! Stunning!” You finally wrench the seatbelt out of his hand and free yourself. “I look like a fucking joke when you take me places. You think I don’t see people staring?” Another mirthless laugh before you kick the door open and wobble your way out. “Make someone else laugh, Eddie.”

He watches you stomp off inside and slap the button for the elevator. There’s enough time he could get out and follow you in and upstairs and finish the yelling match and maybe get you to see straight.

But he doesn’t. His grip tightens on the steering wheel so much it creaks. He feels on the verge of tears and when you disappear behind the closing doors he punches his door and drives home too fast.

The doorbell rings and Eddie answers it without thinking. You look small in your hoodie, your hair damp and braided over your shoulder. He’s so used to you standing tall with him, a sturdy pillar he can lean on instead of always having to be the support. To see your shoulders pulled in tight makes his chest ache.

“I’m sorry I haven’t answered your texts.” You say quietly.

“I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

“God don’t-“ you wipe at your eyes and stare at your feet. “Don’t apologize to me. I shouldn’t have gone off the fucking handle like that.”

“Maybe, but you’re obviously feeling some kind of way that you aren’t telling me about.”

“It’s the normal shit, Eddie. I just let it get to me.”

He holds the door open wider and nods his head over to the couch. “You wanna tell me about it?”

You don’t, not really. It’s going to go the way it always does with you explaining a life long loathing and the few times you see daylight out of the pit it holds you in.

“I shouldn’t have started that pretty shit.” You shake your head and clutch the pillow tighter around your middle. Eddie sits on the other side of the couch, long legs tucked up under his chin and you wish you could fold in on yourself like that. There must be a twist to your mouth or a shift of your body because Eddie sighs deeply.

“You know you don’t have to ask me that.”

“I know, but that’s not what I was asking anyways.”

“What does it matter?”

You shoot him a puzzled look. “I mean, I just want-I’d like to know if-“ you start and stop and Eddie just waits until you stop floundering.

“If I think you’re pretty, what does the rest matter?”

“It just does.” Your bottom lip wobbles and you hide it behind your fist. Eddie catches it, of course, and crawls over to you, grabbing your quivering chin and making you look up.

“I can’t undo a lifetime of self loathing in one afternoon, but I can definitely help cut through that shit one compliment at a time.” He gives you a gentle kiss and feels the smattering of tears hit your face, his thumb coming up to wipe them away. He cradles your face till you bury it in his neck and quietly cry for a while.

You loose count of how many sorry’s you give him and he finally tells you enough with a smile. He gives you his phone and tells you to order dinner and he disappears for a few minutes in his room.

Later, after food and more talking and a quiet nap spent curled up against Eddie’s side he asks if he can take you to bed.

“Sure grampa.” He smiles at your humor, an improvement to the tears earlier. He gets you out of your Sad Clothes and you quickly get under the blankets. He wants to say something but he knows to start small.

Starts with the lights off and sheds his clothes before crawling under the blankets from the foot of the bed. It makes you laugh and wind your legs around him, a win in his book. He kisses up your legs leaving a wet trail from your ankles to your thighs before you feel your face growing hot the closer he gets to your center. When you think he might pull your underwear off he doesn’t, instead kissing up your soft stomach to your breast and it isn’t until his curls spill out from under the blanket that you can hear him murmuring against your skin. Chanting “beautiful beautiful beautiful” and laying down “I love you’s”. His nose runs along under your chin while he kisses up to your ear “so pretty so perfect”. He runs his hands up into your hair and hold you in place while he hovers, warm brown eyes staring lovingly into yours.

“You have no idea how lucky I am.”

“Eddie…”

“No, don’t start.” He kisses you long and slow and it makes you tear up in a good way. He notices them hanging in the corners of your eyes and kisses those away while you laugh at him, watery and light and he knows he’s winning. It isn’t long before he’s got you trapped under him, legs tugged up around his hips so he can fuck into you slow and deep, his fingers still carding through your hair and keeping your eyes on him.

“So good for me.”

“Keep your eyes on me baby.”

“Just me and you.”

You couldn’t close your eyes if you wanted to, anchored to his stare and his touch and the way he whispers at you such sweet things. He kisses you deep when he feels you tightening around him. Thighs pulled tight around his hips, hands grasping for his shoulders to hold him tight to you while you spasm and gasp around him. He follows soon after, dropping his head down to nuzzle into your neck.

“Sweet girl.”

“Always so good to me.”

“Love you so much.”

Eddie lets you unwind from him before he lays on his back beside you.

“Can I show you something?” He pulls you in next to him so you have to drape over his chest, tattoos swelling under his deep breath. He holds his phone over your heads and finds the photo album he was looking for. You catch a glimpse of one of you and start to turn your head into his chest before he tuts at you.

“What did we just talk about?”

Instead you give him the benefit of doubt and let him scroll through. He talks about all the photos he has of you and why he kept them. Why he took them or got them from Robin or Nancy or one of the kids on one of the many outings. He’s got pictures of sunsets and really good food and flowers and his succulent pot. There’s a skyline in the rain from a green room he was in that he tells you reminds him so much of you. Says something about composition and the rain and how it comforts him like you do and if you weren’t wrung out you’d start crying again. He scrolls for a half hour explaining every photo and why they’re all you or remind him of you and how he finds you in the things he finds beautiful.

“So yes, I do.” He grabs your chin and you melt into his touch as he pulls you in for a soft kiss. “I think you’re pretty and beautiful and stunning and I will remind you every day.” Another peck before he cradles your head against his chest.

One day, maybe, you won’t have to remind yourself that it doesn’t matter. That Eddie thinks you’re pretty and that’s all you need, but today you know it for sure and feel it for sure and it’s enough.

(Sacrifice for the read more)

[dxppercxdxver]

lyric ask,,,every hhsa character /hj

okay bitch (affectionate) let's fucking go

juno: half awake, i wander through this house / lost in a labyrinth and left with no way out / i built this hall of mirrors all myself / the faces staring back at me look like somebody else - wander. wonder. by the arcadian wild OR so throw on the black dress, mix in with the lot / you might wake up and notice you're someone you're not / if you look in the mirror and don't like what you see / you can find out first hand what it's like to be me - the end! by my chemical romance

nat: oh but i'm quite small and i never have it all together / and i'm just a girl who doesn't have any diamonds or pearls / but don't give me your pity 'cause there's more to life than pretty things / so i'll just give you me - five foot three by flannel graph

eloise: well, i'm just a stranger, i'm only a walker / i guess i am human, but sometimes i feel / like i'm only a ghost, like i'm only a wall / and if you come around, honey / i'll probably just follow you home / 'cause it's all that i know how to do - steamboat by adrianne lenker

andrés: and you've come to know me stubborn as a butcher / and you've come to know me thankless as a guest / will you recognize my face / when god's awful grace / strips me of my jacket and my vest? - hymn #101 by joe pug

lawrence: there's rules to life i know / and if you follow them you'll go / up to the mountains and the clouds / and where the golden rivers flow / but I've always been so good at breaking all the rules / i wasn't made to be their robot / and i ain't nobody's fool / i am the goat that got away / but i know there will come a day / when i'll be punished for my mind / 'cause i led myself astray - what's a devil to do? by harley poe

margaret: i picked up the sword that you gave me today / took your blessing and then i made my way / hoped the first challenge would be easy / oh, great deku tree, would you please me? / all the heartless want my blood / all of the gods wanna spit me out as cud / if I don't make it out alive / at least i'll see my undead wife - the dying song by montaigne

draven: so kiss me now / this whiskey on my breath / feel the lives that i have taken / what little soul that i have left / and oh, my god / i'll take you to the grave / the only love i've ever known / the only soul i ever saved - chasing twisters by delta rae

pidge: and i have so many / questions / about life, the universe / and everything / i look up at the / stars at night / and i sometimes wonder / if the atheists were right / 'cause this world is getting worse / don't know if i wanna be here after the night - 42 by sage crosby

northernfield: hey, danny-boy, i was thinking of our crew / but thinking just makes me sad, and that’s why i write to you / how do you do? / there’s been years between us / didn’t we have big ideas when our school was done? / we’d leave our smaller minds and move out to oregon / but i was the only one / who went the road less taken - those days are gone, and my heart is breaking by barton carroll

ebony: out of the blue, everything's new / all the talk we heard was true / the legends we all heard once / the whispers from the storefronts / hope for the best / prepare for the worst / we wait like stock-piled landmines, ready to burst / wait all your life to see what you see / open up your eyes and be free - sicilian crest by the mountain goats

juniper: i dragged her down / i put her out / and back there i left her where no one could see / and lifeless, cold / into this well / i stared as this moment was held for me - drowning lessons by my chemical romance

claire: but counting down the days to go / it just ain't living / and i just hope you know / that if you say / good-bye today / i'd ask you to be true / 'cause the hardest part of this / is leaving you - cancer by my chemical romance

this genuinely emotionally wrecked me thank you for this ask do come again

[evening-starlight]

Daddy’s Best Friend

I tried posting this three times and each time Tumblr crashed so we’re trying again. woohoo

Master List

3

Word Count: 1498

    Amaris smoothes down her dress as a knock sounds from her closed door. Tom walks in after Amaris invites him in. "Your dad sent me to come fetch you." He stops in the doorway, looking at the woman in front of him dressed in a dark red, sleeveless dress. She rolls her eyes with a groan.

    "Thank God it's you," Amaris says, holding out her arms and doing a  slow twirl. "Do I look well enough for the party?" Tom's throat runs dry, and his mind races with all the thoughts he's been trying to ignore the last two weeks.

    "Breath-taking, Darling." Amaris smiles at the compliment. "C'mon, your dad's waiting." Tom offers his arm to guide Amaris into the backyard, where William had set up a welcoming home party for her. "You ready?" Tom asks as they reach the back door.

    The look Amaris shoots up at Tom conveys every annoyance she feels. Tom laughs and has security opens the french doors. Applause erupt as Amaris steps out, her arm on Tom's and a fake smile plastered on her face.

    Amaris would rather be anywhere else but here, in anything else but this. But she'll stand there and greet her dad's colleges and make conversation with the old men for her dad. She did a lot of things for her dad, for his company she's set to inherit. Not that he ever asked her to, but Will went into a deep depression after her mom died, and Amaris was the first to help pull him out. She would do anything to make her father smile like he used to.

    "Amy," an awful, nasally voice screeches from across the lawn. Cleo Hubert, Amaris's 'best friend.' Amaris fakes yet another smile and hugs the woman. They met in junior high, where Cleo sucked on like a leech on Amaris's riches. She couldn't quite shake Cleo off, no matter how many times she's tried. Cleo didn't try to come visit Amaris in Paris either. That year was the best year of their friendship.

    Cleo had a habit of being a total bitch at parties, so Amaris steered her away from her father's high-end clientele. "Hey, Cleo," Amaris greet through gritted teeth. "I thought you were still in Rome?"

    "Well, Daddy William invited me home because he knows how much you love me," She squeals, throwing her arms around Amaris's shoulders with a leg pop. Amaris finds Tom's eyes and mouths for help. Tom looks away with a wicked smirked and goes back to talking with Juno. That asshole. "I'm so glad you're home, Amy Boo. You left me here all alone." Cleo pouts, hands still on Amaris's shoulders. "I missed you so much."

    "Cleo, I've told you many times, I don't like being called Amy. You're allowed to call me Amaris or Mari." Cleo lets out a dramatic sigh, throwing her head back.

    "Amy, baby, you know I call you Amy because I can't say my 'r's." Amaris removes Cleo's hands and holds them between the two women.

    "I'm delighted you showed up, but I need to get back to the party. I'll call you later, okay?" Cleo waves a hand in Amaris's face.

    "Don't worry, girly. I'll just be over there getting a drink, finding myself a sugar daddy." Before Amaris can stop her, Cleo skips off to the open bar. Tom appears next to the worried Amaris.

    Tom laughs as Amaris smacks his chest. "You're a mother fucker, Tom Hiddleston. I can't believe you left me with that." She gestures to the woman getting a pink alcohol drink. Tom's arm finds its way over her shoulder like it belonged there as he chuckles.

    "You think I wanted to deal with her? She's the definition of a hot mess." They watch as Cleo downs her drink and asks for another in a minute flat. "Jesus, I'll fix it," He sighs as she starts to chug the second drink.

    Amaris's eyes travel down Tom's back, focusing on the tight-fitting pants and the way his legs go on for days. She heads back to the small group of businessmen she left, picking up the conversation where it's at.

    Tom's attention slowly drifts from Cleo over to Amaris. The way her white teeth glisten in the sun as she laughs at the jokes being thrown around and the way that the red dress adorning her body hugs in the right places, accentuating her curves. She looks nothing less than ravishing. Tom orders two old fashions, one for him and the girl he can't get off his mind, while Cleo talks his ear off about something he could care less about.

    Amaris smiles as Tom hands her the drink, slipping his arm around her waist as he joins the conversation. She leans up to whisper in his ear, "Did you take care of Cleo?" Tom curses and leaves once again to take care of Amaris's stupid friend, who ruins everything for him.

    While babysitting Cleo, Tom drinks a bit more than he was planning on. So he ends up retreating inside the house to calm down and drink some water. Tom doesn't hear anyone come in behind him, only jumping when someone sets a hand on his shoulder while he fills up a cup in the sink. "Jesus," He curses, turning to see who frightened him.

    "Had a little much there, Tommy?" Amaris asks, a teasing smile gracing her beautiful features. She looked so wonderful standing there, hand on Tom and smile genuine. He continues to look her over, admiring how breathtaking she really looked. How had he not seen this before? She was his perfect girl, standing right in front of him. Maybe he was just drunk. He reminds himself. "Woah, Tom." Amaris laughs, reaching across him to turn off the tap as water overflows onto Tom's hand. "Let's get you downstairs to calm down, yeah?"

    "I'd like that," Tom replies, taking a drink from his filled cup before leaning into Amaris. She giggles and helps him down the stairs, into the basement where guests weren't allowed. "You know?" Tom slurs once Amaris drops him on the couch in the downstairs lounge.

    "What?" Amaris laughs as she bends down to help Tom get his shoes off. He stops to look over her ass, which looks perfect from his drunken perspective. He remembers his train of thought when Amaris sits next to him with a raised eyebrow.

    "You're not a kid anymore. You've really grown into yourself." Amaris laughs as Tom leans over to rest his head on her shoulder. She runs a hand through his hair, keeping him grounded. "I'm sorry I got drunk at your party," Tom apologizes.

    "Don't be. I was ready to be done anyways. I saw you come inside and took my chance to dip. So really, I should be thanking you." Tom nods, eyebrows pull together as he nods, sitting up to look at her.

    "Exactly, you're welcome." Amaris laughs and pats his knee. "You're beautiful," He adds, raking his eyes over her again. Amaris blushes and thanks him quietly. "You know? Since you've been back, I've been baffled. Honestly? You came back a totally different girl," Tom stops himself and shakes his head. "Woman. You're a lovely woman, Amaris."

    "Well, thank you, Tom. I appreciate your honesty."

    "Can I be honest again?" He asks, leaning in closer to Amaris and whispering. Amaris nods, a small smile on those beautiful pink lips of hers. Tom leans all the way in, kissing her. She lets out a small squeak before kissing him back. This was everything she wanted since she was sixteen. But he was drunk. Amaris pulls away and sets a hand on Tom's chest to stop him from coming closer.

    "You're drunk." She whispers.

    "Drunk words and sober thoughts," Tom remarks, eyes hooded as he looks at her. She felt like the only person in the world with the way Tom focused his drunk attention on her. Amaris always wanted to be that girl to Tom, but not like this. He was drunk and taking advantage of that for her own gains would be wrong.

    Tom lays his head back on her shoulder. "Get some sleep, Tom." She whispers, running a hand through his hair while he starts to nod off. William meets Amaris upstairs after she tucks Tom in on the couch downstairs.

    "You alright, Owl? You look like you've seen a ghost." He asks as he pulls her into a quick side hug.

    "Oh, yeah. I'm fine, just feeling a tad tired. Tom passed out downstairs after babysitting Cleo all night." William laughs and shakes his head. "Why'd you invite her?"

    "I promise you I did no such thing. I can't trust her around my clients." He laughs. "Must have gotten word from her mother. You know, the city gossips." Will and Amaris laugh together as they make their way back outside as the sun starts to set to finish out the last hour of the party.

Taglist: @queenofallhobos​

[mollymauk-teafleak]

The Bianca Nureyev Detective Agency

This was an anniversary present for my wonderful girlfriend @spiky-lesbian who is just the most wonderful girlfriend ever and I love her a lot!

Juno tries to entertain his and Nureyev’s daughter on a slow day in space...

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

Being a space pirate did sound good on paper. It sounded like a life full of narrowly dodged laser bullets, sprawling on beds of golden creds, witty one liners delivered to fallen foes in the smoking ruins of their empires that you’d just toppled and large, audacious hats.

And it was like that, about twenty percent of the time. But what they didn’t tell you was that the other eighty percent was a hell of a lot of waiting. It was a lot of snail crawling through deep space, killing days upon days worth of time in cramped metal hallways, eating stasis food and absorbing simulated sunlight. Planning your next big twenty percent could only take up so much time.

And it only got harder when you also had a three year old space pirate to entertain.

“Mamaaaaaaa,” Bee Bee poked her head up over the edge of the sofa, looking like some burrowing animal resurfacing, “I’m bored.”

Juno lowered the case file he’d been reviewing, eyeing his daughter with the tired amusement only a parent could muster, “Oh?”

Bee Bee scrambled up onto the family room’s busted old soda, sinking down beside her mama. She peered at him for a moment, taking note of the way he was sat, one ankle folded over the other and tried to copy him as best she could with her chubby little legs.

“Space is boring,” she declared, “There’s nothing to do.”

Juno set the files aside, silently accepting that he wouldn’t be getting back to them anytime soon, “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Nope,” his daughter gave a forlorn sigh, “Nothing at all.”

“Well then,” Juno shrugged, sinking down into the sofa so they were level even if it would be murder on his back later, “We’ll just have to think of something to do, won’t we, kiddo?”

Bee Bee giggled, “Yes. What was mama doing?”

“Oh,” Juno looked to the files he’d piled on the arm of the sofa, “Nothing interesting. Just looking into cases where other people have tried to do the same job we’re going to do.”

“And what happened to them?”

Juno winced. It wasn’t as if their daughter was unaware of the dangers they faced in their line of work. Pirates weren’t exactly famous for operating within the confines of the law, even in her storystreams. And since she’d been born, she’d seen her daddy at work, often getting a birds eye view of it all from a wrap slung across his chest.

“Well. Jail mostly,” he admitted, knowing he didn’t have to hide the truth from her even if it didn’t feel good to.

“Huh,” Bee Bee hardly blinked, swinging her legs, “Well, Auntie Buddy’s way way smarter than all of them. And Auntie Vespa is faster and Auntie Rita is better and Uncle Jet is cooler and my daddy is the best at stealing ever ever in the whole galaxy. And my mama’s the best detective. So we’ll do just fine.”

Juno grinned, reaching over and stroking back her curls, “Yeah. We’ll do just fine.”

“So can I help Mama? With being a detective?” her eyes sparked excitedly.

He knew that look, once her mind was fixed on something she’d follow it to the far side of the universe. She was like her daddy in that. But she wouldn’t exactly find much interest in going through old case files that somehow managed to make jewel heists sound boring. Though the tactics these failed thieves had used didn’t have an awful lot of pizzaz to them. Probably why they’d flopped, or at least that’s what Buddy would say.

“You know what?” Juno snapped his fingers like he’d just had a fantastic idea, “You’re just the kid I need for this very important case!”

