#the entire sequence going up the stairs and onto the bed was so well done

[tinesleftnipple]

the duality of man is wei qian fist fighting one on six and succeeding but also going weak in the knees from yuan kissing him

[burning-omen]

Break the Rules part 2

Peter Parker x Male!Mob boss!reader

Summary: The next morning with reader, Peter, a unexpected (and unwanted) guest, and an even less welcome anxiety attack....fun, right?

Warning: a little bit of anxiety and a small anxiety attack. OH AND GUNS! I ALMOST FORGOT! Murder threats and mentions too!

Part 1

Word count: 2879

A/n: Writers block is kicking my a*s so part 3 might take longer. Also, there’s a scene that I f*cking hate so much, like reading makes me want to cringe so hard, there’s nothing wrong with it, I just wish I went somewhere else with this chapter.

Oh, Peter also forgets his pants at some point, just a little heads up.

Last time: You settled down in your own bedroom, hanging your coat and tie up by the door before drifting off to sleep.

Now:

The next morning you woke up, only to hear Peter loudly exclaim “what the hell!” From the other room.

You groaned then sat up, still hearing Peter panicking in the other room. You made your way to him, only to see him sitting on the bed with the most panicked expression you’ve ever seen on a human person.

“Peter...relax yourself..”

His eyes snapped over to you. “Where am I?!”

“Fucking Christ…” you groaned. You’d woken up with a headache that felt far too similar to a hangover for you liking. “...you’re in my house. Yours was swarming with police and I wouldn’t want them to see me or you. Understand?”

He nodded slowly.

“Good, so you're done yelling then?”

He flushed red then nodded with a small chuckle.

“Sorry…”

Groaning again, you said, “it’s fine, just come down stairs when you're ready, okay?”

“O-okay..”

“Great..” with that you walked out of the room.

You honestly had no idea why you were being so nice to Peter. You’ve never shown this kind of hospitality to anyone before. So all of this was very new to you.

Maybe this had something to do with the sudden thought you had last night.

You walked down the stairs and to the kitchen. The entire bottom floor had been completely illuminated by sunlight making cooking yourself and your guest a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and sausage a lot easier. You were a little surprised that there was food in the house. Then you remembered that you’d been paying your neighbors to bring in groceries every few weeks.

You heard light thumping from upstairs then saw Peter emerge from the stairway...with no pants. You could feel your cheeks heat up at the sight...he knows he’s not wearing pants, right?

From the looks of it the answer was no, he came and sat on one of the stools on the outside of the counter then folded his arms and laid on them.

“Sorry for taking so long…” he said through a yawn.

You cleared your throat a little then said, “it’s fine.” With a small voice crack. “It seems you’ve made yourself at home..”

He laughed softly and said, “I hope you don’t mind. Your house is just very relaxing to me.”

“I don’t mind at all..”

The house was silent other than the sounds of you preparing both yours and Peter’s plate. He looked up at you suspiciously.

“What is it?”

“Just...why are you being so nice to me? Like I understand that you want me to work for you but it seems like it’s…”

“It seems like what, Peter?”

He picked up the fork on the counter and twirled it in his hand.

“I don’t know… To me it looks like you want me to do more than just work for you…” he said, getting quieter and quieter, sinking down farther into his seat as he went on.

Well fuck. You see, you’re not the best with emotional confrontation. Or emotional anything for that matter. You could easily put on a simple “I’m Just A Suave Kind Of Person” act but that just makes you look like a fool because this has gone far beyond just being charming.

“Well...” you cleared your throat, trying to find the right words for the moments. “You see, I’ve just bee-“

You were cut off by the very loud sound of your front door being practically thrown off its hinges by no other than Markus Cane, aka one of the lower level(but not bottom tear) players from your more “private” games. He was very clearly enraged. More than likely about his recent losing streak, an unfortunate occurrence that's bringing him closer to being kicked out of the game permanently. Now he's broken into your house while you have an important guest over, which has just brought him a lot closer to death.

But, instead of letting the growing rage inside you show you spoke to the man in the calmest of tones.

“Markus Cane? What brings y-”

You were, once again, interrupted by him.

“You mother fucker!” He shouted, “You’re the reason my life has gone to shit You and your little games!”

You rolled your eyes at the disheveled man, “Is this about you losing the last few games? Because I can assure you that your...inability to play a proper game has nothing to do with me. I only run fair games, it’s your own fault that you lost.”

“Bullshit!” He pulled a pistol out of the waistband of his pants and aimed it straight at you...Sort of.

It was obvious he hadn’t slept in days, he had dark circles under his red bloodshot eyes. His hands shook and his body swayed as a clear sleep deprivation. He was delirious.

“You’re always pulling the strings in those games! Always behind the scenes telling the croupiers what to do! You set me up!”

“Trust me, I had no interest in your downfall..”

He looked at you with confusion, “‘Had’?”

“Yes Markus, had. I don’t know if you noticed but you’ve broken into my house, throw ridiculous accusations at me and now you're threatening my life, all of this done in front of my current guest of honor. At the moment I want you dead.” You said, your tone never changing.

Markus stumbled backward, the weight of what he’d done crashing down on him. He backed himself into a wall, his hands shaking so hard that he dropped the gun. It seemed as though the safety was still on so it collided with the ground without going off.

Peter, who you hadn’t been too focused on at the moment, rushed to grab it before settling back onto the stool, setting it on the table. All done while keeping his eyes on the man, who was now overcome with the realization that he was more than definitely dead.

“L-listen man, I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a joke!” He stuttered.

You walked from around the counter, placing your hand on Peter's shoulder for a moment before moving forward towards the man.

He was frozen, mouth agape watching you.

“Now, I would normally kill a fool like you who decided to interrupt my peaceful morning, but I have a guest and that would be rude. And the clean up would take hours, hours that I don’t want to waste on idiots like you. So i’ll give you ten seconds to get as far away from here as possible..” Your voice shifted, turning to a lower, more threatening tone.

Markus stared at you for a long moment not moving until you said, “You have 5 seconds Markus..”

He was out of your house immediately, slamming the door behind him.

You turned back to Peter, who was staring at the door Markus had run through moments before.

“Peter?” You said, your tone changing from the anger laced one you used earlier to a much softer, calmer voice.

He turned to look at you, his eyes wide and bright as though you hadn’t just threatened to murder someone.

“Yes?”

You sighed, leaning against the counter next to him.

“I think it’s time for us to go.”

He nodded, hopping up from the stool.

“Okay, I’ll go grab my shoes from upstairs.”

“Mhmm, make sure you grab your pants while you're up there..”

He looked at you with confusion clear on his face, “What?”

Without looking back at him (less in a respectful way and more in a ‘I don’t want to start staring’ way) you gesture downward.

He looked down, then blush quickly took over his face.

“Shit! I’m sorry!” He shouted before running up the stairs quickly.

You went up a little after he did, heading to your own room. Quickly getting yourself ready for the day ahead of you, grabbing your tie and putting on your shoes as you exited the room.

By the time you were done and heading back down the stairs Peter was already there (with pants this time) staring down at his lap, blush still covering his face.

“Are you ready to leave?”

He nodded, more than likely too embarrassed to speak at the moment.

“Alright, lets go.” You walked over to the door with Peter right behind you, grabbing the keys from the small table next to it.

The both of you walked out, the sun was beaming down but a cool breeze evened out the temperature.

You unlocked the car doors, watching Peter slide into the passenger side quickly. You got into the driver's seat and started the car. You drove in silence for 20 minutes, every so often Peter would look over at you like he wanted to say something but would always go back to fumbling with his hands in his lap.

You decided to interrupt his anxious cycle, besides you were almost at your place of business and you wouldn’t be able to talk to him until after he was done with whatever work he has to do today or if he was suddenly brave enough to walk all the way up to your office on his own, which you doubted he would.

“Is there something you want to say, Peter?”

He stumbled and tripped over his words nervously, creating an illegible sequence of sounds.

“I can’t understand you, Peter, you need to relax..”

He stopped, taking a long breath before speaking again.

“If I wasn’t there, would you have killed that man?” He asked, barely above a whisper.

He didn’t want to talk about it but he felt like he had to know. Did he really change your decision that much? So much that you went from Yes Murder to No Murder in a matter of seconds.

“Probably. I don’t usually take any kind of disrespect from anyone, ever… But, you were there and I didn’t want to subject you to that, especially this early in the morning.”

There was a long silence after that.

Peter didn’t know how to respond and you had nothing more to say on the subject.

As you drew closer and closer to the large building both of you worked at Peter felt as though he should say something, you offered him a job, taken care of him while he slept and cooked him breakfast so he figured some sort of thanks was necessary. (You also didn’t murder a guy because of him but what ever.) By the time he figured out what he wanted to say to you, you’d already arrived at your destination but that didn’t stop him.

“I-I…” He started, but all the things he planned to say died on his tongue when you looked over at him.

His internal monologue turned to one word in that moment. Fuck, fuck, fuck…

He gulped, feeling a knot coil in his chest and in a very sudden moment his mind was on fire. Not a single coherent thought ran through his head and he felt his throat close up. So he did what he always did in moments of anxiety, he left. He opened the car door and ran into the building, not really realizing that you had to go in there too. But at that moment it didn’t matter, he had to get away. He had to get away from you, being in that car with you was throwing him into a weird anxious panic. He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know why. But once he was away from you it got better.

You were less confused than Peter was, you’d watched him long enough to know that speaking was a problem for him. Especially in situations where he felt he needed to speak but he still felt rude and interruptive if he did. But then he was flooded with the many thoughts of how it could go wrong or how the other person, the other person being you this time, would feel, which would panic him and cause him to leave as fast as possible.

You understood, he was having a hard time speaking, he panicked, he left.

It was a bit rude of him to leave your door open but you could excuse it just this once.

You got out of your car, locking the doors then pocketing the keys. Slamming your door shut before walking around to the other side and closing the door that Peter had left open.

As you walked inside and up the stairs you could feel multiple eyes watching you. Before you disappeared up the stairs completely you looked down at the many low level idiots below, and then you spotted Peter. His cheeks were a dark pink and his eyes were teary, he stared down at his feet, tapping the left with the right every few seconds. He looked so upset, not quite sad or angry just…upset.

Seeing him like that hurt. It hurt a lot.

You made him feel that way, not intentionally, no. You would never, Still, he was feeling that way because of you.

You wanted to help him, to comfort him and tell him that everything was okay but you know that you had piles of work you couldn’t get behind on. They were important and then needed to be done. That had to be done, it wasn’t opsional.

And then you remembered something that made you want to grin like a cat.

This is your business. This was your building. These were your workers.

You were in control of everything that happened here, you chose what was important.

And what was important to you right now was that boy downstairs that was looking like a kicked puppy.

So you walked back down the stairs, cut through the large group of associates that flooded the lowest floor and got to Peter.

You gently grabbed his hand, holding it close to your chest and rubbing his palm slowly with your thumb. He didn’t meet your eyes only staring at your hand clasping his.

“Peter?”

He didn’t respond but you could tell he was listening.

“Would you like to go home?” You asked in a low voice.

He quickly shook his head no.

“Okay, okay...where do you want to go? I’m not letting you stay down here, not with how you are right now.?”

He looked up at you for a moment before slowly pointing to the ceiling with his free hand. It took you a moment to figure out what he meant.

“My office?”

He nodded and squeezed your hand tightly.

“Alright, lets go..”

In seconds you were pulling the shaking boy behind you up multiple flights of stairs. In the time it took you to get to your office you’d become winded, while Peter on the other hand looked almost completely fine. His chest rising and falling a bit faster than normal but other than that there was no indication that you’d dragged him up a shit ton of stairs.

Once you caught your breath you gently guided Peter to the chair he’d sat in the previous night. You leaned back against the front of your desk, your hands on either side of you, keeping you balanced.

“So… Are you feeling any better?”

He didn’t respond for a long while, and for a moment you thought he wasn’t going to.

“A little...I-” he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment to regain control of his thoughts, “I thought getting out of the car would help but just...being in there with all those people, I-it only made it worse. For a second I felt like I couldn’t breath, it was sudden an-and unexpected.”

You opened your mouth to say something but stopped yourself.

“Honestly I don’t understand why I was suddenly so nerve wrecked back in the car. I’d been fine the entire ride but at the end I just...wasn’t.” He looked up at you quickly. “I’m not always like this, I swear! I just…”

“You’re having a rough morning, I get it. It happens.”

“I-I know, I guess I should have at least tried to handle it a bit more professionally,” he muttered.

You laughed a little, pushing yourself off of the desk and leaning closer to Peter.

“I’ve seen you in your underpants, it doesn’t get more unprofessional than that..”

His face immediately flushed red, stammering he refused to meet your eyes, “Sorry about that…”

“Don’t worry about it, you were tired, it’s an easy mistake to make..”

“Yeah, at home. Not at the house of a man you don’t even know the name of.”

This made you freeze, had you really not told him your name?

You felt you face heat up, visible or not you brought your hand up to your face, shielding yourself from your own embarrassment.

“O-oh crap..” you muttered to yourself.

You cleared your throat, straightening yourself out in a moment.

“You’ll have to forgive me Peter, I hadn’t realized that I never told you..”

He looked up at you with a soft smile and said, “I-It’s fine, honestly. It was a simple mistake.”

“Well then, let me fix my mistake. I’m Y/n, it’s a pleasure to meet you..”

[bedlamsbard]

Part 3 of the other side AU concept!  Still estimating this at five parts total.   The AU is Backbone-based and uses Backbone backstory up until the present day.  Markus Anjali also appears in these Backbone backstory scenes, referred to in this sequence.

Previous: Part 1 Part 2

About 5.7K below the break.

***

“Don’t make trouble,” was the first thing Hera said to Chopper as they got off the maglev train at the station nearest the ISB Complex.  She had told him that back at the Ghost, but she thought it bore repeating.

He grumbled back at her and Hera made a face at him.

The platform was crowded with commuters, most of whom were either Imperial officers or support staff for the Imperial Complex and ISB Headquarters a block away.  Hera’s green skin and white-covered headtails got her a few second glances, but after four days here she was starting to become a regular, and a few people remembered her from the previous year.  She stopped at a tapcaf to get a takeaway caf and nervously emptied two packets of sweetener into it while Chopper complained about the delay.

“Oh, shut up or I’ll leave you here,” Hera told him, jamming the lid back onto her cup.  The tapcaf was full of people in gray or white Imperial uniforms, mostly junior officers or staff running errands for their superiors up at the Imperial Complex.  Only moffs and flag officers could keep really good caf in their offices; even on Naboo what was available in the mess hall or the break rooms tended to be swill. Even if it hadn’t started out that way, being kept on a warmer for eight or twelve hours rendered it little better than tar.  Not that tar didn’t have its place, but Hera was of the firm opinion that place was in the field on a sixteen-hour watch, not in the office.

She threaded her way out of the tapcaf back into the street, where several other astromechs were waiting on the pavement for their owners; Chopper had followed her inside rather than make polite conversation with them.

The Imperial Complex was only a street away.  The stormtroopers at the entrance waved her inside with only a cursory check of her credentials and Chopper’s operating number; Hera wasn’t the only nonhuman who worked there, but as far as she was aware she was the only Twi’lek.  She had to swipe her code cylinder in order to get into the ISB building, while Chopper had to plug in to be scanned.  Since his ban had never been official, just verbal, he was allowed in without raising any alarms.

“Do not light anyone on fire,” Hera told Chopper under her breath when they had reached an empty hallway that she knew had a faulty security cam.  “I’ll signal you when I’m done.”

He saluted her with one of his manipulators and rolled off.  Hera took a deep breath, smoothed down the front of her uniform unnecessarily, and started towards the turbolifts and the bullpen on the sixth floor where Agent Beneke’s office was.  Markus Anjali, as he had done the past three days, was waiting for her outside the glass doors to the bullpen.

“Hey, Hera,” he said, as if he hadn’t been staking the turbolift lobby out.

“Hello, Markus,” Hera said, pitching her now-empty caf cup into the nearest trashcan and already exhausted by the thought of having to spend the next few minutes with him. They had shared a desk when she had been working here, she and Markus and two other agents at one of the four-desk setups in the bullpen.  The others had been all right, but neither of them were here at present.

Her old desk was occupied by an agent she didn’t recognize.  A handful of offices ringed the bullpen’s second level; Hera glanced up and saw Agent Beneke silhouetted through the window of his office.

“Do you want to get dinner tonight, after you get off?” Markus said. “We could catch up.”

“I’m here with my partner, Markus,” Hera said.

“Well, it’s not like he has to come.”  He put a hand on her wrist. “I know you were angry at me after Felucia, but by now you have to realize that he’s not –”

“Let me clarify,” Hera said. “I’m here with my partner whom I love and have sex with on a regular basis, Markus.  I wasn’t trying to replace him two months ago and I’m not interested now.”  She removed her hand from his before he could respond and was at the stairs to the second level before he could do more than open his mouth again.

She rapped her knuckles against Agent Beneke’s door and waited for him to look up and wave her inside before she entered.

“Good morning, sir,” she said.

Beneke gave her the kind of look that made her uncomfortably certain that he knew that not only had she spent the night in Kanan’s bed, but that her double was on the Ghost now and Chopper was rolling around ISB HQ looking for a convenient and sufficiently high-access dataport to plug into.  But all he said was, “Good morning, Hera. Have a seat.”

She took the chair in front of his desk and set her shoulder bag carefully down by her feet.

“I hope this inactivity has not made the Inquisitor too restless,” Beneke said.

“No, sir.”

The cams are disabled, she reminded herself. He doesn’t know.  They had checked the Ghost over months ago after Kanan had first come back, after a chance comment from another ISB agent Hera knew who usually oversaw internal surveillance.  The bugs had ben transmitting until just after Kanan had returned, when they had been turned off; Chopper had been able to have the Ghost’s systems fry their internal circuitry so that they couldn’t be reactivated if the ISB and the Inquisition ever stopped fighting over the two of them.

Agent Beneke looked at her for a long moment.  Hera met his gaze evenly, not allowing herself to blink or look aside; it was Agent Beneke who finally said, “Well, let’s get started then.”  He touched the control on his desk that dimmed the windows to the bullpen, so that no one down below or on the balcony outside could see what they were doing.  “Where were we when we left off last night?”

“Otoh Gunga, sir.”

