#let’s just say the prerequisite to the hallway happens

[mymitochondriaforpresident]

I was really looking forward to the continuation of the Wille Sweater storyline, as well as the third installment of the Fish Trilogy. :(

[hislittleflower-throughconcrete]

I don’t know yet whether I will homeschool my future kids or put them in traditional schools - I am leaning towards homeschooling due to how messed up the school system is, the traumatic experiences I had there, what wayward paths kids get led down by peers, etc. Not to mention the massive potential for abuse and violence in traditional schools.

But I have a theory why most people respond to homeschooling with “well you don’t want them to be unsocialized or weird,” I think they’re saying something different. It’s easy to show them that homeschooling kids are often more social than kids in public school because they have more time to be, most people don’t know about co-ops, etc. 

But it doesn’t matter because I think they are trying to say “kids must have the shared trauma of enduring school in order to form the bonds born out of that trauma and so they can understand what their peers experienced and understand how the *system* works.”

They’re saying “How will kids who are homeschooled and innocent know how to interact with and form bonds kids who are shaped by the trauma of the school system? If they don’t experience harshness and unfairness from their teachers, how will they know the world is harsh and unfair? If they don’t experience bullying, how will they know that that’s the way the world is? If they don’t have lockdown drills, how will they know the world is a dangerous and scary place? If they don’t experience harassment over petty rules and dress codes, how will they learn that people in power use it just to lord it over others? If they don’t have panic attacks due to stress, how will they know that authority figures don’t care about your well-being, just what you produce? If there isn’t an unhealthy focus on grades, how will they know that the process of something doesn’t matter, only the result? If girls don’t have obscenities yelled at them in the hallways, how will they know that their bodies are viewed as commodities and not as a component of a person with dignity?”

And their bottom line message is “homeschooling is shielding kids from a cruel, uncaring world that waits to devour them, destroy their innocence and hope - you ae setting kids up for failure if you try to pretend the world is sunshine and rainbows. And then when you do set them free into the world, how will they ever begin to relate to peers who have been through so much, grown up too fast, have had their hearts hardened and weighted down by it? Do you want your kids to be well adjusted healthy happy weird???”

The answer is, I as a parent do want to let them learn about the world - but from someone who loves them. I want them to learn about the harshness of society, but not through traumatizing experiences that are thrown at them before they have the tools to cope with them. I want to build up their coping skills, allow them to focus on being children at their appropriate stage of development, and then introduce them to the horrors of the world, but with me at their side - to talk with them, process things with them, devise strategies to mitigate negative outcomes so that when they will experience them firsthand, they have the tools to cope and come out the other side successfully.

Everyone talks about their childhood trauma, but no one talks about how experiencing trauma is not a prerequisite for growing up. Everyone just accepts it as if it is a necessary right of passage. I don’t - at least not to the degree it occurs. I am not naive enough to believe I will shield my kids from all trauma, but I’m not going to just throw them to the wolves and say “here 5 year old kid, get used to it, there’s more where that came from” either. I don’t want to stick them in a system that does not care about them as people, cares more about grades than learning, more about rules than character, and cares more about cranking out robots rather than creating thriving human beings. As a healthcare professional who works with children who are victims of trauma and whose goal is to give them coping skills to deal with trauma, there has to be a better way. I would rather have happy, healthy kids who learned in their own ways their own paces, were prepared for difficult situations before they happened, and taught coping skills on how to deal with them. If they are considered “weird” because they don’t have a porn addiction at 11, I pray my children are weird.

[shoichee]

Hi, congrats on 100!! Could I please request 27 for Kasamatsu? Thank you very much, and good luck on your finals! :D

Kasamatsu x Reader

27. “If we get caught I’m blaming you”

Word Count: 4416

prompt list here

Note: the Replace novel starring the Kaijō team was a HUGE inspiration for this, and dear anon who requested this, I hope you’re still around;; I’m sorry it took so long EEEEE But yes! I did okay on my finals anon! I hope you’re doing well too~

@knb-kreations

»»—————　☼　—————««

“If we get caught, I’m blaming you.”

“Look it’ll be quick… n-no one’s here as far as I know.”

“B-But…”

“J-Just… be quiet for a s-second, okay?”

“H-H-Huh?! Ah…”

Huh? Kise stopped himself before leaning closer to the edge of the building, slightly doubting his ears. Wasn’t that Senpai’s voice? With someone else…? Alone?

“Oh come on, why are you even block the wa—oh, ohhhhhh, are there any cute girls nearby?—”

“Shh,” Kise hissed, harshly waving his hand over Moriyama’s face to give a signal to stay quiet. “Listen…”

“A-Are you done, Kasamatsu-san…?”

“I-I-I… uh, just…um…”

Kise and Moriyama shared a look of shock… then registration… and finally a look of that spelled nothing but trouble. Immediately, they both simultaneously crouched to squat and share their “realizations” together in hushed whispers.

“Quick—when was the last time Senpai talked to anyone outside of basketball?”

“Hmmmmmm, certainly none of the girls I’ve tried to approach.”

“No, that’s obviously not what I meant!” Kise said, facepalming. “Anyone in your year that he’s been talking to? Maybe anyone in class?” Moriyama continued to hum in deep concentration before he lifted his index finger in a “eureka” moment.

“He’s been talking to (y/n)-san in the hallways recently!” he quietly exclaims, pounding his fist against his open palm to emphasize. “Though their conversations have sounded nothing remotely romantic. No charm, I say.” He struck a pose after to imply that he himself was the charismatic individual.

“.... Right,” he deadpanned, expecting nothing less from his quite… eccentric upperclassman. “Welp, now that we narrowed it down who he might be talking to, I don’t wanna spy on them… but I’m really curious if it’s really this (y/n)-san you mentioned.”

“Well,” Moriyama pouted with a grumble. “One peek wouldn’t hurt.”

“I guess you’re right…”

Kise cautiously scans his surroundings and gauges the situation “clear” to slowly peer from behind the corner of the building, where both of them had been seeking shelter from for the past several minutes. Moriyama follows suit, poking his head out just underneath Kise to see.

Kasamatsu’s back mostly covered your figure, but the view of what was happening did not slip by either Kaijō players’ eyes. He had his arms partially around your head while you were pressed up against his chest. You were gripping onto his loose blazer on his sides to presumably stabilize yourself while Kasamatsu was… fiddling with something on top of your hair? Even so, there’s no denying that the both of you were currently very, very physically close.

“Look… d-does it really take that long to take out petals from hair strands?” you mumbled, looking up at Kasamatsu’s face while trying not to move your head to avoid disrupting his “handiwork.” “I can do this myself....”

“W-W-Well, you can’t risk yourself being unkempt when you go back to class.” Kasamatsu gave a poor attempt at trying to lecture you, judging from his stammers and the way he slightly turns his head to the side to avoid your curious scrutiny. “It’s more thorough this… way. It’s the w-week where these blossoms fall rampantly… you have to be careful where you’re walking under…” In turning his face slightly towards Kise’s and Moriyama’s direction, his exposed flushed face puts the cherry blossom trees around them to shame.

So that’s what he was doing. Kise narrowed his eyes in pity at his captain, and Moriyama expressed a similar expression at Kasamatsu’s struggles. The poor captain’s hands were shaking non-stop. Not only that, he’s been darting his eyes everywhere since you’ve been gazing up at him from below. No wonder he’s been standing there unable to quickly pluck off the petals.

“Should we leave our captain alone to let him lead his own destiny?”

“What are you even talking about, Moriyama-se—”

“W-Whoa!! What a(l)e you [guys doing] he(l)e? Why a(l)e you sneaking a(l)ound (r)ike that?”

Kise and Moriyama instantly whip their heads behind in a panic, seeing a curious Hayakawa jogging up to be with his teammates, and the both instantly pounce on the poor rebound player to slap desperate hands over his mouth.

“Sh-Shhhhhhhhh!”

“Mrmpgh—?!! Lef—What [is going] on?”

“Hayakawa-senpai, please—just be quiet for a sec!”

The ruckus causes Kasamatsu and you to break out of the oddly intimate moment to face towards the direction of the sudden noises. After looking at each other questionably, albeit briefly and with stiff eye contact, there was an unspoken consensus for you two to investigate behind the corner of the building. Imagine both of you guys’ surprise when you two see a tangle of limbs between the Kaijō starter players. Kobori somehow arrived prior, separating poor Hayakawa from his two assailants.

“What… What the hell are you guys doing?!”

“Kasamatsu-senpai!! Is it t(l)ue [that you] and (y/n)-san a(l)e da—mrmf—!”

“Ahaha… we didn’t expect to see you here, Senpai~” Kise smiles with a slight grimace, hand still firm on Hayakawa’s mouth.

“It must be fate, yes surely!” Moriyama confidently speaks, flipping his fringe. Both Kise and Moriyama drop Hayakawa and straighten themselves up. “How else would we encounter such a situation as unique as this?”

“Why are you all here?” Kasamatsu sputters indignantly, but everyone (except you) saw how horrendously red his face was. You peek out from behind his back curiously, noting how Kasamatsu did a 180 in his personality compared to whenever he spoke with you.

“Kasamatsu-san… are they your teammates? You seem very close with them.”

“That’s—”

“Now, now, Kasamatsu-san… we’re only here because we were concerned where you went is all,” Kobori reassures a flustered captain. Kise only stares at him incredulously, but it seems that Kasamatsu, as usual, buys into Kobori’s naivete.

“I see…”

“Wow… the fact that your entire group came to look for you is very sweet of them,” you chime. “They really care for you, Kasamatsu-san…” When you elbow him at his ribs playfully, he immediately straightened himself like a plank.

“N-Nn.”

“Well… it’s almost time for class, so I have to go, see you all!”

“W-Wait, your… uh, hair, um—”

“I can get out the rest of the petals in the restroom, but thank you for trying! I’ll see you later!”

“R-Right…” He puts up his hand in a shy wave as you dash away, but he immediately drops it once you are out of the vicinity to hound on his teammates. “Were you watching this entire time? And stop with the looks—that’s creepy as hell!”

“Sooooooo…”

“Senpai, could it be that you and…”

“Kasamatsu-senpai! I’m (l)ooting fo(l) you!”

“N-N-No!!” he denies, ready to hold an iron fist to stop their antics, but Kobori gently holds onto his raised arm.

“Alright, let’s calm down a bit,” Kobori reasons with a placid smile. “I’m sure we’re all a bit curious because you hardly talk to anyone outside of basketball, right?”

“Kobori…”

“Have you heard of the prerequisites of the key elements of the blooming spring, Kasamatsu?” Moriyama asks, immediately drawing confused looks towards the 3rd-year.

“Moriyama-senpai, we have no clue what you’re talking about,” Kise says, asking the question that’s occupying everyone's mind.

“The key elements…! In the season of new birth, to enrich the experience, they are ‘hanami,’ ‘plums,’ and ‘spring cleaning!’ Of course, the prerequisite to these would be…”

“Please stop—”

“... to have a cute date.”

“... This is ridiculous,” Kasamatsu says irritatedly. “I’m going to class.” He immediately speed-walks to the adjacent building, leaving a scheming group behind.

“You know, if it’s true that he does like (y/n)-san, shouldn’t we help him? It’s the least we can do for our captain,” Kobori suggested.

“That sounds too troublesome,” Kise frowns, averting his gaze to also start to walk away, but Hayakawa immediately latches to his arm to pull him back.

“Don’t be (r)ike that! We have to do this as a team effo(l)t!”

“How did it become like this?!”

“Well…” Moriyama audibly ponders, stroking his chin. “If we make this successful for Kasamatsu, perhaps this can be a template for our own love lives! A sign that we will meet our fated ones this spring!”

“Yes, yes! Mo(l)iyama-senpai is abso(r)ute(r)y (l)ight!”

Oh god, Kise mentally sighs. What has he gotten himself into?

———

“Why are you guys surrounding me like that? Did you not hear me say that we have to change quickly? We can’t have the lockers for long today, considering that the janitor will come to do their routine clean-ups.”

“According to my online research,” Moriyama states, “this mint-scented deodorant will guarantee mutual attraction from the person you like.”

“Wha—?”

“Ignoring what Moriyama-senpai said,” Kise elaborates, scratching his head. “Is it really true that you like (y/n)-san? Otherwise, they’ll keep getting the wrong idea, senpai.”

Kasamatsu gapes like a fish, pulling his shirt collar as he starts to sweat and flush.

“Kise! Be a bit tactfu(r)! You do not unde(l)stand how to app(l)oach this!”

“What’s there to understand, Hayakawa-senpai!? It’s better to be direct about this, or otherwise we’ll be doing this for nothing!”

“Kise may be right,” Moriyama muses. “To be honest gives a feeling of a fresh start in the spring. Kasamatsu, you should follow this example and leave all the baggage behind to obtain a new start.” Kasamatsu could only stand there glued to his spot as his teammates continued to corner him, blocking any possible route to the locker exit.

“I… I…” he gulps. “Th—... that’s… I… like…” His voice dwindles to the softest whisper, but it easily resonates throughout the locker room, where the team had fallen silent in straining to hear and hang onto his every syllable.

“So you do like (y/n)-san,” Moriyama exclaimed, the first one to break the silence. “I see, I didn’t think they were your type.”

“H-Hey…?! Can you not say it like that!?”

“You can’t distort the truth, though. Anyways, you should chat with (y/n)-san nicely.”

“I already do!!” Kasamatsu half-shouts, but he immediately bows his head down shyly. “Wh-What’s a… good topic, you think… to talk to (y/n)-san…?”

“Huh? Just normal topics,” Kise replies, not sure what Kasamatsu meant by the question.

“What’s… normal?”

“Just talk to them like you’ve always done, senpai.”

“Y-Yes, but… h-how can I talk to hint that I l-l-l-like… never mind this is hopeless—”

“Ask them to come watch ou(l) next match [and have] (y/n)-san chee(l) fo(l) you!!”

“N-No! Anyone would run away from that!”

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted when the locker doors opened with a bang, with a very weary janitor standing with his equipment on standby. With a flurry of apologies to the janitor, Kasamatsu recovers himself and ushers everyone out before bidding him a good evening. Walking out of campus several minutes later in silence, Kobori breaks the silence.

“Why don’t we help you, Kasamatsu? Maybe through different methods you will find the best way to ask for a date. Perhaps asking for a cup of tea would be sufficient…?”

“I’m not gonna involve myself with this! No way in hell!”

“Senpai, so you’re just gonna wait and let it fester—u-uwah?!” Moriyama immediately sprays the mint-scented deodorant down Kise’s back to silence him before turning back to Kasamatsu with a straight face.

“What if someone else steals (y/n)-san away for their own elements of spring? After all, it is the perfect atmosphere for them to communicate with the person you like with pickup techniques, with high chances of success.”

“N-No way (y/n)-san would just go along with a random stranger!”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re more suave and have that particular charisma that they’re secretly weak to.”

“Moriyama-senpai, you might be going too far…”

“Kasamatsu, he’s right though, if you hang around (y/n)-san more, not only would you learn more about them, but you’ll protect them from potential unwanted people.” Kobori’s calm voice rang louder above the clamors of the starter players, and everyone immediately looked to Kasamatsu for his response. Kise mentally sighs at how Kobori always manages to misinterpret Moriyama’s words.

“Fine—but only to make sure (y/n)-san will be safe! Don’t get any funny ideas!”

———

Praise. Make them laugh. Praise. Make them laugh. Say something interesting. Say something interesting. Praise. Use a normal topic.

Kasamatsu stands at his usual spot, waiting for you to leave class and meet up with him after school. Only this time, his hands grow clammy, his thick brows deeply furrowed as he wills himself to stop shaking. His teammates spying on him from behind the hallway corner certainly wasn’t helping him either.

“I told you, there’s no way I’m gonna involve myself with this!”

“Come on, Kasamatsu,” Moriyama sighed, shaking the mint-scented deodorant on hand. “We talked about this yesterday. You agreed to this, remember?”

“It was to make sure no one weird bothers (y/n)-san! Why do I have to go along with this?!”

“So you’re fine if I hold (y/n)-san’s hand in the name of destiny…”

“To hell with that!—argh—you!”

Moriyama immediately sprayed the can on the captain’s neck, watching his spine jolt and jump before he was met with an intense glare.

“You’re the captain, right? Come on, you have to show us how it’s done. We all want to see the ways to push the boundaries of romance. Who would lead us if you don’t?”

“What kinda—”

“I ag(l)ee with Mo(l)iyama-senpai! Take the (r)ead, Kasamatsu-senpai!”

“Wouldn’t Kise be someone better to learn from if you wanted to learn how to hit on people?!”

“Senpai, I’ve never done such a thing in my entire life.”

“Kasamatsu, I’m sure Moriyama is just telling you how much we all admire and look up to you. Naturally, we want to see how our captain fares in these situations. Besides, as a team, if something happens, we’ll be there to cover up for you.”

“Well… if you put it like that Kobori… all I have to do is talk to (y/n)-san… right?”

“That’s the spi(l)it!”

“... Kasamatsu-san? Helloooooo…?”

You wave a hand repeatedly over his face, and he immediately blinks and flinches back when you pull him back to the present. He’d been standing still for the past five minutes.

“I-I-I-I…”

“Are you okay? You’re all tensed up… if something’s bothering you, wanna talk about it?”

“W-W-Well… wh-what’s… up.” Normal topic, normal topic.

“Well, nothing much really,” you say, smoothing out your blazer. “I got out the petals but barely made it to class in the nick of time!” You laugh at your own recollection, and he immediately flames a radiant flush.

“N-nn.”

“Is it me… or is our captain…. really, really stiff right now…”

“Shhh.”

You perk up at the noise and slightly tilt to the left of Kasamatsu to discern the source of the hushed whispers… only to spy a conspicuous group of basketball players. You merely raise a brow at your discovery, but you return your attention back to Kasamatsu before he notices your change in gaze. The Kaijō teammates were too busy shushing each other to notice your attention on them.

“Ah, yes! Kasamatsu-san, you just had your trigonometry test right? Those identities and proofs are always so difficult to remember… how do you think you did?”

“G-Good.”

“Wow, that was too quick of a response! I didn’t know you were that confident about it—obviously not a bad thing if you studied for it.”

“N-nn.” Come on, say something interesting. Interesting topic. Something you like. “U-U-Uh… w-weather…?”

“The weather…?” You look outside the window in confusion before you make a face of realization. “Oh! Like how’s the weather?”

“N-nn.”

“Well, it has been a bit windy with all those branches and leaves flying around, but I think it accompanies the refreshing atmosphere of spring very nicely, don’t you think?” You turn back to face Kasamatsu, who’s been slowly bowing his head down gradually more and more the entire time to avoid scrutiny.

“N-nn.”

“You’ve been… really quiet since lunch. I’m serious, if something happened… is there anything I can do to help?”

“Kasamatsu, take advantage of the elements of spring! The elements of spr—”

“Moriyama-senpai, shut… up…!”

“Hey—what are you—?”

“Wait!! Kise! Don’t push, [or else] we a(l)e gonna fa(r)(r)—!”

“Shit—”

Right on cue, the gradual leaning weight from the three players on Hayakawa at the bottom gave way, and everyone tumbled out smack dab into plain sight. Kobori was the only one who managed to break his fall and stayed behind the corner, holding onto Kise in a failed attempt to stop him from exposing his presence. Kasamatsu breaks out of his shy stupor and turns around to see awkward smiles and chuckles.

“Y-Y-You guys—?!”

“Ahaha… sorry Senpai… the floor was a bit… slippery?”

As Kasamatsu forgets about you in dropkicking Kise, you note how the other upperclassmen had their own little quirks in interacting with the captain. Seeing how assertive and gutsy he was compared to talking with you makes you feel unbelievably warm. Little did anyone know, you held a hand to your face as you turned away to let out a chortle before you collected yourself again.

“Ah, I guess I’ll be going now! Your practice will start soon right? I’m sure your friends were only waiting for you… Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, Kasamatsu-san!”

“W-Wait—” Kasamatsu drops Kise from his collar before he turns to you, but in making eye contact he immediately loses courage again. “I-I-I… s-see… you.”

“Of course!” You give a close-eyed smile before you leave.

“You missed the opportunity to set up the atmosphere,” Moriyama sighs, staring wistfully at the mint-scented deodorant. “Was the mint scent not enough?”

“It was going fine until you crashed in!”

“Now, now, there’s always a next time…”

As the upperclassmen continue to bicker and banter (mostly one-sided from Kasamatsu’s end), Kise, who was dropped on the floor by Kasamatsu moments prior, silently stares at the direction you left. Did you leave because you knew how embarrassed Kasamatsu was from that incident?

———

For the next few days, Kasamatsu has been quite clipped with you, reduced to mere “nn’s” and “no’s” during your conversations, and Kise doesn’t know whether you’re just as oblivious as Kobori or whether you’re ignoring it to spare his remaining shreds of dignity. He mentally sighs at how oddly persistent Moriyama is about this even though the captain refused all of his ridiculous “suggestions” every time.

“I believe Moriyama is trying to help out Kasamatsu as a close friend,” Kobori had said, when Kise grumbled about his tenacity. “He just wants the best for him.”

Even so, Kise still heaves a sigh when he sees Moriyama and Hayakawa with an agitated Kasamatsu, knowing that whatever is going on won’t be smooth-sailing. He had no choice but to join them when Kobori sneaked up on him to sling an arm around his shoulders and called over the trio.

“Huh… what’s up with Kasamatsu-senpai?”

“Ou(l) captain is af(l)aid [because someone] da(l)ed to app(l)oach (y/n)-san (l)ight now!”

“Huh? Is that really a problem?” Kise shoots a tired look at the rebound player, but Moriyama solemnly sends a gaze to where he assumed was where you were at right now.

“I knew my online research would come in handy…! Someone also has the knowledge of taking advantage of the perfect atmosphere! Look at the intimacy shared between the two…! The undeniable auras exhibited by them, and elements of spring they embody together!”

“What the hell! No way!” Even through the denials, Kasamatsu looks visibly distressed about the possible “new revelations” between you and what looks to be a close companion of yours.

“I’m gonna have to agree with Senpai on this one, Moriyama-senpai.”

“(R)ook! They finished ta(r)king and (y/n)-san waved them [off with] a smi(r)e!” Kasamatsu whips his head at the speed of light to see you sending them off with the smile Hayakawa spoke of as your friend exits the campus gate. At his dilemma, Moriyama gently nudges his arm to encourage him to go talk to you.

“... According to my online research, talking under sunny weather with a fresh scent is the formula to having the desirable spring experience.”

“Oh shut up, will ya?” Kasamatsu mumbles half-heartedly, but he slowly walks in your direction before he stops to turn back. “You better not interrupt.”

“We [will be all] the way back he(l)e to suppo(l)t you!”

With a final sigh to expel his nerves, he gives a nervous smile to his teammates before coolly walking until you turn to face him once you hear his footsteps. Almost immediately though, his calmness easily dissipates into thin air once again, and his teammates only look on in dismay and worry from afar.

“Er…” Come on, just be direct. Talk normal.

“Kasamatsu-san?”

“Y-You were… d-datin—I mean t-talking, with… someone…”

“Oh, you saw? Yeah, I asked them to meet up with me here actually.”

“Is… that so?”

“Mmhm, I asked for their notes to compare to mine because I feel like I can’t get a hand on the subject sometimes.” Kasamatsu finally finds his voice for the first time in a while when the conversation finally re-enters familiar platonic territory.

“Was it… trigonometry? I did, um, do well on it last time, so…” Normal topics. Normal topics.

“I know,” you laugh. “You told me that a few days ago, remember?”

“W-W-Well…” He coughs to clear his throat and find his voice. “Y-You could’ve… a-a-asked—er…” You patiently wait for him to try to finish his sentence, and out of the corner of your eye you accidentally made eye contact with Kise from the distance.

Kise didn’t expect for you to notice the group even from a sizable distance away. He stayed still for a few seconds to make sure the shared eye contact wasn’t a fluke. Seeing how Kasamatsu was standing there like a statue again, he puts a flat hand next to his lips to discreetly mouth out:

He’s jealous.

To his surprise, you caught onto his cues, giving a subtle yet playful smile of your own before you carefully mouth out:

I know.

The others don’t seem to notice the secret exchange, all too focused on the poor captain bowing his head down out of extreme shyness. Kise doesn’t even know why he’s doing this, but perhaps Kobori was right that it’s only right for the team to help out their hardworking captain.

“Ah, Kasamatsu-san?”

“N-Nn?” He lifts his head up abruptly at the call of his name, and he turns red from mortification at the realization that he stood there like a dunce for the past several minutes. He doesn’t even have time to react to you stepping closer to him with an outstretched hand, and he stands motionless as you slightly fiddle with his cropped hair before you pull out a vivid cherry blossom petal.

“Remember what you told me?” you muse. “That ‘you can’t risk yourself being unkempt?’ After all, you’re right… it is the week where these blossoms fall rampantly… Must I also remind you to be careful where you’re walking under?”

At this point, Kasamatsu is sputtering like a broken engine, his mind barely functioning enough for him to think about putting a hand over his face in a desperate attempt to cover his frenzy.

“I, um, I…”

“Ah… can I ask you something first instead, Kasamatsu-san?” you gently interrupt him, and he flits his gaze back to you before staring at the ground again, and you took that as silent confirmation. “A-Are… are you free to go cherry blossom watching this weekend…?”

He snaps his head up in shock, only to see you slightly pink after that slight stutter in your question. It was your turn to avoid looking at his face.

“N-nn, I’m-I’m free.”

“Ah, that’s great…!” You muster your own courage to hold his clammy hands at his sides. “Can I ask to confirm if this is a romantic date between us?”

“Y-Yes,” he says in a hurry and you only laugh at his shyness. But his piercing eyes focus on your figure before he frees his hands from your loose clasp and reaches out to you, albeit with a slight shake in his hand still, before he clumsily takes out a petal from your hair. “It was… stuck.”

“See?” you shyly tease. “I knew it shouldn’t take you long to take out petals from hair.”

He completely lost his cool in front of you again.

You didn’t really care though… not when he looked absolutely endearing with the onslaught of petals settling on top of his head and shoulders to complement his flushed face.

———

Bonus:

“So are you two dating now?” Kise asks you. You both coincidentally met up at a hallway intersection the next week.

“Well, I think that’s a bit too fast,” you inwardly laugh. “You know how he is more than anyone.” Kise gives a light chuckle of his own before he asks you the question that’s been on his mind for a while.

“Hey (y/n)-senpai, how did you know Kasamatsu-senpai liked you?”

“Eh?”

“It was pretty clear from that time last week that you knew how he felt.”

“Ah… well, remember when he was… trying… to tidy up my hair? When you all spied on us?” you say, continuing when Kise gives a slightly sheepish nod. “It felt… different from how we normally talked. I’m sure he felt it harder than I did. I’ve always been nervous talking to him, but… seeing him so flustered and shy like that made me connect the dots, and then, I became more at ease and knew to be patient, realizing that he does hold a degree of feelings for me. I just didn’t know when was the right time for us to take it a step further.”

“I see. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“I must say, please send my thanks for the rest of the team. I think without you guys, this wouldn’t have happened as smoothly… or quickly.” At your words, Kise only sweatdrops as he remembers Moriyama’s antics, Hayakawa’s over-enthusiasm, and Kobori’s good-natured naivete.

“I’ll… send your regards to them.”

“... Why do you look so hesitant?”

———

End note: the cherry blossom falling season only occurs in the first to second week of April, which would conflict with the timeline of this scenario IRL. The Japanese new school year also coincides with this week, and as 3rd-years, Kasamatsu, Moriyama, Kobori, and the reader would be college freshmen instead. If I wrote it in terms of “last year” with the 3rd-years as 2nd-years, then Kise would still be in Teiko. So for convenience sake… ignore the “realism” in the setting for this :^)

[motownfiction]

who are you, sadie lou?

On a Friday afternoon – the last day of finals before summer begins – Sadie schedules a meeting in the guidance department. There’s no reason for her to be there. She finished her finals yesterday, and there’s no way her grades have made it to her transcript. But there’s been something heavy on her mind since last December. She’s not about to spend another break wrestling with it.

She waits outside the office in an uncomfortable chair, bouncing at the knee, thinking about what she’s going to say when the advisor lets her inside. She’s not sure why she’s so nervous. She has good grades – made the Dean’s List in her first semester at a real college and everything. This is just a meeting. She’s met with this advisor before. No reason to treat it like it’s Planned Parenthood.

The office door swings open, and the advisor stands there, grinning. She’s a tall woman with a blonde perm called Lisa. And she insists on being called Lisa – so vehemently that Sadie can’t even remember her last name.

“Sadie!” Lisa says, and Sadie stands up, matching her height and her grin.

“Hi,” Sadie says. “Is it OK if I come on back?”

“Of course! It’s your time.”

Sadie smiles and follows Lisa back to her office. The guidance offices here feel a little surreal, like they were designed by some distant cousin of M.C. Escher. The hallway feels normal, but as soon as you step into one of the advisors’ personal offices, they get small and low to the ground. The lights are almost always off, save for one lamp each advisor keeps on in the corner of each room. Sadie wonders if it’s supposed to make the place feel more like a home. All she feels is cramped.

She takes a seat across from Lisa. Neither of their grins have wiped off yet. Sadie is sure she won’t be able to stop smiling until she leaves campus and heads back home. She doesn’t know what would happen if she didn’t smile. It’s what they expect.

Everybody.

“So,” Lisa says, sitting back and reviewing what little Sadie has of a transcript. “When you called, you mentioned you were at a crossroads.”

“Yes,” Sadie says.

Still smiling.

“You’re not thinking about leaving us, I hope.”

Sadie’s smile gets a little bigger as she shakes her head – holds her hands out in front of her and shakes them, too. She feels every movement of every muscle. Just like being in a pool.

“Oh, no,” she says, from the diaphragm. “I could never. I’m just … I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to major in.”

Lisa’s eyes sparkle like a cliché. For a second, Sadie considers running out of the office before she becomes a number in a pamphlet or a pie chart. Maybe Sam was right about school after all. But Sadie is not Sam, and so, she doesn’t run. She sits there, gripping both arms of her chair, smiling.

“Seems about the right time,” Lisa says. “You’re probably finished with most of your prerequisites by now.”

She glances down at Sadie’s transcript and smiles.

“Especially since it looks like you came in with a healthy dose of Advanced Placement credits,” she says. “Good for you!”

Sadie laughs a little, though she’s not really sure what she’s laughing at. She took those classes because she knew they’d save her money in college – nothing more, nothing less. People always look at her like she’s a saint when she mentions her AP record, but she doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s all those years of Catholic education. You can’t really feel like a saint if you had to memorize every step of the canonization process for a quiz in fourth grade.

“Yeah,” Sadie says. “I’ve taken a lot of classes.”

“And you’ve done so well,” Lisa says – gushes, almost. “For someone like you, it’s just a matter of … what do you like? What can you see yourself getting into?”

Sadie’s whole body seizes up. Her tongue feels three sizes bigger than it ought to be, and her knees start to shake all over again. This is the question she asks herself in the mirror every morning before she drives to class. This is the question that, by the time she takes her regular seat, she still can’t answer.

“Well, um, that’s why I’m here,” she says slowly. “I can’t seem to … I can’t seem to figure out a good answer, and talking to myself about it isn’t helping.”

Lisa smiles. She does that too often.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s actually a good sign,” she says. “It means you’re a good critical thinker, and you really care about the implications of your decisions. Can you think of any majors or careers where that might come in handy?”

Sadie wants to frown, but she just can’t do it. She wishes people would stop using the words major and career, even though she knows that’s what she’s here to figure out. She wants to be in school – she knows that – but can’t that be enough? Can’t she just point to classes she likes and write papers about the things that excite her? Does she have to be working toward a job? She’s seen what working a job does to people – even Sam, and he only works part time at a 7-Eleven. They lose whatever it is behind their eyes. They forget how to really smile.

Sadie is still smiling.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “My best friend Lucy – she chose her major in the first grade. Literally. We had to take home a worksheet where we planned our futures, and she wrote that she’d attend this school, major in English, and become a professor like her parents. And my boyfriend Daniel – he decided to major in business because he doesn’t know what else to do, and business is always there. And my friend Will – that’s Lucy’s husband – he’s going to major in psychology and criminal justice so he can be either a lawyer or a private detective. He hasn’t decided yet. And they’re all working so hard, and I’m so proud of them.”