“I am!” Bianca beamed, not a question. She had perfect confidence in her own abilities.

“It’s a classic head scratcher, kiddo,” Juno announced grandly, mostly to stall for time while he decided just what this case was going to be, “I’ve been at it for years and I’ve never been able to crack it but with your pluckiness and my brains we might just solve the case of...uh...the case of daddy’s missing glasses!”

Bee Bee gasped appreciatively, “Daddy’s always losing his glasses!”

“He is,” Juno snorted, “And we’ve got to go help him, right?”

“Right!” she jumped onto her feet, bouncing up onto the couch cushions and promptly tumbling, Juno just about managing to catch her. It didn’t seem to diminish her enthusiasm, as her legs windmilled wildly, “Let’s go!”

“Okay,” Juno grinned, “Well, first thing is to examine the scene of the crime and…”

“No, mama!” Bee Bee frowned, looking at him like he was profoundly stupid, “First thing is to dress up.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

Apparently no detective work could be done until Bianca was wearing her mama’s old coat, the one he’d hung onto for sentimental reasons even after he’’d been unable to really call himself a detective. And long after the leather had worn on the elbows and there were none of the original buttons left on it.

It needed to be rolled up quite a few times to even get the tips of her fingers poking out of the sleeves and the bottom of it looked like a mad kind of wedding train but Bee Bee grinned in delight and it was pretty good to see the old thing getting some use again.

“Now we go to the scene of the crime,” she declared, waving her arms, “Daddy and mama’s room!”

“Come on then, co-detective,” Juno laughed, “Lead the way.”

If Nureyev was surprised to see them burst through the door, it didn’t show on his face. He didn’t scare easily. He only smiled and tilted his head, quickly shoving the book on pregnancy he’d been reading far under Juno’s pillow. They weren’t quite ready to broach that subject with Bianca yet.

“Hello, my loves,” he hummed, “What adventures are we on today?”

“We’re playing detective!” Bee Bee toddled up, clambering on the bed to give him a quick hug before anything else, “Going to find your glasses.”

“Oh could you!” Nureyev smiles pleasantly, “It does seem I’ve misplaced them again, reading is something of a chore without them.”

Juno arched an eyebrow at his husband, “You wouldn’t possibly be deliberately reading that book without your glasses so you could claim you have while not retaining any information or looking at any of the diagrams?”

“An outlandish notion,” Nureyev flicked his fingers at him airily, turning his attention to Bianca who was now crawling around the bed, bent over so she could scrutinise every inch of the sheets like a bloodhound with a scent, “Please, dear little detective, will you take my case?”

“We on the case, daddy!” Bee Bee assured him, hurrying over to give him a hug, now just because she wanted to, “We’ll find the glasses.”

“You gotta question the witness,” Juno advised, “Build a timeline.”

Bee Bee nodded, looking up at Nureyev with a sudden fierce seriousness, “What is your timeline, daddy?”

He couldn’t help but smile down at her as he pretended to think, “Let’s see...well, I went to the kitchen for breakfast...then I had to collect some floorplans from Buddy’s office, I read them over in the family room with my wife...then I had an appointment with the physician. Then I came here to have a nap and do my assigned reading.”

Juno rolled his eyes at that last one.

“We’ll track 'em down!” Bee Bee declared, barrelling off the bed onto the ground. Again, her mama only just managed to catch her, “Come on, Detective Mama! Before the trail goes cold!”

Juno chuckled, pausing briefly to lean down and kiss Nureyev, before he followed his daughter, not needing to hurry too much, one of his strides matching about five of hers.

Their trail through the ship took them most of the rest of the afternoon, clattering through the winding corridors, the two of them making up wild twists and turns whenever suited them, inventing new characters, dastardly schemes that had happened off screen, speculating wildly on new threats. Buddy of course joined in enthusiastically, she was a regular and beloved playmate of Bianca’s. Just searching her room turned into a frantic search to disarm a bomb left by this mysterious glasses thief, a bomb that turned out to be in Buddy’s chest which could only be fixed by a hug from a plucky little detective.

Vespa was less willing, they caught her in the middle of disinfecting all of her scalpels. But even she wasn’t immune to Bee Bee’s charms, eventually playing her role with grudging grace. And Juno was able to get a quick whispered update on Nureyev’s check up, feeling a little better that it wasn’t just him and his husband who knew, that he had someone to offload all his anxiety on, the same anxiety he was trying to shield said husband from.

Even better, they ran into Rita in the kitchen and the game then swerved happily into the wildest corners of two vast imaginations, going off on a tangent that somehow involved werewolves, a falling moon and a galaxy wide ring of prolific glasses thieves (it turned out Rita had lost her pair too, though they did turn out to be perched on top of her head).

It was when Bee Bee was rolling happily around on the floor that she suddenly froze and squealed in triumph. She bounded up to the side table next to the old, sagging sofa, less than an inch from where Juno had been sitting earlier.

“Here! Here’s the glasses!”

Sure enough, there was a pair of cat eye spectacles on a silver chain resting there. Even Juno couldn’t raise much of a grump when he realised they’d been inches from their goal at the very start of the job. Some cases just worked out that way.

“We’ll have to take them back to your daddy, huh?” he panted, collapsing next to his daughter on the sofa. Somewhere along the way he’d picked up glitter on his black turtleneck, a rubber glove from the infirmary stretched over his head like a mad hat and one of Buddy’s scarves wound around his neck.

“Yes! And then get paid,” Bee Bee nodded, making Juno slightly nervous about what sort of payment she was going to demand. She’d asked to be paid in ice cream last time they’d played this game.

She plopped down next to her mama, leaning against his arm, adding more glitter to his favourite jumper, “Mama? I don’t think daddy is very happy right now. I think something’s up.”

Juno froze, “Uh...what makes you say that, kiddo?”

“Well…” Bee Bee wrinkled her nose, “He just seems...floppy. Always flopping on you and he looks pale and he doesn’t sleep good, mama. I think he’s sick.”

Juno tried to keep his face carefully neutral, “Your daddy’s fine, honey, I promise.”

“Hmm,” she replied, in that way she had that let him know she didn’t believe him in the slightest, “But it’s okay. Because we found his glasses and that’s gonna make him happy. And then we’ll help him more and we’ll do detective and find his happy.”

Juno relaxed, wrapping his arm around her, “Oh yeah?”

Bee Bee beamed and nodded, “Cos I’m the best detective ever! And mama helps!”

Juno sat back, laughing mostly to himself.

“You know what, kiddo? I thought I was pretty good but I think you really might be the best ever.”

[notfeelingthyaster]

Imagine (Son of Hades! Percy; Godswapped! Big Three's kids) Son of Neptune AU (2/7) or (7/12)

Hello! Before reading, check the PJO AU and the TLH AU - the links are on the masterpost - because they are essential to this one. Don't forget to check the warnings before reading. Review and make suggestions! And have a good reading :))

TW: This post in special has sexual harassment, racist slurs, and mentions of whipping.

Perseus wakes up in a semi-destroyed building full of wolves with a black ax in one hand and a Warhammer in the other. And that's just the beginning of the worst months of his life - or the only months of his life he can remember.

Then everything hurts - too much, like his skin is melting from his bones and his eyes are being gouged out. His skin feels like it's melting, and he promptly passes out.

He has no idea of who he is - except his name, but he might just know it because the wolf woman told him - and the talking wolves don't know - or can't tell him anything else. Either way, Perseus is getting nowhere.

Oh yes - he is also pretty sure wolves aren't supposed to shapeshift. And rope you into training - which, he must've been a bodybuilder or something because he is pretty good at wrestling.

Shoving the wolves into the ground and destroying the monsters that try and defy Lady Lupa's pack are the highlights of his week.

Lady Lupa is... - Lupa is everything he knows. She is the one who, for some reason, let's him stay. She tells him about the gods and the monsters - about how she found him in her doorstep after her home was sacked by Earthborn.

How he must be the sign of the Olympus that Lady Venus promised her. The one who comes to help.

Perseus doesn't know her - he doesn't know who she is or if she is telling the truth. But he has well-trained powers that he has no idea how to utilize, nowhere to go and no way of searching for his family - no one knows who he is, except for his first name (which sounds wrong).

And he tried to run away once - it didn't end well, because monsters are immortal - and everywhere.

Lupa tells him he had a curse upon him, so he has to train himself all over again now that it's gone. It doesn't sound like the truth, but he prefers Lady Lupa's carefully crafted half-truths than sleeping in the streets.

Lady Lupa teaches him - and tells him to expect the signal of the gods. They will guide him - even if they give him no answers.

Perseus doesn't like the gods much. They've left him here - which is a good place, but not his home, wherever it is - with no idea of who he is or what to do - except train and learn.

Mother Lupa - as most call her in the Wolf House - educates him like one would an unruly puppy. She corrects everything - from the way he addresses the gods at evening prayers to the way he sits - and he obeys.

Because in the midst of all those wolves? Perseus is just another puppy. So he sits and read hours of Vergil, Ovid and Horace in ancient Latin out loud - even if he would prefer not to.

Sadly - he does not have an opinion. Lady Lupa won't hesitate on using her whip on him. Oh yes, she has a whip - a black whip, which she uses to educate them. His back hurts sometimes when he rests upon the cold floor.

He prays to anyone - his godly parent - who is some Underworld God if his hold on shadows and stone means anything - or a friend, someone who's missing him, anyone really, for them to come and gives him answers.

It doesn't happen.

So he trains and he trains. He has no idea how much time has passed - how much time he has been slashing and cutting and killing, how much time he has heard every detail of Julius Caesar crusade through Europe.

It's still cold when the gods send their signal - they send him a maiden. She holds her hand to him like he is an old friend - and he goes.

She makes him only one question - "Do you want peace or answers, Perseus? Choose carefully, for no path will be easy, but the harvest comes for those who plant the seeds" - and when he answers, she climbs to his back and flowers create a path in the ground.

She doesn't talk anymore. He follows the trail and the girl threads her fingers through his hair, humming to herself a melody only she is able to hear.

In the way, there are two gorgons. Lady Lupa taught him about them. It's an easy battle - until he discovers that they just don't die. They keep reforming, like evil pottery.

They attack again and he picks up his ax to continue racking them into bits, but she tightened her fingers in his hair - like one would steer a horse.

So before they reform, he runs. Perseus runs - with a beyond beautiful maiden on his back (which would be really uncomfortable, if he wasn't so pissed with the gods for giving exactly no answers) doing nothing but play with his hair and eat granola bars - and he gets to a military outpost.

At least, it's what it looks like. There's a wall who must be at least 20 feet high. Its not a normal wall - because he can see eyes in its crevices, looking at him.

Perseus is really tired. There are people there - he is seeing them, do they think he is stupid? - and he has a person in his back.

So he kills both gorgons again with his stone spikes - he is pretty sure the guys that aren't opening the doors can deal with them when they eventually reform - and shadow travels inside.

He doesn't do this often - it takes a lot out of him and he might end up stuck in the wall if he is too tired, but he is too angry to care.

Perseus could've destroyed their door. He should've, really. It might have stopped those people from surrounding him with weapons.

These people - the people looming over him now that he crossed the barrier, who are using togas just like him, so different but so familiar - would've let him die for nothing. Perseus growls - a bad habit he picked up living only with wolves for an undetermined amount of time.

He should kill every single one of them. He should open the ground - and let it swallow them, let their bones turn to dust, return their weapons to molten metal.

But the maiden tightens her fingers in his hair, and he obeys - because Perseus has been well trained, and he doesn't bend.

"Who are you?!" A boy with a bow asks harshly, and Perseus wants him to rip him apart - he is so done. Perseus is a Roman - is what Lupa taught him - and Roman wolves don't roll over.

"Lady Lupa sent me." They don't look like they believe him, but they take him to their leader.

He feels like an alien - behind the wall, there's a whole new world - hundreds of people stare at him with a mix of fear, disdain, and curiosity. It feels familiar.

Perseus is reluctant to leave his weapons with a statue - specially while entering the territory of people who won't protect him and might try to kill him, but he is not one for scandals - so he thanks Lord Terminus, and goes on.

They enter the Senate after walking for about an hour - his head held high, even with the extra weight in his back - in the middle of the session. Lady Lupa would find this appalling.

Everyone turns to them - the tall black muscular man, dressed in a dark red toga, with a woman in his back also clad in a toga - they look like normal citizens, and yet, somehow, completely foreign.

Their escorts - a black girl no older than fourteen and the archer, that must be around his age - kneel to the Praetor - but as soon as they start explaining, they are interrupted.

Their promagistrate - a man Perseus will later learn is named Justus - looks at them once and shrieks.

"Lord Pluto!" They call him, and the whole Senatus knee down "Lady Ceres!"

The goddess he didn't recognize comes down of his back, chuckling to herself. All gods are mad - Perseus thinks, but keeps stoic in front of the government of this Rome copycat, else they kill him for disrespect or something.

"Rise!" She starts "You're almost correct, child of Justitia. For I am Ceres, but this is not Lord Pluto."

The promagistrate seems offended with Perseus somehow - like it's his fault the man is an idiot.

"This is his only mortal son and my daughter's champion, Perseus of Styx. He has been under Lady Lupa's tutelage in her command." This was new.

So his father was the king of the dead himself - which was not surprising. But he was apparently Lady Proserpina's champion - a goddess who left him with Lady Lupa, apparently with his father's, Lady Venus' and Lady Ceres' approval.

Perseus (apparently, of Styx) wants to tear Olympus apart. He wants a lot of things - but for now, he shall observe and do what it's told of him.

Ceres leaves him under the "care" of the Romans. Immediately, the Praetor takes him to be interrogated.

He tells her the truth - or at least, what he can bender: He has been with Lady Lupa as long as he remembers. Yes, he is trained. He can control earth, shadows, metal. Sometimes, vines and skeletons. No, he doesn't have a last name. No, he doesn't know Jason Grace.

In return, the woman (a daughter of Bellona with brown skin that he feels he should know) explains where he is.

This is Nova Roma - and they are in Jupiter's Capitol, also known as the First City of Twelve, where is localized their Forum Romanum - which is composed by the Comitium (where the Senatus is localized), the Pluton Denar Domum (their bank) and a temple for all the gods - decorated with gardens and founts mainly used by the politicians in session and augurs.

The other non-military districts are Juno's Urbs, where most families live; Minerva's Scientia et Quaerere Centrum, which contains schools, colleges, libraries, and research centers; Phoebus Apollo's Salutem Receptum, a whole district for health care and who mainly takes care of cleaning the city; and Vesta's Forum Boarium, where the temples reside, including the Hearth of Rome, with their sacred fire.

Then there the indirectly of military nature; Ceres' Agris, fields who produce all food of the city; Mercury's Via, where communication and post are handled - also, the main place for entertainment; Vulcan's Caminus, the forges and armory; and Neptune's Militiarum Equestri, battle horses, pegasi, hellhounds, elephants, wolves and hounds.

There's also the military ones: Venus Victrix's Feminam Lorem ad Bellum, the training camp for girls; Mars Ultor's Masculum Lorem ad Bellum, the training camp for boys; and Diana's Venari, a forest they use to hunt monsters.

Praetor Arellano shows him around. The praetor shouldn't be doing that, but he seems to be important enough - he got here with a goddess in his back after all. His step-grandmother?

"Everyone is involved in the war effort - Everything for Rome. Everyone capable is obliged to join the training as soon as they're eight. When you're ready, you join the Legion, for fifteen years, in any capacity. Some - the ones with specific talents - join the field healers or the forges."

"Most join the legionnaires. Later in life, some go to college - training to farm, teach, own business, plan buildings, weave, research, write, go exclusively into politics, or become doctors - for either animals or people. Some never leave until they absolutely have to - it's an honor to serve Rome."

"You are neither a son or legacy of any construction or any health deity, so you'll go directly to be tested by Mars Ultor's Masculum Lorem ad Bellum - to see if you are qualified to be a soldier or if you need to undergo more training, and how much."

"A fight, Praetor?" He asks, as respectfully as Lupa indoctrinated in him, even if he hated this situation from the start.

"It's part of it, yes. But a fighter is not a soldier - you'll be expected to know rhetoric and show resilience, to be able to think and strategize. Put on a good performance - the Centurions choose which Cohort you go."

Then, she explained the Legion and its Five Cohorts - and the Centurions - before leaving him with one of his escorts from earlier. He doesn't think it matters much - if one of the Praetors is from Third Cohort and their last Praetor, from Fifth, while the Consul himself was from Fourth - what does it matter?

The guard seems uncomfortable in his presence - as if she knows exactly who he is. She introduces herself - Hazel Levesque, daughter of Jupiter. And part of the Fifth Cohort - mainly because of the previous Praetor - the one who's missing.

Her buddy, the archer, - Frank Zhang, unclaimed - is also part of the Fifth Cohort. But it's not him they meet - it's a boy way too familiar to be a coincidence - three times today.

"You know me, don't you? You know where I come from?" He snarls, and the boy denies it.

Shadows start curling at his feet - and he's told later that his eyes darken to black from their usual forest green. Perseus is a second away from killing the little lying gremlin when Praetor Arellano shows - and he immediately reverts to parade rest.

She doesn't ask - and he doesn't volunteer an answer. He leaves the guy trembling - and flustered, for some reason - and goes with the Praetor to his "test".

Hazel is having a very bad year. A very bad life, to be true, but mostly, a bad year.

She died, and she was walking aimlessly for years - until she met a boy. She thought, initially, that was a god - for his beauty was insurmountable.

He talked with her - he was named Perseus Jackson. He was powerful and kind - but still a mortal, so she latched into him. Hazel isn't a good person - her mother always told her that - and she used his kindness to drawn just a little of his powers. Just enough.

When the Doors opened, she was strong enough to escape - even if she left Perseus drained for a week, apparently. Hazel didn't go far - she got caught by Ceres.

Ceres - who was in her greek form - took pity of her and brought her to Hazel's father and stepmother, pleading for her usefulness in the war to come. The dead aren't their domain - but as long as Pluto didn't discover it, they would turn a blind eye.

Her brother - who was the first bridge between the two demigod settlements - took her to Nova Roma. She adapted - she learned about the ending of segregation and the world they now lived - and made friends - Frank and Jason.

But she never forgot the boy who gave her the chance, the chance to be more than the cursed child Marie Levesque told her she was. Her curse is supposed to be washed away by a descendant of Pluto.

Perseus gave her a chance, and now he is probably her salvation from this poisoned existence. He is in Nova Roma, and both Hazel and Nico are too ungrateful, too proud, too involved in the gods' plans to help him.

Her father's curse rang true - for children of Zeus aren't supposed to control unaltered energy through minerals. Metal is not theirs to use - and Hazel is paying the price.

Perseus does well in his test - so well, the First Cohort wants him. He is not generally rude, but the way Octavian - their apparent Centurion and Leader of the Augurs (the priests of Apollo) - calls him "Excellent, for a colored one with a graecus name" makes him mad.

So he rejects Octavian - no one gets to mock his name, the slur for greeks matched with the blatant racism almost makes him clock the guy in the face - and, since no other Centurion wants to go against the white supremacist, he joins the Fifth Cohort.

"Well, there's the place for filth, anyway. What could you expect from a nigger ape, like that one?"

If in the training that followed, he left Octavian unconscious - well, everyone turned a blind eye. Perseus saw the Praetor laughing discreetly from where she was polishing her spear.

He is given a bunk to sleep on, a probatio tablet and a date - it's March 18th, 2012. He remembered that, when he ran away from the House of the Wolf, was still January's first week.

Almost three months for the gods to bother with him, and he has no guesses how much time he is missing. Did his family give up on him? Did he have a family?

