#this is both senseless and aimless

[ellewritesx]

liquid assets

(part five of the sugar, baby series)

Summary: You left the boxes, but you never really leave.

Warnings: sugardaddy arrangement, mentions of past sex, Harry's drunk, this isn't very smutty, sorry if that's what you're here for!

A/N: music has helped me tremendously while writing this part, especially ''the archer'' by taylor swift, which captures harry's inner turmoil perfectly, while ''my tears ricochet'' (also by taylor) represents y/n to a tee. both are a must-listen while reading this imo, i couldn't recommend it more!!! i hope you like it lovelies x

Word Count: 3,134

...

The city is still asleep when Harry stumbles out of the sleek black cab, the sky above him bleeding into a pale gray with the promise of morning and soul-crushing melancholy. The street lights flicker in sync with the pounding in his head, and his boots echo hollowly against the pavement as he makes his way toward his building.

He hadn't meant to stay out all night. Or drink that much. But lately, nothing felt intentional. Everything was senseless. Aimless. He hasn't slept in his bed since you left, not really, just collapsed onto the couch when the liquor dulled his mind enough to let him.

This morning, though, the ache is louder than usual. Maybe because the night before, he dreamt of you. Of your laugh. Your lips parting for him. The heat of your mouth. Your hands pulling him closer. Of the way you had looked at him when he'd told you to leave.

He nearly trips over the boxes on his doorstep.

At first he thinks they're deliveries. Something from his stylist, maybe, another line of designer clothes he won't wear. But then he sees the writing on the labels. You always write your ones with a little line at the bottom. Just weeks ago he'd jokingly called it pretentious and kissed your shoulder. Now, he just stared.

Two large boxes. One smaller. Taped shut, but not tightly. Like you couldn't care enough to secure them properly. Or like you couldn't bear to really seal them closed.

He stands there for a full minute, the back of his neck prickling with the sick, sinking understanding of what this means. You weren't just pulling away from him. This wasn't a temporary rough patch. You were returning everything. This was goodbye.

The elevator ride is unbearable. The boxes sit at his feet like the materialization of his guilt, heavy and silent. He drops his keys twice fumbling to get the door open, and when he finally does, he bumps the door open with his hips, carrying the boxes in, the weight similar to the one he's been carrying on his shoulders.

He drops the keys in the bowl, lets his coat slip from his shoulders, and shoves the largest box onto the floor in front of the coffee table. He sits down on the rug and starts cutting through the tape.

Perfume is the first thing that hits him. Your scent. Sweet and warm, a little citrusy. It blooms from the open cardboard like a ghost.

The top layer is fabric: folded, neatly arranged. A black silk nightgown he'd bought you at a boutique in Paris when you'd joked about needing something ''ridiculously fancy'' to sleep in. You wore it that night in the hotel, standing barefoot on the balcony while he held you from behind and the Eiffel Tower glittered before you, so close you giddily told him ''It's like I can touch it, Harry!''

Days before, when he'd first seen the excitement on your face at the prospect of going to Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle, he had made some calls, voice hushed so as not to spoil the surprise, securing you two the hotel with the best view.

He remembers watching you and thinking he'd never seen anything so painfully beautiful, the golden lights reflecting in your eyes. You had no idea how much it wrecked him, how much he would sacrifice to just stay in that moment forever. He lifts the fabric to his nose and nearly flinches. It still smells like the expensive red wine you'd spilled on it when he had impulsively pressed your back against the balcony railing and kissed you, making you smile against his lips.

He puts the dress down like it can rid him of the reminiscence.

Next is a pair of Louboutins. Red soles barely scuffed. You'd worn them on his birthday, matching the red lipstick that would leave imprints on his skin when you worshipped him just hours later.

You'd complained for days leading up to it, insisting on throwing him a party. ''It's your birthday, Harry. You deserve to be celebrated,'' you'd said adamantly, wrapping your arms around his neck, a pout on your lips. He told you he wasn't ''a party person''. He didn't have the heart to tell you nobody would've showed up.

He swallows and sets the heels aside, gently, fragile like the memory of you in them. He works through the rest with methodical silence. Each item slices him open a little more.

The floral sundress he'd brought home after he saw you eyeing something similar in a magazine. You laughed when he surprised you with it and teased him relentlessly about ''knowing trends now.'' Which he didn't. He had asked his stylist for advice.

