#look! jelly mostly finished a thing!! two days in a row!!

[jellydrawsposts]

Screenshot redraws(ish) of The Boy King and his Royal Guards

[goldenraeofsun]

the best day with you

Part of this verse!

Dean taps Claire on the shoulder. “You got plans for this weekend?”

Claire twists on their couch to see him and sets aside her laptop. With narrowed eyes full of suspicion, she grabs the remote and mutes Dr. Sexy. “Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Dean rolls his eyes. This is why he became a teacher. To help teenagers. Not to strangle them for sassing him to his face. Sure, Claire might be a sophomore in college now, and she’s not really a teenager anymore, but Dean’s never going to see her as anything but an angsty junior in high school. Especially if she keeps up the this attitude. Dean says, as evenly as he can, “Because I want to do something with you.”

Claire grimaces. “Really? Don’t you have other boring old man friends to do things with? Like, for instance, your boyfriend?”

“No,” Dean says. “Cas is going to visit Gabriel in LA this week.”

“And you chose to stay behind with me instead?” Claire says, her eyebrows rising to her hairline.

“Yes.”

“Are you dying?” 

“What?” Dean gapes. “No!”

Claire squints at him. “Are you hoping I can score drugs for you?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “I can get my own drugs, thanks. It’s one of the perks of being a real live adult.”

“Do you need money?”

“If I did,” Dean starts incredulously, “why would I ask a broke college student?”

“I don’t know,” Claire says with a shrug. “Dementia? That kicks in about now for you, right?”

Dean’s mouth falls open. “I’m barely thirty-four!”

Claire shrugs. “Alzheimers?”

“That’s a kind of dementia,” Dean tells her flatly. He runs a hand down his face. “Look, are you free or not, kid?”

Dean is pretty sure she doesn’t have plans, judging by the way she’s religiously camped out on their couch for the past two weeks straight. She's abandoned her spot only to go to the bathroom, eat meals, and, on one memorable occasion, visit her parents for Sunday dinner. The living room her space now - which is fine with him, Dean’s been doing his summer school grading at the kitchen table. Along with her computer, Claire’s got the coding handbook Charlie Frankenstien-ed for her out of a bunch of different documents, probably all downloaded and printed illegally. On the television, she cycles through daytime soaps and CW evening dramas.

Claire grins. “On Saturday or something? Yeah.”

He rolls his eyes. “Was that so hard?”

“No, but it was fun.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a handful?” Dean says as he turns to head back into the kitchen. Lunch wasn’t going to make itself, and Cas was due back any minute from his errands.

“Just my parents, every day from age thirteen to eighteen,” Claire says casually as she reaches for the remote to resume Dr. Sexy.

Dean freezes. “Hey,” he starts, not really sure where he’s going with this.

“What?” Claire snaps as if annoyed, but her face is guarded. 

“Your parents were asshats, you know that?” Dean says. “They shouldn’t have done that to you.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about family,” Claire mutters as she turns up Dr. Sexy.

In the middle of her junior year of high school, Claire moved in with Cas for about six months.

Early in the year, she had an explosive argument with her parents about transferring from their preferred private school to Edlund High. She also came out to them.

Dean has the sneaking suspicion Claire doesn’t think she had it that bad. Her parents didn’t hit her. They didn’t kick her out. They didn’t even stop giving her her allowance.  But they didn’t talk to her for days on end. They ignored her until she needed something from them, or the other way around. By Christmas, Claire had had enough. She left.

Back then, Dean told Claire her parents were in the wrong as many times as she would let him - which wasn’t many.

Cas took the lead with her, instead. She was his family. He found her a therapist and encouraged her to make friends at Edlund. Dean didn’t really feel like it was his place. She was Cas’s niece, and Dean was the guy who stayed over a couple times a week when she was crashing there too. And then he became her teacher when the transfer to Edlund became official. Still, she wouldn’t consider him family.

“My uncle always said, ‘family don’t end in blood,’” Dean tells her seriously.

Claire slumps back on the couch. “Right,” she says dully.

Dean takes a step back, rubbing his neck as he swallows down his next few words. He’s not about to give a heartfelt lecture on family and healthy boundaries to someone who’s going to grumble and groan through it. He jerks his head towards the kitchen. “I’ll get started on-”

Claire interrupts, “But that’s not grammatically correct. Aren’t you an English teacher? Who gave you a license to teach?”

Dean snorts. “Just think about it, will you?”

“Uh huh,” Claire waves him off. “If you’re going to the kitchen, can you make me a sandwich?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yes, Your Majesty. Cas finished off the strawberry jelly while he was grading essays last night, so you’re gonna have to settle for grape.”

Claire makes a face but nods. Dean’s almost at the kitchen door when she asks, “Your uncle, was he really your uncle?”

Dean shakes his head. “Not by blood. He was a good friend of my dad’s. But he was as good as family - better than, sometimes.” He swallows. Bobby’s been gone two years now. Dean had thought the grief when his dad passed was bad, but it was a whole other beast with Bobby.

Claire squints at him, looking so much like Cas Dean can’t help the warm feeling in his chest. “This is your show, right?” she asks out of the blue, gesturing to the television.

Dean blinks. “Yeah?”

And that’s how Cas finds them ten minutes later, eating PB&Js on the couch, watching Dr. Sexy - with Claire skewering every characterization and costume choice, and Dean defending Dr. Sexy’s cowboy boots with his life.

* * *

“Minigolf, really?” Claire asks as they pull into the parking lot on a bright Saturday afternoon. The early-summer temperatures are already high enough to make Dean sweat in the Impala, and Claire’s shorts could double as bikini bottoms, they’re so small.

She adds, “You realize I have a fake ID and we could probably go to a bar or something.”

“One,” Dean says as he slams the car door shut, “minigolf is a classic American pastime. Much better for your liver than drinking. And B, don’t ever tell Cas about that fake.”

 Claire clambers out of the car. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Just making sure,” Dean says airily as he starts walking. He holds out his hand as she jobs to catch up to him. “Lemme see it.”

“Why?” she asks suspiciously as she digs for her wallet in her purse and fishes the ID out.

“Nice job,” Dean says as he holds it up to the sunlight shining overhead. “Ash?”

Claire stops short, surprised. “What?”

“Did Ash do this one?” Dean asks. “Come on,” he tells her as he nudges her shoulder to keep her moving out of the middle of the parking lot. “Nobody else does ‘em this good.”

“How do you know that?” Claire demands.

Dean laughs. “I told you I can get my own drugs.”

“Ash deals too?” Claire asks, looking hopeful.

Dean leans over to ruffle her hair. “His dope is a little out of your price range, squirt.”

“Hey!” Claire squawks as she tries to smooth everything back into place. “And nobody calls it ‘dope’ any more, you doof.”

Dean grins. “Yeah, I know.”

They enter the main building and get in line to rent the putters. It smells strongly of sunblock and worn down parental patience. A few parents wait ahead of them, all older than Dean with kids younger than Claire. A group of high schoolers are inspecting a row of putters on display on the far wall. Through the windows to the back, Dean can see a splendid display of mostly-intact astroturf and course obstacles with sun-faded paint.

The guy behind the counter is wearing an obnoxiously bright shirt and smile. “Hiya,” he says cheerily as they step up to the counter, “I’m Garth, welcome!”

“Two adults please,” Claire says quickly, like she knows Dean was going to ask for a kid’s ticket to mess with her.

“You got it,” Garth says as he bends down to grab two putters. “The bathrooms are by Hole 7, and if you want to grab lunch across the way at Fenris’s Diner, show them your receipt and you’ll get 15% off.”

Dean steps forward with his wallet. “Do you know if they have pie?”

Garth smiles wider, showing even more teeth, which Dean didn’t think was possible. “You bet! The best darn cherry pie I’ve ever tasted.”

“Awesome,” he says. “Thanks, man.”

“Thank you!” Garth says as he rings them up. “And good luck on the course!”

* * *

Dean is uncomfortably sweaty by Hole 2, and Claire piles her hair on top of her head in a messy bun to cool off her neck halfway through Hole 4.

“Swing batter, batter, swing!” Dean shouts from right behind her as she hits the ball at Hole 6.

Claire glares at him as her ball knocks against the windmill blade and skips off to the side. “That’s for baseball, idiot.”

“But you still missed,” Dean points out as he sidles up to tee. “So does it really matter? Hey!” She kicks him in the ankle as he strikes at the ball. “You cheater,” he gasps dramatically.

“So what?” Claire asks, putter swinging ominously at her side, “You gonna tell on me?”

Dean frowns. “No, but I won't buy you any pie when this is all over.” He keeps his eyes peeled for an opportunity to mess with her as she takes another stab at the windmill.

“Fine with me. I like cake better.”

Dean raises his head to gape at her. “Seriously?”

Claire throws him a funny look. “Does it matter?”

Dean’s mouth works furiously. “You ate the last slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving two years ago.”

Claire’s eyebrows climb to her hairline as she leans against the windmill and watches him take another stab at it. “You remember that?”

Dean hardly watches where his ball goes. “Of course I do.”

Jimmy and Amelia had elected to have Thanksgiving at Cas’s mother’s place. Cas, whose frosty relationship with his mother wasn’t helped by her dismissive attitude towards Claire, hosted a separate Thanksgiving at the (then) new house he shared with Dean. Sam and Jess flew in from California, and Claire was, of course, invited too. They were having a fucking blast, until Claire stole the last slice of pie right out from under Dean’s nose.

Claire snickers under her breath. “You’re so weird.”

Dean glares. “I called dibs.”

“I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about, McMurphy,” Claire says, the liar. She crouches to get a better look at the windmill. 

Dean tries to suppress his smile. “Was that a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reference?”

Claire rolls her eyes. “I paid attention in your class, you know. Even if you gave me an A-minus.”

Dean grins. “But you got a 5 on the AP Exam.”

Claire does a little jig as her ball falls into the hole. 

* * *

“What the fuck?” Dean howls as his ball stops just short of Hole 9. Parents chaperoning a group of five kids at Hole 10 glare daggers at him.

Claire laughs uproariously. “Sucks to suck, old man.”

“Hey!” Dean glowers as she sinks a hole in one. 

“What’s that?” Claire holds her putter up in victory. “Did you see that? Did that go in the hole? I wasn’t watching. Did the ball go in the hole?”

“Shut up, kid,” Dean grumbles as Claire smirks. “It wasn’t funny the first time.” He concentrates on his next shot. God help him if he fucks up with his ball barely half a foot from the hole.

One of the toddlers at Hole 10 lets out an ear-splitting shriek, and Dean’s ball skips off in the direction of Hole 13.

Claire doubles over laughing.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grumbles as he sidesteps her to go fetch it, “Like you would’ve done any better.”

“I just did. Or did you miss my hole in one?” Claire asks from right behind him.

“I’m hungry,” Dean declares.

“Okay…?” Claire squints at him.

Dean nods to a hotdog stand by Hole 14. “Whaddya say to a dog?”

“Mystery meat at a roadside attraction that hasn’t been renovated since ‘97? Sign me up,” Claire says sarcastically.

Dean claps her on the back, just a shade too hard. “That’s the spirit.”

She stumbles but doesn't fall - exactly Dean’s plan - and glares at him. “If I get E. coli, it’s your fault.”

Once hotdogs are in hand, they sit and eat on a worn bench that’s more chipped paint than bench, facing a dinky little fountain. A few pennies glint dully from at bottom, almost obscured by the bright midday sunlight reflecting off the surface of the water.

“So,” Claire says after she takes her first bite. “You wanna tell me what this is all about?”

“What?”

“This whole distant dad trying to reconnect with his kid routine,” Claire says.

“I - I’m not your dad,” Dean stutters, face heating. 

“Duh. Dad was more of Church retreat guy.” She leans back on the bench, stretching out her legs, and tilts her face up to catch more sun. “I would’ve had a better time if there was no singing and 100% more hitting things.”

Dean asks haltingly, “So you don’t think this is weird?”

“What hanging out with you?” Claire asks, her smile guileless. “I heard elder enrichment is important to prevent cognitive decline, so I’m just doing my duty.” She laughs at his disappointed frown. “Relax. This has been… great.”

“Really?”

Claire finishes off her hotdog and balls up the aluminum foil wrapper. “Yeah. Don’t let it go to your head.”

Dean gets up to put her trash and his in the garbage and manages to stow his broad smile before he gets back.

* * *

“Hole in one!” Dean crows at Hole 15.

“Do you want a gold star?” Claire snarks as she tees up.

“Shut up.”

Claire swings, and they both watch as her ball deftly navigates around the bumps and turns to sink neatly into the hole.

Dean’s smile falls off his face as Claire jumps around in victory. “Lucky shot,” he tells her as they troop to Hole 16.

“Uh huh,” Claire says. “And that makes, what seven lucky shots for me? And how many holes in one have you had?”

At the next hole, they have to wait for the large family ahead of them to finish up.

“Oh my god,” Claire mutters as one of the parents demonstrates how to properly swing the putter for the youngest child, “it’s minigolf. Not the Olympics.”

“I know, right?” Dean says in an undertone. “Who cares how she hits the ball? If she wants to bowl it down the course, let her.”

“Seriously, who gives a fuck?”

“I bet she’s gonna scream before they’re done with the lesson.”

“What?”

“Water works in 5… 4… 3…”

They wait with bated breath as, sure enough, the child sits down in the middle of the course and wails. She refuses to even touch the putter.