As Hera was pulling out her datapad to bring up her own notes on the mission, Agent Beneke said, “Agent Anjali only has your best interests in mind, Hera.”

“Agent Anjali has getting into my pants in mind.  Sir.”

Agent Beneke raised an eyebrow.  “My impression has been that Agent Anjali has always been a good friend to you, apart from that little incident on Felucia.  And you must admit you overreacted there.”

Hera felt a muscle in her jaw twitch.  That “little incident,” as Agent Beneke called it, had been her slapping Markus in front of a tent full of officers and agents – not to mention Kanan – after he had called Kanan a thing and suggested that she was sleeping with Kanan because she didn’t think she had better options.  As far as she was considered her reaction had been entirely justified and would have been so even if she had gone up on charges for it, which she hadn’t – mostly because everyone there had been too afraid of Kanan to suggest that she might have been in the wrong.  He had been six months out of the Crucible, barely speaking, and terrifying even to the officers in command of that operation.  It had also been the morning after the first time since he had come back that they had had sex; for months after his return Hera hadn’t been certain he would ever be able to touch her again.  Markus’s reaction had gone a long way towards ruining her morning.  He had also suggested with what was clearly supposed to be glowing praise that she was “nearly human,” presumably in contrast to the Twi’lek girl down at the Lake House whom Hera knew he slept with regularly.

“Sir,” she said instead of any meaningful response.

“We do have some leeway with the Inquisition, you know, Hera,” Agent Beneke said mildly. “If you were to request a transfer, it would go through.   Your partnership – if it can be called that – is highly irregular and entirely unprecedented as a long-term assignment.”

“I’m content with my assignment, sir.”

Agent Beneke arched an eyebrow at her, as if gently contemplating how that could possibly be true. “You were very young when you met him, and you haven’t had much experience apart from your current assignment –”

“I had a year’s worth of experience, sir.”  She had even seen other men on occasion, mostly to placate Agent Beneke when she had been so tired and so grief-stricken that she would have done nearly anything to make him leave her alone.  Every one of those occasions had ended disastrously, including the time two years ago when she and Kanan had been fighting and she had gone out with another agent to make him jealous.  She had never gone home with any of them; she hadn’t even gotten through dinner with any of them.

“I suppose that’s true,” Agent Beneke conceded, “but you must admit that it was somewhat limited. I could arrange for you to be transferred to one of the other ISB regional headquarters, or even to Coruscant. Give it some thought.”  He activated the holoprojector over his desk and the city of Otoh Gunga sprang up in miniature.  “Let’s review your operation here.”

It was one of her rare solo operations from her year on Naboo, and Hera was glad that she had made herself take extensive notes at the time, since she had blanked out most of her miserable year onworld.

From the Otoh Gunga op they moved onto a review of the Onaxa fiasco, which had ultimately been a win for the Bureau but had unfortunately involved several senior officers and government officials being completely humiliated.  That had been one of the operations that had taken place shortly after Kanan had found out that Hera was ISB and not an independent contractor, so he had been as delighted about it as she was dismayed.  It also happened to be the operation they had been working on when she had gone to dinner with Agent Taraj and come back to the Ghost drunk and crying.  She and Kanan had been fighting for weeks; he had been furious with her for lying to him about working for the Empire, and she had been furious at him for not merely accepting it.  He had left when she had told him the truth; he had come back not long afterwards, but the fact that he had left at all had hung over them both.

When he had come back, he had asked her to leave with him, and it was the greatest regret of Hera’s life that she had refused.

“Hera?” Agent Beneke said, a note of reproach in his voice.

She raised her gaze to him. “I’m sorry, sir.  I didn’t sleep very well.”

She knew it was a mistake to say as soon as the words were out of her mouth.  Agent Beneke’s eyes narrowed, so slightly that anyone who didn’t know him well might not have noticed, and he said, “Did the Inquisitor keep you up?”

Hera wondered how he would react if she told him the truth, that she had lain in bed beside Kanan and thought about the woman in the other cabin, the woman with her face and her voice and the insignia of something that didn’t exist, not yet.  For that matter, she wondered what he would say if she told him yes, she had been having sex with Kanan most of the night, even if on this particular occasion it wasn’t the truth.

“No, sir,” she said instead. “I just don’t sleep well when I’m dirtside.”

“Perhaps you should see the Bureau psychologist about that, Hera,” Agent Beneke suggested.

“I’ll consider it, sir.”

She wondered if the other Hera Syndulla ever had to deal with this.  She couldn’t see it – the other woman was too confident for that – but it seemed inevitable that she must have.  With rare exception, humans were humans and her Rebel Alliance couldn’t be that different than the Empire except in goal.

A rebel alliance, part of her thought.  She had gone after plenty of rebels and in her experience, none of them wanted to cooperate with anyone else, which was why they were rebels in the first place.  The little she knew about the way her father ran Free Ryloth suggested that it only worked because he was the highest ranking person there; if another curial clan ever joined up – unlikely, given how much most of the curiates hated each other – then the fleet would probably self-destruct.  Unless something had changed drastically by the other Hera’s time, Hera couldn’t see any way that a rebel alliance could actually succeed.

She forced herself to concentrate on what Agent Beneke was saying, despite her earnest desire to be anywhere else right now and her sinking feeling that no matter how intently she listened, it ultimately wouldn’t matter.  After this, she wouldn’t be able to come back to the ISB even if she wanted to.  And she wasn’t sure she did.  She wasn’t sure she didn’t, either, but if she went through with this then the choice would be out of her hands.

She could also, she knew, tell him right now and then that would be out of her hands too.  But she couldn’t do that.  She just couldn’t.

She sat impatiently as Agent Beneke asked her a series of leading questions about Kanan’s involvement with the Onaxa operation and how he had interacted with the other ISB team on that operation.  Since he had shot one of them – not Agent Taraj – it was an exhausting conversation, even if Agent Beneke had to admit that it had been a justified shoot.  It just didn’t look good when a civilian contractor, which Kanan had been at the time, shot an Imperial officer.

What does it matter? she thought despairingly. I’m not going to stay.

The realization brought her up short.

She and Kanan had talked about this, or rather, they had talked around it.  They had discussed what they were going to do; they hadn’t discussed what it really meant and what the outcome was going to be.  But she was going.  She wasn’t coming back.

“Hera,” Agent Beneke said pointedly.

He must have asked her a question; Hera didn’t have the faintest idea what it was.  She was still staring at him when the comlink set into his desk beeped with an incoming transmission.

He touched the control. “Yes?”

Hera kept her expression neutral through the response; Agent Beneke said, “I’ll be down shortly,” and disconnected.  As he stood up, he looked down at her and said, “This will only take a few minutes. We will continue this, Hera.”

“Yes, sir.”  Hera folded her hands over her datapad, looking straight ahead.

“Stay here.”

He left the room. Hera sat where she was, silently counting off his progress across the bullpen floor until she was certain that he had reached the turbolifts, then got up and crossed quickly to the other side of his desk.  He hadn’t bothered to log out of his computer, though Hera knew his log-in information and had been prepared to use it.

Hera pulled the datacard she had brought with her out of her jacket and inserted it into the slot. She kept an eye on the door and the darkened windows as she brought up the files she was looking for and copied them over.  She was about to close out the files and disconnect when she saw a folder titled “SYNDULLA.”

It was probably nothing more than his notes on her, which Hera frankly didn’t want to see, but she copied them to the datacard anyway.  She closed out of everything she had opened, then disconnected her datacard and stuffed it back into her jacket.  It hadn’t taken more than two minutes.

Hera straightened upright. She looked around the office, taking it all in – a small, spare room whose only decorations were a handful of plaques and a single watercolor landscape of Naboo’s Lake Country.  Then she straightened her jacket and walked out of the room, clicking her comlink once as she went.

Markus looked up as she passed his desk. “Hera,” he said, surprised. “Are you leaving already?  I thought you –”

“We’ve got an op,” Hera said, surprised by how calm her voice was. “Orders just came in from Mustafar.”

He frowned, but even the ISB wouldn’t argue with the Inquisition.

“Could you tell Agent Beneke that I’m sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye?” Hera said after a moment’s hesitation.  It wasn’t a lie, not quite, and that surprised her too.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Markus said.  He started to stand, and then stopped, as if unsure what to do. “Hera, I – be careful.”

He didn’t add “with him,” so all Hera said was, “I always am,” before she left.  She didn’t look back.

*

Kanan met her on the Ghost’s ramp with a quick kiss and an arm around her waist.  Hera took a few moments to lean into the comforting curve of his shoulder before they went inside, breathing in the familiar scent of him.

She doesn’t have this, she thought, and the memory of what that had been like made her heart ache.  The idea of going on like that for years was too painful to contemplate.

“All right?” Kanan asked her quietly.

Hera nodded.  She leaned up to kiss him briefly, then said, “Did you get the transmission?”

“Yeah.”  He glanced up at Chopper, who had preceded them up the ramp, and added, “Nice job.”

Chopper waved one manipulator and made a dismissive noise, but Hera could tell he was pleased by the compliment.

They went up into the Ghost, closing up the ramp behind them.  Hera pulled at the front of her jacket, suddenly uncomfortable having it on, even though it wasn’t treason – not quite yet. They still had a few hours before then.

Kanan glanced at her, his expression understanding; he was in his uniform too, even though he hadn’t been wearing his leathers and armor when Hera had left that morning.

“Can you take us out of here?” Hera asked him once they were up in the cockpit.  As Kanan’s eyebrows climbed towards his hairline, since she seldom let him fly, she added, “I have to work on the credentials.”

“Yeah, of course,” Kanan said, though from his expression she could tell he knew she just didn’t want to be the one who left Naboo behind.  She had left the planet dozens of times before, but this was different. She didn’t know if she could bear watching, let alone doing it.

“Thanks.”  She left him and Chopper in the cockpit, stopping in the corridor as soon as the door had closed behind her.  She pressed her hands to her face , breathing hard, then started to strip off her gloves.  She had one hand out for her own door controls when something made her frown and look up.

She went down to the common room instead, and started in surprise to find the other Hera Syndulla sitting at the holotable, holding a mug between her hands.  She looked up as Hera came in.

“Oh,” Hera said.  She didn’t know why she was surprised; of course Kanan would have let her out.  She knew that he knew she hated being locked in anywhere.

“Hi,” the other Hera said.

Hera almost turned and walked out of the room again, but instead she said abruptly, “Are you afraid of the dark?”

The older woman blinked. “No.  Why?” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you?”

Hera nodded. “If Kanan’s not there, I have to sleep with a light on.”  Sometimes when he was there too, if she was having a particularly bad night; he had never commented on it or asked why.  She thought he probably guessed, and something about the way he had acted after he got back from Mustafar made her suspect he knew exactly why.

She glanced at the door she had come through, feeling the Ghost’s engines vibrate through the deck as Kanan started them up.  He wouldn’t be leaving the cockpit anytime soon.  She looked back at the other Hera and swallowed before saying, “When I was at the Spire – when I was in prison – they used to turn the lights off.  Or on. Not on the planet’s night cycle, it was just…random.  Sometimes not for very long.  Sometimes for – for a long time.”  She looked down at her hands, which even seven years later were still flecked with scars where she had beaten them bloody pounding at the door to her cell when it had gotten to be too much for her.

She could still measure out the walls of her cell in the dark; it had been a little smaller than her cabin was now.  On bad nights, when Kanan wasn’t there, she still walked the width of her cell, back and forth in her cabin or in the Ghost’s hold, turning invisible corners and skating around the steps that had led up to the door.  Once one of the Ghost’s air filters had broken and Hera had woken up wild with terror, because it had smelled exactly the same as it had back in the Spire.  Kanan had fixed it while Hera had curled up in a corner of her bunk, weeping as Chopper tried to comfort her.

She looked up at the other Hera’s stricken expression.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I just couldn’t remember if I was afraid of the dark before or not.”

“Hera –”  She stood up.

Hera left before she could come after her, hurrying back down the corridor to her cabin and catching herself on the wall as the Ghost lifted smoothly up from the docking bay.  She stumbled into her cabin, letting the door shut behind her and flattening one hand against the wall.  She was breathing hard, tears pricking at her eyes; she wasn’t sure why.

But she had a lot of practice doing work while on the verge of tears; she had gone through all of last year and most of her Academy days like that.  Swiping the back of her wrist across her eyes, Hera pushed away from the wall and dug the datacard out of the inside of her jacket.

*

Hera looked up as Kanan came into the common room.  For lack of anything else to do, she had been playing sabacc against herself, which was easier said than done since Sabine hadn’t fixed the buggy software yet and creatures would randomly disappear and reappear on opposite sides of the board.

Seeing him was still a shock.  She knew he wasn’t her Kanan – the age was a dead giveaway, even if the scars and black outfit hadn’t been – but it hurt to look at him.  She could tell that he knew it, too.

“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said.

Hera shut the sabacc game off. “Do you have a plan?” she asked.  She couldn’t shake her uneasy memory of what had happened the last time the Rebel Alliance had come to Scarif.  They still didn’t know what had happened down on the planet, and never would; everyone who could have told them had died there.  Many people who had never made it to the surface had died there.

He arched an eyebrow. “Did you think we didn’t?”

“Why do you think I asked?” Her Kanan would have had a plan. She might have had one, but it likely wouldn’t have been as good as his.

He smiled a little. “We do.” He glanced back as Hera – his Hera – came in behind him as if summoned.  Her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she had been crying, but she looked grimly determined.

“I hope you don’t mind wearing an Imperial uniform,” she said to Hera.

*

“Well, this is new,” Hera muttered a few minutes later, pulling uncomfortably at the hem of her borrowed uniform.  It was ISB field grays, and a little tight – she and the other Hera were almost but not quite the same size, though she thought the younger woman was actually broader in the shoulders, if smaller in the bust.  Well, she was an active field agent instead of a flag officer, and she hadn’t had a child.

Even these days it wasn’t uncommon for Alliance personnel to have to go undercover as Imperials, and most larger ships had a small collection of Imperial uniforms and armor just in case.  Hera, for fairly obvious reasons, had never done so.  When she was in the field now she was commanding from the deck of a starship, or on now rare occasions, in the cockpit; when she had been younger she had always had humans around who could believably take that role.  She had managed to avoid taking the dancing girl roles that Twi’leks tended to get relegated to when she was younger by virtue of never having to go on a mission where that was necessary; as a flag officer it was completely out of the question now.

She grimaced at her reflection in the mirror and began to wrap up her lekku, hating it immediately. Upper-caste Twi’lek women never covered up their lekku and usually left their other caste markings bare; Hera didn’t bother with the latter because when she had first been in the field she had been concerned about being recognized as a curiate Syndulla.  In the Alliance, not only did it not matter, no one would recognize their significance anyway.  Once off Ryloth, it wasn’t uncommon to see Twi’leks with decorative lekku markings; it would have taken a Ryloth native or a first generation colonist to recognize her markings as curial caste markings.  The other Hera obviously felt differently, though probably for different reasons.

Once her lekku were covered, she used makeup to subtly change the shape of her face, accentuating the slight differences between herself and the other Hera.  They would probably still be taken for sisters, but there was nothing to be done about that.

She stepped into the cockpit to a stream of familiar Binary obscenities.  Chopper swiveled his dome at her approach, his invective suddenly replaced by a low, startled sound.  The other Hera, who had been crouched in front of him, sat back on her heels and looked up at Hera.

“You’ll do,” she said, sounding unhappy about it.

Chopper chirped a cautious inquiry.  It was, Hera realized with surprise, the first time she had seen him since she had arrived.

“Yes, it’s me,” she told him. “Do you want to do a genetic test?”

He waved one of his manipulators dismissively, but the sound he made was distinctively taken aback. The younger Hera waved a hand in front of his optical processors. “Come on, you.  Your paint’s not dry yet.”

Hera gave him a second look. She had assumed that his black-and-red paint job was how he looked normally in this universe, but apparently not.

The door slid open behind her and Hera stepped out of the way so that Kanan could come in. She glanced at him, then did a double-take.

Even in his heavy leathers and black vambraces she had had trouble seeing him as an Inquisitor before. Now there was no question about it. He had added upper body armor, including pauldrons with the Imperial cog painted on, and his step was heavier; he was wearing blackened greaves that covered his legs from ankle to knee.  A black mask of some unfamiliar material concealed the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes visible.

The other Hera said, “I hate that.”

“Not as much as I do.” His voice was a little muffled. He reached up and unsealed the mask, wincing as little as he pulled it away from his face.  Hera realized abruptly that the scars she had seen there earlier exactly matched the outline of the mask, as if he had worn it until it had worn the skin raw.  “But it impresses the regs.”

“Hmmph.”  The other Hera stood up and kissed him. “You look like you’re coming to murder someone.”

“That’s the intended effect.”

“I know.”

Suddenly Hera realized that they were both completely serious.

Kanan flicked a glance at her, as if he had sensed her revelation.  He looked away, stepping past her to take the co-pilot’s seat.

He’s done it, Hera thought, her fists clenching and unclenching inside their black gloves.  He’s killed people for the Empire.  He’s walked into a room dressed just like this to do murder, and she was probably with him.

She didn’t know Inquisitors, but she knew how terrified Kanan had been after they had gotten him back from Tarkin’s star destroyer over Mustafar.  He had had nightmares for weeks – months – afterwards.  He had still been having them intermittently when they had gone to Malachor, which hadn’t replaced them so much as added something new to have nightmares about.  Hera did know Imperials; apart from personal experience with those still in the Imperial service, there were plenty of Imperial deserters in the Alliance ranks.  Kallus wasn’t the only former ISB officer, either, though he was the one she knew best. She had a pretty good idea of exactly what it took to succeed in the ISB and the other Hera had clearly done it.

She hadn’t been thinking of them as Imperials in more than name.

The other Hera glanced at her, her expression unreadable, then slid into the pilot’s chair.  Hera looked down and took the chair behind Kanan, the one that should have been Sabine’s.

Hera had always felt a certain amount of pity for the Imperials who had come over to the Alliance, though too much experience had kept her for feeling any for those who chose to stay with the Empire.  The Empire recruited heavily from worlds like Lothal and Tatooine, Outer Rim planets whose residents had few options to get out or make something of themselves, as well as from the lower levels of ecumenopoleis like Coruscant, where options were equally limited.  She remembered being that desperate to get offworld when she had been a teenager, and if she had been human – well, she wouldn’t have taken that option, not growing up as Cham Syndulla’s daughter, but she understood how it felt to do anything, anything, if it meant you could get away.  Those who came to the Alliance were the ones who understood that “anything” didn’t mean “everything.”