Lisa nods like she has something else she wants to say, but she doesn’t know how to say it. So, she tries, anyway.

“That’s interesting,” she says.

“What’s interesting?” Sadie asks.

“You just spent all that time telling me what your friends want to study and what they want to do. Did you realize that?”

Sadie furrows her brow, but she’s careful to bring that smile right back.

“Well, I guess so,” she says. “They’re kind of stuck in my head.”

Lisa nods, a little too knowingly.

“You care a lot about your friends,” she says.

Sadie frowns. This time, she doesn’t bother trying to get her smile back.

“Of course I do,” she says. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Oh, yes,” Lisa says. “But what I mean to say – what I mean to ask – is … do you think knowing your friends so well has kept you from knowing more about yourself? Just a little bit?”

Sadie takes a deep breath, and she has to remind herself to let it out. She wants to tell Lisa that she’s wrong – that she knows herself perfectly well, thank you, and you don’t have to know all the answers to your life story in order to choose a major in college. But as much as she wants to, she can’t make it happen. She knows better than that.

That doesn’t make Lisa’s knowing smile any less irritating.

“Why don’t we try this?” she asks, in a way where she’s not posing a question at all. “The guidance office stays open all summer. I’ll have plenty of time to help you before classes start up again.”

“OK,” Sadie says (because she doesn’t know what else she’s supposed to say).

“You spend the next month thinking about yourself. I know it’ll be hard, but try not to let anybody else get in the way. Think about what you want. Don’t think about what your friends want to do. Don’t let your family get in the way. Just spend some time thinking about what Sadie wants. Spend some time thinking about who Sadie is.”

Sadie feels herself nodding, but she feels far away from her limbs.

“We can get together again then,” Lisa says. “But you have to promise me you’ll really do what I’m asking. OK?”

Sadie nods again.

And there’s that winning smile.

[yuzukult]

effortlessly pt. 8 || jungkook & reader

title: effortlessly pairing: jungkook x reader genre: fluff, romance, school!au, smut some chapters words: ~3.5k notes: just a couple more chapters + epilogue left!!!! :) also hpbd jungkook

series: part one || part two || part three || part four || part five || part six || part seven || part eight || part nine || part ten || epilogue 

“Jungkook thinks I should be a coach.”

Sitting outside of a convenience store on a weekday night in your track pants and a hoodie, Yura sits across from you at the table, dressed in something similar with sweatpants. It had been a while since the two of you spent time together, and you were longing for a female companion.

“That’s... interesting,” She says, lifting up the plastic covering of her ramen that cooks in the disposable bowl. “So, you gonna do it?”

“You think I should?” You ask, observing her expression. Honestly, you had expected her to ask more questions and poke for further details as to how and why Jungkook came to that conclusion.

Yura nods, pushing bowl in front of you before grabbing the other that sits beside it, replicating the same actions before handing you a pair of chopsticks. “Yeah... so you gonna do it?”

You wrinkle your forehead, leaning onto the back of your seat. “I... you think I’d be good at coaching? You don’t think it’s a bad idea?”

Shoving as much noodles into her mouth with her chopsticks, she inhales the food, cheeks full before chewing and swallowing with a nod. “Uh, yeah.” She wipes the soup remains that drips to her chin with her sleeve. “Don’t you coach Jungkook already?”

“You think I coach Jungkook?”

“Yeah, do you not?” Yura waves her hand to gesture you to the bowl of ramen. “Eat up, the noodles are getting swollen.”

Blindly following her instruction, you take a portion of the noodles into your mouth, slurping up the remains. Looking up to your friend, you look at her questioningly. “Do you think I’d be good at it?”

“Uh, Jungkook is pretty much an Olympic level kind of swimmer... so I say, yes? You coached the entire swim team, basically. They’re all doing very well.”

“They have their own swim coach.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t he just keep having practices when he’s not around? And he makes sure you’re there if he’s not, right? Pretty sure that means something.”

“Yura...”

“Hey,” She wags a finger in front of you. “You brought this up, we’re gonna talk about it. Why are you so hesitant?”

“Because...” You sigh, slouching. “I’m not sure if I like it. Do I love doing it? Is it my passion?”

Yura rolls her eyes, placing her chopsticks down. This was getting serious, you note, because Yura never pauses her time eating just to talk. “Eat first, talking second,” she’d used to say to you when you’d interrupt her slotted breakfast schedule during homeroom. 

 “Listen, you don’t need to love the idea of it right away and be as passionate about it like Jungkook and Taehyung are about swimming. You just have to like the idea enough to try it, and life sucks but the good thing about it is that you have time to figure whether or not it’s for you. If you find out that coaching isn’t your thing, then you move onto the next idea.”

“But—“

“But you’re good at coaching. Just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean that you have to have a career in it either. I’m great at eating but you don’t see me getting into competitive eating, don’t you?” Tempted to tell her that she probably should, you bite down your tongue from making the comment. “Just try it, why don’t you?”

Yura made a point— yet again, and as constantly brought up from before, you’d never tell her. It would just stroke her ego, you think, but you love her nonetheless for being so supportive and rational.

Maybe you’d look more into coaching. What it requires, what it means to be one.

That very same night, you’re up for hours to the point that the only light in your room is from your computer screen, brightly displaying onto your face. You’re straining your eyes, forgetting how much time has passed from being engrossed in your research. 

“Why are you still up?”

“Shit—” You curse, eyes wide as you stumble off your seat. Turning to the voice, you notice Jungkook sitting by his window sill, hair rustled and rubbing his eyes tiredly. He’d just woken up from his sleep. “I just got up to use the bathroom and noticed light from your room coming into mine. Why are you still up?” 

Clicking off the screen, you turn in your swivel chair back into his direction, mimicking his position by the window while resting your chin on your arms. Distressed, your fingers fidget on the fabric of your sleeves, humming in thought. “I started looking into prerequisites for coaching.” Jungkook doesn’t look like he just woke up anymore, attentive to your words.

“You were?”

“Yeah,” You nod, gazing off to the streetlights outside of your houses. “I don’t know if I’ve ever considered that before.”

He stares at you longingly, observing the expression on your face. Jungkook is hesitant about what he should say, how he should comfort you because he doesn’t want you to feel like you should force a decision from his suggestion. “You don’t have to do it just because I said it, you know. I think you’re great at it. Talented, patient, encouraging, and understanding— you have the characteristics of what it means to be one.”

“Why does it feel like my decision right now will determine the rest of my life?”

He pauses. How do you convince someone that it’s not true after they’ve already drilled the idea in their head already? How does he get you to see yourself from his eyes? He wants to tell you that there’s more to life than choosing a career at the age of eighteen and coming to the conclusion that it’s all you have, but that you’ll eventually find pleasures in other things— like your hobbies, spending time with friends, and being with the love of your life. How he made it seem like his own dreams and aspirations are what determines his own life, but in reality, he had just learned a couple days ago that it doesn’t stop there for anyone. 

“It doesn’t.” Jungkook ultimately speaks up. “But know that whatever happens, I’ll be by your side through it all, whatever you choose.”

Despite spending most of the night tense from being glued to the computer screen, feeling frustrated with yourself and debating what next steps to take, Jungkook’s words were comforting in a way, whether or not he’d result in keeping his promises.

You smile at him, and he swore in that moment that his heart was swelling to the point it would burst out his chest.

“Jungkook, I think you’re an impressive swimmer. Have you ever considered going to college for it?”

“Well, of course. It’s only my dream, really.” He jokes, mouth dry while repositioning his hands yet again. His palms are drenched in sweat, and he only hopes he’s not soaking the sleeves of his blazer. He already had to loosen the first couple buttons of the shirt that you had picked from him that morning, preparing for this meeting, hoping that with your help he’d be more confident. He’s still anxious, nonetheless.

The woman sitting at the desk across from Jungkook smiles. She notes that he’s nervous but all the applicants are coming to meet her. But Jungkook is different, he’s built of talent and drive, more than all the people she has met recently.

“I know you probably weren’t expecting anything after the outcome of your last swim meet. But I saw a couple of the ones you had previously, and despite the loss, you’ve shown the same amount of energy and motivation for all. I’m fascinated.”

“Thank you,” He retorts quickly, bowing to her. “It really means a lot from you. I didn’t know you attended those other matches, there weren’t many people there.”

“If I’m being honest, I was there for someone else, but a colleague of mine was interested in you, so I decided to attend for the two of you.”

He creases his brows in confusion. “Was there another swimmer that you had in mind?”

She shakes her head at his question, slipping off the glasses that had sat on the bridge of her nose. “No, actually, I was searching for someone who would be almost like an apprentice for a coach at our University. There’s been a rumor that she helped Kim Taehyung from your team get to where he is now, and seeing that she wasn’t even part of the team had caught the ears of those in the industry. I’m sure you know who she is?”

“I got the scholarship!”

Mouth agape, you drop your backpack in the hallway, arms open and welcoming Jungkook into a tight embrace. At this very moment, you’re not confusing that feeling in your stomach for jealousy anymore, but pure happiness for the boy you love, the boy you watched grow up to be the person he is today, chasing his dreams and working as hard as he does. 

He pulls away just barely, lips pecking the tip of your nose warmly. “Thank you. For being there, for telling me that I could do it. I can’t believe they offered me a scholarship. The school of my dreams offered me a scholarship. They want to train me and hopefully get me far.”

“I don’t doubt you for a minute.”

“There’s... something else,” He says, finally letting go of you. “And you’ll figure it out later, but I’m debating if I should be the one to tell you.”

You roll your eyes at the male, standing back to cross your arms against your chest. “Who else would tell me besides you if you’re the one saying it like that? What is it?”

“Actually, come to practice today after class.”

You slouch, disappointed in the decision he concluded with. “I’m always there at practice, do you even have to ask?”

He grins. “Just making sure you’ll be of attendance is all.”

Hoseok is walking with you on route the gym, the tips of his hair peculiarly drenched wet. He hasn’t even started swim practice yet, how is he already on the path of being soaked?

“Why are you so freaking sweaty, Hoseok?” You ask, glancing over at him. He was perspiring more than usual. “It’s not even hot out. Are you anxious about something?”

“No,” He mutters quickly, shaking his head.

“And why are you walking with me to the pool? You never walk with me. You’re being suspicious.” Stopping in your tracks, you turn to look at him, hands in the pockets of your zip-up jacket. “Spit it out. What’s happening? And where’s Jungkook?” You suddenly notice, tilting your head to the side in confusion. 

“Uh, he left to go to practice early.”

“Did he ask you to walk me or something? I’m a big girl, you know. I don’t need someone else walking me to the gym.”

He sighs, slightly frustrated and defeated. “Can’t we just go? It would make more sense if we just... walk into the gym.”

Shrugging, you abide by his instruction and follow him. He opens the doors to the arena, and you swear the humidity is worse than on an average day. You’re grateful you made the decision to tie your hair up in a ponytail that day because if your hair was down, it’d be blown up by now.

Making your way to your everyday spot on the bleachers, you throw your bag onto one of the benches, sliding off the hoodie before you notice Jungkook.

“Hey,” He says, jogging up to meet with you. He has on a smile that exposes his teeth from excitement that you’re not sure from what. “You made it.”

You stare at him questioningly. “I always make it to your practices. Except maybe like... once, but I told you I wasn’t coming.”

“I want you to meet someone.”

There’s a woman who comes from behind Jungkook, dressed in casual business attire, hair let down and fallen on her shoulders as she bows and extends her hand for a shake. You take her offer, hand in hand as you mimic her bow. She introduces herself as the recruiter that gave Jungkook the scholarship, and you thank her for giving him an opportunity, yet you find the greeting ambiguous.

“Jungkook here was able to clear up a couple things for me.”

“Clear up a couple things? What were they?” You ask, playing along to what you weren’t sure with. 

She takes a seat on the bleachers, patting the seat beside her for you. Complying, you settle yourself in the spot. “I actually came several times in search for you and wanted to discuss some things with you. Rather, you’re quick on your feet, aren’t you? You leave fast.”

“Jungkook takes too long to get dressed, I like to wait in the car before him.” You jokingly admit.

The woman smiles, letting out a light laugh. “Rumor has it, you are Kim Taehyung’s personal coach.”

You scoff in disbelief. “Kim Taehyung’s coach? His coach is Coach Choi from our high school, the one standing by the pool over there.”

She shakes her head in disagreement. “No, no. He’s different. Taehyung had mentioned before that there was someone on the team that gave a lot of the guys advice and suggestions that they took, improving consistently. I’ve also heard here from Jungkook himself that you’ve pretty much trained him his entire life, ever since he wanted to get into swimming.”

“I—“ Before you could even finish, she interrupts you mid-sentence. 

“Just once summer. That’s all we’re asking. One summer being an apprentice of our University’s coach before you start your semester. We’re hoping you’d take up our admissions offer as well, it would be an honor for us to mentor you into a career that could benefit us all. You have so much potential. We’re hoping to be able to help mold you into being better than all of us.”

Smack! Jungkook winces, rubbing his arm with a frown on his face. “Baby, what was that for?” The two of you are standing outside in your school’s parking lot beside his car, in public where anyone could witness you giving Jungkook a beating, but you could care less. “It really hurt.”

“I’m glad,” You say through your clenched teeth, feigning another hit in his direction and he flinches. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I was going to, remember what I said this morning? But I thought if I mentioned it, you’d get too scared and back out. I needed you there, so I asked Hoseok to make sure you came since I had to meet with her first.”

“I wasn’t going to back out!”

He pulls the handle of the passenger door, opening it for you as he gestures you to get inside. “Yeah, like I believe that.” You frown at his response, sliding into your seat, waiting for him to get to the driver’s side, slamming his door close.

“So, are you going to take the offer?”

“Huh?” You respond dumbfoundedly, as if you never expected him to ask. “Oh. I’m not sure.”

“You’re not?” You shrug in response, slouching in his seat that shifts back slightly— one of the flaws of his worn out car. “I don’t know. What if I’m wasting their time after I find out that this isn’t for me?”

“Then that’s something to worry about in the future. What about now, do you want to do it?”

There’s a lot of uncertainty that lies on the surface, especially since everyone else says you’re good at something but you’re not sure yourself if you feel confident enough to do it. How does a doctor gain enough courage to do what they do everyday? What about a nurse? An engineer, a business owner, an artist, a producer... all of the above? How does one leave the house every morning, ready to go do what they’re considered a profession in, and not feel that insecurity?

“... what if I’m not good at it?” You confide, voice gentle and quiet. There’s no hint of aplomb, just pure apprehensiveness that seeps out of each word that escapes from your lips. “I don’t want to disappoint anyone.”

Jungkook’s orbs soften. You know you shouldn’t be so dependent on someone when it comes to your confidence, but it was hard to be self-assured when you spent half of your life listening to people who didn’t believe in you. “I get it, I shouldn’t be so... negative and putting myself down. It’s just hard knowing that I might actually disappoint someone.”

He shakes his head, turning the key in his ignition as his car does its signature stutter before starting the engine. “You’re not going to disappoint anyone, everyone knows this. The only obstacle right now is yourself.”

Jungkook sounds harsh, harsher than he’d like to admit, but he wants nothing but the best for you. If anyone talked lowly of you, expect him to be first in line to defend you, and even though it’s you that’s talking down on yourself, you’re no exception. 

“I wish you saw yourself through my eyes. The amount of potential, the amount of effort you put into certain things. You don’t need this to be your passion, there’s people out there enjoying the small things in life and they’re just as happy.”

He’s hushed for the rest of the car ride, lost in thought and on a course that he doesn’t inform you where the destination is. The sun is setting over the horizon, the warm pink, orange, and yellow tones remind you of those late cool summers nights you’d spend with Jungkook, laying on a picnic blanket at a park, sharing stories of memories that the two of you shared together. During those times, there weren’t as many responsibilities, no worries in mind. 

“I hope you know that high school isn’t what we’re making it out to be.” Jungkook’s voice shatters the silence, peering a quick glance at you. “We’re making it sound like high school determines the rest of our lives, but it doesn’t. Everyone I know says otherwise. There’s more out there than this.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” He confirms, a warm smile shooting in your direction. “And I’m going to be there for all of it.”

“What’s all of this?”

He places a light brown wicker basket onto the red checkered picnic blanket that lays on the grassy field of a location that you’re unfamiliar with. You expected Jungkook wanted to go for a drive tonight but this was not what you anticipated. 

“I don’t think we’ve had a real date since we started dating. Plus, I owe you an apology for what I said that day. I was a real dick,”

“Yeah, you were definitely a dick,” You ratify, sitting down with your legs crossed. “But, depending on what’s in that basket, I might just forgive you.”

There’s an assortment of foods— bento boxes full of eggs, vegetables, rice, stir fry chicken, and so on. He didn’t even forget to pack another set of fruits for dessert, and juices for drinks. It’s strange, you think, that Jungkook is putting this much effort because he would usually whine and make you do the packing with him whenever you’d go on picnics or trips together that required cooking food. 

“What— how?”

“It’s our first date, no? Aren’t I supposed to whip out all of the skills to impress you?” He grins innocently. You squint your eyes at him, shoving him slightly. “But you were at practice. We didn’t even drop by at home— did you leave the food in the car the entire time?”

He scoffs. “I’m not stupid! I actually asked Yura to help me. A bit risky because she could’ve eaten all of this. Kind of surprised she didn’t.”

“She... cooked all of this?” He nods, unpacking all the foods. “Yeah, I mean, I probably should have but I was on a bit of a time crunch. She was very helpful.”

Pouting, you pull open the clasps on one of the containers. “I didn’t know she cooked.” Picking up a pair of chopsticks, you pick up a rolled egg omelet that Yura had cleanly sliced, taking a bite. Abruptly, you pause.

“What? Something wrong with it?”

If Yura was better at anything else than eating, it would hands-down be cooking. The flavor of such a simple egg omelet bursted in your mouth, causing it water, yearning for more. “What—Oh my god.” Quickly, you snatch up another slice and shove it into Jungkook’s mouth, who opens up despite being confused. Chewing slowly, his eyes gradually widened in shock. “Oh— ooh. I thought she would just be average but this... this is really good.”

Then a thought pops into your head. Were you so blinded by your own problems that you didn’t even get to celebrate the success of your friend’s? Yura had been with you through thick and thin— from when you were just someone who was friends with the Jeon Jungkook, crushing on him indefinitely, to someone who pushed you to get out of your comfort zone and express your feelings until now, motivating you and putting you in place when you needed it during your doubt in yourself. 

Yura had been there for everything, supporting you throughout everything. Your own personal cheerleader. So did you mess up for not being hers?

[middleinthenight21]

Ain't that the worst thing you ever heard? Part 3

This is sad for me, It's the end

Thanks to @ravenfan1242 Without your help I could not have done this. Thank you!

If you read stay safe

"Damian Wayne has a girlfriend and she's beautiful."

"It is a pity that Bruce Wayne's son already has a partner."

’’ I ship them so much.’’

’’ Tessa Collingwood and Damian Wayne are so beautiful. God, they look so in love’’

’’ I need someone to look at me like Tessa at Damian’’

Tessa Collingwood was a British actress, mostly known for starring in teen series. Her fame exploded when she participated in a Netflix series about the rampant life of wealthy teens, the series was questionable in many ways, but it powered the careers of its stars; Tessa Collingwood accumulated more than three million followers on her accounts, being a celebrity on Instagram looking beautiful in all her photos. The actress was gorgeous with long fire-red hair, a freckled face and big blue eyes, plus an innocent smile.

The photographs circulating on the internet were taken at an auction, the youngest of the Wayne family holding a glass of champagne out to the crowd, right next to an ice sculpture in the shape of an angel with flapping wings and Tessa Collingwood looked impressive In a red dress that highlighted her hair, she was hiding a smile behind her glass. The following showed a conversation with Dick and the one who was supposed to be the manager of the actress, but the young woman was inclined as if paying attention to something Damian said and smiled.

Conner was jealous and Jaime muttered something in Spanish about the fate of some.

He rolled his eyes.

"What is she like, man?"

He frowned, he was not willing to talk about anything related to the actress, since it could be misinterpreted, especially by his colleagues, who tended to exaggerate everything and if a few simple photos could ignite all that paranoia a few words would probably make them explode. He threw his bag on the living room sofa and ignored the questions choosing to sit down.

Jaime snorted "Give us something. You are being linked to an actress and model, and you are so indifferent" He showed the actress' social networks on his cell phone, as if that cleared his mind. "It's Tessa Collingwood! She won an award for best actress in a drama series. "

He said nothing.

Donna grimaced at the ceiling, she didn’t even know who they were referring to and was thankful that there was at least one reasonable person in the room.

Superboy didn’t stop talking to Garfield about the actress and her presence at the auction, as well as reading comments together and laughing out loud when they called Damian a gentleman, but he refused to continue this conversation.

His older brother sat next to him, crossing his legs with a smirk. He nudged him "Tell them. She kept smiling at you. "

"You too? I let them take a photograph for a single event and they already mad up a silly love story", he growled. His words were tinged with rejection at the idea of all those people getting into his life. Over time, he accepted that some types of relationships are necessary, but if he considered it, it would not be in the public eye. The point was "He had to wear the scarf. "

"And Bruce would have loved it."

Damian said nothing, just grimaced and looked away. The journey from Gotham to Jump City was more tiring than he’d like to admit, plus the auction for the sculpture by Allard, an artist known for his dark style, became famous for his sculptures of smiling demons, tormented angels, and trees with sloping logs; He had been fascinated by the man's work and the details, even though people murmured how horrifying it was.

The event was slow and boring, he knew it would be, but there were responsibilities that came with being a Wayne. Commitments.

"Dick, you have to tell us," Conner insisted. "Is it true that she offered him her phone number as anonymous sources say? "

The man laughed at just imagining it and Damian crossed his arms.

Jaime looked at him as if he had done something wrong.

Garfield kept reading comments aloud and zooming in on the photos.

Troy cocked her head, processing who the actress was and why they cared so much.

Conner bombarded Dick with questions, trying to get as much information out of him as possible. He couldn't believe he considered him a friend, he's an idiot.

"I prefer cancellation."

Each one looked at him. He ignored them by focusing on removing from the packaging of the small statues he bought at the auction, as well as a handwritten book by an anonymous ancient Arab poet., The piece was valued at less than a million dollars and how millionaires are of unknown origin. They had nothing to brag about, but Damian found a value for it, perhaps because he is also an Arab, perhaps because people are stupid, especially those with more superficial money.

His older brother gave him a sideways glance.

"What? " He asked defensively. He put everything heshe bought in his bag, taking care that it was kept in perfect order.

"You've been reading a lot lately."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

He raised his hands, as if stopping an invisible attack.

"No, I didn't mean that, Damian." He shook his head. He put a finger on his chin thoughtfully. "It is just that I have seen you with at least two books in the week. Three days ago, I saw you reading Lovecraft, then Whose Body? or whatever ... "

Garfield looked up from his phone and watched him.

"Who, darling?"

Kory stroked Dick's chest from behind, pressing her chin against the hero's shoulder. Damian pulled away, despising the show of affection from the apparent team leaders, and the entire team made excuses to go elsewhere.

"I have to go bathe with my tongue." Garfield disappeared down the hallways.

The couple laughed. It seemed that they lived in a sugary bubble when they are together, all the time they touch each other and smile every time their eyes connect, once the caresses begin, they do not stop and they are not shy at all ... Damian has bad memories of this.

He left.

He just wanted his bed. After finding his face on the internet and what's on the fingers of so many people who just want to get involved in the gossip of the moment, he wanted to train, use his time productively.

Preparation is a prerequisite for victory.

And he's always ready, but he just wants to sleep.

For some reason, he can't help but start reading this book. That baffles him.

When passing through the kitchen a person is sitting eating a cereal bar and holding a coffee with a pungent chocolate aroma. She keeps a book over her face, covers her expressions and is dressed completely in dark tones., She had on a sweatshirt that is triple her size and one shoulder is exposed, he could only see a vestige of some shorts , since they disappeared in the long sweatshirt and thick stockings.

Her foot moved to the rhythm of an imperceptible melody and her hair was tied back in a high ponytail, leaving strands at the nape of her neck.

She turned the page "If you stay longer there, I will consider you as a stalker, what do you want?"

"And they say I'm rude."

Raven looked up. Her eyes narrowed when she saw him standing at the door, he was not surprised that she did not look excited, since the girl rarely showed her emotions and he was grateful for that. After coming from an event surrounded by teenagers who sighed ion his face, daughters of mayors, granddaughters of businessmen, actresses, models and influencers who took pictures of him on his social networks without asking for his permission.

He had considered suing, but Dick found it unnecessary and his father kept speculating with Selina about the possibility that a black-market gang would steal the pieces. Bruce thinks they collaborate with the Penguin, but he doesn't count them until they arrive.

The best detective in the world.

She puts the book down, but reluctantly does it "Sorry. I thought it was Garfield or Conner. " He bit down on the cereal bar, keeping an eye on Damian. "So, what happened? "

He frowned.

Raven watched him.

She is empathetic, he reminded himself. Sometimes he overlooked that detail, this was one of her powers, that does not make it more tolerable, he did not like that people would look below his appearance; It felt like an invasion of his privacy, it doesn't feel right, but he can't get mad at Raven for knowing too much.

Supreme warriors like us never give the enemy a chance to defeat us, not when it comes to emotions or appealing to feelings. We must get rid of them to rule the world, Ra's Al Ghul was clear. You cannot guide them to a better world, being equal to them.

You will not be useful to me, just as you are.

He pushed Talia and Ra's voice away, as if shaking the dust off.

He sat across from Raven. He watched her silently taking small sips of her coffee, when he met her he believed that she was a person drinking bitter espresso, but she has an insane inclination towards sweets of all kinds; she went to that little sweet shop on Riva Street where they prepare artisan cotton candy and bought those colored candies that she keeps in her pockets, like an amulet.

Damian grimaced when she added a spoon of cream to her coffee and licked what remained on the kitchen utensil. Pennyworth would disapprove of her behavior; he can almost hear the scolding in his head.

"Nothing. "

For a few seconds he struggles to remember her question. If this happened to him in the mansion, his older brothers would mock his face, and he grimaced.

After a weekend at Wayne Mansion living with his brothers and Helena, he was fortunate to be back with the Titans - his thirteen-year-old version would hit him in the face - but his little sister is loud, shaking her fists in the air and she opens her mouth as much as she can, claiming attention only for her, the noise of his brothers adds to it, that combination almost drover him crazy.

He doesn't want to talk about the auction.

"Look." She pulled a package out of her pockets. He raises an eyebrow, because he doesn't think it's anything special. "Son ghraybeh" she tried to pronounce. Raven lowers her voice, like she does when she's admitting something, she doesn't want anyone to hear. "I bought them in an Arab store. "

Damian analyzes one of the cookies. In his childhood in Tibet he had seen these biscuits in the markets of the nearby towns, the masses had almonds, pistachios and all kinds of nuts, but he had never tried them.

He bit into it. The sweet has a bitter flavor charged by spices, it’s an explosion in his mouth and he’s almost transported to those stores, to women covered by hijabs and  it reminds him of the music his grandfather listened to during dinners, Of burnt incense, the blue hyacinth that grows as a weed and the Dragon Blood tree that rested in the garden that was extremely cared for, his grandfather had said that it is as old as he is and it’s sap is the color of blood.

Raven smiled, she bit into one of the cookies herself while drinking coffee.

He is not surprised that she had visited Arab stores, since in her spare time she visited bakeries, and that bookstore where the owner recommended novels and would have a reserved seat in the Costa restaurant while reading a book, as well as the ice cream parlor hidden among the luxury stores .

She tried foreign dishes, does not despise any genre of novels and is shocked by the arts. He supposed it was due to her time in hell, but deep down it's more than that; Raven is someone who leaves memories between those streets, measures people's energy and how they impact places. At first, he thought that her powers focused more on magic, such as enchantments, potions and spells, but she is more focused on emotions and feelings, she is different from Zatanna or Constantine.

"Is it true that the Belmont Allard sculptures were being auctioned?"

He set the cookie aside by making a mental note to finish it longer.

"I should have known that you were interested in his works."

Raven rolled her eyes, glancing at her book, her eyes scanning the page, and was drawn to whatever she now has on her reading list. She was quiet, reserved, and would rather sit in the back than walk in the front, but she should not be underestimated, and Damian had seen her vanquishing godlike humans and demons, yet she has a gentle aura. It is difficult to explain.

"Allard is famous. It has a history related to Satan, it is full of treasons, witches and enrichment overnight. "

She Mocked "Typical of pacts with the devil. "

Despite her mocking tone the truth slips.

Damian pulls out the book he bought, it's not flashy, it's dirty and worn. It smells of dust and dry ink, lined by a thick cloth of a dull red hue, it has damp spots and folded corners.

She says nothing but he sees the interest in her eyes.

"It is from an anonymous poet. It is of Arab origin; historians say that the book dates from 750. approximately, which corresponds to the times of an Iranian revolution" explained. "They assume that the author is a wealthy man because of the references to luxury and the elaboration of the work, but they are not sure. "

She stared at the book. He let her analyze it, but she frowned as she turned the pages and her mouth twisted into a grimace, like she was annoyed.

"What's wrong? "

"The book transmits strong feelings" her eyes shine, and she continues turning the pages. Damian raises an eyebrow, waiting for a clearer answer. "It brings me a feeling of longing; it is as if the author had misplaced something or someone" she closed the book. "It's amazing, I never felt this coming from an object" she leaves it.

He frowned.

It doesn't seem like a danger to him.

"Also, I can't read it."

He rolled his eyes.

Almost on impulse he opened any page of the book. The leaves are of a yellowish tone, with the corners eaten by humidity and the poet's pen is small and light, a scribble made of ink that in some places is smeared and he is surprised by the content of the letters.

"What does it say? "

He read in a loud voice. His voice was released, his mother tongue slides through his tongue and it is simple, after speaking English for so long it is even relaxing to speak Arabic, but she was puzzled and confused by his words, she was even happy that she does not understand what he is saying. Despite knowing the language, the words feel foreign.

                                                                                            عظامي المحطمه تتصلح

                                                                                      مع كل تلك الليالي التي قضاينها

                                                                                حبك سر آمل احلم اموت لحفاظ عليه

                                                                                                    التغير من اولوياتي

Despite everything, he prefers that she be the one who listened to him. Damian realizes she is comfortable; he feels domestic and that makes him reconsider what he just did.

The girl bows her head and frowns, she didn’t understand what he just said and struggles to try to associate the words, but the English and Arabic languages ​​are opposite. Raven rests her head on her hand.

"What does it mean? "

Damian Wayne does not make these kinds of mistakes, his grandfather would subject him to abysmal punishment and his mother would slap him in the face, even his father would growl, but the answer is said before he can avoid it.

The translation is simple for him, a custom that he acquired over the years.

"My broken bones are healing with all these nights we spend. Your love is a secret that I am waiting, dreaming, dying to keep" responds. "You change my priorities. "

He looks her in the eye. Her eyes are like the purple tanzanite, a precious stone that Ra´s Al Ghul kept around his finger in a ring, a symbol of his status and power against his enemies; in the end it did no good, even the most powerful person in the world and his kingdom had fallen. Ra´s Al Ghul was no different than Julius Caesar, Tarquin, Darius I, Napoleon or Hitler and what they built.

Now he understood that the stone on his grandfather was a sample, a shell to inspire fear; Tanzania is extremely rare and expensive, its color was a boost to make it so coveted, and it seems imprinted in Raven's eyes.

He is aware of the level of communication they have; words are not necessary. Damian would have turned away, walked away and ignored her presence, he did not like that anyone felt familiar with him., He is a warrior not a sentimental teenager, but after the last few months he had been alone, nobody talked to him apart from matters involving the missions, he couldn't help but measure his actions and keep an eye on anyone who was around, it could be a stalker, maybe a person who hates him, or someone interested in selling a photograph to a magazine.

Damian preferred solitude, he exiled himself while the media storm passed over his head. Long ago he would not have cared, the Titans many times represented being a nuisance, they were open to anyone who told a sad story without caring about their past, but the weight of the distance began to haunt him.

He understood the nature of his character, how difficult it is to establish relationships, and the approach is difficult to deal with. Damian was extremely professional at best, concerned with realistic aspects and devised plans based on data, measured his peers and analyzed each and every action, judged and issued verdicts, disliked being touched by anyone and growled with his words to anyone who treated him like a child to be protected.