“How did you know that was gonna happen?” Claire asks as the family moves on. She eyes him critically. “High schoolers aren’t the tantrum type.”

“Shows what you know,” Dean snorts. No matter the point of spending today with Claire, he wasn’t about to tell her how he became an expert in toddler care. Christ, he can still remember the sticky feeling of Sammy’s vomit all over his front when he cried so hard he puked. Dean’s crime? Telling Sammy his favorite blanket needed to be washed. Dean hadn’t even taken it away yet. 

Dean tells Claire instead, “I’ve seen more meltdowns over bad essay grades than I’d like. And it’s not like I can say, well, you should have read the damn book, Ava.”

“You wouldn’t say something like that,” Claire says as she bends down to set up her ball.

“Of course not,” Dean rolls his eyes, “that makes it worse.”

Claire straightens. “No, I’m saying, you would probably ask her why she didn’t have the time to read the book; if she’s tried the audiobook instead; if you should talk to Mr. Lafitte for her since she spent too long on Algebra and didn’t get to your homework.” She shrugs, meeting his eyes briefly. “You would do something like that.”

Dean blinks because she’s got him exactly right. He’s a firm believer that there’s no such thing as a lazy student. There are unmotivated students; there are students with undiagnosed ADHD or dyslexia; and there are anxious and/or depressed students. Hell, there are students with side-jobs, bills to pay, and little brothers to look after.

“Yeah,” he agrees, discomfited. Claire was his student for one year, but her presence in class was kind of eclipsed by her rocky home life. In senior year, she was back with her parents, but she also caught up regularly with Cas. In class, she faded into the background - Kaia’s blonde shadow. Cas’s stories provided Dean with more insight than any discussion on The Plot Against America ever did.

“All the seniors loved you,” Claire says. “Max Banes would’ve slept with you if he could.”

Dean hits his ball right into the mini sand pit. “What?”

Claire smirks. “You didn’t know?”

“No!”

“Uncle Cas was right, you are oblivious,” Claire says as she whacks her ball straight into the hole.

“Hey,” Dean says, but the protest is weak. “Cas wasn’t much better.”

Claire grins. “No one’s arguing that.” She waits until Dean’s mid-swing to say, “Max would’ve slept with Uncle Cas too - which, gross.”

“Dammit, Claire!”

* * *

“Okay,” Claire says as they walk away from Hole 18. “I’m gonna need to sit in AC for at least forty-five minutes.”

They’ve been out in the sun for nearly two hours now. Dean pulls his damp shirt away from his stomach with a grimace. “You down for pie?”

“Sure,” Claire says gratefully as they leave minigolf behind them.

In the diner, the air conditioning hits them like a bucket of cold water to the face. Claire throws herself into the first both they see as Dean troops off to relieve himself in the bathroom. He checks his phone - one grumpy text from Cas about Gabriel’s inappropriate choice of swimwear for a hotel pool - and exits with a smile on his face.

Back at the booth, Claire is twirling a lock of blonde hair around her finger, smiling coyly up at the waitress from lowered lashes. But Claire's inviting expression flips off like a switch as Dean drops down into the opposite seat.

The waitress’ own sunny smile takes on a distinctly plastic sheen at his arrival. “Hello!” she chirps as Dean picks up the menu. “Is there anything I can get you besides water?”

“Can I get a coke?” Dean asks the waitress - Maggie, according to her nametag. She’s tall, probably taller than Claire, and dark-haired. She seems around Claire's own age, so Dean would bet she’s only working here as a summer job.

Claire is still glaring daggers at him, so Dean asks, partly to be a dick, “And what’re you getting, Claire?”

“Water,” she says through gritted teeth.

“A coke and a water, please,” Dean says cheerfully to Maggie. 

She bobs a nod and casts a lingering look at Claire. “I’ll be right back to take your order.”

Claire kicks him under the table as she disappears into the kitchen. “You couldn’t have waited another five minutes?” she hisses “I was just about to get her number.”

Dean grins. “My bad.” 

“Now she thinks I’m here with my dad or something.” Claire crosses her arms across her chest.

Dean rolls his eyes. “You call me an old man, but I’m, what, twelve years older than you? We’re more likely to be on a date.”

Claire’s flat-out horrified face is enough to make Dean’s week. He’s still laughing as Maggie makes a return, one water and one Coca Cola in tow. 

“So what can I get you both?” Maggie asks as she reaches for her pad and pen.

“One slice of cherry pie, thanks,” Dean says brightly.

“Nothing for me,” Claire mumbles.

Maggie looks from Claire to Dean and back again. “One cherry pie,” she confirms slowly. “Should I bring out two forks?”

Over Dean’s fresh bout of laughter, Claire says loudly, “We’re not together!”

Maggie blinks a few times, and Dean can’t tell if she’s more shocked by his reaction or Claire’s. “Okay.”

As she leaves, Claire buries her head in her hands. Her voice is muffled by her hands and hair, but Dean can make out, “This is all your fault.”

“How?” Dean asks as he sucks on his straw. “It’s not my fault if you’ve got no game, kid.”

Claire slumps onto the table. “I used to.”

“Stalking doesn't count as ‘game’ or else Cas and me would have gotten together way before we did,” Dean says sagely.

Still face-down on the table, Claire flips him the bird.

“Have you spoken to Kaia lately?”

Claire doesn’t move for a long moment. When she finally raises her head, her expression is pinched. “Not since Spring Break last year. She was doing good, I guess.”

Awkwardly, Dean says, “It’s okay if you’re still hung up on her.”

Claire waves his assurances away. “It’s been a whole fucking year."

Dean sighs. “These things can take time. You were with her while a lot was going on in your life, and she was there for you through all of it. Just ’cause you're young doesn’t mean it meant less. But if you want to move on, sometimes you don’t have to wait until you’re 100% ready.”

“Thanks, Senpai.”

Maggie approaches carrying a large slice of cherry pie.

“Here you go,” Maggie says as she sets the plate down. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Nothing for me,” Dean butts in before Claire can get a word in edgewise, “But Claire, here, would like your number.”

Maggie goes bright red.

“Dean,” Claire hisses, completely mortified. “What the fuck?” She turns to Maggie. “Forget what he said. He’s a moron who doesn't know what he’s talking about.”

Maggie glances to Dean before settling back on Claire. “So… you don’t want it?”

Claire splutters, “I - no - yes, but not if-” She takes a breath, clearly trying to compose herself. “Yes, I would like your number. But not because he said so.”

“You don’t have to decide now.” Dean fishes out his wallet and takes out a five. “It won’t affect your tip,” he says with a wink as he shoves the bill under the napkin dispenser.

Maggie bites her lip. “I’ll think about it.”

Once Maggie’s left, Claire leans over the table and punches Dean, hard, in the arm. “Oh my god, are you actually braindead?”

“Hey, watch the pie!” Dean yanks his plate closer, out of Claire’s line of fire.

“What on earth possessed you to do that?” Claire demands.

Dean eyes his pie, planning his perfect plan of attack. “You needed a push in the right direction.”

Claire’s eyes flash. “I don’t need your help.”

“Tough luck, because you got it anyway,” Dean says with a shrug as portions off his first bite. “You’re only here for the summer. You don’t have the time to pine from across the softball field for a whole season.”

Claire frowns, saying warily, “I know Maggie isn’t Kaia.”

Dean points his fork, dripping with pie filling at her face. “So you gotta try a new strategy.”

“How?”

“Well, get yourself a capable wingman, for starters,” Dean says around his next bite of pie.

“Who? You?” Claire asks incredulously.

“Probably not,” Dean says, shuddering at the thought. He’d intervened with Maggie because was fucking funny as hell to see Claire get Cas-levels of awkward, but scoping out any more romantic prospects for Claire makes him feel sleazy. “I’m more of a pinch hitter.”

“What?”

“You really didn’t pay attention to a single softball game, did you?” Dean says, almost impressed.

Claire glares.

“They’re the guys called in last minute to fill in for a batter,” Dean says. He shovels the last bit of pie into his mouth, saying, “Did you keep in touch with Krissy?”

Claire shakes her head. “They were all Kaia’s friends first, so…”

“She got them in the divorce?” Dean says sympathetically.

Claire nods, her expression darkening.

“I know she’s back home for the summer too, taking care of her dad,” Dean says. “I bet she could use someone to hang with - if you ever get bored coding from our couch. Data entry for Charlie can’t be that exciting. Don’t tell her I said that.”

Claire rolls her eyes. “You don’t need to set up playdates for me, Dean.”

Dean shrugs. “Suit yourself. But none of Krissy’s other friends are back home - Josephine’s abroad, and the rest of ‘em are staying in their college towns.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Dean nods. That’s probably as good as he’ll ever get with Claire - she’s not the type to gratefully accept help. She’s more likely to complain to his face while going behind his back and doing it anyway. Which, fine, if it gets Claire out of their apartment and out of her funk.

On their way out, Maggie leaves her number on their receipt.

* * *

Claire slams the Impala door shut and relaxes in the passenger seat. “Well that was fun,” she says sarcastically as Dean twists around to pull out of the parking lot without mowing down an unfortunate 1999 Toyota Camry. “Let’s do that again soon.”

“Really?” Dean asks. At her blank stare, he adds, “I never know with you. Did you really have a good time?”

She fiddles with her seatbelt, biting her lip. “I won’t say this again, so cherish this moment: today was not the worst day I’ve ever had.” She huffs out a long breath. “It was almost fun, if you forget that shit in the diner.”

Dean laughs. “I’ll take it, I guess.” He taps his fingers against the wheel as he waits for an opening in traffic to merge onto the highway. “I’m glad.”

“Me too,” Claire mutters, so low he can barely hear her.

Dean lets the noise of the road take over for a few minutes: the reassuring rattling of the toy soldiers in the back air vent; his baby’s engine purring like a dream; the low ambient hum of her tires carrying them across miles of pavement.

Once he’s as calm as he’s gonna get, he says, “I have a question for you.”

Claire shoots him a look. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

Dean shouldn’t have bothered asking. She really is incapable of being anything other than a teenager. 

“I’m thinking of asking Cas to marry me,” Dean says quickly. As Claire absorbs his words, his heart kicks up to double-time, hammering away in his chest. “Would you be okay with that?” 

“Why are you asking me?” Her eyebrows are drawn together in that same furrow that Cas always has whenever a student stumps him with a question. 

“Because you’re his family.” He’s honestly surprised he has to say this part out loud.

“Shouldn’t you be asking Grandmother instead?” Claire asks.

Dean shakes his head. “Cas doesn’t care about her opinion - or Jimmy’s.”

Claire takes another long moment to think that over. “So… are you, what, asking my permission?”

“Yep.”

“To marry my uncle.”

Dean shoots her a look. “I really don’t think the concept is that hard to understand.” Claire’s a smart kid. She’s probably drawing it out on purpose.

“Yeah, but -” Claire breaks off, “It’s weird, though.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “You literally called me a weird old man yesterday.”

“But… not this weird.”

“It’s a yes or no question, Claire,” Dean reminds her testily.

Claire waves him off. “I mean, yes, obviously, but what the hell?” Her eyes narrow, accusatory. “Is this why you made me do this weird bonding thing with you today?”

“I -” Dean stutters. “I didn’t make you-”

“It is!” Claire crows. “Were you thinking about it for all 18 holes?”

“No,” Dean says shortly.

“I don’t believe you.” Claire grins. “Were you nervous?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I’m calling BS again. You gotta work on that poker face.” She sits back in her seat, her smugness practically radiating off her in waves. 

Dean has the strangest urge to hug her.

Claire lets her hair fall over her face as she picks at her nails. “Just so you know,” she starts in an undertone, “I know it was you who convinced Uncle Cas to take me in. Back in high school.”

“Cas wanted to be there for you,” Dean says quickly, “He just didn’t know how. Honestly,” he says with a laugh, “Cas was scared he’d piss you off more, and then where would you go?”

“Really?” Claire asks, surprised.

Dean nods. “The guy is a great teacher, but he’s not great with kids if there isn’t a desk between them, you know? He's been working on it, though. Having you around taught him a lot.”

“That makes sense,” Claire says, almost to herself. “Anyway, I’ve only really known Uncle Cas while you were together. It’d be more weird if you didn’t get married.”

Dean doesn’t bother turning on the turn signal as he pulls over to the side of the road.

“What the-?” Claire starts, twisting in her seat to look out the window. “Why’d you - oof.”

Dean wraps his arms around her, squeezing tightly.

“Ugh,” she groans, “You smell.” But she hugs him back anyway.

[shibalen]

Hi! I’d like a match up for Kuro please!~ I’m bisexual, non-binary (leaning a little more towards the masculine side most of the time), and my height is 5’9. My zodiac sign is leo and I’m INTP if I remember correctly. I love to write, draw, and read more than anything, though I’m also trying to make my own video game in my spare time, and I absolutely love anything horror related or really dark/gothic. Outside of that, my interests and tastes tend to vary so I’m pretty flexible. (1/2)

My fashion sense is sort of all over the place too, but I usually dress really edgy, mostly just in black or other dark colors. I’m not bilingual (yet~) but I’m trying to learn languages like French, Latin, and German. I have no self control when it comes to desserts or any sort of candy. I also own five dogs! I’d prefer a romantic match, but platonic is okay too if that’s easier. ^^ (2/2)

♡︎ matchup for @blank-envy

hello! i assume you meant Kuroshitsuji? if not, please correct me. thank you for waiting so long, i've finished your match!

and five dOgS?! god i wish that were me

|| kuroshitsuji: i match you with . . .

joker

• Joker is an aries (one of the best matches for leo) and an entp (one of the best e's for intp, imo)

• you two are a quite a pair! you're both easy-going but have a flame of passion in your hearts that strives to make a change. this dynamic immediately makes you click with each other.