Hera had always thought that she would never be one of those people, even if she had had the option.

And Kanan –

She looked down at her hands rather than at the back of his head, breathing hard, and missed the transition from hyperspace to realspace.

“Welcome to Scarif,” Kanan said. “That is a lot of star destroyers.”

Hera straightened up, peering over his shoulder out the viewport.  “Not as many as the last time I was here,” she remarked.  The blue glow of the planetary shield was just barely visible; they had arrived on the day side of the planet.  She looked at the shield gate and shuddered.

“You’ve been here before?” the other Hera asked.

“I had more friends with me,” Hera said, then clarified, “An Alliance commando unit infiltrated the vaults to steal plans for the D – for an Imperial superweapon.  The rest of the Alliance fleet came to support them; it was our first major fleet action against the Empire.  I was with the fleet; it was my last action flying the Ghost, actually.”

“They don’t sound like they were very good commandos,” the other woman muttered.

“They got the information out.”  Hera’s mouth tightened.  She hoped this didn’t go the same way that had.  The Alliance would never know how Rogue One had died, just that they had, and so had everyone else on the planet’s surface.

She had heard their last transmission, the desperate plea to bring down the shield gate.  It wasn’t the only thing that haunted her dreams, not by a long shot, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t one of them.

The two Imperials exchanged a look Hera couldn’t read, then the girl leaned forward to touch the comm unit, “This is ISB/Inquisition transport Ghost, code ISB/INQ-972484, requesting permission to land.”

There was a long moment of silence, then the response came, “Ghost, you’re clear to land.  Landing pad 6.”

“Thank you.”

Hera supposed that no one questioned the ISB, or possibly the Inquisition; presumably the combination of the two was something that no one wanted to deal with for longer than they had to.  It was a pity that that information would be useless back home, since the Inquisition no longer existed.

She watched as they slid past star destroyers, TIE patrols, and transport vessels, the latter all making their slow approach to or from the shield gate.  The Ghost descended it slowly; Hera clenched her fists on the arms of her chair, thinking about the starfighters she had seen shattered against it when it had closed during the battle. She glanced up reflexively once they had passed it, even though that didn’t show her anything but the ceiling of the Ghost.

Scarif was pretty, she could tell from the viewport.  It would have made a nice vacation spot if it wasn’t for the Empire. She wondered what had been going through Tarkin’s head when he had picked it for the data center – the location, maybe, though there were dozens of other planets as conveniently placed.  Hera didn’t think she would ever see it as anything other than a killing ground. She watched the Citadel Tower slide past them as the Ghost circled to their assigned landing pad; the other Hera brought the ship down as gently as Hera herself would have done.

Kanan got to his feet, sliding his mask back on.  “Well,” he said, his voice cold, a killer’s voice, an Imperial Inquisitor’s voice, “here we go.”

[bubmyg]

(mostly) for him - myg

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre/warnings: lawyer!au, established relationship, fluff, humor, ft independent art contractor taehyung and yeontan (the most important feature)

word count: 2,735

summary: yoongi doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of a dog or taehyung asks you to dog sit yeontan for the weekend.

a/n: this takes place before “for us” (linked on my masterlist) and can be read as a prequel of sorts. “for us” does not need to be read to understand this but it’s nice in context :-)

The extra curt tone of Yoongi’s voice clipped on the end as his headache throbbed just underneath where he rubbed long fingers into the pain and the sound colliding plastic made when he misjudged hanging up the phone elicited another pointed throb to the surface. His second hand joined the first on his neck, threading together as his forehead hit his desk and if he weren’t hyper aware of any and all noises, he would have mistaken the tentative knock on his door for the sound of his skull dully thumping through the desk calendar.

“Uh...hey Mr. Min?”

He couldn’t even muster enough energy for formality, groaning to the dangle of the pink tie you’d secured around his neck that morning, “Yeah, Jeongguk?”

Four days into his internship meant the young intern still had flushed cheeks and magnified doe eyes when he popped into the office and Yoongi theorized they’d never go away, especially not when they only worsened, softening on some sort of edge of concern as he barely cracked the door to his boss slumped over. 

“Uh…” Yoongi threaded his fingers underneath his chin, propping himself up to squint at Jeongguk, the only way to suppress his headache enough to hear whatever he needed, “...there’s a man in the lobby for you and...he has a dog? Is that okay?”

“Did he give you a name?”

Jeongguk’s features squinted, “Uh, T-Taehyung I believe. I tried to tell him to leave the dog but—”

Even his headache wanted to flee at that name and it gave Yoongi the momentary ability to lift his head without wincing. He sighed instead, “He’s an old friend. Send him in. The dog too.”

If an incompetant investigation team paired with a tentative intern Yoongi incorrectly assumed could deal with them couldn’t make him want to rip each of his hairs out by the individual follicles, Kim Taehyung definitely could. 

Specifically when he waltzed through the closed office door without knocking with a frazzled Jeongguk on his heels, only to shut the door in the face of Jeongguk’s apologetic Hey! You were supposed to follow me!, and plop the equivalent to a living pom pom onto his desk. 

The dog seemed to study Yoongi, mirroring the inquisitive squint of the man before he let out a low growl, baring his teeth just long enough to let out the least intimidating yap! Yoongi had ever witnessed. 

Taehyung panicked nonetheless, swiping an arm underneath the dogs middle to drag him against his side like Yoongi had seen him haul blank canvas’ multiple times before. Yoongi passed his analyzing glare from the still vibrating dog to his owner, forcing his eyebrows not to lift into his hairline as he took in the state of his friend. 

Heavy brown jacket draped over his shoulders with his arms not pressed into the sleeves, baggy pants swishing around sandals strapped to his ankles, a white button down half secured across his broad chest, messy brown hair smeared into his eyelashes, and the geometric smile painted to his gums a sharp contrast to the uttered scolds he periodically mouthed in between the dog’s pulsing vibrations. 

A streak of red acrylic paint bubbled on the side of his neck and Yoongi unintentionally zeroed in on it, eyebrows crinkling at that instead of the rest. 

“New project?” Yoongi motioned to the red glob, “I’m still pretty rusty on copyright law so—”

“What?” Taehyung’s smile erased for comical confusion, almost like a cartoon character as he dragged the dog aside carelessly to press the sanction of his index and middle finger into the glob. He inspected it with an almost giddy realization, shaking his head as the smile returned and he wiped the glob across the front buttons of his shirt, “Oh, no. I’m not sure where that’s from.”

How do you not know? “Right…” Yoongi leaned back in his chair, elbow on the arm of the chair to press his cheek into his palm, “Take a seat—” When Taehyung flopped with dog balanced carefully across his thighs, he continued, “—what brings you here?”

“What? I can’t just come to visit an old friend?”

Yoongi shook his head, rutting his chin further into his palm, “No, you’re always welcome here or in my home. I just figured—”

“But I do need something,” Taehyung was still grinning, unapologetic and charming, “...I have an unexpected trip this weekend. I have to go quote some work for a new aviation museum a couple towns over. Will probably take the whole weekend.”

“Need me to get your mail?” Yoongi thought to Taehyung’s mailbox, an oddly charming spiral that curled upward out of the soil like a screw with a tiny, birdhouse like structure balanced on top. 

“Nah, if someone wants to steal and pay my bills for me, they can. The hotel I’m at doesn’t allow dogs, so—” The younger man again hooked an arm underneath the dog, plopping him down on top of the desk. It bared its teeth but didn’t bark and Yoongi held up a silent hand in surrender, “—I need you to watch him for me.”

Yoongi was suddenly pulled from studying the seeming eyebrows embedded into the dog’s fur, ones that were silently judging the gape that suddenly overtook his lips. “You...I...you want me to what?” 

“Dog sit. Come on, it won’t be that bad. Tannie is extremely well behaved.”

On cue, the dog yapped. Louder than before. Twice.

“A-actually,” Yoongi sat a bit straighter in his chair to bullshit properly, “My intern, the one who brought you in. I hear he loves dogs. He lives alone on his campus so like, maybe ask him?—”

Taehyung laughed, “Why would I want a stranger to take care of him? No, it has to be you.”

Yoongi felt his resolve fading the higher Taehyung’s smile dimpled into his cheeks, gaze falling away from his friend to pat affectionately down the dog’s spine. His fluffy tail wagged once then twice, spinning a delighted circle a top the desk to stretch his tongue for Taehyung’s willing hand. 

“You...can’t find anyone else? You’re sure?”

“Nope!”

“I probably need to call—”

“Oh your lovely wife? Tell her hi for me, by the way,” Taehyung seemed to muse mostly to himself as he shifted in his chair, “She’ll love him. I know it. And it’s only for a few days—”

“Only for the weekend?”

“Only for the weekend. Not even forty-eight hours. I’ll be back Sunday before noon.”

“...if you say so—”

Taehyung barely waited another syllable, shooting up from the chair to reach the door in one long stride. “Great! I had your intern go to get something from my car for me so—”

Yoongi started to defend Jeongguk, that he only answered to him and Taehyung didn’t have that kind of authority, when the gangly college student waddled around the corner with a giant blue tub clutched in white knuckles. 

“Is this that tub you wanted, Mr. Kim?”

“Yes, perfect!”

“You can just call him Taehyung, Jeongguk, that’s—”

Jeongguk plopped the plastic to the ground below his feet, long ways across the hall and huffed, dabbing at some of the sweat in his neatly parted fringe while Taehyung beamed. “It should all be in here. Food, some toys, his bed—”

Yoongi eyed the industrial sized bag of food Taehyung dragged out from underneath a labrador sized bed and a squeaky toy shaped like a horse, then eyed the dog on his desk, his long muzzle poked into Yoongi’s pen jar. 

“...you said he’s...a Pomeranian? Right?”

Translation: He won’t sprout into a puffy Great Dane like one of those spongy toy dinosaurs you put into glasses of water overnight, will he?

Yoongi slumped into the seat when the garage door rumbled to a stop, closed and fully enveloping the garage in the eerie light provided by the illuminated timer hanging above the mechanics that opened and closed the technology. His head lulled, eyeing Yeontan where he sat gracefully in the passenger seat, head tilted at a neon orange ladder hanging from a hook on the front wall of the garage. 

He pocketed his keys, fumbling his phone into his pocket as well before dragging the dog underneath his arm like he’d seen Taehyung do without much struggle. 

“This is your first test,” Yoongi told the dog at a grumble as he swung cracking joints out of his SUV, “Actually, our first test. Hope you like Lexus SUV seat reclining, we may be sleeping out here—”

Yoongi tried to twist the door shut without alerting you of his presence but your sweet voice rang down the staircase, “Hi, bub!” and he was already entirely done for seventeen different reasons. 

He adjusted the dog in his grip, peeled his shoes off by the ankle because he figured you scolding him for some buffable scuffs was the least of his worries, and then he called back, an octave lower than normal and unintentionally trembling on the end, “Hey!”

He watched you take the stairs two at a time, concern written all over your features and your fingers struggling at your necklace clasp (He’d have to help you, anyway. He always did) but you paused halfway through your descent and your sentence, changing your inquiry, “Hey, are you okay—wait is that a dog?”

Yoongi presented Yeontan like Simba in the Circle of Life sequence. “Taehyung’s dog,” He corrected, assured more than anything. 

You took the rest of the stairs at a normal speed and then did Yoongi register you only had one half soled sock on too. Cute. “Let me guess,” You were ranting, “He showed up at the office because he panicked about some last minute contracting appointment he had somewhere out of town and needed a sitter and you and your way too big heart was the first person he thought of.”

Yoongi blinked at you as you materialized in front of him, fingers reaching out to scratch at the dog’s ears. “Yes. Actually, that’s exactly what happened.”

“That’s Taehyung for you,” Yoongi read the smile on your features as genuine but he still swayed, uneasy with your lips on his chin, “What’s his name?”

“Yeontan,” Yoongi blinked into the kiss you pressed to his lips and he steadied mostly himself with a hand on your hip, “You’re not mad?”

“No?” You pulled the dog into your arms, letting him lick a stripe to your nose that you giggled into and Yoongi melted even if he’d witnessed the dog take a shit on the newly planted daffodils outside the office without so much as blinking, “I know how Tae is.”

“He’s a good friend he’s just…”

“Taehyung,” You finished for Yoongi, cradling the dog against your chest like a baby, “He’s just Taehyung.”

“Right.”

You considered the dog for another few passing moments, rocking him between the sway on your feet and then you panicked, “Do we need to get him food? I’ll run to the store—”

“No, actually Taehyung brought food with him...like enough for seven of a dog his size. You don’t think he’s punking us and is gonna swap this little guy out for a horse in the middle of the night, do you?...”

“Maybe not a horse—” You said ten hours later at three in the morning with two torn couch cushions and a stained rug and patio, “—but maybe a demon.”

Yoongi was afraid to shift higher on the bed to wrap an arm around your shoulders even if his legs were bare from the covers and he was freezing in fear that he’d wake said demon from his slumber at the foot of the bed. His hair stuck out on one side over his ears, mud crusted underneath his fingernails where he’d tripped in pursuit of the escaped creature down their cul de sac, and nail rips in his favorite university basketball t-shirt. 

“Satan reincarnate,” Yoongi breathed with finality as it raised it’s tiny head and whined. 

“No,” You moved, catching the dog in gentle fingers when he tried to skitter out the cracked door of the bedroom. Your bottom lip pouted, stroking a gentle finger behind the dog’s ear, “He misses Tae…”

Yoongi’s features scrunched, “Who would miss him?”

You settled back into his embrace that he stretched for you, still cradling the dog’s head to your chest, “Shush. Remember that one day conference I attended for work and you called me crying—”

“I wasn’t crying—”

“It’s like that,” You kissed the top of the dog’s trembling head instead of the cheek Yoongi presented for you. “He’s just sad and needs some love, that’s all.”

Yoongi held his neck in an awkward position until you awarded him with a peck on the cheek. “What about me?”

You rolled your eyes, jostling the slumbering creature in your arm to fit your fingers into the soft hairs at Yoongi’s scalp and cooed just to hear him whine, “Oh, come here—”

The dog incident rate skyrocketed at night and then dipped drastically low during the day, a gradual decrease until it met and rested at zero, and Yoongi virtually forgot about Yeontan’s presence for various durations throughout the day. It was his emergence from a shower well into the Saturday evening hours that made it worth it, his heart melting into the stumble of his feet halfway down the staircase when he caught sight of you curled up on the corner of the couch. 

He knew you were awake only by your phone resting in your hand, your other fingers preoccupied with scrunching through Yeontan’s fur, lips puckering to place periodic pecks to the space between his flicking ears. 

Yoongi dropped a knee into the couch, the first step in wrapping his stature around you, arms threading around your tummy to thread at your navel and squeeze, chin dropping to your shoulder. He wasn’t intrigued by the contents on your phone but instead the tiny, slumbering creature with his nose buried between your thighs. He eyed the flex of your fingers, in, out, scratching like you would in his scalp and an endearing sigh relaxed his further into the crook of your neck, lips turning to mouth at the sensitive skin there. 

“Maybe we should get a pet of our own…”

You were careful not to wake the dog as you tossed your phone aside, turning your head to allow him better access to your throat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. A dog, specifically.”

“I’d like that.”

“You would?” Yoongi nuzzled the spot underneath your ear, “I haven’t had a dog since I was younger…”

Silently, you shifted, gently placing Yeontan into Yoongi’s lap and he subconsciously picked up where you left off in mindless petting. “Oh yeah?” You curled into his side, tucked into his chest. 

“Yeah. His name was Tubby,” His cheeks heated a bit even without a reaction from you, “You know. Like from the Teletubbies…”

You nudged gentle fingers up underneath Yeontan and the hem of Yoongi’s crewneck, applying gentle, sweeping rubs to his tummy. “That’s cute, Yoons.”

Yoongi grunted in embarrassment, “We could name our dog something different. More refined.” 

“Oh yeah?” You repeated the rhetorical inquiry in the same, hopelessly endeared tone, “Our dog?” 

He hummed a mindless tune for a few moments before the gradual shake of his head grew in volume, “No, nevermind. We couldn’t have a dog, not right now. We’re both too busy. It’s not plausible…”

“I think we could do it.”

“Maybe…” You startled when Yoongi stood, dog in tow as his face scrunched while his spine stretched, “I don’t know. It’d be nice but...yeah. I don’t know.”

You watched Yoongi’s slow waddle away from you, again hopelessly enamored by the dip of his head as he clearly tried to converse with the half asleep puppy until you thought to call, “Hey, where are you going?”

“He needs to go outside one more time before bed!”

You pretended not to hear the high pitched shriek followed by low grumbles and the spray of the hose on the kitchen sink. He returned without the dog, shoulders slumped and a ranting pout screwed to his lips as he muttered something you couldn’t hear. 

“...alright?”

“If we do get a dog, can we train it not to shit right outside the door—”

[swiftlymoniquesblog]

You and Me at Christmas Time Tom Holland x Reader

A/N: Merry Christmas friends! This was based on this request by my dear friend @tloveswriting:  Heya friend! I hope your week is treating you well! I was in class and thinking about your Tom Holland story and I was wondering if I could request a Tom Holland one? If so, I would love to see a Tom x Reader where they are in a secret relationship because shes average (lol I'm original... not) but he doesn't want to be any more or honestly anything fluffy.

It’s not exactly what she asked for but I incorporated the holiday with the prompt of Tom and the reader in a secret relationship. Hope y’all are having a wonderful holiday and I’m so grateful for all of you! -Monique

Y/S = Your State

Word Count: 2179

Warnings: Angst, lying, language, secret relationship (is that a warning?) lots of fluff mostly in the end

Masterlist |Prompt List

                                                    December 15th

                                                      Tom’s POV

“And here comes superstar Tom Holland, star of this movie! At only twenty-three years old, he is the biggest up-and-coming actor of the twenty-first century! And, with friends like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, he has quite the future ahead of him! Tom, tell us about your new movie?”

Another interviewer asked me about my “latest” movie, shoving a microphone in my face during the process, as we stood on the red carpet for the premiere. You think with all the times I’ve done premieres, either my own or others, I’d be cool with all the same inane questions, but honestly, I get tired of it. There are aspects of my life I don’t get to show anyone and I wish I could talk about the things that excite me in my real life. I mean, everyone gets to see a lot of my life from interviews and social media; I really want my fans to know me. But again, I can’t always be completely open.