What before seemed to him aspects that should be highlighted now are the reasons why he is so hated.

He realized that his skills are a mattress; He was not welcome in many places, many heroes had complained about him and insulted him to his face, but they recognized how good a fighter and excellent strategist he is, not for nothing he is the son of Batman and the heir to the League of Shadows, and that does not mean anything. People on the internet didn't care who he was, what he accomplished, or what his story was. They hate him for the pictures, videos, and comments, and he couldn't do anything. It's tiring sometimes, when people decide to subject you to rejection and there is nothing to do to correct that.

They besieged his castle, forced him to close the gates of the kingdom.

He may not need third-party approval when criminals were loose on the streets, but it doesn't make it more tolerable.

His father told him of the harassment he would receive when he was recognized as the son of Bruce Wayne, but his home was snatched away, burned from head to foot and he had to create a new belief system out of thin air, he wanted to feel like he belonged somewhere. Bruce was right.

His privacy was stolen, he found his face on the covers of youth magazines and invented relationships with strangers based on nothing, he committed innocent people to address him and he does not want to live like this. He hates other people getting into his life, he doesn't have to explain to anyone, or hide, but Damian does.

I despised help, as well as apologies and looks of pity from others.

Raven was silent, and did not push him away when it appeared, she doesn't not care about the cancellation or how the Internet saw the next heir to the Wayne fortune. It was silent, private and intimate.

It is not dependency, it is not attachment based on loneliness or trauma, he doesn't even know where to catalog it. Raven had a breakup recently, although he knew that she is now friendly, that had affected her and he was canceled, tried and sentenced to global rejection, while his civilian identity was compromised, it is not a good combination.

She gulps and looks away. His hands tremble around his book and he almost see her shudder.

Damian stirs uncomfortably and insecure, he wants ...

"Tessa Collingwood talked about you!"

The entire group entered. Kory had ordered food from a local restaurant, and the rest just argued around the news on Garfield's phone, as if this was a gathering of old ladies arguing about the life of a misbehaving neighbor.

Raven raises an eyebrow "The actress? "

Jaime nods.

"She mentioned Damian in one of her stories," Garfield replied. Donna laughed at something, and Conner grimaced rereading the screen. "She said:’’ Me and Damian are just friends.’’

Kory smiled.

"I doubt I was friends with someone I saw only once." He crosses his arms. Looked at the Titans. "In fact, I have known certain people for years and doubt that I would include them on my list. "

Jaime rolled his eyes.

 "Do you have a friendship list? Dude, that's absurd."

Conner nods looking at the green teenager, while Donna decided that the adult conversation is more interesting.

"Anyway, this beautiful actress mentioned you."

He hit the table with his book, attracting everyone's attention. "I don't care what it has to do with her." He turned around. "I will be in my room."

Someone called him, it was Raven ...

He stopped, standing at the door with his fists clenched.

He looked at her, while she held the book in her hands and smiled, just a little, as if she had heard an internal joke that only she knew. He had left the book.

So, everything was very clear and he's an idiot because he hadn’t seen it before.

*** 

Raven was lost.

Completely lost.

Alone and confused in her room, wandering from place to place like a caged lion. She wanted to demand answers, she felt like she was about to go crazy, and it is as if it is slowly killing her, she tries to fight, but she loses the fight as soon as it begins.

She compared this sensation with the previous ones; Raven had experienced love, the one that hurts your heart, the one you justify when you are hurt and you throw yourself into the void, with your blindfold you stumble over stones and ignore the blows, but this is different; born of intimacy, like a secret that grows until it is difficult to maintain.

She had to know.

Oh, Azarath.

She never learns from her mistakes.

Now she talks to everyone except him.

When surrounded by her peers it's easy to keep up, she just focuses on the cakes Kory brought, Donna's fighting techniques she hones in the training room, she even prefers her father's voice in her head to pay attention to her.

If she bleeds, if she hurts not to have it, she would never tell him.

Your love is a secret that I am waiting, dreaming, dying to keep.

Damn the poems of unknown Arab authors.

Raven wants to bury her feelings; burn his perfect face and the dimple rarely shows to others. Maybe he's aware of his own charm and she did something that bothered him, and he's only taking revenge on Raven in the worst way, Damian was vindictive and…

This is ridiculous.

I'm going to kill that boy, witch. You are a whore girl.

She makes a gesture to turn away her father's voice, but he doesn't shut up and she doesn't care.

She is so disoriented, she lives anchored to him like a bird in her blue sky and she has no way to kick him out of her life, she just doesn't want to. She is not selfish, she would never put her desires or her integrity over that of others, but she hates it because she could not have him in her life without compromising their friendship, the level of confidence they have and that feeling of home when they are going through difficult times.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Now it had taken on a new meaning. There are people who went through her life, were transitory, arrived at a specific moment and continued on, like nomads who left a lost object, and those who stay and fight by her side, accept her without expecting anything in return, they are important, they are family. However, there are others that transcend to the next level, they are like home, places shout their names and even everyday aspects seem valuable.

Raven does not want to despise this, but she is not going to ruin it by confessing her feelings, she felt like a schoolgirl who jumped when she saw the boy and hid in the corners.

Someone knocks on the door and opens it, she discovers Damian's serious face, frowning and holding two coffees. The first rays of the sun illuminate his face, as if blessing his soul and highlighting his tanned skin, and for a few seconds it seems that he knows.

"Good Morning. "

She steps aside, letting him pass. Her voice is monotonous, tired and she considers for a few seconds not to let him in, but it is too late.

Everything seems to be pulling towards him, as if he possessed a magnetic field and was a magnet. This morning he was not wearing his uniform, but a simple plain t-shirt in pastel blue and dark jeans and Nike sneakers, he squares his eyes like when preparing for battle or listening to something or someone who he does not like.

From here she perceives that he is having an internal struggle.

He leaves the coffee glasses on a small piece of furniture and stands in front of the window with his arms crossed behind his back.

"Is Something wrong? "

Hearing a bark and opening the door, Titus enters the room going upstairs to his house licking the pillows and spinning on the mattress. With Damian he was disciplined, obedient, surprisingly submissive, but when Raven is around, she allows him to be playful and mischievous, as if he had never become an adult animal.

Damian had scolded her for being permissive, but in her mind, he was never going to stop being that puppy she gave away inside that box. The animal had been scared, lost and away from his brothers, he trembled when a person approached, and she seemed to see her friend in the animal in a strange way.

Titus was shy and fearful when he arrived. Little by little he emerged from his cocoon to become a loyal and courageous Great Dane.

He didn't challenge him for messing up the bed like he normally would, so she started to worry. She didn't feel anything and that was frustrating, it was easy for Raven to understand people through her magic, although she didn't like what was underneath, but he only let her see what he allowed.

"What wrong? " She asked again.

"People have spoken again. "

Raven grimaced "Is it because of the actress? "

He turned his back on her and the young woman sat on the ground, partly so as not to disturb Titus, to have a better view, partly because she felt closer.

He was still flat, like a soft wave on a lake, and that is not all; it's just the outside.

"A little." He paused. "People hate Robin, people love what Damian Wayne stands for" His face is reflected in the window glass, he is impartial, and he keeps that scowl that characterizes him. "I do not care. My father says that the press is like vultures, but sometimes they are noisy. "

She cannot relate to that.

Raven enjoyed anonymity, she may be a consecrated heroine, and has a couple of victories on her record; people do not stop to talk about her private life, but are interested in the source of her power, her dark and quiet nature, they build and destroy theories, but nothing else.

She was a favorite on YouTube and blog channels focused on mysteries, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal.

She can't imagine what media persecution is, online harassment and what it means to have so many people eager to know about your life, that drove celebrities crazy all the time, some fell into addictions to flee their problems, those who survived cruelly understood the boundary between professional and personal, marked the line and took refuge in their homes, as if they lived in a fortress. Robin was a global trend in social networks, it required many people to achieve this.

Damian had stayed away, holding on to his training and lifting his chin as high as possible, but she knew him; with him not everything is said, it is not what is shown.

"Damian" she calls him because she knows his thoughts are strong right now. She reached for the coffee. She appreciated the warmth of the drink in her hands, it feels real. "It´s okay" she smiled.

He looks at her.

She had never seen that shade of green before. He may not realize his own charm; his face reflected the golden rays, and his dark hair shone in a lighter shade.

Titus now sleeps in bed and his snoring is deep.

He sits next to her in the lotus position and they watch the sunrise together. They do not say anything, they do not speak much, both are people who were touched by tragedy, who face battles while forging their way to adulthood and are not used to expressing their feelings, interpreting silences and supporting each other from a distance with small gestures.

She wants to have better words, be more forthcoming, and offer advice, so they could talk more about his breakdowns. Raven would cleanse his heart if that helps his heartbeat, a word and it would be his.

Damian takes her hand.

His fingers are barely touching, his skin is hard, and that scar that ran like a thick rope over his knuckles is soft to the touch; his fingers are long and shiver, as if cold, but he remains in place; she compares it to a burn and is surprised.

Raven wants to hold onto him, because he doesn't deserve all the hatred, they chase him with torches and spears. She wants to tell him that she regrets him for his past, for all the manipulation, because there was no one to show him love and treat him like a child, who sees him as a person during his childhood and she wants to smooth his wrinkles that were beyond the ones visible. She wants to show the affection that was denied him all his life and tell him that she does not care what they call him on the internet- Either as Robin or Damian Wayne- Deep down, he is only a kind and generous soul, and she is fortunate to see it, even if he is insufferable.

She squeezed his hand. Words are not necessary.

He keeps his gaze on the dawn. His eyebrows tremble and he showed his emotions for the first time, it is like the caress of the wind of a summer night.

Silence.

They are like little children who take too much importance on their clasped hands. There is no lust, nor the typical approach to achieve something, they are two people who are used to being alone, pushing everyone away, seeing the worst in people and being disappointed, betrayed and disheartened, clinging to the other; it is so simple and complex.

He leans his head against hers and leaves it.

At first, she is surprised, but she thinks he is like a scared animal that would walk away in the face of any foreign sound or reaction. It is beautiful, vulnerable and serene, like a new dawn.

Aware of his exhaustion and frustration, this simple action reflects the fatigue of all these months of witch hunting, keeping quiet and holding on his own, she can feel him letting go of his burdens and that mask of indifference is shattered.

Her hair is soft, and his shoulder bumps into hers; He is taller, and his muscles are worked by constant exercise and his breath tastes like coffee.

The scent of shaving lotion reaches her nose, she was aware of that smell and it was masculine, it had a woody touch and she was relaxing.

Can they stay like this forever? In the silence and secrecy of her room with their hands clasped and leaning on the other drinking coffee from plastic cups ...

... And suddenly, this is enough.

*** 

Raven bought a dress.

That night is hot, and they visit an open bar on the seashore. The music is relaxed, the musicians play bass drums and ukuleles, giving the place a tropical atmosphere; decorated by lights and all the tables and chairs are made of wood, with small floral decorations as centers.

The sound of ocean waves and salty-smelling air was sleepy, almost as if slowly inducing her to sleep.

Kory forced them into a night of mandatory fun, booked a table in a corner under a palm tree, would give them a little privacy, and they wouldn't get as much attention. She sensed that in the place photographs were not allowed was a factor for her to choose it.

The tradition of compulsory fun was installed with the arrival of Damian, she was left justifying small getaways or celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, certain days of the year.

Raven thanked the team leader- who she considers to be an older sister- since the bar is not very crowded nor does it allow crowds with all those people sweating under the influence of alcohol, but the place is familiar, spacious and quiet. Her powers would not overwhelm her.

"Honey, will you bring us our drinks?"

Dick nods walking towards the bar. The man was wearing a simple T-shirt and shorts, on the other hand, his fiancée looked glamorous in the purple dress with large openings revealing her shapely legs and a plunging neckline.

Garfield, Conner, and Jaime share a conversation with Donna about the dance, but the young woman only frowns when she looks at the musicians.

"It's Latin music. "

Jaime snorts "Don't look at me, dude. Just because I'm Latino does not mean I know how to dance. "

"I'm not the best dancer anymore." Garfield looks with a grudge at Damian, who grimaces looking away.

"I just beat you."

"You break codes and all that, surely you did it with the dance machine. "

Raven snorts, but she's amused.

"That was a long time ago." He looked at everyone. "Can we get over it? "

When Dick arrived he announced that he asked for drinks for each one, but they had a limit of two, because some recently stopped being minors, also in the tower they had rules and arriving drunk is on the prohibited list; for those who are minors there are unlimited juices.

The night is progressing normally, although she sees certain people who are surprised by her colorful group, nobody really cares. They are just a group of friends enjoying an evening by the ocean.

Damian rolls his eyes when Dick starts Kory dancing with a slow song.

"They've been dating for years."

Raven raises her eyebrows, not at all surprised. She already knew.

"I mean long before they became teammates." He gives his whisky a small sip. "When he was a boy, he kept having suggestive calls with her." He shrugs.

"No way! " Conner leans in and opens his mouth.

Jaime contains a laugh.

"Are you seriously surprised?" She didn’t need to be empathetic to know that.

They look at her, but it's Garfield who speaks first.

"Did you know?! " He shakes his head. "Of course, you knew, why didn't you tell me?! "

"I did not mean that. "

"Traci arrived!" Jaime gets up from the table and disappears.

After two years together he is still excited to see her enter the room, Raven got along with the girl, she is pleasant and has a pink aura, used to loving and showing it, she also has Jaime around her fingers.

Raven drinks her gin and tonic, the drink is incredibly sweet and fruity. Her friends raised an eyebrow at seeing her bite into the lemon wedge that decorates the drink, but it's not that she cares, it's probably because she's going for her second fruit drink and sweet alcoholic drinks are misleading.

A boy appears pushed by his group of friends, who laugh giving him sidelong glances and extends one of his hands to dance, he is tall, and his face is youthful, perhaps just after finishing high school. His emotions are strong too, but the one that predominates is lust, she has a moment when images of herself come of kissing him in the dark.

He has too much imagination.

"Would you like to dance? "

She shakes his head, absorbing the lemon juice to the last drop. The scene almost seems funny to her, this boy asking her to dance in front of her friends, among them her ex-partner is present, along with the young man who answered the name of her best friend, who also has feelings. It is funny.

A smile glides across her lips.

The boy stirs uncomfortably without knowing how to interpret her smile, but she continues to shake her head, so he leaves.

"You have low tolerance, Roth."

Raven grimaces "It will pass soon. Alcohol will be in my system for exactly forty minutes and then I'll be like new. "

She calls a waiter asking for a Cuban mojito with that sugar-covered rim she likes so much.

When the drink is put in front of her, it is just as promised and she almost sighs when she sees it. Damian drops his drink, gives her a disapproving look with those green eyes, and she could cry right now because she thinks it's cruel and insane to be around him.

Conner invites his friends to dance wanting to flee from the discomfort. The others continue to join the small group that formed in the middle of the dance floor, Kory and Dick get all eyes, they move well.

Raven sips the drink through the straw. The little umbrella is a hindrance, so she pushes it aside noticing how her fingers tremble, the sugar and the drink mix is ​​not a good match.

Damian approaches, but she moves away.

She should think twice before entering his space.

Raven looks him in the eye. Noting that his expression reflects concern, just as he was ready to scold her, she knows that scowl and he has that plain short-sleeved shirt with the designer's name she can't pronounce and some worn jeans; For someone with so much money, he have not invested too much in his clothing.

His eyes are green as a drink, and he raises an eyebrow. His features are a mix between the Middle East and the West, his Arabic accent is light, as if he had always spoken English and he moves his fingers on the wooden table; remember that morning when their hands touched.

She wants to cry.

"It's not fair."

It's not fair that he so perfect, while she was melting away for keeping her secret just to keep him within her life. It's not fair!

She doesn't want him as her best friend.

He is a magnetic force in the form of a man.

She is attracted to him. It is not a fairy tale, it is not idolatry, just esteem it, the past seems to have been erased by a rubber when they were together, and she is dying to have him.

Random, she's so angry.

Damian grimaces "are you okay? "

"I'm fine. "

That’s a lie.

 "Let's go," he says, taking her by the forearm before she finished her drink and takes her to the parking lot without asking. He opens the door of his car, sitting her in the back seat. "Try to get comfortable" He sits down on the pilot's seat and starts the car.

She really wanted to stay.

She rests her head against the headboard and looks out. The highway is fast and distinguishes trees and pieces of the ocean illuminated by a moon.

The lights are off, and there is no music.

She lies down in the back seat.

It smells of leather and that forest fragrance, just like his lotion.

Suddenly the tears slide down her eyes, they are thin. She is angry with herself for being weak, with him and for the life that kept hitting her, a few weeks ago she had been convinced that she is much better alone, lives well and recovers from a breakup, she is not missing anything, then he entered little by little to her life and she wants to push him away, now she just wants him to stay a little longer. A little bit closer.

Raven wants to see what's underneath that bad boy attitude.

He sees her in the rearview mirror "what's wrong with you? "

"Nothing," she says in a broken voice.

Damian raises an eyebrow. Maybe he doesn't care, maybe he's worried she will throw up in his expensive car or she pretends that she cares just so he doesn't make her feel bad.

What doesn't kill her makes her want him more.

He tilts his head she and sees that sharp scar in the corner of his chin catch the silver glow of the moon. This is horrible.

"It's not important what you're upset about."

What?

Damian, the worst adviser in the world.

Yes it is important because it would destroy everything, they would end the reading of books on the roof, visits to Riva street where they would chat in the book store, the shared cafes in their room when they feel too lazy to go up or the weather is not favorable for them and the way he smiles marking that dimple on his cheek, how he held her hand and leaned his head against her. She thinks that if she lost him, she wouldn't do those things again.

Her heart breaks.

She would never walk down Riva Street again.

It is her fault.

It is his fault.

She imagines reading Robert Frost alone knowing he didn't love her, she would visit Riva Street trying to meet again, she would finish the cafes on the floor of her room because she is dumb enough to confess. Damian wouldn't worry about love affairs, he has a purpose and it would be a distraction, a stone in his shoe, he had better judgment, therefore he would walk away first.

He would not give her second glances; in fact, he would despise her for ruining their friendship.

It terrifies her too much.

She cries like a baby in the back of the car.

When they park in front of the tower of the Titans, she does not think twice and opens the door running into the forest that surrounds the home of the young heroes, entering it as if he were chasing her. She can hear the car's engine go off, as well as his desperate call, then the footsteps.

Raven takes off her shoes.

Thanks for the lightness of her dress. She thinks about going through the back door of the tower and locking herself in her room, tomorrow she could say that she was drunk and was not thinking clearly, but now she needs to be alone.

Maybe she deserves it.

She is running barefoot through the woods with her dress catching leaves and branches, just as her hair is now a wind-tossed mess. The moon is a fuzzy point between the treetops and the warm weather does not help.

She runs a hand down her face, ridding herself of the tears that were running down her cheeks.

"Raven!"

She is not a runner, so she is caught by arms before she could open a portal to her room, another country or dimension, she really doesn't know for sure. There are three uncertain options.

Damian pushes her away, looking her in the eye.

"What's wrong? You ran away, the car was moving, Raven."

His hands go up and down her shoulders to her arms, giving her warmth. Then she realizes that she is trembling, like a scared puppy and she is a total disaster.

She wanted to escape to close her fate, because she deserves to be alone and having him close is her own personal torture.

Damian had come to her in moments of vulnerability, when no one was looking, he trusted her more than anyone, he was harassed and hated by people. Damian Wayne was easily associated with actresses, models and celebrities, they took his privacy without his consent, everyone hated or loved a version of him.

He showed her his true self and she paid him by falling in love with him.

He had driven her crazy, begging him to knock on her door or end it all.

It would destroy years of friendship and companionship.

Raven got out of a relationship, that's not how it was supposed to go, she hadn't looked for it.

He looks her in the eye, as if waiting for her to tell him the devastating ending of a novel. He is so close that his mint breath almost makes the tide, his hands are warm as the desert and she has to look away so as not to be consumed.

Her heart beats painfully in her chest.

She ruined her life for not being his.

She wants so much and that is hurting her.

"Tell me."

She digs her feet into the ground, her toes touch the ground and the dry leaves. This is real.

Suddenly, she is angry with everyone and everything.

Tell him! A voice rolled her, almost crying. You're going to ruin everything, says another with resignation.

However, something inside her asks for more, she wants to have him closer and her hands tremble wanting to interlock their fingers; it is as if a spirit had possessed her body and made her ambitious and selfish.

She feels her heart breaking.

Wanting it is bad. Damian doesn't deserve this, but ...

Now or never.

She shouts: "I love you! Ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?"

Time is frozen, like dead. Everything stops.

Damian is silent.

She swallows and clenches her jaw.

She wants to cry.

She has ruined everything.

But he looks up and smiles like a devil.

***

The lights are off when they reach her room, Titus is playing with her sheets and there is disorder.

She stands still, not knowing what to do.

The moonlight is bluish, almost blinding them and everything is silent. The door to her room is open, the kitchen light is dim and she listens to a tune in the distance, she thinks it's the radio that Kory always leaves on.

The tension could be cut by a knife, but it is different.

Raven has passed the effect of alcohol and knows that she has done something that is irreparable, but she couldn't care less, because he smiled and held her hand gently; Damian dropped the costumes a bit, sheltering his feelings and emotions as heshe had been taught all his life, just for her. Nobody else.

He is standing at the door.

He looks her in the eye and there is an unspoken agreement between the two.

Close the door.

Raven is an awkward mess, it will take days for her emotions to normalize, but this time she allows her stomach to spin, her hands to stay inert at the sides of her torso without knowing which position to adapt, and her brain short-circuiting.

All roads had led her to this moment.

Feeling their fear and how confused they are, none are used to showing affection unless someone loves them, but they try. She stands firm.

Damian says nothing when he approaches, he takes her hand gently interlacing his fingers, it is like fire and ice, two forces that collide. It is something so every day, but with him it is as if he left a mark that she cannot erase.

He presses their foreheads and she sigh.

She had been a hawthorn tree for a long time, but now she may be a rose.

He caresses her face, the pads of his fingers running down her forehead, her cheeks up to her neck. It is pure, there is longing and affection, he will not tell her that he loves her too, but the gentleness and innocence of the act is enough to let her breathe out, because they do not need to speak, nor do they require speeches. Love can be declared to anyone, castles are built on the sand with ease only from confessions based on nothing, but demonstrating it is something else.

Raven kisses him on the cheek, presses her lips against the skin, and the fingers he keeps on her neck tremble. His breathing is ragged, as if he was agitated; they were both so lonely, apprehensive, and fearful that this bubble was an illusion.

They cannot make promises now because this is running a thread.

Darkness surrounds them, like a blanket on this summer night. There is no one in the tower, everyone stayed at the bar and they only heard Titus's playful grunts.

Her hands go up his chest and go to the nape. They take it easy, adapting to being this close, and trying not to get the blow too strong to leave them in shock.

She presses her forehead against his cheek.

Her father's voice is strong and threatening, but she contains a smile because it is so ridiculous and funny.

"What does he say? " He whispers.

She looked him in the eyes "My father wants to kill you. "

Damian frowns "And me to him. "

Raven laughs, a loud, clear laugh; she shares his feelings about her father.

"I will have a good relationship with your father," he says sarcastically. His voice is light and attracts her, like bees to honey. "It would be a shame if you spend time with me. "

"It would be," she whispers.

He brushes back a lock of her hair, pressing both hands to her cheeks. He kisses her cheek lightly with the touch of a butterfly and sighs, almost instinctively closes his eyes and kisses her on the corner of her lips, they are like school children experiencing romance.

When they finally kiss, it is soft and delicate.

She has to lean on him not to slip, and her heart trembles with joy, because she has what she wanted for so long. She doesn't know when they crossed the line, when she started having feelings for him, it felt like a thousand years ago.

She in a safe place, she feels like she been waiting a long time to find something like that. This is the kind of love that time does not heal, that makes you sigh and beg for more.

She would ask him to please stay.

In the past she believed that love is painful, that it steals things from you and runs away, like a criminal, but it is more than that.

Kissing in the dark, limbs trembling and hearts pounding, praying this doesn't end. They are a blank page on a desk, which is filled as they go.

Raven strokes his hair, and feels his breath catch.

They stay there and Titus jumps around her, barking and expressing enthusiasm; he is the only thing in the room that is moving.

He kisses her again. This time it is safe, the kiss is slow, and he seems to want to savor this moment and her legs tremble.

His breath is slightly bitter, like whisky, and her lips are ice cold in the drink. It is an interesting contrast to his warm skin to the touch and she realizes how much she wanted to feel each of his scars, she wanted to perceive what his skin is like and the lights change the color of his green eyes, she wants to know what is under his clothes, count his freckles, moles, wounds and scars.

One of the straps of her dress falls from her shoulder.

Her body is new to him, and she is more than willing to get used to it.

Let him have everything; her heart, her body and soul.

*** 

Damian and Raven talk and agree to have their relationship private.

In front of the titans they are companions, they get along well, but it is not that they revolve around each other, in fact, they hardly speak if it is not for the missions. They try to separate the professional from the personal, they would have nothing in front of the others, but they look in private corners. No one knows what is between them.

They do well.

Damian has already been exposed to the media, they had gotten into his life and he was hated by everyone for his attitudes like Robin, but when they are together that does not matter. All the drama queens and the noisy ones muffle their voices and the statements of celebrities approaching him lose their meaning.

He doesn't care what is said in the tabloids.

He thinks the Titans are suspicious, but not that there was enough evidence, and none are willing to answer the questions or pay attention to suspicious glances. Nobody asks Damian, but his brothers are an exception, after all, they didn't learn from the best detective in the world for nothing and sometimes he thinks it's a curse to surround himself with his family.

He thinks Alfred and his father know but ignores them.

They are not a sentimental couple, nor do they go out too much, only on missions or compulsory fun dates, to walk in the park with Titus, although they rarely go together, since they fear finding the photos on the internet; they prefer to be in the room, have breakfast on the roof of the tower, lie next to each other without speaking, they could read together or hold hands and Damian prefers to enjoy her company when no one is around, She is surprised when she feels light waking up by his side in the morning or by entering her room after a mission.

Damian walks to her room with Titus following in his footsteps.

He goes through the room where the group watches a movie, Raven is not there, so she assumes that she must be in her room probably because they are watching a horror movie and it is not that the girl is a fan of horror movies that include Blood and uncensored deaths, the group barely notices as they are thrilled by the butter knife murder scene.

He opens the door and is surprised.

She is reading in his bed, wearing a shirt that she stole from his closet and never returned, and shorts made from gray fabric. Now she wears a plain Dolce and Gabanna shirt for sleep, as if the designer's brand was nothing.

Her short hair is strewn across the pillow and she is focused on the letters in that book.

Titus jumps onto the bed, licking the girl's face, she suppresses a smile, and looks up to see him lock the door securely.

She pet the dog "Hi. "

He quietly walks over to his computer, pulling a document Drake had sent him out of the recycle bin that contained a report with a couple of errors. His father instructed him to correct the mistakes since his brother had overdosed on coffee or something.

she is probably feeling his apprehension.

From his bag where she carries his pet's leash, water bottles, the muzzle and a part of towels, she extracts a cotton candy wrapped in a plastic bag, it looks like a pink cloud.

When he saw the vendor in the park, he remembered how she had that insane obsession with sweets and his mind began to associate her with caramel, soft and extremely sugary flavors. Sometimes he doesn't understand how she can tolerate eating a whole cotton candy.

She smiles at him and takes it in her hands. He sits on the bed, and she spreads her feet using his lap to support them; Damian looks down as if asking why he did that, but he just lets it go.

Raven eats the cotton candy, while smiling as she tries to push the dog away. Finally, the animal licks her fingers absorbing the sweetness, and she laughs.

He tries to focus on correcting the report, but her laugh distracts him.

"I'm trying to finish," he declares, but his gaze is no longer focused on the screen.

She puts a piece of cotton candy in her mouth and smiles. She doesn't answer him, but she looks sorry for interrupting him, heshe knows it's not her fault, but she didn't impose rules on Titus and around Raven he behaves like a spoiled brat. 

"Sorry, it's just ..." The dog jumps on top of her and licks her fingers. Damian decides that enough is enough and with just a sign Titus settles near his feet. The girl grimaces picks up the book and opens a page. "Is that the report they called you so much for? "

He nodded. 

Gotham City.

The Penguin robbed the city bank, between the streets ...

Raven shakes her hand and opens her palm. Now heshe is sitting next to her, she bumps her shoulders against his, she is small and their palms touch, she thinks she wants to interlace her fingers, but she puts a piece of cotton candy in his hand.

"Eat a little."

He is transported to the first night of mandatory fun when he hated being with the Titans, he did not belong because he knew everything there was to know, he was the most intelligent, disciplined and the most brutal fighter in the world, but nothing else and that is precisely what he lacked. He did not have any social skills, it was never clearer than in that amusement park, he had thought that his mistakes were great, he did not deserve that any of these people accepted him.

Raven had gotten closer; he didn't even know why. She offered him cotton candy ...

Just like now.

Shit. His father would kill him.

He closed the computer and set it aside. Damian eats the cotton candy, he still doesn't like it, it melts in his mouth and it is pure sugar, it is gooey, and his throat warms up, as if he had ingested a liquid at high temperatures.

He draws her in and sits her on his legs.

Raven is slim and diminutive, not muscular like Kory or Donna, but possesses the body of a runner, although both know she is not exceptional in sports, she prefers her magic. He surrounds her waist, and she rests her head against his cheek, as she likes to do when they hug.

She keeps her gaze on her book and turns the pages.

Read:

With his back to the sun, another day ends in this abandoned town.

You have a wish list:

-Know the city.

-Build an aviary for those little birds that roam your yard looking for food.

-Risking for someone and that it turns out well.

…

Damian laughs wryly.

"What? " She asked, looking him in the eye.

Raven pulls back a little but adjusts the position so that both legs rest to one side.

"You were drunk when you confessed. You took a chance. "

She buries her head in his shoulder "Don't remind me. "

She is embarrassed. He Finds this charming.

"It went right."

Raven stiffens, and looks him in the eye, but Damian is smiling because he can't help it and he likes to see how certain answers surprise her. She puts those eyes that he only sees when he smiles at her, it's like she's melting inside, struggling to hold back a sigh; He has seen her do it before they started dating because Damian Wayne is not a fool, he is still the son and heir of the best detective in the world, and he was taught from a young age to measure personal body language; It is adorable.

Maybe he still slips.

He strokes her hair, tucking one of her locks behind her right ear.

They looked into each other's eyes.

 "Yes." She kisses him, sighs against his mouth, and Damian interlocks his fingers giving her a soft squeeze. "I did something right. "

His grandfather and mother would be scolding him, an Al Ghul did not hold his partner as a delicate thing and allowed himself to be kissed without a purpose, even his father who had lost the ground to the Gotham cat would give him a disapproving look, it is dangerous to establish a personal connection with your teammates, but none knew and to be honest, they were not interested.

In fact, no one knows for sure.

The diamond sparkles on her forehead.

"My father still wants to kill you."

Of course, yes.

She changes position now sitting face to face, strokes his chest until she stops at his heart and stays there. He really doesn't understand how he came to this, he didn’t expect to find love, nor in a million years would he think about being in this position, but he won't run from this. All the voices from his past scream in his head, but Damian stays.

It is so unexpected.

Damian hates when something doesn't go according to plan, because he usually has it all coldly calculated, if it doesn't work then he would have a backup. As the future leader of an organization, his life was designed, as Robin, he has to be prepared for everything and being a Titan, he took on the hard work, the aspects that others would not take care of, everything was perfected. This is out of his hands.

"I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this"

Raven smiles and they kiss.

All the murders, all his past, all the pain and confusion, the hatred and the persecutions are nothing compared to her.

End.

[georgecrecy]

Living Fossils {2}

The group of explorers made their way back to the shuttle and entered, chattering excitedly about their findings and what might yet lay in store. One by one they entered the cramped shower facilities to wash off the toils of the day, and finally gathered in the helm.

As everyone sat down in turn, Doctor Ghan busied himself with the report to Allnex, while Codru poured over the pictures of the site on a combipad with Murien, each pointing with long fingers at various points of interest as they spoke in a low mutter.