• your views on the world are quite similar too, and your conversations can take a lot of interesting turns, seeing as both of you prefer meaningful discussions over small-talk.

• Joker is more extroverted than you though, but no need to worry about that. he cares for you deeply and respects your boundaries. at the same time, he's an effective communicator and knows how to minimise any misunderstandings you two might have.

• you guys met a high-class costume party (let's say for Halloween, it's spooky season). the moment you spotted Joker in the crowd you were amazed by his skeleton arm (oﾟ▽ﾟ)o

• of course, you first assumed it as a part of his outfit, and it was a bit embarrassing when you went to compliment him on it and he just laughed . . .

• after giving you a quick explanation, Joker expected you to be weirded out, but knowing he actually had a prosthetic arm made it all the more facinating in your eyes. it was creepy but in a cool way!

• not only was Joker thrilled and amused but also entranced. he knew right there and then he wanted to learn more about you.

• he was drawn to your creative side from the very beginning. he too is an artist, and an entertainer, so it was thrilling to meet someone who understood him so well.

• soon he came to trust you enough to introduce you to his family. everyone was so happy for you! Beast was kinda jelly at first but even she saw how well you fit together, like two puzzle pieces.

• your fashion senses are on the opposite side of the scale, but that's what makes it exciting! he jokes that you could use some colour in your wardrobe.

• shopping with you two is a real rollercoaster. you search for clothes representing your tastes but have a blast having the other try out the clothes of your choice.

• pssst Joker is slowly converting you into the same style as him so you can wear matching items🤡

• thankfully your interests are flexible because Joker will want to try out new hobbies with you. anything that looks mildly fascinating draws his attention. you'll have a fun learning about so many new things.

• he's especially into anything he can make a show out of in the circus, so next time you're meeting up with friends you'll have a few party tricks up your sleeve. Joker proudly grinning in the background

• but honestly? he loves the feeling of you braiding his hair before a show. he insists you do it for him because it's his good luck charm ♡︎

• after another successful performance he treats everybody to a big dinner. for you there will be a row of desserts. the twinkle in your eye when you see all thise sweets is irreplaceable to him.

• the only condition is that you have to feed him some as well, tehe

• now, when it comes to romance, Joker is a natural, hands down.

• acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation—he has so many love languages you'll feel loved 24/7

• he's a huge tease though. can and will pull the cheesiest of lines and actions in public and still wear that innocent grin. personally, he sees them as fun more than anything. if you get embarrassed, that's just more in it for him.

• his favourite tricks are making flowers pop out from his hand and gifting them to you, as well as the "coin behind your ear" trick because he loves leaning in close to you and making you flushed.

• "oh, what's this? the coin was here all along!"

• "you know, you've done this same trick a hundred times already."

• "and i'll do a hundred more for you, my sugar cube."

• he's so smooth it should be illegal, but as i said, he lives for your reactions.

• coming up with all those sickly sweet petnames for you is also right up his alley. he takes inspiration from desserts and languages because those are some things that remind him of you.

• a few of his personal favorites to call you by: honeybee, sugar plum, ma fraise (my strawberry), and honigkusse, (honey kiss) + a classic when all else fails: my love

• compliments, compliments, compliments! expect them from Joker every other sentence. he never runs out of them, as he always sees the good in you ♡︎

• you two are seriously such a fun couple! the type to appear chaotic at first but also the one that share the deepest bonds. Joker loves you (and your five dogs) very much.

runner up: Grell Sutcliff

i had fun with this one since he's one of my faves! i hope you enjoyed it too, have a great day (◍>ᴗ<)ﾉｼ

if anyone hasn't noticed i make the matchup a bit longer if you only request one fandom ♡︎

[tss-grimmverse]

Chapter 2: Gloxinia

it doesn’t mean much

it doesn’t mean anything at all

the life i’ve left behind me is a cold room

Virgil stirred to wide-eyed awareness twice in the night, both times because he thought he heard doors opening. But he was too exhausted to get up and check, and reluctantly settled down after the adrenaline wore off.

The third time he opened his eyes, the sky outside his bedroom window glowed an early morning blue and he desperately needed the restroom.

Groaning, he grabbed his hoodie from where he’d slung it over the headboard the night before, pulled it securely around him, and padded across the hallway. Once finished, he tiptoed cautiously into the main room, finding it exactly as he had left it the night before.

Was he still alone? If the sounds he’d heard were Logan coming in super late, at best the dude was probably still asleep.

Hell, I should still be asleep, Virgil thought, wandering blearily into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, more out of curiosity than actual hunger, and let out a surprised laugh.

“Holy troll shit, that is a lot of jelly,” he murmured, pulling out a jar to read the label. Crofters Organic.

Oh.

That explained the postscript.

The sound of front door opening and closing startled him to his feet. Virgil hastily replaced the jar, lining it back up next to its dozen or so neighbors.

Closing the fridge door, he looked over the counter and found himself face to face with the most gorgeous person he’d ever laid eyes on. His heart stuttered. The newcomer dumped a keyring on the counter…shit, this was Logan?…and adjusted a pair of half-moon glasses.

“You must be Virgil,” he said in a deep, tranquil voice, stepping out of a pair of worn athletic shoes.

Virgil made a croaking noise that tried to become a greeting before getting stuck halfway down his throat.

Logan swept through the apartment, disappearing into the furthest room and reemerging with a towel. Sweat glistened on his bare chest, bark dark and beech smooth, and sparkled in black hair braided into a dozen wavy rows against his scalp. The guy had one of those sculpted, solid builds, all broad, lean planes and bold, sensual lines. An artist’s dream to shade; a little awkward to hug.

Virgil swallowed hard, forcing his poor gay eyes away.

Somehow between the normalcy of the apartment and the weirdly formal note, he had forgotten that Logan was half faery; half Court Fae, in fact, if his looks were any clue. Such faeries were, as a rule, heartbreakingly beautiful.

Upon closer examination, his non-human heritage was obvious. Ears that swept up and back to points on either side of his head, clearly visible to Virgil’s changeling gaze. Frost white streaks that twined through his braids. And those fae, prismatic eyes: the irises an explosion of frost and indigo and smoke that coalesced into a deep slate gray.

Eyes that gazed a little too deep, burned a little too wild behind his glasses.

Virgil knew he ought to say something, but his addled brain had forgotten how to operate his mouth.

“Apologies for my unkempt state,” Logan said as he patted himself down. “I always do my running in the morning before it gets too hot.”

“Uh…yeah,” Virgil muttered, wrenching his gaze from smooth muscles and a graceful sweeping collarbone to Logan’s stormy eyes, so striking in that dark face. “No, I mean…that’s cool.”

Eloquent, Virgil.

Logan eyed him impassively.

Virgil became abruptly and painfully ashamed to be dressed in nothing but ratty boxers and a faded hoodie. Maybe he could just escape into my room and put pants on or would Logan hate me for being rude but maybe he already hates me for being half naked in the living room what the hell is wrong with me…

“Do you drink coffee?”

Logan hung the towel over one of the dining room chairs and swept past Virgil into the kitchen. A trace of that elusive teal scent from the night before followed in his wake, nearly making Virgil swoon. Even his voice was sexy: dark and ocean blue, pleasantly filling the room without being loud.

Kelpie’s mane, Virgil, get your shit together. It’s not like you’ve never seen a hot black dude before.

He pulled his hoodie more tightly around himself.

“Uh, yeah,” he belatedly answered Logan’s question. “Coffee’s great.”

“Personally I like tea.”

Oh. Well, Virgil did usually manage to say the wrong thing.

Logan pulled a Keurig machine from a bottom cabinet and set it up on the counter.

“Herbal, preferably,” he added, “though I have been known to enjoy a good Earl Gray from time to time.”

“Earl Gray.” Virgil forced a chuckle. “You Captain Picard or something?”

His Rennie family had all been very fond of Star Trek, which was the only reason Virgil knew anything about it.

Logan, however, frowned.

“I am Logan Ursae.” He adjusted his glasses. “I assumed the Youngstown Grimms would have at least informed you of my name before sending you here?”

Virgil wasn’t sure if he was being mocked or if the guy was just that literal.

“I meant, like, the Star Trek character, dude. Obviously I know who you are.”

Logan’s mouth twisted and he turned back to the Keurig.

“I’m afraid I am not at all knowledgable about popular human entertainment. I find most of it trite and shallow.”

Virgil scuffed his bare foot uneasily over the carpet. Usually he preferred people to speak their minds instead of fucking around…but this guy took that philosophy a bit far.

He did write that stick-up-the-ass note.

“Do you know that proper peppermint can be frustratingly difficult to procure unless one grows it themselves?” Logan said, once again ignoring the awkward silence that had fallen.

Or maybe Virgil was the only awkward one, as usual.

“And it cannot be grown from seed, only cuttings.”

Virgil made a noncommittal noise, unsure if Logan was even expecting a response at this point.

Logan held out a box of flavored coffees, packed side by side and seemingly organized by color.

“Um…hazelnut if you’ve got it,” Virgil muttered. “Should I, like, help or whatever?”

“Nonsense, you are my guest. Plus my kitchen is not large enough to accommodate two people comfortably.” Logan waved a graceful hand as he filled a copper kettle. “I will start our drinks, and then perhaps we should both get dressed for the day.”

Virgil flushed and pulled his hoodie closer, aware once again that he’d galavanted out here in his underwear and worse, Logan had noticed. Had he seen Virgil ogling his bare chest?

Was that why he kept prattling on about tea?

He’s probably already decided I’m weird and creepy, he’s just waiting for the right moment to call me out…

“Why even have a coffee maker if you don’t drink coffee?” Virgil asked, and then flinched. He had a bad habit of masking his anxiety with belligerence.

It was why people tended not to like him.

Logan’s mouth quirked as he centered a mug under the Keurig. “You are not the first changeling I’ve taken in.”

He brushed past Virgil again (that scent, gods, Virgil’s brain swooned again), heading towards the back bedroom.

“Go and change while I shower,” he threw over his shoulder. “Then we can properly acquaint ourselves with one another.”

With that, the door clicked shut, leaving Virgil alone with a gaping mouth.

“Bloody redcaps,” he muttered, yanking a handful of his faded purple hair. ‘Acquaint ourselves’, my gay ass. Said with a straight face. How the fuck is anyone that oblivious?

“Naughty, naughty thoughts, changeling.” Remy’s amused smirk and sunglasses were just visible from his cabinet’s half-open door. “You’re lucky the Bear’s not a telepath.”

Virgil, flushing, made a rude gesture in the brownie’s direction and stalked to his own room, slamming the door. He then leaned against it and exhaled, his heart still throbbing unsteadily in his chest.

Logan was…not what he had expected.

Virgil wasn’t sure what he had expected, after reading that note from last night. Certainly not some hot nerd with a gorgeous runner’s body and a quiet, self-assured aura, plus a bit bossy, and damn, why do I find that kinda hot?

Remy’s taunt came back to him and he groaned, covering his face. They were naughty thoughts; thoughts a changeling like himself had no business entertaining. A beautiful half-faery deserved far better than a former thrall who’d done the sorts of things Virgil had done…

Plus you haven’t made the best first impression, have you?

Virgil thunked his head against the door, realized he’d been wool-gathering like a moron for several minutes, and went to change clothes. He took a little time to comb his hair and rub a little patchouli oil behind his ears. He wished he owned something nicer than ripped black jeans, faded band t-shirts (mostly metal), and one bulky, black plaid hoodie.

He hated that it suddenly mattered.

When Virgil emerged, Logan had already returned to the kitchen, dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a plain black polo that clung rather unfairly to his arms and torso, and…Virgil almost chuckled at the sight…a blue striped necktie.

Somehow, he made it work.

“Sit where you’d like.” Logan poured hot water into a galaxy mug without turning around. The Keurig spat the last of its sweet smelling contents into a second mug, and Logan carried both to the table.

Virgil sat, feeling self-conscious as Logan passed him his coffee.

Because now the half faery clearly expected them to talk about things.

Virgil hated talking about things.

“I imagine you have questions,” Logan stated without preamble.

“I…guess?” Virgil took a shy sip and winced as it burned his tongue.. “I mean…they didn’t tell me much about you back in Ohio,” he admitted. “Only that you have some ability to hide changelings from other Fae, and that’s why I’d be safe here.”

Logan stirred a generous dollop of honey into his tea, tasted it, grimaced, and added another spoonful. Virgil stared, morbidly fascinated that anyone so doggedly serious would want their drink that sweet.

“My ability to hide you is actually a byproduct of what I am, rather than anything I do.” Logan explained. “Simply put, even as a half-blood, my Court magic burns strong enough to mask yours. A proper Court faery could hide you far better, but finding one who wouldn’t immediately turn you back over to your master would be…”

“Impossible?” Virgil shivered.

“Improbable.”

There were a million questions Virgil probably needed to ask, since he was stuck here. But as usual, his mouth refused to cooperate.

Logan eventually got up to fry a couple eggs and fix some toast, prompting Virgil to ask about the fridge full of jam, which sparked a passionate one-sided rant about fruit spreads, organics, ethics, and the superiority of Crofters that spared Virgil the need to do anything except nod with wide eyes until breakfast was over.