Perseus doesn't know. He spends the next weeks following the army's routine - wake up with dawn with the horn, muster, morning prayers, then the morning drills - stretching, an obstacle circuit of three miles with a lake in the middle and running five times around Ceres' Agri.

After the drills - which Perseus and Hazel bond over hating, because there's a lake - they go to breakfast, then classes - for the younger ones. Perseus is old enough (and did well in the school tests), so he has a free slot where he allots his power training - under Praetor Arellano's watchful gaze, as she tries and brings him to his full potential.

Reyna (as he is allowed to call her during free time) also does power training - she has a different kind of charmspeak - the kind that makes people motivated or defeated. She can make armies have a burst of energy, or drop-down with exhaustion - possibly. Nova Roma has very few wars nowadays.

There's lunch, then weaponry training - where he kicks Octavian's (and all of his little friends who look down on Perseus because of his name, his lack of family or his skin color) ass with pleasure every single day - followed by weapon cleaning - which always takes forever because Perseus has both an ax and a giant Warhammer.

On Wednesdays, they have horse and pegasi riding. Both Perseus and Hazel have it slightly different - she mounts a venti, Tempest and he mounts a hellhound, Spot. On Fridays, they have hunting lessons in Diana's Venari - which always end up with some Apollo's child or legacy waving their victory in everybody's face - except for that one time where Frank and Perseus joined forces and won in an hour.

At four p.m. every day, those who did well enough get to have two hours of free time before evening prayers, which can either be followed by dinner or competitions - wrestling and gladiator games are really popular on weekends.

Then, if it's Sunday, they are allowed to go to Mercury's Via to drink, party, dance, go to karaoke - whatever, if they're over fourteen. It seems young - but Perseus has seen younger kids, at the training camps, sneaking in wine.

If it's not Sunday - they are free to do anything if they don't drink and are in bed by 21h30. You are only excused of the routine if you are escalated for border patrol - generally twenty different people every day. Perseus's patrols are on Thursdays - because Reyna loves him. Octavian's are on Sundays - they're just not on Saturdays because he has Augur functions and is excused of everything on Saturday.

Saturdays are days of prayer - there's no training and no feasting. They go to the temples and see the Vestal Virgins - a custom Perseus though would be outdated by now - and do basic chores - like washing their togas and sheets, mending their leathers, or airing the blankets.

When Hazel's brother leaves, he actually bonds with the girl - over being a child of the Big Three, of having big expectations thrust upon them - and consequently, with Frank - who is also his bunkmate. They spend their free time on the small fountain that overlooks the aqueduct, just in front of the Vesta Temple.

It's weird to see the Vestal Virgins - they are six girls between 8 and 24, wearing white stolas and veils, of incredible beauty and vowed to modesty and chastity. They spent their days tending the fire and giving blessings, cleaning the temple, and visiting the Senatus.

They didn't choose to be priestesses of Vesta - Vesta herself chooses them, and they have to leave their families and vow their lives away for thirty years. The other priests are there of free will - they never join the Legion, if they choose to serve a specific god.

Perseus goes to his father's, Lady Proserpina's and Lady Ceres' temples regularly - if only to ask for answers. His father's priests treat him as royalty - which, to them, he probably is. There are not even legacies of Pluto, as far as they know.

Every Sunday, Perseus goes to the Comitium - while people don't generally like him, he is good in rhetoric, and well respected for a probatio - so they hear him. He is good at politics. Reyna looks like he is measuring him, when he rises to debate - like he can be the next Praetor instead of the campaigning Octavian - who the Senatus is divided into loving or hating his guts.

Perseus is happy - or something. He hates not having memories - not knowing who he is, who his mother is, pains him. He has friends - Frank, Hazel, even Reyna and Dakota, his Centurion, who lives half-drunk in wine most of the time - and a life.

It doesn't feel like his life. By the third week of his staying in Nova Roma, he starts having dreams - a blonde boy, doing everything Perseus is doing now. He is afraid of telling anyone. Perseus is already called slurs by Octavian and his hateful friends - he doesn't want to attract attention now that he is settling.

By Reyna's pictures, he finally names the blonde in his dreams. It's Jason Grace.

Jason Grace is, for lack of a better word, graceful. He is loved by everyone - so different from Perseus, who is more feared then liked - and a troublemaker - if the vision of him being whipped in Mars Ultor's training camp is to be believed.

Romans don't hesitate in corporal punishment on children. Nor in adults, either - misdemeanors are punished harshly. Perseus is lucky Octavian has no direct authority over him - the number of times he put him on his ass would get Perseus bleeding on the floor for days.

However, he didn't escape the whip completely. In his fourth week on Nova Roma, Hazel is disrespectful to one of Octavian's friends - he called her a "good piece of monkey meat" and touched her ass, so she kneeled him in the balls. Reyna is out on a mission - and the guy just happens to be Questor Cicero.

Questor Cicero is twenty-eight - and everybody believes him when he tells them Hazel kneeled him without reason - a grave offense because it can affect his descendants. Hazel gets sentenced - by the Consul, in absentia of the Praetor - to a hundred lashes.

Everyone is obliged to watch - and neither Perseus nor Frank can last after she sobs. They rise from the crowd and volunteer to take the rest of her punishment. The executioner of it - a girl named Domitia - is surprised and asks why when they rise up to take Hazel's place - not a lot volunteer, generally older siblings or partners.

Hazel protests, while she is taken by a daughter of Aesculapius, Lavinia - "No, Perseus, no, it's my fault, Frank, I can take it, please!" - But he doesn't care to hear. Hazel is a child, and something stirs inside of his memory - No child shall suffer under his watch. - He wants to stop Frank - the boy is only sixteen - but there's no stopping the guy about his best friend.

"She could take it. I just don't want to see her, or anyone I care about, do it. She is too young. A child - one that shouldn't feel the injustices of life."

"That's my best friend. I won't let her pay for something she didn't do, and I won't let Perseus do this alone."

It's rational enough that no one will see weakness when she starts whipping them. Domitia is a good girl - they become a sort of friends after it, but Perseus can never understand why the daughter of Nemesis would dispense unfair punishments.

Perseus endure the whole thing awake - the forty-five lashes, under the jeers of Octavian and his friends - and they walk out of the stage supporting one another, before collapsing in a pool of their own blood, in the arms of Caelius - the youngest of Apollo's offspring working on the hospital.

They take both of them to the UTI - he doesn't remember a thing. He wakes up three days later - they aren't allowed to use any magic to heal him, or anesthetics to numb his pain. He suffers for a week, while his godly blood slowly heals him.

Hazel sits by their bedside - he and Frank are in the same room - her own back fully healed by now - and tells him stories about how Dakota kicked Octavian's ass in training in their name, or just plays with his hair. Sometimes, when she thinks he is asleep, she cries - it's heartbreaking.

Reyna comes back by the time Frank is out of the hospital - Perseus moved to much and his stitches came out - and is fueled by rage. This kind of punishment is hers to give - and with through interrogation before - and she has been trying to eradicate them for years.

She does insist on an interrogation with Aurum and Argentum - perhaps because she knows what a sweetheart Hazel is. She uncovers the whole story - how Cicero called her names and sexually harassed her - and the guy is stripped off his post and exiled - sexual harassment is a crime punishable by lashing, but together with lying to a court of law and supplanting his direct superior - oh well, he is not coming back for the next five years.

With Hazel's absolving, the doctors are allowed to heal them with magic - but it's too late. They can repair the nerves and muscles, take away all the pain - but the flesh will remain scarred.

Their backs are now a crisscross of scar tissue - it's a reminder of Nova Roma's failings - and he revels on taking his shirt off to drills, even if Frank is ashamed of it, for some reason.

Praetor Arellano thinks "Perseus' loyalty to the Roman Law and his Cohort" is enough to give him an SPQR tattoo instead of his probatio tablet. He didn't cry when they put the mark of his father on his arm - just later, in his bunk, for the eleven-year-old that was tattooed together with him.

After the tattoo, Perseus discovers he has money. Like, really, lots of money in the bank - which is named after his father, who is their patron god - and apparently filled his account with denars. Perseus solves to donate part of it - and part of it he keeps because his wages as a foot soldier are meager.

Hazel, on the other side, is brimming with remorse - and protectiveness. She will do her absolute best to protect Perseus Jackson - this is the second time he saves her. She can't tell him anything - but she can make his life as easy as possible.

Hazel dreams about Frank - Frank, and a terrible price that is a piece of wood - and she thinks she likes him, even if he is older and braver than she'll ever be.

It's June 18th - and Perseus has been in Camp for three months when the war games take an unexpected turn.

Frank is leading the Fifth Cohort - Dakota is hangover somewhere - and their battle formation is impeccable. They also have the two biggest powerhouses - Perseus and Levesque.

Hazel - while a child of Jupiter - is unable to fly - or any air or climate control. Her power lies on energy - publicly, she controls lighting and thunder - and can get bolts to basically incinerate whole canons or dismantle phalanges.

Perseus, however, can raise skeleton soldiers to fight for him - and stone spikes to block his enemies. His vines are of no use - the First Cohort has two sons of Ceres who out-do him any day. He can also use the shadows to confuse their rivals or make the ground tremble - under the cost of their own stability.

Frank is very proud of having such powerful and amazing people as friends. He didn't expect Perseus of Styx, the boy who didn't have to fight to be recognized - the one who came with a goddess at his back and muscles in his arms and a father on his blood - to be friends with Frank.

He is a very okay guy, you see. Frank had - has - three best friends, but no one openly dislikes him. He doesn't have someone - he has no use for quick tumbles under the cloak of darkness, and that is all people like him can ever have.

But he is not like Perseus or Jason. He doesn't defy Octavian. He was too anxious to muster the courage to volunteer to take Hazel's punishment alone - Perseus had to do it first.

He is not like them. He isn't anything like his mother. Frank feels happy, at least, that at those little things like war games he has better strategies than anyone else. It was Perseus who motivated him to take the lead while Dakota is otherwise incapable - under Hazel's cheerful applause.

This time, there are elephants involved - Perseus loves elephants - and they burst through their rival's doors - the 12th consecutive victory for the Fifth Cohort since Perseus arrived.

Gwen - the only openly ficatrix girl that Perseus knows, a Jewish daughter of Venus Genetrix - dies probably by Octavian's hand - and doesn't stay dead.

This evokes Lord Mars Ultor - who claims Frank, gives him a quest to find Letum and ropes Perseus into it - "Your father's domain, your responsibility" - so they choose Hazel as a third member - because who else - and get in a car to go to Alaska.

Before that, for Dakota's negligence, the Fifth Cohort is passed to newly-coined Centurion Frank - with Hazel as his second in command, while Gwen - who is not respected because of her preferences - steps down the second position to go study - apparently, she wants to be a teacher.

They have to be back by June 24th - or die. That gives them six days - it's at least two days going and two days back from San Francisco to Alaska, so they have two extra days to localize and rescue Letum.

Hazel, Frank, and Perseus battle the karpoi in Mendocino - this time, they're easily defeated, because no one leaves Hazel alone. Frank actually kills a lot of them - under the sheer appreciation of both his very supportive friends.

They see Polybotes army - and run away in their car, which crashes in the front of the R.O.F.L.

Perseus IM's Reyna - he thinks it necessary, for she is their Praetor, their leader. Hazel is right by his side - and then goes to call her brother - which he doesn't stick around for, examining the drachmas - the weird graecus' coins that Perseus recognizes

Iris remembers Perseus of someone. He doesn't know who, or why, but that night, for the first time in months, he doesn't dream of Jason Grace. He dreams of red hair spilled into the snow, blond curls around his fingers, a mechanic leg whirring in his ear, a spear coated with blood, shoes with wings and pan pipes - and wakes up crying for a past he doesn't remember.

He hugs the tie-dye bag against his chest - and cries. Perseus doesn't care - his chest literally aches with missing, for someone he doesn't know.

Frank doesn't ask questions when he finds Perseus crying. Frank cried a lot when he first got to Nova Roma.

"Are you missing someone?"

"I'm missing everything" And that's how Frank discovers Perseus doesn't remember anything at all.

Everything spills up - Lady Lupa's house, the dreams about Jason, the way he just dreamed of what could possibly be his friends, and what if he was a graecus like Octavian said - and Frank does not judge him.

He knows what it is to have a gigantic secret pressing upon his shoulders - and he has known Perseus for three months now. He knows Perseus is a trustworthy person.

"We'll discover who you are - but if you don't like it, we won't judge you. It doesn't matter what your past life has been like, it doesn't matter if you're a graecus - you're one of us now."

Because Frank is the absolute best - Perseus can't think of a friendship he deserves less than Frank's.

They trade stories about their rage against the gods - things they would never be able to utter at home. Their lives, their insecurities, their shared hate of Octavian's racist ass - everything they can share.

Frank tells Perseus about the piece of wood - which is very important when Perseus tells Frank that, sometimes, he can conjure a weird green fire of which he has little control over, so is better to keep that wood far away from him.

Some things are kept in secret - Frank is not sure Perseus will be repelled by his preferences, by the way, no woman ever caught his eye - and Perseus is afraid of telling Frank about the way that, sometimes, he wants to see the world burn, skeletons beneath his feet and blood coating his hands.

They travel through Portland - which means half the journey is done - and meet Ella - which Perseus immediately wants to take away from the creepy old dude because that's a child.

Ella is hungry and cold and in pain - and neither Perseus nor his quest mates are having that.

So he does a gamble with Creepy Old Dude and Lady Terra - which he isn't sure is in their side - and kills him. Because he is not dealing with a creepy old man who is trying to capture children, even if those children are monsters.

They take Ella with them - she's such a small, innocent girl-bird. They can't send her to Nova Roma alone - they would either kill her, hunt her or use her as entertainment - and they can't stop the mission, so there's that.

Hazel and Frank are sharing memories - with each other and Perseus. Perseus himself has no private memories to talk about - except for his dreams of Jason, which he already told Frank and now relays to Hazel.

Ella says is because their destinies are connected - says that their curses will be gone by their hands. Frank gives Hazel his piece of wood - "I would give it to both of you, but your fire is weird" - And Hazel tells them about being dead.

Perseus has an inkling of suspicion - that maybe - just maybe - he brought Hazel back. Maybe that's why his memories are gone. Either that - or he has a sibling, and wouldn't that be amazing? Siblings, cousins - a giant family. Just for him.

He doesn't ask though - because Hazel is sad and he is not an insensitive ass.

They head to the Amazon Headquarters - where Perseus has the amazing idea of going in, even if he knows Amazons just have one utility for men - sex.

They get caught - just this time, while Hylla does recognize Perseus, she is grateful. Perseus did kill Circe, yes, but he didn't free any pirates - Hylla and Reyna sailed away and never got any trouble.

Hylla is grateful for Perseus - but she cannot help him or Frank - Amazons are misandry warriors, and they are too young to be lovers, but too old to be reliable to let go. So they lock them up, and Hylla and Hazel make a plan to free them.

Otrera is dangerous - because the Amazons will follow anyone, they aren't connected to any goddess. So, when Perseus shadow travels from his cage with Frank, Hylla helps Perseus - who is way too tired - to mount Tempest - Hazel's venti - so that they can reach Letum - or, how Hylla calls him, Mors.

They go North - then further North - to the house of Frank's Grandma.

Everything goes the same - Frank's Grandma is cryptic, Mars appears, the house catches fire, they flee. A bird is seeing flying out of the window - but if it's her or no, they don't know.

Frank and Perseus discover they are related - by a lot of generations, but does it matter really? They are shield brothers - and fight in the same Cohort, for the same Rome.

Hazel feels lucky - both her best friends are related to Pluto. Both can be the one to save her - and she really hopes is not Perseus, for she can't own him any more debts.

Frank tries to control his abilities - and between Perseus' own training and Hazel's unwavering belief on him, they get him to shapeshift. Some. He is not good at it at all - but he'll get there.

They don't fear Hazel - not even when gold slips between her fingertips. Perseus calls her sister, for their connection shall be forged on metal and fire.

They fly to Alaska - this time, Perseus entrusts Ella to a General skeleton and tells him to take her somewhere safe.

During the travel, they cuddle together - all three of them - to share body warmth. Hazel is flushed - for she never had such close contact with a boy, least a boy she really likes, like Frank.

Frank, on the other side, has never been so close to a boy as he is to Perseus now. Perseus is just a brother to him - but he can't help but blush like a virgin maiden.

Perseus observes the situation with confusion - for he doesn't understand Hazel's flustered expression - which makes her look a lot like her brother any time Perseus even glances at the guy - nor Frank's blushing cheeks - which must be because of the cold.

Perseus almost drowns on Earth - the single thing he fears the most, in his own element. It pains him, and he wants to destroy Lady Terra for her trickery and mockery.

They stay in a little motel, just out of the way. No way that Frank nor Perseus would make Hazel go back to where she was abused and mistreated.

They shared basically everything in the past few days - they know almost everything about each other. Hazel tells Perseus she knows him - but is under oath to not tell anything.

Perseus is frustrated - but that is Hazel. Soft, trustworthy Hazel. She isn't doing this to hurt him. Her brother, on the other hand, can go to hell. He obviously knows Perseus - but lies to him. Explicitly. Nico Di Angelo is as bad as the gods are in Perseus' eyes.

He can't sleep - he keeps dreaming of the Earth swallowing him like it did many of his enemies - and Frank hugs him as Hazel inches closer to their shared embrace - it feels, for the first time since he woke up, like family.

They fight against Alcyoneus. Frank frees Letum - waisting part of his life on it, literally - Hazel takes on Alcyoneus - vengeance for herself - and Perseus raises an army to fight against the Undead Roman one - it's easy to defeat them, and then turn them against the giant once he has the Twelfth Legion Eagle.

Perseus - and his army that is getting harder and harder to maintain - helps Frank (who has finally managed to shapeshift) and Hazel to drive away Alcyoneus - and finally kill him, once he is out of Alaska.

They head back to Nova Roma - Hazel on her venti, Tempest, with Frank as an eagle and Perseus mounting Spot - the hellhound he was able to call from Nova Roma - pushing a chariot of Imperial Gold weapons - something rare and essential.

They meet Mrs. O'Leary - another hellhound - Blackjack - a hellhound that can speak with Perseus - Ella - who apparently found safety - and Nico Di Angelo with the cyclops Tyson - which immediately spark Perseus memories, even if he has no time to think about it.

Perseus leads the Romans - they look at him, and see the boy that has spent three months with them and three months with Lady Lupa, the boy who has been invaluable for Nova Roma's safety - their own Julius Caesar, their Augustus.

He fights against Polybotes one on one. Polybotes may be the bane of Neptune - but Perseus is also an earthshaker. He makes the Earth - Lady Terra's earth, who they are oh so proud of, the earth that swallowed him - fight against her own son.

With help from Terminus - and lots of backup from the army, his army - Polybotes is gone. The monsters - defeated.

There are thirteen dismemberments and fifty-three gravely injured. These are rushed to the hospital, while the other 184 soldiers rest and prepare for the burials.

Thirty-eight dead - men and women alike - plus nine that succumbed to their injuries. They do the procession - followed by cremation and the burial of the ashes in the temple of Pluto.

What follows is the eulogy - and the laurels. The families who have dead members are given money and prestige - it bothers Perseus. Is not enough - it won't fullfill their childrens, siblings and friends places.

Then come the laurels of the living. Frank, Hazel, Di Angelo, and Reyna are awarded Civic Crowns - the second biggest award any commander can win for battle. Everyone else is rewarded Golden Crowns - the fourth-highest decoration of battle, for their bravery.