“So, tell us, are you dating anyone? You know, for all the single ladies out there?” The interviewer is super cheesy, overly energetic, and a tad grotesque, but he managed to make me blush.

“Oh uh, no, I’m single.” I lie once again. Over and over, interview after interview, I can’t tell the world about the most amazing girl that I happen to be dating, because she is shy and doesn’t want to be in the spotlight. So here we are, six months into our relationship, about to celebrate Christmas, and I don’t get to take her out to any parties, any clubs, movies, charity events; nothing. I just want to show her off to the world because she is mine and I adore her and want everyone to know that I am off the market and hopefully, for a very long time.

                                                  Reader’s POV

I watch as my boyfriend of six months lies with ease about our relationship. It was my idea to keep our relationship quiet but now, I wonder if I made the right decision. Sure, it’s nice having my privacy and if we were out in the open with it, I would lose that forever, but what’s the alternative? I can’t give any kind of PDA to the man I have fallen so madly in love within such a short time. If we do go out, he’s always in some kind of disguise and it’s horrible cause people look at me like I’m crazy for dating such a strange-looking man. In another world, Tom wouldn’t be famous, and we could go anywhere at any time and not have to worry about getting recognized.

“Y/N, let’s go!! Mandatory tree decorating, now!!!” My best friend, Alex, calls for me in the living room of the small apartment we shared. Christmas was always a big deal for the two of us and now that I’m dating Tom, this year was more important to me than ever.

“Coming!” I call back to her, grabbing my box of decorations I’ve inherited from my parents and grandparents, that we were going to look through and decide what was going to be put up. I step out of my room and walk down the hall to see Alex struggle with putting the star on the top of the tree.

I chuckle as I watch her, not sure why she opts to struggle all the time. “You do know we have a step-stool for this kind of thing, right?” I remind her for the third year in a row.

“I know but it’s not as satisfying as if I did it myself.” She says, right as she places the star on the top.

I shake my head and start untangling the red garland that we wrap around the white Christmas tree. Holiday music is playing from the Spotify playlist I made specifically for Christmas as we stop occasionally to sip our hot chocolate.

“So, when is Tom coming over?” Alex asks, glancing around the backside of the tree, where she hung ornaments.

“He flies in on the 22nd and stays until New Year’s Day.” I say, smiling to myself.

“He’s not going to see his family this year?” Alex asks, shocked to learn that Tom will be with me for the entire holiday week.

“No, actually this was his Mom’s idea. She really likes me and suggested we spend the holiday together, which is odd because I’ve only video chatted with her.”

“You’ve never met his parents?!”

“I haven’t yet. They’re back in London and I’m here and with my schedule and Tom’s filming schedules always fluctuating, we haven’t found any common time where we can go and meet in person.”

“Then how are you and Tom getting to spend the holiday together? You’re working up until Christmas day!”

“Well that’s the thing, he says he doesn’t mind just playing tourist while I work. He said he might sneak out to see me, take me to lunch, or breakfast depending on my shift, and then take me home; some days.”

“Are you sure he’s real? Like, I’ve never dated a guy who was that patient with my work schedule.”

“I know, he’s something else, but one hundred percent real. I’m really lucky to have him.”

                                                          December 22nd

                                                                        Tom’s POV

Finally, after a fifteen-hour flight, I landed in (Y/S) and told my driver the address to Y/N’s house. I was nervous, to say the least. My knee was bouncing uncontrollably as I wondered about celebrating the holidays with my girlfriend, getting to do cute couple things, all while keeping our secret. The drive wasn’t too long but the anticipation inside me made it feel much, much longer. I scroll through my social media accounts, sending out a tweet to my fans, just to let them know what I’m up to.

@tomholland13: Heading somewhere very special for Christmas this year. Wonder if my mates think I’ve been good this year….?

“Sir? We’re here.” The driver says to me and my heart speed up.

Here we go big boy, you got this. This is your girlfriend, whom you love more than anything, and she’s invited you to spend Christmas with her and her roommate, despite she’s having to work so much. You love her, you’ll do anything for her.

I jump out of the car, grab my backpack and fling it over my shoulder, and walk up three flights of stairs until I reach apartment 320. I reach up to knock on the door but before my hand even touches the door, it opens to reveal y/n, looking utterly beautiful in a Christmas shirt that read “What The Elf?” in sequences.

“Hi.” She says, with a big smile.

“Hi.” I breathe out, still not believing she’s mine.”

I rock on the balls of my feet and wonder if she was going to invite me inside or were we going to stand out here.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake y/n, let the boy in!” A voice calls from inside the apartment; her roommate I’m assuming.

“R-right, come in.” Y/N says, stepping to the side and letting me walk in, her following close behind me.

“Wow, this is a great place,” I say, sitting my backpack down against the front door before I look up, meeting her eyes. No words were spoken but I knew what she was thinking. Before I knew it, she was quickly coming towards me as she flung her arms around my shoulders; mine snaking around her back.

“I missed you, baby girl,” I whisper to her as she buries her face into my shoulder.

“I missed you, too.” She answers but is muffled by my shirt. “I’m so glad you’re here! Here, I’ll show you my room where you can keep all your stuff.”

She takes my hand and we walk to her room, where I throw my bag once again before I tackle her and we both fall onto her bed; her squeal and giggles fill the room. I keep her in my arms as my fingers dig into her sides, causing her to erupt into very loud cackling and a few snorts here and there. When I finally let her go, she hides her face. I chuckle at her and take her hands, just for her to hide her face again.

“Why are you hiding, silly girl?” I ask her, wondering why she feels she needs to hide from me.

“Because I cackle really loud and I snort and it’s so unattractive!” She groans, throwing her face in her pillows.

“I happen to find it very adorable and very, very attractive,” I say, laying on my stomach in a similar fashion to her.

“Really?” She asks, rolling over to face me.

“Yup. Everything you do is adorable. Why else do you think I asked you to be my girlfriend? I knew I wanted to make you smile and laugh for a long time so here we are.”

She smiles at me and moves closer to me, wrapping her arm around me and snuggles into my chest.

I kiss her hair and hide my face there for some time and soon enough, we’re both asleep.

                                                December 25th

                                                 Reader’s POV

With all the craziness from working retail around the holidays, I’m glad to have today off. I wake up to see that Tom was already awake, making breakfast for Alex and me. I walk over to him as he was working on the stove, and wrap my arms around his middle and snuggle into his back.

“Good morning, beautiful,” He says, rubbing my arms and pinching my waist affectionately.

“Good morning. Can I help?” I ask, peering over his shoulder to check out the food he was making.

“Nope, you’re too much of a distraction but, I do have an idea for something after breakfast.” He says, wiggling his way out of my grasp and I pout at the sudden coolness that he left behind.

After we eat and open presents, he asks me to get dressed in my best Christmas outfit and meet him back by the tree. I find my best Christmas dress and do my makeup before meeting Tom by the tree to find him wearing a dress shirt and slacks.

“What’s going on?” I ask, walking over to his side as he wraps his arm around my shoulder.

“I think it’s time we tell the truth. Being here with you these last few days, I don’t want to keep this quiet anymore; I have to brag about how amazing you are. And I can’t do that if people don’t think I have a girlfriend. I know you’re scared, I am too, but we can get through this together. You told me that you don’t want to go public because you think you’re “average” compared to me, but that’s not true at all. In fact, if anyone is average, it’s me. You’re incredible; you work so hard and you love everyone even if they don’t deserve it and I….”

He stops to pull me in front of him, making sure I can see him when he speaks up.

“I love you, Y/N.” He says, looking down at me with his big brown eyes that make anyone turn to mush.

“You do?” I ask.

“I do, I love you 3000.” He quotes Tony Stark from the last Avengers movie to me before he moves closer to push his lips onto mine. I instantly react, standing on my tip-toes to reach him, arms around his neck as I kiss him back. This was the first time he told me he loved me and with that kiss, I knew it was time.

“I love you too, Tom. It’s time.” He smiles and kisses me once again, before grabbing his phone and opens Instagram.

“Hey everyone, Tom Holland here, and I wanted to go live to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. You know, this year has been incredible for me. I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool things and be a part of some really great projects and meet some amazing people. But one person stands out to me more than anyone else. We met six months ago and we’ve been dating ever since. Yes, I am dating someone, and I know it’s a surprise to you guys but we wanted to keep our privacy. But now, we’ve decided to come out with our relationship. I’d like to introduce you guys to Y/N. I hope everyone can respect our privacy to a point but we understand that not all the time can we be let alone. We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and we will see you all soon, bye!!!”

I was glad when the video was over but surprisingly gladder that we told the truth about our relationship and we don’t have to hide anymore.

“Best Christmas if you ask me,” I say to Tom, who just smiles at me and kisses my head.

“Me too. Merry Christmas, baby.”

“Merry Christmas, Tom.”

Tag list: @tloveswriting @simpleboox @juju-la-tortue @fandom-princess-forevermore @forever-trapped-in-my-dreams @marvelfansworld @grace15ella​ @damn-stark

[tlhnetwork]

the last hours by cassandra clare : a complete compilation of snippets released as of 19 feb 19

reminder that snippets are tentative and can be misleading, it’s all up to interpretation. i have ordered the snippets, some are all from chain of gold as far as i guessed / can tell from cassie’s tags and have some sort of sequence, others are most likely from chain of gold too. some are from cassie’s pinterest so they might just be ideas. i will update this post at least once a month, also depending on whether new snippets have been released. 

WILL, JEM, TESSA & JAMES ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Will had been sitting on the floor, the rug bunched up under his feet, with his back against Tessa’s legs. He looked up when Jem came in, and Jem, in his Silent Brother robes, went over to Will and sat down beside him. He drew Will’s head against his shoulder, and Will held the front of Jem’s robes in his fists and he cried. It was the first time it had ever occurred to James that his father might cry about anything.

SHADOWHUNTERS FOUR

They were inseperable.

MATTHEW

"What's that little smile of yours?" Matthew inquired. "You look as if you're about to laugh."

UNKNOWN BOY & MATTHEW

He yanked him downward, and in a moment they were rolling on the carpet like puppies, Matthew laughing uncontrollably...

SEMI-UNIDENTIFIED SNIPPET ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

He took a deep breath, and crossed the floor of blades and constellations to the other boy’s side. He stood at the foot of the stairs, looking down.

“But of course,” he said, very softly, “your sentiments are reciprocated.”

He stooped over him, tilting his chin up. Their lips met. The other boy made a soft sound, almost like surrender, stretching under his body. He slid an arm around his neck and pulled him down onto the stairs.

TESSA & WILL

"Will." Tessa sank down beside him on the bed. "There is no war."

MATTHEW

"A lapidary phrase is one that is worth carving into stone," said Matthew, "and preserving forever — a wise saying such as we are dust and shadows, or alternately, any words that come out of my mouth."

JAMES

"That's because you’re drunk," said James. They were both sprawled at the same round table in an upper room of the Devil Tavern on Fleet Street.

MATTHEW

"I think too much and I drink too much," said Matthew, "that's my problem."

MATTHEW talking to JAMES

"Please recall that I am the pale neurasthenic one and you are the dark brooding one. It is tedious when you mix up our roles."

MATTHEW & JAMES

Matthew held out his hands. “Pax,” he said, wheedlingly. “Let it be peace between us. You can pour the rest of the port* on my head.”

James’ mouth curved up into a smile. It was impossible to stay angry with Matthew. It was almost impossible to get angry at Matthew.

* as it turns out, a definition of ‘port’ is a strong, sweet dark red (occasionally brown or white) fortified wine, originally from Portugal, typically drunk as a dessert wine. that’s how I made the connection between these snippets and arranged them so. it’s not confirmed.

WILL & LUCIE ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

“What if Cordelia has changed her mind, and says she will not have a minx like you?”

“She would never!” Lucie was outraged.

“No,” Will agreed. “She would not. As far as I am concerned, you shall perform the ceremony as soon as you please. All I want is for you and Cordelia to live a long and happy life, and never be parted.”

CECILY ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

"I am pleased - it is high time I think more girls became parabatai with each other," said Cecily.

WILL & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

“Cordelia Carstairs,” Will said, after greeting her mother. “How pretty you’ve become.”

Cordelia beamed. If Will thought she was pretty, perhaps his son thought so, too. Of course Will was entirely prejudiced toward all things Carstairs. He even thought Alastair was perfect (and, possibly, also pretty.)

LUCIE

The Beautiful Cordelia was a novel that Lucie had begun when she was twelve.

“THE BEAUTIFUL CORDELIA” LUCIE & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Cordelia glanced over her shoulder. “Is it — I mean, I wish to chat alone with you, too, but are we being dreadfully rude asking your brother to walk behind us?”

“Not a bit,” Lucie assured her. “Look at him. He’s quite distracted, reading.”

And he was. James had a book out and was calmly reading while he walked. Though he seemed entirely caught up in whatever he was perusing, he nevertheless skirted oncoming passers-by, the occasional rock or fallen branch, and once even a small boy holding a hoop, with admirable grace. Cordelia suspected that if she had tried such a stunt, she would have crashed into a tree.

“You’re so lucky,” Cordelia said, wistfully, still looking over her shoulder at James.

“Goodness me, why?” Lucie looked at her with wide eyes. Where James’ eyes were amber, Lucie’s were a pretty pale blue, a shade lighter than her father’s. The famous dark blue Herondale eyes had gone to Will’s sister’s children.

Cordelia’s head snapped back around. “Oh, because —“ Because you get to spend time with James every day? She doubted Lucie thought that was any special gift; one didn’t, when it was one’s family. “He’s such a good older brother. If I’d asked Alastair to walk ten paces behind me in a park he would have made sure to stick by my side the entire time just to be annoying.”

“Pfft!” Lucie exhaled. “Of course I adore Jamie but he’s been dreadful lately, ever since he fell in love.”

She might as well have dropped an incendiary device on Cordelia’s head. Everything seemed to fly apart around her. “He’s what?”

“Fallen in love,” Lucie repeated, with the look of someone enjoying imparting a bit of gossip. “Oh, he won’t say with who, of course, because it’s Jamie and he never tells us anything. But Father’s diagnosed him and he says it’s definitely love.”

“You make it sound like consumption.” Cordelia’s head was whirling with dismay. James in love? With who? The look he had given her when she stepped down from the carriage, perhaps she had imagined that?

“Well, it is a bit, isn’t it? He gets all pale and moody and stares off out of windows like Keats.”

“Did Keats stare out of windows? I don’t recall hearing that.”

Lucie plowed on, undeterred by the question of whether England’s foremost romantic poet did or did not stare out of windows. “He won’t say anything to anyone but Matthew, and Matthew is a tomb where James is concerned. I heard a bit of their conversation once by accident, though —“

“Accident?” Cordelia raised an eyebrow.

“I may have been hiding beneath a table,” said Lucie, with dignity. “But it was only because I had lost an earring and was looking for it.”

Cordelia suppressed a smile. “Go on.”

“He is definitely in love, and Matthew definitely thinks he is being foolish. He does not like her.“

CORDELIA, LUCIE & MATTHEW ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Cordelia clutched Lucie’s hand as they jolted through the streets in the Carstairs’ carriage, surrounded by the blurred traffic of omnibuses, motorcars, and pedestrians. Advertisements whirled past. THE HORSESHOE HOTEL. THREE GUINEA STOUT. NEW PALACE STEAMERS. Signs advertising tailors and fishmongers, hair tonic and cheap printing.

Matthew, sitting across from them on the upholstered carriage seat, was muttering and swearing to himself, his hair sticking out madly.

“Hidebound,” he muttered. “Weasels.”

“What?” said Lucie.

“I think he said hidebound weasels,” said Cordelia. “But who do you mean, Matthew? Are you angry at us?”

Matthew flung himself sideways so his long legs were pulled up on the bench seat in front of him, and his profile was presented to Lucie and Cordelia. It was a fine profile: he was much more delicate-featured than his brother, who had a broad, strong face. Matthew had a face that looked as if it had been meant to be painted on china.

“Of course not,” he said. “It’s just appalling how they all treat James.” He glanced at Cordelia, and then at Lucie. “She knows, doesn’t she?”

JAMES, TESSA & WILL ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

James could see his mother moving like an anxious pale star among the guests in her lilac dress, greeting each of them warmly, welcoming them to her home. She had not glamoured herself to look her husband’s age for the evening, and she appeared enormously young, though her hair was done up like a gracious older woman’s, not a girl’s. When Will materialized out of the crowd and came to put his arm around Tessa, smiling down at her, the gray at his temples flashed like silver. James looked away; he loved his parents for being extraordinary, but sometimes he also hated them for the same thing.

JAMES & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

James and Matthew separated, Matthew to dance with Lucie, and James to speak to his parents. Cordelia saw them glance over toward her and looked away quickly; still, she was not at all surprised when James appeared a moment later in front of her, flashing a smile at his aunt and uncle.

“Miss Carstairs,” he said, with a slight bow in Cordelia’s direction. “Would you favor me with this dance?”

“It’s a waltz,” said Cordelia’s mother, before Cordelia could speak. “My daughter does not know how to waltz.”

Cordelia bit her lip. She certainly knew how to dance: her mother had engaged an expert instructor to teach her the quadrille and the lancer, the stately minuet and the cotilion. But the waltz was a seductive dance, one where you could feel your partner’s body against yours, scandalous when it had first become popular.

She very much wanted to waltz with James.

JAMES & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

"Who's the boy tripping over his own feet?" Cordelia asked as the boy in question, a slender, ink-stained young man with spectacles and tousled brown curls, nearly careened into Lucie and Matthew.

"That's Christopher Lightwood. My cousin. Alas, Christopher is far more at home with beakers and test tubes than he is with female company. Let's just hope he doesn’t pitch poor Rosamund Townsend into the refreshment table."

"Is he in love with her?"

"Lord, no, barely knows her," said James. "Charles and Ariadne* are engaged, and Barbara Lightwood has an understanding with George** Hayward. Beyond that, I'm not sure I can think of any romances brewing in our set. Though having you and Alastair here might bring us some excitement, Daisy."

Her heart leaped. "I didn't realize you remembered that old nickname."

"What, Daisy?” He was holding her close as they danced: she could feel the heat of him all up and down her front, making her prickle all over. "Of course I remember it. I gave it to you. I hope you don't intend me to stop using it."