By the time everyone had gathered again, Doctor Ghan had finished his report and sent it off to the ship in orbit. He cleared his throat to gather everyone's attention as Hyupi sat down, still toweling off her tendrils from the shower. "Ahem, welcome back everyone. I know we're all tired so I'll make it brief before we retire for some proper sleep." The doctor eyed Kenta as he mouthed, "Thank the stars." to Hyupi, who smirked in response. The doctor continued regardless. "I would be lying if I were to say I wasn't excited. It's not often we-"

His sentence was broken off by the insistent beeping from the console behind him. The rest got a bit closer as the Doctor smiled and hit the answering key. A new face, upside down, came over the screen.

The doctor looked aghast. "Epan, why in the world is the gravity field off? Is the ship damaged?"

Epan, gangly even for their race, blinked back in brief confusion before his face broke out in a smile. "Ah, naw Doc, she's fine. But you know how the negative sound sets my nerves off, and with no one else up here, I just thought…"

Ghan was visibly relieved, but his tone was still stern for the younger technician. "Yes, well, that's fine and all if nothing's wrong, but would you please orient yourself right side up to the screen?"

Epan cheekily and slowly turned two loops in the air, waving at the others as Ghan looked on with a fake air of weariness. Once Epan was right side up to the screen, Ghan continued. "You rang, Epan?"

"Oh, right! Yeah, is this report for real? You found a Class A? That's amazing!"

Ghan nodded, "Yes, and I was about to mention that it's not often we have this opportunity to explore an untouched, late Class A Civilization structure that is so well preserved. I suspect that once Allnex receives my report in a day or so that it will take to traverse the techweb, that we will be flooded with scientists clamoring over our find in a week!"

Epan looked to the side of the screen sheepishly. "Well, about that doc… unfortunately, we are a little dark up here with the techweb. The antenna's on the fritz and my baby ain't being nice back to me, so Allnex won't be getting any news for a while." 

Kenta piped up from the back of the group. "Could it be pirate jammers? I don't know when this sector was last sweeper for them.'

Epan shook his head, his body tilting a bit awry from the motion before a hand reached out to steady himself. "Nah, it's nothing like that. Sector scans are clear, and I did post-jump diagnostic runs when we first popped in, that was all green. But it's me we're talking about, I can get her squawking again in no time!"

Ghan nodded in thought, and looked briefly at the others in the group before turning back to the screen. "I'm sure you will. But in the meantime, be on the alert, the scans may have missed something behind one of the system moons or in the asteroid belt. We will talk later. Be good up there and keep the bunks warm for our return!"

Epan saluted, "You got it Doc. I'll even warm up the fahn rolls for us all when you get back! Over and out."

The screen faded to black as Ghan turned back fully to the others. "This means that the sooner we get the choicest artifacts for study, the sooner we can go home and get the most credit for our intrepid work… and, of course, be paid handsomely." The doctor nodded to the two mercenaries, and then clapped his hands in anticipation. "But we need to rest, so we get started as soon as we can tomorrow. Goodnight, and good work today, everyone!"

All began to shuffle to their respective bunks. The accommodations were rather cramped on the landing shuttle, so there were typically two to a room, such as the one Codru and Saffer shared. As Saffer prepared for bed, he gazed sidelong at Codru in the upper bunk, the light from the combipad lighting up his face and the bulkhead behind him, the former of which was scrunched up in concentration.

Saffer's curiosity got the best of him as he jokingly asked, "What are you thinking about so hard that you look like a wounded Gorhax?"

Codru, so concentrated on his thoughts, barely registered the jibe. "Just trying to translate the alien script from the pad. The script is very unique so the translation program isn't getting very far at all, and I don't even want to talk about my manual attempts. Have you taken xenolinguistics?" Codru looked down from his bunk hopefully.

Saffer tilted his head, "I can speak a little Zenthian from my primary days, but I haven't had the prerequisites to take that class yet."

Codru looked back at the pad in disappointment. "That's alright. Given the amount of species out there -- let alone their scripts and all the variants -- it's a tad broad, but Dr. Juil makes it pretty fun. I only got a B- though, and I think she was being kind to me on that- ugh, damn!"

Saffer, who had slipped into his bottom bunk, could only see the light above wink in and out before the room plunged completely into darkness, and hear the sound of Codru tapping hard on the combipad. "What's wrong?"

"Hm, this Allnex piece of tech trash, it won't hold a charge or something! I might dig through the storage and see if there is a new one tomorrow. I really don't want to have this issue in the middle of the dig."

Saffer yawned, and laid his head back down on the bedding. "Oh, ok. If it does happen again tomorrow, you could use mine if you need to. Goodnight!"

Codru fiddled with the pad a little more, but eventually tossed it toward his feet in disgust and defeat. Closing his multicolored eyes, the senior student eventually joined his younger companion below in the realm of sleep.

Several minutes later, the combipad's screen lit up once more, and in milliseconds slipped past the code screen to the linguistic program beyond. The progress bar, which had been stuck at no more than 2% for the last several hours, suddenly jumped to 34%, and over the image of the pad their language dropped into place somewhat translucently over the alien script.

"W*lcom* to th* ***. Pl**s* imp*t **thoriz*tion."

The small room went dark once more, while over the soft sound of the two occupants snoring, there was only the hum of the ship and the omnipresent scraping and tapping of debris against the hull outside.

_______________________________

The stamping of feet on hull preceded the shouting which echoed along the short hallway, "Doctor Ghan! Doctor Ghan!" The owner of the name looked up from his morning tea in amazement at the disheveled figure of the usually unexcitable Codru, who was holding his combipad in front of him with elation clear on his face. 

Ghan, with his browplates raised almost as far as they could extend said, "Codru, what in Navek's name has got you so excited?"

Handing his combipad to the Doctor, once he had gotten some composure back he exclaimed, "Look at that! Last night it wasn't getting anywhere, but the translation software finally came through while we were sleeping." 

Ghan briefly looked over the picture of the door pad, the alien letters now partially transposed with letters of their own language. He looked up at Codru and the others who had gathered to the commotion with a grin. "This is excellent! Then the faster we get out there, the faster we can plumb the depths of this little mystery, so to speak!"

Murien, who was gazing at the screen over the doctor's shoulder asked, "Do we have an idea what the contents might be then? What it's welcoming us to?"

Both Ghan and Codru shook their heads, the former responding, "No, there isn't enough info just yet for us to even guess." He sipped a last hurried gulp of his tea before standing up, "So let's get out there and find out, shall we?"

The rest agreed, and within forty-five minutes the group were suited up and on their way, struggling through the early morning winds. However, it wasn't very long before Hyupi stopped the procession with a hand signal of warning. Over the helmet comms she commanded, "Kentu, cover our rear, there is something in the sand ahead."

While the rest kneeled in wait, Hyupi carefully moved up to her target: a half-buried sphere of rusted metal with various antennas, cracked camera lenses, sensors, and propulsion systems. 

The rest of the survey team witnessed as she swept her carbine over what little of the landscape was visible through the storm, which had abated a little since their setting out. Finally they heard the crackle of her voice over the comms say, "Alright, all clear. Seems like a nonfunctioning probe."

The group moved forward to her position, gathering around the probe, which had a drift of sand built up to one side. Saffer kneeled down again to examine it closely. "Ooh, Doctor, is this another example of this civilization's technology?"

Ghan pulled out his combipad and a sensor pack, taking readings of the probe. The rest had to wait a few minutes while he looked over the results. "I… I don't believe so. It isn't nearly as old as the building, the dating shows only a century or so, and of a different material structure entirely. Does anyone see any markings?"

Saffer and Hyupi dug around the probe, exposing more of its body. Saffer was the one that found the remains of a red triangle, with an inner line of symbols. "Here's something, but I don't know what."

Kentu's voice now sounded over the comms channel, "I do, I've used their tech before on missions. That belonged to the old Erzeni Corporation, they used to make all sorts of military-grade equipment."

Murien looked back at him, "Used to?"

Kentu nodded, "Eh, they've been out of business for decades. I've only used surplus leftovers. But they were dependable despite their age, which makes sense considering it's a Scaanid company." 

Ghan looked at the probe and Kentu questioningly. "Are you sure Kentu? We're practically on the other side of the galaxy from the Scaanid Empire, there would be no reason for a probe of theirs here." 

Kentu shrugged imperceptibly through the bulk of his suit. "I'm pretty sure, doc. I probably still have a thing or two of theirs in storage to compare. Maybe it was a wayward one that happened to crash here."

Saffer interjected, "I don't think it came from space. It would have been flattened and broken apart if it had, with a larger crater. With its condition, it didn't fall more than a hundred feet, right Doctor?" 

Ghan was very lost in thought, but Saffer's question seemed to wake him. "Hmm? Oh, yes, quite possibly. Let's get some pictures taken of this and get back to our main mission before we use too much of our limited time on this. And yes, Kentu, I would like to compare the markings when we get back."

The rest of the trip was uneventful, fortunately, and soon the group returned to the imposing metal structure. It didn't take much more digging to uncover the door again from the night's accumulation against their earlier work. They once more were confronted by the pad, which lit up at the mere touch of a brush clearing the sand crusting the top.

Codru retrieved his combipad from his pack, which was piled with the rest to one side while they dug into the sand, and booted up the translation program once again. Using the overlay he began to manually interact with the door pad, looking at it through the screen of his own combipad. Ghan, Saffer, and Murien were crowded around him as he worked, offering the occasional bit of advice as he did so.

"Try finding some sort of diagn-"

"Diagnostic settings, yes, that's what I'm looking for."

"Did you try that button there?"

"I'd rather not just try buttons, Murien. That never works."

"But it looked promising!"

"Make sure to record this process, Codru, we may have to figure this out again should the translation not improve."

"Of course, doctor."

His suit hampered his attempts at pushing the buttons on the screen, but once he figured out a good angle to use with the thick finger pads his attempts went much smoother. Through a multitude of screens and clumsy backtracks, eventually he was able to get to a screen with a green and red button. 

* _c_ss p_th 46*

*Op_n door?* 

He pressed the green one, and the six of them heard through the rushing wind around them the hiss of decompression, and the door next to the pad jolted open slightly. All patted each other on the back in joy before opening the door fully. Murien looked at Codru suspiciously, "How did you know that was the right button to press?"

Codru sniffed, and after a moment of hesitation as the group donned their packs once more, he said, "After careful consideration of the circumstances, it seemed the most logical choice." 

Saffer interjected with a smile clearly visible through his helmet. "Don't you mean it looked promising?"

The older student didn't deign to respond as they entered in turn through the door.

The lights on their suits bounced off of smooth, granite grey walls and the stairs that led downward from the entrance landing. The last two in line were held up momentarily as they wrestled the door back closed, the combined strength of Kentu and Murien still straining against the difference in pressure and the sand piling up while rocks bounced off of the walls and down the stairs ahead of them all. The door closed with another hiss and squeal, the howling wind outside stifled to a low moan as the few remaining clacks of bouncing rocks echoed into the beyond. Lights embedded in the juncture of the ceiling and walls promptly lit up the stairway as soon as the door closed.

Doctor Ghan looked back towards the team above him from his position several steps down once the clattering of pebbles stopped, turning his suit lights off. "Excellent! Alright. Turn your recorders on if you haven't already, because we are stepping into the uncharted world of this newly discovered civilization, and I don't want to miss a single detail! You all know your respective jobs. With a building as ancient as this, I also need not remind you to be very careful and call out any structural faults you see near us. I'd like to first find that power source, so that will be one of our main goals of study. But keep an eye out for anything else that might be of interest. Let's move on, stay close all." With preparations and speeches finished, the team descended deeper into the unknown.

[emmerrr]

let’s try this again shall we? also that should say ‘single level’ not single reference, i had fixed that typo before i posted and lost the original but never mind

-

It’s a while before Ronan notices, to be honest.

Socks just aren’t something he pays that much attention to; his own, or anyone else’s. They’re just...there. He doesn’t even really have a specific sock drawer. It’s more of a mixed bag drawer, full of sweatpants, PJs, boxers, and socks. His only prerequisite when reaching for socks in the morning is that there’s two of them. Whether or not they match is irrelevant.

So when Adam, home for the summer, mentions that he thinks some of his socks are going missing, Ronan doesn’t think too much about it.

“You sure you didn’t just leave them in the drier?”

“Pretty sure. I checked, and then I double-checked.”

“Oh well, I’m sure they’ll turn up,” Ronan says, then drags Adam’s attention back to more important things, like making out on the sofa for hours.

A couple of weeks later, Adam brings it up again, and Ronan tries to suggest other explanations.

“Maybe you accidentally left a bunch of socks at college?”

“Not a chance. They’re getting washed and dried as pairs, but when I come to empty the machine, a sock from each pair has gone, every single time. I’m gonna run out at this rate, I’ll have to get more.”

“You can always wear mine, Parrish, I don’t care. Or I’ll dream you up some new ones, easy-peasy.”

Adam frowns. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just...weird. It’s only my socks. I don’t get it.”

Strange as it is, Ronan still thinks weirder things have happened to them, so again it doesn’t rank too high on his list of priorities. It’s just one of those things, an unexplainable story to laugh about in the future.

After one afternoon spent working in one of the barns outside, Ronan returns to the house in the early evening and heads straight for the kitchen. Adam has returned from work, and is standing with his back to Ronan, leaning on the counter before him and watching the coffee machine do its thing.

He’s clearly been back a while, because he’s wearing sweats and a baggy t-shirt, and he’s had a shower and a nap if the way his hair’s sticking up on one side is anything to go by. But it’s his socks that immediately draw Ronan’s eye.

On Adam’s left foot is a sock in the colours of the bi pride flag, and on his right is a sock of Ronan’s, a red one patterned with multi-coloured dinosaurs. They were a Christmas gift from Matthew.

Adam doesn’t immediately realise Ronan’s there what with the coffee machine gurgling away, but as Ronan pads over he senses him a second before he reaches him, turning his face a half-inch and smiling.

Ronan tugs lightly at the sleep-stretched neck of Adam’s t-shirt and presses a lingering kiss to his bare shoulder, before wrapping his arms around him. “You look so fucking adorable,” he murmurs into Adam’s hearing ear.

Adam doesn’t verbally respond but he melts into Ronan a little, tilting his neck to allow access for Ronan to kiss a line down it the way he knows Adam likes.

“Nice socks,” he says, and it’s this that finally prompts Adam into actually speaking.

He turns around and lifts up his bi-stocking-ed foot. “See!” he exclaims. “The other one’s disappeared. I now don’t have any matching pairs of socks in this house and there is definitely a conspiracy at play.”

Ronan snorts. “Yeah, okay, this is getting pretty weird,” he allows.

Adam narrows his eyes. “This isn’t you, is it?”

“Huh?”

“The socks, Ronan. Is it you?”

“Adam, why the fuck would I steal your socks?”

“...Yeah, okay,” Adam says, visibly deflating. “I didn’t think you had a foot fetish as well as a hand kink.”

“Hey.” Ronan lightly pokes the tip of Adam’s nose. “Rude.”

“Sorry.” Adam sighs. “I just...I really, really don’t understand what could have happened to them.”

“Have you tried asking your tarot cards?”

“You’re hilarious, you know that?”

“I try.”

The rest of the summer passes in a wonderful blur, far too quickly but with as much fun and love as they can possibly squeeze into the days. No more of Adam’s socks go missing, but he refuses to replace any until he gets back to college, not wanting to risk them going walkabout at the Barns.

The day before he’s due to leave, he has one final shift at Boyd’s, an easy afternoon of oil changes for one last influx of cash. His bag is packed and waiting by the door in the hallway so it can be easily thrown into the car in the morning.

Ronan’s in the kitchen preparing a farewell feast worthy of champions when he hears the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor coming from the hallway. He stops chopping potatoes and follows the sound, stepping through the doorway just in time to catch sight of Adam’s duffel bag being pulled up the stairs.

He rounds the corner so he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs and looks up to see that it’s Opal who’s making off with Adam’s bag. She freezes when she spots Ronan, drops the bag strap and darts the rest of the way upstairs to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Sighing, Ronan puts Adam’s bag back by the door and then follows Opal up the stairs.

He knocks on her door. “Opal?” No response. “I’m coming in, okay?”

He hesitates just in case she decides she doesn’t want him there, but when there’s still no reply he opens the door and scans the room.

He doesn’t immediately see her and feels a brief flare of panic that she might have escaped out the window (an alarming prospect as they’re on the second floor), but then he spots her sitting in the corner, facing the wall and covering her face with her hands.

She looks like she’s put herself in a time-out. Or that she’s counting for a game of hide-and-seek.

Ronan sits on the edge of her bed. “Opal. Look at me.”

At length, she lowers her hands and turns, pinning him with those big eyes, wide and unblinking.

“Why were you trying to hide Adam’s bag?”

“Because he can’t leave if he can’t find it,” she says slowly, as if she thinks he’s being very dim-witted on purpose.

“But he’s gotta go back to college. You know that.”

She shakes her head adamantly. “He went to college last year.”

“Right, but we talked about this, remember? It’s four years. And he’s already done one now.”

“Three more,” she says sadly.

“I know. It sounds long. But it’ll be like last year. He’ll go and then he’ll come back.”

She crosses her arms, petulant. “So long...”

“It feels like it sometimes, yeah, but that’s why we call him, and why we visit, and why he comes home as much as he can.”

Ronan understands separation anxiety all too well. It’s hard to comfort Opal when he feels very much the same. But he supposes one of them has to be the adult in this particular situation, and the task has fallen unenviably to him.

Opal finally deigns to come and sit next to him. “Won’t he miss us?” she asks quietly.

“Course he will, we’re fucking awesome,” Ronan says, and Opal finally quirks a smile. “But he’s worked really hard for this and he’s learning loads of cool stuff at college. So we can’t hide his stuff even though we’re gonna miss him, okay?”

Opal sighs. “Okay.” She hops down and reaches under her bed, pulling out a cardboard box. “Do you think he’ll need these as well?”

Ronan peers inside to see that the box is full of socks. Adam’s socks, to be exact. Mystery solved.

He bursts out laughing, and it’s a while before he gets his breath back to speak. “Did you think Adam wouldn’t be able to go back if none of his socks matched?”

“What else is the point of matching socks?” she asks, genuinely curious, and this sets Ronan off again.

“Ohhh, brat,” he says, wrapping an arm around her. “Don’t ever change.”

Adam is both pleased and confused when he gets home and is presented with his missing socks.

“Where did you find them?”

“Uhhh...” Ronan stalls, looking to Opal, unsure of how much she wants him to say, or if she even cares at all.

Adam notices the exchange and smiles at her. “Was it you who found them?”

Opal nods slowly. “They were...out...side,” she says unconvincingly. “I think Chainsaw took them.” Then she nods emphatically, happy with this excuse considering Chainsaw won’t be able to defend her own honour. “It was Chainsaw.”

Ronan supposes that just because he doesn’t lie, doesn’t mean Opal’s incapable. Adam smiles again, and there’s something knowing and wistful in it. He can likely now guess that Opal’s the true culprit, but he won’t call her out on it. He’s good like that.

“Well thank you,” he says, straightening Opal’s skull-cap. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Opal beams and kisses the back of his hand before scampering off outside to torment the local wildlife or whatever else she does for fun.

Adam steps into Ronan’s orbit and kisses him, slow and gentle. “I don’t know what I’d do without you either,” he murmurs.

Ronan grins at that. “I think you should only wear odd socks from here on out.”

“Y’know what, it’s grown on me.”

[yourfaveisyanderematic]

Boiling the Frog

When you leave things up to me, you get Horrible, but I suspect you already knew that :3c

You hated nail polish.  The whole process of manicures, in fact, seemed like a frustrating hassle, far too much effort for a result that would only chip in a few days anyway, something that was…girly, in a way you instinctively shied away from.  Your friends would admire your hands and complain that leaving them bare was a waste of good genetics, but you were perfectly content to simply regard their nails with vague admiration and leave things at that.  When would you ever need to learn, anyway?

“Fuck.” you swore under your breath as your hand trembled, moving the brush in the wrong direction and ruining the coat yet again.  Reaching for the rubbing alcohol and undoing everything for the umpteenth time was the last thing you wanted to do—you’d already been at this for over an hour—but entertaining the idea only reminded you of the last time you’d given into the impulse.  You saw his face in your mind’s eye, clear as day, the handsome cheekbones and elegantly styled light hair framing cold grey eyes that betrayed no hint of emotion but communicated profound disappointment all the same.

“Even young girls can do this properly, it’s one of the first things they teach each other.  How is this so difficult for you?”

The mere memory of hearing him say the words made your heart wobble.  You scrubbed at the fresh paint with new fervor, erasing the thought of having to actually hear them again with each stroke.  You’d do it right.  You could do this right.  It was easy.

You’d never paid attention to the routine before, but in only a short time you knew it intimately.  You knew how to push your cuticles back (an intimidating process that drew blood the first time you tried it) and to lay a clear base.  You knew how long to wait between coats and how to brush them for the best consistency and coverage, and you knew to coat the undersides of your nails with the topcoat to keep them from chipping for longer.

Only a month or two ago, if someone told you you’d learn to do all this for some guy, you would have laughed in their face.  You tried not to think about that, just pushed past the fatigue of making such tightly controlled motions for so long and tried again, watching the rainbow flecks of the micro glitter swirl against deep blue in the wake of the brush.  It was a good thing you were on the very last nail.  There wasn’t much time before you had to go to work, and Kira hated to be kept waiting.

You waved your hand in the air in an effort to get the last coat to dry faster, capping the bottles with your free hand and putting them away.  These, too, had a particular order to be in, and you weren’t sloppy enough to forget again.  Everything had its place.

Time to go.  You took a glance at yourself in the mirror, adjusted your slacks and dress shirt, and made for the door, stepping into the hallway.

“Kira?  I’m ready to go,” you called for your boyfriend (it still felt a little weird to think of him as that) and made your way down the stairs.  Yoshikage Kira waited for you near the front door, standing between you and your shoes, making a show of adjusting his tie even though his appearance had never been short of what you’d call ‘effortlessly immaculate’.  It was enough to make you straighten your shirt again, a little more nervously this time, even though you’d already confirmed you looked professional enough moments ago.

Kira gave you a very obvious once-over as you came to a stop in front of him, finally reaching forward to redo the button at the very top of your shirt.  The sensation of his hands, close enough to your neck that you could feel their warmth, was enough to make your breath hitch, but he graciously ignored it.  

“That’s all anyone else should be seeing of you.  You look very professional.”  He raised his hand, a wordless invitation (or an order, something in your head whispered) and you complied, resting your hand in his.  He tilted his hand, letting the light catch your fingers from all angles, regarding your work in complete silence.  You couldn’t help but hold your breath.

“Very nice.” Your heart fluttered at the words, so simple yet rarely heard from him.  “I can see you’ve been improving with practice, I told you this wasn’t hard.  Although…” a frown creased his thin features, “I’m not sure about the color.  Don’t you think the glitter’s a little childish?”

You felt your heart sink.  “But…you said it was fine, when I picked it out.”  This was stupid.  It was your nails, it should have been fine if you liked it.  Ever since your relationship began, however, it became increasingly obvious that Kira was far more sophisticated than you were.  You found yourself acting in response, changing how you dressed and even what you cooked, a childish compulsion to please him, to live up to the standards he set for you.

“For work?  When you wanted to buy this I assumed it was for a night out or the weekend, so I didn’t raise any objections.”  He eyed the clock overhead.  “You don’t have any time to change it.  Come on; traffic will be terrible.”  He stepped aside, letting your hand fall out of his grasp as you stepped into your shoes.  Without another word, Kira opened the door and walked you to his car, letting his arm rest around your shoulders in a way that was almost possessive.

But I don’t want to change the color, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“…and that’s how I got Sato to start putting his laundry away!”  Suzuki, one of your coworkers, finished her latest spiel about her adventures in childcare, sitting back for your reaction with an expectant grin.  You gently nudged her to move her leg, letting you finish filling out the form, and gave a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement.  Lunch hour was only ten minutes away but really couldn’t come fast enough.

“Everyone kept telling me ‘oh, once he’s got the habit it’ll be so hard to change’, but once you know the trick it’s actually really easy,” she wound a brunette curl around her finger with a knowing smile.  Suzuki was a nice enough coworker, older than you and modern enough to work despite being a mother, but she had a frustrating ability to carry on a conversation almost entirely one-sidedly, and learning to tune her out was almost a prerequisite for your job.

“It’s just boiling the frog.  All you need is patience.”

The strangeness of the phrase made you pause, and you watched her grin broaden as you stared up in incomprehension.  “‘Boiling the…frog’?”

She clapped her hands, loudly enough to draw looks from others in the office.  “Funny saying, right?  I picked it up on a trip to America.  Basically, instead of trying to do everything all at once, you change things gradually, one at a time, and wait.  They get so used to things that they’re doing everything you want, and they don’t even notice the change!  Next I’m going to do it with vegetables.  You’ll definitely want to do things like that when you’ve got kids of your own!” she gave a knowing wink, despite the fact that you’d never once expressed the slightest interest in children.  She opened her mouth to continue some other story about parental wisdom she wanted to pass to you, and you went back to work, hearing her voice muffle into a background drone that was almost musical.

A shadow loomed over you, breaking into your thoughts.  The next thing you registered was that Suzuki’s presence had mysteriously vanished from your desk, freeing up a good third of the space.  

Kira loomed over you, beautiful even in the fluorescent lights that flattered nobody.  His hand came over your own, stilling your pen.

“What are you doing?  Lunch has started.  Hurry, we’ve only got an hour and I want to have Saint Gentlemen’s.”  Normally you would have objected—not even Suzuki would interrupt you in the middle of work, and there were only a couple lines left on the form—but Saint Gentlemen’s was popular, and missing out on lunch would put Kira in a bad mood.  You put the pen down and stood up.  It felt bold to grab Kira’s arm as the two of you walked out, but he didn’t pull away this time; when you looked up at his face, you realized it must have been because he was distracted, glancing over his shoulder with an unreadable expression.

“What’s wrong?”  You waited until the two of you were alone in the elevator to ask.  You hated to look like you were gossiping.  He took a deep breath.

“It’s nothing, really…I just dislike two-faced people, who smile to your face but laugh at you behind your back.  I’m so glad you’re nothing like that.”

You watched the lights on the display slowly count down, itching to press but unsure if you should.  “Like…did something happen?”

He looked at you out of the corner of his eye and then reached out, once again holding you close.  

“I don’t want to upset you.  We’re about to have lunch, I’d hate to ruin the mood.”

Memory flashed.  It was Suzuki he’d been staring at.  

“Was it Suzuki?  Did she say something about you?”  The elevator doors opened, and Kira stepped out with you, holding you tight against the crowd flowing out the doors into the warm sunshine.

“Actually, it was about you.  She’d been laughing with some friends on her break, while you were still working.  ‘They’re so gullible,’” Kira repeated in a high-pitched imitation of your coworker, “‘Did you see their face when I joked that their work was worth the promotion?  I trust the part-time hires more!’”  His face betrayed no emotion, but you felt your stomach twist as you began to rethink every compliment or comment she ever told you in a new light.  Was that really how she felt?  Why didn’t she say anything?  She—

Kira took your chin in his hand, turning your face to meet his.  Something like amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re so easy to rile up.  Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to ruin your mood?  Forget about it.  You aren’t even friends with her.”

I thought I was, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“You’re lovely to look at, and so intelligent.  You’re just so…unpolished.  Only with my help can you really shine.”

Those were the words Kira said to you that first night you began dating.  You would have laughed, but you could tell by the conviction in his eyes that he was completely serious, so you played along, even if you didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

As time went on, however, you began to realize just how right he was.

You were careless.  Time and time again you’d found yourself locked out of the house or missing your wallet, for Kira to look—with you in hysterics—only to produce the missing item from a pocket you must have forgotten to check.  You’d misplace laundry, and Kira would have to buy you new clothes.

You were naive.  Suzuki was the first of your silent bullies you learned about, but she wouldn’t be the last; it seemed like everyone at the office was undermining you somehow, and if Kira hadn’t been acting as your silent guardian you’re sure you’d be the office fool still.  It had been enough to make you quit your job from the stress, though Kira had been more than gracious enough to keep you at his home to recover in peace.

You were hysterical.  Too often you got yourself worked up, imagining that Kira said something hurtful, that he was trying to control you, that he told you this or that or locked you in your room.  It was in the moments of clarity that followed, moments that swept you up in shame and embarrassment, that made you realize that you’d imagined it all.  The stress of being the hunted at your job, of everyone being against you, was threatening to turn you against the one man truly and unconditionally on your side.

Kira had been so patient.  He helped you through it all, tolerating both when you hurled insults at him through the door he you locked to the moments of weakness when you sobbed like a baby into his chest.

“Structure,” was all he would say in those times.  “Structure is what will put your mind in order and make you stronger.  You’re very close, you just need me to help you a little more.”

He was right.  It was only when you knew you were following his lead that you really felt safe, that you could wear that coat or follow that recipe without being sure that you were somehow making a mistake.  The agonizing hours that he was gone (“I still have to work to support you, dear,” he said with a smile as you opened the door for him to leave) were almost suffocating.  Those rare, rare nights when he was out for longer than normal were the worst, when you genuinely felt that you were going to die.

Even so, it was with numb incomprehension that you watched him crush pills from an orange prescription bottle and tip them into the pot he stirred.  He caught your eye and smiled reassuringly, turning the label away from your view.

“To help you sleep tonight,” he offered as explanation, “I have to work late, but I don’t want you to be up all night worrying for me.  You’re fine with it, right?”

The idea of being awake and by yourself was awful.  The idea of being drugged—unconscious and vulnerable to whoever happened by—was borderline unbearable.  No, you felt the word push behind your lips, but you couldn’t make yourself say it.  You nodded slowly.

Kira tilted his head, a satisfied smile that made your heart flutter with pleasure.  If it made him happy with you, if it made you less unmanageable, maybe it couldn’t be that bad.  He gestured to the dinner table, where a small bottle of nail polish waited.  You could see your reflection in its pearly pink sheen as you approached.

“A new shade was released at the department store today.  I’d love to see it on you; we have enough time before dinner’s ready.”

You looked at the label, some high-end brand you would never buy on your own.  Killer Queen.

“It suits you, doesn’t it?”

[shireness-says]

The Man Behind Glass

Summary: When Emma Swan moved to Storybrooke, Maine, she never imagined she’d end up living out a real-life ghost story. But then again, does anyone really expect to find a cursed mirror, or the 300-year-old pirate trapped inside? Rated T. ~12.5K. Also on AO3.

A/N: I’m back, with my second contribution to @cssns! @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713 is responsible for that fantastic gif above - go tell her how awesome she is, because seriously, she’s the best (if its not working, that’s my fault, not hers). As always, thanks to my amazing beta, @snidgetsafan. She’s also the best. Additional thanks to @branlovesouat and @kymbersmith-90, who were 100% responsible for the brainstorming on the CSSNS discord that led to this fic, and helped me get it off the ground.

Tagging folks that were interested or I think would like this: @kmomof4, @hollyethecurious, @winterbaby89, @courtorderedcake, @aerica13, @teamhook, @searchingwardrobes, @katie-dub, @snowbellewells, @wingedlioness

Enjoy!

“Well, kid,” Emma Swan says, apprehension coloring her voice, “looks like this is the place.”

The house isn’t much to look at, to say the least. Truthfully, most of this little town isn’t much to look at. But when Mary Margaret Nolan, an old friend from college, had told Emma about the opening for a counselor at her elementary school, she had jumped at the chance to finally move Henry out of the city and into a place where they can have something resembling a support system. The house Emma purchased is older, shabby-looking, but is in surprisingly good condition inside, albeit dusty and outdated. The previous owner had died some months before, leaving her assets to the town trust. Having no real need for a shabby Queen Anne home, the town had been anxious to sell it, and Emma had snapped it up at a bargain price, some of the late owner’s furnishings included. A lot of it’s probably going to end up carted off to the nearest thrift store in the back of David Nolan’s truck, but Emma’s hopeful that there might be a few pieces they can use. The more she can save on furniture, the better.

At the time of purchase, it seemed like there were almost no downsides - furnished, affordable, with a nice sized yard for Henry to run around in - but looking now at the crooked fence and peeling paint, Emma’s a lot more nervous. God, what have I gotten myself into? she wonders with rising panic. No one has ever accused Emma of being handy, and by the looks of things, she may have quite a few projects on her hands.

It does help that Henry is clearly thrilled by the new house, practically skipping up the front walk with his backpack and all the energy a five-year-old can muster.