Perseus himself is the most celebrated - he not only wins a Grass Crown (Corona Obsidionalis) for being credited for saving the whole Legion - he charms the Senatus with his acts of heroism - enough that they give him the Praetor Peregrinus title - for he also has a reputation of a good politician, as he often spoke on the Forum - while Reyna holds to the Praetor Urbanus one.

Frank himself also gains a promotion - he is now Legatus Legionis - the overall Legion commander - a title that was vacant since Jason Grace rose to Praetor, but with him missing for six months - it is time to fulfill both positions. Hazel raises to be Centurion of the Fifth Cohort.

The Consul holds the ceremony for both of their awards - where they vowed to serve Nova Roma with their lives, to put Nova Roma above their personal lives and interests - and later, they feast.

Perseus is happy with his new position - While Reyna is in charge of all judicial matters - the matters of the law - he is in charge of all defense, war and foreign matters.

That's why - when Lady Juno gives back his memories - he is infuriated. Not only he has a whole life waiting for him - one that conflicts directly with his new life - he has now a giant pile of paperwork.

The first thing he does - still in his toga praetexta, the worst garment to ever be done, even if he pities Reyna for having to use a stola on most occasions - is to punch Nico di Angelo in the face.

Then he hugs him. The boy apologizes - stuttering through words - promise to make up for it - and promptly leaves to not be seen again.

Perseus goes to the Senatus, and tell the truth: Lady Juno has sent him a vision - and in the war to come, they have to fight alongside the greeks.

Octavian wants to discredit Perseus for being a graecus. It doesn't work - for the Romans love their new Praetor - and Octavian wasn't even in the battle.

That night, Perseus doesn't even remember Jason Grace - he is just a shadow of some dreams he had for two weeks, more nightmarish than not. He dreams of Nico di Angelo - who is walking around ruins - and fears for the life of the boy who betrayed him.

He doesn't think much about it.

Perseus shadow travels to his mother - not yet to Camp, he is not ready to see them yet, and Hera/Juno told him they are coming, so it would be a waste of his energy - and hugs her for about four hours before his duties call him back.

She is happy to see him alive and well - even if she doesn't like he is fighting in yet another war for the gods. He doesn't like it either - after this, he is retiring and making them promise to never bother him again.

Perseus spends the next days preparing - for his friends, for his two lives to collide - and working his very difficult political job - Nova Roma is a homophobic and racist place, and he won't stand for other people like Gwen to be killed for it - he isn't tolerating "ficatrix" instead of lesbians or the clearly prejudiced priests anymore.

He has a long way to go. But it's fine - he and his friends are the government. Talking about his friends...

"Call me Percy"

[princegabriel]

@lilyistryingherbest requested Chained to a Bed with someone on the Carte Blanche or Damien. Of course, I picked Juno “Listen, when you get tied up as often as I do” Steel. Thank you for the prompt! @badthingshappenbingo 

Snare

by princegabriel/ FaintlyMacabre

Rated: M

Characters: Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev, Jet Sikuliaq, Vespa Ilkay, Rita, Original character

Summary: If, for whatever reason, you were to ask Juno Steel, he would tell you that no, seduction was not his wheelhouse. If he were feeling chatty, he'd probably tell you, without much exaggeration, that back on Mars, a night out had an even chance of ending in a bar fight as in a hookup. He was abrasive, and brash, and naturally unpleasant. 

But under certain circumstances, he can give it a shot. It just may not go as planned.

CW: This one’s kind of a doozy. (Under the cut)

Dubious consent—I'd describe it as uninformed consent on the part of one character, and unenthusiastic consent on the part of the other. Both are deciding to do what they're doing under their own steam, but for sketchy reasons. Also, as part of the plan, Juno drugs the antagonist to knock him out so he'll be out of the way for their heist. I didn't write sexual assault, but Juno experiences a loss of control that he definitely does not want to be experiencing, and panics as a result. The feeling/themes are similar, so if that's a no-go, totally get it, turn back now, take care of yourself! Also, alcohol, references to murder, and canon-typical quippy tone (may be jarring to some readers, given the subject matter).

---

If, for whatever reason, you were to ask me, I’d tell you that no, I’m not exactly a natural seductress. (Also, never ask me that. It’d be weird.) I’m not the type of lady who can charm my way into someone’s bed or even their good graces. I’ve got just enough charisma to be annoying.

Again, don’t ask me. But you know who maybe should have?

Buddy Aurinko.

Maybe if she had, I wouldn’t be lying here, chained to a bed in an unexpectedly swanky hotel room, but really, it wouldn't be fair to put all the blame on Buddy. Let me start at the beginning. My name’s Juno Steel. I was a private eye, who was a cop, who became a thief, and if most of the people I left behind in Hyperion City could see where my life has taken me, they wouldn’t bat an eye. Or if they did, the eye they batted would be mine.

Our crew's on a "relocation" mission to a little satellite hotel orbiting Pluto. The creep who runs this place is kind of a hoarder, and his is the kind of hotel where dreams (and, according to rumor, the occasional interspace traveler) go to die. The job was basically show up, rob a terrible person, get out of dodge. There was just one thing I didn’t like about this plan.

“Remind me why I’m doing this again?” I leaned back against the high top table, holding a drink like a lifeline in one hand and fighting the urge to push away the hair covering my eyepatch with the other.

“It’s because you’re so incredibly charming, love.” I jumped a little. That wasn’t the voice I’d expected to hear.

“Ransom?” I hissed. “Where’s Buddy?”

“Not happy to hear my voice, Juno?” The question was all tease and no hurt. “The captain thought I could use some practice working behind the scenes.”

Well, I knew what that meant. “So, you got bored?”

“When I have you to worry about?” Nureyev quipped. “You’ll forgive me my caution; you do have such a talent for getting into trouble.”

“Which brings me back around to my question.”

“You are playing this role because both Buddy and Ransom are wanted by the Plutonian government, and because the rest of us are unsuited to this kind of undercover work.”

“Big Guy! When did you connect to this line?” I'd nearly choked on my drink when Jet’s voice had rumbled into my head.

“I have been connected this whole time, since I dropped you off.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything?”

“There was nothing to say,” Jet said. “Talking would only have been a distraction.”

“You must admit, you do fit the profile of our mark’s usual type,” Nureyev said. I didn’t have to admit any such thing, but I knew. Osric Salazar, multi-millionaire, hotelier and general misanthropist, liked his partners more rough than refined, more sour than sweet; in the slinky dress that showed off a fair number of my scars and holding a double shot of whiskey that was threatening to vanish into thin air, I fit the type pretty neatly. It was maybe the only thing I’d ever fit into neatly in my life.

“Yeah, yeah, the role was made for me,” I said over the glass. “The part I’m not thrilled about is where I’m the bait.”

“'Bait' is such a strong word, dear,” Nureyev said. “This is really more of a honeypot job.” His voice sounded neutral, but carefully so. To anyone else, I'm sure he would have sounded genuinely calm, but there was something in his diction that made me think he was less assured than he let on.

“Well, either way, I’m pretty much just a piece of meat on a string—”

“The target is approaching on your three o’clock,” Jet cut in. “Do not turn quickly; it appears he is trying to stay in your blind spot.”

I made myself sip at the drink and lean on the table as though I wasn’t about to be ambushed.

“Don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before.” The voice was like honey over coffee grounds, and I probably would have liked it if it hadn’t belonged to the owner of this... fine establishment. The Renegade’s Arms was just far enough from everywhere that people only went there when they had nowhere else to be and just enough of a dive that it wasn’t frequented by anyone rich or flashy enough for people to make a fuss if they vanished.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said, refusing to turn and look.

“Let’s hope there’s a second one, too.” Salazar walked around the table and into my field of vision, but… a little higher. He was a wall of a person, reminding me of Pilot Pereyra, who’d used their intimidating size and demeanor to cow every would-be opponent into submission for years as mayor. I hoped it would be easier to exploit Salazar’s weakness than it had Pereyra’s; that walk in the desert had been no walk in the park.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said, and ignored the rise of Salazar’s eyebrows as I knocked the rest of my drink back. “You gonna buy a lady a drink?”

“Oh, sugar, it’s on the house.” I tried not to flinch at the hand that Salazar planted on my back, which steered me the short distance to the bar. “Another?”

“Whiskey, neat,” I said, setting the empty glass down on the bar.

“Make it a double,” Salazar told the bartender. “Top shelf.” The bartender nodded and once again, all the bastard’s attention was on me. Great.

“So, what’s a pretty lady like you doing in a place like mine?” Salazar purred. The sound sent chills down my spine, but definitely not in the way Salazar intended. Well, probably.

“Currently, getting drunk for free,” I said. “So, thanks for that.”

“I’d take it as a personal offense to find out that a gorgeous creature like you would ever have to buy his own drinks.”

“If you wait there, I can give you a whole list of people I know who’ve personally offended you,” I said.

“Gorgeous and funny,” Salazar said, looking me up and down in a way that made me want to wash with sandpaper.

I did the next best thing and downed my drink. “Thirsty, too.” Salazar raised a hand and gestured to the bartender, who got me another. “So this is your place?”

“I haven’t exactly made it a secret,” he said, looming closer.

“I hear people do small talk,” I said, “you know, early in their acquaintance.”

“So you’re sticking around?” Salazar said. He was even closer now, and he smelled aggressively like mint and aftershave. It wasn’t terrible, and everything was going according to plan, but knowing who this person was, I felt kind of queasy about it. In my earpiece, barely audible, Nureyev huffed out a short, sharp breath.

“Not like I got anywhere else to go.” I looked down into my drink while I said it, trying to look like like I wasn't angling for anything more than a bed for the night and someone to help me keep it warm.

“I wish I were sorry to hear that,” he said, practically in my ear. “But really, the way I see it? Whoever you’re running from, their loss is my gain.”

I turned to look at him again and all I saw was teeth. I couldn’t help but recall the first time I’d seen Nureyev, when he was just Rex Glass to me, and the smile that looked like he could rip me apart, easy and natural as breathing. This was different. Salazar’s teeth were big and blunt, like tombstones; it would take him some work to tear into you and he’d enjoy it.

Hopefully he’d take my focus on his mouth as interest rather than self-preservation.

I’d told Buddy I was all right to kiss a mark if the job demanded it, and I was. I’d told her I was all right to do more than that if I knew about the possibility beforehand, though hopefully in this case the neurotoxin-laden lipstick I was wearing would do its job before that became an option. Nureyev and I had talked about it—we were both coming at this with our separate and collective baggage, but honestly, I’d thought it would be a harder conversation to have. We decided that if it was the best plan we had and if whoever was on the job was comfortable, it was all aboveboard.

When Salazar pushed the door to his apartment closed and then pushed me up against it to kiss me, though, I couldn’t think of anything but Nureyev on the other side of my earpiece. If he was still there. I definitely wouldn’t blame him if he’d decided to hand it off to someone else.

Salazar kissed like he was fighting, and I grabbed the collar of his shirt so I’d be ready if it swung in that direction. One of his hands slid up my thigh, taking the hem of the dress with it. I stopped him when he got to my hip.

“Not,” I said against his mouth, “doing this against the door.” At the very least, the farther into his apartment we went, the longer he’d be distracted. And it gave the lipstick a few extra seconds to work. Salazar was a big guy, it might take a bit.

The bed was in the next room. It was big, covered in a rich-looking comforter and sheets that probably had some kind of thread count, with a huge ornate headboard, from which hung a—Jesus Christ. He had a pair of cuffs threaded through it. I was starting to rethink the door.

I didn’t get a real good look at it after that because Salazar spun me around and walked me back until my knees hit the edge of the bed. He climbed over me, biting and sucking at my neck, and I had a moment to just hope this lipstick was as unlikely to re-transfer as Buddy said it was, before I felt his teeth moving up to my ear. The ear with the earpiece. The earpiece I was using to stay in contact with my fellow crewmembers for the purpose of robbing the person who was currently getting real familiar with my earlobe.

“Hey, uh, no,” I said, like a professional, “my earring—”

“Oh,” he said, pulling back, and I tried not to sigh with relief. “Let me get that for you.” And he fucking took it off. The only positive side to the situation was that it really was a gorgeous ear cuff with a hidden wireless transmitter and he didn’t seem to suspect. He put it on the bedside table and picked up where he left off. And I thought, “Maybe it’ll be fine, maybe they won’t need to contact me for a while, maybe they get what they need and I sneak out while he’s unconscious and that’s that, job well—” A siren cut off the “done.”

Salazar sighed, hot on my neck. “I hate to leave you here, gorgeous—”

“Then don’t,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nothing else for it.”

“Uh, hey, but wait,” I said. “If the fire alarm’s going off, shouldn’t I be getting out of here too?”

“It’s not the fire alarm,” he said, getting up and smoothing out his clothes. “It’s the burglar alarm.”

Yeah, I’d been afraid of that. “Okay, well, if there are dangerous burglars around, maybe I don’t want to be a sitting duck.”

“Oh, if that’s what you’re worried about, darlin’, don’t be.” He came back and I thought for a second that it had worked, turned out I was pretty good at distractions after all. He took my hands and kissed me, and yeah, I actually felt kind of smug about my performance right up until the cuffs closed around my wrists.

“What,” I said.

“Didn’t want to bring these into play so soon, but we adapt, don’t we, sugar?” he said, with a fucking wink. “I can’t have you running off before I get back. Don’t worry, I’ll lock you up safe as houses.” I wished a house would fall on him.

He took a handgun out of a drawer, waved at me without looking back, and then he was gone. I heard the click of two locks, and that was the last I saw of Salazar.

So now you’re all caught up.

I wait a few seconds before turning my head in the direction of my removed earpiece and saying, “Hey, he cuffed me to the bed, get me out of here.” I have no way of knowing if anyone is responding, or even if they can hear me at all. All I have is this dress, a pair of stupid strappy heels (what is it with Buddy and putting me in six-inch heels?), and zero arm mobility. Well, not quite zero. I look up at the headboard. It isn’t metal, at least, but it doesn’t look cheap either. It’s either wood or painted to look like it, and if it is paint, it's been expertly applied, which points to good quality. If Nureyev were here, he’d have a lockpick in his sleeve or metal-tipped nails or something useful, but he’s not, so I pull myself up to sit against the headboard and start scraping the chain against the back of it to try to wear through.

“That alarm’s still going,” I say through gritted teeth as I try to saw through the headboard. I hope they can hear me, but even if they can’t, it helps to think they might. “Means Salazar's probably knocked out, definitely hasn’t resolved the situation, so I guess you’re still holding your own. In case you’re done before I get out of these, I’m in Salazar’s quarters, the door past the stairs, in the second room. Two locks on the door.” The cuffs are chafing my wrists, but I just clench my fists and try to go faster. “God I hope you get here soon, this is the least efficient way to get out of this but it’s all I’ve got.” The alarm shuts off and instinctively, I stop moving. It’s too quiet to move.

“Damn it, whoever’s listening, say something!” I hiss. I’m getting uncomfortably close to panic. “Yell, come on, just say something!” I feel trapped in these shoes and this dress and these fucking handcuffs and so I start moving again, pulling the chain forward like I could break clean through the damn headboard. It doesn’t work, just like I know it won’t, but I can’t do anything else. I can’t do anything. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

In the quiet, I hear the locks click and I freeze again. If it’s Salazar… he might suspect I’m part of this. Is he coming back to kill me? I get my legs over the side of the bed just for solid ground underneath me, the smallest illusion of control. It puts my arms at an even more uncomfortable angle, but they were never going to do me any good here anyway.

I can’t hear footsteps, and I don't know what the hell that means. I feel myself start to spiral again until I see Vespa in the doorway with a duffel bag.

“Oh, thank god.” Should have known—of course the assassin’s not going to make a sound. I’m sure I’d feel weirder about her seeing me like this if I weren’t so relieved.

“Where’s the key?” she says, looking right, left, up, right again, checking for… security cameras, maybe?

“I don’t know!” I say. I feel like my body hasn’t caught up to my brain, which hasn’t caught up to my mouth. Adrenaline is still rushing through me—it couldn’t shut itself off the instant I knew I was saved, but I’ve apparently started to autopilot into our usual dynamic. “He didn’t exactly give me a tour. ‘Hey, just to be on the safe side, here’s the key to the cuffs I just surprised you with, also I’m definitely not going to murder you—’”

“Shut up, Steel,” she mutters. She’s already got the drawer of the little side table open and there’s the key. I guess it’s not something he really has to hide. In a second, my wrists are free. “Come on, Sikuliaq’s got the car running.”

I grab the ear cuff and slide it back into place while we get out of there.

“Mistah Steel oh my god please don’t be dead or hurt, say something please,” Rita’s sobbing into my ear.

“Let's go, Steel," Vespa whispers over her shoulder. I nod and let my eye focus on the green shock of her hair to follow her out as I turn my attention back to Rita before I worry her into an early grave.

“Rita,” I say, “Rita, I’m okay. I’m out. Vespa got me.”

“Boss?” she says, sniffling. “That you?”

“It’s me,” I say. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

“Only I could hear you and I was trying to tell you Mistah Jet and Miss Vespa were on their way and you didn’t answer and you sounded so scared—”

Yeah, I don’t want to think about that right now. “I’m okay. We’re headed back to you.” Vespa's taking us out the fire exit, in the opposite direction of the guest area, and there's Jet, just like she said. We get in the backseat and drive away into the night as the last of my adrenaline gives up the ghost and I let the now-familiar smell of the car ground me.

I'm okay. I'm going home.

[artificialqueens]

The Goode Case, 4/14 (Multi) - Juno

Chapter Summary: Jaida meets both Heidi’s date and Dahlia’s girlfriend, along with a woman who she might want to get to know a little better. Brita and Jackie do not have as good a Sunday on call. What will happen at the guest house?

(A/N: Hi all, here is part four, I hope you enjoy. Thank you very much for your supportive words!)

Sunday 29th October

12.14PM 

There were no calls early that morning, thank God, and Jaida managed to sleep in until almost eleven. She knew Heidi would be waiting for her at one, so there was plenty of time to shower, tie back her box braids, and put on some makeup.

Her phone buzzed, friend tone, and she looked down at it.

Dahlia: shop closes at 4, so can u come over for 5? then we head over and can set up and be ready for 6.30 x

Jaida: Thank youuu! That’s perfect. X

Jaida: Brittany

Jaida: Dahlia can set up for 6.30 tonight x

Brita: awesome! Thanks for sorting it Jai xx

She’d thrown on a pair of stonewashed jeans and a royal blue hoodie and was setting off to meet Heidi and her new girlfriend, when she saw Widow in the front room, holding a mug of coffee in both hands and staring at nothing. A canvas lay on the ground, having been ripped and torn from its frame; paint was slowly dripping from it onto the newspapers.

“Widow,” Jaida began, but Widow’s face crumpled, shuddering with sobs.

“It was all wrong,” Widow whispered, motioning weakly to the canvas. “It was all going wrong.”

“Come here,” Jaida sat next to Widow and rubbed her shoulder, while Widow shook with silent tears. The grief going through her was making her take one step forward and two back.

Jaida watched the woman in the corner as she reappeared, just as ashen and hollow as she had been yesterday; the same spirit, something Jaida could feel and see from Widow.

She stayed with Widow until the shorter girl stood, wiping her eyes and moving to grab her cigarettes, kicking at the frame of the canvas as she passed it.

The spirit in the corner vanished again.

—————————————

Getting off the bus after her ride in, Jaida saw Jackie stood at one of the bookshop windows, gazing inside, her dark hair being blown into a mess by the wind. She tugged her coat around her and pushed her fringe back and out of her eyes.