"Of course not. I like it." She forced herself not to move her gaze from his. Goodness, his eyes were startling up close. They were the color of golden syrup, almost shocking against the black of his pupils. She had heard the whispers, knew people found his eyes odd and alien, a sign of his difference. She thought they were lovely: the color of fire and gold, the way she imagined the heart of the sun. "Though I don't think it suits me. Daisy sounds like a pretty little girl in hair ribbons."

"Well," he said. "You are at least -"

He broke off. She heard the click as he swallowed: he was looking past her, at someone who had just come into the room. Cordelia followed his glance, and saw a tall woman, thin as a scarecrow and dressed in the black of mourning, with gray-streaked auburn hair done in the style of decades ago piled on her head. Tessa was hurrying toward her, a concerned look on her face. Will was following, and goodness, what did they both look so worried about?

As Tessa reached her, the woman stepped aside, revealing the girl who had been standing behind her. A girl, dressed all in ivory, with a soft waterfall of white-gold curls gathered back from her face. The girl moved forward gracefully to greet Tessa and Will, and as she did so, James dropped Cordelia's hands.

They were no longer dancing. Cordelia stood, frozen in confusion, as James turned away from her without a word and strode across the room toward the girl.

* in the original snippet, her name was Daphne, it’s been changed to Ariadne, confirmed.

** see next snippet

BARBARA & THOMAS ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Barbara patted Thomas, as if his brawny arm was a small boy’s head. “I was merely anxious about you, Tommy. Surely you are not vexed.”

Thomas’s brows were drawn sharply together, making his amiable countenance dark for the briefest interval. Then he sighed, drew his sister toward him in the circle of his arm, and stooped to press a kiss upon her brow.

“No, Babs,” he said. “Of course I am not vexed. Can you spare your brother a dance, though I know Oliver** will be loath to part with you? I will take care not to be clumsy.”  

** unsure if George’s name has been changed to Oliver or if they are even the same person.

THOMAS, CHRISTOPHER & GRACE ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

“Christopher,” said Thomas. “Would you take James away immediately and show him an interesting scientific experiment?”

Christopher frowned. “Which one?”

“Any one at all!” said Thomas. “I will escort the ladies home.”

Christopher’s brow cleared. “Ah, I understand perfectly. This is what Matthew said we were to do, about not letting James out of our sight and above all else keeping him away from…”

He trailed off, gazing at Grace with distant alarm.

GRACE

Be careful what you say to me, Grace told him. There is nothing I cannot make you do.

[ popularly assumed to be JAMES talking to GRACE ]

"That was vile, what you made me do, and vile that you made me do it."

THOMAS & LUCIE ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Apprehension stole across Thomas’s face. “Lucie, you must not challenge Grace to a duel.”

“We shall see where the night takes us,” Lucie declared.

“Oh good,” said Thomas. “I see you intend to Herondale to the fullest.”

JAMES

Make a wish, Jamie

JAMES

"Stop!" James cried. He felt as if he were drowning. He had always been shy...

JAMES & BARBARA

The world had gone monochrome. James saw broken, black walls, a splintered floor, and dust that glittered like dull jewels scattered across the place where Barbara had fallen.

SHADOWHUNTERS FOUR ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

James cried out. Lightning seemed to fork behind his vision, and suddenly he was back in Regent’s Park, kneeling on the grass. There was a firm grip on his shoulders. “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,” said an urgent voice, and James — his breath tearing in and out of his chest — tried to focus on what was in front of him.

Matthew.

Everything was blurred in that moment but Matthew’s face, his green eyes wide and dark and steady. Behind him moved other figures; they seemed in that moment like the shapes James had been finding in the clouds — inchoate and untouchable.

“Jamie, breathe,” Matthew said, and his voice was the only steady thing in a world turning upside down. It had been years since this had happened. Years. The horror of it happening in front of a crowd of people —

“Did they see me?” he said in a cracked voice. “Did they see me turn?”

“You didn’t,” Matthew said, “or at least, only a very little bit — perhaps just a bit fuzzy round the edges —“

“It’s not funny,” James said through his teeth, but Matthew’s humor acted like a slap of cold water; he opened his eyes fully, saw Thomas and Christopher looking down at him. They had positioned themselves so as to block him from the crowd at the lake’s edge.

“Get up,” Thomas said. “It’s the best thing you can do, James, we’ll tell them you tripped or fell.” His hazel eyes were anxious but his tone was reassuring. “Honestly all the attention was on Ariadne — “

Matthew’s hands on James’ shoulders turned into a grip on his arms, and James was hauled upright by his three best friends. Christopher produced a handkerchief from somewhere and began to dust his lapels.

“Chris,” said Matthew. He was the only person who ever used that nickname for Christopher besides Anna. “Stop. Who cares if he’s dusty? He was just invisible.”

“But he isn’t any more,” Christopher pointed out.

“We need to get you back to the Institute,” said Matthew to James in a low voice. “If you’re going to start suddenly going all — shadowy — for no reason, then the Silent Brothers —“

“Not the Silent Brothers,” said Thomas. “Just Zachariah.”

JAMES & MATTHEW

The whole way to the Fairchilds’ James had felt as if he were choking, and now he could breathe, the pressure on his chest easing. He couldn’t find words now, couldn’t do anything but clutch on to the front of Matthew’s shirt and put his head down on his shoulder.

JAMES & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Cordelia was alone in the hallway. Squaring her shoulders, she pushed open the door to James’ room.

She had never been in a boy’s bedroom before, and it was quite a scandalous action to enter now, but the significance of it seemed small, swallowed up by her worry. James was half under the covers of the bed, moving restlessly from side to side, his face flushed with fever. His nightclothes clung to him, wet with sweat. It was a bright day outside and sunlight speared through the room, illuminating the bowls of burning herbs that Enoch had left behind.

James rolled toward her. His eyes, the color of sunlight, blinked open slowly. “Matthew?” he said. “Matthew, is that you?”

CORDELIA

A betraying hope swelled in her heart and for a moment she allowed herself to imagine being engaged to James, being welcomed into Lucie's family.

JAMES

The moonlight softened the harsh gold of James' eyes to a dark umber. How changed would his life have been if his eyes had not been a sign of his difference?

JAMES & CORDELIA

Cordelia blinked, bewildered. "James?"

"I suffered every thorn for you," he said. "I would again."

JAMES & UNKNOWN GIRL

"Hold my hand, James," she said.

WILL & JAMES ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

“Matthew told me what happened at the park,” Will muttered in a voice no one but James could hear. James shot a betrayed look at Matthew, who shrugged and gave him a half-smile. Matthew could be relied on to tattle on James if he thought it was for his own good. “Thank the Angel for Matthew and Thomas and Christopher.” He touched James’ face. “I regret ever having said that your generation was wasting its time with parties and boating and dancing. All I wish for you is to be able to amuse yourself in a pointless fashion during peace and never, ever be in danger.”  

ANNA & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

"To take tea with Anna Lightwood," said Cordelia. "She invited me."

CORDELIA

Cordelia felt her back stiffen. "I accepted the invitation," she said. "I will go."

ANNA & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Anna Lightwood lived on Percy Street, a small byway near Tottenham Court Road. It was made up of long rows of houses of red brick that all looked very much the same. Each had sash windows, white-painted doors, brick chimneys, a shallow set of steps and a fence about the servants’ entrance made of black wrought iron.

On the stairs in front of No. 30, a girl sat crying. She was a very fashionable girl, in a walking-dress of blue foulard with lace trimmings and acres of flounces about the skirt. She wore a head-band trimmed with silk roses, and they wobbled as she cried.

Cordelia checked the address she had written down again, hoping it would have changed. No, definitely Number 30. She sighed, squared her shoulders, and approached.

“Pardon me,” she said, as she reached the steps. The girl was blocking them completely; there was no way to politely edge past. “I’m here to see Anna Lightwood?”

The girl’s head jerked up. She was very pretty: blond and rosy-cheeked, though she’d been crying. She gave Cordelia a deeply wary look. “Who are you, then?”

“I, ah…” Cordelia peered more closely at the girl. Definitely a mundane: no marks, no glamour. “I’m her cousin?”

“Oh.” Some of the suspicion went out of the girl’s face. “I — I am here because —“ She went off in a fresh spate of tears.

“Might I enquire as to the problem? Is there something I can do?” Cordelia asked, though she rather dreaded finding out why as it seemed the sort of thing where she might have to come up with a solution.

“Anna,” the girl wept. “I loved her — I love her still! I would have given it all up for her, all of it, polite society and all its rules, just to be with her, but she has thrown me out like a dog on the street!”

“Now, Emmeline,” drawled a voice, and Cordelia looked up to see Anna leaning out of an upstairs window. She was wearing a man’s dressing gown in rich purple and gold brocade, and her hair was a cap of loose, short waves. “You can’t say you’ve been thrown out like a dog when you’ve got your mama, two butlers, and a footman coming for you.” She waved. “Hello, Cordelia.”

“Oh, dear,” said Cordelia, and patted Emmeline gently on the shoulder.

“Besides, Emmeline,” said Anna. “You’re to be married Wednesday. To a baronet.”

“I don’t want him!” Emmeline sprang to her feet. “I want you!”

“No,” said Anna. “You want a baronet.”

LUCIE & ALASTAIR ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

He might be Cordelia’s brother, but she did not like him above half.

Moreover, at the present moment, he presented the appearance of a lunatic. Beneath his unbuttoned coat his waistcoat was disarranged, and one side of his high wingtip collar was dreadfully askew. His improbably light hair was out of its usual careful shape, pomaded strands going wildly in all directions and glittering electric bright under an arc lamp. On Percy Street, the street lights were older and less reliable, their fierce yellow burn stripping them all down to harsh lines.

“You’ve lost your hat, Alastair,” said Lucie.

Alastair said: “I have lost my sister!”

Lucie went cold. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Cordelia?”

UNKNOWN GIRL

Does love mean anything to you, she said. Or is it just something people give you easily, the way you give toys to a child?

ANNA & GRACE

“I respect a heartbreaker,” said Anna. “People are better off without hearts anyway. But you don’t leave people better off. You’re not a heartbreaker, Grace Blackthorn. You’re a life destroyer.”

MATTHEW & ANNA

"Anna can seduce anyone," said Matthew.

ANNA

"Preferably not boys," said Anna, without looking up. "Then I have to pretend to be interested."

JAMES & ANNA

Anna raised her eyebrow at James as he turned away, but James ignored it. Anna had been raising her eyebrows at him all his life.

ANNA & COUSINS ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

Anna’s deep-blue eyes narrowed as she studied him. James was sitting on the edge of his chair, hands clasped together and leaning forward in Anna’s direction. These cousins looked more like brother and sister than James and Lucie, or Anna and Christopher. James’s face was chiseled and serious, while Anna’s features were sharp and roguish, but they shared the same coloring of crow-black hair and snow-white skin. More than that, both had an air of cleverness that seemed thrown up as a defense against sensitivity, sharp minds that shut away hearts too easily broken. Seeing the similarity made Cordelia wonder what had happened to Anna, and fear what might happen to James.

Anna flicked an eyebrow upward, a scratch of ink dashed across a page. “Ah yes, about that. Let me be perfectly clear what you are asking: you want me to seduce a pretty warlock in order to procure you an [item redacted for spoilers!]?”

Anna surveyed the room, and when she was answered with cautious nods she threw her hands into the air.

“You are off your heads, every one of you.”

“Can you not do it?” Thomas asked apprehensively.

Anna toyed with her watch chain so the chain caught the light and glittered. “Oh, I daresay I could.”

There was a collective moan lamenting Thomas’s stupidity in asking such a question. Lucie told Thomas he was a dolt. Thomas begged Anna’s pardon.

“Not at all, Thomas, I know you’re an innocent soul. That said,” Anna drawled, “I take many issues with your request. For a start, it is against my strict policy to seduce anybody twice.”

“Every outlaw must have a code,” James said.

ANNA

"No one ever just wants to have tea," said Anna. "Tea is always an excuse for a clandestine agenda."

ANNA

"Do you think he's in love?" Anna said. "People can be rather awful when they're in love."

MATTHEW

"But is it wise to prove James isn't a lunatic?" said Matthew.

ANNA

"You might leave that to me," said Anna.

LUCIE & GRACE

And there beside her was Grace. Lucie remembered Grace as a determinedly poised twelve-year-old but she was quite different now. Cold and lovely and statuesque.

TATIANA, GRACE, JAMES, LUCIE & CORDELIA ( CHAIN OF GOLD )

From where they were, they had a perfect view of James, standing straight and polite as Tatiana Blackthorn, wearing a faded fuschia dresses stained with dark spots, advanced on him, a witchlight torch in her hand.

“How dare you come here, Will Herondale,” she said, a savage tone to her voice. “What is left for you to destroy? You murdered my husband and my father —“

Lucie made a small whimpering noise. Cordelia clutched at her cold hand, squeezing it for comfort.

“That’s James.” It was Grace, dressed all in a long white nightgown with a white dressing-gown over it. White slippers covered her feet and her blonde hair was loose, falling over her shoulders. “It isn’t Mr. Herondale, Mama. It’s his son.”

LUCIE & JESSE*

He really did have a most arresting face, Lucie thought. She firmly believed it was all right to stare at people when you were a writer. Writers needed to gather material. That was all there was to it.

* not confirmed, but popularly assumed and not without good reason.

LUCIE & UNKNOWN PERSON

"Miss Herondale?" said a soft voice behind her.

[ most likely JESSE & LUCIE ]

But Lucie was staring at the boy who had come in with them. The boy who she had last seen in Brocelind Forest. Lucie was ten when she met the boy in the forest. Lucie looked for him in the forest after that, but she never saw him again. It would be ten years before she saw him again.

[ these snippets are actually separated but they flow well so I put them together. ]

JESSE

Jesse sighed and looked up at the chandelier. "I have two ages," he said. "I am twenty-four. And I am sixteen."

[ popularly assumed to be JESSE & LUCIE ]

"Can no one else see you?"

JAMES & LUCIE

James went white. "Lucie?"

CORDELIA & JAMES

Not tie him to the bed, Cordelia thought. Not cut his beautiful hair. She loved his hair: it was black like his father's, black as night, dark as a place you could tell secrets in.

ALASTAIR, CORDELIA & MRS BRIDGESTOCK

“Disgraceful,” said Mrs Bridgestock. “I know your face. You are that Persian boy. Are you not ashamed to be running around corrupting nice young people? I suppose you are only following your father’s example, but considering what happened to him, you should really know better.”

Cordelia wished to rush to her brother’s defense, but she did not dare move.

Alastair bared his teeth at Mrs Bridgestock. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

LUCIE & MATTHEW

A coat settled on Lucie’s shoulders, bottle green superfine and warm from the heat of Matthew’s body, smelling of expensive cologne. Lucie glanced up to see Matthew’s face above hers, limned by sunlight and the gold of his hair, serious for once as he carefully buttoned the coat closed. His hands were usually swift and bright with rings, flying through the air when he talked or to the curving hilt of his rapier when he fought, but now they were moving with great deliberation over such a small task. She heard him draw in a slow breath.

JAMES

James' heart lurched in his chest. "We were childhood friends."

UNKNOWN GIRL

"You lied to me," she said.

UNKNOWN BOY ( the person in the pin was a guy )

"You carry my life in those careless hands"

ANNA ( SHADOWHUNTERS FOUR, the pin was four boys )

"Delicate boys must be protected," said Anna.

UNKNOWN BOY

The house has all fallen down into ruins, he said.

UNKNOWN BOY AND GIRL ( in the pin, they both had dark/brown hair )

We could get married, she said.

JAMES & CORDELIA

To the last hour.

[ according to Cassandra Clare’s The Last Hours Pinterest board. The picture was a girl with red hair and a guy with black hair. Cordelia and James fit the description best. ]

UNKNOWN BOY AND GIRL

Death is not the end.

UNKNOWN BOY AND GIRL

The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.

SHADOWHUNTERS FOUR

One for all and all for one.

TWO UNKNOWN BOYS

We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven, souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet, one splendid spirit, your soul and mine.

SHADOWHUNTERS FOUR

All together, or not at all.

TWO UNKNOWN GIRLS

Thank you angels for ensuring she’s a good dancer, loves to dance and takes me out dancing.

[ unsure if the last five are actually snippets, it’s not in the Shadowhunters’ Wikia but it’s on Cassandra Clare’s The Last Hours Pinterest board so I just added them in. ]

[idleheartbeat]

I Didn’t Ask You

Author: idleheartbeat

Pairing: Suga x reader

Genre: Angst, Romance, Arranged Marriage AU

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3.5k

He was so cold and distant. You assumed he hated you, the way he would never look at your face or give you the time of day. If anything he seemed irritated when you would try and get to know him. All your attempts were met with glares and silence and eventually, although reluctant, you gave up.

It was a silly crush then, when you had admired him for afar in your college days, but it was a painfully ridiculous one now. It was silly you had thought you could catch his eye. It was ridiculous that you thought the two of you could ever fall in love.

But that's what was so difficult about it, he drew people in with his creativity and passion, he could get a crowd. It was so instant, so natural. You wanted so genuinely to understand him, you could see how much he was hurting beneath it all. You could see how he tried to internalize his pain except for in his music, but even then it wasn’t authentic. It was made glamorous by the beauty of the lyrics and sound and it couldn't be enough. It couldn’t heal him. Making the music couldn't be a complete comfort; he needed something physical, something alive.

It was clear to you he needed someone permanent. 

A stable, loving companion. But it was only as you spent time with him before the wedding that you realized he may need it, but he didn't want it. At least not with you. It had been early into the discussions, as you tried desperately to bond with him but to no avail, that you first began to realize this. Was he going to call it off? You had fretted. You could live with that but you needed to know, your parents were itching for you to get married as soon as possible.

“Suga?” You had asked gently as the two of you wandered down a city street walking his dog. He glanced at you coolly but didn't stop moving. Hesitant, you continued on. “Are you alright?”

He shrugged and didn't answer, just kept walking and when you stopped moving he snapped at you to hurry up. You made yourself accept then that he didn't want warmth from you and, from what you had seen, no one else either. The only thing he consistent behaved sweetly towards was Holly. Oh God, were you jealous of a dog? Genuinely, you had become bashful in the moment thinking this may be true. Suga shot you confused looks when you stayed several paces behind him and kept your head low for the rest of the walk.