(He was permitted to taste the sacred jam, and had to admit that it was pretty good).

“We will need to pick up Nicodemus this morning,” Logan stated once they’d finished eating and carried their plates to the sink.

“We?” Virgil echoed, choosing to focus on that rather than on who or what a ‘Nicodemus’ might be. He slid his plate into the soapy water as Logan washed, almost dropping it when he accidentally brushed Logan’s forearm. The half-faery’s skin was smooth and pleasantly cool.

“I do not think it safe for you to be left here alone for long periods of time, at least not at first. Therefore you will need to accompany me on errands. I suggest we take thirty minutes to digest and then be on our way.” Logan paused, and turned to properly face Virgil. “If…that is agreeable to you?”

Virgil’s dislike of being ordered around must have been visible on his face. He schooled it to neutrality and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Good impression, Virgil, come on.

“I mean, I don’t have anything going on until classes start in two weeks, so…you know, whatever you need to do is cool with me.”

Great. Now stop rambling, idiot.

Logan nodded and swept past again, down the hall, and then his bedroom door was closing firmly behind him again. Virgil huffed and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Definitely not a man of excess words.

Or, and I’m just spitballing here, he thought wryly as he meandered back to his own room. Maybe he hates you already.

Gloxinia: love at first sight

[halfway-happyyy]

Dream a Little Dream for Me

AN: Another AU - not sure how this one came to me, but it did and I wrote it down. Bill’s a cellist in New York City, who happens to meet the love of his life. Alas, fate wiggles her fickle fingers and emotional pain ensues. Cheers!

Word count: 2,554

“My head in “happy” bloused,

For love lives in this house.” – ‘To June This Morning’ – Johnny Cash

The beginning was forever inscribed in your mind in snapshots: New York City. September. Julliard. Music. Laughter. Anxiety. Love.

His viridian orbs, intense and twinkling in the low light from the candles scattered around your third-floor walk-up.

His fingers, long and calloused and usually cool to the touch, knew cello better than anyone you had ever met. It was almost as if he had known it his entire life; like he was born with the ability to play it even then.

His dreams: (which had also morphed into your dreams) playing the cello for the New York Philharmonic.

Moments where it was just you and him; where he spent more time memorizing every detail of your face, your favorite food, what made your blood boil, where you saw yourself in ten years’ time… than he did in reading music off of coffee-stained sheets of paper.

You had asked someone very dear to you once for advice on relationships. This was the one thing they had said that stood out to you the most:

“Pay attention to the subtle things… for they are the things that you will miss the most when they are gone.”

It was a shift that had happened so suddenly, and without notice that you’d almost missed it. Where once there was room enough for your cat and you in your one-bedroom walk-up, you were now blissfully aware of him. He made his presence known in entirely subtle ways; a slight indentation in your mattress on his side, his toothbrush jutting out from the cup at the edge of your sink, a black fabric case in the shape of a cello stood in the corner of your bedroom. In the mornings when he had to be up hours before you to get to the symposium, he would kiss your temple three times and whisper nonsensical things into your ear. You would arise a few hours later to a cup of coffee in the microwave, and a sticky note scrawled in his loopy script stuck to the Ziploc bag of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Loving him was as easy and effortless as anything in the world could be. You never had to think about it; one day you were without him and the next day you were with him.

“I don’t feel prepared.” The admission had been a quiet one; the cap of a pen was wedged between his lips, which made understanding him that much more difficult. You observed him in the waning light of the kitchen; his brows knit together in frustration. He was surrounded by piles of musical sheets; his cello sat expectantly a few feet from where he was situated. You waited for him to say something else. “I uh… don’t feel prepared at all.” He ran a hand through the mop of brunette hair atop his head. “Which is frustrating because all I feel like I’ve been doing for the past few years… is practicing.”

“Why don’t you feel prepared?” You had asked quietly.

Bill was silent before the pen cap dropped from his mouth, and a sigh exited behind it in the form of a puff of air. “This is one of the biggest auditions of my life and if I don’t play like my life depends on it…”

You settled the book you had been reading into your lap and turned your attention fully to him. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you play the cello like you weren’t playing it as if your life depended on it.”

Bill glanced sideways to the wooden instrument next to him, eliciting another heavy sigh as he did so. “All I want out of life is to build the best one I can with you… I want to make you proud.”

You got up from where you were seated next to the window, allowing the chunky knit blanket to pool at your feet. You padded over to where Bill was sat at the kitchen table and bent down over him to press your lips to the center of his temple. “You are one of the most talented and driven people I have ever met in my entire life. It is not lost on me, that I get to wake up to you every single day. Whether you make this audition or not, I could not be more fortunate to be with you.” You squeezed a palm around his shoulder reassuringly. “Come to bed when you feel like it, I’ll always be waiting for you.”

           You observed Bill take his seat at the center of the stage from a distance; and though his anxiety was palpable throughout the entire taxi ride over, he seemed completely focused now. He had to be. David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center was mostly empty except for the people sitting in the first few rows. Bill introduced himself and within moments, he was playing. It was quite possibly the best cello you had ever heard him play; it brought a rush of memories back from years ago, when he was simply a student with a dream. It was difficult to look away and it was pure poetry in motion. There was really no telling where Bill began, and the cello ended; they were synonymous with one another. His deft fingers played the bow against the strings with such expertise that it simply took your breath away. There was the notion that this person had acquired a God-given talent, and he was on his way to do doing magnificent things with it. When he was finished, he simply removed himself from the chair, bowed to the people in front of him, and exited through the side stage. You met up with him outside, it was a chilly September evening, a rosy tint seeped into the apples of his cheeks, but you knew it had nothing to do with the weather. He was leant up against the outside of the brick building, grinning from ear to ear. “How’d I do?”

           You stuffed your fingers into the pockets of your coat, kicking at a stray rock with your right foot. “How do you think you did?”

           Bill shrugged his shoulders and pushed himself from the wall to place a kiss to your cheek. “I think I did alright.”

           You tilted your head back to illicit a giggle and nodded your head in agreement. “Maybe they’ll let you in after tonight.”

           Bill sighed happily and looped his palm through the handle on his case. “Yeah, maybe they will.”

You had awoken a month and a half later to the innate feeling of Bill’s fingertips tracing lazily up and down the dips and valleys of your hips and torso. His lips rested at the shell of your ear, and your eyes slid open to the sound of his voice. “Wake up my love…” The red glowing digits of the alarm clock next to your bed read, ‘7:07 A’. You frowned to yourself and turned in his arms to face him.

           “This better be good…”

Bill nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck, causing a giggle to bubble up from the depths of your throat. “They want me, love.”

           You froze a moment before his words registered through the sleep-induced fog of your brain. “Beg your pardon?”

           As Bill lifted his gaze to yours, you knew. Immediately, you knew, and you couldn’t be happier for him if you tried. “I now work for the New York Philharmonic as a cellist.”

                                                               ~

You had both chalked it up to exhaustion at the very beginning as it was his third year into Philharmonic life in the Big Apple. Bill had been working almost entirely without pause; practice after practice. Live show after live show. He was indescribably happy about it though; this was clearly what he was meant to be doing with his life and though he would come home utterly spent, he loved every single minute of his career. And so, at the beginning it was easy to label it as fatigue. It was easy to think that it was normal to have your vision go off some days, or to forget minuscule tasks. Those things just managed to get lost in the jumble of everyday life with Bill. Nothing to be concerned about. “I’m sure it’s just exhaustion.” Bill would say, when you reminded him the second time in a row about something important happening. When it started to become worrisome, was when he would misplace objects he’d just recently used. Take his bow for instance. He would be using it to practice with, and an hour would pass, and he would simply forget where it was that he put it down. Or perhaps, getting into the car to head to an appointment, and then re-entering the apartment a few moments later to ask what it was he was going for in the first place. The last straw however, occurred when reading music started to become an issue for him.

It had been a simple enough process; Bill had gone through numerous brain scans and MRI’s, and one morning as snow began to fall in thick white flakes from the sullen sky, you found out. It wasn’t going to be ideal; that much was certain just from the way the Doctor was peering over at you and Bill. He had cleared his throat, glanced down at the papers in his hand and shook his head woefully. “There uh… there is no other way to put this, other than to say that it looks as though Mr. Skarsgård has developed an extremelyrare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.” It had almost been laughable, really. Bill had just turned thirty-years old two months ago. This was the kind of illness that ravaged the minds of elderly people- people who lived in nursing homes and relied on a myriad of medications and doctors’ visits to keep them afloat. This was not the kind of disease that took hold of a young person’s brain let alone Bill’s. His doctor droned on for maybe another half an hour after the first initial blow. Bill asked questions, and most of the answers flew past you without notice. Sounds and sights were distorted; almost as if you were hearing and viewing them from under a massive body of water. The subway ride home had been mostly silent, save for the white noise of chatter around you both. Though few words were spoken between the pair of you, there was a silent look in Bill’s glassy green gaze that seemed to match yours and scream at the top of its lungs, what the fuck are we going to do now?

Bill had resumed his daily routine almost as if nothing of significance had even occurred. In the morning, with a cup of black coffee and maybe a croissant, or a breakfast bagel, he would swallow back a handful of pills that were designed to slow the progression of the disease. “I love you to the moon and back,” he would murmur before hoisting his cello over his back, blowing you a kiss and leaving out the front door. You were constantly stuck in an internal battle of wanting to bring up what was going on with him and wanting to pretend it would go away. One night, a few months after the original diagnosis, the decision had already been made. You had awoken to the haltingly unfamiliar sounds of crying; full-body sobbing and uncontrollable hiccupping. You fumbled around in the dark for the light switch to your bedside lamp and peered blearily over at Bill. It had taken you a few moments to process the situation and when you did, you simply shimmied over to his side, and wrapped your body up behind his. “I’m so scared…” he whimpered helplessly, and the sentence alone almost caused the heart inside your chest to shatter.

You smoothed the hair back from his face and pressed your lips to the nape of his neck. “Shh, my darling. It’s going to be okay.” It was the only thing you could think of to say in that moment. You held him to you for a while, listening as the sobs dwindled into sniffles.

“We’ve both worked so incredibly hard to build a life for ourselves that we’re content with…” Bill’s voice wavered under the imminent threat of more tears. “I’m just scared.”

You held him closer to you, willing his pain to dissipate beneath your embrace. “You and I are going to navigate this together, Bill. I’ll always be here for you.”

Bill had risen before you one morning; it had been the first morning in weeks that New York hadn’t been dumped in snow during the night, and the sun shone brightly through an azure sky. Your gaze travelled to a note, tacked to a small wooden box. It was written in Bill’s scrawl, and you strained in the light to read it fully.

Things I never, ever want to forget:

- The noises she makes when she’s sleeping, the smell of her perfume on my pillow, how she makes coffee, her favourite flavour of ice cream, her top ten favourite books, the look on her face when I ask her to marry me.

Just as you had reached for the box on Bill’s pillow, he rounded the corner to your room and stood inside the doorway. His head rested lazily against the paint-chipped frame, a bouquet of flowers wedged tightly within his grasp. He cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant way. “You asked me a few months after I started with the Philharmonic… what was the next big thing I’d like to accomplish in my life.” Bill’s voice; the slight inflection of an accent, pulled you away from your thoughts.

You had turned to him, eyebrows raised in slight amusement. “And?”

Bill folded his arms across his chest, a slow smile pulled at the corners of his lips. “And… it is spending the rest of my days in the kitchen with you. It’s us making coffee, it’s you in the crowd at Lincoln Center. It’s Oscar the diabetic cat, and this one-bedroom walk up that’s too small for the three of us, but I love it dearly,” His voice wavered the slightest bit. “Just as I love you dearly. Whether its here, or there… it makes no difference to me. Life is short and I’m not sure how many years I’ve got left but I know I need to spend them with you, creating whatever memories we can.” It was only when he was finished speaking that you realized you had been holding your breath. “Will you be my wife?”

You reached for the box and opened it, peering down at the diamond band before you. You slid it onto your finger and watched in silent awe as it twinkled beautifully in the sunlight. A tear escaped your eye before you could help it, and you wiped it away with the pad of your thumb. “I’d love nothing more, Bill.”

                                                            ~

The ending will forever be inscribed in your mind in snapshots: New York City. September. Music. Laughter. Anxiety. And love… so much love.

[sending-the-message]

A Window to the Void by Cymoril_Melnibone

What some people call ’lucky’ isn’t so much luck as just avoiding disaster. In my opinion, that word should be reserved for events like winning the lottery, or finding a lump of gold in your back yard. It’s not really lucky to get an early diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, nor is it lucky to survive a catastrophic car crash. But people say that sort of thing all the time. Maybe it’s a personal thing. People have been calling me ‘lucky’ for years now, and it grates on me. I certainly didn’t feel very fortunate after the accident. That afternoon was stormy, the clouds bruised purple-grey and pregnant with unshed rain. Thunder rattled the street signs as my brother and I hurried down the winding footpath round the bays, our shoulders hunched in anticipation of the impending downpour. But instead of rain, something else came down from the sky. I’d been nearest to the lamp post when the lightning hit, but I don’t remember a single detail of the actual event. My brother recalls a searing flash, then the stink of burning hair and the roar of thunder overhead. I’d been thrown ten feet into the road, and the next car stopped just in time, assuming there had been a hit and run. The driver was an ER nurse on his way home. He had administered CPR, and restarted my seized heart. He was the first one to say it. “You were really lucky I finished my shift early,” he’d told me, “otherwise I’d never have been driving past at that time.” Lucky. Everything hurt, but my right side was the worst. The lightning strike had arced into my shoulder as my bare arm grazed the metal pole, part of the current running through me to the ground. “You were lucky it wasn’t your left side,” explained the doctor, “it could have burned a hole through your heart.” Lying in the hospital in blind agony, I didn’t feel lucky at all. The shockwave had impacted my eyes, causing the corneas to buckle and fracture. The result was at once horrible and quite beautiful – milky, star-shaped occlusions known as ‘star cataracts’. They were able to replace the left cornea with a dead girl’s. They wouldn’t tell me who she was, but she was around my own age, and she wasn’t lucky at all; she drowned in a river, trapped under a fallen branch. My right eye was unsalvageable; damage to the optic nerve meant I’d never see out of it again. They offered to replace the cornea anyway, to match the other one. But I decided that liked the strangely pretty, crystalline shape of the star cataract. Even if I didn’t call it lucky, it was a reminder that I’d survived being hit by lightning.