Jaida crept quietly, intending to surprise her, but when she was about six feet away, Jackie’s head snapped up towards her. Jaida stopped dead in her tracks, while Jackie chuckled.

“I know what you were trying to do!” She wagged her finger. “No more of that now!”

“Damnit!” Jaida laughed.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jaida nodded, looking towards the shop.

“It’s fine, Jaida. Really.”

“Brita asked me to organise a séance at the house tonight, see if there are any paranormal clues to go off,” Jaida changed the subject rapidly. “Can you be at the house at six thirty? My friend Dahlia runs an esoteric shop and phone line, she knows what she’s doing.”

Jackie nodded solemnly. “And did you talk to Brita?”

“Oh, shit. I meant to, honest. I will tell her. I will.”

“Because if we’re doing a séance, it will be useful to see any spirits that are there. And you’re the only one of the three of us who can see them.”

“Alright, alright!” Jaida rushed past. “I’ve gotta go, I’m late!”

Heidi greeted Jaida with a squeal, a hug, and two air kisses on her cheeks in that order, when she eventually got to Vanjies. Heidi looked absolutely radiant in a purple mini dress, showing off her long legs, toned from years of running track; with a pleather jacket on top, and spiky boots.

“Bitch, I’m freezing,” Heidi announced, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why did I wear this in October?”

Jaida just laughed. “Making a good impression, even when it’s monsoon season out there?”

“I guess so!”

“She must be amazing,” Jaida winked, while Heidi playfully slapped her arm.

Heidi’s date arrived shortly after, pushing the door of the bar, her attention focused on finding Heidi. Her platinum blonde bob scraped her chiselled jawline, and she had piercing grey eyes. She waved when she saw Heidi, coming to give her a peck on the lips, before turning to Jaida.

“Enchantée,”, she said, giving Jaida two air kisses as well. “I am Nicky. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too!” Jaida took in Nicky’s slender frame and immaculately clean cream-coloured raincoat, hanging to just below her knees, neat wine-coloured buttons down the front; along with bare legs and Chelsea boots. She was casual and cool, but also breathtakingly beautiful. Not someone Jaida expected Heidi would go for, but she seemed very put together, an intelligence behind her eyes.

“What do you want to drink? My treat for standing you up yesterday, Heidi Almighty.” Jaida grabbed her purse.

“You know I want a Pinot, Jai,” Heidi replied.

“Thank you, that would be lovely for me too,” Nicky purred, nodding at Jaida.

As Jaida approached the bar, a short, blonde-haired woman in pale blue jacket, ordering two pina coladas, twirled round a bit too exuberantly and knocked one of them into Jaida.

“Oh my God! Oh, Jesus!” She exclaimed, her hand rushing to her mouth.

“It’s fine,” Jaida muttered, fishing the melting ice cubes out of her sweater and brushing herself down, but the blonde woman had grabbed some napkins from the bar and was wiping at Jaida’s front with them, their hands getting tangled.

“I am so so sorry! Oh God! I’m not normally this clumsy!”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s just an accident,” Jaida tried to wave her off, but the woman grabbed her hand.

“Let’s go to the bathroom, and get you dried off.”

She dragged Jaida to the bathroom, turned on the hand dryer and turned the barrel upwards, so it blew straight up into the air. For a split second her sheet of blonde hair was caught in the gust, flaring upwards, spilling a scent of peach shampoo into the atmosphere. She grabbed at Jaida again and pulled her into the stream of hot air.

“That’ll dry you off in no time! Oh, God! Really, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine, really, you don’t need to apologise again,” Jaida said, letting the blonde woman maintain a grip on her hand nonetheless. She let the hot air dry her sweater as much as she could, still smelling peach shampoo, before turning off the dryer and removing herself from this girl’s grip.

“It’s, uh, it’s a really nice sweater,” the blonde said, her voice hitching up an octave.

“Thanks,” Jaida said with a small smile. “I like your outfit too.” The blonde wore a lilac shirt under her jacket, and a pair of skinny jeans. She looked vaguely familiar …

“That’s really nice of you! Especially when I just, you know, soaked you!” The blonde twitched her shoulders happily. She had light-brown eyes that crinkled up as she smiled, and a kind of perpetual motion to her face, darting eyes and an expressive mouth, ever-changing.

“I’m Jan,” she held out her hand. Jaida took it to shake.

“Jan,” she muttered, the name and face finally connecting in her mind. “Do you work at that Italian place? Mantione’s?”

“Yeah!” Her eyes widened with shock. “How did you know?”

“We were there yesterday afternoon – me and my friend Brita – she knows the Mantiones, she grew up with them.”

“You know Brita? Yeah, she was like a big sister to me. I only have brothers,” Jan nodded, looking relieved. “I’m a Mantione. The baby,” she added with a giggle. “Brita was in school with my older brother Paul. I only graduated in June, she graduated a few years ago. How do you know Brita?”

“I work with her, we started together,” Jaida said.

“No kidding! This city is far too small!” Jan laughed. “Are you from New York?”

“No, Milwaukee. I moved for work. Sorry, I’m Jaida by the way.”

“Okay, hi Jaida!” Jan shook her hand, Jaida realising she still had it in hers. She wasn’t relinquishing it. Still not letting go.

Jan turned her eyes nervously to the ground and cleared her throat.

“Well, Jaida, I think I owe you a slice of pizza or two at some point, for spilling my drink all over you. Just drop in when I’m on shift. Which is, like, all the time unless I’m auditioning. I mean, all the time. Well, I mean,” Jan paused for breath, “I mean, come and see me whenever.”

“Is that – an invitation?” Jaida felt the realisation hit her. She perked one eyebrow up, realising her hand was still in Jan’s, unable to stop the coy smile creeping across her face.

Jan tilted her head to the side, smiling nervously.

“Maybe,” she said softly.

——————————————

“Bitch, that better have vodka in it,” Heidi nodded to Jaida’s coke when she came over to them.

“I’m on call today,” Jaida replied, “so no can do until my shift is over.”

Heidi and Nicky hadn’t even been looking at the bar when Jan had spilled her drink, a bit too immersed in each other to notice that Jaida had just been drenched and then flirted with in the space of the last two minutes.

“What is it like, being a secret agent?” Nicky asked Jaida, a polite smile gracing her face.

“A what?”

Heidi spluttered with laughter.

“Heidi!” Jaida cried. “Bitch, what have you told her?”

“She told me you are a secret agent!” Nicky gave Heidi a playful shove. “I didn’t trust her, and I was right!”

“Sorry, Jai, I couldn’t help it!” Heidi giggled. “She’s a detective, Nicky, so she has to go out and work on cases sometimes unexpectedly.”

“And you are working today?”

“Yeah, we got a lead on a case yesterday. A serious case. Nothing I can talk much about, but I need to be on call today, and I have some work tonight.”

It was that moment that Jaida felt a sharp pain in her stomach, a stabbing sensation. She ignored it and smiled at Nicky to mask it.

“Do you worry about your cases?” Nicky was asking.

“Of course, but you do have to learn to leave work at work, in my line.” Jaida carried on smiling. “What do you do for work?”

“I work in an office for a finance company, but I also do translation, and some French tutoring for high school students,” Nicky replied. “French is becoming more popular for students to learn.”

“I don’t speak a damn word,” Jaida waved her hand, “I took Spanish instead. Four years of Spanish, and I can barely remember adios.”

“I can say, voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Heidi cackled, while Nicky groaned and rolled her eyes at her, giving her a playful slap on the arm.

“So of course you know that Heidi teaches Kindergarten?” Jaida asked.

Suddenly, Jaida felt another stabbing pain, this time on the left side of her temple, like a migraine was coming, but it hit her fast, making her wince. She gripped the side of the table with one hand, and concentrated on moving to take her coke with the other, trying to make sure neither Nicky nor Heidi noticed.

The pain vanished almost as fast as it came on, only lasting seconds.

“… kids, my brother has two younger than five, and they drive him and his wife crazy! They’re back in France though, so I don’t see them very often.” Nicky peered at her quizzically. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah fine.”

5.16PM

By the time Heidi and Nicky said goodbye to Jaida, they were both a little tipsy. Nicky had seemed very nice; beautiful and very down to earth; and Jaida was happy for her friend in finding someone. The two of them had planned to grab some food and maybe a movie, and Jaida thought it best to leave them be.

Dahlia’s outlet, Syn City (as Sin City was copywritten) was a tiny, narrow shop about ten blocks away, with three rooms, two of which were rented by fellow esoteric folk for psychic readings and trades; but Dahlia’s mom owned the lease. The shop was closed, with the “Gone to raise hell lunch” sign on the door serving as a Closed sign too; but the apartment above it was what Jaida was interested in. She buzzed the buzzer, with the door opening shortly after.

Jaida didn’t recognise the woman who opened the door, whose dyed pastel-blue hair clashed with the deep red shawl and the floor-length red skirt. It definitely wasn’t Dahlia, or her mom.

“Hello?” Jaida asked.

“Who are you?” The woman replied.

“Who are you?” Jaida retorted.

“Jaida, is that you?” Dahlia called from up the staircase behind this strange woman.

“I think it is!” She turned to call back up the stairs, while Jaida gawked silently at her.

Dahlia came down the stairs two at a time, leaping gracefully to the bottom from five up, with no shoes on as she normally preferred. She gently pushed the other woman away from the door.

“Come in, Jaida, we’re almost ready to go.”

She took Jaida’s hand and led her past this woman and up the stairs to the apartment on the first floor, above the shop. The scent of incense was alluring, and the beautiful, intricate hangings draped around the walls were familiar and welcoming. Dahlia’s mom’s apartment was full of character and personality, in spite of its small size.

Dahlia’s childhood room was lit by fairy lights which glowed a warm orange colour, a mess as always, the floor covered with Dahlia’s clothes and makeup, but also some unfamiliar shawls and a few scattered piles of manga. Incense burned on the altar in the corner, just underneath the window, Dahlia’s old school desk, covered now in candle wax and crystals, and an icon to a deity that Jaida had forgotten the name of in the centre.

“Got all my shit packed, and Rock’s gonna join us too.”

“Rock?”

“Yeah, don’t call her Roxy or anything, she hates that. Says it’s a ‘doggie’ name,” Dahlia made quote marks with her fingers before Rolling her eyes. “And no Roxanne either. Says she can’t stand that song. Something about getting told all the time about putting on a red light.” Dahlia shrugged.

“So … she decided on Rock as her nickname? Okay, cool,” Jaida shrugged. “Rock it is. Is she your new girlfriend?”

Dahlia rocked from side to side, pondering the answer. “I wouldn’t say new. You haven’t been to my house in like, three months, bitch. That’s a long time in politics. And romance.” Dahlia smacked her lips.

“Alright, so why is she coming?” Jaida asked, motioning down the stairs, where it appeared Rock still was.

“Girl, I told you, I’m not taking no chances at this place. Rock is good at casting protection. She’ll be making sure we’re all safe from anything nasty in the building.”

“How are we all meant to fit on your motorcycle then?” Jaida frowned.

Fifteen minutes later, Jaida was in the back seat of Rock’s battered old third-hand Citroen, clinging to the hook on the ceiling with both hands; Rock behind the wheel and Dahlia in the passenger seat; Dahlia’s box of wonders as she called it on the seat next to Jaida. Rock drove like a crazy woman, seemingly hyper-vigilant to whenever any lights changed, taking left-turns at frightening speed, and screeching to stops every so often for a squirrel crossing the road.

It was probably the fastest that Jaida had ever made it to the old guest house, a full half hour early. Brita would be so proud.

She took out her phone to send Brita a message to that effect, to find four missed calls, one after the other, from Brita about two hours ago, followed by a series of frantic texts.

Brita: Jaida pick up xx

Brita: Come on sis xx

Brita: Jaida please, it’s not work I promise xx

Jaida’s chest felt ice-cold. She pressed the phone key and put the phone to her ear, waiting for Brita to pick up, but the phone just rang and rang.

Frowning, she disconnected, and tried again after a few moments.

Still nothing.

“Brita,” she whispered to herself, tapping at the screen. “Come on, sis, pick up your fucking phone.”

Jaida: Brita I’m sorry I missed u. Pick up sis. X

Jaida: Brita?? You’re scaring me xx

Rock, still in her red shawl, brushed past Jaida now, scattering something from a large jar she cradled in her arms, muttering some kind of incantation.

“Protection,” Dahlia shrugged. “Just let her get on with it, she’s real fucking good at this.”

Jaida’s phone finally sounded, and Jaida looked down with relief to see Brita’s selfie on the screen.

“This is Hall.”

“Jaida. Something happened. Not with me – with Jackie.”

“With Jackie? Is she okay?” Jaida’s heart dropped through her stomach.

“Yeah, she’s fine, just a bit shaken. She tried to break up a fight earlier, took a couple of hits. Assholes! She’s got a bit of a headache from a punch one of them landed, but she’s not bad. We’ll just be a bit late.”

“Well, I’m already here. And Dahlia.”

“Oh, good. Is she setting up?”

Jaida turned to watch as Dahlia lit a cigarette, and Rock continued her slow walk with the jar, sprinkling and murmuring under her breath.

“Uhm, yeah.” Jaida nodded.

“Good. We’ll be there in five.”

As Jaida disconnected the call, she looked up, seeing something out of the corner of her eye, in the room on the top right of the front of the building.

It looked like …

No way.

When she looked up, she saw shoulder-length blonde hair, an anguished face, peering out at her from the window, a young woman silently reaching down towards her.

A young woman who matched the photograph and descriptor they’d had for Gigi Goode.

Jaida ducked under the hazard tape and ran for the window on the ground floor with the loose board, while Dahlia watched her confusedly.

“Aren’t we meant to wait for your colleagues?”

Rock, finishing her circle at the front, placed her jar at the floor and ran up the path, grabbing Jaida by the ankle as she was climbing inside. Her hand was shockingly cold.

“Where are you going? You’ve seen someone? Who did you see?”

“Let me go!” Jaida shook her leg, but Rock frowned at her.

“You definitely shouldn’t go alone. Let me come in with you.”

“Alright, let go of me, and come inside.”

“Can you unlock the door?”

Jaida shook her head. “Brita has the key.”

“I can’t climb through there! I can barely climb stairs!” Rock folded her arms.

Dahlia tossed her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with her boot. “Move over, Rock.” And she swung herself up and inside, tumbling on top of Jaida as she did so.

“What did you see?” Dahlia demanded. “Because you’re not going anywhere on your own in here, no way. I told you, this place is fucking crazy.”

“I need to get upstairs.”

The main entrance inside entered into a large main room, with the kitchen behind it and the hallway and staircase on the left. Past that was a closed room, that was firmly locked, which according to the sign above it was a smoking room and small bar in its day. Upstairs were four guest rooms, and one larger room at the right hand side, which was a living and sleeping area for the guest house owners.

Jaida took the stairs two at a time, Dahlia bounding gracefully along with her, and turned right at the top of them. There was a short corridor with two rooms on either side, and at the end one larger room with two double doors, which was the owners’ living area.

Without pausing to think, Jaida sprinted down the right hand corridor to the double doors, but they were shut tight.

“Gigi? Gigi!”

Frantically, Jaida rattled at the doorknobs, but the doors would not budge.

“Come on, Dahl, give me a hand, maybe they’re stuck.”

Dahlia joined Jaida in shoving at the doors with her shoulder, as hard as they could, but they wouldn’t even shift a little.

“Jai,” Dahlia whispered suddenly, her voice shaking, and Jaida turned to see Dahlia’s startled green eyes, fixed in the opposite direction, pointing a finger behind them.

Two shadowy figures had emerged from one of the guest rooms behind them.

[thiswasinevitableid]

On brand with the last ask, could you please do a New Years indruck?

Of course!

The list is created three weeks after the world almost but ultimately doesn’t end, and a mere five days after Indrid announces he plans to stay in Kepler for the foreseeable future. 

“Hey, uh, if you wanna come with us, me and Leo and a few others are gonna go bowling tomorrow night.” Duck says these words after dropping Indrid off at his trailer, as has become their habit if both happen to be visiting the lodge at the same time.

“I would be happy to come along. I have never bowled, so I can’t promise I’ll be good.”

“Wait, really? You been on Earth, what, decades if not centuries and you’ve never gone bowling?”

A shrug, “I was alone, and often chose my activities based on my investigations and, later, on what allowed me to intervene in unwanted futures.”

Duck taps the steering wheel, “Are there other things you missed out on?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what?”

Indrid sifts through his memories, looking for the moments when he’d wistfully wondered what something was like, or turned away from an object of interest in order to pursue his mission or prevent a catastrophe.

“I...there are so many, I am afraid we would be in the car all night if I were to name them.”

Duck drums on the wheel a moment more, then snaps his fingers and reaches across Indrid to rummage in the glove box,. He pulls out a napkin and a pen, scribbles something on it before handing it to Indrid.

“Here, when you think of more, write ‘em down on this list. Probably can’t help with all of them, but I’m bettin I can help with some.”

“Thank you Duck, but why do this for me?”

He knows the answer but, selfishly, he wants to hear it in real time.

“Because you’re my friend. And hey, owe you one for tellin us our first plan to stop the Quell was gonna backfire.”

Indrid doesn’t really care about that second part of the explanation, but he smiles anyway, “I suppose that’s true. See you tomorrow.” He hops out of the car and waves as Duck pulls away, opens the ‘Bago in the dim red glow of his taillights. It’s only when he’s inside that he sees what Duck actually wrote on the list. 

Fun things Indrid’s never done

1) Bowling.

Indrid grabs Capri Sun from the fridge, sits down and picks up a pen, still laying on a nearby drawing, and adds to the list.

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

Somewhere around number 14, obtain fancy, proper manicure the list moves from Indrid’s table to Duck’s fridge. Indrid admires his shiny, pink and yellow nails while Duck crosses that item off along with number 23, eat Sushi at a place with rotating boat things. They’d driven two towns over for that combination, a Saturday well spent as far as Indrid is concerned. 

And he is. Concerned. Duck has spent nearly one day out of every weekend with Indrid since the list was created, even when the activity is something Indrid could easily do on his own. He’s bonded with others as well. Juno took a  water-coloring class with him (he’d seldom sought out other forms of art in spite of wanting to try them, drawing serve his purposes just fine) and dishing the dirt on Ducks younger days. Barclay helped him actually make a cake from start to finish. Jake taught him how to do an adequately graceful dive off a diving board. 

But more often than not, it’s Duck by his side. He enjoys the other mans’ company immensely, the warm, safe feeling that flickers in his chest when Duck is with him. Yet still he worries. 

“Duck?” He looks up from his nails.

“Yeah, ‘Drid?” 

“I appreciate all your help, and your company. But you know you do not have to do everything on the list with me simply because it was your idea, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m doin them because I like spendin time with you, goofus. Besides, it’s kinda fun, havin an excuse to share all the normal, cool shit of the world with someone who hasn’t gotten to experience it before. I like seein how happy it makes you”

“Oh.” Indrid says softly. He hadn’t seen that last sentence coming. Duck’s smile goes shy at the edges, and  Indrid realizes his answer was not sufficient to convey how he feels. 

“Thank you, Duck. I hope you know I always enjoy spending time with you. And there is no one I would rather explore the world with.”

“Glad to hear it” Duck leans against the fridge, “now c’mon, we’ve still got time to go feed the Ducks down on the Greenbriar.”

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

It’s the week between Christmas and New Years when Indrid discovers another item for his list. 

“So, Barclay,” Dani, visiting from Sylvain this week, flops on the lobby couch near the fire, “you’re gonna finally have someone to smooch at midnight.”