“This house is so cool, Mom!” he exclaims excitedly, bringing a smile to Emma’s face despite all her worries. “Can we put a play castle in the backyard? Can my room be in the tower? Oh! Do you think it’s haunted?” Frankly, Henry seems most excited about the last possibility, which Emma will take the time to be worried about later when her schedule is more open.

“Do you want this place to be haunted, kid?” she asks, a bemused smile gracing her face.

“I don’t know, I think it’d be kind of cool,” Henry grins right back. “Didn’t you say the person who lived here was dead?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think she died in the house, Henry. Isn’t that some sort of prerequisite for a haunting?” In fact, Emma knows that the house has been empty for the past year or more, the previous owner having relocated to a care home. Henry doesn’t really need to know that though.

“I don’t know,” Henry shrugs. “We should definitely pay attention, though. Ghosts in stories always get stirred up when something in their home gets changed.”

“Alright, kid, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open,” Emma replies, trying not to chuckle at Henry’s fanciful suppositions. “Are you ready to go check out our new house? Maybe stake your claim on a room?”

Henry’s face lights up with fresh excitement at the notion, dashing up the porch steps as fast as his legs can take him, leaving his mother behind to shake her head in fond exasperation. With a final look at the shabby outside, Emma continues her way up the walk, ready to dive headfirst into this latest adventure.

———

They don’t find the mirror right away. That comes later.

The inside of the house is similarly aged and faded, but still in good condition; it just needs a thorough cleaning and some paint. Well, a ton of paint. Preferably not in colors picked out by a 5-year-old, or they’ll have a neon technicolored home.

They start with the cleaning, although even that is done in bursts. There’s a series of staff meetings ramping up to the school year that Emma’s required to go to, and executing a deep scrub of the sizable house was always destined to be a difficult undertaking with an energetic young child to watch and keep entertained.

Thankfully, though progress is slow, Emma doesn’t have to do it all herself. Mary Margaret has been an enormous help with all her Pinterest cleaning techniques, as well as conscripting her husband into tidying the yard and performing minor repairs. In addition, Emma had somehow hit it off with the school librarian, Belle, and the elegant brunette had graciously offered to lend another set of hands. Between the four of them, the layers of dirt and grime are slowly being peeled away to reveal what will be a very stately-looking house, if given enough love and hard work.

They’re tackling one of the unused guest rooms when Emma removes the dropcloth from an object propped against the wall, revealing a mirror with an ornate faux-gilt frame. The golden paint is flaking a bit, but the intricate carving is still evident on what must have been a beautiful piece in its time. Soon enough, Belle joins her at the mirror, a frown gracing her typically smiling face.

“I know, looks a little out of place in the middle of all this junk,” Emma says, but Belle just shakes her head.

“No, it’s not that,” she murmurs almost absentmindedly before correcting herself. “Well, yes, it does look out of place. But I could have sworn I’ve seen it before. Perhaps in a book?”

They stand for a moment longer, just contemplating this unexpected antique, before Emma turns back to the rest of the room. “Well, let me know if you figure it out,” she says to Belle before turning to a dresser with a fresh dustrag.

And that’s the end of that.

———

Except it’s not the end of that, because Belle shows up a week later in a flurry of excitement over some discovery she’s made.

“I had seen it before!” she proclaims excitedly, dropping a hefty tome onto Emma’s nice clean(ish) kitchen table. Legends of Coastal Maine, the cover announces in an intricate, curling font, and Emma finds her interest piqued despite her better judgement. Taking a quick peek to make sure Henry is still absorbed with his legos in the living room, Emma refocuses her attention on the pages just as Belle finds what she’s looking for.

“The legend of Killian Jones,” Belle reads off, like the title alone will explain everything. When Emma just stares back at her blankly, Belle finally continues. “It’s like Maine’s version of Bloody Mary. Legend has it that there’s a mirror - one that looks almost exactly like the one we found in your spare room, I might add - and if you stand in front of it and say his name three times, he’ll appear in the mirror.” Belle turns the book around and pushes it towards Emma so that she can see the illustration more clearly. Sure enough, the pencil drawing looks uncannily like the mirror Emma currently has propped on a table at the end of a hallway as a placeholder until she finds something more to her taste.

“So what’s his deal?” Emma asks, pushing the book back after examining its contents. “I know Bloody Mary is supposed to kill you, and so are a bunch of ghosts if you run across them. Is it the same thing with this… Jones guy?”

Belle hums speculatively, tracing her finger back down the page as she searches for the correct information. “There’s not really a clear answer on that,” she hedges after a minute’s reading. “The stories are a bit split. Some say he’s a specter of vengeance - so I assume that’s the violence or murder you were thinking of - but there’s just as many claims that he’s just a lonely shade. I suspect that the verdict would vary from telling to telling.”

“Huh.” Emma stares at the book in silence for a few minutes longer, arms crossed, before making up her mind. “I guess there’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?”

“What’s that?”

“Well test it out, of course.” And grabbing the book, Emma marches for the stairs to test the theory, Belle nervously trailing behind her.

“I don’t know that this is a good idea, Emma…” the librarian cautions. “The whole thing gives me the creeps.” Perhaps another person might have been put off the enterprise by Belle’s words, but Emma’s not one of them. She’s already made up her mind; they’re going to try this, either prove or disprove the myth, and that’s final. Personally, Emma doesn’t think anything will happen; the whole thing seems a little far-fetched, and anyways, Emma’s attempts at playing Bloody Mary as a kid never turned into anything. But she’s always been a bold type, willing to live on the edge a little, and even if nothing happens, it’ll be worth the short adrenaline rush. Plus, Belle seems nervous about the very idea that Emma might have a haunted mirror - it’d be nice to prove to her that the mirror is safe to walk past.

Striding up to the glass, Emma looks back at her companion for clarification. “So, what do I have to do? Say the name? Pace back and forth, Room of Requirement-style? What?”

“Just say his name three times,” Belle says hesitantly. “But really, Emma, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’ll be fine, Belle. See?” Turning back to the mirror, Emma quickly expels the words before her friend can make any more attempts to stop her.

“Killian Jones. Killian Jones. Killian Jones.”

A gust of cold air unexpectedly trails through the room, and it almost creeps Emma out, but the mirror remains stubbornly empty of anything but their own reflections. After waiting a minute longer without any ghostly action, Emma turns triumphantly back to Belle, who looks almost disappointed in the outcome despite her earlier nerves.

“See? Nothing more than a silly story.”

And once again, that should be the end of it.

———

Of course, it’s not the end of the matter - something Emma comes to find out in the worst possible way.

It’s a quiet evening in the Swan household, the house’s silence only broken by the faint noises of its inhabitants preparing for bed. Henry’s already been sent off to put on his pajamas and brush his teeth, though Emma knows she’ll need to double check the latter. In the meantime, Emma’s halfway through her own routine, rinsing off her face in the bathroom sink in an old college t-shirt and boxers. Faintly, she thinks she hears something in the hallway, but easily writes it off; if it’s not Henry, padding to his room or the bathroom, it’s probably just one of the old house noises she’s slowly growing used to.

That is, until she hears the scream.

It’s unmistakably Henry, and Emma knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his shriek was one of terror. Blood running cold in her veins, she runs out to the hallway, not even stopping to grab a makeshift weapon in her haste to find her son, protect her son, keep him safe at all costs. Practically skidding into the hall, she expects to see intruders, or wild animals, or anything else to explain her brave boy’s scream, only to find Henry standing stock still in front of the hall mirror.

Emma almost relaxes, thinking that Henry was only startled by his reflection, before noticing:

There’s a man facing her son in the mirror.

He doesn’t look particularly threatening at first glance, squatting with his arms resting on his knees, but Emma’s not taking any chances. Moving on instinct, she steps between Henry and the creature in the mirror.

“Stay the hell away from my son!” she growls, herding Henry behind her.

Curiously enough, the man, ghost, thing, huffs a sigh, dropping his head as if in resignation. “As you wish,” she thinks she hears him mutter.

“Henry, go to your room and stay there until I say it’s ok,” Emma tells her son in as calm a voice as she can muster. As Henry hesitates, peering around her legs to get a better look at the thing in the mirror, her voice gets harder. “Henry, now. Please go to your room and close the door.”

As Henry finally scurries away, the ghost chimes in again. “I don’t mean any harm, you know,” he observes.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Emma snaps. “How dare you terrify my son. How dare you! What the fuck even are you? What are you doing in my house?” Halfway through her reply, Emma realizes she’s moving closer to the glass, finger pointed accusingly, but can’t bring herself to care. It’s in defense of her kid; she’ll do whatever she has to.

It doesn’t seem to have any effect on the mirror-man, though, as he stands to sweep into an old-fashioned bow. Passingly, Emma notices his clothes - a long leather duster, breeches, and a gauzy shirt, like something out of a different time. “Killian Jones, at your service, milady.”

“What, like the legend?”

Killian Jones, whatever he is, raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “Ah, so you have heard of me, then.”

“You’re not real,” Emma insists. “Belle and I tried it earlier on the mirror. Nothing. It’s just a stupid urban legend.”

“Ah, but did you really believe I was real?” Jones asks. “That’s an important part, you know - I don’t appear for people who doubt I exist. Your son, on the other hand, seems to have belief in spades, thus -” he spreads his arms wide - “my presence here before you.”

“Yeah, well, take your presence somewhere else,” Emma retorts, “or I’ll… I’ll smash the mirror!”

“You’re welcome to try,” he smiles ruefully. “But as you wish. My apologies for causing such a disturbance and startling your boy.” And with a final dramatic twirl of the hand, he’s gone.

After waiting a minute to make sure Jones doesn’t reappear, Emma rushes to Henry’s room, where the boy himself is waiting on his bed with tears in his eyes.

“Hey, what’s wrong, kid?” Emma asks, panic again rising in her throat. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?” So help her, if her kid is hurt she’ll find a way to hurt Jones, mirror be damned.

“I’m sorry, Mama, I didn’t mean to,” Henry cuts in tearfully. “I just heard you and Miss Belle talking, and I wanted to try and… I didn’t mean to!”

“It’s ok, Henry,” she soothes, gathering his small body in her arms and rocking him back and forth. “I don’t blame you for anything, kid. I’m going to protect you from the scary man, ok? You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“I don’t think he was scary,” Henry mumbles in a minor protest, eliciting a confused hum from his mother. “I screamed because I didn’t think it would work, but he wasn’t scary. I think I scared him, though.”

“Sure, Henry,” Emma placates. Henry, thankfully, is winding down, worn out by the heightened emotions of the past half hour, and doesn’t argue the point further. Thankfully, he’s already in his pajamas, making it easy for Emma to transfer him back onto the mattress and securely tuck him in. “Sleep well, kiddo.”

Emma stays for a few moments longer in the doorway, watching her son slip off into dreamland, before softly closing the door and hurrying back down the hall. The mirror, she’s careful to check, is perfectly blank once again - just an ordinary decorative piece. Even in its blank state, Emma’s reluctant to get any closer to it than she has to in the dark, the whole thing freaking her out.

Collapsing onto her bed, cell phone in hand, she quickly dials, listening to the grating ring before a groggy voice picks up.

“Belle? Something weird happened. Do you think you could come over tomorrow?”

———

The next time she faces the mirror and any… ghosts it may contain, they’re prepared.

Or at least, they think they are, because Killian Jones snorts in skeptical amusement as soon as he sees Emma and Belle’s supplies, causing the latter to jump in surprised fear.

“Is that holy water?” he asks, almost scornfully. “Put that away ladies, you’ll just get the glass wet. And trust a man trapped in a mirror - there’s nothing more annoying than streaked glass.”

(It’s a little bit disappointing to hear, since Emma had to beg for some from the local Catholic Church, but something about his tone leaves her inclined to believe him.)

“That crucifix also won’t do anything, darling,” he nods towards Belle. “This isn’t an exorcism; I’m not a demon. And before you even try, Milady the Blonde, the funny thing about smashing my mirror is that it just reappears elsewhere. Same with burning, or any other destruction you want to try. Odd little side effect of a curse.”

“So you are a man, then?” Emma cuts in, stopping his little ramble. “Not some ghost or demon or… something?”

“I believe we’ve already covered that, but yes, I am a man. If I’m ever freed from my reflective prison, I’d be more than happy to show you exactly how much of a man I am,” he ends with a flirtatious smile.

“Yeah, that’s enough of that,” Emma deadpans. “Here’s what’s going to happen - you’re going to leave my family the fuck alone, and I’m getting rid of your mirror as soon as possible. Capiche?”

“I don’t suppose you’d rather help me escape this prison?” he asks hopefully, receiving only an unamused look from Emma in return. “Aye, I know that was a long shot. Alright, Milady, I’ll behave. No contact.”

“Great. Then… begone. Or however you’re sent away.”

“As you wish.” And once again, he executes an elaborate bow and accompanying hand gesture, and the mirror is just a mirror again.

After spending a last moment watching the mirror for any movement, Emma turns back to Belle, jerking a thumb back downstairs. “I’ll go call David.”

“I’ll get a sheet to cover the frame.”

———

That should be the end of it. David will be over tomorrow afternoon to pick up the mirror and drop it off as a donation to the local secondhand store, and all traces of the supernatural will be out of Emma Swan’s house.

But of course, life isn’t as she plans, and the matter isn’t closed like she expects, because Emma comes back into the house after dealing with some minor yard work to hear Henry chattering away upstairs. That’s not really abnormal; Henry is an imaginative child, and since he’s learned to read, he’s taken to reading picture books out loud to his stuffed animals. But when she climbs the stairs to peek in on him, he’s not in his room, but in the hallway.

In the hallway, reading to Killian Jones’ reflection.

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues…” Henry recites from his copy of The Lorax, and Emma can’t help but take a moment to be proud of how confidently her son reads, despite the current circumstances.

“Of course they don’t have tongues, what a preposterous idea,” Jones interrupts, brows furrowed in a way that might almost be cute if Emma wasn’t so steamed to see him at all. “And what the bloody hell is a truffula tree, anyways?”

“Hey!” Emma snaps, causing two dark heads to snap up guiltily to meet her eyes. “What is going on here?”

“Mom…” Henry starts, but Emma quickly cuts him off to turn her anger on Jones. “I thought I told you specifically to stay away from my son!”

“It’s not his fault, Mom!” Henry quickly cuts in. “I called him, he didn’t show up on his own.”

“Yeah, well, he should have ignored it. Or left immediately.”

“I do have to answer when called by a believer, love,” Jones reasons unhelpfully. “I likely should have departed immediately, but your boy was so excited to show me his book, made-up words and all, and I just…” He cuts off suddenly, a look on his face that Emma can’t quite place.

“He’s lonely, Mom,” Henry supplies, before stubbornly adding, “Aren’t you always telling me to make sure everyone’s included?”

“I meant the kids at school, Henry,” Emma tries to protest, but her big-hearted kid is having none of it.

“You never said that,” he insists. “Well, Killian is lonely, and I’m making sure he’s included.”

Looking at the man in question, Emma will admit that it’s hard to call him a threat. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, knees pressing against the glass in an effort to get as close as possible, Emma can’t find any trace of that confident, almost threatening swagger and attitude she’d spotted so easily in their previous interactions. He almost looks like he could be a visitor to Henry’s kindergarten show-and-tell, albeit an unusually dressed one. Even beyond the posture, there’s a look on his face that Emma can only think of as vulnerable - a small amount of hope in his eyes, mostly clouded by shame, hope for… something. Emma’s not sure what. Perhaps it’s like Henry says - he’s just lonely, and hopeful they won’t send him away.

Regardless, Emma has always been a sucker for her son’s puppy eyes, and today is no exception. “Fine,” she grumbles. “But step one foot out of line, and I’m finding a way to destroy this mirror, I don’t care what you say.”

“I swear, love, pirate’s honor,” Jones replies, executing a crossing motion over his heart with a grin on his face.

“Choose a different oath. You’re not helping your case.”

“I promise, Emma,” he utters solemnly. “You’ve nothing to fear from me for your boy.” The slight panic at the moniker must show on her face, as he hurries to clarify his previous words. “Henry made the introductions earlier.”

That makes more sense. Henry’s always been a sociable kid - lord only knows where he got that - and likely was more than happy to tell Jones absolutely everything that came to his mind.

“Fine,” she says shortly, still somewhat put out by this turn of events. “I’ve got to go cancel on David. Start thinking about what you want for dinner, kid.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Henry pipes, suddenly cheerful again, before turning back to the mirror, back to the glass so his new friend can see all the pictures. Walking away, Emma can hear their conversation, quickly receding.

“Do you remember what part we were at?”

“You were telling me about how the trees don’t have tongues, lad,” Jones replies, more gently and patiently than Emma would have given him credit for. Acting like that, she really doesn’t have any excuse to kick him out, one way or another.

For the time being, it looks like the legendary Killian Jones is here to stay.

———

Emma hates to admit it, but Killian Jones isn’t so bad. Sure, it’s still weird that they’ve got a resident ghost-person-thing, but Henry’s delighted to have a friend who’s always there to talk to, and Henry’s happiness outweighs a lot. Eventually, the mirror is moved to the living room, where Henry won’t have to sit on the hardwood all the time and Emma can keep an eye on him better. It feels a little bit like encouraging the whole thing, but her kid’s comfort is paramount, so the mirror is lugged down the stairs, where Henry is left to try and explain to Killian how the television works.

Jones, in return, seems thrilled that someone wants to talk to him, though there’s still a lingering sadness evident when Emma tells them it’s time to wrap up. Killian is a bit of a puzzle, Emma’s finding; in those first ill-fated conversations, he made it clear that he was only in the mirror because of a curse, but Emma can’t truly figure out why. From his interactions with her son, she doesn’t think he was cursed for being bad, but his more rakish interactions with Emma lead her to believe it probably wasn’t for being a paragon of virtue either.

When Emma finally bites the bullet and asks, he’s quick and willing enough to reply, albeit in a sarcastic tone. “Well, you see, when a man loves a witch not very much at all…” he intones, smirking at Emma’s unimpressed look. “I’m told this is an appropriate punishment for a man who doesn’t care about anyone or anything beyond his own nose. I probably should just be glad that she didn’t follow through on some of her comments about my lack of heart - I suspect that would have been rather more… fatal.”

Despite his cavalier tone, it’s difficult to hear his words and reconcile them with the man she’s coming to know. Of course, there was a bit of a rough start - Emma was maybe a little suspicious of the man who’d gone down in legend as a spirit of vengeance, so sue her - but he’s more gentle and patient with Henry than she ever would have thought, and that carries a lot of weight in her book. He’s certainly not the uncaring, heartless man he was supposedly cursed for being, however many years ago.

“It was warranted, for certain,” he admits quietly, traces of shame coloring his voice.

“I’m sure that can’t be true,” Emma tries to excuse, but Killian just waves her words away.

“No, I assure you, it was,” he says. “I was on a quest to avenge my brother’s death, and truly couldn’t see beyond that. It was all-encompassing. We’d stop in various ports for ale and supplies and women, but I was always moving forward, trying to exact revenge against the British Navy for taking him from me.” He sighs, suddenly sad. “Being trapped, isolated from everyone really changes your perspective on such matters. Avenging him seemed like the most important thing in the world at that time, you know? But looking back, now when it is far too late for me to accomplish what I set out to do… I think he would have been rather disappointed that I stopped living my own life.” With a sad smile and rather morose chuckle, he concludes on an almost self-deprecating note, “It seems rather ridiculous that it took such extreme measures for me to realize that, doesn’t it?”

There’s no real good answer to that, so Emma just offers a sympathetic smile. “Did you ever try to get out? Break the curse?”

“And how do you propose I do that?” he asks with impatience. “I promise you, I’ve tried just about everything. Probably bruised some ribs those first few days by repeatedly throwing myself against the glass. This mirror has been smashed no less than six times by men and women on your side, and yet I’m still here. After 250 years, I don’t have much hope of ever being free of these confines.”

“Well, that’s optimistic,” Emma comments drily. “Really? No lingering hope?”

“None worth dwelling on.”

Maybe Henry and his eternal fountain of hope and belief has finally rubbed off on Emma, but she struggles to accept such a bleak fate for the man who’s unexpectedly found his way into their lives. He’s certainly not a perfect man - from the sounds of it, he believes himself to barely be a good one - but it hurts something inside her to hear the way he’s just… acceptant of the idea that he’ll be trapped forever.

“Well, I don’t believe that,” she declares decisively. “And if we ask Henry, he’ll just say the same thing. You don’t want to upset my kid, do you?”

That finally coaxes a small smile back on his face. “No, I most certainly would not.”

And that’s that.

———

Belle may be a little nervous about meeting Killian Jones face-to-face again, but Emma knows that her friend can’t resist a good research project, and sure enough, her curiosity overpowers her hesitancy.

“I thought we’d go back to the original legend,” Belle explains, dropping far too many books of varying thickness and age onto Emma’s nice clean coffee table, “so I went and dug up all the books I could find that even mention it. Plus a handful on historic witchcraft. There’s another handful I requested through interlibrary loan and am expecting next week, but this should be more than enough to get us started.”

It’s an understatement, to say the least. Glancing over to the mirror, Emma can see that Killian is wide-eyed and looking vaguely overwhelmed, a feeling that she echoes, frankly. Belle French doesn’t do anything by halves, Emma’s learned in the weeks of their friendship, and this research project is obviously no exception.

“If you’re ready, this one looked particularly promising,” Belle continues, handing Emma a hefty volume, “and I’ll work my way through some of the less likely candidates, rule them out. Ok? Great!”

Meeting Killian’s eye, he offers a shrug, which Emma takes to mean as there’s no real point arguing - something Emma already unfortunately knows to be the case. Faced with the outcome of her own planning, and with a new unstoppable researching force in the form of a soft-spoken brunette, Emma stifles the groan of consternation bubbling in her throat and settles in to read in her favorite armchair, Killian over her shoulder attempting the same.

It’s slow going, and the whole while Emma is reminded of exactly how little she enjoyed writing research papers while in school. It doesn’t help that, while they’re armed with a specific question that needs answering, most of the books are either hopelessly vague or filled with wildly incorrect information. Killian, in particular, is put out by the repeated accusation that he’s a vengeful and murderous spirit, the furrow in his brow growing deeper with each new source and his outraged huffing becoming louder and louder.

After a particularly enthusiastic exhalation, Emma can’t help but cut in, jerking her head to the side to meet his eyes. “Jeez, you sound like you’re trying to blow the house in back there,” she grumbles, only half jokingly.

“Well you’d be upset too, reading this drivel about yourself. I’ll have you know that even if I could somehow break free of this mirror, I’d never take my anger out on any but the woman who deserves it. And she’s long dead. Vengeful, my arse,” he snorts, before continuing petulantly, “And it doesn’t even make sense, saying that my reactions could blow an entire house down. Preposterous.”

“It’s a reference, there’s a fairy tale - you know what, never mind,” Emma replies, cutting herself off. She’s not particularly in the mood today to explain “The Three Little Pigs” to a 300-year-old pirate. “It’s been, literally, hundreds of years since you were cursed. The story is going to get a little messed up over time, like a bad game of Telephone.” As his blank, confused stare makes a reappearance, Emma impatiently waves him off. “I’ll explain it later. I’m just saying, I hear you with the frustration and the dramatic huffing, but it’s not helpful, and driving me nuts to boot. Knock it off.”

“Sorry,” Killian mutters in a tone that only sounds half sincere, his eternally proper manners deserting him in his frustration. It’s a little refreshing, if Emma’s being honest - the attitude, despite being annoying, makes him seem less like a bizarre fairy tale or ghost story, and more like an actual man - albeit one trapped in a fantastical situation.

“If you two are done arguing,” Belle cuts in, her stern teacher voice on full display and causing both culprits to look over sheepishly, “I think I found the best rendition yet.”

“Well, let’s have it then, lass,” Killian prods, some of his previous roguish face back in place.

“The story in this one hews pretty close to what you’ve told us - that you got cursed for thinking only about yourself and your own problems, and not acknowledging that there are other people in the world that have feelings. But it goes on to say that you’ll remain cursed in the mirror until you ‘rediscover the missing piece of your soul.’”

It’s a cryptic answer, to say the least, and both Emma and Killian look at Belle expectantly, waiting for more information - or even better, an explanation. When none is forthcoming, Emma snaps, “And?”

“And that’s it, unfortunately,” Belle replies apologetically. “I’ll keep looking though. That’s more than we had before!” The last sentence is said with a bright note in her voice, clearly supposed to remind them of their meager progress as a positive thing, but neither member of her audience is much affected.

“Great,” Killian replies drolly. “That illuminates the whole thing.”

As Belle deflates at his words, Emma tosses Killian a dirty look, eyes hard with disapproval, and he at least has the decency to look guilty. “Sorry,” he mumbles, for the second time in as many minutes.

“That’s great progress, Belle,” Emma jumps to reassure. “It gives us something to go on, at least.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Belle says as if in excuse, “but if nothing else, it’s a jumping off point.”  As she speaks, she starts gathering up the books, clearly making as if to leave. “I’ve go to get going, but we’ll meet up later?” The last part may not be phrased as a question, but Belle makes it seem as such with a polite tone to her voice, even if Emma does know that their research continuing is a foregone conclusion.

“Yeah, same time next week, if that works for you,” Emma replies, moving with Belle away from the living room and back towards the front door.

“Perfect,” the other woman beams. “I’ll see you then!”

And then the house is once again occupied just by the Swans and their ghost.

Working her way back to the living room, Emma can’t help but offer a sarcastic smirk to the man behind the glass. “So, any ideas about what the ‘missing piece of your soul’ might be?”

“Not a single clue,” he smirks right back.

Even if they are facing an unknown and confusing path to regaining Killian’s freedom, Emma can’t help but revel in their newfound comradery. Initial mistrust and periodic arguments aside, she thinks he just might be a friend - or at least as much of one as a mythical pirate can be. And Emma Swan will do anything for her friends.

They’re going to figure this out.

———

Emma does mean to sit down with Killian in the week following to try and talk through with him what this lost thing might be, but it seems that making those plans was just tempting fate. Unexpectedly, Emma’s faced with a much more stressful week than she had planned - an incident with one of her students leaves her with plenty of paperwork and stress, the first snowfall of the year shows that maybe the old house’s heating system isn’t working quite as well as it should, and to top it all off, Henry comes down with the flu.

Emma always hates to see her happy-go-lucky kid feeling so under the weather, but it’s not her first rodeo. She knows the dance that goes into taking care of a sick kid, knows that he’ll come out of this just fine. Killian, on the other hand, is more concerned, especially when Emma maneuvers the half-asleep Henry onto the couch downstairs.

“He’ll be fine,” Emma tries to reassure at the sight of those furrowed brows. “It’s just the flu. He’s an awful patient, though - keeps trying to hop out of bed and go back to playing with all his toys - so I thought maybe you could keep him distracted enough to stay tucked into the couch when he wakes up.”

Killian heaves a heavy sigh, and Emma thinks she can see his relief at having a useful job to do through his worry. With Henry resting under Killian’s watchful eye, Emma’s able to head back to the kitchen to attempt to clean up the ever-present mess occupying the counter space around her sink.

An hour and a half later, fully settled into her paperwork with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, Emma is startled to suddenly hear Killian’s low and smooth voice trailing back into the kitchen. Assuming Henry must be awake, Emma goes to heat up a can of soup. Sure enough, as she brings the steaming bowl and TV tray back into the living room, Henry is wide awake, though still tucked into his blankets and apparently enthralled by whatever tales Killian is telling.

“...and the water was the most stunning shade, blues mixed with greens and silvers,” he’s saying - an apparently child-friendly tale, Emma is relieved to hear - before stopping abruptly when he spots Emma standing in the doorway. “I think your mother is here with some broth, lad,” he says lightly, nodding in her direction as Henry squirms on the couch to see her more fully. “Why don’t you have a spot to eat, and then we can maybe watch one of your moving pictures?”

“How’re you feeling, bud?” Emma asks, moving to place the tray over her son’s legs before mouthing a thank you in Killian’s direction. “Any better?”

“A bit,” Henry shrugs. “Killian was telling me about all the places he’s seen!”

“Was he now? Well I’ll have to ask for the recap later. Can you have a bit of chicken noodle soup for me? It’ll make you feel better, I think.”

As Henry digs into the soup, Killian catches her attention again. “He slept for about an hour,” he tells her softly.

“Thanks, Killian. I appreciate you looking after him.”

“Any time, Swan.”

———

The anticipated meeting and knowledge swap with Belle gets rescheduled due to Henry’s illness and recovery, and with it goes Emma’s intention to sit down with Killian and attempt to brainstorm with him what the thing they’re looking for might be. It’s not that she decides it’s unimportant, or forgets, she just… gets distracted by the multitude of other things in her life. And maybe forgets, just a little. So sue her.

Killian, however, seems to have done that brainstorming on his own, as he’s already ready with a suggestion by the time the three of them finally sit down to talk and search through even more books.

“I was thinking about our previous discovery over the past days,” he says, slowly and hesitantly, “and I had a thought about what we may be searching for.” The words are uncharacteristically uncertain, coming from the cocky pirate, leaving Emma mildly concerned - both at the prospect of what he’s about to suggest, and for the man himself.

“That’s great!” Belle replies warmly, tangibly setting the entire room more at ease with her cheerful and encouraging demeanor. “Any ideas would be helpful.”

“I don’t know if it’s right,” he cautions, and Emma starts to understand his hesitance. He’s afraid - not of their reactions, but of his own. It’s something she probably should have recognized from looking in the mirror - no joke intended - as a fear she’s seen so often in her own face: a fear of raising her hopes too high, only to be inevitably disappointed. If what Killian thinks is correct, it could set him free from hundreds of years of imprisonment, a glorious prospect; if not, he’s still back in the same situation, but with a fresh pain born of believing, even for the slightest of moments, that a brighter existence was within his grasp.

He underestimates her though, because even if this fails, Emma won’t be deterred - won’t stop trying to find a way until he actually is freed. It’s what Henry would want.

(It’s what she wants too, she’s coming to admit to herself.)

“Tell us,” she prods gently, wearing the same smile she uses to set Henry at ease when he’s nervous about admitting to something, especially when it’s something he shouldn’t have done in the first place. Endearingly, it has the same effect on the 300 year old pirate, the tension in his shoulders visibly relaxing as he finally begins talking.

“You both know I was a pirate,” he starts, waiting to see Emma and Belle nod an affirmative before continuing. “Well, for a pirate - or any man of the sea - a ship is more than just some cobbled together pieces of wood, more than just a convenient way to get around. It’s… it’s everything. His home, his livelihood…” pausing for dramatic effect, he focuses his gaze on Emma before solemnly concluding, “Some might even call it a piece of his soul.”

“And you think your ship is the missing piece,” Belle finishes, knowingly. It seems to Emma that Killian is leaving something out, but brushes the thought aside. It’s not really any of her business.

Killian nods in response. “Her name was the Jolly Roger, and even though she was smaller than many of the ships other captains commanded, I thought she was beautiful from the moment I first set eyes on her, with her elegant lines built for speed,” he remembers wistfully. Quickly, though, his soft smile collapses in on itself to something more sorrowful. “Even if that is the mysterious piece we’re searching for, however, I doubt it will be of any use. It’s been so long, I’d be surprised if the old girl is even still in existence…”

“Hey, it’s something to start with,” Emma interrupts, cutting off his train of doubt. “That’s the least we can do, right? Try and follow that lead, see where it goes?”

“I suppose so,” Killian concedes, seemingly reluctantly, but Emma has spent far too much time in his company, and can see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I’ll pull any information I can find about your ship and piracy in this area this week,” Belle says, jotting down the information on a yellow post-it with a weird smile on her face. Emma can’t quite place it - it’s more than an uncomplicated happiness, but not quite smug. Emma almost wants to call it a knowing smile, though knowing what, she has no idea. Before she gets a chance to ask, however, Belle is already straightening and briskly clapping her hands together in a gesture of excitement, an indicator that they’re about to dive into a major research session. “On that note, shall we begin?”

They shall.

———

Killian can’t really be considered a babysitter - even if he was able to move beyond his mirror, Emma doubts he’d be able to handle a phone in the event of an emergency - but he’s still an enormous help with Henry, all the same. In the years since Henry’s birth, Emma’s had to act as a sort of superwoman - simultaneously balancing the demands of her job with keeping her son happy and healthy and entertained, all while trying to keep their apartments from dissolving into trash heaps and desperately trying to hold her sanity and sense of self together.