  My brother, Michael, forever blamed himself for the events of that day. It was his fault that we were delayed at the beach; he wanted to chat up some girl he liked, long after we were supposed to head home. I forgave him years ago – most fifteen-year-old boys are at the mercy of their hormones – but his guilt lingered so strongly that I worried it had truly damaged him, that he’d never have a normal life. In a way, the accident hurt him more than it had me. He was always there. If I moved flat, he’d turn up with a van, loading all the boxes, insisting that I shouldn’t lift a finger. Every birthday was elaborate, and every year Michael offered to pay for surgery to fix my star-shaped eye. I think it really bothered him, seeing the cataract. Every time he looked at me he saw his careless teenage lust staring back at him, overcoming his common sense, putting his sister in danger. When I moved to the other side of the country, he came with me. He uprooted his whole life; quit his job, left his girlfriend, and sold everything he owned, just to stay close to his half-blind little sister. In truth, I’d done it mostly to get away from him, to try and gain a little independence. But I couldn’t tell Mike that. I suppose I reconciled it with myself that he needed to do something that really cost him, to atone for the mistake he felt he had made. And I hoped it would finally free him, that such a huge sacrifice would be enough to fill the gaping, guilty void in his heart. But it was not. Looking after his crippled sister had moved from penance to pathology – it wasn’t just about the guilt any more. It had become his purpose. It had become who he was. I felt unkind when I thought that he was a little too in love with his martyrdom. And I felt selfish because I didn’t tell him to go away. But I guess I’d grown so used to him always being there.

  My right eye had been my master eye, and adjusting to using only my left had been surprisingly difficult. The lack of depth perception especially bothered me, and I really hated the sudden surge in popularity for 3D films; they highlighted my disability even more. And with right-eye dominance goes right-hand dominance, which was also a problem for me. The lightning strike had damaged a lot more than just my eyes; the sudden and powerful muscle contractions caused by that massive electrical current had pulverised several bones, my own shocked flesh like a vice. Comminuted fractures heal poorly, and I could never fully straighten my right arm, or regain much mobility in that wrist. Retraining yourself to be left-handed takes work and practice. Mike insisting on doing everything for me really didn’t help – he took over to the point where I swear he would have wiped my ass if I’d asked him to. After we moved, I embraced my inner bitch, and I’d yell at him to fuck off, to leave me alone for one goddamn hour and let me do things myself. He blamed the outbursts on my ‘trauma’, and would be so understanding that I’d grind my teeth in frustration until my jaws ached as much as my wrist. In truly dark and shameful moments, I’d wish that he had been the one who had brushed past the lamp post. Sometimes I’d wish that passing nurse hadn’t stopped his car. And the more people told me I was ‘lucky’, the less I told the truth. Eventually, the story behind the star cataract became a mundane little lie, just a curious birth defect; my twisted arm just the legacy of a clumsy child. Then one day, on a visit to the coast, I saw something. And I saw it with my blind eye.

  When both eyes are open, I see nothing with the right eye; not even darkness. When I close my good eye, sometimes I fancy I can see something through the star. I try to convince myself that maybe a few photons can drift through all that damaged jelly, and that the optic nerve isn’t as fried as I know it is. On particularly bright days, like the morning of our sojourn by the sea, I experiment. I stare into the sun with my blind eye, to see if anything at all can get through. That day was breathlessly clear, the sky perfect and cloudless, blue as a child’s painting. I sat in the warm sand and covered my good eye, turning my face full into the glare. Something flashed across the blank nothing of my blindness – so quickly that I almost didn’t register it. As quick as a lightning strike. “Jesus!” I swore, dropping my hand. Mike was there in an instant, “What is it, Brooke?” “I saw something! Out of my bad eye. Just for a second.” His worry turned sceptical, brows humouring me with a frown. “It was probably nothing. Random neurons firing.” “No. I saw something.” I turned away from him, conveniently blocking out his condescending gaze by covering my good eye. “I’m gonna try again.” “Hey, don’t do that! Staring into the sun can’t be good for you, blind or not.” Ignoring him, I turned my head again, just catching something – a fracture in the field of nothing, a hint of a line, straight as a torch beam shining into the heavens. Tilting my chin carefully, I snuck up on it, triangulating it back into my field of view where no view should have been possible. Yes, there; it was like torchlight. But instead of a white line on black, it was an eerie, impossible reversal. A black beam on a field of nothing. I pointed with my other hand, “It’s like a light, a beam, shining up from the ground and into the sky. Over there.” Uncovering my sighted eye, I squinted in the bright sunlight, to see where I was pointing. My finger hovered directly over the smaller of two islands in the harbour; just a hump of rock and sand, with a few scraggly bushes clinging to it. “There. It’s coming from the island.” Mike squinted at the salt-blasted landmark, then made a noise that was both dismissive and unreasonably irritating. “I don’t know what you think you’re “seeing”, B.” I could hear the quotation marks. “But there’s nothing out there, trust the guy with two good eyes. Just seagull shit and a bunch of rocks.” “Seriously, Mike. I can see something there!” I covered my eye again, peering into the blank grey nothing. And there it was again, the unwavering column of darkness, like a negative flare. “Okay, whatever,” he shrugged, shuffling his toes into the sand, “there’s some kind of mystery beacon out there that only you can see. Big deal. We’ll let the coast guard know and they can check it out. Or just tell us you’re nuts.” “No.” I sounded like a petulant kid. And I didn’t care. “I want to see what it is.” “You’re joking, right?” “We can hire a kayak and paddle out there. People do it all the time.” He bunched his hands in the pockets of his shorts, a sure sign of resistance. “No, Brooke. I’m not taking you out there.” I sniffed, snatching my towel and sandals, “Fine. I’ll go out myself.” It was manipulative and I knew it was. I could see the glassy panic rising in his eyes already at the thought of his cripple sister clumsily rowing out to sea, dashing herself against a dangerous crag of rock. He took his hands out of his pockets and picked up his backpack, every line of his body a quandary. “All right. You win. We’ll check it out quickly, but then we’re going home. The weather is turning to shit later this afternoon anyway. C’mon.” He held out one broad hand, and I grabbed it with my good arm, letting him pull me up from the sand.

  It was an easy row out to the island, though I don’t think I helped much. The two-seater kayak slid effortlessly through the bright water with Mike’s oar dipping and rising either side of the orange hull, each stroke strong and sure. It was farther than I’d thought, the distance from the shore deceptive, but the fresh tang of the ocean smelled good, like a promise. We beached on a narrow rind of sand on the far side. Mike hauled the vessel up onto the rocks and tied the lead rope securely around one of the stunted, thorny bushes. “Don’t want a freak wave to get it,” he told me, “there’s no way we’d be able to swim back.” Of course, he meant me. There was no way that I would be able to swim back, life vest or not; but he could easily save himself if some rogue tsunami washed the boat away. My hand over my good eye, I scanned about for the mystery beam, and found it immediately. It beckoned from the apex of the v-shaped slash of sand, cradled between rising rocks. By covering and uncovering my eye, watching it appear with blindness and disappear with sight, I could make out that it originated from somewhere beneath the ground. “Whatever’s making it is under the beach,” I explained, and I started to dig one-handed, conscious of how awkward I must look, like a child pretending to be a crane. Mike gave me a lopsided grin, something hopeful in the set of it, “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” “Jesus, Mike. No, I saw something, and we’re right on top of it. Either help me, or shut up.” Resigned, or more likely concerned that I’d hurt myself scrabbling in the hard-packed sand, he retrieved one of the oars out of kayak, “Here. This will make things faster. Just don’t break it, or we’ll lose the deposit.” We dug for maybe twenty minutes, slowly widening the ever-collapsing hole. When the blade of the oar struck something hard, I made a small and triumphant sound of excitement. “It’s probably just rock,” Mike cautioned. Ignoring him and my blisters, I kept digging.

  The circle of black metal sat on the sand. It was smaller than a sewer lid and thinner than a dinner plate, yet it was obscenely heavy and it had taken both of us to get it out of the hole. As we lifted it, the weight shifted alarmingly inside it, as though the object contained a sea of liquid lead. “What the hell is it?” I asked. Mike said nothing for a long moment. He stared at the thing we had unburied, wiping sweat from his shiny, shaved scalp. I stared at it too, but with my blind eye. The anti-light was still shining from it, dark and strong, straight up into the sky. The surface of the disc was neither cool nor hot, though the black metal should have quickly grown scalding beneath the afternoon sun. And Mike said he still couldn’t see even the vaguest hint of the beam rising from it. “This is starting to freak me out,” my brother husked finally, his voice low and uncertain. “Maybe it’s some kind of NASA black box?” I wondered, running my fingers over the slick, smooth surface, “maybe only special equipment can detect the beacon?” “Yeah, or only all their half-blind astronauts can see it.” He was trying hard, but he wasn’t even convincing himself. “Maybe you shouldn’t touch it. It could be radioactive.” I flattened my palms against it slowly, and grinned up at him, “If it is, then we’ve probably had lethal exposure already.” “Christ, Brooke! Why do you joke about shit like that?” My smile died. “I dunno. Just trying to lighten the mood.” Mike huffed out a breath, one short step away from picking me up and bodily hauling me out of range. “Look, we’re going to head back and call the authorities. Let them deal with the damn thing.” He was already unwinding the kayak rope and pushing the vessel back onto the sand. “Okay, whatever. I hope they give us a reward or something.” “I just hope they don’t lock us up,” Mike shot back. I stood over the object, looking down on it, still reluctant to leave it just lying there. What if it disappeared, and took the only thing my blind eye had ever been able to detect along with it? “Take a picture of me with it?” “God!” He saw the stubborn set of my chin, and knew we would get home quicker if he didn’t argue. “All right, fine. One pic, then we’re getting out of here.” He retrieved his phone from the waterproof pocket in his vest, and aimed it at me, tilting it to get both me and the object in the frame. “Okay, done. Let’s move.” “One more. I want one with me standing on it.” “Hurry up then.” I stepped off the sand and onto the disc of black metal. A wave of violent static discharge engulfed me, the crackle and shock of it terrifyingly familiar. And then the beach was gone, replaced by total darkness.

  My heart still beat. I seemed to be in some sort of cave, though ‘cave’ didn’t feel like quite the right word. While my good eye showed me only thick darkness, the view through my cataract was quite different. Everything had an anti-halo, strange and wrong, limned in black light. I could make out that the chamber around me was cramped and oval, the walls and ceiling oddly ribbed. Forcing my unused eye muscles to focus, I realised the ribs were metallic tubing, interspersed with humps of tangled, colourless cables. Ahead of me, the mouth of the chamber opened into a low tunnel, its construction much the same. The narrow throat curved to the right, and out of sight. A dull thump and CRACK! right behind me spiked my skull with sharp, instant fear. Pulse a drumbeat in my ears, I stayed crouched for a long moment, then turned slowly, instinctively shielding my face. It was Mike. Groping blindly, he started yelling my name, stumbling into the walls. I hadn’t heard him sound so panicked since the accident. “I’m here,” I called softly, touching his arm, “Mike, I’m right here.” “I can’t see anything,” he warbled, terror writ large on his broad features, eerie and distorted in the soft-hard shadows, “I can’t fucking see anything!” I took both his flailing hands in mine and soothed him until he stopped shaking. “It’s okay. I can see for both of us. We’re in some kind of cave, with tubes all over the walls. There’s a tunnel up ahead.” “A cave? That doesn’t… where the hell are we, B?” “I have no idea. But if we follow the tunnel, maybe we can find a way out.” The passage was far too low to stand up in, so we crabbed along painfully, bent over double, shuffling, sometimes crawling. My voice guiding him, Mike followed behind me. It took me some time to realise that the noise I kept hearing was his teeth clicking together as he shivered in the darkness. It was cold, much, much colder than the waning heat of the spring afternoon we had left behind, now just a memory, bright and distant. I could see my breath steaming in front of me, black as a cloud of ink in deep water, outlined by the maddening, impossible light. “You just… vanished,” my brother told me, his voice halting and stuttering between shivers, echoing strangely in the tunnel, “and I ran over. As soon as my feet touched it, I felt an electric shock. Then I was here.” “What happened to your phone?” “Gone. I must have dropped it. When it jolted me” The air tasted stale, flat and expired, and I couldn’t feel any breeze. A musty sourness choked my nose, as if old clothes, heavy with mildew, had been pulled from an ancient closet and puffed their invisible spores everywhere. My own teeth were chattering like castanets now, and Mike stopped talking completely, saving his energy as he thumped and groped blindly behind me. Just as I had decided the tunnel was going to go on forever, that we would freeze to death here in the dark, the passage began to widen. It rose abruptly, leading into a large, vaulted space. “There’s a chamber ahead,” I whispered to Mike, squinting back at the hunched, backlit shape that was my brother. His only response was to nod blindly, arms hugged over his chest for warmth.

