#life said hey eri are those your nuts can i kick em real hard

[commarogue]

idk even know what the list is but tell me about SO YOU MARRIED A PINNIPED or i will expire thank you for ur service ily

ok ok i suppose you have more than earned it considering how often i've crowed at you about this one, and i do actually have the opening drafted out!

2. so i married a pinniped (cn: death of aging parent, talk of death of parent in the past) modern au attempt at a black comedy wherein brienne comes home to get her dad settled in a senior home except whoops nope he's dead and shenanigans ensue from there:

“The last O’Tarth, now,” one blue-hair nodded sagely, crushing the bones of Brienne’s hand between her own veiny ones. Brienne found herself drawn downward, yanked to the face of a woman who disregarded manners and politeness as allowed by her age. “You’ve spent quite enough time on your quest to save the bloody mainland, certainly. Time to come home now, isn’t it? Find you a nice young man—or woman, of course, I don’t judge. Just someone to help you look after your family’s legacy. Make up for lost time?”

Brienne heard herself croak out some noncommittal reply before Asha, preceded by dissipating cigarette smoke, ushered the mourner on into the living room to leave Brienne holding a warm loaf of probably another zucchini bread. Everyone was emptying out their gardens—what luck they could do it into the O’Tarth household.

The last time her dad’s house was this crowded, Brienne remembers there being less bread. Fewer people, too, for her mother had been an outsider, and they had never recovered her body from the water. Everyone on the island loved her father. Everyone here had probably asked him for something at one time or another. They all probably had experienced her father’s generosity whether they consciously knew it or not. Lucky, and ungrateful.

She thanked another face she wished she couldn’t remember, and followed their eyes down to where she was indenting the loaf such that it seemed to be sprouting a ribcage between her fingers. It gave a hollow thunk as it landed on the top of what used to be her father’s dining table until Asha had dubbed it “Condolence Carb Mountain.”

Her mountain, now, though hopefully not for long. Maybe she could foist the mountain off in the sale as well. Everything goes, complimentary funeral loaves non-negotiable.

An immaculately dressed woman passed through the hallway beyond the arch on the other side of the mountain, followed by her partner, equally immaculate and so entirely out of place here on the island. Here, you dressed for the weather and for pragmatism. And you did so a couple decades behind the mainland, as trends and fashion trickled slowly past the bluster of the bay if at all.

Brienne regarded her own too-big dress pants and wrinkled blazer. Those were her father’s as well. Her own were floating somewhere in that bay. It had been an acceptable loss, before. She wasn’t supposed to have seen anyone. Her dad wasn’t supposed to be dead.

“That crown moulding,” the woman said, loud even as she made her way deeper into the house, past the living room where the viewing was taking place.

“I know, but hush.”

“It’ll have to come down.” Come down?

“Babe, we should have waited for the realtor.”

Brienne bumped the table on her rush into the hallway, sending a plate of cookies plummeting to their carpetty deaths. As she called out to redirect the couple disappearing up the back stairs, the doorbell and subsequent dirty looks from old women gossiping under the pretense of mourning silenced her. At her elbow, Asha sucked her teeth.

“Who’re they?”

“Buyers,” Brienne said. “I forgot about the showings.”

“Holy shit you’re selling the house?”

Her dad wasn’t supposed to be dead, she wasn’t supposed to be here, and the house wasn’t supposed to be her problem anymore. She was supposed to have been back on the ferry to Stormsend by now, her father safely set up in assisted living where he would be less likely to get himself into more trouble. Where he wouldn’t be breaking any more hips or terrifying neighbors he didn’t recognize off of public property. She wasn’t supposed to be eating up two days’ worth of time off dealing with every person who lived in Evenfall who expected that she’d finally be moving back to Tarth.

She was supposed to never have to come back to Tarth again.

The back door opened and a voice commented on the smell of baked goods. Asha swore like she was excited.

“Want me to kick them out?” Asha said, and Brienne got the distinct impression she would be granting her a most fervent wish.

“No.”

“No?”

“I need to get this over with.” She needed to get back to her life, back to Winterfell. Delaying the house viewings would be another day before she could get home, more lost time, would feed the island’s gossip that she was back. Back-back.

“How?”

“I’ll get the door, can you—?” But before Brienne could finish her question, Asha was a shark after immaculately-dressed albacore. It didn’t make sense; the realtor was supposed to have met her this morning so she could turn the keys over before the scheduled appointments.

“But the advertisement said this was an open house?” The potential buyers on the porch regarded Brienne with suspicion as she informed them they were double-booked. Fair, she was actively hiding a dead body from them in her living room. Brienne stepped into their line of sight, though it was obvious they had already seen her crowded living room. Why hadn’t she drawn the drapes?

They grumbled minimally but retreated to their car to wait. The notification drawer on Brienne’s phone stared blankly back at her—despite her father’s passing it seemed the island’s charms remained intact. Had she known she’d be on Tarth for this long she would have brought her old pager. At least then she’d have had some kind of warning from the realtor.

From inside the house came a startled shriek and the murmur of a group of people remarking disapprovingly to each other, followed by heavy hurried footsteps. Three figures emerged in a rush through the front door, two looking alternately like they’d seen a ghost and then vomited, and Asha after them doing a decent impression of the kind of teacher who lets you stick your finger into a socket to teach you a lesson about electricity.

“You’re sick,” the first spewed at her as Brienne attempted to apologize. The second looked like they were holding more vomit in.

Another car pulled up. It was the couple from the porch. The tall one rolled down their window: “Can we go through now?”

Once they realized the viewings would just keeping piling up, Asha parked herself on the porch, a wake-cum-open-house bouncer directing people this way and that.

“Open house or open casket?” turned into “House or body?” turned into “Shopping or mourning?” and eventually Brienne stopped caring. She smiled her most welcoming smile at potential buyers and frowned her grieving frown at people who still called her Little Bri and told her how proud her father had been of her, even though she ran away.

endless wips meme!