Even confined as he is, Killian somehow manages to alleviate some of that load, happily keeping Henry distracted and watching over the boy as he plays. Henry, as it turns out, loves attempting to teach his new friend everything about the twenty-first century, giggling and laughing uproariously at Killian’s confused faces (some of them exaggerated for Henry’s benefit, Emma suspects, but she’s not telling). He loves hearing Killian’s stories even more than that, and it seems like the ancient pirate enjoys the telling just as much, turning each tale into a vast drama of thrilling adventure that leaves his young audience enraptured.

(Emma notices that he’s careful to keep his stories tame, choosing ones without the violence and booze and women she’s sure must have been a significant part of such a life, or at the very least downplaying and glossing over the details. She appreciates it, even if she’s never openly said it; there’s no need for Henry to learn about such things this young.)

It’s a pretty tableau they make, Emma thinks as she watches from the doorway, almost Rockwell-esque - the young boy, a book of fairytales propped across his lap, and the brotherly (or possibly even paternal figure) over his shoulder, helping him sound out the words in a learning ritual repeated every day across America. The only interruption to ruin the facade is that prohibitive pane of glass, preventing boy and man from interacting in more concrete and physical ways.

“Are you going to stand there all day lurking, Swan, or will you join us?” Killian calls, a teasing note evident in his tone. Emma may roll her eyes in response, but she willingly crosses the room to join them, ignoring Killian’s cocky smirk in favor of focusing on Henry’s sweet giggles at the exchange.

“What are we reading tonight, my little Giggle Bug?” she asks, before sweeping down to attack Henry’s head with kisses just to hear those giggles continue even longer.

“The Princess and the Frog!” he happily chirps back when Emma finally ceases her kiss attack to allow her kid a moment to catch his breath. “The princess looks like you, Mama!”

Sure enough, when Emma looks at the illustration, the princess’ head is covered in blonde curls - the feature she’s learned is most important in identification to a kindergartener. “She sure does,” Emma agrees affectionately. “Looks like she’s kissing that frog.”

“She’s going to turn him back into a prince,” Henry explains. “He just needed someone to kiss him, you see, and she said she would because he saved her ball and she’s so nice.”

“What do you think, Swan?” Killian cuts in. Somehow, Emma gets the impression that, were he free from his glass confines, he’d be elbowing her in the side. “Do you think a kiss from a pretty blonde would be enough to break my curse?” Mirth twinkles in his eyes, but beneath that, she can sense just a little bit of hope. It seems the ruthless captain still believes in fairy tales and all that comes with them.

“Please,” she scoffs, fighting a smile all the while. “You couldn’t handle it. It’d smudge the glass, give you a conniption.”

“Perhaps you’re the one who couldn’t handle it, love,” he taunts, playfully tapping a finger against his lips.

Emma looks at him appraisingly for one more moment, mouth fixed in an amused smile, before moving decisively, never one to back down from a dare. As Killian stares back in shock and confusion, she gestures impatiently. “Well come on then! Mosey up, or whatever. I can’t really kiss you through the glass if you’re not puckered up on the other side.”

Though he looks flustered - honestly, what did he expect from that teasing? - Killian finally moves to press his lips against the glass, eyes closed as if waiting for a real kiss on real flesh. Taking a final deep breath, Emma moves to do the same, and rising on her toes, presses her lips to the glass where Killian’s own are reflected.

Immediately, she knows it’s not going to work. Not only is there no fairytale-esque flash of rainbow light, but she can still feel the glass under her lips, eternal and unyielding. It reminds her faintly of dares made in middle school to make out with her own hand - that same lack of response, same feeling of why the fuck am I doing this, just colder.

Pulling away, it’s impossible to miss the disappointment on Killian’s face, though he quickly masks it by furiously wiping at the mirror with his soft linen undershirt, flashing Emma a glimpse of a trim midsection and treasure trail in the process.

“Do me a favor, Swan,” he says, brows furrowed in a valiant attempt at feigning deep concentration. “Go fetch that blue liquid you use.”

Emma snorts in amusement. “You mean the Windex?”

“Yes, the… Windex,” he replies with evident disdain for the newfangled product name. “Quickly, now, you know any impediment to my clear viewing will ‘drive me nuts’, as you and the lad so charmingly say.”

“Fine, Captain Neatfreak,” Emma concedes. It’s the least she can do in the face of his disappointment. “C’mon, Henry, let’s go hunt down some Windex before Killian blows a gasket.”

“Actually, Swan,” Killian calls, “I was hoping the lad might be amenable to reading another story aloud?”

Henry looks up eagerly, and even if Emma wasn’t looking to make amends, she’d be lost. “Of course he can.”

After all, as she said before - after the temporary defeat they just suffered, if hearing another fairytale from her kid will make Killian feel better, it’s the least she can do.

———

Despite Emma and Killian’s continued distraction - even though Henry is feeling better, the flu bug having run its course, he’s still rather lethargic and low on energy and is stuck in bed, having developed a nasty cough to boot - Belle arrives to continue their research bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“I’ve got excellent news!” she chirps, all smiles. Not even a delayed response seems to faze her, grin only growing wider in the face of Emma’s tiredness and the deep look of concern on Killian’s face. “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

“Of course, lass,” Killian quickly jumps in. No one particularly relishes the thought of dimming Belle’s cheerful enthusiasm. “What have you discovered now?”

“Well, I was finally able to hunt down what happened to your ship,” she beams. “As it turns out, after your mysterious and untimely disappearance - that’s how it was described in the book, by the way,” she laughs, “a man named William Smee took over as captain  — ”

“Smee?” Killian interjects, leaving Emma to stifle her laugh at the look of horror on his face. “That buffoon?”

“Well, the history books don’t say anything about him being a buffoon,” Belle explains patiently, “but yes, William Smee became the new captain, renaming the ship the Siren’s Call — ”

“Gods, this just gets worse and worse,” Killian mutters, not quite under his breath. “Bad enough luck the first time.” Emma makes a mental note to ask him about that later. Killian, seeing the brunette librarian’s exasperated look at his continued interruptions, sheepishly apologizes. “Sorry, milady. Please continue.”

With a final fond glare at the outraged pirate, Belle picks up her train of thought again. “As I was saying, it was renamed the Siren’s Call, and actually managed to survive to the current day, mostly intact. She’s been turned into a piracy museum, and a very popular one at that.”

That perks him back up well enough. “My ship? She’s still on the water?”

Belle nods, her initial enthusiasm returning. “Majestically so. Now, for practical reasons, we can’t really bring you to the ship, so I brought the ship to you!”

Emma eyes Belle skeptically. “Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t see a massive pirate ship in my backyard. I’m pretty sure Henry would have been hollering about that by now.”

“Oh, of course not, I can’t actually bring the whole ship here,” Belle amends. “But, as it happens, the local historical society funded a major restoration about ten years ago, and a few of the overworn or fragile parts were replaced in an effort to make the ship properly seaworthy again, and the originals were put into storage at the historical society’s archives. And I might have made up a little fib about teaching a unit about historical piracy and its economic effect on the British Empire, just so I could reasonably borrow… this!” As she finishes on that enthusiastic punctuation, Belle produces a small item from her purse with a flourish.

To Emma, it doesn’t really look like much; just a small, worn and stained piece of wood, clearly carved to serve some purpose, albeit none she can easily recognize. It must mean something to Killian, though, as his face fills with a soft awe, fingers brushing the glass reverently in a desperate attempt to get that little bit closer.

“A piece of the rigging,” he all but breathes. “I can’t believe…” His wonder is so great that, while usually verbose in the extreme, he can’t even finish his sentence, trailing off into nothing more than a soft smile.

“Exactly.” Belle beams, obviously pleased with herself. Emma silently holds out a hand in request, and Belle hands her the small wooden piece in response. It’s in good condition for its age, though stained and worn from decades exposed to sun and salt and water and beginning to crack. Rubbing a thumb along the smooth, worn wood, Emma looks up to meet Belle’s eyes.

“And you’re sure this is from his ship? There’s no possibility it’s a case of mixed-up labeling or storage or something?” Part of the asking is to make sure they’re not trying this for nothing without any chance of their desired outcome, but the other part is in search of an excuse. There’s a significant chance that this won’t work; Emma’s not kidding herself on that front. That doesn’t stop her from searching for a reason this might fail that’s not pure dumb luck.

But Belle shakes her head confidently, negating that possibility. “Nearly none. It was only recently removed, and they’re a very meticulous organization, despite their small size.”

“Ok then. Figured I’d check.” Strangely nervous as she turns to face Killian, who is patiently waiting in the mirror for his companions to finish their debate, Emma takes a deep breath. “Ready?”

Killian nods solemnly, fingers still stroking the glass absentmindedly and eyes focused on the small piece of wood in her hand.

With a final determined nod, Emma raises her hand with the rigging to face the mirror. “Here goes nothing, then.”

Pressing hand and artifact against the glass, at first Emma feels nothing. The glass is just as cold and unforgiving as ever, now tinged even colder with the chill of disappointment. But as Emma presses harder, in a last ditch effort at refusing to relinquish hope, she feels… something. There’s a give to the surface that wasn’t there before - not enough to break through yet, but enough to feel that there is an effect, contrary to all logic and physics.

“I think something’s happening,” she mutters, barely loud enough for Killian to hear, as she pushes even harder against the glass, brows furrowed and mouth frowning in concentration. Sure enough, she can physically see her hand start to sink into the glass, the surface bending around the pressure like the surface of a trampoline. Glancing up quickly, she can see the way Killian’s eyes are blown wide in shock before he moves his hand to receive hers.

Suddenly, the glass gives way around her hand, not quite disappearing but reducing to nothing more than a film, and her hand with its treasure encased falls to meet Killian’s own. Briefly, there’s a muted sense of skin meeting skin, of callused yet tender fingertips just brushing the inside of her wrist, before there’s a sucking sensation around the wood piece in her palm. Without any warning, Emma’s hand is once again expelled from the mirror, only her quick sense of balance saving her from being sent sprawling on the floor.

She doesn’t even have the time to start contemplating everything that just happened before Belle is trying to get her attention, amazement coloring her voice.

“Emma, look!” she all but screeches, leaving Emma with the urge to issue a reminder about indoor voices. “It didn’t work the way we expected, but look!”

At first, as Emma focuses on the mirror, she doesn’t notice anything different. Sure, Killian looks a little shell-shocked, like his entire world has been jarred, but Emma’s a little freaked out by whatever experience they just shared as well, so honestly, that’s warranted and not especially surprising. However, as she looks closer, Belle’s exclamations are explained; inexplicably, Killian is holding the piece of his ship in his hand.

“How even…” Emma starts, but there’s really no point in asking. She’s unlikely to get an answer that makes any amount of sense anyway.

“Swan,” Killian says, voice just a little bit broken. “Look at this, this is… Swan.” He’s clearly in a state of shock and awe over this development - Emma thinks she even spots tears glistening in his eyes. She supposes that it stands to reason - this is the closest he’s gotten to freedom in literal years, and yet without true success. This seems to be an emotional reaction even beyond that, however, and Emma’s itching to ask him about it, and try to comfort her friend in any way.

Belle must sense that he needs a moment to collect himself, as she smiles knowingly and moves back towards the door. “I’ve procured an old spell book that I left in the car,” she explains in a weak excuse. “I thought there might be a few potions in there that might be worth a try - let me go grab that from my car really quick.”

Emma turns to fully face the mirror as Belle makes her exit, attempting to meet Killian’s eyes. “Hey, are you okay?” she asks, fully aware of the concerned tone of her voice.

“Aye, Swan,” he smiles weakly, wiping at his eyes. There’s a moment of quiet, filled only with the sounds of their breathing. Emma can’t help but notice the way he handles the weathered piece of wood almost reverently, running his thumb back and forth across the surface like that piece of the rigging, at first glance a humble and utilitarian object, is the greatest treasure imaginable.

“The Jolly wasn’t always mine, you know,” he finally says, smiling in a way that almost seems wistful, choosing his words carefully in starts and stops as he continues. “It was a proper Navy ship once - the Jewel of the Realm she was named in those days. And my brother… my brother was her captain, the best captain imaginable. I’d have followed him anywhere, even if he hadn’t raised me. And after he was gone…” Killian finally meets her eye again, glancing up from his hands with a smile that’s turned sad. “Well, after he was gone, it felt like that ship was all I had left of him. Even after I renamed her, even after I threw off the red coat to become a pirate… it felt like part of him was still alive on that ship. Attempting to avenge him is what got me into this mess, and I lost my last connection to him in the process. Having this little insignificant piece of the Jolly… it may seem small to you, like we didn’t achieve much,” he concludes, more confident now in his words, “but you’ve given me a little piece of my brother back that I’ve been missing for years. Thank you,” he finishes earnestly, the tears making a reappearance.

It’s not really Emma’s territory. She’s not great at accepting thanks, especially when she doesn’t think she’s done anything to warrant it. “I don’t know that you should be thanking me,” she mutters, eyes downcast. “It’s not like I did it on purpose, whatever just happened just kind of… happened.”

“Still, Swan,” he insists, “whether you intended it or not, you’ve given me a great gift. Take the thanks - they’re freely and sincerely given.”

“Well, I guess you’re welcome, then.”

Killian grins, and Emma can almost physically feel the emotional cloud lift from the room. “Now tell me, before the lovely Miss French comes back - do I look a fright?”

Emma can’t help it - she laughs, despite their previous seriousness. “Don’t worry, you still look devilishly handsome, or whatever you call it.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he winks - a move executed more with his eyebrows as both eyes close - just in time for the sound of the front door opening to trail back into the living room.

If he’s at all upset with the way things have gone today, Killian doesn’t show it, and Emma breathes a sigh of relief at that.

———

Emma hates to admit it, but as the weeks go on, the initial flurry of research starts to trickle off. It’s not that they’re falling into resignation - or, at the very least, Emma isn’t - but as it turns out, without knowing what this mysterious thing they’re looking for is, their little group is left just to read the same books over and over again, trying and failing to wring another drop of information out of the same tired words. In the immediate aftermath of what Emma’s started thinking of as the “rigging incident”, Belle had tried a number of spells and potions, but none had made any difference beyond annoying Killian with the various murky liquids trickling down the front of his glass. As the weeks stretch on, it seems like Killian is settling into resignation more than anyone else, albeit a content resignation. After years with naught but his own company and the occasional ill-intentioned summoner, Emma supposes this is likely as good a life as he ever expected to have after his drastic change in circumstances.

There’s a routine they’ve sort of settled into; come down, say good morning to Killian (who now comes and goes as he pleases, rarely choosing the solitude of the blank mirror over her or Henry’s company) and eat a little breakfast on the couch before school. After school, Killian happily keeps Henry entertained as Emma deals with whatever work she’s had to bring home before dinner - once again on the couch so their resident pirate doesn’t feel left out (something Henry is very concerned about). After Henry is put to bed, Emma usually takes some time to sort through her day with Killian, relishing the chance to talk and vent with an adult after dealing with teenagers and her own kid all day. Honestly, it’s becoming a highlight of her day; Killian is a fantastic listener, and Emma feels a kinship with him like she’s never experienced before, even with her closest friends.

This Saturday is like any other - Emma and Henry both sleep in a little later than usual, before Emma goes to try and figure out something they can eat for breakfast. Henry’s in the other room with Killian, as per usual, and Emma smiles at the thought of her kid attempting to explain the finer points of cartoon plots. As she tries to pry open a can of biscuits, she faintly hears Henry cough, but doesn’t pay much attention to it. The cough showed up not long after his flu bug disappeared; it’s just a little leftover cold, one they’ve gotten used to.

What Emma hasn’t gotten used to, however, is the note of panic in Killian’s voice as he calls for her. It’s so out of character that it strikes Emma dumb for a moment, and he’s already calling her name again as she rushes into the living room.

“What’s wrong - what happened?” she demands, attempting to analyze the situation. Despite the relatively early hour, Henry looks absolutely sapped of energy already, and Emma’s blood runs cold in her veins at the realization that the only thing that would leave Killian calling for her in a panic is Henry being at risk somehow. “What’s wrong with Henry?”

“He went into one of those coughing fits,” Killian jumps to explain, eyes a little wild as Emma meets his gaze in the mirror, “but after that passed… it was like he couldn’t catch his breath, Swan, just this horrible gasping.”

“I’m tired, Mama,” Henry cuts in with a mumble, as if to underscore that something’s wrong.

“Is he going to be okay, Emma?” Killian asks, painfully earnest.

“Yeah,” she says, voice uncertain, worry almost certainly splashed across her face. “But I think we need to go to the doctor. Right now.”

———

It has to be one of the longest mornings of her life, carrying Henry to urgent care and anxiously waiting for the doctor to tell her what’s wrong with her kid.

Even if it’s only early afternoon by the time she carries a sleeping Henry back into the house and straight up to his bed, Emma’s exhausted. Intense emotion and stress will do that to a person.

Coming back down the stairs, she’s ready to fix herself a cup of hot chocolate and maybe crash for an hour or two before Killian’s voice halts her in her tracks. He only calls her name - just a way to get her attention, really - but Emma is drawn up short by the sheer desperation in his voice. Changing her course towards his mirror, she notes that he doesn’t look much better - hair mussed from hands running through it and a permanent frown on his face, looking wildly out of place. It would have been easy enough for him to retreat from the mirror - Emma knows from previous conversations that time goes marginally faster for him when he’s not summoned in the mirror - but he’s clearly spent the whole time pacing back and forth in the glass, waiting to hear the news as soon as they returned. Truly, Emma’s touched by the gesture and obvious concern as a symbol of exactly how much he’s come to care for their little family.

“Please tell me he’s alright, Swan,” Killian all but begs when he looks up from his frenetic pacing. “He’s so young, so… please tell me he’s going to be okay.”

“He’s going to be okay,” Emma assures with a weak smile. At her words, Killian practically collapses in relief, tension visibly lifting from his frame. “He’s got pneumonia, so he’s going to be sick for a little while longer, but the doctor gave him some antibiotics - some medicine,” she clarifies. “But yeah, he’s going to be fine. Hopefully he’ll start feeling better in the next few days.”

“And these… antibiotics, they’ll cure him?”

“I think it’s more that they’ll help him fight off the little disease bugs, but yeah, basically. And they hooked him up to an oxygen tank at the doctor’s for a little bit, which was kinda scary at the time, but he perked up right away. Honestly, it was like baby’s first drug high, he was so energized all of a sudden.”

“I was so scared, Swan,” Killian admits, resting his hand against the glass. “Henry’s such a bright little boy, and when he was sitting there, gasping for breath, I was absolutely terrified for him.”

“I know you were,” Emma replies softly, moving to press her own hand against his through the glass. “I was too.”

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m overstepping, Swan, but I care about that boy. He’s… everything. I was lonely for so many years, trapped in this prison, and meeting you both… It was the first bright spot in my existence in a very long time. Both of you,” he emphasizes. “Seeing him this morning, seeing your bald-faced worry, I was forced to think of what life would be like without either of you in it again, and it scared me half to death.”

“That’s not overstepping at all,” she reassures him. “That’s just called caring. You care about us.”

Killian nods solemnly at her words, as if in a vow. “Yes. I care.”

There’s been a warmth to the glass between their palms for as long as they’ve been pressed together, but Emma had largely disregarded it, far more focused on the words of the very concerned pirate looking back at her. But with his final words, in a cinematically dramatic moment, the glass suddenly becomes almost too hot to touch, before Killian’s hand sinks right through, palms suddenly meeting skin to skin without their customary barrier. In another circumstance, Emma might laugh at the look of almost comic shock on Killian’s face, but in the moment she can only stare with her own matching expression.

“Is that…?” Killian begins before trailing off, clearly struggling to believe such a thing could be possible for him after years of dreaming. Emma only nods in response, but rotates her hand to grasp his and attempt to draw him the rest of the way through the glass.

Miraculously, it works. Emma steps slowly, disbelievingly backwards, lifting her other hand to meet his, until eventually he swings a leg over the gilded frame and into freedom.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmurs, looking around in astonishment, clutching her hands like a lifeline the whole while. In a way, perhaps it is; Emma’s the first human contact he’s had in hundreds of years. “I’m here? With you and… and the rest of the world? Truthfully?”

“You’re really here,” Emma smiles, her own vow. Then, as all the events of the preceding minutes sink in, she bursts into uncontrollable laughter, forced to release Killian’s hands to brace her heaving frame on her knees.

“I don’t understand what’s so funny, Swan,” he protests, though a small smile plays across his lips.

“You finally broke your curse because you cared, Killian!” she tries to explain through the laughter, before realizing that did nothing to clear the matter up. “It’s frickin’ Beauty and the Beast, how did I not realize that? Let alone Belle?” Killian chuckles along good-naturedly, but it’s easy to see that he’s still confused. There’s a lot she and Henry are going to have to catch him up on; Emma forgets that sometimes. “It’s a fairy tale. And a movie - one of Henry’s moving pictures. I’ll get him to show you. Trust me, this will be hilarious when you get it.”

“I’ll trust you on that,” he replies with a smile. He does that a lot, Emma realizes - both the trust and the smile.

Killian may claim that Emma and Henry are the ones to brighten his world, but Emma has a strong suspicion he’ll do the same for them.

———

Henry is positively thrilled at the breaking of Killian’s curse, only stopped from attack-hugging the man by Emma’s stern warnings not to get him sick.

(“He’s 300 years old, Henry, and hasn’t had all the shots we have. You could very literally kill him with your love.”)

Killian seems a little overwhelmed by everything, but that’s to be expected, she supposes. The last time he saw real daylight, not just through a reflection, the main method of transportation was horseback and electricity hadn’t been discovered yet. She can give him a little slack if he’s looking at everything suspiciously.

When Emma and Henry moved to Storybrooke, Maine, she never imagined she’d end up living out a real-life ghost story. But then again, there’s not really a how-to manual for living with a 300 year old pirate. What they learn along the way is that he makes an excellent roommate - clean and courteous and always willing to help out with Henry or whatever else she needs. There’d been a debate about procuring him his own place, but for the moment, this is just easier - no needing to find him money no one has to spare or sorting out the intricacies of figuring out some fake papers. Belle is able to get him a job at the local library, where he develops a reputation as a courteous and professional member of the staff and great with the children’s storytimes, if universally considered to be a little eccentric.

He even looks the part too, these days, courtesy of a shopping spree at the local Target and thrift stores, even if Killian is only talked down from continuing to wear his long leather duster by the purchase of a second hand leather jacket in a more recent style. Sometimes, Emma almost forgets that Killian is a man out of time with the way he stands so normally in her kitchen, pouring out a bowl of cereal in stockinged feet. Of course, he’ll then refer to the computer as the “information box” or something else so obviously out of the ordinary, and the illusion is ruined.

She’s not sure she’d want him to fully acclimate, anyway. There’s something adorable about his little confused pout, and especially the way that Henry’s taken the pirate under his proverbial wing, trying to explain the world to him and introducing Killian to particular highlights (the Reese’s peanut butter cups are a particular hit). There’s something to be said, too, for his manners, courtly and chivalrous in ways Emma’s not accustomed to but welcomes all the same.

Honestly, she thinks he might be attempting to court her - to borrow a phrase - even if he hasn’t definitively declared it. Emma certainly wouldn’t be opposed if he did so; there’s a connection between them, one that’s existed for longer than she likes to admit. Living together, it’s hard to ignore the tender looks sent her way - not that Emma wants to. In fact, she might be guilty of sending a few his way in return. Still, he never makes a move, never seeks anything else, and by the time he figures out how to use the toaster oven, Emma is tired of excusing it as him still trying to acclimate to the modern world.

“Are you ever going to do anything about that flirting?” she finally demands one night, sitting on the couch watching television with Killian after Henry’s gone to bed.

Killian looks flabbergasted at her outburst. “Excuse me?”

“You send me doe-eyed looks, like, all the time, not to mention the comments. Are you ever actually going to follow through, or…?”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to,” he admits, flushing brilliantly scarlet as he ducks his head to scratch behind an ear. “I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries.”

“You didn’t think I wanted you to? Jesus, Killian, I never said that! Honestly, I’ve been trying to give it right back — ”

“ — well I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, a gentleman never — ”

But Emma never finds out what a gentleman never does, as she finally drags his lips down to hers.

It’s not much of a kiss at first, Killian’s shock turning it into two sets of lips ferociously pressing against one another rather than a proper, romantic gesture. It’s not much different from kissing the glass, really; warmer, softer, but similarly unresponsive. After a prolonged moment, Emma draws back, meeting his stupefied expression with her own fierce-eyed stare. When Killian doesn’t react - except perhaps to become more slack-jawed - Emma nearly takes her hands away from his face and resigns herself to the embarrassment of having unsuccessfully made a move on her roommate. Before she can move, however, he’s back, warm lips moving against hers, fiercely at first before settling into something more tender. It’s a good first kiss, a perfect one really, and Emma looks forward to many more.

As they finally break apart to regain independent use of their lungs,  Emma rests her forehead against Killian’s. “That was…” she begins, breathlessly.

“Fantastic,” Killian finishes, before breaking into a shit-eating grin. “Really, Swan, you’re so much better at that without the glass in the way.”

“Shut up,” Emma retorts, but she smiles even as she smacks his chest with the back of her hand. Really, the man’s got a point.

“Make me,” he shoots right back, smirk permanently affixed to his face.

And really, can anyone blame her for doing exactly that?

(As it turns out, 300 year old legendary pirates make excellent kissers.)

[the-canary]

All The Stars Aligned - S.R

Summary: A person really isn’t what you make of them in your head. They are something much greater than that. (College AU!Reader/Steve Rogers)

Masterlist

A/N: I saw @eufeme‘s little prompt thing and i came up with this short thing. as always recently, mood music is brought to you by st. vincent with all my stars aligned. please also note that i am writing under the assumption that the main character goes through some major changes through the college years.

Please enjoy and feedback is always welcomed.

You first remember meeting, well more like seeing, Steve Rogers during freshman orientation. He was a skinny thing that wore clothes two sizes too big for him, and hung near the end of the group, which you were also doing but for different reasons. The guide was talking and showing you everything that you would be using for the next four years, though you weren’t paying much attention obviously more entranced by the clouds up above. It isn’t until the group starts going up a hill that you hear a deep heaving, though nobody seems to be paying attention. You stop and and head back to where he is, as he is taking in deep gulps of air, while holding onto his knees with his head in between them.

“Hey, maybe you should sit down,” you try to give some assistance, as blue eyes turn up to look at you, “Wouldn’t want anything to happen before school starts.”

He nods, as you point him to a bench at the beginning of the gentle slope before it turns into the hill that nearly killed the poor boy’s lungs, though you don’t say anything besides that. You know from personal experience that some people didn’t like to be babied and you try your hardest to respect that as he took his inhaler out of his pocket.  You wait for him to calm down, as you fiddle with your phone for a bit.

“Thanks,” is all he manages to say, as you look through your bag and hand him a bottle of water, “Ya didn’t have to.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing do,” you shrug as blue eyes widen for a moment, though you aren’t paying attention at the moment as you are midway through another raid in your mobile game. Steve takes a big gulp of water and can’t help the large grin on his face.

“Where are ya from?” he manages to ask after a while, as your eyes flicker to see he has completely turned to look at you, “I’m commuting from Brooklyn.”

“Living on campus. Jersey girl, born and raised.”  

Steve lets out a nervous laugh, Bucky would surely have his head for this --  if he ever heard of it.

 You swear that you don’t mean to be that person in the English Department, the one student that all the professors talk about due to their differing opinions on what is being taught. It’s just that you have a different viewpoint when it comes to certain literature, and it always had to be with Dr. Phillips.  During freshman year, it had been on the meaning behind the blue topaz in your creative writing final. Last semester, it had been over the concept of “loneliness” in Carson McCullers's book, now you couldn’t help but groan as he declares that Daisy is a fool for not loving Jay Gatsby.

“Do you disagree, Miss?” the old professor questions, as some of the students turn to look at you.  Even Steve, who is sitting in the back doodling, since he is taking this course as more of a general education requisite more than anything else and while he did all the work nothing really interested him -- until you started talking.

“Well, yeah. I think they were more in love with the concept of the other than the actual person,” you start up, as some of your classmates can’t help but nod, “I mean, Gatsby didn’t know what Daisy wanted, but he wanted to live the type of life she had. He was in love with the lifestyle, and Daisy for all her fooling around never left that lifestyle when asked if she wanted to be with him --- she was never willing to leave for love. They were just using each other, no?”

There is a low murmuring of agreement between the people you know are English majors, as a new round of discussion starts around your ideas for the rest of class. The redhead next you whispers something, which causes you to laugh and from Steve’s vantage point, he can’t help but start drawing your profile.

And maybe, Steve is falling in love with the concept of you as well.  

However, thankfully, life isn’t an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and Steve starts to see less and less of you as his prerequisites are completed and he completely focuses on his art degree. Steve never mourns you though, he doubts that you even remember him from the handful of occasions that you had interacted with each other, but he knows that you are there somewhere on campus drinking overpriced coffee and still fighting with the professors -- and he’s okay with that. He grows out of his small body (literally), moves closer to the university when Bucky transfers, and even tries dating an English medical student though it doesn’t work out. Life goes on until it hits you again.

In the first semester of junior year, Steve is going through an Egyptian art phase thanks to his tutelage underneath Dr. Erskine, an eccentric doctor that in his latter age traveled and painted. Due to this, a nameless woman that always ordered at the same diner as him catches his attention, well more like her back --uncovered due to the unbearable New York heat-- wouldn’t leave him alone, as he often found himself sketching it out when he was bored. He wanted to know the history around it, maybe he wanted to know more about her as well. However, even now standing at 6’ feet, he still feels like skinny Steve from two years.

After a month of watching her, Bucky does him the sore favor of pushing him into the poor woman waiting for her order, as they sit on the front countertop. Her eyes are covered with large sunglasses, as she gives him an annoyed grimace, at least from what he can see.            

“H-Hey! Is that the Eye of Horus on your back ?” Steve tries to nervously lead the conversation after giving a brief apology, and she entertains him for the moment.

“Yeah? ” she manages to answer, unsure of where this is all going and Steve swears that Bucky is laughing behind him.

“ Ah cool, but what do you need its protection from ?” he keeps questioning, as she moves away slightly. One hand on the back of her neck in embarrassment and the other on her bag of greasy fast food.

“ Everything, especially my social anxiety ,” she tries to laugh at her own expense, but it comes out strained, as Steve can now hear Bucky curse softly in the back. Both of them now feeling bad for bothering her.

“ Oh shit, I’m sorry, ” is all he can manage to say, as she starts backing away.

“ Hahaha, ‘kay, cool, no problemo ,” she turns away, trying to save face, and heads out the exit as Steve heaves out a weary sigh, feeling sorry that he had scared her away.

“Sorry, Stevie,” Bucky manages to say after putting his burger away,  knowing that he might have ruined his best friend’s chances in one blow.

“It’s okay, punk,” Steve says as he tries to best to smile.

However, some thing up above is kind to Steve Rogers as he starts to see the Eye of Horus girl everywhere: in the hallway, during school events, and now sitting in the coffee shop on a laptop sitting across Natasha Romanoff -- a redhead that double majored in Russian lit and art who Steve had interacted with a couple of times during those “Red Room” art classes that he would like to forget. However, aside from all that is really stuck in his head at the moment is going to apologize to her, though for a brief moment her laughing at something Natasha says makes him think of something else, of someone else and he hopes Sam’s psychoanalyzing has gotten to him again. Well, here he goes.

“Hey, Natasha,” he manages to say without a crack in his voice, as both women look at him, “I was wondering if you had the notes for Dr. Fury’s Cubism class.”

“Oh...yeah,” the redhead says with some suspicion in her voice, as Steve takes a sip of his over sweetened coffee, while she rummages through her bookbag. Eye of Horus girl looks up from her laptop once before going back to typing, “Here ya go, Steve. But, I don’t know--”

“ Steve Rogers ?” the woman suddenly squeaks out, which has both art students looking at the blushing mess she is turning into.  

“Yeah, why?” he manages to finally ask, as all of the familiarity from two years ago rushes forward. Those twinkling eyes are cautious and the once familiar uptick of a smile is set to a serious frown.  

“Oh shit,” she mutters quietly, as Natasha starts laughing before calming down and saying her name softly, as if trying to stop her from getting nervous all over again.

He knows that name, and his original concept of you is shattered.  