  The floor and walls of our new, larger prison were built the same as the others. Whoever had built this place had an inexhaustible source of those monochrome tubes; only their width varied, every few feet punctuated with tangles of cabling like the huge nests of industrial rats. Rising above us, the cylinders converged at the apex of this chamber, then appeared to have melted together. The slick puddle rippled impossibly across the ceiling, thick rivulets flowing down in a complicated umbilical mess. Neither organic nor plastic, I thought of intestines, colourless mushrooms, the eyes of snails, watching those smaller filaments branching off and hanging in the air. They moved and quested lazily as our presence disturbed the stale atmosphere. Connected to some of those filaments were fleshless corpses. I had no doubt these were genuine remains. And I was just as certain they were not human. Each skeleton had two arms, but their bones were wrong; too simple, too heavy, too long. The cages of ribs were a complicated contrast, honeycombed with holes, as if eroded by the relentless black light that crawled and spilled through their substance. None possessed legs or pelvis, each strung-bead spine splayed into a horsetail of fattened filaments, grey as sick spittle and dissolving into the floor. I could not look for long at what had been their heads. Eyeless, jawless, smooth as a puffball fungus, each skull lolled on a neck with too many tapering vertebrae. Hundreds of wires pierced the uniform domes of black-grey bone, needles through eggshells. The only discernible facial features were the twin slits of nostrils, each as long as my index finger. “Holy… shit!” I clenched the words through juddering jaws. “What? Oh God, what is it, B?” “Bodies. Weird bodies. All tangled up in the tubes from the roof. It’s hard to explain.” Mike’s voice was broken, I heard the click of his throat as he swallowed saliva. “Can… can you see a way out?” “No. Not yet.” Stray filaments stretched and rose from the skulls of the dead creatures as I approached, their languid stir like the autonomic response of plants. Faint black light flickered at the ends of a few, winking in and out, like dying flashlights. The relentless cold had penetrated through to my bones, and I felt numb, my head filling with an unreal fog. Mike jogged on the spot behind me, his hands wrapped into his armpits. We needed a way out, and we needed to find it fast, before we froze to death. Reaching out to the swaying filaments, I touched a fingertip to the pulse of hypnotic anti-light, then snatched it back as a sucking heat flashed up my hand. “Mike! Over here, these things are warm.” As I held up my palms, more of the snaky filaments lifted from their skull-cradles, extending from their long-dead hosts and questing for my flesh. Warmth began to flow through me, such a blessed, comforting heat. I reluctantly drew away to prise the frozen meat of my brother’s shaking hands from his chest, thrusting them into the anemone heat. But when that forest of alien hairs grazed his skin, their reaction was very different. Mike’s scream of agony was a molten sound as they entered his fingers, burrowing slickly beneath his nails and deep into his hands. Black light bloomed around him like an alien flower. My equilibrium swayed as a queasy, sucking noise filled the room. Cables twisted and writhed all over the walls, revealing glimpses of other pulsing tunnels, then coalescing into purposeless tangles. But on the far wall, smooth as a camera’s aperture, the animate tubes dilated like a great iris. Revealing a huge window. Sunlight streamed in, but cold and distant; our familiar star greatly diminished in size. A blue-white marble floated far to the right, lonely, tiny, beautiful and terrifying. It was familiar from so many glossy space posters, overused in countless documentaries. I fixed it at the centre of my star cataract, and my scarred cornea wept tears of black light. Mike bubbled out a groan behind me, his arms blistered with tangled nodules, colonised by the parasitic worms of alien wires. “Oh god,” he moaned, his knees buckling, “Oh god, oh god!” The room shuddered, and the view through the window shifted faintly. “Brooke. Get… out. You need… to get out,” Michael whispered, each word an agony, each breath a laboured gulp. One arm twitched and spasmed, pointing toward an uncurling tangle on the floor. The deep black shine of metal, coalescing into a circle rising from the boil of cables, identical to the one on the beach. Mike’s skin was losing colour, draining to white, then no hue at all, and he fought as more filaments pierced his neck and cheeks, burrowing for his skull and the precious, energy-rich soup inside it. “I can fight you!” he screamed, his eyes welling anti-light and black blood, a spray of it as his head thrashed from side to side, “I’d fight anything for her! I can feel your thoughts like you can feel mine! I can destroy this ship, I just need to -” Black light seared the room, bright enough to burn my starblind eye. When it faded, only the wan sunlight from the viewing window remained, picking out the white bones of my brother, lovingly tangled in quivering wires.

    A passing fishing boat spotted me on the little island, shivering in the sand, my hands covered in strange pin-prick blisters. The disc was gone, and no column of black light shone into the heavens anymore. All that remained was a stupid crippled girl and her worthless, one-eyed tears. They searched for Mike for several weeks. Everyone was hopeful to start with, so reassuring, even though I told them it was futile from the start. He might have been lucky, they said, you just never know. They stopped saying those things after the first two weeks, and the search became an exercise in grimness as everyone had to admit we were looking for a body, not a person. And no matter how I told my story, or to whom, not a soul believed me. Just like them, you’ll all write my babbling off as insane, as the trauma-induced delusions of an already compromised girl. For a while, I even tried to believe they were right. I coached myself that I hadn’t seen those things, I couldn’t have visited an alien starship. Mike had just slipped on the slopes of the rocky islet and smashed his head as he fell into the sea. They found his phone, but it was so sodden and corroded that the photos were long gone, unrecoverable despite my initial insistence that the evidence was inside. But now, like the sea eating away those delicate circuits, any belief that I imagined it all is being eroded. The black light has returned. At first it was random flashes, like a stuttering searchlight in the sky. But as the fear-drenched nightmares of my screaming brother have diminished, the light has waxed ever stronger. The steady beam shines downwards this time, its steady gaze sweeping our planet, ever-widening, gathering power. Tonight, it is so brilliant that I can see everything, clear and cold, with both eyes; the right in grey-black monochrome, and the left in vibrant colour. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what happens next. Perhaps some of you will die, your flesh instantly vaporised like that of my late brother. Or perhaps everything human must be sacrificed, living fuel for the unknown horror that lurks high above us. I think I might be able to see exactly what will happen, very soon. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. Treat each day on your little blue planet as a blessing. You’ve been living on borrowed time for far too long, and your luck has finally run out.

[artificialqueens]

I Remember You Differently (Trixya) - Chapter 4 - goth

One more high school lesbian AU for the good people of this blog. It’s the end of senior year, prom season, and Trixie thought she was finally over her crush on Katya from freshman year drama class. She was wrong. Kim is over it before it even starts.

A/N: Purely Trixya interaction, for the most part. Y'all deserve it.

Katya’s perched on the handrail leading to the restaurant, knees jutting out and legs tucked in, black jellies on the lower railing. Her fingers jitter against the metal, like she’s missing something. Trixie wants to hold her restless hands. She wants to kiss them. She wants them jittering across her skin.

Trixie doesn’t tell Katya this. Not in words, but in body language. Arms crossed tight across her chest, weight shifting foot to foot. She’s standing in front of Katya, about a foot away. It feels both like a mile and an inch apart.

She’s had girls before, and a handful of boys. It’s not virginal shyness holding her under. She thinks her problem might be its cousin: intermediately-experienced timidness. Trixie feels clueless around Katya, so fucking inept.

She pulls her arms around herself tighter.

Tonight marks the longest they’ve been around each other in years. Trixie breathes in the warm night air, steadying herself. They’re alone, in regards to other people. Cars are parked on the other side of the street, and an endless supply of cars drive past them. Trixie assumes they’re driving to other restaurants, and bars as well. It’s that time of night.

The last time she stood outside in the dark with Katya was their first date. It’s a lot to process, not adding-on and last date anymore. Prom night is going to end her.

To clear the air, it wasn’t entirely a date.

They were sophomores, then. Katya had left their high school after freshman year, enrolled in home schooling. Trixie thought that was that. She’d never talk to Katya again. She was so convinced, one night in the middle of the year, Trixie called Kim and begged she come over.

Trixie had a bit of a meltdown.

Kim saved her ass, quietly listening to her explain every interaction they had in drama class, nodding along. They sat still for a moment, on Trixie’s bedspread, before Kim flicked Trixie’s forehead. ‘She likes you, dummy,’ Kim said, rather matter-of-factly. ‘Ask her to go see a movie tomorrow.’

Again. Not entirely a date.

But she texted Katya fully intending it to be a date. After Katya said yes, Trixie danced in her room. She twirled and jumped around like an idiot. On the night of, when Trixie got back home, she threw herself across her bed, bubbling over with happiness.

Trixie remembers grinning into her pillow. They didn’t kiss or hold hands, Katya didn’t let Trixie pay for both of their popcorns, nor did either of them confess any pent-up feelings from the year before. Not quite the one of the love stories she had read in Cosmo.

Instead, they laughed like maniacs. An old married couple a few rows back even shushed them. The girls didn’t quiet down any, only laughed harder, slid further down their scratchy pleather seats. From there they talked over the movie neither of them were watching. Talked about topics like family drama, likes and dislikes, how things had changed since last year, and dreams for the future.

Katya said she wanted to design costumes. Trixie wanted to write plays. They joked about working together one day, loud mouths full of popcorn. Trixie thought it was magical. Better than any of the love stories she had read in Cosmo.

There were cues Trixie picked up. Things she noticed, one by one, when she glanced over at Katya throughout the movie:

Katya’s arm pressing against hers on the armrests; bony wrists digging into ample counterpart. Katya curled up in her seat, inclined towards her left, intruding upon Trixie’s space. Hair spilling over and mixing with Trixie’s own. Cologne mixing with Trixie’s perfume — Katya never wore cologne freshman year.

It was all needless, and Trixie’s stomach had churned at the possible implications of need. She felt a desperate tension between her and Katya that entire night. It’s building again. She can feel it. She’s been feeling it since Katya decided to reappear in her life.

Trixie doesn’t want to write plays anymore. She wonders what new dreams Katya has for herself.

Neither of the girls have said a word since Katya escorted Trixie out. It’s only been a minute or two, but time stretches out so much longer in silence. As much silence as there can be, anyway, on a busy night. A siren goes off a few streets away, but Trixie’s lost in a daze.

“P.F. Chang’s puts giant stone horses outside their restaurants in small towns.” Katya states, breaking the silence, pulling Trixie out of her stream of consciousness. “Can you imagine those here?”

Trixie takes the offering, runs with it, giggling at the imaginary scene. “I can imagine the pissed off Chicagoans. Petitioning for them to be taken down.”

Katya’s hands curl around the railing, supporting her slow bend forward. Trixie can smell the peppermint on Katya’s breath again. She can practically taste it. Trixie’s eyes trail up and down the length of Katya’s fingers, then up to the smirk on her lips.

“I’d want to mount one.”

That voice in Trixie’s head whimpers. Suggesting she say, ‘I want you to mount me.’

She’s on sensory overload: Katya’s curls, frizzing in the heat. Her red lips crooking up in one corner. Her green eyes, clear and bright under the artificial lighting. The colors make Trixie’s head swirl. Katya is like Christmas.

Trixie shrugs. “Of course you like lifeless things under your legs.” She plays with the hem of her dress, ignoring Katya’s instantaneous cackling, for her own sake. Trixie tries not to catalogue how the girl alternates between wheezes and squawks. The little breaths in-between.

She fails miserably; it’ll be what keeps her awake when she tries to sleep tonight. Trixie’s never heard a more ridiculous sound in her life.

Katya reaches out to tap Trixie’s shoulder, still laughing, and Trixie looks up. With each tap, her hand moves down goose-bump-covered skin, giggles heightening. Katya takes a breath to speak. She stole it from Trixie.

“Will you be free, Trixie? When you’re deceased?” The end of her sentence drops off. Trixie’s holding Katya’s hand. She didn’t mean to. It just felt natural, the way Katya’s was progressing towards hers.

Katya’s face is red. Again, past memories stir up within Trixie; she wants to scream. Moments ago, Katya alluded to sex with a stone horse, and here she is. Blushing, like how Trixie must be.

Trixie’s mind goes back even further. Minutes ago, Katya pressed her hand against Trixie’s lower back, guiding her, as if that’s how they’ve always been. Trixie realizes she’s holding that very hand, tips of her fingers brushing over veins. The skin is sweaty, but so is her own.

Trixie blames it all on the heat of the night.

One car drives by especially fast — how timely — giving a much needed breeze. Trixie’s free hand has to hold down her dress, and she shuts her eyes when Katya’s flick down to the movement. When she opens them, Trixie fixates on the blinking streetlamp up ahead.

She’s ready to let go, Katya’s skin is burning her alive, but Katya’s fingers squeeze down hard. Not enough to hurt — Trixie can feel the restraint. Katya could crush Trixie’s hand with ease. If desired.

She’s wet again.

Trixie holds back a whine, but she doesn’t hold back from mimicking Katya’s gesture. She’ll have to ask her friends about Katya’s metamorphosis from gangly pubescent virgin to whatever the hell she is now.