“Uh, ah, well, yeah. I mean, if Joseph wants to, of course.”

“Oh yes, that is an earth tradition, isn’t it. For luck?” Indrid cocks his head, trying to recall if he ever learned the true reason for it. 

“Maybe? I think it’s mostly an excuse to kiss.” Barclay shoots Dani a friendly glare when she bounces her eyebrows. 

“I see.”

“Have you ever gotten a New Years kiss, Indrid?” 

“No.” He answers mildly, as if the thought is already leaving his mind.

That night, as Duck is queuing up The Addams Family (it’s not a list item, they simply both enjoy the film), Indrid adds a new item to the list.

60: Kiss someone at midnight on new years

At some point during the night, Duck gets up to grab them drinks, and from the corner of his eye he sees him pause and read the list.  He says nothing about it when he sits back down, but several futures emerge where he rests his arm around Indrid’s shoulder. 

None of those futures come to pass.  Indrid tries not to be disappointed.

 He continues this futile process throughout the remaining week. True, he could ask someone to be his new years kiss, or choose the person closest by to ask on the night of. But he wants it to be Duck. Duck, with his easy smile and good heart, his fondness for gently teasing Indrid, his absurd laugh, the way he makes Indrid feel home when they’re side by side. It can’t be anyone else.

He nearly cracks during item 43, have a snowball fight, when he collides with Duck accidentally while avoiding a barrage from Hollis and Jake. They hit the ground, the human shaking with giggles beneath him. Duck catches his breath, reaches up and adjusts Indrids glasses, knocked askew in the dive. 

“Knew I was fallin for you, but this is ridiculous” he murmurs.

Indrid is a half-second away from kissing him, or at the very least asking him out, when a large snowball is dropped on top of them. He splutters, shaking powder from his head while Duck guffaws, and spots Barclay running the other way in his Sylph form. 

He hands Duck his glasses and scoops snow into all four hands “I’ll be right back, I need to perform an air strike.”

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

The lodge lobby is covered in white star lights, silver and gold streamers hang from the ceiling, and Aubrey has enchanted the clock above the fireplace to shower rainbow glitter on the room every hour, on the hour. 

Because the party invitation stated guests should dress “fancy,” Indrid is in a sparkly silver sweater and his most formal pair of sweatpants. When he sees Duck enter the room around nine, he spends a good thirty seconds admiring the way his suit flatters the sturdy, familiar curves of his frame. 

He’s given many more chances to admire them, as Duck spends much of the night by his side, sitting snug against him as they talk with their friends by the fire. Indrid allows himself to be content with this closeness, afraid that broaching the subject of the kiss will ruin things. He’s so certain it’s not worth the risk, he doesn’t bother looking at the futures. 

As midnight approaches, many of the guests crowd near the glowing count-down clock Aubrey’s created in the air. Duck and Indrid stay seated.

“Five, four, three, two, one, happy new year!” People cheer and whoop, and Indrid watches Dani dip Aubrey in a kiss, Stern cup Barclays face gently with a smile.

Oh well, there’s always next year. 

“Hey, ‘Drid.”

He turns, finds Duck with a sweet, flirtatious smile spreading across his face. Carefully, he tilts Indrids glasses up onto his forehead. Indrid leans in, pulled magnetically into Ducks arms. He hums as warm, champagne-tinged lips meet his own. 

Duck pulls back to breathe, but keeps him in the embrace, “That good enough to check off the list?”

Indrid tries to keep his voice steady, “Please don’t tell me that’s the only reason you-mphnmmmmm.” The next kiss is deeper, Duck growling gently when Indrid nips his lower lip. 

“Been wantin to do that for weeks” He nuzzles Indrids cheek, “This just seemed like the most romantic way to start things off.”

“Agreed.” Indrid kisses him eagerly, climbing into his lap.

“Whoo! But also, get a room!” Aubrey’s voice rings out, and Indrid doesn’t need to look to know many heads in the room are turned their way. 

“Apologies.” He smiles, not in the least bit ashamed, at his friends. Duck turns redder than the fire behind them.

As the party winds down, the duo says their goodbyes and head out towards the human’s car. 

‘Y’know” Duck’s voice is low, full of warm, filthy promises, “think we outgha make another list of things you been wantin to try,”

“Agreed” Indrid purrs, looping his arm around Ducks shoulder, “but I suggest we not keep that one on the refrigerator.”

[f-nodragonart]

@theload: 

My point is that the "instincts" things like Beastars uses aren't supposed to be accurate, because that's not the story these shows are telling. They're using animal stereotypes as a shorthand to talk about other issues (including eugenics, it's not necessarily by accident).

Maybe "window dressing" is the wrong word, what I mean more is shorthand and coding based off of how humans percieve animals to get the message across. The animals don't act like their real counterparts, but they instead act the way cultures percieve them.

Which I don't think is wrong, or even bad. A lot of furry works aren't claiming to be hard science fiction, and instead do what they need to do to set up the world. To use another example, almost all of Star Trek's science is bullshit, but the science isn't the point. It's the backdrop to exploring issues of cultures and humanity.

I can kinda see your point about using a subject as a shorthand, it definitely works in some cases. but I can’t find it in myself to fully agree, at least on certain bio subjects

b/c the thing is that for specific bio subjects like evolution and instincts, a lot of the general public like. actually thinks that’s how those things work. a lot of ppl think evolution has a “goal” and that “goal” is “human-like” sentience (and that we humans have reached the peak of evolution), and that affects how they view the world and other animals as a whole. a lot of ppl think that predators are instinctually, mindlessly violent and that affects how they view predatory animals when discussing policies like keystone predator reintroduction

I’ve never watched Star Trek and I’m not very informed on physics, tech, and the like, so I rly can’t speak on what ST does wrong. but from what I’ve seen from ST fans discussing it, while the show wasn’t necessarily accurate, it playfully toyed with tech and what it might be capable of, giving a lot of Trekkies ideas for what *could* be possible, and led to the ideas for a lot of tech we see today. I don’t think it’s fair to compare that to a show that literally has a rabbit crawl into a wolf’s mouth b/c that’s what her “instincts” are forcing her to do

and again, I must reiterate that using evolution and instincts as key factors in a story that’s an allegory for human racial oppression is. tricky and must be approached very very carefully, but can often come off incredibly tone-deaf and harmful. the best-case scenarios are few and far between, and other folks have spoken abt this issue better than I can

Beastars in specific is a weird one to bring up, actually. b/c out of the three furry stories I mentioned as pushing my buttons, it was actually the MOST divorced from human reality, yet even more biologically inaccurate for it. like, it felt like it was rly TRYING to be about anthro animals navigating a pred/prey world together, within a human backdrop

more importantly, the issues b/t preds and prey aren’t simply arbitrary assumptions, but real fears based on very REAL very PRESENT threats. prey animals are REGULARLY killed and consumed by predators. this isn’t a problem that’s directly comparable to human issues concerning discriminated groups, and the way it’s handled just. ENTIRELY breaks a lot of the worldbuilding for me. why does prey even want to live w/ predators? how did they all reach the conclusion of cohabitant cities, when prey can be killed at any time? why haven’t prey made their own separate societies? what exactly is driving this desire for cohabitation? yeah this is a fake world but it doesn’t make SENSE even by its own standards

and am I supposed to feel bad for predators being discriminated against? when murder is an accepted biological reality for preds in the show, I rly truly don’t! that discrimination against them is completely justified!! like how am I supposed to feel bad for Juno crying abt being bullied for being a predator, when literally a couple eps later she uses her predatory status to intimidate Haru? I don’t feel bad for Juno, I don’t!!!

so if Beastars was in fact trying to be a specific allegory for human eugenics, as u say, then that makes me even more nauseous. what race, exactly, is the one doing the violence and devouring, here. if there’s any human allegory here, I think Jack Saint is onto something w/ deviance, but even that runs into issues when, again, the predators are constantly fighting violent instincts that regularly kill others, and they’re being discriminated against for that reason, yet that discrimination is branded as a bad thing

like, Doe of Deadwood, while explicitly being *about* nonhuman animals, also had some commentary that could be directly compared to human issues, yet it handled those comparisons far more gracefully than most furry media that tries the same

[transcript start]

Doe: Were it you then, what would you do?

Doe: You were born with healthy blood and sturdy limbs. Graced by nature.

Doe: It is much easier to adhere to the narrative of survival of the strong when birth affords you such fortune. That the weak shall be humbly devoured, and go quietly from this cruel world.

Doe: How comfortable it must be to stare upon the dead and feel safety in nature’s narrative. How terrifying to see this narrative defied.

Buck: How dare you--

Doe: How dare I reject what nature fated for me.

[end transcript]

and even saying all that, I do still rly love Beastars! it’s a rly fun story! I’m just saying that maybe Beastars and similar furry media that’s using bunk biology (and esp those that are simultaneously trying to make thoughtful commentary abt the human condition), has some issues

-Mod Spiral

[typinggently]

Prompt number 6 with Tommy/Alfie? ❤️

6) an art heist, an old library, a pile of books

!!!! Listen I am one whole Clown emoji!! I had one last prompt left over from the last prompts and was just finishing it up when the new prompt post was scheduled to go up and anyhow, the old prompt was this:

And the prompt was 6) marble sculptures, old books, a burning building

And  you know what I wrote??? Art Heist AU!!

I cannot believe…..the coincidence..the utmost tomfoolery…Please accept my humble apologies for taking SO long and also the drabble (since it..fits perfectly..)

-

Art Heist AU

-

“So-“ Alfie tilts his head back a little to follow the folds of Athena’s dress with his eyes, the movement of his lips hardly noticeable under his beard – “I’ll assume you bribed someone?”

It’s late afternoon, the last sunlight is falling through the tall windows, melting into the marble and making the traces of red in Alfie’s beard glow. Tommy hums, hands folded behind his back. He lets his gaze drift over white fingers, the shield on a marble-cool chest. “Something like it.”

 Here, Alfie throws him a glance, then rounds the statue to meet him at her side. Their steps echo on the wooden floors as they make their way to the satyr sleeping on a block of black marble. Surprisingly young, soft-mouthed with goat ears and long lashes, a little beard on his chin.

Tommy hums, eyes on the horns poking through the mess of tangled curls. “There’s a library at the end of the Roman wing, they give out the key for private research.” His words are soft and he flicks his eyes up towards the end of the room where a gold-shimmering plaque promises the Roman wing.

“Ah, I see. And no one will notice the missing key, huh?” Alfie’s fingers come dangerously close to touching the dip of the satyr’s waist, his furry-soft flanks.

Tommy frowns, steps back. “It’s a copy. I suggest we make our way there before it gets dark.”

Alfie’s hoarse little laugh sends a shiver down his spine, but he doesn’t turn around until he reaches the door leading to the Roman wing. It’s made of dark, glossy wood, the door handle golden, smooth-cool against his palm.

-

And yes, of course he’s been here before, twice with Polly and once on his own. Still, in the dimming light, the atmosphere of the room changes drastically. The two rows of marble statues seem sharper now, glowing white against the dark wood of the floors and walls. In contrast to the hall they just crossed, there are no paintings on the walls here, no shimmer of gold and oil to distract from the silent figures. Between the windows, large vases of flowers emit a soft-sweet scent.

Alfie’s hand is warm on his shoulder, even through the layers of his coat, waistcoat, shirt. “Were you waiting, Love? Charming. Now, if you could be so kind.” With that, he gives him a gentle shove.

 Tommy takes the hint and walks down the few steps, watching the way the angle changes the contours of the statues. It’s a row of Gods, Tommy knows as much after three visits, after reading the name plates three times and letting Polly talk while glancing at the door leading to the library.

Jupiter and Juno, sharp-beaked eagle and graceful peacock. Neptune and Pluto, seaweed and pearl-dripping shoulders and a gaunt, sharp face. Venus and Mars, milk-white breasts and sun-tan pectorals hidden behind a breath of fabric and hammered gold. Apollo and Minerva, indistinguishable faces, laurel in wild curls and snakes on a cold chest. Vesta and Vulkan, warm-soft and hot-rough. Diana and Mercury, slim limbs, graceful hands.

 -

By the time they reach the door to the library, Alfie has fallen silent and Tommy feels a little dazed. It takes him two tries until the golden key slips into place, then they slip inside.

“Alice in Wonderland,” Alfie says as soon as the door is closed behind them. “I was half-expecting a glass table with some cryptic instructions on dubious sweets.”

Tommy straightens and locks the door from the inside. “That’ll have to wait until we’re out again.”

Alfie laughs, then turns to take in the library. “Ah, Christ.”

It’s a small room, but with a ceiling high enough to indicate that it spans all three stories of the main building. Tall windows, a maze of ladders and delicate staircases, platforms. Rows and rows of books.

“You know, I think we should just get into book thievery, Love. Wouldn’t that be much easier?”

Tommy slips out of his coat and doesn’t bother answering. He wanders over to the bottom of one of the staircases and makes his way upstairs, his steps silent on old smooth wood. “See if you can find a hiding place. They’re still doing their rounds and might come in despite the locked door. We should stay until eleven, I think.” He checks his watch, then steps onto the first platform, walking to its end to check for possible dark corners.

-

In the end, Alfie joins him on his search and what they find, of course, is a loveseat with a curtain on the third platform. “Do you think they fuck in here?”

Tommy hums. “I assume they sit and smoke and read papers on dinosaurs.”

At that, Alfie laughs, the sound unexpected and unfamiliar. “Well, their loss. Now up you go, move it.”

The light is almost completely gone, the shadows have deepened, and they don’t have much time left until the museum closes its door for the night. Tommy sighs and takes a seat.

“Now make room.”

At that, Tommy raises a brow at him. “What about your own hiding place?”

“No time. Move it.” Alfie’s knee is brushing his, a shock even through their trousers, and his hand rests on the back of the sofa, bringing them much closer than anticipated. With his free hand, he pulls the curtain closed as he climbs on, trapping them in soft-warm darkness.

Tommy twitches and leans back against the headrest to make room for him to climb on as well. “Fine, but-“

“Love, do you really think you want to complain now?” Alfie’s voice is soft, his breath warm on Tommy’s cheek. “Come on, pull your feet up.” His hand is just as warm, gently squeezing Tommy’s knee.

Not wanting to risk making more noise, Tommy does as he’s told. If it’d been cramped before, it’s almost impossible now. Tommy’s left thigh slips against Alfie’s hip, his shoe no doubt leaving an untraceable smear of polish on Alfie’s black coat. He tries to move a little, give Alfie room to rest more of his weight on the sofa, but in his effort to not touch the curtain, he slips and kicks at Alfie’s leg, which topples Alfie and results in them knocking their foreheads together painfully. They both make half-muffled sounds of pain, then it’s silent for a moment.

Alfie is heavy on top of him, his breath against his throat where the collar of his shirt slipped. “Was that some sort of plan, Love? Not terribly slick, I have to say.”

Tommy tightens his grip on Alfie’s arm and hushes him.

For a moment, their breathing seems awfully loud, then Alfie huffs softly and rearranges his weight, drops his head, warm and heavy next to Tommy’s. His beard scratches against Tommy’s freshly-shaven skin, his breathing is soft against his throat once more.

He’s warm. Heavy. His palm is still on Tommy’s thigh, holding it up.

Tommy swallows thickly, licks his lips. Now that he’s accustomed to the dim light, he can make out the shimmer of Alfie’s eyes, flicking down.

It’s hot. The buttons of Tommy’s coat dig into his hip where he ended up laying on top of them and he tries to arch his back a little, get away from the uncomfortable pressure. In the process, his thigh tightens around Alfie and he feels his soft intake of breath.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Alfie mumbles softly and tilts his head to fit their mouths together.

-

-

Do they actually leave that library to do their art thievery or do they just make out in that library for a few hours and fall asleep?? Who knows!!!

Also I just?? Love those two cramped up in an alcove of some sort SO much??

Thank you so much for this, again! It was great fun to write and I’m so sorry it took me so long!

-

The prompts

[gcthamqueen]

Title: she’s like the den mother of hell.

Summary: “If Perse is here in the ass crack of nowhere Connecticut in the middle of winter, what does that tell you about what’s happening in the Netherworld right about now?”

———

A year after the events of the musical, a freak day of scorching sun in the middle of a Connecticut winter lands the queen of the Netherworld in the middle of the Deetz-Maitland household.And they thought letting Beetlejuice stay with them would put an end to the majority of their supernatural weirdness.

Link: [ao3]

***************************

chapter one: winter’s nigh and summer’s o’er.

A freak weather phenomenon sweeps through Winter River, as Lydia and Beetlejuice make a discovery on a trip to the local graveyard.

It takes a moment, when Beetlejuice suddenly finds himself awake in the early hours of the morning, for him to realise what had dragged him back to awareness.

The last time he can recall feeling something even a little bit similar to the distinctive thrum of the supernatural currently making the hair on his arms stand on end had been a year ago when his mother had emerged from the Netherworld intent on claiming Lydia, her fury practically rolling off her in waves. But this is something he barely recognises, especially after the last year spent mostly outside of the Netherworld, and nothing he can recall coming into contact with previously had been potent enough to wake him up like this.

Throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed, he yawned widely and raked a hand through his eternally messy hair as he phased through the door to head downstairs and raid the fridge. It had been an admittedly bizarre year in the wake of his first encounter with the Deetz family and the Maitlands. Despite his initial return to a Juno-less Netherworld, Beetlejuice had ended up returning to the living world because somewhere very deep down - not that he’d ever actually admit it - he’d missed the breathers and newly-deads too much. So it had been months of Lydia wearing away at her living and ghostly parents to allow him to move in and earning his way into the family’s good graces. Somewhere along the way, he’d even become Lydia’s big brother to explain his presence to anyone in Winter River who might ask, which had warmed his cold dead heart more than he’d care to admit.

Padding down the stairs, he wasn’t particularly surprised to find Adam and Barbara in the kitchen, working on preparing the beginnings of a breakfast for when the resident breathers woke up.

“Woke you dorks up too, huh?” He asked, opening the fridge to rifle through it for the leftover Chinese food from the previous night.

“That energy spike?” Barbara replied, “Yeah. It’s the strangest thing. Everything feels all...heavy, I guess. Like the air right before a storm.”

“It is way too early in the morning to be gettin’ all poetic like that, Babs,” Beetlejuice grinned as he scooped a handful of fried rice into his mouth with his fingers.

“What was it anyway?” Adam asked, moving to drop a fork into the takeout carton in response to him eating with his hands.

“Hell if I know, A-Dog,” Beetlejuice shrugged as he continued with the food, albeit now with the fork, “Something supernatural’s all screwy. Couldn’t tell you why though. Sometimes it just happens.”

Eventually, he found his way into the living room to pass out on the couch for another few hours, only to be woken up by Lydia practically throwing herself on his back.

“Morning Beej!”

“You’re chipper this mornin’, Scarecrow,” he grinned, squirming around to get her in a headlock and give her an affectionate noogie, making her shriek with laughter and wriggle out of his grasp.

“It’s the first proper day of my holidays and it’s actually nice out,” she replied, “We can head down to the graveyard and start on those photos I’ve been wanting to take.”

“Nice out? I thought it was snowing.”

“Geez, when you sleep, you really sleep, huh?” Lydia mused, gesturing to the living room window, “It’s been super sunny since I woke up.”

Sure enough, despite the snow, the sky seemed as blue and clear as the middle of summer, the sun beating down across the barren trees at the edge of the garden and the existing layer of snow.

“Huh,” he mused, tilting his head to one side like a dog, “Sure is. Well, might as well make the most of it, Lyds. Kick your holidays off in style.”