The bottle of your favorite perfume is on the bottom of the box, half-empty. He turns it over in his hand and stares at the gold label. He remembers sitting in a shop with you for over an hour while you sniffed sample after sample and asked for his opinion repeatedly, only to go back to the first one you'd tried. ''You like it, right?'' you'd asked, a little shy. He had, and he told you so. Now, the scent clings to everything in the box. His chest feels tight.

Then come the little things. A silk eye mask he got you for the flight to Tokyo. A tiny tub of lip balm in that ridiculous flavor you always used. Marshmallow. He always hungrily watched you dragging it across your lips, then leaning in and asking, "Wanna taste?" like you didn't already know the answer. He swears he can still taste your lips, even after all these days without your kisses.

His hoodie, one he didn't even realize was missing. He reaches out and curls the fabric in his fingers. You used to sleep in it when he was away. Once, he caught you wearing it with nothing underneath, strutting into the kitchen, legs bare, hair messy, eyes soft with sleep. It undid him. He'd fucked you until the sunset that day.

And then, in the smallest box, wrapped in tissue like you'd been afraid he'd shatter it like he did your heart: the necklace.

It was simple. A fine gold chain with a tiny charm, an enamel daisy. You'd told him one night daisies were your favorite because they always looked happy and reminded you of simpler times. ''Everything changes. Daisies don't. They're the same ones I used to pluck as a kid. It's like a time capsule,'' you'd whispered, absentmindedly drawing the flowers on his bare chest with your fingers.

It stuck with him. He found the charm a few weeks later in a shop in Notting Hill and had it made into a necklace. He didn't give it to you on a special occasion. No grand gesture. Just left it on your pillow with a note that said ''My daisy''. You wore it every day.

He holds it now like it might burn him. You gave this back. You gave this back. His gift to you.

Harry feels his throat close. He stands abruptly, needing air, needing to escape, and forces his feet to move to the kitchen. The overhead light is too bright, worsening his hangover, so he snaps it off and leans against the counter in the dimness, still holding the necklace. It feels so small in his hand. Useless. Pretty and pointless.

He should have known. Should've known from the moment he pulled back when you hugged him that night that it would come to this. But he thought, selfishly, naively, that maybe you'd keep the things he gave you. That maybe they had meant something.

That maybe he had meant something.

Apparently, not enough.

He wanders back into the living room. The boxes stare at him. The scent of you, faint and persistent, clung to the air, to his clothes, to his goddamn skin. It was like you were everywhere and nowhere at once. His apartment hadn't changed, but it felt hollow now. Like you'd taken something with you when you left that he couldn't name.

He sinks down onto the edge of the couch and lets the necklace dangle from his fingers. It spins gently, catching light from the streetlamp outside. He doesn't cry. Just lets the silence pile up in the room like snow, cold and heavy. The kind that buries things.

You returned everything.

But the cruelest part, the part he couldn't just box up and send away, is that his apartment still smells like you. Still looks like you'd just been there. Like you never left in the first place.

It hits him strongest in the bedroom, where the air is thick with warmth and ghosted memories. Even after opening every window, even after lighting a cigarette just to drown it out with something acrid and biting, it clings to him. Your perfume, like flowers pressed into the pages of a book, has settled into his sheets, the curtains, the collar of the hoodie he instinctively pulled over his head this morning, only to realize halfway through the sleeves that it's the one you wore to brunch a few days ago. Your scent is stitched into the seams now.

He moves through the space like a man haunted. Maybe he is. Maybe that's what you get when you open yourself to someone just enough to let them settle into the cracks.

The shower still holds your shampoo. A tall bottle with a pearly label and one of those unnecessarily complex French names you'd once made him pronounce, laughing when he butchered it. He'd picked up the pronunciation eventually, just to see you smile when he got it right. Now it stands like a monument in the corner of the tiled stall, half-full and untouched since the last time you used it. He should throw it away. It doesn't make sense to keep it. When he tried, his hand lingered over the bottle, then dropped to his side again.

On the floor next to his bed is one of your hair ties. Black, thin, stretched nearly to its breaking point. He'd found another one wrapped around the knob of the closet door. Another tucked into the pocket of his sweatpants. You were always losing them. Now he has a dozen, and not a single one matters.