Katya clears her throat and cocks her head towards the restaurant entrance. “You said your friends wanted to meet—“ She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Both of their heads whip around to the sound of the doors bursting open, and the sight of Adore ambling towards them.

If Trixie wasn’t aware of the short distance from Katya and her hand in her own, she would be hyper-aware, now. Katya’s grip keeps Trixie locked in place. Trixie would’ve had to fight the instinct to jump back, if not for that. The instinct of a closeted fourteen year old she’s finding herself reverting to.

Katya straightens up. It’s a merciful act, to pull back and taking the peppermint and cologne scents with her. Trixie cranes her head up to the murky black sky, saying a silent thanks.

As Adore comes closer, Katya’s jaw sets and her brow tightens. Trixie looks for a distraction and finds one in Katya’s legs gently swinging back and forth. The voice in her head screams at the contrasting image.

Adore’s soon standing next to Trixie but looks up at Katya. They look somewhat nervous, but mostly blazed out of their mind. Trixie spies a plastic baggie sticking out of their overalls. “The girls need to speak with you.”

“I’m talking to Trixie right now.” Trixie suspects Katya’s tone would be significantly cooler if the little freshman was replaced by a different friend of hers. She wonders if that was deliberate. It pisses her off, to imagine anyone taking advantage of Katya.

“Everyone’s getting upset. I don’t wanna get banned from another place. Please, Katya.”

So. This isn’t just a problem for Trixie’s friends. There’s humor to be found, somewhere. Trixie’s incapable, as every other emotion has a hold on her at the moment.

Katya sighs in defeat. She wiggles on-top of the handrail, better adjusting her position to hop off. Trixie backs up, helps her down with the hand still holding on. Trixie rolls her eyes at no-one but herself, feeling foolishly chivalrous. Adore eyes the two of them with a newfound smile.

Katya lets go when she lands. The embarrassment turns to mourning.

Trixie’s fingers flex. She’s convinced the lines of Katya’s palm are sure to be imprinted of Trixie’s own. She’s scared to check.

“Thanks,” Trixie almost doesn’t hear her over the cars driving by and the added sound of Adore smacking gum. Peppermint flavored. It must be Katya’s brand. She’s weirdly jealous of Adore for a hot second, then shakes her head to rid herself of the thought.

“I’m sorry, Trixie.” Her hand comes to Trixie’s arm, thumb rubbing a circle above her elbow. The movement is a languid rhythm, and Trixie shivers. “This’ll probably take awhile.”

Katya’s Docs make her about an inch taller, yet she has to lift her chin to make eye contact. It’s cute until it’s not; Trixie is hit with the full force of Katya’s jawline. She decides to only think about how tiny Katya has to be without her fucking boots.

Trixie bites down on her lip, concealing a grin. “I still have your number.” She stands stock-still, all she can do not to buckle at the knees. Katya’s thumbnail scratches her skin lightly. “I’ll text you.”

Katya smiles wide. “Do that.”

She disengages, thumbnail coming out of Trixie’s skin. Trixie feels cold without her touch. Katya turns around and pats Adore’s head before walking away, disappearing through the restaurant doors. Trixie’s confused as to why Adore isn’t joining her.

Every car passing by is louder now, and every light down the street is brighter. Trixie rubs the bridge of her nose. She can’t believe she’s going through fucking withdrawals with this girl.

Adore blinks at Trixie a couple times, before all-out laughing their ass off. Trixie frowns.

“What?”

“Hey,” Adore manages, regaining their breath. They reach into their back pocket with a smile. “You are nervous.”

“Your observational skills are astounding.” Trixie deadpans, crossing her arms. She watches as they laugh at her again, like they did earlier tonight.

There appears to be a problem removing the baggie from their pocket. It’s caught on something, and they mutter out a slurry of curses. Trixie doesn’t offer to help. It’s the little things in life.

After the short struggle the plastic is freed, and Trixie’s first guess is right: weed.

Much to Trixie’s surprise, after they open the bag, Adore doesn’t start another search for a lighter. But rather, they extend the blunt towards her. Adore practically pushes it against Trixie’s nose.

“Take this.”

Trixie just stares, squinting into Adore’s hazy eyes; the red lines are vibrant in the whites, and Trixie is reminded of late nights in Pearl’s smoky bedroom. She sighs, then plucks the blunt out of Adore’s fingers.

“You know,” Trixie rolls it around in her own, inspecting it under the light of the streetlamp. “I’ll probably need this later.”

[writingkiwi-blog]

Prologue

September 1972, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

"Arresto momendum," Blanche whispered into the collar of her gown, eyeing Peter Pettigrew with a devious grin. He sat a table down with his fellow friends—a quartet who began recently titling themselves as the 'Marauders.' Peter dipped his spoon into the bowl of cock-a-leekie soup before him. As he tried bringing the spoon to his mouth, he found his hand slowed to an achingly slow pace. Blanche watched slyly as his face contorted slowly.

"What are you doing, Peter?" Blanche heard James Potters' voice sound from her side of the table.

"I.. don't… know," he replied at a glacial pace, gradually squeezing out each consonant and vowel. Blanche watched as Remus Lupin broke into laughter beside Peter.

"Wingardium Leviosa," Blanche whispered in her collar again, looking directly at the spoon. Peter's slow actions couldn't catch the spoon as it left his hand. He reached up for it, but moved so slowly his hand wasn't even in the air before the spoon was nearly nine feet in the air.

"Silencio," she finished in her collar, watching as Peter opened his mouth and tried to create words but failed.

"Bit tongue-tied, are we?" Blanche heard Sirius Black mock from his spot beside James.

As Apollyon Pringle walked to their row of tables, watching the magical enchantments go down, Blanche waited carefully until he identified her as the caster. He walked toward her quickly with a bitter look on his face until he was within ten meters of her. In her collar, she whispered: "Confundo," and watched as confusion drew across his wrinkled features. By the time he stood beside Blanche, he simply shook the jumbled thoughts from his head and walked on. Her final spell had revealed to the Marauders that she was the culprit, but that was all a part of her plan.

Blanche picked up the textbook she had been reading during supper, A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, and exited the hall—intentionally passing and halting in front of the table at which the Marauders sat.

She looked at Peter with sharp eyes. "The next time you think to call a witch more skilled than yourself a 'kiss-arse' in front of an entire class, I recommend you rethink your decision—or else you might, once again, find yourself in a predicament such as this," she hissed. "Am I clear?"

Peter opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Blanche grinned. "I'll take that as a yes."

She continued out of the Great Hall. She could hear the non-charmed Marauders laughing boisterously as she left, and a grin framed her face.

From the table between the Marauders and that at which Blanche had sat, Lily Evans watched the black-haired girl leave the hall. Lily swore she could feel a string of ice following her trail. She hadn't ever spoken to the girl, who mostly kept to herself. But she now had a sudden urge to befriend the witch who could so readily make fools out of bullies. She recalled her name was Blanche—a name which so starkly contrasted her dark features and the inky shadow she left in her path.

In Potions, Blanche usually sat by herself at the front of the class. By no means was she a 'kiss-arse' as Peter Pettigrew had claims, she just genuinely liked and excelled in Potions. It wasn't her fault Professor Slughorn doted on her, it was only an unintended result.

Today, however, a girl with vivid red hair and green eyes from Blanche's house plopped down in the seat beside her.

"Hello Blanche," she greeted with a friendly grin. Blanche looked at her with a cold interest, as she often regarded most things. Lily had noticed that Blanche was not particularly amiable, but she was determined to squeeze a friendship out of her.

"Lily," she nodded. Lily thought it was odd how only a girl of twelve could maintain such a distant disposition, but she genuinely believed she could crack through it. She knew she could when she saw Blanche's eyes from a closer range than ever before—they were the purest shade of cornflower blue. There was nothing cold in those eyes.

"Do you mind if I sit next to you?" Lily asked.

"Not at all," Blanche shrugged. Lily looked across the room to Severus who was now sitting alone—she mouthed 'sorry' to him and his lips thinned into a straight line.

"I really admired what you did last night at supper," Lily complimented. "I try to stick up to bullies, too."

Blanche sent her a fragmented smile, like she was unfamiliar to Lily's genuine kindness. "That Peter's an idiot," Blanche said and shrugged.

In the opposite corner of the room—the back left corner—Peter tilted his head and muttered under his breath to Sirius: "Looks like the two class pets have decided to share a cage."

"Careful now, Peter. If she hears you making fun of you again, she might just turn you into a rat," Sirius replied with a grin.

"Yeah," Peter scoffed. "Over my dead body."

"For some reason, I don't believe she'd have a problem with that," Sirius responded cleverly.

Together, Lily and Blanche brewed an exemplary Hate Potion. Professor Slughorn allowed the girls to take a vial for themselves, on the terms that they only use it for 'playful purposes.' Severus was the only other student to make a perfect potion, and he was also permitted a vial.

As Professor Slughorn dismissed the class, Lily and Blanche left the room together. They both laughed at the steam which had frizzed their hair and planned on whom they would use their potions. As they walked down the hall and into the courtyard, Severus Snape stood by the partition between the courtyard and the hallways surrounding it. Lily departed from Blanche with a cordial farewell and followed Severus back down the halls. Severus sent Blanche a glare before his leave with Lily—it was a very cold glare, riddled with black ice.

Blanche entered the courtyard and was glad to see a that pale frost had not yet glazed over the grass. It was warm and large enough for everyone to occupy in time between classes; Blanche preferred quiet spaces and isolation, but the spot beneath the hazel tree was shaded, inviting, and open.

Blanche retrievedher copy of Jinxes for the Jinxed and opened it on her lap. She resumed reading about the Melofors Jinx, but the slender streams of sunshine hitting the parchment pages were soon impeded by a figure that engulfed the entire book in shadow. Blanche looked up and saw Sirius Black standing before her. He was tall for a twelve year old boy, but rangy and even a bit shrimpy. His eyes and hair were dark, and he surely would have been daunting if it had not been for the prepubescent weight that still clung to his cheeks and jaw. He was not an unattractive fellow, but he was still deep within boyhood.

"That was Marauder behavior, you know," he commented vaguely, but Blanche quickly picked up on his reference.

"Only playful retribution," Blanche shrugged.

"What are you reading?"

"Jinxes for the Jinxed," she answered. "I'm picking something special for Peter."

Sirius laughed, walking forward to look at the book from upside down. "Encases head in pumpkin," he read. "Sounds perfect for him."

"I thought he was your friend?" Blanche asked him.

"Gives me all the more reason to torment him," Sirius smiled deviously. He sat beside Blanche and looked at what else the book had to offer.

September 1974, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Blanche was walking leisurely to her Defense Against the Dark Arts class when Severus Snape crossed her path in an uncharacteristically disorganized run. She soon identified its reason as James Potter and Sirius were hot on his trail, shouting "Snivellus" after him. Peter Pettigrew followed behind with his heavier set stature and missed Blanche's glare when he passed.

She followed them out into the courtyard and watched as Sirius cast the stickfast hex on Severus. Blanche raised her wand and exclaimed, "Finite Incantatum."

Severus immediately unstuck from the ground and ran.

"Now why do you have to go and spoil all the fun, Blanche?" Sirius sighed, turning toward her as he recognized her voice.

"Because she's sadistic," Peter sighed hopelessly. "Because she derives pleasure from our sorrow."

"Says the boy laughing whilst he mercilessly taunted a boy who did nothing to him," she retorted. "Don't make me cast the Jelly-Fingers Curse on your again."

Peter's ratlike face contorted in fear and he stepped back, standing into Sirius' long shadow. Sirius was now something to hide behind as he had grown taller and broader from when they'd first became friends in their second year; manhood now seemed to be someplace on the horizon, but at fourteen his chin was still smooth as silk and his cheeks full with youth.

"You couldn't pick up a spoon, fork, or knife for two days," Sirius bent over laughing at the curse Blanche had casted upon Peter last year. The two had never made amends after the Soup Scandal from second year. "I thought you'd starve."

"Sirius, let's go to Defense Against the Dark Arts," Blanche tilted her head down the hallway.

"Right, forgot about that," he reached for the books he had thrown on the ground once he reached the courtyard.

"See you later Prongs, Wormtail," he tilted his head in farewell.

"Go on Sirius—keep following her! Maybe one day she'll shag you!" James cried dramatically after Sirius. Sirius turned instantly and smacked James hard on the arm with the flat of his textbook.

"Christ! Don't get your panties in a knot!" James cried dramatically in return. Sirius ran back into the hall and caught up with Blanche, who was already on her way.

"I've this idea for Charms, Sirius," Blanche laughed once she saw his figure had caught up. "Wait, we're in class together for that, right?"

"Yeah, we have it together," he nodded.

"Perfect. Have you heard of the Caroling Jinx?" She asked him.

"Isn't that the one that forces people to sing?" He clarified.

"Yes," she nodded. "So I was thinking throughout the entire first class we cast the jinx on random students every time Flitwick tries to speak. Do you think you can do it without a wand?" She asked. Blanche was exceptionally talented at wandless magic, and it was no trouble for her; Sirius was an profound and skilled wizard, but she was unsure of his wandless ability. It was rare for anyone below sixth year to be even adequately skilled at wandless magic

"It hurts that you doubt my ability," he said with feigned sentimentality. He held a hand over his heart in dramatic ache.

"Shut up," she shook her head.

Through Defense Against the Dark Arts, Sirius and Blanche scribbled down sample songs for their prank. They decided on a Christmas song, but fought over which. They were called out by the ever-changing Dark Arts professor, now an unfamiliar Professor Bucklebee whilst they kicked one another's legs under the desk.