As the teenager clattered her way upstairs to change and gather her camera gear together, Beetlejuice found himself gravitating to the back porch, stepping out into the unseasonal weather. Maybe this strange weather had been what had woken him and the Maitlands earlier? Though the same strange supernatural itch seemed to continue as though telling him he was yet to find the source.

“Let’s go!”

Allowing Lydia to loop an arm into his and drag him out of the house as they shouted their goodbyes, they began the walk down to the graveyard. It was a strange combination of the summer sun and the slowly melting snow, and the continued pull of something beyond typical small town life that had been driving him insane all morning.

Once they reached the graveyard, he was quickly distracted by posing for Lydia, even though more often than not he never appeared in photos beyond the faintest blur. It still didn’t stop him from striking ridiculous poses against some of the gravestones or sneaking into frame on others and pulling stupid faces in an attempt to make Lydia laugh.

After a while, Lydia had moved over into an older area of the graveyard to photograph some of the more interesting statues, while he had perched cross legged on top of one of the tombs to keep an eye on things. As she stepped around one side of a mausoleum, she suddenly stopped in place before leaning back to call out to him, attention still focussed ahead of her.

“...hey Beej?”

“Hmm?”

“There’s...someone here.”

The unease in her voice finally refocusses his attention, and he hopped down from his perch to jog over to her. Sure enough, as he stepped around the edge of the mausoleum, he saw the figure pressed up against the wall, almost unmoving. Almost as soon as his eyes fell on her, that same energy that had dragged him out of bed last night sparked something familiar in the recesses of his mind, and the sudden recognition of the woman hit him with the force of a rampaging sandworm.

Juno had roped him into the annual meeting for Persephone’s return to the Netherworld once before his banishment, part of the welcoming committee for the queen. (He also hadn’t been allowed to attend again after the incident with the spiders). At that point of the year, her hair had been vibrant red and orange curls like autumn leaves, and her eyes a bright gold. He’d never seen her quite so deathly pale or with her hair this shade of icy blonde, though he supposed this was more to do with the seasons than the way his hair changed with his mood.

Now he actually understood what had caused the day’s freak summer sun.

Moving past Lydia to crouch down beside her, he carefully reached out to gently shake her shoulder, noticing the ring of scratches and bruises at her throat that had the distinct shape of clawed hands and letting out a string of curses. Who in their right mind had attacked her?

“Perse?”

When she didn’t respond, he couldn’t help but swear again. The longer he looked, the more injuries were apparent; more cuts and bruises, and what looked like a set of claws gashed deeply into the side of her hip to stain her dress and the hand she’d attempted to use to place pressure on it in golden ichor.

“Is she okay?”

Glancing behind him, Lydia had moved closer, clearly concerned at what was happening. Sighing through his nose, he looked between her and Persephone again before making a decision.

“She will be, if we get her back to the house.”

He bent down to carefully pick Persephone up bridal style, making sure he wasn’t about to hurt her any further.

“Sorry we’re cutting this short, Lyds.”

“The graveyard’s always gonna be here,” she replied, “This is more important.”

Clearly she’d managed to pick up on just how worried he was about this giant bombshell that had been dropped in their lap. God-slash-Satan only knew what colour his hair was right about now.

“Grab on, kid,” he said, waiting for Lydia to link her arm in his before focussing and transporting all three of them back to the house. Making a beeline for the back door, he practically kicked the door open as he headed for the living room.

“You two are back soo-,” Adam said as he stepped out of the kitchen before he took in the unconscious woman Beetlejuice was carefully setting down on the sofa, “What on earth happened?!”

Stepping back from the sofa, the explanation Lydia was giving to Adam as Barbara and Delia made their way down the stairs at the sound of raised voices almost seemed to be drowned out by his own racing thoughts as he sank his hands into his hair trying not to panic. How the hell was he supposed to explain a badly injured Persephone if anyone had followed her here? He’d been in enough trouble in the Netherworld before that he was certain they’d jump to the wrong conclusion that he had been responsible and find some heinous punishment to fit the crime of attacking the queen. And what would her husband do about this whole mess?

Fighting back a distinct sense of nausea at the prospect, he was brought back to the present as Barbara gently eased his arms back down, taking his hands in hers to give him something to focus on so he could try and calm down.

“It’s alright Beetlejuice,” she reassured him, giving his hands a soft squeeze, “We just need to know what happened. Who is she?”

Swallowing thickly as he glanced back to the sofa where Adam and Delia were already fussing around to figure out how to dress the wound in her side

“Persephone,” he managed to croak out, “Queen of the Netherworld. And she is so not supposed to be here.”

[allaboutthebooz]

Send My Love (To Your New Lover) Part Nine

Summary: It’s time for ACL.

Warnings: fluff, mentions of sex, drinking

A/N: Here we are. Part 9 a day early! I’m not entirely happy with this part, I moved things a long pretty quick, but I’m hoping part 10 will be better. My husband, son, and I have all been sick with the flu, so my mind has been foggy and I feel like I haven’t been able to get my ideas to play out right. We’ll see. Not every part is a winner. But I hope you all enjoy!

The following day you’re sitting in the back of a car headed to set for a night shoot, with little Juno sleeping in your lap, and scrolling through your Instagram feed, when you suddenly become overrun by notifications. You check to see what could possibly be going on and find the People Magazine has tagged you in a post. You click on it to see what it is. Probably just them giving people sneak peeks of you on set or something. What you weren’t expecting, were the pictures of you and Jake kissing on the sidewalk outside of the sandwich shop.

“Shit shit shit.” You guys had tried your best to keep everything quiet, you weren’t ready for the world to know. You take a screen shot and send it to Jake before calling him. He answers after the second ring.

“Hey, I was just getting ready to call you.” You hear the ding on the other side of the phone. He must have gotten your picture.

“Look at that. I just sent you something.” You try to hide the anxiousness in your voice.

“Yeah, I saw it. I just got slammed with notifications.”

“Me too. What are we going to do?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to let them ruin what we have. I know we haven’t officially said anything or really talked about it, but I want to be with you. I want to show you off. I want this.”

“No, I do too. I just-I was-I just wanted it to ours for a while longer. Not because I don’t want everyone to know about us, but because I liked that it was just us and our small circle of people that knew.”

“I understand that. I liked it too, but we should have known this was going to happen eventually. I mean, I’m not a small name in the film industry and your name is growing bigger every day. You’re not just being known for being Anne Walker, anymore.”

“I know. I just wish we could have been the ones to tell everyone.”

“Me too, but it’s out and all we can do is run with it. I love spending time with you and I want you to be my girl. I didn’t really want to do this over the phone, but there isn’t any going back.”

You’re quiet for a minute. “You really want to be with me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re amazing and beautiful and you have the biggest heart of anyone I know.” You can hear his smile in his voice and it makes you smile. “I know, you’re nervous about me, but I promise you that I’m not like him. I’ve been trying to show you that this entire time. You deserve someone who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated. I know he messed you up pretty bad, but I’m going to make you believe in love again.”

“I want to be with you. You make me so happy, happier than I’ve been in a long time.” You bite your lip. “Let’s do this, Jake. Let’s show the world.”

“Hell fucking yeah!”

You laugh at his outburst. “I guess we have some phone calls to make. I don’t really want my parents finding out about you in some magazine article and I should call Jane and Amanda to let them know what’s going to happen during interviews and things.”

“Okay. Well, I’m done with set today, but I was going to come back and have dinner with you. I thought we could avoid the food tent and I could grab some food from your favorite Italian place.”

“Oh my gosh! Yes! I could definitely go for their chicken parm! I don’t deserve you. You’re the best!”

He laughs. “You deserve the world. Just call me when you know what time you’ll be eating, and I’ll be there.”

“You’re the best, Jake.” You smile, petting Juno a she looks up at you.

“No problem, babe. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Talk to you later.” You hang up and enjoy the rest of your ride to set with a smile on your face.

+++

Your parents and everyone else were happy that you finally found someone that makes you happy. Jared and Gen kept pushing you to bring him home for ACL and on vacation with you all, but you told them that you would have to talk to Jake. You didn’t want to assume that he would go anywhere just yet, but you had to ask him soon. You were flying out to Texas in two weeks.

You were sitting around set between scenes, when Gen text you, asking if you had asked him yet. You bite you lip and look around. Hoping to catch sight of your boyfriend. You spot him moving to his mark as the crew around him sets up for filming. He looks over at you and smiles. Things have been going great since the photos came out. Filming was almost done, and you couldn’t wait to relax a little before you had to fly back and forth to Atlanta and Vancouver. You were nervous to ask Jake about ACL and Greece.

You stood up from your chair and walked over to him, while everyone was still setting. When you’re close enough, he reaches out and puts his hands on your hips. You both lean in for a kiss. When you pull apart you just smile at him for a moment.

“What’s up?”

“I have something to ask you.” You run your hands up his arms, until they reach his shoulders. “I’m hoping that you’ll say yes, but I’ll understand if you can’t or don’t want to.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll want to, as long as you will be with me.”

“Of course, I will be, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

“Just spit it out.” He laughs.

“Jared and Gen have been bugging me for weeks, to ask you if you would come to Texas and Greece with me. Every year we go to this music festival in Texas and we usually take a trip, sometimes with the kids and sometimes without. This year the kids are staying with Gen’s parents for the week. I’ve arranged my schedule enough that I’ll be able to keep up the tradition, before I have to fly back here and finish filming those last two weeks. Then after filming they’ll be flying here on their way home from Rome and Jared and I are going to fly back to Vancouver together. And then-“

“Y/N. Breathe, babe.” He cuts off your rambling.

“Sorry, I just have everything planned out. I had it all planned out before I met you and I know it’s last minute to ask you, but I was nervous.”

“When are you supposed to leave?”

You scrunch your face. “Two weeks.”

He huffs out a breath. “Two weeks?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have asked you earlier.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll have to check my schedule, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything going on for a little while. We won’t start the press tour until December and we are almost done filming. You said we would get back before the last two weeks of filming?” You nod. “I’m sure I can work something out. I know I can make it to Texas for sure, but I’ll have to let you know about Greece.”

You smile. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I would get to spend some more time with my best girl, why wouldn’t I want to go?”

You wrap your arms around his neck and hug him close. “I seriously don’t deserve you.” He laughs and hugs you close before the director calls everyone to their spots. “I’m gonna go call Genevieve! I’ll book your ticket too! Oh my gosh, this is great!” You kiss him once, twice, three times before running off. His laughter following you.

+++

Before you knew it, you and Jake were walking through the airport, looking for Jared after grabbing your luggage.

“I don’t know how we haven’t seen him. He’s the tallest guy I know and yet, I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Well, he’s here somewhere. We’ll find him.”

You scroll through your contacts until you find Jared’s name and call him. Putting the phone to your ear, you wait for him to pick up as you continue to look around.

“Hello?”

“Where are you? We just picked up our luggage. You said you were going to meet us by the carousel.”

“I’m coming. I thought I had found the perfect parking spot, but then found out that someone parked their scooter in it. Who drives a scooter to the airport? I’m walking through the doors now.”

You turn towards the entrance and spot his beanie covered head. “Oh, I see you!” You wave you arm that was holding the phone, in the air, since the other one was holding Juno. He catches the movement out of the corner of his eye and turn towards you. A big smile gracing his face and you both hang up. You speed walk towards him, careful not to lose Jake or your luggage.

“I forgot who short you were! How are you smaller than Gen?” He goes to pull you into a hug, but you punch him in the gut. He laughs and drags you towards him. “It’s great to see you, Bug.”

“I missed you! London has been great, but nothing beats Texas!”

“Well let’s get you home.” He turns towards Jake and sticks his hand out. “Hey man. It’s great to see you.”

“Likewise. Thanks for letting me tag along with Y/N.”

“No problem. We wouldn’t leave her alone until she asked you.”

“Okay. Let’s get home to Gen. I want to see the kids!”

“Alright. Calm down.” The men laugh as Jared takes your luggage from you and Jake wraps his am around your waist and pulls you close, careful not to jostle the husky puppy too much.

+

You all spent the first couple of days just hanging around with the kids and swimming. Jared’s parents watched the kids one night, so the four of you could go out. Finally, ACL came, and you were beyond excited. You couldn’t wait to share the experience with Jake and to have a blast with your best friends.

After getting dressed and eating breakfast, you all pile in Gen’s SUV. Halfway to the field, Jared glances at you in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Bug?”

You meet his gaze. “Yeah, Moose?”

“I thought I should warn you that uh-that Jensen and Danneel will be there.” He watches for a reaction and kind of surprised when you don’t explode.

“I kind of figured he would, Jare. He goes every year, just like I do. He’s not going to take this from me. I brought him to his first festival.”

“I know. I just wanted to let you know. That way there wouldn’t be any surprises, like with the lake.”

You huff a laugh. “He’s not gonna rain on my parade. I’ve got my man, I’ve got my cute puppy, and I’ve got my best friends. I’m going to have the best time ever.” You smile at him. A genuine smile.

He smiles back. His eyes crinkling in the mirror. “That’s my girl.”

“He is going to ask questions though. He already has been, but we haven’t told him much about you guys.” Gen pipes up from her spot in the passenger seat, turning back to look at you and Jake.

“Not like it’s any of his business, but he’ll get all the answers he needs today.” Jake puts his two-cents in, putting his hand on your knee as you nod.

The rest of the drive is filled with lighter conversation until Jared is being directed into a parking spot. You all climb out and meet at the trunk. Jake takes Juno from you, giving you a break from holding her. You open your backpack and pull out headphones that you often see infants wear during loud events. Juno was mostly deaf, and you didn’t want to damage it anymore than it was. You slipped the headphones over her ears and laugh at how cute she is, the others laughing with you.

“Poor girl, but this is for the best. You know that she would have been fine if you had left her with Arlo.” Jared says behind you.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know where she is, and I don’t know how she would do. She’s always with me, it wouldn’t be right to leave her at home. Plus, she still chews things up every now and then. We would get home and find her asleep in one of your shoes, Moose. Probably passed out from all of the fumes.”

“Ha ha ha. My feet don’t stink.”

“Sure, they don’t sweetie.” Gen jokes with him as she rubs his arm in affection.

You all laugh before moving with the crowd, VIP tickets within your grips. Your own spot carved out in the crowd. A little pavilion near the main stage, loaded with food and drinks and a couple of couches and chairs.

Once your all settled, Jake puts Juno down and you clip her leash on her collar. She’s bigger to the point, that you don’t have to worry about people stepping on her, if she walks around on her own. As long as she keeps her headphones on, she should be pretty happy. You’re excited to see all the people and listen to all the great bands that are lined up for the weekend.

You turn to Jake as he offers you an open beer before opening his own. “Let’s go walk around. I want to see what food trucks are here! Last year, they had the best taco truck and if it’s here again, I’m so getting some.” He laughs but takes your hand.

“Lead the way.”

You turn to Gen and Jared. “Are you guys coming?”

Jared looks apprehensive as he looks from Gen to you. “We’re gonna wait for Jensen. You know he always gets lost when he first gets here.”

You slump a little but understand. “Okay. We’ll be back soon.”

He gives you a nod and Gen gives you a smile, before you and Jake head out into the crowd.

You both know it’s unavoidable that you will be spotted, so you just enjoy each other and everything around you. Jake wrapping his arm around your waist and pulling you into him as you wrap an arm behind his back. You lean up and kiss his, careful not to bump the brims of your baseball hats.

“You’re going to love it. This is by far the best music festival around.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great. Just being here with you, already makes it the best.” He smiles down at you as you laugh.

“God, you’re so cheesy.”

“Yeah, but you love it.”

You just laugh and nod. You’re both spotted by a small group of girls. They shyly move towards you both, excitement on their faces, phones being pulled form their back pockets. You give them a smile and wave as the move in front of you.

“Oh my gosh! I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d get to meet you here!”

“You’re both here! So, it’s true! You guys are so cute together!”

“This is amazing! Can we get a picture with you guys?”

The girls throw questions around as pictures are being taken and you both sign their lanyards. You answer questions as easy as possible, without giving too much away. You leave them with smiles and waves.

“Does that happen every time?”

“Every year, but we ask for it when we come out here. The fans in the area have pretty much learned that we come every year, so they are always on the lookout for us.”

“And it doesn’t keep you from coming?”

“No, are fans are everything to us. Without them, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. We would have been done a long time ago. So, we never turn them away.”

“I guess, I never really understood that. I’ve never had to really deal with this.”

“I guess it’s different being on a long running tv show, then being in movies.”

“That and my fan following is usually older. I haven’t done a lot of family friendly movies.”

“Well if you stick around long enough, then you’ll fit in really quick.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He draws you in closer and kisses your temple.

+++

After walking around for a while, you both decide to head back to your pavilion. You’re anxious to see Jensen again. Not because you care what he thinks, but because you haven’t seen him since Comic-Con and things were tense. You know he brought Danneel with him and it’s going to be awkward, you both brought your significant others, and this will be the first time that anything like this has happened.

Juno stops outside of the cemented platform to use the bathroom and Jake takes her leash so that you can move inside, while he stands with her. You don’t see Jared and Gen or even Jensen when you move in. You see that familiar head of red hair. Her back towards you as she looks through the snacks that were provided for you. You try to act like it doesn’t bother you that she’s here, like she didn’t help destroy your relationship.

You move through the area and she hears someone behind her and turns. For the first time, you both stare at each other.

“Oh. I didn’t know you were going to be here.” She tells you.

Keeping calm, you tell her, “I come every year. I’m the one the introduced Jensen to it.”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, he’s good about that.”

“Look, I don’t want this to be awkward, but-“

“Just-Let’s not even say anything. I’ve never talked to you. I might have moved on finally, but that I’m not still pissed off. I’m here to have a good time with my best friends and my boyfriend. You’re here to have a good time with Jensen. Let’s keep it that way, by keeping that subject locked away. I’m not saying we’ll be best friends forever, but we can act civil towards each other.”

She studies you for a moment before nodding and turning towards the fridge. “Would you like a beer?”

“Sure. Can I have two please? I’m sure Jake will want one once he comes inside with Juno.”

“Juno?” She turns her head to look at you as she pulls the beers from the fridge.

“My dog.”

“Oh. I thought-“

“I know.” You huff a sarcastic laugh. “Don’t worry, he’s not hiding any children from you.”

She turns and hands the beers to you as voices rise behind you. Laughter and male voices talking over each other before three tall man and a tiny woman move in. The four-missing people from your party all come to a stop when they see you and Danneel standing close to the fridge. You take the beers from her and move towards Jake after he lets Juno off of her leash. You hand him one of the beers and he pulls you into his side.

“Everything okay?” He asks as you give him a small smile.

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” You tell him as you cast your gaze over to Dee one more time before shifting your eyes to the others. “Hi Jensen.”

He clears his throat. “Hey, Y/N/N” He says before moving over towards Danneel and taking the beer she offers him.

+++

As the night goes on, the tension becomes less and less. Everyone acts as if nothing is wrong for the sake of each other. You and Jake standing in the crowd listening to all the different band and singers playing their hit songs. Pictures being taken often with fans. Jared and Jensen taking their fair number of pictures with fans, just like you. The three of you often squeezing together for pictures with fans. Letting the alcohol flow through you, keeping everything at ease and everyone happy. You dance with Gen and make nice conversation with Danneel. You all look like the happiest group of friends to the crowd around you.

Eventually the last performer finishes their set and the crowd starts to thin. You always book rooms in the hotel down the street and decide to walk over instead of risking your lives, by one of you trying to drive.

You and Jake get settled into your room. You had already taken a shower and was making a call down to the front desk to see if you could still order anything from the kitchen. When they give you the answer you were looking for, you call down to the kitchen and order a cart full of food and sweets. Everything sounding great in your alcohol fussed mind.