In the living room, there's a single flower in a glass vase on the table by the window. He bought it on impulse. He'd seen it in a florist's window on the way home from an exhausting meeting and stepped inside before he could think twice, it was the last one. He'd watched her light up when she saw it, throwing her arms around him and accusing him of being soft, a romantic. He'd vehemently denied it, obviously. Helianthus. You'd taught him that word, too.

''Just call them sunflowers, baby,'' he'd said with a chuckle and a shake of his head. ''They're majestic, Harry. Helianthus suits them better,'' you'd argued passionately, face drop-dead serious, which only made his amusement grow. But he never referred to them as ''just sunflowers'' again.

The petals have started to curl in on themselves. Losing their brightness. He can't bring himself throw it out.

Your toothbrush is missing from the holder. The space where it used to sit is stark and empty. Your favorite mug is gone, the one with the cracked handle and a faded design of a dancing avocado. You must've taken it while he was at work.

The throw blanket is still draped over the couch from your last movie night. He drops into the cushions and buries his face in it, just for a second. Maybe longer than a second. Maybe long enough to feel pathetic and wallow in self-pity. Maybe long enough to remember how you looked wrapped up in it, curled into his side with your bare legs tangled in his lap and your voice low and sleepy.

There's a forgotten earring on the nightstand. A small hoop, nothing flashy, but he remembers watching you put them on in the mirror, remembers unhooking them with careful fingers before he laid you on the pillows. He doesn't know what to do with it.

His throat tightens with something sharp and sour. It's not just that you're gone. It's how thoroughly you were here.

You made this space feel like a home, like something more than walls and furniture and soft-close drawers. He let you in without meaning to, and now that you're out, he can't scrub you from the corners.

His phone buzzes on the table. He glances over, more out of instinct than anything else. Maybe delusional hope. Just a work notification. He throws it face-down and leans back into the couch.

He knows he should stop checking his phone. Knows you won't text, not first. Maybe not at all. But he can't help it.

Even silence feels loud now. It echoes. And in that silence, he hears you, your laughter bouncing off the walls, your bare feet padding across the floor in the morning, the sleepy hums you make when you stretch. The way you whispered his name sometimes, like it was a secret. Like you were afraid of breaking it.

He drags a hand through his hair. The strands are still damp from the light drizzle outside, and he catches a faint whiff of your shampoo again. Fuck.

He's not used to missing people. He doesn't make a habit of letting them stay long enough to be missed.

The couch dips under his weight as he sinks deeper into it. He drags a hand down his face, eyes gritty from the lack of sleep and too much thinking. He hasn't been out of his head in days. He's always done this. He shuts down, shuts out.

He's used to earning love by being quiet. That was the unspoken rule growing up. Don't speak unless spoken to. Don't cry unless you're bleeding. Don't ask for anything unless you're prepared to owe something in return. There was always a weight to every act of kindness in his childhood home, like affection came with a receipt. He learned early to stop wanting what he couldn't afford.

He remembers once, he must've been around nine or ten, when he'd won some regional spelling competition. For some reason, it was a big deal where he lived. The children winning those were referred to as ''the bright ones''. Their parents always seemed so proud, he'd seen their families hollering and cheering them on. He'd figured that if he won, maybe his family would be proud of him, too.

Every day leading up to the competition, he spent hours on end in the library, reading the dictionary and quizzing himself on words like ''fiduciary'' and ''eudaemonic'', which was way above the reading level of a nine-year-old, but he liked to be prepared. He always has.

And he'd won, impressing students and teachers alike, but he hadn't cared about any of them. He ran home, clutching the shiny laminated certificate with shaky fingers, beaming. His mum looked up from her laptop just long enough to say, "Put it on the fridge, if you want."

No one came to the ceremony. That was the last time he brought something home hoping to be praised for it.

He's always lived in transactions. Give this, get that. Be good, be useful, be what they want, and maybe you'll be wanted too.

He doesn't think about those years often, it's easier not to. The past feels like something heavy in the water, always threatening to drag him under if he swims too close. But now, alone in the apartment with the ghost of you, it all comes rushing back. The empty dinner table. The silence that rang louder than any argument. The way he used stay awake at night dreaming of growing up just so he could finally be in control of his own life.

He'd told you from the beginning; nothing was yours to keep. Every dress, every dinner, every luxury, bought by him, belonging to him. He built the arrangement around ownership. Around control.