Steve learns quickly that the confident facade he had seen before hid a more cautious woman that tended to shy away from the limelight unless something really bothered you. You had gotten your tattoo back in sophomore year after a tough semester through one of Natasha’s friends, Clint, but it was her original design. You liked wearing charms for protection and played with the rings on your fingers whenever you can. Your smiles are rare, unless you’re with Natasha, but there’s the most beautiful things he’s seen — he swears it to Bucky over and over again the first time he makes you smile on his own.

“A green light?”  you ask looking at Steve’s finished picture for his next art show. You’re standing next to him as he smiles at the green mist that it the majority of the his painting, as you simply stare at it with your arms crossed over your chest and a frown, trying to figure what book its from -- since that was the theme of said gallery show.

“Just like Gatsby,” he laughs, as you finally put two and two together and groan.

“Are you trying to romanticize that awful novel?”

“More like warn them,” he shrugs as you start laughing. The sounds catches him off-guard, though he can’t help but grin at the smile blooming on your face.  

Over time, Steve falls in love with the person that he has come to known that you really are, though he still doesn’t forget the teenager with the kind heart that helped him almost four years ago. Blue eyes look at you from outside of the coffee shop window on a wintery December day shortly after the last finals for junior year have been completed. You play with the ring on your right index finger before turning the page of the book you have been reading. He smiles, as he opens the door and gets ready to pour his heart out and show off the latest thing he has been working on.

A concept drawing on someone you love.

And while, he isn’t in love with the idea of just “you” anymore, Steve knows that that he’s madly in love you as a person and all that you are, and he wants to keeps seeing you grow and change as long as you’ll let him.   

[rachel-gates]

five times kissed for; rachel x jenny

1. Rachel and Jenny had grown up around each other, and when that kind of childhood bond forms, there are few things that seem strange or silly. The girls were about twelve when they asked each other if they’d ever been kissed before. The question seemed somewhat scandalous to Rachel, but she trusted her answer with Jenny, who had always been kind and funny and loyal. When both girls answered ‘no’, it left a second question in the air. Rachel, who had always been shy and less adventurous, left it up to Jenny to say it out loud.

“Should we try?”

It was quick and simple and entirely uneventful, and they both agreed it didn’t count as either of their first kiss.

2. Rachel didn’t really care for parties. It wasn’t that she felt too out of her depth– though she could admit it wasn’t really her forte– she just never knew what to do. Everyone in high school seemed to understand how to dance and let loose and drink and have fun, but that was the kind of subject she just didn’t get. She promised Jenny she’d show up, though, and tried her best to enjoy the music and atmosphere, knowing could drive home sober when she wanted. She wandered over to a large group who were loudly shouting and giggling above the sound of something like glass sliding around. Rachel had only just caught Jenny’s gaze in the crowd before looking down and realizing that an empty beer bottle had ceased spinning and was pointing directly at her. When she looked up again, Jenny was suddenly there and whispering.

“I promise I’m not drunk, and we can leave right after this, okay?”

They agreed on the ride home that since it was a game, it didn’t count towards their first kiss either.

3. Now that every friend around her, and even Charlene, was encouraging her to experience high school– and life– to the fullest, Rachel was getting better at parties. As soon as she equated the act of becoming a good teenager, to learning how do it, she could do the research and the homework. And that included getting good at parties. She figured out how to dance to loud music and find the drinks that didn’t taste like absolute trash, all of course with the prerequisite of safety. Having found a DD for the night, a lightweight like Rachel was tipsy pretty quickly. She and Jenny were scrolling through old pictures on their phones and laughing at the memories over their drinks. She felt extra giggly and extra happy and somehow extra sentimental. Upon seeing a picture of Jenny taken a year ago, Rachel let out a proper ‘awwww!’ and leaned in to her friend.

“You look so good there! Almost as good as you look right now.”

In the backseat of their designated driver’s car, they couldn’t recall who had initiated it. They agreed since they were definitely both drunk, it didn’t count.

4. The park was their favorite place for study dates. Havensdale’s evenings had the perfect balance of cloud and sun and breeze and the fresh air helped revive them when they got too stumped by flashcards and quiz notes. It had been a week since that party and Rachel brought it up again by mentioning how hilariously idiotic Cameron Cooper got after a shot of fireball, that is, even more idiotic. Something in Jenny seemed to shift and Rachel quite couldn’t put a finger on it. After a moment, her friend mentioned that it was sort of funny that as much as the two girls kept doing their best to ensure their mistakes didn’t count, neither had yet to actually have their first kiss. Rachel meant to say something about how it just hadn’t happened at the right time yet, but for some reason, couldn’t get the words out. She looked up at Jenny, and in an instant, Jenny was there and holding her and kissing her. When the two parted, Rachel couldn’t think of a single word to say. Jenny’s expression darkened.

“This was a mistake.”

Suddenly Jenny was gathering her things and apologizing and promising that this moment didn’t count either. She left Rachel wide-eyed and stunned.

5. It had taken a full night for Rachel to process what had happened. A lot went through her brain, a lot she didn’t understand until she could think it through for the seven-hundredth time. And when she finally understood it, she could only imagine Jenny had been agonizing about it the whole time. Rachel rushed to school that morning, parking haphazardly and running through the halls to get to her. When she finally spotted that familiar head of red hair, she grabbed Jenny’s arm and willed her to turn around. She could tell instantly that all Jenny wanted to do was apologize again but Rachel cut her off.

“I wanted it to count,” she stated, loud and clear and definitive. “It wasn’t a mistake, and I wanted it to count.” Rachel was tired of always being the shy one and always being content with being less adventurous. She didn’t want to have to let Jenny take the lead. So, before she could stop herself, and in the middle of the bustling hallway of their school, Rachel grabbed Jenny’s face and kissed her. Hard.

“This one counts.”

[ur-mom-kayn]

Loyalty Chapter 7: League of Legends

Zed Pov

"What's this league supposed to be?" Shen rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "Do you live under a rock? The League of Legends has been around for about 2 years now. Hm ... how can I put it that way for dumbasses ... Think of it as the place where elite fighters from all over Runeterra break their heads. Mostly 5 vs 5 in one round. It's a kind of game where you have to destroy the enemy Nexus. I know that is not the part that interests you. During a round, you can get killed or kill your opponents as often as you want. You do not really die. It's complicated. Inform yourself independently. Anyway, you cash in fat, for that you are there at any time ready to fight. Sounds very lucrative." And how it did that. Kill and get money for it, but do no real harm or take it.

"Does that mean if I join in there, could I kill you every day again and again?" "Ha ha, as if you can, but basically yes. For that, the Fields of Justice were also made. To clarify wars without harming the civilians. However, it could happen that enemies have to end up on a team and work together. Unfortunately, you have to stand over it. "Zed did not really care. It was too long ago for the two brothers to fight side by side. The last time was at the capture of Khada Jhin. Zed was reluctant to remember. Something broke in him that day when he was not allowed to kill the virtuoso. His stupid master insisted on the capture. This was the first and last time that Zed and Shen agreed. They both wanted Jhin's death. But he was put into Tuula Prison at the mercy of his master. No five years later, Jhin escaped from prison. He was free. That was the last result of their collaboration and their biggest defeat. Working with him again could wake unwanted memories. However, the offer was just too tempting. Because of this, Zed made every effort to banish the pictures from his head.

"Being in a team with you would be a complete horror. Is there any more of your kind?" "Charming as always. And yes, Akali and Kennen are there too. The three of us can provide the complete Clan all by ourselves. The catch on the whole thing is that unfortunately, you have to live there. Only between the seasons or if you have requested vacation, you can go back home. Holidays are only available under certain conditions. The one is if you are a permaban or not chosen at all. Ah yes, you are also summoned. You can not rage around wildly. That is not possible. As I said, look for yourself. "

Great, the green slut and the fast hamster are also there. There was a lot against accession, just as much as admission. It was impossible to decide that now in the middle of the street. Especially there was a corpse on the ground, which must be delivered urgently. "I think about it. But first, let's pick up the bounty. And yes, we mean both you, Shen, and Kayn. We share the money as agreed. "Zed leaned down and threw the body on his shoulder. Without exchanging words, they set off. The silence was pretty overwhelming. Having Shen so close to her made Zed uncomfortable. What if he starts on Kayn to take revenge on Zed? Instinctively, he approached his student and searched for Kayn's hand. You never could be sure enough.

...

Finally arrived at the client, Zed threw the corpse at Shen. "Ehm okay Zed? What will that be?" "Go in and get the money. I stay here with Kayn. You said it yourself. He is still a child. So you do that." Shen joined Zed and entered the building. 10 minutes later he came back with two well-filled suitcases. Shen handed him one of the two suitcases. "Take it. I made sure that there was exactly the same amount in both suitcases." "You do not believe that yourself." Zed did not trust his adoptive brother. He insisted on counting the amount of both cases. To his surprise, in his 10% was more in it. "Why Shen? Why are you kidding?" "The 10% go to Kayn. He was really damn good. Buy him something nice." With that, Shen finally disappeared. Sometimes he could do this guy even less than usual. Kindness was a weakness. And Zed loathed weakness more than anything else.

"Come Kayn. Let's go home." "Okay, Master." At last the boy spoke again for hours. Understandable that he had no desire to talk when Shen was present. On the way to the temple, Zed sought the conversation with Kayn. "So how was that again? How could you be so fast? We were in an open field." "Yeah. Sure, it was open, but there were still obstacles. I did not know if the Shadow Step worked on humans, but apparently, that worked, at least for a very short time." "You flew through people? That brings me to an idea. You know my technique Deathmark. I'll disappear and leave a mark on my opponent that does more damage the more I hit him after the marker is set. The prerequisite for this is, unfortunately, the technique of the shadow double, you can not. But maybe you can completely become a shadow, invade your opponents and tear them apart from within. "

Kayn smiled. "Sounds good ... Tell me, Master, are you really proud of me or did you find my action crappy?" Walking, Zed grabbed Kayn by the shoulder and pulled him towards him. For a moment the younger man stumbled but quickly recovered. "Hey!" Kayn protested. "Where does that come from?" "I just want to show you that I'm proud of you. Did you seriously think that I wanted to cause an accident?" Instead of fighting Zed, Kayn put an arm around Zed's waist. That was not the plan, but his closeness to Kayn did not bother him. Basically, he felt better with him than with anyone else. He was somehow really his son.

...

When they finally arrived at the temple it was pitch black. Nonetheless, Zed put on his mask again. In the hallways, they did not meet any of the other acolytes. Most of them were already in their rooms at this time. Just like Zed. Together with Kayn, they entered his room. Before that, the younger man brought bedding out of his room. They quickly agreed to spend the evening together. After a short snack, the two threw themselves to bed. As usual, Kayn lay in Zed's arms and laid his head on his chest. For a while, it was quiet between them until Kayn broke the silence. "So that's your brother Shen?" Actually, the older one had his nose brushed out by his brother. But Kayn to love he pulled himself together. "Yes, unfortunately..."

"Hmm ... for beheading your father, he was amazingly relaxed. His emotions were also pretty played. "" Do you think so? Anyway, the values of the Kinkous Klan are knitted so that you should be in the right with yourself. That is, in principle, love and hatred must be in harmony. Just as light and shadow must be in balance. If Shen sticks to it, he must not be tempted by his anger towards me to kill me. Why he was nice to me, I can not explain with the best will. "The action with the higher amount of money, he was still a mystery. Supposedly because Kayn earned it. In fact, Shen just wanted to make fun of Zed's situation. A child had saved his ass, so what? Kayn was not a normal kid. Zed was not ashamed of it. It would have been worse to let Shen save her.

But maybe it was the money issues that Shen found so funny. Unfortunately, Zed did not find any way to think about his offer. The biggest problem was that he did not want it either. He was well aware that when he joins the league, he will automatically leave Kayn and the others. And that was his biggest concern. Kayn ... The boy did not like all the talk about the league, as he has not yet commented on the subject. It was understandable to Zed that he did not like it.

Kayn Pov

For Kayn, her togetherness was a bit uncomfortable. All along, he had in mind the thought that it might be their last time. If Zed decided to join the league, then they could only meet once a year. He could not and did not want to endure this thought. Zed was for him everything. He was dependent on him. Just letting him go that way would not be an option. "Hey, Kayn ... what do you think of the offer?" Zed stroked a few strands of his face to give him a better view of his reaction. Kayn pulled himself together to hide his true feelings. He did not want to show weakness in front of his master. Nevertheless, his master expected an answer from him.

"I'm sorry. Unfortunately, I can not express an objective opinion." "Then tell me your subjective opinion." Kayn wanted to avoid that. "Master ... I do not want to talk about it ..." Zed then put two fingers around his chin and forced him to look into his eyes. In the incredibly beautiful, red eyes. Damn ... He just could not resist his orders. "Be honest with me. I want to hear your opinion." "That's good. I do not want you to leave. I need you here and not on an imaginary battlefield. I know that we are becoming more and more soldiers, but we are too young to earn money. I understand it when you say that you are leaving to make us feel better. But honestly ... I feel better when you're with me. I can not master without you. You have become everything for me now. You are much more than just my master, and you know that. Why do you ask my opinion, when you know the child wants to keep his father? "

Kayn tried hard not to put emotions into his voice. His words were honest and they hurt him from the inside. He showed weakness and he puked himself already. He honestly did not want to know what his master thought of his words. He certainly did not care about his gibberish. It was Zed, after all, who was shaking his heart out. The Master of Shadows did not care about weaklings. And that was Kayn right now. He thought of his own needs first and not of the Order. He already felt a little bad. Nonetheless, he stood by his words. Zed belonged to him.

"I understand," his master answered after a long break. He did not let anything is read out of his face. "Still, I think you're wrong, Kayn. You are far more independent than you dare to do it yourself. You do not need me here. I'm your incentive to get your engine stronger, or am I wrong? I'm still, even though I'm not here, but in the league. Besides, I do not completely disappear from your life. I will always take a vacation if I get the opportunity. So you let me go?" Kayn almost snorted in amusement. He knew it did not make sense. "As if you stay here if I say so. You have already decided. I do not care about my opinion. You want to finish Shen, right? You are keen to fight against the best in the world. You can not fool me, Master. I know you too well. Your blood is already boiling with fighting spirit. But just for the record, I'll say it again. I do not want you to go, Zed. "

It was the first time that Kayn addressed his Master without a title. He had his reason. Zed had to understand that he finally recognized him as a father. He was his educator, his lifesaver, and friend. He was much more than a teacher. Inwardly, Kayn's heart broke, if he had one, into a thousand pieces. No matter what he said, Zed would not change his mind.

"Shit ...", Zed cursed, turning his face as far away from Kayn as possible. "I care about you Kayn. How many times do I have to tell you that you are my son? Your opinion is important to me, even if I wish that you had the same as me. From your father's point of view, I would just stay here and raise you. But from the point of view of a master, who I am, I must act for the good of the entire clan. I'm sorry Kayn ... I'm going to curse myself for not seeing your progress. I think that will be the worst for me. It's like missing the first words of your child or the first steps. Your development as an Assassin is very important to me. As well as your development as a man. Kayn please never say again that I do not care, because that's not true. You are not aware of how much you have already done for me. Before I knew you, I could not open anyone. I could not trust anyone. I was terribly lonely. Then you came and I finally had someone to show me the way I am. I realize that I will give it all up, but this time, everything will be different because I know that you will always be waiting for me. Thanks to you, I'm no longer alone, Kayn. Please forgive me if you feel like I'm leaving you. Please let us enjoy when we see each other again, okay? "

Now the younger one finally understood why his master turned away. He also showed weakness. That was new to him. And that just made it harder for him. They were emotionally closer than ever before and now they had to split up? That was not fair. But he knew that the only thing to do would be to let his master go. "Okay ... Could we let the topic go now? I want to sleep, Master." "For me, you deserve it to sleep. Good night. "A few minutes before Kayn finally fell asleep, he felt Zed petting him over his head.

[vrepit-sals]

Title: When I’m not the only one Characters: Pidge, team Voltron, the Holt family Pairings: None Tags: space family, found family, trans girl pidge Word Count: 4055 This was my piece for @pidgevoltronzine, you can get a copy of the free zine here. This fic is available on a03 here

They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant.

"Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!" ______

Pidge learns that blood is not a prerequisite for family.

She's sitting on the kitchen counter, sprinkling chocolate chips into a bowl while Matt stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon. They're almost done, and in half an hour she knows they'll have freshly baked peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies.

She feels grown up, being allowed to help in the kitchen with only her brother's supervision. She's wearing her brand new green dress, the one she'd spent half-an-hour spinning in that morning, trying to memorise the unfamiliar way the fabric swept across her legs.

Her mother had pulled her hair up into pigtails and smiled at her from behind a camera as she twirled, then bundled her up in her arms. She'd received a kiss on the cheek and revelled in hearing her name from her mother’s lips. She'd never felt safer.

Her favourite cookies are like the cherry on top of the cake, the celebration of something she's wanted for years and only just attained.

Her brother makes a dramatic reprimand when she eats a chocolate chip and opens his mouth wide, swooping for and missing the chip she throws.

She giggles as he bends down and pops it in his mouth anyway, citing the five second rule. She continues to watch, eagerly accepting when Matt offers her the chance to stir the bowl.

He smiles down at her as she works, and declares the cookies complete with a flourish.

It's as he's pulling out the baking paper that she realises their vital mistake.

"We forgot to add the pidge of love!" She says, ready to clamber off the counter in order to grab the mysterious ingredient that their mother adds to everything she cooks.

Matt stops and stares at her for a second before he starts to laugh.

"Yes, we definitely can't forget that!" he says, wiping away a tear before showing her how to do a sprinkling motion, adding their blessing to the mixture.

He hands her back the wooden spoon.

"Better make sure it's stirred in properly."

He grins at her and she smiles back, sweeping the spoon through the dough in the figure 8 motions their mother had taught her.

They scoop out the dough with their hands and roll it into balls between their palms. Matt hands her the spoon to lick as he leaves to ask their father to put the tray in the oven for them. He lifts her off the counter and lets her pick the TV show they watch while they wait for the cookies to be done.

It's the best birthday she's ever had.

"They look great, Pidge," Matt says when their father places the cookies on a heatproof mat, batting his children's hands away from the hot tray.

She looks at her brother and tries to raise one eyebrow the same way their mother does.

"Pidge?"

"Yeah," Matt says, ruffling her hair and laughing as she squeals, "because you're our own little 'pidge of love'. Our most important ingredient."

She smiles at him, and he grins back, a certain mischief in the quirk of his lips that she can't seem to place.

In eight years she'll be telling him she hates the nickname, a slightly embarrassing story of childhood ignorance and Matt's warped sense of humour. In ten years it'll be one of the few connections to her family and planet that she still has, and she'll hold it tight with no plan to ever let it go.

But for now her chest feels lighter than ever. A new nickname, her first dress and her favourite cookies.

Life couldn't possibly get better.

Coran looks tired.

He always does, at least to some degree. Pidge doesn’t think she's ever seen him without loss and exhaustion lingering behind his eyes.

All of them need a spa day. Sometimes it feels like the entire team is running on empty. But Coran and Allura have been fighting far longer than the paladins have. They don't have a home waiting for them when this is all over.

Sometimes Pidge can see Coran's uncertainty in the crack between his smile.

But he hides it well. He wanders over to her research as if he's been resting all day, without a care in the world. In actuality, Pidge knows he's been cleaning the castle, preparing training sessions, assisting Allura with recon and checking up on all of them and helping when he can.

She wants to tell him to go have a nap. She wants to give him something to ease the burden, even just a little.

"I found the next link in the chain," she says instead.

It's taken three days and feels like nothing. Coran still smiles like it's progress.

"Oh?" he asks. He leans forward to look at the screen over her shoulder.

"The ship Matt was on docked near the Vaekla system, and unloaded cargo before jumping into hyperspace," she says, "it's been stationed for combat ever since. The logs don't mention the prisoners, but they must have been moved around the same time as the cargo."

The one thing that seems crystal clear in all this is that the Galra value prisoners as less than worthless. They are shepherded from ship to ship in a seemingly endless chain until a more permanent prison happens to be on the ship's route.

They’re rarely listed in logs at all, and where they are there’s merely the number of prisoners and a date. She’s struggled to keep track of which group Matt is in, and the disquiet of her mind whispers that she might not even be on the right track.

"The Vaekla system, that sounds familiar," Coran says.

"It one of the biggest Galran cargo hubs on this side of the galaxy."

Coran nods and taps his finger against his chin.

"Do you know the ship they were transferred to?"

"The base has enough resources to hold prisoners for about a week at a time. I've just finished compiling a list of all the ships that went through there within a week of the prisoners arriving. I'm just about to start cross-referencing their cargo, logs and destination routes to come up with some likely candidates."

Just saying the sentence drops a weight on whatever small piece of optimism she still had going. She thinks of how little of the cross referencing can be done automatically, and the seemingly endless list of ships.

Coran just nods and pats her on the shoulder. His presence does make her feel a little better, for all that she knows he'll give her some words of encouragement before going back to his own duties.

"Well then, we'd better get started."

Coran plops down into the seat next to her and pulls up a monitor. Pidge looks at him in shock for a moment before distributing the list between them.

The time passes eons faster than it did that morning. Coran tells her a story about King Alfor and a rather forward Torian diplomat as they work, and Pidge's stomach hurts from all the laughing by the time they take a break for dinner.

The mind is such an inefficient memory storage system.

Pidge knows that she had an album of family pictures back at home. She had backups on external hard drives and CDs and physical copies stashed in just about every room.

When Matt and her Dad disappeared, she swore she would never forget them. She would never lose the family photos of them, no matter what natural disaster or piece of bad luck might strike. She knew one day she would use the photographs to find them.

She'd brought the picture of Matt with her to the Garrison and to space beyond. But she'd left the pictures of her father at home. She'd thought one photo she could pass off as coincidence, but any more would make her real identity obvious.

She'd been just paranoid enough, but in a completely unhelpful direction.

Some days she tries to picture her father's face, and she can feel her memory falter. It takes her brain minutes to construct something that resembles him, but when she tries to zoom in, to see the quirk of his cheesy grin, it blurs away to nothing.

She sees the uncanny valley whenever she tries to think hard about home.

She doesn't mean to bother Shiro on the bad days. It's not like it's a conscious thing, she'll just be getting some food goo and he'll be sitting at the table with a cup of what Coran swears sounds just like green tea. Or else she'll be training with the rest of the team, and he'll notice that the bags under her eyes have multiplied overnight.

She knows he sees what's happening, because always, without fail, he'll start talking about her family.

He never asks her about it directly, but the tales from the Kerberos mission remind her of things that have slipped her mind.

How Matt sang Lady Gaga at the top of his lungs when the world felt too heavy. Her father's habit of accidentally stealing other people's combs. The stories flesh out her family in her mind's eye, transforming them back from vague recollections into actual people.

People she can see again.

People she is going to.

Some days space seems intent to rip the past from her. To fog her memories and cloud her perspective, to block her from anything but the battles and missions and death.

But she knows that whenever she starts to forget what's important, Shiro will make sure she remembers.

Allura pulls her aside after a debriefing for another diplomatic mission. Pidge expects something to be wrong or there to be extra work to do.

Sometimes Pidge feels like she manages to accidently insult the princess every time they talk. Allura always accepts her apologies with grace, and although they've become closer over the past few months, Pidge still feels the need to hold herself back somewhat, before her tongue manages to undo all their progress.

Perhaps that's why missions and training still seem to dominate their conversations.

"What's up Allura?" she asks, already half calculating what she could accomplish for Allura before they land planetside.

"This new mission doesn't require us to wear our armour, but we will need something more formal than our regular attire. I was wondering if you'd like to borrow a dress for the occasion?"

Pidge stares at her for a moment. She's suddenly transported back to that day all those years ago. The hallway mirror, fabric whooshing around her legs and a feeling of peace she never expected to find.

Allura's face shifts with her silence.

"Of course, if you'd prefer I'm sure Coran can find you a suit-"

"No," Pidge cuts her off in her haste, "I'd love to borrow something. Thank you."

She can't keep a grin off her face. Allura returns it before leading her to her bedroom, where they spend the afternoon going through her princess-sized closet.

Allura seems to have stories about every item of clothing: tales of tall trees and impromptu play-fights that ripped holes in ball gowns; diplomatic missions to planets that may no longer exist; soft fabric for dresses worn around the castle, on days she could forgo her royal duties and just be a child.

Pidge feels a little foolish trying on dresses Allura wore when she was 10, but as soon as the fabric goes over her head she feels a sigh of relief spread through her.

The clothes she normally wears are one of the only connections to Earth she still has. But these dresses, alien as they are, remind her of another kind of home.

Allura retires to the edge of her bed and comments on each dress Pidge tries. For some she is loud and exuberant, quoting lines she's heard from the team like "walk walk fashion baby" or Altean slang that she assures is positive.

For others she can't help but laugh at the outdated buttons that apparently clash terribly by current standards and silhouettes that are unflattering in every way.

Together they create a shortlist. Then, one by one they eliminate options until a winner is found.

The dress is a deep emerald with a high neckline, finishing just below her knees. On Altea it would have been used for lunch events or as less formal day wear, but Pidge has never felt more like royalty.

The weight of the dress is comforting and familiar, and she could easily fit her bayard, along with any other useful gadgets in one of its almost-impossible-for-their-sheer-size pockets.

Allura looks at her in confusion when she discovers the pockets and promptly sticks her hands in them, twirling around with gleeful shouts of their existence.

"Of course it has pockets. What kind of dress doesn't?"

Pidge turns and stares at her with the kind of reverence that thus far has been reserved only for technology.

"Altea must have been a wonderful place."

She sees Allura smile with a far-away look in her eyes.

"Yes, it really was," she smiles at Pidge like that dress is helping keep the past alive.

Even when they're done choosing an outfit for the meeting, they continue going through the wardrobe. This time Allura joins her, pulling on gifts from diplomats of other planets and piling scarves around her neck.

Pidge laughs at the look it creates and Allura strikes a pose, prompting Pidge to do the same.

When they've finally expended every item in the closet, Allura picks up a large pile of dresses Pidge hadn't even noticed her making, and tells Pidge to lead the way back to her room.

Pidge looks at her in disbelief for a moment, but can't help the smile pulling at her lips.

"Are you sure you don't mind me wearing them?" she asks as she pushes aside the various electronics she'd stacked in the clothing-devoid closet.

"Of course, hand-me-downs are an important part of Earthen bonding," Allura grins at her, before looking slightly sheepish, "or is this like the time Lance told me that the middle finger was a sign of great admiration and respect?"

Pidge laughs at the memory, and all the healing pods Lance had to clean in punishment.

"No, that's right. Just, thank you."

Pidge isn't sure if she'll ever be able to express how much she means it. Allura just smiles at her and hefts all the dresses into her closet in one graceful motion Pidge could never hope to replicate.

Pidge is wearing one of her new dresses when she enters the lounge and gets comfy on one of the big couches. She has her laptop with her, but there's no pressing intel to translate or interpret. She fiddles with a few of her passion projects, but can't seem to focus.

Lance had greeted her when she walked in, and he's sitting on the next couch over, working on a jumper using sharpened sticks that were once part of some Altean extreme sport.

Pidge finds herself continually distracted by the soft clack of the needles.

It takes her back to when her mother would sit next to her father on the couch, knitting squares for their local charity group during family movie night. She'd always promised Pidge that she'd teach her one day.

But life was always too busy, and then Kerberos happened and family movie nights stopped. The clack of needles and any sense of life drained from their house.

She stares blankly at her laptop screen and imagines bringing her mother back a blanket, one knitted in space. She imagines knitting with her during future family movie nights. She imagines the warmth of yarn slipping through her fingers feeling like her mother's hugs.

She turns her head towards Lance and he looks up from his knitting. He grins easily at her, one eyebrow raised in an unasked question.

"Can you teach me how to knit?" she asks.

Lance lets out a happy of bark of laughter, and all but throws his needles to the side as he exclaims.

"Of course I can! You know, I am an excellent teacher."

Pidge rolls her eyes at him, but the smile that overtakes Lance's face is contagious. He ruffles her hair as he leaves to grab another pair of needles and some yarn.

Pidge's first square looks more like a dilapidated rhombus. Her second isn't much better.

But Lance just has this proud look on his face as he examines them. He weaves her tales of all the holey scarves he gave his mother for Christmas when he was small.

Pidge smiles as she casts on her third attempt.

"Hey Pidge, can I get a hand with something?"

She looks up at where Hunk is smiling at her from the entrance of the room. She'd originally come in to the lounge room to knit. The blanket she's making is almost halfway done, and she preemptively misses it whenever she works late into the night without its warmth around her shoulders.

But her laptop had sat and stared at her. Taunting her with puzzles and uncracked codes that she's never been able to resist.

Hunk's voice snaps her out of what the other's affectionately call her 'technology haze', and the laptop all but whines at her as she puts it down to follow Hunk into the hallway.

They don't seem to be following the familiar path to their joint workshop, and Pidge frowns.

"What do you need help with?"

Hunk just turns to her with a secretive grin.

"Just a little something I've been working on," he says, pausing at the end of corridor for a moment before his eyes light up in recognition and he leads them left.

Secrecy isn't like Hunk. They share information on their projects as easily as breathing, exchanging ideas with barely a need to speak. She and Hunk are the only ones on the ship to truly appreciate the intricacies of what they do, and she holds her comrade in arms in high regard.

She manages to hold her tongue for almost a minute before the curiosity gets the better of her.

"Is it problems with the real-time Galra tracker?" she asks. Hunk lets out a laugh.

"No."

"Is it time to re-scramble the communication frequencies?"

"Not for another few days."

She hums and taps a finger against her chin.

"It's not modifications to Yellow?"

"Yes."

Pidge's eyes light up and Hunk looks at her with a grin.

"It's not," he says, and picks up the pace, laughing at her grumbling.

They continue winding down the castle corridors, watching them get smaller and darker. Hunk leads her to a part of the ship she's never been before, stretching hallways of doors leading to what she assumes are guest rooms their team of seven have no use for.

Hunk seems to stop at one of them at random, but when he flicks his wrist to open the door, it asks for a passcode. As if it were the armoury, or the keeper of a great secret.

When the door opens Pidge can see a faint glow emitting from the room. She takes in the mass of contraptions taking over half the floorspace, all leading up to a projection of a familiar start-up screen.

Killbot Phantasm 1 gazes back at her.

Her eyes are fixed on the game she's spent months trying and failing to play. A grin takes over her face and she swears she starts to tear up a little.

"I was thinking maybe later I could get some help carrying it up to one of the larger common rooms," Hunk says, as she stares at the screen in a daze, "but for now do you want to try multiplayer?"

Pidge takes the offered controller and asks herself how she ever got so lucky.

"Oh it's on," she says. Hunk cheers and presses start.

Pidge is seriously considering just snuggling down and sleeping in the cold, hard metal of her chair.

Her bed feels light-years away, an insurmountable distance. Her limbs ache at the thought and her mind lies, tells her that surely if she just lets her eyes drift shut, she'll be able to muster up the energy to make the journey. Just five minutes is all she'll need.

The part of her brain that's holding the fort together, that's somehow still functioning after 12 hours piloting her lion and running through Galra battlecruisers and three days before that working around the clock to decode the intel for this stealth mission, feels like this information is somehow sketchy. But she can't gather enough evidence to refute it.

She's just starting to sink into sweet, sweet rest when someone grabs her wrists and hoists them over their shoulders. After a jostle, she can feel hands under her legs securing her in place, pressed up against someone's back.

Then, despite any effort on her part, she's moving.

Pidge musters the last of her energy to pry open her eyes. Apparently the thing scratching her nose is actually long, black hair.

"Thanks Keith," she says, some part of her feeling their slow, lumbered movements and reminding her that Keith must be almost as tired as she is.

Or maybe not, the way he pulls his arms to boost her further up his back, and the smile she can hear when he says "No problem Pidge."

Her mind marks her current situation as ‘safe’ and resumes its descent into slumber. Just as she's about to slip away, Pavlovian conditioning pulls a final phrase from her lips.

"You're my favourite brother."

Keith pauses, and Pidge sluggishly realises that there was something unusual about that statement.

She's said it a thousand times, whenever Matt would give her the remote without a fight, or team up with her in Trivial Pursuit, or when the night got late and he'd piggyback her to her room, a million worlds away but exactly like this.

Every time Matt's response was exactly the same:

"I'll call it an achievement when I'm not the only one you've got."