Presently, you smiled to yourself and shook your head at the thought as you walked out of work. “Let it be funny,” you told yourself. No worries anyway, you weren't that invested in him. You couldn’t let yourself be.

In fact, you figured it was best to try and move on. You could still have a happy life, it would just be lacking in the romance area. Well, more like vacant but still! You had a career, freedom, pets, a lovely home- the list could go on. And you could daydream of him being tender. It was an odd idea though; him laying beside you in bed or brushing the hair out of your eyes. You wondered what his laugh sounded like. It was those simple yet close moments of intimacy that seemed so unrealistic. It still plagued you, the reality of what a sham your marriage was.

But you were trying. You had that much.

---

“Here.” Suga's voice came sharp as you had just entered the house and you squeaked in surprise. You knew he’d be home at this time time today but usually he was in his room, not right at the entrance.

A full smile spread across your face when you saw what he was holding. Having assumed it was somehow related to your job, you were surprised to be greeted by the sight of flowers; a bouquet of purple anemones and pink tulips.

You took it carefully, not entirely convinced it was meant for you. “They're lovely,” you breathed, the words airy and admiring, “But why?”

“They were being given away,” He dead-panned before walking up the stairs. You stood there in awe from the whole sequence. It would be comical if it didn't hurt too much to laugh, it was like slapstick for the goon that gets hit.

Despite his rudeness you put them in a vase because they were lovely, even if he didn't agree. You didn't care if someone had begged him to take them. It didn't matter because you loved them, their colours were vibrant- giving the dull, unused kitchen life. You smiled every time you saw them and cried a little, soft sobs, when you had to throw them out.

---

The question is: to cook or not to cook? That was what you pondered as you waited in line at the cafe. You had been considering making Suga a nice dinner because he had been ridiculously busy at work. His job as a music producer and lyricist put him on strict deadlines especially since he had started to get more well-known. People were learning his name and wanting to meet with him, get his input, use his talent.

This hectic schedule, although his dream, meant he didn't rest enough. At least that's what you were able to gather from the early hours he'd leave and the fact that he often never came home at night; sleeping at his studio you supposed. This was something you had been prepared for, you had known his mistress was music, everyone did.

His mother had implied more than once that he was bad at taking care of himself, he would forget to eat, put off sleep, anything was second to work. His friends had called you to ask if he was okay because he hadn't been answering their calls and texts consistently and you worried he was skipping meals or only eating convenient, non-nutritious foods. Being his spouse, even if not by his choosing, you wanted to make sure he was okay.

But Suga always seemed so hateful towards you. Cooking him dinner couldn't be too big a deal right, he wouldn't mind. Or would he? Would he throw it out without even taking a bite? Well, maybe your mind was being a little dramatic. But if you did cook him something what would it be? You hadn't the slightest idea what he liked. You two rarely spent time together, the only time you had eaten with him was at the wedding. What was served that night?

As you pondered this you realized it was your turn to speak. The cashier asked for your full name, which you found a little odd, and your order. You answered the two questions and saw the cashier smile wide before informing you it was already paid for by someone.

“Who?” you asked excitedly. “Who paid for it?” You had been so lonely since moving to Los Angeles with Suga in hopes of better opportunities for his career. You worked 3rd shift and struggled to make friends due to your odd schedule; you were awake when everyone else was usually asleep. Plus, your husband was extremely busy and, even if he wasn't, he wouldn't necessarily want to spend time his free time with you. This surprise made you giddy- the idea that someone had been thinking of you.

You adored this coffee shop since moving to LA and had mentioned it to your parents and friends back home, had one of them really called and done this for you? Well, some one must have.

The woman shrugged innocently. “Sorry, they told me not to tell you who it was from.” You narrowed your eyes at her careful use of gender neutral pronouns. From her demeanor she seemed to be already on the verge of telling despite your minimal insistence so far.

You felt confident you could get her to crack. “Come on, tell me. I won't tell them you did, I just need to know so I can thank them in my own little way,” you implored sweetly.

Immediately she caved. “It was your husband!” She revealed, practically squealing. It was clearly the cutest thing to this young worker as she swooned and grinned at you. To you, it was a complete mystery. 

“My husband?” The worker tilted her head. 

“Yeah, Min Yoongi.” She frowned, “Are you not married? Maybe I got the wrong person, maybe it’s someone else with that name?”

You shook your head, face hot, “No, that’s my husband, I just…don’t know..” ...why would he do this? 

Had you mentioned this shop to him? Well, you must have, and he must have listened. A blush crept onto your cheeks at the thought of his thinking of you, making your face even hotter. It suddenly occurred to you that you were holding up the line. As you returned to the present you noticed the cashier staring at you perplexed

“-don’t know what I did to deserve such a sweet gift,” You tried to recover the moment. “Thank you, I'll make sure to repay him,” You replied, then giving her a wink, added, “slyly of course.”

As you went out the door and began sipping your drink you wondered what to make him. How to repay such a sweet, unexpected gesture. It was clear now he wouldn't be angry, or at least shouldn't be, if you cooked him something but the question of what to serve remained. What did you have at your wedding? Oh yes, you ate steak! But wait.. wasn't their a choice between dishes.... You sighed and took a long swig of your coffee.

---

“Why did you do this?” Your head snapped up from the book you were reading and you tilted your head at him. It surprised you, you were all the way in the sunroom,you didn't think he knew you went there a lot.

“Do what? Make you dinner?” You questioned as he continued staring at you, hard.

“Yes,” he snapped.

“Oh, um, I knew you would be busy running around all day and that it would be pretty late when you got home but you would need to get up even earlier than usual, and I thought it'd be nice if you could have a meal but not have to cook. I assumed you hadn't had a decent one it a while,” You rambled, nervous from his stoney eyes. You had to continuously remind yourself that you had done nothing wrong because his gaze made you feel strangely ashamed.

“Why?” He asked again.

“I just told you why, I thought it make things easier on you,” You explained, supposing maybe your words were too jumbled before.

You didn't notice until now how tense he looked. “I mean why, why do you care about making things easier for me? You know you're only my wife in name.”

“Of course I know that!” You bellowed, surprised by your own anger. He was clearly surprised as well, usually you were so meek. You took a deep breath and stood up, abandoning your book on the coffee table. “Of course I know. You know how I know? Because you have made it painfully clear you aren't happy about being married to me. But it is what it is and I want us to be able to at least coexist. So, sue me? I might do little nice things for you sometimes. I'm not trying to kiss you or asking for anything in return, okay? So stop being dramatic. I didn’t ask you to get me flowers, I didn’t ask you to pre order coffee for me, and I’m not asking you to love me! So stop looking at me like I've done something wrong.”

In those handful of sentences you had let out so many hurt feelings, all the loneliness and self doubt. You felt lighter until you met his gaze, his eyes were bloodshot and unreadable. All the toughness was soon fading from you. “I'm going up to my room and going to bed. Good luck on everything tomorrow,” you contended before scurrying upstairs.

He didn't say anything, at least not that you heard. So you washed your face and and brushed your teeth and attempted to sleep. But everything that had just occurred kept playing in your head, over and over again. It made you feel nervous, like you were walking on uneven ground. Maybe it was because you didn't know his mind, you didn't know what he was thinking. You could never tell, you knew so little about him.

All you had gathered was little things from living with him and from listening to his songs. You knew he liked sleep despite how often he denied himself of it. You could tell he loved the piano, you would commonly over hear him playing as you read in the evening or tried to sleep at night. You knew his coffee order and that he was picky with music. You could tell he was anxious in social situations, he always hung near you and seemed ready to leave.

But most of these little things were more preferences than personality. They didn't tell you much or give you insight into him, not like you wanted. Maybe you read into things too much, his music and his habits, because you were so desperate to know him.

With all those unpleasant thoughts swirling in your mind, you feel asleep -unsure and solitary- as you had been every night since marrying him.

---

The next day he was gone by the time you woke up and wasn't home when you went to bed. This continued for two more nights until one morning he was there; standing in the kitchen with disheveled hair and baggy clothes.

“I was invited to a party tomorrow night, there is supposed to be a lot of music industry executives there. Will attend with me?” His eyes never met yours as he asked.

And it was odd that he had even asked, it kind of went without saying in an arranged marriage that you were supposed to do these things. Public appearance mattered, you were supposed to be by one anothers' side. In the past he hadn't asked, more informed. “Here's the time, be there” kind of thing. But you didn't question his new approach.

“I would be glad to attend,” You answered as you grabbed a bagel for breakfast. He watched you quietly and when you turned towards him he looked away.

“Suga?” You inquired, stepping closer and searching his face for an emotion.

“What?” He grumbled.

“Are you alright?”

“I-I'm... I'm not sure.” He admitted. You opened your mouth to ask what was wrong but before you spoke he mumbled goodbye and shuffled off. You considered following him but decided against it, he liked space. You'd let him come to you if and when he wanted.

You didn't see him the next morning but he did come home from work at a normal time for once so you two could wouldn't be late for the party. As you drove yourself and Suga there the car was uncomfortably silent; not because you were both wondering whether to talk, no it was pretty normal for neither of you to speak, it was just weirdly quiet. You could hear every little noise, every shift and sigh from him. You imagined it was the same way for him which made you self conscious of your breathing.

“Suga, why not turn on the radio,” You offered, hoping to ease the atmosphere.

“Why do you call me that?” He questioned, listless.

Suga was a nickname you had given him early into meeting him, during your “dating” period. You had thought of it because you would see him being sweet, under all those bitter layers, not so much to you but to children or animals, as well as his friends at times. Sugar is a term of endearment but since it wasn't quite right, his kindness or the relationship you held with him, taking the 'r' off seemed about right. It made the name cooler too, you thought, which you figured he'd like. He always was so cool.

The day you came up with it you two were being forced to meet for a so called “date”. You decided on the moniker after he insisted on buying ice cream for some kids at the park, all while keeping a distance and refusing to smile. So, proud of your creation, you started using it right away. The first time you said it he glanced at you, eyes lingering for a moment, but he didn't protest. As you used it more though he looked at you oddly. “It's a nickname for you,”. You explained. “Suga, S-U-G-A.”

And from there that is what you called him and no one questioned it, his friends started calling him that too. He never complained but he didn't seem particularly fond of it. He just let it be.

But before him all that story translated into a short, reserved answer, “Oh, it just seemed fitting I guess.”

“The first time you called me that I really thought you were calling me Sugar,” He commented. “I kind of thought you were flirting with me.”

“Oh,” was all you could manage as you tried to think of what to say. This conversation, which had hardly happened, was making your heart pound. You stopped at a red light and glanced him and this time he didn't look away. You could see pain in his eyes. There it was again, the heartache you had always sensed in him, even back when you were both fresh-faced students. You wanted to take it away.

“It's green,” He informed you, his tone flat in a defeated way.

You pressed the gas pedal and stared at the road ahead intensely. It gave you something solid to focus on as began to speak, your nerves flaring up more. “Actually, I thought about flirting with you constantly back then.” You failed to mention you still did.

You could see him shift in your peripheral. “Why didn't you?”

“You didn’t seem interested. I thought you borderline hated me.”

“Pullover,” He demanded abruptly. You glanced at him in confusion.

“Why?”

“Please, just listen.”

“Alright,” You replied, uncertain. You turned into the nearest parking lot you could, some restaurant, and parked the car. The minute your hands were off the wheel his lips were on yours. And you stayed like that, kissing tenderly without words or explanation until he pulled away.

“Don't ever think for a second that I don't care about you,” He said, resting one of his hands on yours. “I'm sorry I made you feel like that... I know I was...” He seemed to be searching for a world.

“Rude? Apathetic? Untouchable?” You offered, smiling all the while.

He sighed, “Yes, those things.” Quickly he gave you another kiss. “You were always kind to me and I didn't know what to do with that, not a lot of people have been that way with me. Especially not someone who I had a crush on.”

“You? With a crush? On me? I thought that was just one of my unrealistic daydreams,” you murmured, more to yourself than him.

“Oh, it was very real.” At this admittance he became a bit coy, looking out his car door window. “ I have it pretty bad for you.”

You wanted both to kiss him and question him, but you decided on the latter first. “Why were you so mean then? I don't understand.”

He sighed again, seemingly embarrassed. “I don't like getting attached to new people and I was frustrated with how you made me feel. And sometimes, I would try to flirt or hint at my feelings but you either didn't notice or didn't requite-”

“Didn't notice,” You cut in. He gave you a small smile before continuing.

“It bothered me because I was going to marry you and I didn't know how to handle the fact you would always be in my life but you still seemed inaccessible. I was frustrated and my feelings were hurt to be honest.”

You frowned, “How did I hurt your feelings?”

“I can't blame you, it's not your fault. But like, with the flowers. I bought you those flowers because it was our anniversary, I knew those flowers in those colours were your favorite, but you hadn't remembered the date.”

Your eyes widen in surprise and confusion as you fretted, “But we were married in the winter, you gave me those flowers this summer!”

“The date of when we began dating,” He explained. “Remember, we had met up for the fifth time to get to know each other and I said, 'I guess it's official now, I'm your boyfriend'.”

Of course you remembered, the two of you were awkwardly holding hands when he said it. The words were lifeless and you had suspected either it was a jab about how much time he was being forced to spend with you or he was simply informing you of the relationship status. All the same, it made you a blushing mess. Instead of reply you looked away and changed the subject. Then it occurred to you. “Wait, was-was that you flirting?”

He nodded.

“But you sounded so matter-of-fact!” You exclaimed. “How was I supposed to know you had a thing for me!”

He threw his hands up in defense, “I was doing my best!” You giggled, it all seeming so silly and sweet in hindsight. You gave him another kiss.

“We can properly celebrate from now on, if I had known I would have gotten you something. I didn't think you considered that day special.”

“I find it to be very special,” He said. “Now let's go home.”

“What about the party?”

“Who cares, I'm tired and I want to see if your bed is more comfortable than mine.”

[starryviolentine]

Brody’s Diary (Revised Edition): Chapter 1/10

Part one of the “Pre-Apocalypse Adventures” Series

Dedicated to @vilavenderm23, who came up with the long-haired Violet headcanon that I adore, for her birthday.

Ever since I found out that Violet and Brody used to be close friends before Minnie and Sophie disappeared, I’ve always wanted to know more about the backstory behind their relationship. This is just my personal pre-apocalypse headcanon about these two precious children. Brody is Violet’s roommate and also her very first friend at Ericson. What happens when Violet gets blamed when Brody’s special diary (aka anxiety relief journal) goes missing?

For as many times Violet has dozed off in science class, today is not one of those days. The science teacher makes an announcement at the beginning of the lesson that tomorrow they would be dissecting a cow’s eye. A real, actual cow eyeball. How cool is that? The eleven-year-old doesn’t even care that Louis is assigned to be her lab partner. For the rest of class, Mr. Stanley shows a slideshow about what to expect during the procedure, complete with detailed explanations of the tools they will use, the anatomy of an eyeball, and lots of grotesque pictures.

There are a few calls of “eww” and “gross” and one kid in the back laughs and makes gagging noises, but Violet has never been more excited about something school related. When the bell—not just the standard end-of-class bell, but the extra-long chime sequence signifying the end of the whole school day—rings, Violet hops up and quickly shoves her things into her backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. There is only one thought on her mind.

She can’t wait to tell Brody.

In just a few more weeks, Violet will have been at Ericson Academy for an entire year. Looking back at her time here, she recalls just how tough things were when she first got to the school. Violet didn’t want to be here at all. She was absolutely miserable. The days went by so slowly that Violet was sure that she was going to go nuts, and then her mother would probably ship her off to a crazy house next. They would lock her up and throw away the key and leave her to rot there for the rest of her life. Not that being at a boarding school was any less awful. On a campus surrounded by tall brick walls and a front gate that’s always locked, Violet felt like a prisoner doomed to serve a life sentence.

Violet didn’t want to make new friends. She didn’t want to go to her boring new classes. She hated—no, despised—being forced to meet with stupid grown-ups who all claimed they wanted to “help” her. Violet didn’t want their help. They were always forcing her to think about things that she just wanted to forget. How was that supposed to help her? Here she was, only eleven years old and already seeing a shrink. Multiple shrinks, actually. Everything about her life was so lousy and depressing that Violet truly believed that things were never going to get any better. And for a while, just like the pessimistic girl expected, they didn’t.

Until they did. 

Nothing at Ericson Academy was worth Violet’s time… with one exception. 

Right from the start, there was one person who was there to talk to her even when Violet had nothing to say. Who kept her company even when she wanted to be left alone. Who smiled at her even when she felt like scowling and flipping everyone the bird. And, well, with someone like that in her life, it was really hard for Violet to stay angry at the world.

That person was Brody. 

If Violet was a raincloud, Brody was the sun. Even during those dark, grey weeks when all she wanted to do was sulk and brood, Brody’s vibrant rays of color always found a way to shine through her cracks and light up her day. Brody is nice and funny, and she tells the best stories—ones that keep everyone on the edge of their seat from beginning to end because the way she tells them sounds like they came straight out of a storybook. As it turns out, having somebody like Brody around makes everything better somehow. Believe it or not, Violet no longer minds being stuck at Ericson’s. 

Well, she doesn’t mind as much.

Violet makes it back to the dormitory and climbs up the stairs to the second floor lounge. Just as she’s about to make up her mind whether to wait there for her friend or just meet her in their room, the twin-tailed girl herself marches straight up to Violet as though she had been waiting for her arrival.

“Not funny, Vi,” Brody starts, hands on her hips and lips turned into a frown. “Give it back.”

Violet has no idea what Brody’s going on about, and the fact that the girl seems angry at her catches her off guard. “What?”

“I know it was you!” Her friend’s voice steadily rises in both volume and pitch as her emotions start to take over.

The confused blonde backtracks and tries to think of what she could have possibly done to make Brody mad, but she can’t think of anything. “What are you talking about?”

“My diary, Vi!” Brody snaps. “Don’t play dumb!”

“I didn’t take your diary.”

The girl scoffs. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Are you sure you didn’t, like, leave it somewhere?” Violet asks. Maybe by giving Brody ideas of where her diary might be, she can prevent this crime from being pinned onto her unfairly. “You take that thing everywhere.”

“It was on my desk this morning and now it’s gone!” Brody yells, stepping closer to Violet and glaring at her. “The only people who can get inside our room are you and Therissa, and I doubt it was her.”