He's turned into his parents. He's replicating the patterns that once hurt him, and calling it safety. Because if everything is defined, then nothing can be taken without warning.

You'll never be left disappointed, suffocating in the aching emptiness where something you once called yours used to be.

He slumps back into the couch, fingers pressed to his temples. And for a brief, unguarded second, he considers going to your apartment and dropping to his knees and confessing his feelings, even though he's not sure what they are exactly. But then it leaks in again.

The thing he still carries, this quiet, aching fear that love only stretches so far before it snaps.

When he got sick as a kid, he used to fake being better faster than he was. He didn't like how it made his mum sigh, how she'd move around the house more angrily when he was home from school. He'd lay there, feverish and aching, but tell her he felt fine, insisting on going to school with a tight-lipped smile. He didn't want to be a burden. Didn't want to be more than she could handle.

There were no bedtime stories. No tucking in. No gentle hands brushing hair off his forehead. Instead, there were closed doors and flickering hallway lights, his own small fingers tracing shapes into the walls, waiting for silence to settle enough that he could sleep. Love, in his house, was a presence you had to earn. It had to be invited in, performed for, clung to. Maybe that's why now, even grown, he keeps things transactional. It's what he knows. It's what he can control.

He reaches for his phone to shake off the feeling, his thumbs hovering above the screen. There's so much he wants to say to you. ''I'm sorry.'' ''I miss you.'' ''Please forgive me.''

For a moment, he thinks about deleting your number. Blocking it. Pretending none of this happened.

But the truth is, it did. And it's eating him alive, consuming his every waking thought, and, as of last night, his dreams. He stares down at his phone for a long time before he types. Are we done?

There's a long pause. Long enough for him to regret sending it, for his heart to drop to his stomach and his hand to wander toward the half-empty vodka bottle still on the coffee table.

But then your reply blinks onto the screen. Were we anything to begin with?

It knocks the breath out of him. If whatever the two of you were is already broken, what's left to protect?

What's left to lose?

...

thank you so much for reading! i appreciate any and all support so remember to like, comment and reblog. requests are open! 💕

sugar, baby series tag list

@indierockgirrl @prettygurl-2009 @cherryflavoredbyme @dipmeinhoneyh @haliastyless @drewrry @maddiesalvatore1839 @robinsue87 @zoraaasyd @sincerely-yours-marsbar @m0mmyfromtarget @maudie-duan @hoolabalooba @hisparentsgallerryy @txmhxllqnd @harringtonhundreds @freddyselmstreet @caynonmoondreams @matildasatellite @ilovezaynmalik08 @looney-goose @call1800coochie @nostalgiainmybones @billweasleyswife

general tag list

@2601-london @mads3502 @angeldavis777 @run-for-the-hills @postsexfistbump @hobireasns @madilee7802 @spinninc

...

[valentine-cafe]

First ask here, but how would a top afab reader go down with the characters that are open to being topped? Any surprises or unexpected people open to the idea? Hope you both have a fantastic day.

˖⁺. “ let me be your desire ” : 

﹙ top afab reader x various monster characters ﹚.𖹭 ݁

. . . various monster characters x top afab reader !! 🍓 : 

they just love whenever you top them <3

﹙ cws ﹚: explicit content ˖ penetrative sex ˖ riding ˖ spanking ˖ thigh-fucking ˖ office sex ˖ creampie ˖ dumb-fucking ˖ anal ˖ nipple play | wc : 1.8k 

﹙ receipts ﹚: welcome to the cafe! I hope that this is to your liking <3

꒰  other treats : guidelines ˖ m.list ˖ characters ˖ our lore  ꒱

﹙ alessio 9948e. ﹚. . . always wants to touch and grip !! 🍒 :

Bating breaths and shaky hands reaching up to grip the pair of hips rolling against his in vain effort, as another pair move down instinctively to halt the movement. Your hands pinning his to the soft silken sheets as you hips smack back down against his.

Sounds of the erotic dance tango around the room. Your groans with his moans taking turns to run their lap around the field.

“Ah-ah. What do we say?”

His emerald eyes roll back at the small coo he receives upon his dick being squeezed around in that way that sends him to zenith

“M-nh— pl-p-please— por- Por favor—” He gasps, hips roll upwards with so much thought or concsious notice. How adorable. Pussy drunk already isn’t he?