It looks like he may have to start doing just that.

Or not, because apparently Keith has swept the title out from under him.

And part of Pidge wants to cry, because it feels like every day her Earth family drifts further and further away. And part of her wants to laugh as she tries to imagine the look on her mother's face when she introduces her to her new uncle and sister and four new brothers. Because she has to believe that one day she'll bring her families together.

Even if her team never consider her family back.

They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant.

"Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!"

The voice is easily identifiable as Lance's, and Pidge can imagine him in his pyjamas, half a face mask applied, his features pulled into put-on disgust.

"Yeah, well I set it up!" comes a deep voice from even further in the ship. Hunk's deep tones betray far more humour than Lance's, and Lance squawks.

"I taught you how to knit!"

"I helped you decode 20 million lines of cargo logs!"

Pidge can almost see Hunk's teasing smile and Lance's over-exaggerated hand movements.

"The point is: your favourite brother is Keith?!" Lance yells in indignation.

A laugh is ripped from of Pidge's throat, and it mingles with laughter coming from Keith before drifting back down the hallway. It's answered by two over the top declarations of future retribution sent Keith's way.

When Keith drops her off at her door, she hugs him tight as she wishes him goodnight. His cheeks are red and wet, but a smile threatens to overtake his face as he returns the hug, his arms gentle but firm around her shoulders.

Then she's in her room, kicking off her shoes but otherwise letting nothing distract her from the sweet comfort of her bed. She pulls the blankets up to her neck and lets herself snuggle into the warmth which seems to be emanating from her heart.

And perhaps it's been building up over months, but it still hits her with surprising clarity.

For the first time, the Castleship truly feels like home.

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 10: Totally Obeying Orders

Emery and Wes hustled across campus in their pajamas, quick-stepping over the chilly sidewalks and brittle grass, ignoring small groups of dreamhunters and the early-rising students from the day division.

The food court had just opened for breakfast when they arrived. The kitchen workers crashed pans and plates together in the back rooms behind the food lines. The fountain bubbled to life. Wes and Emery split apart for food and gravitated together to a table in the center of the atrium, near the fountain.

“You know Joel Cullweather?” Emery asked between bites of waffle.

Wes, hunched over his food, glanced up at her. “I know of your boyfriend, Joel Cullweather, yes. I don’t know him.”

“Joel’s great,” Emery said. “He wants to mount an ice sculpture at the top of the fountain. The sculpture’s of Fabian Fenhallow and a—”

“Em!” Joel, Kris, Lewis, and Jacqueline all burst through the atrium doors, as if they’d been summoned. Lewis and Jacqueline looked put together for the day; Joel and Kris looked like they’d been plucked straight from their beds.

“I didn’t know any of you woke up this early,” she said when they dragged more chairs up to the table.

“I do,” Lewis grumbled.

“We heard the sand wore off.” Joel settled next to Emery, sliding an arm around her and pulling her close to kiss her temple while he stole a piece of watermelon off her plate. “Everyone thinks you had a run-in with some huge nightmare that spits sleeping sand.”

“The Howards think you’re full of it,” Jacqueline rested her chin on her palm, “and you just knocked yourself out chasing what you thought was a huge nightmare.”

“Isaiah Howard wouldn’t know a nightmare if it knocked his shield out of his hand and stabbed him with his own sword,” Emery said. Jacqueline snorted.

“So what actually happened?” Kris asked.

“We’re fine, it was—”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Wes said. He stared Emery down across the table.

Again, he was right, they weren’t. And it was an unspoken rule between the members of the day division and night division that if a dreamhunter student refused to speak about a mission, no further questions would be asked. Plenty of secrets made their way around Fenhallow; if one didn’t, it was serious enough not to risk getting in trouble for leaking it.

“Everyone,” Emery said coolly, “have you met Wesley? Wes doesn’t have many friends, so he’s not too skilled at introducing himself.”

A vein stood out in Wes’s temple. Emery wondered if she could make that aneurysm a reality before the end of the month.

The other members of the student council introduced themselves in turns. Kris got Wes to smile by mentioning that she had a few classes with Ridley (“Honestly, everyone always talks about how she’s the nicest person on campus, but they never talk about how smart she is”); Joel had played soccer with Wes a few times (“Being a dreamhunter should be automatic cheating—you’re all faster”); Lewis, an assistant to their dream theory professor, had consistently docked Wes points on his essay grammar (“It’s nothing personal, I swear. I just can’t in good conscience allow you to keep using ‘your’ when you should use ‘you’re’”); and though Jacqueline and Wes didn’t have anything in common, Jacqueline managed to make him blush deep red just by making direct eye contact for longer than ten seconds while he explained to her that yes, he was interested in girls, and no, he did not currently have a girlfriend.

“I can fix that for you,” Jacqueline said. “Just let me know.”

Wes turned a mottled shade of purple.

Emery knew he didn’t have many friends. People didn’t avoid Wes they way they avoided her, but she never saw him hanging out with anyone. He didn’t talk to anyone before or after class. If she saw him in the Kirkland lobby, he was by himself in a corner. Before, she’d thought it was because he was as unpopular as she was, just in a different way—people didn’t like her for being the best, and they ignored him for being the worst—but now it seemed self-imposed. Like the way he hid his dreamforming skills.

He was hiding behind mediocrity, at least in some areas. He looked at her across the table, and there was no surface to those black eyes, just two deep and bottomless pits.

Then he looked away as Jacqueline started listing off all the single girls at Fenhallow.

~

Two days under sleeping sand didn’t excuse them from Marcia’s morning workout. They went through the whole thing with Marcia glaring daggers at them, and after shower time, Emery waited her prerequisite five extra minutes before leaving the locker room, and ran straight into Marcia in the empty hallway outside.

“What did he look like?” Marcia snapped.

“Who?”

“Emery, I swear—”

Emery sighed and pretended to be burdened. “I don’t know. Tall, sharp fingers, goggles. He really needed a haircut.”

“What did he say?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it does.”

“I’ll tell you what he said if you tell me why you care.”

Marcia flexed her crossed arms. Emery wondered if she’d had her arms crossed for so long they’d fused together that way.

“We were in the same class,” Marcia said.

“Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s the whole story.”

Marcia shifted, and the lights overhead caught her hair and made her look like her head had gone up in flames. The blooming anger on her face didn’t help.

“I mean like, did you go out with him, or was it more of a onesie-twosie thing…?”

Marcia turned livid.

The fit of rage was, as Emery predicted, bad enough to turn Marcia away and send her stomping down the hall. Probably to a place where she could destroy something. The rage didn’t answer as many questions as Emery had hoped, though. Marcia was a perfectly capable dreamhunter and seemed to have familiarity with the Sandman. If she hadn’t been sent after the Sandman, there must have been some other conflict of interest. Grandpa Al was keeping her off the case for a reason.

Marcia’s incursion made Emery three minutes late for dream theory. Professor Lenton docked her half her participation points for the day—not a harsh blow, as Emery’s extra credit work had already earned her over one hundred percent in the class—and made her stand by her desk and give a summary of the reading they were supposed to finish the night before. Which, of course, Emery didn’t know, because she had been asleep at the time. The rest of her participation points went down the drain.

“The reading, Miss Ashworth, was over proper procedure to open a gateway into the Dream. Most of you won’t learn how to do this until next year, when your skills are more developed and you are better prepared to handle whatever may try to come out of your gateway—or what may find you once you go inside. Sit down, Miss Ashworth.”

Emery sat, ignoring the snickers that cropped up around the room. Professor Lenton launched into an explanation of Dream gateways with a diagram on the whiteboard wall taller than himself. The diagram itself was little more than a set of circles layered over each other, each layer pried apart and labeled. On the board beside the diagram, Lenton had written in big, sloppy handwriting, APPEARANCE UNIQUE TO HUNTER.

The diagram had been on the board for almost a week. Lenton had promised weeks ago to bring in one of the full-time dreamhunters to actually demonstrate opening a gateway into the Dream, but had yet to deliver. Apart from Marcia and Lana, most of the Fenhallow teachers were non-dreamhunters, a fact that didn’t matter much when they were discussing theory or instructing the lower division students, but really seemed pointless when it came to experience in the field. She’d heard Lenton say over and over again that Dream gateways were unique in appearance to the dreamhunter who opened them, but how? As doors? As tears in the world? Half the time Emery wasn’t sure Lenton himself had ever seen a gateway opened. He’d just read about it in textbooks and been asked to regurgitate.

She took dutiful notes anyway, and when Lenton started repeating himself halfway through class, she began to wonder what her gateway might look like. Maybe the door to Grandpa Al’s office. Maybe something cold and wintry, with snow. Maybe nothing—maybe it would just shimmer and disappear.

Grandpa Al’s gateway was the literal gateway of a tall, wrought-iron fence. Emery only knew because her father had told her. Once Edgar was old enough, his might be the entrance to a saloon, or a dusty desert road. Marcia’s would be…the gym? Some kind of coliseum? Emery tapped her pencil lead on the desk. She didn’t even know what Marcia’s dreamform weapon was.

When class was over, Emery caught Wes outside the room and pulled him to a corner of the hallway.

“We can’t go through the front tonight. I can guarantee Grandpa Al told Alice not to let us off campus. We’ll have to sneak over the north fence.”

“Great,” Wes said. “Sneaking over fences.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure? It’ll be fun. Defying authority, sneaking out, and pursuing a dangerous criminal who can definitely kill us is fun.”

“We won’t find him,” Wes said, frowning. “And after this, I won’t sneak out again.”

He left.

Wes’s gateway was probably a plain boring door.

~

“They stole our idea.”

Emery and Wes perched on the roof of an office building on the edge of the warehouses to watch the skyline. The dark forms of the full-time dreamhunting pairs crossed above the warehouses. Emery had only seen four individuals so far; either they only had two pairs searching for the Sandman, or these were the only two still hanging around the warehouses after two days.

As they watched, a black SUV coasted down the street and past the entrance to the warehouses. Beneath the streetlights, the words VAN DER GELT SECURITY flashed in gold block lettering against the SUV’s side. According to Stainer, the VDG private police force had tripled the security around the warehouses since Wes and Emery’s disturbance there.

“He’s not here,” Wes said. “If he was, they’d have found him.”

“Not necessarily.”

“We found him right away. You think full-time dreamhunters wouldn’t?”

“He found us. He was following me.”

Wes went momentarily quiet. “You think—are you—”

“What?”

“Are you saying you’re using yourself as bait?”

“I wasn’t before, but that might actually work to draw him out.”

“This is stupid. You can’t use yourself as bait. We don’t know why he’s following you, or what he wants.”

Emery climbed to the edge of the roof and lowered herself down the pipe that ran along the edge of the building. Wes followed. When they reached the ground, Emery started walking. The streets on the north side were quiet at this time of night except for the occasional truck on a midnight delivery—or, now, the many VDG security SUVs moving around the warehouses. In the distance, cars rushed through intersections, and the lights of the Sleeping City beckoned.

Emery sensed better when she was moving. She felt the dreamhunters behind her, light little pulses of them looking through the warehouses, growing faint now. She felt Wes right beside her, but he didn’t give off the kind of power the Sandman had. She was sure she would know that power if she felt it again.

“Do you…do you think he’s following us right now?” Wes asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t feel anything, but he’s a good hider.”

Wes passed a hand over his eyes, groaning. “Okay. We want to draw him out, right? He told you not to go looking for him. We can assume if we make it known that we ignored him and are still searching, he’ll enforce the threat.”

Emery’s stomach went watery the way it always did when she thought about doing something stupid.

“Idea time, then,” she said. “Fastest way to tell him we’re still looking for him?”

Wes lowered his voice. “Do you think he’s keeping tabs on us now?”

“Maybe.”

“So he’s close by.”

“Sure.”

“There are dreamhunters spread throughout the city right now. We send up a warning flare and they all come running.”

“Trap him from all sides.” Emery unholstered one of her Peacemakers and held it out. The bullets fired bright purple; they’d stand out against the night sky, and there’d be no mistaking them. “They’ll focus all their senses toward this point…if he’s around here, he won’t be able to slip past them.”

Wes’s eyes shone in the light of the nearby streetlamp. “They’ll know it was us. And we’ll have disrupted all the teams out tonight.”

“If this guy is such a bother to the Hypnos State, I’m sure they won’t mind a bit of disruption.” She shook with excitement. Grandpa Al was going to be so damn proud of her he’d spill his tea. She raised the gun to the sky.

She couldn’t pull the trigger.

Not for lack of trying; she looked up and found gray-purple stone wrapped around her hand and the gun.

“I told you not to look for me.”

Emery and Wes spun around. Behind them stood the Sandman, as if he’d been there the whole time. His oily black armor absorbed the light and the shape of his body; his hair fell over his goggles and he raised a clawed hand to brush it away. He stepped toward them.

They stepped back. Excitement turned to fear so quickly Emery choked on it. Her other hand went to her second revolver, still snug in its holster, not encased in stone. Wes had his hammer out, but he was choking, too.

Time stood still as the Sandman looked them over.

“I could make you forget about this, but I don’t want to dose you again,” the Sandman said, “so let’s come to another arrangement. You ‘forget’ you were here, and that you saw me, and I won’t put all of Fenhallow to sleep for a week. Agreed?”

Emery knew it was a demand, not a request.

Still, she managed to work through the knot in her throat to say, “That’s no good for me.”

She drew her other Peacemaker, thanking Hypnos for all the times Edgar had made her practice the quick draw.

The dreamform bullet arced into the night in a brilliant beam of purple. The Sandman hissed something unintelligible, then spun around and raked his claws through the air.

The gateway tore open, a pulsing black portal that crept into the waking world like ink spilling in water. It grew taller and wider than the Sandman himself, and from the darkness came the soft rustling of wind in the trees, a trickle of water, the hum of insects. The darkness stopped, and on either side of it appeared two massive old oaks, framing the portal, growing atop the asphalt of the street.

The Sandman disappeared between the trees. The stone around Emery’s hand vanished. Then the trees began to disappear, too.

Without thinking, Emery holstered her gun, grabbed Wes’s wrist, and leaped into the darkness.

(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> They Should Have Given Up.) 

[talabib]

The Secret To Creating A Persuasive Three-Minute Pitch.

Three minutes. That’s not much time – barely enough to make a cup of coffee or brush your teeth in the morning. But according to experts that’s all the time you need to deliver a successful pitch. In just three minutes, you can sell even the toughest of audiences on any good idea, product, service, or business. 

Your pitch has three minutes to succeed.

Imagine you’re about to have a meeting with some potential investors, customers, partners or collaborators. You’ve got an amazing idea, product, service or company to pitch to them. You know it’s a winner. The only problem is they don’t even know what it is or how it works, let alone why it’s so great. Heck, for all they know, you’re just another person with a bridge to sell. 

In other words, you’ve got a lot of explaining and persuading to do – so you better pull out all the stops, right? Design an hour-long PowerPoint presentation that explains everything in meticulous detail. Fill it with a bunch of clever animations, jokes, one-liners and catchphrases. Practice all those tips and tricks you’ve learned about public speaking, sales, and persuasion.  

That’s the traditional approach – but it gets everything backward. The truth is you’d do a whole lot better if you did the opposite. Simplify the PowerPoint – or even ditch it altogether. Cut out the fluff. Forget the gimmicks. Stop worrying so much about your delivery. Focus just on conveying your key information as clearly and concisely as possible – three minutes maximum. 

The alternative is to shoot yourself in the foot. That’s because in today’s fast-paced, digitally-connected world, people are constantly bombarded with information, advertising, and various other demands on their time, money, and mental bandwidth. As a result, their attention spans are short, and their patience is even shorter. They’ve got zero tolerance for hot air, long-windedness, gimmickry and anything else that wastes their time or insults their intelligence. They’re savvy, skeptical, and quick to pass judgment on whether your message is credible, relevant, and interesting to them. 

So, sure, you might have an entire hour booked for your presentation. But by the end of three minutes, your audience will already be leaning yes or no on your proposal. From that point on, you can continue yammering for another 57 minutes, but the die is already cast. Your audience is going to filter the rest of your presentation through the prism of their initial judgment. If it’s positive, they’ll be eager to learn more, and they’ll be receptive to what you have to say. If it’s negative, they’ll be doubtful, critical, resistant, bored or just plain tuned-out. Either way, you’re unlikely to win them back. 

In other words, three minutes isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a rule. Whether you realize it or not, you only have three minutes to win over your audience. The question is simply this: Will you design your pitch around the three-minute rule to maximize your chances of success? Or will you ignore it at your peril? The choice is yours. 

The three-minute rule also applies to your audience and the people they have to pitch to. 

The prospect of losing your audience is bad enough, but the problems of breaking the three-minute rule don’t stop there. To see why, let’s look at what happens even in the best-case scenario when your pitch goes long. 

Imagine you’re pitching an idea for a business venture to a group of representatives from another company. Your pitch drags on for an hour, but you somehow manage to maintain their interest the entire time. 

So far, so good, but here comes the problem. Even if they’re fully on board with your idea by the end of your presentation, they’re probably not the only decision-makers who need to sign off on it. Usually, they’ll have their own people they need to persuade. For example, they might have to get approval from their legal and finance teams. As a result, the success of your pitch ultimately depends on how well your audience pitches your idea to other people. If the legal team shoots it down, you’re out of luck. 

Now, remember, your pitch is going to form the basis of their pitch. After all, that’s where they’re going to draw their information from. And here, once again, you’re being your own worst enemy if you go long. Why? Because even if your one-hour presentation is brilliant, your audience won’t be able to replicate it. They’re going to forget most of the details and half-remember the rest. 

Plus, they won’t have enough time to repeat it all in the first place – not by a long shot. If Jerry from legal stops one of them in the hallway and asks her for a recap of your presentation, she’s not going to chew his ear off for an hour. They’re probably going to have a three-minute conversation in passing. And during that conversation, she’s just going to take her jumbled collection of fragmentary, muddled memories and reel them off the top of her head. 

The resulting “pitch” won’t be very impressive, to say the least. Jerry is probably going to walk away confused and unconvinced. Now, imagine what would have happened if you’d given your audience a simple, snappy three-minute pitch to remember. Jerry would probably be a lot more on board with you right now, and your idea would be one step closer to becoming a reality. 

Once again, the lesson is clear: at the end of the day, your pitch has only three minutes to succeed. 

You don’t need to say everything you think you need to say in a pitch.  

Okay, sure – a three-minute pitch would be ideal. But is it actually feasible? How on Earth do you squeeze all of your information into a mere three-minute presentation?

The short answer is: you don’t. You’re going to need to be much more selective with your content. The key is to realize that there’s a major distinction between what you think you need to say and what you actually need to say when you’re giving a pitch. And the problem is that many of us tend to think we need to say everything. 

For example, let’s say you have a start-up, and you’re pitching it to potential investors. In that case, your temptation would be to explain every single aspect of your company: what it does, how it does it, why it does it that way and so forth. 

Now, you know all the details of your company inside and out, and you know how they all interrelate. In your mind, they form an intricate tapestry of information. The more you trace the threads, the more complicated it all seems, and the more you feel like you need to convey that complexity to your audience. One detail leads to another and then another. Pretty soon, you end up with a convoluted one-hour lecture that’s going to put everyone to sleep.

But in reality, most of those details are irrelevant to your audience – at least for now, when you’re still at the stage of pitching to them. Remember, the point of a pitch is to win your audience over to the thing you’re pitching – your company, in this case. To do that, you simply have to convey the general concept of it to them in a way that gets them interested in learning more about it. 

At that point, they’ll want to know about the details, and you can dig into them during a follow-up presentation or a question-and-answer session. But until your audience is interested in the general concept of the thing you’re pitching, most of the details are just going to seem like a bunch of boring facts and figures to them. If you start by focusing on them, you’re putting the cart before the horse.  

Your pitch needs to answer four questions: What is it? How does it work? Are you sure? And can you do it? 

In theory, the objective of a three-minute pitch is pretty simple. You just need to capture the basic concept of the thing you’re pitching and communicate it compellingly. Of course, that’s much easier said than done. How do you actually do it? 

The exact details are going to depend on your topic and your audience, but there is a general template to follow. The essential idea is that by the end of your pitch, you need to answer four fundamental questions about the thing you’re pitching. 

The first two questions are: What is it and how does it work? These are the most fundamental questions to answer about your topic. By answering them, you’re going to enable your audience to conceptualize the thing you’re pitching. That’s a prerequisite to getting them on board with it. After all, they’re not going to sign up for something if they don’t understand what they’re being asked to sign up for. For instance, if you’re asking them to invest in your new invention, they might need to understand what it does, what the point of it is, what the market for it looks like, how it operates, how you’re going to manufacture it and so forth. 

Now, in answering the questions of what it is and how it works, you’re going to be making some bold claims about the thing you’re pitching. Naturally, your audience will want you to back them up. That’s where the third question comes in: Are you sure? To answer this question, you’re simply going to provide some facts and figures that will reinforce the claims you’ve previously made. For example, if you claimed the market for your invention was a certain size, you might provide some data to support that assertion. 

At this point, your audience should understand how and why the thing you’re pitching represents a good opportunity for them. There’s just one question left to answer: Can you do it? For example, based on your answers to the previous questions, your invention might sound like a great idea, but do you have the ability to bring it to market? By answering this question, you’re going to reassure your audience that you can deliver on the thing you’re proposing. 

So those are the four questions in a nutshell. Lets take a closer look at how to answer them effectively. 

The four questions you answer in your pitch can be reinterpreted into a wide range of other useful questions. 

Imagine you’re being profiled by a magazine, and the interviewer asks, “Who are you?” If you interpret the question narrowly, you might just say your name – a pretty boring response. But if you interpret it broadly, you might describe your personality, talk about your values or offer a concise version of your life story – potentially a lot more interesting. 

The same lesson applies to the questions you’re answering in your pitch. To get the most bang for your buck with them, you need to be creative with the way you interpret them. And that means reinterpreting them into other, closely related questions that fit the thing you’re pitching and the audience you’re addressing. 

For example, consider the first question: What is it? You should now consider related questions your audience might have about the nature of what you’re pitching. If it’s a service, they might want you to explain what problems it solves, who it can help or what makes it unique. If it’s a business venture, they might ask about the potential payoff, or why this is a good time to pursue it.

In the same vein, the question “How does it work?” should lead you to anticipate other questions about how you’ll deliver on what you’re promising. For example, if you’re pitching a project, how long will it take? How will you accomplish it? What resources do you have at your disposal? 

Likewise, the question “Are you sure?” encompasses any concerns your audience might have about whether you can back up your claims. For example, if you said your service was the best in the industry, what do your reviews say about it? What kind of stats do you have? 

Finally, the question “Can you do it?” relates more broadly to your ability to deliver on your promises. For instance, if you claim you’re the right person to lead a project, your audience might want to know about your training and background. They may also ask how you’ve dealt with similar challenges in the past. 

So that’s how to think outside the box when you’re interpreting the four main questions you’re answering in your pitch.

Make sure your pitch is filled with your most important and interesting information. 

Picture yourself in the mid-2000s. You work in Hollywood, and you’ve got an idea for a TV show to pitch to network executives. It’s called Pirate Master. 

What is it? Here’s the literal answer: it’s a reality competition show that’s sort of like Survivor, only it’s set on a pirate boat. Here’s the better answer: it’s the latest idea from Mark Burnett, and he thinks it could be the next smash hit.   

Now, that might name not ring a bell, but to the network executives, it would be music to their ears. At the time, Burnett was the hottest producer in television. He was riding high on the success of Survivor and The Apprentice. For executives hearing about Pirate Master for the first time, the information about Burnett being at the helm would have been way more notable than the premise of the show itself.

As you’re answering the questions of your pitch, take a page from this scenario and think about which information will be the most interesting for your audience. 

You’ll also want to think about this while you narrow down your answers into your final pitch. For each of the many questions you generate from the four original questions, you should come up with a short, one-sentence answer. Look through these sentences, and cut the ones that aren’t interesting or important enough to include in your pitch. Remember, you only have three minutes, and you want to pack this time with your most essential and compelling material. 

You should also leave out sentences that require too much explaining. You simply don’t have time for anything that gets too into the weeds of your topic, like technical details. Leave these for your follow-up presentation or a question-and-answer session, when your audience will be more interested in them. 

In the end, you should cut your material down to 25 sentences. As a rule of thumb, you should aim to answer the question “What is it?” in nine sentences, “How does it work?” in seven, “Are you sure?” in six, and “Can you do it?” in one. The first two questions are the most essential ones to answer in your pitch, so they should receive the most attention.  

Your pitch needs an opening. 

At this point, you should have 25 sentences, packed full of valuable information about the thing you’re pitching. If you were to put them in a logical order and read them out, you’d already have a serviceable three-minute pitch. But to bring your pitch to life and maximize its impact, there are a few more elements you need to have in place. 

The first one is your opening. To start your pitch, you should begin by telling your audience about your reason for being. This is the story of how and why you became interested, invested or involved in the idea, product, service or company you’re pitching to them. Now, you can’t tell the entire story; you’re just looking for a sentence or two here. With that in mind, try to remember your “aha” moment – the moment everything clicked and you realized you were onto something with whatever it is you’re pitching. 

For an example of how to turn an “aha” moment into an opening, let’s look at the pitch that Brant made for the TV show Bar Rescue. In case you’re not familiar with it, Bar Rescue is a hit reality TV show in which the host, Jon Taffer, helps to turn around bars and nightclubs that are failing. 

Brant’s “aha” moment occurred when he realized something about Taffer: he’s a man with a huge, over-the-top personality – but he also has a lot of expertise in his field. He wasn’t just a character; he was also a longtime business owner and consultant in the food and beverage industry. It was this winning combination of personality and depth that modern audiences craved. And it was this same combination that led to the success of celebrities like Simon Cowell and Gordon Ramsay. 

So Brant talked about this in his opening. He simply walked into the room and said, “Hello, everyone, I‘m here because I found you a talent with a big personality, but also a lot of depth.” He then proceeded with his pitch, describing Taffer in more detail and laying out the premise of the show that would be built around him. 

So that was Brant’s opening. If you need more help with figuring out your own “aha” moment, here are some questions to get you started: What makes you excited about the thing you’re pitching? When did you discover it? And what surprised you when you started looking into it? 

Your opening needs a callback. 

When did you start to believe you had a winning idea, product, service, or company on your hands? And when did you become convinced that your belief was correct? 

The answer to the first question provides the opening to your pitch, where you tell your audience about your reason for being. The answer to the second question provides your pitch with the next element that’s going to push it over the top: the callback. This is a moment in your pitch where you return to your opening and tell an anecdote that helps to illustrate and confirm your reason for being. 

To see how this works, let’s go back to the example of Brant’s pitch for Bar Rescue. Remember, he opened with the idea that Jon Taffer, the would-be host of the show, was a man with a winning combination: a huge personality and a deep well of professional expertise. After describing Taffer and the premise for the show, Brant called back to his opening and drove it home with a simple but memorable anecdote. 

Here’s the story: one day, Taffer was showing Brant a blueprint for a bar he was designing, and he pointed out something called a “butt funnel.” Of course, with a name like that, Brant had to know more, so he asked what it was. It turns out a butt funnel is an area of a bar where a corridor becomes so narrow that patrons have to rub their butts against each other to scoot by. 

When they’re designing a bar, experts like Taffer think about how the patrons’ foot traffic will flow through the floor space, and they purposefully build a butt funnel into it. Why? Because it will boost the patrons’ endorphins and foster a friendly, intimate and sexually charged atmosphere. And all of that lends itself to people buying more drinks. 

By the time Taffer finished explaining all of this, Brant was convinced: here was a man who knew his industry. 

So what was the moment you became convinced you were onto something? When did your belief turn into a conviction? It might not involve as catchy a name as a “butt funnel,” but if you dig through your memories, you should be able to find a quick and compelling anecdote to tell your audience. 

Preempt your audience’s skepticism by acknowledging the elephant in the room.  

You know that moment in a movie when the protagonists seem to be on the edge of defeat? It’s called an “all is lost” moment.

To create your own “all is lost” moment, you simply tell your audience about a problem that jeopardized – or continues to jeopardize – the viability of the thing you’re pitching. Then, you tell your audience the way you overcame or plan on overcoming the problem. For example, if you were pitching an app, you might talk about a major technical issue you encountered during your development phase, and then you’d talk about how you resolved it.  

The rationale here is that your audience wasn’t born yesterday. They know that every major human endeavor faces challenges and setbacks, and they know that the road to success is a bumpy one. If you tell them that everything has been and will be hunky-dory with the thing you’re pitching, they’ll be skeptical. They’ll start looking for problems. That means they’re going to be approaching your pitch from a critical standpoint, rather than a receptive one. It also means they’re no longer going to be fully listening to you; they’ll be drifting off into their own thoughts, wondering what you’re not telling them.

At the same time, you’re also going to lose credibility with your audience, since it’ll seem like you’re trying to hide something from them. By the time you’re done with your presentation, they might even feel resentful toward you. Meanwhile, they’ll have thought of some problems on their own, and now you’ll be in real trouble. They’re going to ask you questions in a combative spirit, and they’ll be suspicious and critical of your answers. 

So why not preempt all of this by admitting a problem upfront? The advantages are numerous. You set your audience’s skeptical tendencies at ease. You nip their criticality in the bud. You make yourself seem credible. You secure their attention. You focus them on a problem you already have a solution for. And you thus transform the problem from a potential liability into an advantage. After all, the alternative is to wait until they ask about it – and by then, you’ll have already turned them against you. 

To maximize the impact of this element of your pitch, ask yourself the following questions: What problem are you most hoping your audience won’t see? What question are you most fearing they will ask? 

Make that your “all is lost” moment. Get ahead of it; don’t let it come back to bite you.

Finish your pitch by making sure it has a correctly placed hook and an edge. 

Now that you have your opening, your callback and your “all is lost” moment, there are just two last elements of your pitch to make sure you have in place. The first is your hook and the second is your edge. 

Your hook is simply the element of your pitch that will make your audience think, “Wow, that’s cool!” Your edge then provides your audience with a vivid illustration of your hook. For example, consider a pitch by Jeff, the owner of a plumbing company. His hook was the fact that his company’s innovative method of re-piping homes turned a previously major renovation into a minor one. His edge was an anecdote that illustrated how minor the renovation had become: once, his company was able to replace the pipes of an entire hotel while it remained open to guests. That’s how inconspicuously they could do their work! 

To find your hook, just look at those 25 sentences you wrote and identify the one that makes you feel the most excited. Then think of a snappy anecdote to illustrate it. That’s your edge. 

Finding your hook and your edge is usually pretty easy. The tricky part is using them effectively. The key is to avoid the temptation to start with your hook. Yes, it’s your strongest piece of material, but you need to wind up to it.  

To see why, imagine if Jeff went up to his audience and said, “Hi, I’m Jeff. My plumbing company can take a previously major renovation and turn it into a minor one! Let me explain how.” By doing this, Jeff is starting with a bold but unsupported claim, and now he needs to back it up. That puts his audience in a skeptical and adversarial mindset. They’re thinking: “Oh yeah? Prove it.” 

In contrast, imagine if Jeff explained how his company just drilled small holes into a house’s walls, inserted flexible pipes into the pre-existing pipes, and left those old pipes behind, all in a single day. At this point, his hook would almost be a foregone conclusion – and that’s precisely how you want your hook to seem. 

By the time you’re done walking your audience through the core concept of what you’re pitching them, they should already be on the verge of thinking, “Wow, that’s cool.” With your hook and your edge, you’re just going to hammer down the nail you’ve already set. 

To persuade a skeptical, savvy and impatient modern audience, your pitch needs to be under three minutes. To create a persuasive pitch that fits into that time frame, it needs to consist of about 25 sentences that answer the following questions: What is it? How does it work? Are you sure? And can you do it? To maximize the impact of your pitch, you then need to make sure it has an opening, a callback, an “all is lost” moment, a hook and an edge. 

Action Plan: Put it all together. If you follow the instructions in this post, you’ll have all the elements you need for your three-minute pitch. But how do you put them all together into a final pitch? Obviously, you start with your opening. Then you convey the basic concept of it by answering the questions “What is it?”, “How does it work?” and “Are you sure?” Then comes your “all is lost” moment. Follow that up by delivering your hook and your edge. Then do a callback. Finally, close your pitch with your answer to the question “Can you do it?” Keep in mind that some of these elements may go hand-in-hand with each other.