"Miss Lestrange and Mister Black!" Professor Bucklebee shouted from the dais in the front of the classroom.

"Yes… Professor Bumblebee?" Sirius answered. The class snickered at his response.

"I will have order in my classroom, do you understand me?" Bucklebee snapped.

"Your classroom? Or Professor Jecklin's classroom? Or Professor Lunny's? Or Professor Prewett's?" Sirius asked mockingly.

"Sit down, Mister Black," Bucklebee commanded. "That's one week of detentions for you and Miss Lestrange. If you want another week's worth, keep it up."

"She didn't do anything, Professor Bumblebee," Sirius insisted.

"For every time you speak up, you get another week. This is your last chance, Mister Black. Are you sure you want to keep this up?" Bucklebee questioned sharply.

Sirius cleared his throat and sat down. Bucklebee turned around, opening his mouth to continue. Sirius, however, interrupted.

"Salvio hexia, Professor," he announced from his seat.

"That's another week, Mister Black!"

"You asked for the counter-spell that deflected hexes from the area," Sirius clarified. "That's the answer."

Bucklebee paused, analyzing the situation. Blanche grinned beside Sirius and nudged her knee with his, congratulating him on his effective embarrassment of the new teacher. Bucklebee cleared his throat and announced as he turned toward the board: "Twenty points from Gryffindor!"

"Shitehead," Sirius muttered under his breath.

In spite of the detentions Sirius and Blanche had already received, they figured they shouldn't let their Caroling Jinx prank go to waste. It went off successfully, and Professor Flitwick had even found it quite amusing. The laughter of their first Charms class of Fourth Year washed off, however, by the time the following morning arrived. The two were scraping off gum from the underside of the desks in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

"Fuck the Dark Arts," Sirius grumbled. "And fuck Professor Bumblebee."

"Bucklebee," Blanche corrected as a hunk of viridian gum fell into her pale.

"This is unfair," he whined.

"Stop pouting. You mouthed off to a professor. What did you expect, a sugar quill and a kiss?"

"It's unfair that you have detention, is what I meant," he cleared up. "He should have given me two weeks and you none."

"Do yourself a favor and don't play self-sacrificing gentleman with me. Nobody knows better than I that you don't mean it," she retorted.

"I do!"

"No, you're an arrogant prick who'd do anything to save his own arse," she muttered.

"Pardon me?!" Sirius exclaimed.

Blanche grinned at him from beneath the table and then looked back up, bringing her scraper to the dark underside of the wood. She felt a dense wad hit her temple just before she started working at another. She gasped and looked at her lap to where the weapon had dropped. It was a gigantic, ancient piece of thick taffy the color of rust. "Prick!" She cried, reaching for a handful from her bucket. She didn't seem to care what she put her hand into; she only knew that she wanted to throw his weapon of choice right back in his face.

Several mounds of old gum hit Sirius in the face and he screamed before reaching for another handful. Before either of them knew it, all the progress they had made was flying across the room. When both of them reached the ends of their buckets, Blanche threw it soaring across the room. It missed Sirius by an inch and shattered a vial that sat on a cupboard behind him. The two instantly broke into fits of rampant laughter.

"I can see you two've made progress," a familiar voice sighed from the entrance of the room. Lily Evans, dressed in her freshly-ironed gown and newly-shined shoes, looked at the mess they'd made with not a glimmer of surprise in her eyes.

"Oh, not Lady Snape," Sirius cursed whilst catching his breath.

"Shut up, Sirius. She's actually here per my request," Blanche walked over to her. "Albeit, a little late."

"I had to finish my Muggle Studies essay, Blanche. It was due tonight. You know that," Lily pled goodheartedly.

"Well, why's it here?" Sirius asked disdainfully. Somehow Blanche's two best friends had never met in the middle: Sirius thought Lily was an insipid goody-too-shoes, and Lily thought Sirius a pompous evildoer.

"Shut up, Sirius," Blanche silenced him. "She is here because Professor Bucklebee said we can't use magic to clean the desks."

Sirius waited for her to finish, but she left him to figure it out. When he clearly was at a loss, she completed her plan: "But he never said Lily couldn't."

"She's going to violate the rules?" Sirius laughed doubtfully, but Lily slid her wand out of her sleeve and began magically lifting the gum they had scattered and putting it back in the bucket.

"I'm actually not, seeing he never said I couldn't help," Lily smiled good-naturedly. It had taken Blanche a while to warm to Lily, but she eventually realized that there was nothing but goodness in this lovely, fire-haired girl. It was refreshing being around someone who would give everything she had just to make the world a better place.

Lily charmed both of the scrapers Blanche and Sirius held and they began to work at the gum magically, scraping at a much faster pace than did Blanche and Sirius.

"And it's not my fault he was fool enough not to watch your detention through," Lily smiled.

"New professors," Blanche sighed.

September 1975, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

There was a hill in the open space near the gamekeeper hut where the water toucher the sand softly; this was the only place on the grounds of Hogwarts where land did not drop steeply into the lake. It was not like the courtyards—it was clear and never crowded. On the hill was a yew tree, upon which Severus would read the textbook chapters before they were even assigned. Here was a peaceful place—a place free from the taunting of the Marauders and James Potter's constant gibes.

But today that peace did not linger as he saw crowds of kids from his year walking toward his sacred tree—all with Potter leading the pack.

"Come on Moony, Padfoot," James called as he withdrew his wand. Severus held his with a shaking hand, but he was too slow. "Expelliarmus!" The wand flew from Severus' weak grip.

"Nice one, James!" Peter Pettigrew called from the back.

"Impedimenta!" James shouted, freezing Severus' movements and lifting him into the air with the tip of his wand.

The crowd chanted 'Snivellus, Greasy' over and over again like a pack of wild followers. In the distance, Severus saw the flaming red hair of Lily Evans as she rushed forward. She was followed by the dark girl, Blanche, who looked lost to whose side she'd take.

"Alright—who wants to see me take of Snivelly's trousers?!" James called to the crowd and they hooted in support.

"Potter, put him down this instant!" Lily ran up to him and pushed him away, but James held his wand securely.

"Get out of here, Evans," James spoke sternly.

"Sirius, make James put him down," Blanche scowled severely at Sirius. He wavered for a minute at her order, but then ignored her. "You're as craven as him, you fool."

Blanche walked away from Sirius stiffly and pulled out her wand in an attempt to break James' charm.

"Not until you let him be! Can't you see he's helpless!" Lily cried. At that humiliation and grand vulnerability, Severus snapped.

"Liberacorpus," Blanche cast, dropping Severus to the ground and effectively breaking James' charm. Lily ran to Severus' crumpled body on the ground, but the embarrassment still pumped through his heart like fire and the sounds of the belittling chants still rang in his ear.

Severus flung himself as far from Lily and Blanche as his injured body would. "I didn't ask for your help, you blood traitor!" He shouted to Blanche. She instantly paled—even paler than she naturally was—and then he turned to Lily. "And I don't need anything from you anymore, you filthy mudblood!"

Severus pulled himself from the ground and dragged himself off, casting away everything but the blood that pumped through his cried in Blanche's arms in the Gryffindor Common Room that night. Blanche was not accustomed to tears staining her nightgown; her family was a cold one, and hugs were not found easily in their manor. Blanche had trouble sympathizing with Lily, as she had never seen a reason for friendship in Severus. Then again, Lily had never seen reason friendship in Sirius, and Blanche, too, felt like she would have trouble forgiving him for what he'd done.

"Perhaps he'll apologize, Lily," Blanche offered, but Lily immediately shook her head.

"I can't forgive him for it. He's said it, and now I know it's always been there all along in his head. I'm tired of finding excuses for this darkness inside of him. Olympia, Holly, and Kyra don't even understand why I talk to him," Lily cried. Blanche had trouble not rolling her eyes at that last bit. Their friendship really was of odd character—Blanche loathed all of Lily's other friends and Lily loathed all of Blanche's other friends. "And what about what he called you—a blood traitor? Is that how he sees people? Is everyone just some fraction of mud and magic?"

"You and I both know what Severus is. He's chosen his path, and we know what path that is," Blanche spoke darkly, thinking of the dark arts that had not only taken her family, but now Lily's family too. "But you should hear the decision come from his mouth."

Lily looked up at Blanche with tear-filled, grass green eyes. "You're right," she sniffed. "But he'll have to come to me first. Though either way—I cannot forgive him."

Blanche then realized this was Lily's first break into realisti humanity. If Severus wanted back their friendship, Lily would not give it—no matter how unhappy it made Severus. Lily would not sacrifice her self-respect to make him happy. Lily's sunlight was what drew Blanche in all along, but this break in her porcelain façade was like the break in a dam. Dark waters came rushing forth, and Blanche finally felt like she might have a real sister.

In Arithmancy, Blanche didn't sit with Sirius. Blanche knew what a blow to him this was seeing she was the only reason he took the elective—she'd begged him the entire summer between forth and fifth year to take it with her. Halfway through the class, Blanche looked across the room through the corner of her eyes and saw Sirius face down on the desk, sleeping.

As much as Blanche loved Arithmancy, she couldn't focus on the reading from Numerological Theory. Every time Sirius snored lightly, she laughed to herself and looked across the room. The Professor of Arithmancy was nearing Dumbledore's age and was as deaf as a post, and as he sat at the front of the room grading their latest exams, he had no idea Sirius was off in dreamland.

Sirius finally woke at the sensation of a Ravenclaw boy throwing a pencil at him. Blanche watched Sirius instantly look to the seat beside him to ask her how long he'd been out, but then his face fell when he realized she wasn't there.

Grumbling, Sirius stood and walked over to the table she sat at alone. He took the seat beside her and watched her closely as she lowered her face to her textbook.

"You've at least got to amuse me. I wouldn't be taking this class if I knew it would be me sitting alone for an hour twice a week," he stated flatly.

"I don't know, you looked pretty peaceful over there," she shrugged, looking at him. With sleep fresh on his face, the youth that had been fading from his face of late sprung anew. Nowadays he shaved just a few barely-there patches of hair on his chin and upper lip and the line of his jaw was coming in; but in that moment of tiredness, he was thirteen again.

Sirius looked at his lap and a stream of dark curls fell over his face. "I'm sorry about Severus. I should have listened to you."

"You didn't, though," she responded in a blank voice, drawing her eyes back over the textbook.

"We were just messing around—"

"Don't make yourself the victim," she silenced him. "I want you to apologize to him. And if James ever wants a date with Lily, I'd recommend he accompany you."

Sirius' brow furrowed at the mention of his friends very recent obsession with Lily Evans. "How did you know?"

"Ever since under the yew tree, I just knew," she shrugged. "Men aren't particularly clever. You can see it in their eyes."

Sirius grinned, looking over at her with wide eyes as grey as clouds looming over lightning. "What do you see in mine?"

"A coward," she answered. He balled his hand in a fist and hit the desk loudly in anger. The goofy look dropped from his face when he refocused his close stare.

"If I do this, will you forgive me?" He asked.

"Yes," she responded. Sirius stood and just began to walk right out of the classroom. Before he was far enough from him, she lunged for his hand and tugged him backward. He looked at her in confusion, but her face was purely devoid of emotion. "I want his forgiveness of you, but make sure he knows he shouldn't expect mine or Lily's forgiveness."

Sirius nodded stoically. If there was one thing in their minds that was equally clear, it was that the term 'blood traitor' was not a word to be used lightly. Both coming from families who valued the pure-blood agenda, they did not take being called a blood traitor kindly. After their acquaintance was nurtured into friendship over second and third year, the final bridge that made him and her best friends was what sat behind both of their last names: hatred, prejudice, and egotism. Both Blanche and Sirius were black sheep in their families for their tolerance, and over that they clung to one another.

Sirius continued out of the room with stiff shoulders. The professor never noticed that he had left—to no surprise.

Blanche unfolded the letter her snowy owl, Sulwen, had delivered in the Owlery. She nearly groaned in exasperation when she saw it was from her mother. She instantly grew irritated at how immaculately measured the creases of the letter were and how frustratingly automatic her mother's script was. It was quite funny; amongst friends and classmates alike, she was known as the structured, unwelcoming one. If only they knew her mother.

Blanche,

I hope the first few months of your last year at Hogwarts have been constructive; your father and I are very proud of your academic success. I am thrilled to tell you that your Uncle Rodolphus has become engaged to a charming woman by the name of Bellatrix Black, who is most wonderful and talented. She is the cousin of your friend Sirius. I am, in fact, writing to you about this boy. Rodophus has told me that his fiancée's cousin is a blood traitor. As Bellatrix's aunt, Walburga, has confirmed this, your father and I have decided you shall no longer be associated with this rapscallion. His familiarity with you reflects poorly on your father to the Dark Lord and dishonors us as a family. I am confused to why you affiliate with his kind; your father and I raised you the True way, and I believed you had better judgement than this. I was speaking to Walburga further of her incorrigible eldest son, and she tells me he associates himself with mudbloods. This is unacceptable behavior and I request it stop at once.

Bellatrix's and Rodolphus' wedding will be held just after your return from Hogwarts. When I see you then, I expect your deviant behavior to be rectified.

Best regards,

Lavinia Greengrass Lestrange

"Short and sweet," Blanche mumbled to herself as she crumbled the letter in her hands. Her fingers wrapped around it set it afire, and before the flames licked her skin she tossed the sooty remains on the ground and stomped on it.