“Please what, essio. c’mon, talk f’me.” You chuckle breathlessly, hands moving from his to shift to his hips. Drawing them upwards into yours to roll your bodies together in tandem.

“L-let me t-touc-hhnghh!” He whimpers, crying out loud in pleasure when your hands connect his to the soft skin of your waist as you fuck him senseless.

꒰  sorcerer ˖ goth character ꒱

 

﹙ talisen 781. ﹚. . . aimless loving gazes !! 🍓 :

“You’re having a good time huh Tal?”

The sound of your little churckle and remark barely passes through the poet’s ears. His sharp teeth biting into the poor plush bottom of his lip.

What a marvelling sight to behold. That perfect figured above him, working deep moans and whimpers out of him despite the fucked out gaze he’s set on you since you got on top.

You give him a good shove into the pillows and drag his face back up form them by his long black hair clenched in your fist.

“M-Mh— mhaaa-. . . ngh— s-so e-eth-ereal.” A hiccup manages through him, when his cock feels a small squeeze around it and spills willingly as always.

You bite down on your own bottom lip, eyes staring into your boyfriend’s below you as you set a fast pace for the thrusts into his pretty ass, your strap pulling out and slapping against one cheek before going in again.

“You’re too cute Tal.” You croon, smacking a hand against his ass, earning a gaze full of hearts. “Why don’t you spew me some more of those poetic paragraphs baby?” The heavy pants against his ear lead to a flood of his pretty sentences spilling in no time.

꒰  grim reaper ˖ naga ˖ poet character ꒱

 

﹙ rasui 9948e. ﹚. . . hiding away his reactions !! 🍒 :

Flames lick at the face that stares back at you. Amber eyes takeing in your shillouette while you’re fucking him into his office chair after a long day of work. The clenching of your hot cunt around him left the work papers from earlier strewn across the wooden desk and floor.

“Fuck— come on, Rasui, don’t hide away from me now.” The words only pull a groan out of him as a response, his arm shooting up to cover the lower half of his face, his eyes flicking towards a different corner of the room— Anything else but than make you see how flustered you’ve got him, huh?

“Oh come on,”

“Let me see you, or do you wanna be stubborn?” You sigh out with a groan when flaming hair stands high. His fire is more revealing than the sounds and reactions. But still . . . You delight seeing when he’s responsive.

What else can you do but lift your hips as far up as possible, tricking him into thinking you’re about to get off of him.

The amber gaze returns panickedly and you grab his arm, pulling it down so you can see all of his little reactions, while dropping back down on his dick, that spurts hot ropes of cum the second it feels the familiar clench and flutter around it once more. Nursing his veins.

“Haya-t—i” He chokes, a streak of drool trickling down his chin as you fasten the pace, lips crashing onto his to fuel some of the moans and heat.

꒰  fire elemental ˖ mercenary leader character ꒱

 

﹙ orion versless. ﹚. . . urge to bite and rip !! 🍓 :

“Yeah— keep biting, acting like a dog.” You chuckle, yanking at one of your boyfriend’s wings to draw out the gasps he’s been letting out for the past hour or so. Oh the love making you have done around this bedroom.

Here you are, with divine blood trickling down your beautiful skin. Dildo in hand fucking away at your boyfriend’s ass while you ride him, gods. You’ll shoot him straight to Zenith and beyond it’s heavenly reaches with the way you make him feel.

Sharp, draconic teeth sink into the delicate flesh of your shoulder, while claws rip across the canvas of your waist. All joined by the large flaps of wings, sending gusts of wind through the room.

“M-More— More.” A bottle of ink is shoved down on the floor, shattering and painting a spot on the wooden surface black like the abyssal skies of his kingdom. “G- God give me more.” He whines out, tongue lathering at your neck before his teeth wrap around it like a necklace.

You give his nipple a hard pinch, pistoning your hips downwards to fuck his sight black and white with stares.

“Too impatient and needy Orion,” You pant.

“You’re lucky you’re getting this and not punishment for it.”

Low whines of pleasure echo through your ears, as you ride him. Cunt fluttering everytime his teeth dig back into your skin to find full bliss in this moment of souls joining together.