“But I—”

“You’re the one who’s always telling me how dumb it is!”

“Brody, listen!” Violet takes a step back, trying to put a little more distance between them now that her friend is getting uncomfortably close. She itches for some personal space. “I didn’t take it.”

But Brody doesn’t listen. In fact, she doesn’t seem to be hearing anything that Violet’s saying. “Stop, Vi! Just give it back and I won’t get mad!”

You’re already mad, Violet wants to point out, but she holds her tongue. “I don’t have—”

“Don’t you tell me a story!” the livid girl seethes, taking yet another step closer to Violet. “Don’t you dare lie to me! I know it was you!”

Trying to keep her cool despite the growing frustration inside her, Violet clenches her jaw and takes a few deep breaths. Brody keeps cutting her off and she hates it.  “You’re not listen—”

“Do you have… any idea how…” Brody shakes her head, letting out a strained growl. The girl is close to hysterical and is no longer making sense. “You… I can’t…!”

Violet knows how important Brody’s diary is to her. Sure, she’s poked fun at her a few times for writing in it every single day and bringing it with her everywhere she goes, but she would never take it and she needs Brody to know that. She tries one last time to get her friend to listen. “Brody, I really didn’t — ”          

“GIVE. IT. BACK!” Brody bellows, and Violet flinches as the command resonates through her like thunder. For a few seconds she just stands there, shocked. The silence that follows is so deafening that Violet can hear her own heart pounding in her head. Slowly, the words start to sink in and she, too, erupts in a fit of rage.

“Back off!” shouts Violet. Before she even realizes what she’s doing, she reaches out and shoves Brody away forcefully. “I never touched your stupid diary!” As soon as it happens, she regrets it immediately. Brody stumbles backwards but quickly regains her footing. Guilt catching in her throat, Violet backs away a few steps and dares to take a peek up at the auburn-haired girl for her reaction.

Brody has an incredulous look on her face, but it instantly changes back to anger and she points an accusatory finger directly at Violet. “You…! I don’t ever want to talk to you again!” With that, Brody sticks her nose in the air and stomps away, leaving Violet stunned and, to be honest, still really unsure of what just happened.

Suddenly, Violet is hyperaware of all the eyes that are staring at her due to having witnessed the whole ordeal. She needs to get out of there. Doing her best to ignore the whispers and the pointing, she flees from the lounge with her head down so as to not make eye contact with anybody. Thankfully, her shared bedroom isn’t very far. Within a minute Violet bursts into the room, already kicking off her shoes. She climbs up to her top bunk and aggressively flops facedown onto her bed.

There’s a strange, tight feeling in Violet’s chest that won’t go away. It started earlier while Brody was yelling at her, and it lingers as if making sure today’s events stay fresh in her mind. Talk about annoying. Now all Violet can think about is how unbelievably pissed her roommate is, all over something she didn’t even do, and how she very well might have lost her first and only friend at Ericson’s.

“I don’t ever want to talk to you again!”

Growling in frustration into her pillow, Violet curls up and resigns. She doesn’t want to see Brody right now, or even think about Brody, at least not until she gets an apology. Blaming people without any proof isn’t fair, and Violet broods over being wrongly accused by somebody who’s supposed to be her friend. Maybe Brody will come to her senses once she realizes the truth, but, until then, Violet decides that she just won’t care.

[theabominableblogger]

My Reaction to “Gotham” S4E21

Screw that ending.  In its entirety.

AN:  I managed to record my reactions to this episode and hopefully I can transcribe what I said into this post (even though about 20% of this post is horrified screaming)

“Dig me up!”  *starts singing “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!*

DIG ME UP/ BEFORE YOU GO-GO/DON’T LEAVE ME LAYING THERE LIKE A HOBO

Pretty much the latter half of Gotham 4B is dedicated to dragging the ever loving crap out of Jerome

*cups hands around mouth*  JIM AIN’T DEAD!

Lucius!

“Last time we [the other officers] followed you [Harvey], the Pyg slaughtered us.”  I haven’t reached Professor Pyg yet in my reactions but C’MON!

Thank you, Harper!

“...he’s outside and he’s not alone.”  Oooooohhhhh...

THAT OUTFIT THOUGH!

“JEREMIAH!  JEREMIAH!”  Dude even has a back-up choir!

I also really like the military-style outfit that the other followers have on

This natural lighting on Bullock and the other officers looks pretty nice, I gotta say

Can we talk about this wide shot of Bullock and the other officers vs. Jeremiah and his followers?  ‘Cause that is a thing of beauty.

“Don’t compare me to that short-sighted psychopath.”  #DraggingJeromeValeska2k18

For some reason, Jeremiah sounds like a mix between Hannibal Lector [Anthony Hopkins] and Andrew Scott’s Jim Moriarty (except if he were American)

*Jeremiah pulls out another dead man’s switch*  Oh crap...

*The clock tower goes down*  OHHHHHH!

Here’s my question:  where did Jeremiah get his outfits?

“Looks aren’t everything,” my ass...

What the crap did they [Penguin and Butch] do to Jongleur?

“If it isn't little Penguin. Oh, and Butch's corpse.“  Pfftt....

“The man responsible for the recent fireworks is Jeremiah Valeska.  Twin brother of our old associate.“  HOW DO YOU [Oswald] KNOW?!?

“[Tabitha] Don’t look at me [Barbara] like that.”  Pfftt...

Bruce!

“I'm [Harvey] so sick of that freaking family [the Valeskas]...“  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

“[Bruce] Be with Alfred.  Be safe.  It's what Jim would want.“  Yes, please!

“Alfred, where have you been?”  “No, not Alfred.”  Shit.

When did Jeremiah take the time to dye his hair in between this episode and the last one?

Ecco probably did it.  We know she did.

“But I meant what I [Jeremiah] said.  You're my best friend, and today I'm gonna prove it to you [Bruce].“  Screw this noise!

Wait, you can turn off the dead man’s switch?

“Tell the police and I'll know. Just like I [Jeremiah] know that's where you [Bruce] are right now.“  Wait, how does he know?  Is there a spy inside the precinct?

HERCULES MULLIGAN

*cups hands around mouth*  I TOLD Y’ALL HE [Jim] AIN’T DEAD!

Lee!

*Jim rips out the IV in his arm*  Why do people keep doing that in Hollywood stuff?  Seriously.

That is the most graceful collapse back onto the bed that I’ve ever seen, Jim.

“I'm [Selina] gonna be here whenever you [Bruce] need me.”  Aaaawww....

“He [Jeremiah] wants something out of me [Bruce].”  “Like what, to be your best friend?“  Actually, yes... for some reason...

I don’t like thisss... not one bittt....

*Bruce is shown footage of Alfred getting beat up*  AAAAAAHHHHH!!!

“If this is what you [Lee] want, I will do it.  For you.”  Oh my gosh, Ed is so unbelievably stupid!

“Do it for us.”  They better not, they better not-

*Lee and Ed kiss*  Eeuughh!

Whoa...

Is that blood... on the mirror above the captain’s office?

Please tell me it’s silly string.

AN:  It’s spray paint.

“The bombs are connected by a nervous system. The core relay is the brain. We find that, we destroy that-”   “We can stop the bombs from going off.”  Where’s the core relay?

That transition overhead shot of Gotham is so obviously New York City.

OOOHHHH THAT’S A NICE SHOT....

“I envy you.”  You do not.  Shut the hell up.

“Call our friend.  Tell him to kill the butler.  He's no longer necessary.“  You better not!

“And is that my dear Jongleur with my core relay in his hand and a grenade taped to his mouth?”  Hooooooo....

Oh my gosh, that hat take-off though!

This is gonna go south real fast.

Look at Jeremiah sitting in the chair all proper and dandy!

“I see.  I play the villain, you get away scot-free and rich.  I get you the money, you give me back my core relay.“  Oh my god, Oswald, you dead.

*Jeremiah rolls his eyes whenever Barbara speaks*  HAHAHAHA!

“I'm nothing if not sane.  And reasonable.  Two things my brother never valued.  Which is why I'll be successful where he failed.  Well, that and being vastly more intelligent.“  *hisses in panic*

#DraggingJeromeValeska2k18

“We're not just gonna hand this thing over and let him destroy Gotham, are we?”   “Of course not.  Once we get the money, we kill Jeremiah and his people, give the core relay to the police, split the $50 million, and are hailed as the heroes of Gotham!”  WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS OUT LOUD?!?  WHY?!?

EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM IS DEAD

*Jeremiah pulls out a bazooka*  OOHHHHH

“Are you [Jeremiah] OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?”  Yes.

“What's insane about having a backup plan?  Something Jongleur never knew about.“  True!

Oh my gosh, Jeremiah running up the stairs!  Speedy Gonzalez!

“I imagine you're wondering, why is Jeremiah doing this?“  I bet you’re wondering I brought you here today...

“My brother once said, "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy.“  Oh my God...

*screams when Alfred is shown being tortured*

Oh my God...

Craaaaap!

*gasps when Alfred gets doused in laughing gas*

*weakly*  Noo....

“I'm only helping you because I'm with Lee now.”  “Fine.  Whatever.” Hahaha!

“Ed, Jeremiah Valeska is threatening to destroy half the city.  You really think I care if you've deluded yourself into thinking you and Lee are a couple?“  YES!  THANK YOU!  THANK YOU JIM!  YESSSS!!

“She's with me in every way.”  Punch him.  Now.

“And you, Jim, are ten times the killer that I ever was.”  Ed, shut the heck up.

*slaps desk with every other word*  Can we please get back to the discussion at hand please thank you!

Is that Gotham?

“Jeremiah lived his entire life in a maze.  Now he's trying to remake the city into the place he feels most safe.“  Man...

“It’s [the solution to the maze] actually rather elegant.”  Shoot, Jeremiah’s more like the Riddler than the actual Riddler in this show!

Punch him [Ed].  Now!

*Jim knocks out Ed with one punch*  YESSSSSS!  THANK YOU!

*claps with each word*  Jim Gordon, MVP.

“Get the core relay, he [Oswald] says!  Have the upper hand, he says!“  Heehee!

“That means we can disrupt them by disarming the first bomb in the sequence.  It's like removing one light from a string of Christmas lights.“  So where’s the first one?

*Jim and Harvey reunite with a hug*  YAY!

You’d think Jeremiah would keep his plans more well hidden...

*Scarecrow sneaks up behind Selina*  OOOOOOHHHHHHH

IS THAT A SCYTHE?!?!?

Scarecrow’s literally just standing there, literally not moving, just holding his scythe.  It’s for the aesthetic.

*Scarecrow swings his scythe at Selina*  WHOA!

Bruce!  Get out of there!

AAAAAAHHHHHH I’M NOT LIKING THIS EPISODE AT ALL!

Fear toxin!  It’s fear toxin!  Bruce, you’re hallucinating this!

*screams when Fake Alfred gives himself a Glasgow smile*

I’m not likin’ this episode!

*gasps when Fake Alfred goes after Bruce*

I’m actually shaking...

No, no, Bruce, this is fake!

*Selina finds a hostage in a closet*  That has to be the real Alfred!

Who’s Bruce fighting then?

*screams when Fake Alfred gets shot and falls over the balcony*

“Alfred...”  Hug.  Please.  Hug.

[The generator bomb] Looks like a building...

Why and how did Jeremiah dye his hair?  I like it though.

Vertigo shot....

“This is a message to the followers of Jeremiah Valeska.  Jeremiah claims to have killed me [Jim].  Well, bad news, I'm alive.“  Haha!

“So, just know you're worshipping a fraud. A pale imitation of Jerome.“  Whoooo...

Go Jim!

You [Harvey] better not be doing “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe” on a bomb...

Aaaand he did.

*jumps when Jeremiah silences the cultists*

[Jeremiah smiles]  *softly*  Oh my God that’s awesome... oh my God...

*Jeremiah purges the cultists*  OOOHHHHHH

Here’s my question:  where’s Ecco?

“Perhaps the outcome was not what we had hoped, - but it was worth the risk.“  Oswald, shut up.  Let everybody enjoy their booze.

*Butch decides not to join Oswald*  Thank you!

Is that an old church?

“Think think think think think think...”  Haha!

“Who are you?  What do you want?”  “I [Ra’s]had a vision.  Of Gotham in flames.”  *gasps*

OOHHHH MY GODDD.... OH my God, I was right!

I freaking called it [Jeremiah and Ra’s meeting]!  I freaking called it!  Jeremiah and Ra’s are gonna cause No Man’s Land...

“Because, my boy-”  Mah boy... not a good sign!  Not a good thing!

“-this is about Bruce Wayne.”  Of course it is!  It’s always about Bruce!

Drink all the booze!

It’d be cool if we see Bludhaven next season.

Oh I like that lighting... it’s so good!  Jim in yellow and Lee in blue...

“But whatever happens after I walk out that door, I care about you.  And I always will.“  Aawww...

Oh man, this is sad.  Man...

Freaking Ed... get the heck out!

Get frozen in ice again!

*The precinct applauds Harvey*  Yaaayy!  Yay, recognition for Harvey!  This is stuff I like this show!  Yaaay!

Happy ending?  In a “Gotham” episode?  It’s probably less likely than I think!

[Bruce and Alfred] Hug!  Please!  Hug!

*Alfred leaves*  Dang it.

“Thank you again.  I don't know what would have happened if you weren't there.”  Aaawww...

Oh oh oh are they are they-

*Bruce and Selina kiss*  OOOHHHHHH!!!  Yes!

“Jeremiah said all it takes is one bad day to drive a person insane. I wonder if my parents dying made me [Bruce] a little insane.“  Mmmm....

*gasps when Jeremiah strolls in*

*Jeremiah shoots Selina*  OOOHHHHHHHH!! NO! NOOOO!!!

*Alfred tackles Jeremiah to the ground and beats the crap out of him*  YES YES YES YES THANK YOU!

NOOOO!!  No, no, she’s alive!

*Credits start playing*  Screw this entire show.  I’m done.

[panticwritten]

Warm-Up #3

My One True Guardian

This one was written using this prompt from @dialouge-prompts. It takes place in the Sequence of Regrettable Happenings universe, about five years before the events of the part of the daydream I’m focusing on writing. This is one of my favorite warm-ups I’ve ever done, and it got me thinking a lot more about the way I view Kane within the bounds of this universe.

This is the last one I’m gonna post for tonight, but I think I might start posting my warm-ups regularly if these are things people are interested in seeing!

Word count: 1912

@yuyi-yuyani @breakeven2007 @jade-island-lives @thespooniewrites it’s in a different universe, but it’s still Kane acting like a dad.

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here.

On the edge of a bed somewhere in the Baudelaire home, I stare at a vanity mirror on the other side of the room. An unrecognizable face gazes back at me with glazed eyes. The charred left side of the face, spreading past what the glass can see, turns my stomach.

Still, I stare.

It throbs. Pulsing from my scalp, to my neck, my back, the tips of my fingers, down my thighs, steady as a heartbeat. I don’t dare move, even as I meet the blank eyes of the stranger in the mirror.

After a while, someone knocks on the door, but I ignore them. It’s likely Beatrice with dinner. I’m far from hungry. Words that I don’t hear drift through the cracks and they’re gone.

I sigh and carefully lay back on the bed. I can’t hold back the garbled cries I desperately try to suppress as the fabric of the quilt presses against the blisters on my back.

Something else, beyond the pain, hits me and I screw my eyes shut. The negative of the house, the flames reaching to me, seems to burn my eyelids from the mere memory. It starts to fade again, and I try to relax. I’ve been hiding from everything since I got back into the city. I can’t focus on it now.

I hear shouting downstairs and my eyes snap open.

I struggle, for a moment, to force the words to make sense. It happens eventually.

“Your people didn’t do anything for them either!” a familiar voice accuses.

I sit up and immediately regret my haste as my heartbeat kickstarts. At the sound of his voice, I’m more alert than I’ve been in days. The voices, now quieter, move under my feet.

I stand, looking down at the floorboards. He knows I’m here, then? He knows I’m alive? The idea is annoying, and just that thought is wakes me up a little more. It’s more than I’ve felt in three days.

I look back to the mirror, now with critical eyes.

I grab a full glass of water from my bedside stand, cringing at the touch to my burned hands, and take a drink. The water hits my smoke-burned throat like acid, but I force it down as I cross to the vanity. I take a seat in front of it and dip a washcloth into the water.

It doesn’t do much for my dead eyes, the bags under them, or the twenty pounds I’ve lost in the past week and a half, but at least the soot’s gone. Now the burns seem brighter. I try to press the cloth against them, too, but my hands shake too much. I would just make it worse.

I drop the rag, finally giving in the to slicing nerves on fingers.

He won’t be happy—they’re getting swollen, much darker than they were before. They’re infected. I touch the edges of the wounds, guilt cutting just as deep as the pain. This is my fault.

I try to put it out of my mind. I brace myself and lift a brush to gently pull it through my tangled hair. Much of it is gone, ending in singed mats, even more pathetic after two days of hiding in this room.

Footsteps start up the stairs, and the argument continues.

“I don’t want you anywhere near our children,” Bertrand hisses. The familiar voice responds with a dry laugh.

“Neither do I. I’m just here for mine.”

I stop, half out of my chair, at that. I stare at the door. The steps stop just outside of the door. Easing myself upright, I cross to it.

“They won’t answer. I’ve been trying all day.” Beatrice is quiet. Her words stand in the air for a moment.

I listen to them, two sets of breathing, but I know there are three people out there. I rest my hand on the doorknob, gritting my teeth against the contact, and brace myself. I swallow down the last of my listlessness and open the door.

Kane stands on the other side, one hand poised to knock on the door. The Baudelaires mutter in surprise, but Kane simply watches me warily.

I turn and walk back into my room, my bare feet silent on the floorboards. The door closes, and I don’t look back. I don’t want to hear his lecture, not today.

“Has anyone looked at those yet?”

I shake my head, moving to cross my arms but deciding against it when my burns scream at me. I don’t hear him move, but suddenly his hand is on my right, burnless, shoulder. I don’t fight when he leads me back to the bed.

He surveys me for a moment.

“Christ,” he mutters, turning to the vanity. I see his brow furrow in the mirror. “Were you going to let yourself die?”

I shrug his hand away and avert my eyes. He doesn’t comment, just sets a bag on the desk. I don’t watch him rummage through it, instead studying the curtain over the window.