You’re finishing up your order, when the bathroom door opens and out walks Jake in just a towel. You hang up and just watch him move around the room. Seeing him still damp from his shower, hair a mess from being towel dried, it made your stomach flutter. It’s not like you two hadn’t been intimate. You were grown adults with needs. But seeing him look so relaxed around you, so fit. It did something to a girl.

You stand up from the couch across the room and move towards him as his fixes his shirt to pull over his head. As he’s getting ready to pull it on, you pull it from his hands, causing him to look at you. One look from you and he already knows what’s going through your mind. He turns and gathers you in his arms as you throw yours around his neck and pull him in for a deep kiss. His clothes being forgotten and yours soon falling to the floor, before you both fall into bed.

The perfect ending to the perfect day.

@liebemeineslebensx @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @cookiechipdough @maralisa124 @spnfamily-thewincheste @tmiships4life @greyeyedsmile14 @aomi-nabi @keikoraventeller @captaindorit0 @frozenhuntress67 @nerdygirlwithacrush @mrsdeanfuckingwinchester @everyfallentear @jxnnxbrxwn @staradroned @parkeret @mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk @mml232 @sing4mejensen @samuelwillliamwinchester @voideandotherstuff @supersupernaturalfan @sherlockedtash88 @smoothdogsgirl @cap-just-said-language @frietjemeloen @31shadesofbrown @deansbbysblog @linki-locks11 @missy-bosstown01 @mirandaaustin93 @hiraethclaire @love-my-not-natural-babies @nickigv @flamencodiva @sexykitten235 @supernatural300 @gh0stgurl @holylulusworld @heyitscam99 @atlas-of-the-world @colie87 @woodworthti666

[zoebulukaki]

Visit to the Lady Lever Gallery

This was my first visit to the Lady Lever Gallery and I must say I was extremely excited to see the ‘Scapegoat’ by William Holman Hunt...it does not disappoint! However, as I have already spoken about the painting in another blog I will try (not making any promises) to not write about it again. 

The first painting we looked at was by John Everett Millais and is called the ‘The Black Brunswickers’. The narrative follows a young English woman trying to prevent her German lover from responding to his call to arms before the battle of Waterloo. The painting on the wall showing Napoleon crossing the St Bernard Pass, was intended to locate the scene within the Napoleonic wars, however according to the gallery only confused critics into suspecting French sympathies within the women, or the painting. In this artwork we can truly see the pristine technique held by Millais through the woman’s silver satin dress, as the realistic portrayal of it makes you believed you could reach out and touch it. In the corner we can see a small dog begging his master, perhaps a further illustration of the women’s attempt to keep her lover from leaving. There is great emotion kept within the characters, as the conflict between a soldier's duty and a women’s love has a universal sentimental appeal. 

The ‘Daphnephoria’ by Frederic Leighton was quite eye catching, as the size of the painting makes it almost impossible to look at it as a whole, as well as the intricate composition of the characters. The Daphnephoria was a festival held in ancient Thebes in honour of Apollo, the god of sun and music. The darkness of the trees, brightness of the marble and clear sharp Mediterranean light adds to the solemnity of the occasion. All the characters in the painting are placed very carefully, making every gesture, attitude, dress, direction and size to work harmoniously. In this painting we could place a LGBT reading, due to the way the men are painted and the knowledge we have of Leightons life. He never married and from the dairies that have been recently examined he had a very prolonged corresponding with a male friend. This would infer a partner but of course the artist would have never been able to admit that as he lived in the era were Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for such an act.  

This painting by William Etty is technically not one we went through in the lecture, however it the one my classmate and I  choose to do a presentation on due to how much we liked it. This (second to the ‘Scapegoat’) is one of my favourite painting, probably because I learned about this story in school and so it reminds me of my childhood in Greece. The painting is called the ‘The Judgement of Paris’ and follows the handing of the golden apple to Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, in preference to her rivals Hera and Athena, which then leads to the Trojan Wars. In this depiction we can see various iconography which would suggest who the characters are; for example, the Three Graces can be seen behind Athena, Hera and Aphrodite, they are the personification of grace and beauty and are often the handmaid's of Venus (Roman equal to Aphrodite), as well as the presence of Cupid (which has been depicted being near Venus in many other paintings). On the bottom right we can see two peacocks, which can be  associated with Juno the goddess of marriage (Roman equal to Hera), and hailed for her unbreakable loyalty to her husband. Furthermore, the wings on his helmet would indicate that the figure laying back is Hermes god of tarde, wealth, luck, fertility, sleep, language, thieves, travel and above all, the herald and messenger of the gods. 

In conclusion, this lecture was a delight. Getting to travel into galleries in order to actually look at the painting you are learning about  is an incredibly way to really understand in what way the artist wanted to depict a story and the characters involved. 

[missjennmurray]

TopShop Interview

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is the film everyone is talking about right now and for good reason: it’s got a star-studded cast, incredible visual production which brings the fairytale land to life with exquisite costumes, as well as epic set design and a captivating plot enriched with valuable life lessons we could all learn from. Can’t wait to watch? Ahead of the film’s release this Friday, we sat down with actor Jenn Murray to talk about what it was like to play Queen Ingrith’s devoted and devious right hand man, how it feels to star alongside the likes of Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer and why this movie is so different from the earlier Disney classics…

First things first, how did you get into acting?

I went to drama school in Dublin and when I was finishing my third year I got a movie called Dorothy Mills with a French director – it was the lead role and it was a dream come true. That was my ‘in’ into the film industry and it kind of went from there!

Before Maleficent, you’ve starred in both Fantastic Beasts movies – is there something about this genre that particularly appeals to you?

No, to be honest I’m just attracted to great story telling and great writing so it’s just kind of shaped out like that. I’ve been pretty lucky with people like Samantha Moreton or Eddie Redmayne, Angelina Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer… I just navigate towards people and films of high quality and hope for the best that I get the part!

What was it like starring alongside Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer in this movie?

Really really fantastic! Angelina and Michelle are very smart women and they’re really fantastic actors! I’ve watched them for so many years and you hear so many different things about them, their career choices and all sorts of other things that they’re involved in and then when you’re on set with them you’re reminded that they’re exceptional at their craft too. That’s why they’re at the top level because they’re really really good actors and they both love acting. Also, it was just a real education and inspiration to be around women that were intelligent and graceful and private and treated everybody with respect – it’s always good to see that at the top level.

Do you feel like you’ve learnt anything in particular from them?

It wasn’t so much that I learned from them, more that it reiterated what I hoped – that even though you can be very successful you can still be very graceful. The most intelligent people I have worked with always ask questions and they’re really interested in other people. I find that with David Yates, the Director of Fantastic Beasts. He wasn’t selective with who he took advice from he was always wanting more inspiration, more creativity and I find the most confident artists are open like that. It’s a generosity thing, I think. It’s why we all get into it in the first place because we want to communicate and collaborate. Sometimes acting can become quite self-involved so it’s really good to be around that energy.

Maleficent was originally inspired by Sleeping Beauty but in this sequel you’ve been introduced as a new character. How did it feel coming into the fairytale world and where did you draw your inspiration from?

Well it’s always amazing to come into a film that is already established but of course Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning and Sam Riley (who were in the previous film) and also others like Juno Temple were all very welcoming and open too! And with regards to getting into character, my process of drawing inspiration is the same for every role I take on: I sort of start from the ground up and think about what they would eat in the morning, what they would read, what they would think about and what music they would listen to. Then I look at poetry and I put images from certain films in front of me. For Gerda, I was quite drawn to Kill Bill, Tarantino’s movies and characters that are quite threatening and unpredictable but don’t say a lot for example Jack Nicholson in The Departed or Jeremy Renner in The Town. I’ve already watched these films so I draw on these things that have already moved me. Also, when you work with an amazing costume designer like Ellen (she’s the greatest and designed the costumes for Speed) you already feel very protected and supported in your character. Plus, the sets have been built by the most amazing production designers and you’re around these actors who are all looking in your eyes, they’re invested and they’re talented. It all comes together.

How would you describe your character, Gerda, in Maleficent?

Silent but deadly. Very focused and immune to distraction. She’s devoted to Queen Ingrid, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She doesn’t ask questions, just follows orders and she’s ruthless. It’s such a privilege to play her, she’s the only woman in an entirely male army and she’s at the head of it. So for a director like Joachim Ronning to give me this role is so exciting because I just didn’t think that I would be cast in that role – like, I’m five foot two! Suddenly I’m being dressed in armour and trained in weaponry…

There has been a lot of talk about the relevance of some of the classic Disney films to a modern audience and about whether the original Disney princesses are positive role models for a young audience. Do you think Maleficent stands apart from these earlier stories?

Yes, I think these are fantastic, modern role models! It’s not like it has a message that’s hitting you over the head but for little girls there are three women are at the lead of this film and they’re multi-faceted so they are positive and negative. Nobody is perfect in the film and nobody is perfect in real life but they are in control of their life and they’re allowed to go for what they want without feeling apologetic or that they’re ambition is shameful. I feel like for a young audience going to see this film, it’s inspiring for them to know that they can be the centre of their own story line. I feel very proud to be part of that kind of filmmaking.

There’s also an important lesson in there about communication – if you are in your own world on your screens, which so many people are, it can lead you to think you are part of a community but it can actually be quite isolating because people are quite lonely. Then if you don’t communicate with your neighbours and ask questions, it can build fear and that can result in sort of closed mindsets which isn’t a positive thing. That message about the importance of communication is sprinkled through the film which I think is very important today too.

If you could work with anyone in the future, who would be your dream co-star?

Sam Rockwell or Sigourney Weaver – those two would be dreams. Or Al Pacino…I could go on and on and on actually but let’s just say Sam Rockwell because he makes really interesting choices. He doesn’t do the same thing and he seems very generous. When you see him in scenes it’s like he’s giving the scene to the other actor. I noticed that with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County: he once said she would turn her face away from camera so that his face could be exposed in an embrace and that’s the most beautiful thing about acting! It’s sharing and it’s serving your scene partner, it’s not about you. So I like working with actors like that because it’s about the story and how we elevate that together.

Can you tell us anything about anything you’ve got coming up in the future?

It’s a really surreal moment right now – you work for years and try to make good choices. You think you have control over your career but you don’t because you’re an actor and that’s just the reality. You’re just always hoping for good material. Thankfully I’m in this position where I’m offered these really really exciting opportunities and I feel incredibly fortunate. So I’m just trying to enjoy this moment for now and then I’ll make a move after.

Source: TopShop Blog

[post-itpenny]

(lap) for Peregrine and Phoebe

Thistle

This turned out so much longer than I planned and is quite full of angst and a good few flashbacks. Enjoy!

Vespers always loved visiting the D’Vitt family home. So much life and family filled the place, whenever he visited even before marrying Cosmos he always felt so welcomed my Stripes and Mama Carol. Vespers could guarantee whenever he came he could feel excepted and at ease.

Except today.

Vespers was a nervous wreck, pacing the floor and giving updates as one of the few allowed inside the room. The baby was coming.

More than once Stripes had to give Vespers a firm shake just to make sure the poor guy had not passed out standing up and Maggie had to stop him from demanding a fifth cup of coffee to steady his nerves. Eventually he did not leave the room and they all knew it must be time.

So everyone waited.

Including the three who had just arrived.

Peregrine did not like the D’Vitt family home. So noisy and full of people. He kept getting odd looks and did not understand why the rudeness. He did not feel welcomed in the least bit.

Juno quickly left to go find someone who could give an update and Lyra was pulled aside by Lydia.

Peregrine frowned, he had never really been one for intermixing however it would be hypocritical to say otherwise. He had not originally approved of his sister-in-law’s choice of mate but Lyra would have defended her twin to the bitter end. If he was being honest in the end of it all came his nephew whom Peregrine has to admit he had a soft spot for, the whole family did really.

Peregrine sat in a chair away from the other’s, not really wishing to speak with anyone. They were all caught in their own conversations anyways. Maggie walked into the room and took one look at him before bolting back out. At one point his sister of all people came into the room. Magpie gave a small smile and moved as if to come sit by him, Peregrine in turn glared, he had no desire to be anywhere near her still. Not if he could help it.

Magpie seemed to deflate a little before a tall woman took her elbow and guided Magpie off to another group.

Peregrine tried his best to ignore his sister’s chatter. How did she fit so well here?

Peregrine left the room without a glance towards Magpie, soon finding himself in an empty hallway with a single chair across from a mirror.

Peregrine slumped down into the chair with a huff, looking across at the clown that stared back, his reflection. Peregrine grimaced, he couldn’t stand his reflection, couldn’t stand the scare that ran up one side of his face. He had Magpie to thank for that.

She had gone mad, there was no other way to describe the thing that was charging at him. Magpie was a thousand things at once and all of them raving mad. Scales, fur, eyes, teeth, many legs, or only wings, as if she was every creature in existence but then none at all. Peregrine braced himself as she crashed into him. Every sinew of muscle fighting to keep her in place.

There was a hand waving in Peregrine’s face.

“Hey there! What’s got you over here all by yourself?”

Peregrine looked up to the smiling face of Aster. They had not really ever talked though he had heard from Vespers via his phone calls to Juno and Lyra that he was a clown of cheerful disposition and more importantly Vespers’ father-in-law.

Peregrine straightened up, “I’m waiting, same as everyone else of course.”

Aster chuckled as he scratched the back of his head, “I mean by yourself though. You seem like a guy with something on your mind.”

Peregrine glanced away, “nothing is on my mind that makes for conversation.”

Aster’s smile seemed to falter a little, “well if you would like you can join us if you would like. I’m sure it won’t be too much longer of a wait. That’s a nice tattoo by the way.”

Peregrine looked down at his hand, the outline of a thistle on his left hand. “It’s the family tattoo…. the baby will be allowed one…. when it’s ready of course. You have to earn it, a symbol of adulthood.”

“But Maggie has one doesn’t she? Jelly told me she did.”

Peregrine flinched, “my sister vouched for her” he sneered.”

He found the red headed thing under Juno’s bed. He had heard his daughter talking to someone and opened the bedroom door to find her. The thing reeked of Magpie, how? She was so human yet so not. A deadlight in a human body, an abomination.

Peregrine closed his eyes at the memory. That was the first time Vespers had ever argued with anyone actually. The first time and it was with his father. Peregrine learning his children had been visiting their aunt, sneaking her ward into his home. He felt so betrayed.

Juno had enough respect to listen to her father. Vespers wouldn’t speak to him for a week after.

“You don’t particularly care for your sister do you?” Aster questioned.

Peregrine snorted, “not particularly no I don’t. I see you all do however.”

Aster’s smile wavered again. So much venom in Peregrine’s voice, so much bitterness.

“I understand you have a history, but today is not about that, isn't it?”

Peregrine looked to Aster in surprise, seeming like he was somewhat offended.

“It’s not about any of us,” Aster continued, “it’s bout the boys. We’re going to be grandfather’s Peri- well I already am one but I get to be a grandfather to someone new!”

Peregrine flinched at the nickname. Only three had ever been allowed to call him that, and one of them was dead now.

Aster brightened, reaching up one sleeve to produce of all things a thistle. It was beautiful in color, a rich purple.

“Nobility, courage, and loyalty-“

“In the face of treachery.” Peregrine finished, “how did you know?”

Aster smiled and handed Peregrine the flower. “Well flowers are a thing for me. Got to pass that down to my son Pepper, Cosmos takes after his mom a bit more if I’m honest. What do you think this one will be like? The baby I mean.”

“....... I just hope she’s not like her great aunt.”

“Oh.” Aster said, unsure how to really respond.

“No I mean my sister’s talent for creation runs in the family. Our elder will actually be visiting soon I expect, you’ll see what I mean then….. most of them die young, the one’s like him….. or just… are lost.”

“Was Magpie lost? Was that the problem?”

Peregrine was struggling to hold the thing that was once Magpie in place. The ground cracked around them, the sky seemed to warp and change colors like a glass prism. Around them were loud booms like a crack of sonic thunder and he found himself wondering in that moment if she was trying to tear the world apart in her insanity. But he had to stop her, keep her from getting to their father again. His broken body behind Peregrine as their mother held tightly to him. Claws reached out and raked down his face, it felt like fire burning into his skin.

Aster had a hand on Peregrine’s shoulder, but he did not say anything. Peregrine shook in anger. He knew their parents forgave her but why? She ruined their father’s leg, she tried to kill him. Their mother-

Peregrine had a mouth full of dust, gravel cutting into his hands. She towered over their parents, reaching to take hold of their mother’s mask and pull it off.

Magpie shrieked in pain. The skin of her hands burning black as if set on fire. It was a good thing really, it brought her back to her senses, but not before the world was crashing down on them.

His best friend died that day. He had come to help bring Magpie home, and he died.

All his children did was cry to see their aunt.

His son grew to be bitter with him, leave home and visit that killer whenever he wished. Feed her and keep her company in a prison when she should have vanished to nothing.

But now here she was. Magpie was living and happy. His son couldn’t stand him, his wife was at the end of her patience, his daughter going against his wishes at every turn.

Peregrine looked up to the mirror in front of him and wondered when he had started crying.

“I guess she was lost.” He said at long last.

“But she’s found now,” Aster observed.

Peregrine gave a deep sigh, feeling the weight of many long years with it. “Yes….. I guess she is.”

Peregrine stood up and smoothed his hair before frowning at his reflection. “I need a haircut.”

“Or this,” Aster said as he offered Peregrine a hair tie.

Yes that would work.

Lyra, as it turned out, liked his ponytail. Peregrine has been brought back to the others by Aster. Lydia and her mother-in-law having gone to help with the delivery. Peregrine was not one for conversation, he used to be he vaguely remembered. Far more than Magpie who seemed to be eager to be friends with everyone. Peregrine eyed the long red gloves she wore that hid her scars from the world. He felt a twinge of jealousy, he could never hide his.

Vespers eventually emerged looking as if on cloud nine, and covered in coffee.

“I thought you were cut off?” Juno questioned.

Vespers grinned as his wings unfolded and he proceeded to unbutton his shirt from the back. It was a clever trick when a normal shirt was not an easy option.

Vespers took his shirt off to reveal a thistle tattooed directly over his heart. A member of the D’Vitt’s questioned the tattoo before Juno proudly pulled her own shirt up just enough to see the thistle that graced the side of her ribcage. Magpie took off her own jacket to show the thistle on her shoulder and Cosmos’ sister convinced Maggie to unbutton her dress just enough to show the thistle that was etched up her spine.

Peregrine could see just the edge of a nasty scar on Maggie’s back. He looked away to Lyra and his eyes fell on the high collar of her dress, hiding the scars on her neck.

Peregrine, in that single moment, felt ... ashamed.

He had done that, not directly but it was ultimately his fault. Magpie might have scarred herself and him. But he, Peregrine, has caused scars of his own.

And Magpie had the decency to be sorry about her’s….. was she the bigger person then? When did that happen?

“Dad show yours!” Vespers demanded.

Peregrine looked at his son and was surprised to see a smile being directed at him. No anger, no persecution, his son was genuinely smiling at him.

Peregrine held out his hand to show off his tattoo. Five thistles, there was something about it that made him feel a swell of pride.

Vespers as it turned out, was there to bring back the grandfathers.

It was a girl.

A tiny little girl that was curled up in her father’s arms. Peregrine cried for the second time that day.

Later, after Blackwood had come and gone along with everything that was a result of his visit. Peregrine found himself with his granddaughter in his arms, resting in his lap. They had named her Phoebe, it was perfect. And for the first time in a very, very long time. Peregrine felt at peace.