꒰  abyssal ˖ dragon character ꒱

﹙ taglist. ﹚: | get tagged for specific posts

﹙ tip jar. ﹚: like our work? consider suporting us 𖹭 

[astorythatwritesitself]

As an offering of peace and for my crimes "holding hands and that's all they can think of" for Shrios so we can both heal?

Adrian: 'haha hope this doesn't like awaken a desire to live or something in me'

(After that incident where the one bartender poisons Shepard, takes place after about half the loyalty missions - most relevant ones done are Garrus', Thane's and Grunt's.)

There's a lot Adrian could stand to focus on right now, and probably will, once they're safely back on the ship.

But for now, as she and Thane sit tucked away into what passes for the quietest, darkest corner in Afterlife - she thinks, this is nice. Yes, she feels remarkably like she's been run over by a tank, and she's only just halfway done with a glass of ice water (anything more than slow, distanced sips, and her stomach hitches), and she's waiting here because she's more likely to pass out on the walk back to the Normandy where Mordin's preparing something or another to help -

But the music's good, and the water is safe - And. Well. Not that Adrian had put much thought into it, before now - but Thane's hands are softer than she'd expected them to be, and if he minds the occasional brush of her thumb where his fingers rest over hers, it's not enough to provoke any sort of reaction, at least.

She's not sure who reached out first, really. One moment, she was just focused on keeping herself upright and not choking on her drink, the next -

Well, the actual next moment, there'd been a shock, but that was to be expected between biotics (even if hers still weren't functioning properly); but - there's probably better ways she can put it, but one moment had been aimless and cold, the next… the next was warm. His hand over hers, and for perhaps the first time since waking up - if not further back - it's not so disorienting to be reminded that she has a body. Perhaps, at worst, a little… embarrassing, right now.

Bad enough to be poisoned, briefly senseless and puking on his shoes, but for it to come on the heels of breaking a decade-long silence that could ruin her reputation, could ruin the Alliance's standing - she wouldn't have judged Thane for leaving her in someone else's care, not in the slightest. Instead, he caught her when she fell. Sits across from her now, holding her hand. It could be.. practically minded? To keep watch, and at the same time, monitor if she loses consciousness again?

Adrian wants to catch his eye, to get some glimpse, some clue of what the motivation here is (or she could do the intelligent thing, and ask, but her heart seems to have traded places with her vocal cords at the moment), if it's some weird practical measure or if it's a matter of comfort - and if so, for her sake? Or - Is it so ridiculous to wonder, if it's for his?

She can't quite gather up that much courage. But she does find enough to shift her arm, to lightly lace her fingers with his (or so much as one can do when fused digits are involved), and she can't help but smile at the light, unmistakable squeeze she receives in turn. They're dead men walking, the both of them - but maybe it would be nicer, walking to the end hand in hand with somebody else.

[i-did-not-mean-to]

Seen some of the ship drama. Read some of your fics. Personally I think they're great and that you have a wonderful talent with the written word. It would be a huge shame if you stopped writing things that make you happy for the sake of a few dozen people who refuse to read it on principle anyway. There will always be some group on this website that is opposed to one ship or another. No one will ever be able to please them all. Write what you love, not what others demand. Wishing you the best.

Dear anon...

I am so sorry you had to see that; as I've said in my reblog, I should live by my own principles and keep my moaning in DMs.

It does nobody any good to see someone else's aimless, senseless negativity. It only ends up pissing people off/hurting people, and these are not things I like to do or strive for.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my little salty heart for your kind words though; I've had a few rough days, and I've held on to this ask to comfort myself. It means so very much to me--you can't even imagine.

Also, the sad part is that what makes me the happiest about writing is to write for someone else. Making other people happy makes me happy.

I take a lot of requests and prompts, and I will admit that I do love it so, so, so much!

I think my Masterlist (and the amount of characters and pairings on it) can prove that I am a proper whore for other people's love. When people go "I love...", my mind immediately wants to do just that.

This is one of the main reasons I stay out of fandom drama. It's also why I take things much more personally than I should...I love writing things for people who are willing to share their love and inspiration with me. I take their love personally.

The downside of that is, of course, that I also take their hate personally.