He sighs and I flick a brief glance at him.

“This is going to hurt,” he says, turning back with a tray of tools. Something about his tone sounds wrong. Kane isn’t supposed to be so nice. I frown and look away again.

He starts with my right hand, and I bite back a cry. It’s searing, blinding white behind my eyes, but I keep my eyes locked on the unraveling fabric in the middle of the red curtains.

Slowly, excruciatingly, he debrides the palm of my hand. He leaves bandages and dull throbbing in his wake, but I know that this is just the beginning of the pain. It will take a while for these burns to heal. I should be in a hospital, but I can’t risk that.

When he finishes with my hand, I’m breathing hard, my brow covered in sweat. He then takes the time to inspect the minor burns snaking up my right arm. I expect him to move on, and I brace myself for the slicing pain that doesn’t come.

I finally look at him to see his unimpressed gaze. He leans back in the chair from the vanity. Waiting. I look away after a mere instant, but he latches onto my acknowledgement.

“When did you last eat?”

I shrug.

“Sleep?”

I shrug again.

“Shower?”

I look at him and direct every ounce of the anger I’ve felt in the past two weeks at him. Who is he to treat me like a misbehaving child? If he’s here, that means he knows exactly how bad things have been and he’s just showing up now.

He isn’t impressed.

“You need to take care of yourself.”

I don’t answer, so he scoots closer and starts on my left hand. This one’s worse. I grit my teeth and return my gaze to the covered window, but I don’t count on him continuing his ‘words of wisdom.’

“You’re lucky that you are who you are,” he says. “You’ll get a scar, probably, but that’s about it.”

A particularly sharp twinge of pain cuts the leash I have on my tongue.

“You think I’m worried about getting a scar?” I say, my voice flatter than I would have expected. My throat burns and I swallow to ease it.

I look to him, surprised to find a frown on his face as he refocuses on my forearm.

“No, of course not,” he answers mildly, pressing a line of medical tape around a bandage. We sit in silence, and he stands. “Look, I’m not here to lecture you. I just need to know that you’re okay.”

“Well, I’m fine.” I’m defensive and I know it, but I glower at him stubbornly. An idea starts drifting around in my head. I can’t identify it so I push it away.

“You obviously aren’t,” he says, but doesn’t push it further. He goes back to the bag with the tray and pulls more alcohol and bandages out. He looks up at me in the mirror, hands still in the bag. “I was going to check on you at the house, but then…”

“Olaf burned it down.”

The idea from before flashes in my eyes again, but I still can’t quite grasp it.

He nods slowly, his brow furrowed. “That’s what the Baudelaires said. Why didn’t you come to me? Or K?”

I shrug. “You know how the clans are. How fast would they have dragged me back in?”

He turns back to me, feigning deafness, the tray full, and comes back to sit. He pauses, a pair of scissors poised near the bottom of my tattered top.

“If I’d known it was this bad, I would have been there a week ago.”

Slowly, he debrides my burns. He extracts the events of the past few weeks from me in that time, his eyes growing harder the more I tell him. He tells me I need an actual medic to look at my burns later, if not a real doctor, without much comment otherwise.

As I speak, the idea comes back and solidifies in my head. When he’s done, I’m sure that it’s what I need to do.

“Do you have any under the table work I can do?” I ask as he finally starts dumping the refuse from the process into the bag. He chokes a little and turns back to me, surprised.

“I thought you were done with that life?”

“I need to survive somehow,” I say, nervously glancing away. “This is the only life I know. It’s what I’m good at.”

He watches me intently, and I try to plead with only my eyes. After a moment, he shakes his head. He’s smiling, though, so I know I’ve won.

“You need to see a doctor—a therapist or something—and you need to tell me if it gets this bad again.”

I perk up, then droop slightly. “I can’t—”

“I’ll find someone to see you,” he says dismissively, his gaze boring into me. “You have to swear that you’ll keep me updated.”

I nod and stand, my entire body throbbing. “Get me a job and I’ll see a doctor.”

He hesitates, seeming unsure.

“Don’t pretend that everything’s fine, Jess,” he says gently. “You have to take time to let the pain heal.”

I shoot him an irritable look and head for the door. “Time is a luxury I don’t have at the moment. Now, are you coming or not?”

“Hang on, idiot.”

I turn back just in time to catch a bundle of fabric. I look down to see a fresh set of clothes. I glance further down, then to the bed at the pile of burned clothing he had to cut me out of. Right.

Kane slings his bag over his shoulder, his mouth a bitter line. “I can’t believe the Baudelaires let you sit here for two days. Get changed. I need to have a word with them.”

He starts toward me, and I step aside from the door to let him pass. He stops, a hand on the doorknob, and turns his eyes on me.

“I’m okay,” I say, thinking of how he must see me. Covered in bandages, a trainwreck. Begging for work when I’m possibly suicidal.

“Don’t think I believe that for a second.” He lifts a hand and rests it on my head. He moves, as if to ruffle my hair, but doesn’t actually do it. “First stop’ll be the hospital. I’ve got a contact that should be discreet.”

[bethanygracewilliams]

Phantom of the Opera North American Tour

On August 6th, I got the incredible opportunity to see the new production of Phantom of the Opera live and let me just say, I had a fantastic time. It was absolutely gorgeous and it was everything I hoped it would be.

If you haven't seen the new production yet and are planning to, you might want to skip this post as it will contain spoilers for the new production.

First off, let me just say that this is the first time I've ever seen Phantom live and the sets were beautiful. I couldn't get over the amount of detail and complexity in each set. It was also amazing how they managed to fit so many different sets into such a compact area. The rooftop, the graveyard, and the Phantom's lair were some of my personal favourites. And, of course, the chandelier was gorgeous. The costumes were beautifully crafted and the wigs were wonderfully styled. I know the Phantom's new wig has been received with both good and bad responses, but personally, I loved it. I thought it was cute.

I fell in love with both the voices and performances of the Phantom and Christine, played by Victor Wallace and Kaitlyn Davis respectively. Their voices were breathtaking and their performances, at least in my opinion, felt very emotional and personal. Carlotta, Meg, and Mme. Giry, played by Trista Moldovan, Julie Eicher, and Kristie Dale Sanders respectively, were all amazing. They were very entertaining and they all had those certain aspects of their characters spot on. Andre, played by Edward Staudenmayer, was absolutely hilarious. He was fantastic at his role and he made me laugh so many times throughout the show. Raoul, Piangi, and Firmin, played by Jordan Craig, Phumzile Sojola, and David Benoit respectively, were, in my opinion, a little weak compared to the rest of the cast, but by no means bad. I still enjoyed their performances vey much.

The orchestra was outstanding. I've never heard an orchestra live before and it might be one of the best things I've ever heard. The music was so crisp and clear and it was even more beautiful live than it is on the 25th anniversary DVD. I can't even begin to describe the feeling I got hearing the overture live.

The pyrotechnics and special effects were so cool to see live! The fog was so magical. The fire was intense and so bright, I actually had to shut my eyes. I was prepared for all but one gunshot. That one nearly gave me a heart attack. And, of course, it was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced to see that chandelier drop live in front of my eyes. I loved it!

Now, let me get into some of the specific things I loved about this production. I loved how they did the sequence of the opera house coming back to life during the overture. They way they kept Raoul on the stage while ballerinas and stagehands made their way onto the stage, almost like he was watching a memory, was so beautiful. And it was so cool how the two walls spun around to be the opera boxes.

Of course, the mirror scene was very cool, with all the lights and smoke as the Phantom brought Christine through. The whole sequence of him bringing her to his lair for the first time was amazing. I loved how they were up in the flies and then all the stairs came out of the wall for them to go down underground. I also loved the little detail, when they were going down the stairs, Christine stopped halfway down and when they Phantom realized she wasn't following anymore, he came back up to her level and offered her his hand. I thought that was sweet. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have the boat during Phantom Of The Opera, but was extremely excited when they did in The Final Lair instead. I also loved during the 'Sing!' part of Phantom Of The Opera, the Phantom really seemed like a teacher. He wasn't just pushing her to sing, he was also telling her to breathe, gesturing to her entire diaphragm, teaching her how to hit those notes. I really liked that because I feel that in many productions of Phantom, we lose that teacher quality in him because they focus only on the fact that he's in love with her.

One of my favourite things in this production was the choreography for Music Of The Night. I absolutely loved it. It just felt so personal and sensitive and sweet. The Phantom gave Christine some of his music for her to look through and it was so sweet. He urged her to look through with the excitement of a little kid. He was so proud to show her the music he had written just for her. Then, he put a blindfold over her eyes because he was still teaching her and he wanted her to feel the music, not just hear it or sing it. He wanted her to really understand the music and feel it in her soul. Again, I loved seeing the Phantom actually teaching her, not just obsessing over her. Another thing I liked was that even with his mask on, he was still so hesitant for Christine to look at him, almost as if he were afraid of her gaze. He was also extremely reluctant to touch her or for her to touch him. Even though he had brought her down to his domain, he was constantly shying away from her. One thing I didn't like, though, was during the second last verse, the Phantom just suddenly picked Christine up, carried her over to the bed, laid her down and that's how she fell asleep. It felt very out of character for the Phantom to just blatantly invade her personal space when he wasn't leading her somewhere or begging her not to leave, especially since he had been so hesitant to let her look at him, let alone touch him, through most of the song.

However, I did like how they did the first face reveal. By having the Phantom remove his mask on his own to clean his face gave it such a personal, intimate touch that I absolutely loved. If he had known Christine was awake, he never would have done that. Because he thought she was still sleeping, he deemed it safe to go about his normal routine and letting us have a glimpse into the everyday rituals of the Phantom was something I really loved. And the fact that he started crying because he felt bad for scaring Christine with his face was so heartbreaking. It was a perfect choice.

The way they killed Buquet, played by Dan Debenport, was really well done, in my opinion. They had the Phantom disguise himself as a stage hand so by the time Buquet realized who it was, it was too late. They actually showed the Phantom tying the noose around Buquet's neck (when in reality, he was hooking it to his shirt so he didn't actually hang) and I thought that was a nice touch. And with the ballerinas screaming and the music, the whole scene felt so dark and sinister. It was amazing.

Another thing I didn't like was that, right before All I Ask Of You, Christine actually contemplated jumping off of the roof of the opera house to escape from the Phantom. It felt very out of character for her, but in a way that I just can't describe. I just didn't like it. However, I did like that after she collapsed onto the floor, Raoul got down on his hands and knees during All I Ask Of You, to get down on her level, and he inched towards her just a little bit at a time. Then, when he got close enough, he wrapped her in a big hug and held her close. Honestly, it was so sweet and I could feel how much Raoul truly cared for Christine in those moments.

I was the most excited and the most nervous about the All I Ask Of You Reprise because it's one of my favourite songs from the whole show. Thankfully, my worries were completely misplaced because Victor Wallace absolutely nailed it. He started out so angry because he felt so hurt and betrayed by Christine, but he sang the line, "he was bound to love you when he heard you sing" so softly, like, for a moment, he didn't blame Raoul for falling in love with Christine. How could he not? But, of course, he soon became angry once again and brought down the chandelier by shooting the lines holding it up from Box 5. So much happened in that scene, I had trouble seeing it all. The chandelier swung and sparked and eventually dropped, people were screaming, curtains and backdrops fell... It was so overwhelming, but it was one of the best moments of my life. I think the people in the front rows had a heart attack when the chandelier dropped, especially if they didn't know it was coming. It was great.

Getting to see Masquerade was also such an incredible experience. The costumes, the music, the colours, the dancing... It was all so amazing and spectacular to see live! I was disappointed with the Phantom's Red Death costume, though. Instead of the big, elaborate costume with the huge feathered hat and intricate skull mask, it was just a red soldier's uniform with a bedazzled half mask. So, yeah, that was a little disappointing.

Something I did like, though, was that while Mme. Giry was telling Raoul about the Phantom's past, they illustrated it through shadows projected on the walls. They showed a man getting a bag pulled off of his head and being whipped by another man and when Mme. Giry merely said that he escaped, they showed the Phantom strangling whoever had kept him captive. It was a nice additional visual and helped better illustrate his story.

A little detail that made me laugh during Notes 2 was that Piangi was eating chocolates and stuff in the background and when the Phantom's note said that he needed to lose weight, he just stopped eating and shoved them somewhere in his jacket. That made me chuckle. And when Kaitlyn Davis sang Twisted Every Way, it quickly became one of my favourite renditions of it. It was so haunting and absolutely beautiful. And when everybody was rehearsing the Phantom's opera and the piano started playing itself, I loved the detail of fire coming out of the piano and the way that the chorus seemed to be addressing Christine with the song. She was so overwhelmed and upset and all of those things really made the whole scene more intense. Also, when Mme. Giry asked Carlotta if she could be certain the composer wasn't present, Carlotta warily looked up for anymore backdrops or sandbags to drop, then stepped out of harm's way and crossed herself. It was just a little detail, but it was one of my favourites.

And then, of course, Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again was beautifully performed by Kaitlyn Davis. It was powerful and emotional and heart-wrenching. It was everything I hoped for and more. It was an incredibly chilling rendition. Wandering Child was also one I was nervous for as it's also one of my favourites, but again, as soon as I heard it, it blew all my worries away. It really felt like Christine was being entranced, hypnotized, by the Phantom. Raoul called out to her, grabbed her hand, even stood right in front of her and she was still being pulled by the Phantom's voice. Then, Raoul did something I did not expect. He just ran up and punched the Phantom right in the face! I almost burst out laughing right there in the theatre; it was incredible. I couldn't believe he had actually decked him, and then went a step further and slammed him up against the wall. I loved that change because, honestly, Raoul should want to fight for Christine in any way possible. Again, it really made me feel how much Raoul cared for Christine.

One of the coolest things was right before the Phantom's opera began and you could hear him saying "I'm here" from all different directions. It was super trippy, especially since I've never experienced it live. And may I just say, Point Of No Return was a lot steamier and a lot more touchy-feely in this production than it was in the 25th anniversary. Like, we all thought it was some hot stuff with Ramin and Sierra? Yeah, this one was twice as bad and I was like, parents brought kids under the age of ten to this. Wonder if they're questioning that decision if they haven't already? So, yeah, that was a little wild. One detail that I did like, though, was that the actor who played Piangi was black while the one who played the Phantom was white. When they made the switch, the Phantom was wearing gloves in addition to the cloak. Then, after a few verses he took them off and put his hands in front of Christine's eyes so she could clearly see it was him. Then, throughout the rest of the song, you could see that Christine was manipulating him to keep him on stage so she could reveal it was the Phantom. You could see the glances she was throwing to Raoul up in his box. I don't know, I just really loved those little details. Also, after the line "past the point of no return", both Christine and the Phantom did this neat little salsa stamp after singing the line. That was another little thing I liked. And, of course, the Phantom's proposal was heart-wrenching as usual. And instead of being instantly angry when Christine pulled off his mask and wig, he just gave off this silent sort of hurt and betrayal and it was so heartbreaking. Also, nobody seemed to care about the fact that Piangi had been hanged? Like, it just got completely overlooked because the Phantom kidnapped Christine. That was a little weird.

Like I mentioned before, I was so happy to see the boat while the Phantom started Down Once More. It really made up for not having it in Phantom Of The Opera. When Raoul showed up, the Phantom held Christine with his arm around her throat to deter Raoul from trying anything. That then shifted into the position where the Phantom is holding Christine behind him by the throat, effectively strangling her without even realizing it. They had that little detail of the Phantom looking at his hand in horror once he released Christine and realizing what he had done. I really appreciate that because the Phantom would never intentionally hurt Christine, but he would unintentionally. And when the three of them started all singing at once, there was a nice detail there. Christine started taking the Phantom's sheet music and began crumpling it up, page by page. It was such a defiant action, like she was saying, "If you're going to take away what I love, I'm going to take away what you love." Of course, Erik was extremely upset by that and immediately, he was on the floor, scrambling for his music and that, in turn, gave Christine a chance to go to Raoul. The Phantom was quick to pull her away from him, though, and he wound up pushing her down onto the bed. Now, I'm not gonna lie, I was extremely concerned that things were gonna get a little a rapey and I was like, please do not do that to Erik's character because he would never even dream of abusing Christine in such a way. Thankfully, however, it seemed more like that's just where he wound up pushing her because that's where they were closest to. He's so manic and unstable in the final scene that he was just doing whatever he could to get her away from Raoul in that moment. When the Phantom told Christine to make her choice, he was already crying, he was so overwhelmed.

And then, of course, the kiss. We gotta talk about that. It was so heart-wrenching, it was beautiful. Christine kissed him and he just froze. His mind couldn't even register that Christine was kissing him. He actually fell to his knees and Christine just came right down with him, giving him a big hug after she pulled away from the kiss. It was heartbreaking and I had a super hard time not crying. That whole moment was just full of such powerful, raw emotion. It was possibly the best moment in the whole show.

One thing that absolutely broke my heart was that the Phantom delivered the line, "Christine, I love you" without knowing she was even there. After Christine and Raoul had left and we had our heartbreaking reprise of Masquerade, the Phantom was on the floor, trying to straighten out the sheet music Christine had crumpled up. Christine came back to return his ring, but before she even said anything, the Phantom delivered that line and Christine had to try her hardest not to burst into sobs(as did I). She just left the ring on a table without letting the Phantom know she was there and then quietly left with Raoul. That just absolutely ripped my heart right out of my chest. I also really loved that Raoul came with Christine when she went to return the ring, like he understood that it was something she needed to do, that she felt so sorry for the Phantom, she couldn't just leave without doing that. And when the Phantom can hear them singing, he just stops trying to salvage his music because if Christine won't perform his work, then no one should because he wrote it specifically for her. It's so sad.

The ending was different than what I expected. I expected him to sit in the chair with the black cloak, then he'd be gone. I was really surprised when Meg and the others stumbled into his lair while he was still putting on the black cloak. And because he had no escape, he simply walked over to his bed and stood there, seemingly resigning himself to being captured. Boy, was I shocked when Meg moved backwards with the black cloak, then revealed that no one was wearing it anymore. And how she handed the mask to a police man? I don't know, I just really liked that detail.

Seeing Phantom live was possibly one of the greatest experiences of my life and I'm so thankful and grateful that I got to have this incredible chance. It's something that I'll remember forever and even if I see it live again, this first time will always hold a very special place in my heart.