As for Angbang specifically, I've only started writing it because @cilil and @melkors-big-tits are exactly the kind of people I was talking about. They're both excellent, but they're neither patronising, haughty, or holier-than-thou in any way. They've never bullied me about my love for incarnates. They've never scoffed at me for being a little scaredy cat. They have been unimaginably kind and supportive to me, and writing for them and with them is a joy and an honour.

Thus, at the end of the day, I once again have to take my own advice and prioritise my love, if not for characters and pairings per se, for my fandom friends over the dismay of strangers.

(And I want to explicitly say that everyone has the right to write and like whatever they want and fancy. That was never the question...)

Thank you so much for reaching out, anon, and for being kind to someone who has inadvertently stirred the pot (and regrets that very much).

May all the solace and joy you've brought to me find their way back to you in times of need! I wish you only the very best!

Lots and lots of love!

[a-cai-jpg]

frailty, thy name is woman! (HAH)

So the other day, I was ambushed by a group of tiny puppies.

I was in the park, breathing some fresh air and sunshine for the first time in a long, long time. I sat on a grassy hill--notebook just recently closed and resting in my lap--staring blankly at the amphitheater beneath me and suddenly, I hear barking to my right and felt something nudge my thigh.

Not gonna lie, I almost screamed and whacked the puppy in the face.

They were three beagles(?), bounding around the hill because, according to their owners who respectfully stood 6 feet away from me, they hadn't left the house in a week. 

(same.)

Anyways, before they came to say hi, I was listening to a sad, acoustic playlist and writing down notes about women.

(it's not weird if u don't make it weird)

That morning, I had woken up thinking about women's issues. 

Sexism is not exactly the social issue I'm most preoccupied by. It's prominent in every aspect of life, but because I've been fortunate enough to be sheltered from most of it, the sexism I experience is very subtle and difficult to pinpoint. I grew up in a primarily female household with a lot of strong personalities, and only recently did I begin to take note of the almost indiscernible power dynamic between the men and the women.

So, most of my life, I've just been kind of cruising along, with this vaguely gender-less persona that only started to shift some time in university.

A friend once asked, "How do you know that you're a woman?"

I think this was during the same time I was taking a philosophy course about theories of sexual differences, and so all my thoughts were kind of meta and hypothetical. My initial thought was, uh what do you mean like of course I know I'm a woman that's what I've checked on all the forms. But then I thought about it and I was like. Bruh. 

Bruh.

The reply I gave her, I feel like, was unsatisfactory and very personal. I didn't want to fall back onto gender norms, because that was so obviously a cop-out. Furthermore, I feel like I didn't experience a lot of the stereotypical "what it means to be a woman." AND, the definition of "adult human being" was too inadequate.

So, how do I know that I'm a woman?

At the time, I gave her a pretty sloppy answer about internalized misogyny, and I'm not going to pretend I have a better answer now, but I think I've broken it down to two main points.

Number one: I know I'm a woman because I'm constantly in competition with other women. I view women as my primary competitors. Very rarely do I see masculine-presenting individuals as competition, even though technically, all of us are competing for resources, prestige, or whatever it is we seek. Sure, you can play a probability game and say it's all statistics, but I think there's an aspect of misogyny as well.

Number two, I know I'm a woman because I feel anger and indignation on behalf of other women, internalizing it as a personal offense, even when I myself have not undergone the same struggle.

It's the same criteria I think of when I ask myself how I know I'm Asian American. But, in the racial aspect, there's a third criteria, which is the reflexive self. I feel that other people see me as Asian American, and therefore, I am Asian American. For some bizarre reason, I didn't experience the same reflexive self when I thought about my gender.

I think it was this lack of a reflexive self and vaguely gender-less upbringing that pushed me to declare, very loudly, in the middle of a science classroom in highschool that, "I am not a feminist."

(I could self-psychoanalyze and come up with a million reasons why my upbringing was gender-less. It could have to do with the fact that my primary caretakers were women, so there was no other for me to reference, and thereby, no juxtaposition between women and men. It could have to do with early, internalized misogyny that caused me to push away things that identified me specifically as a "girl." It could also be that I'm incredibly not self-aware.)

(I stand by the statement that contrast is necessary for identification, though.)

Anyways.

I remember when I said those words, my best friend looked at me with exasperation and a classmate looked at me with disgust. For good reason.

At the time, the word "feminist," to me, had a lot of negative connotations. I equated it with the "feminazi." I didn't buy into sexist ideals, but neither did I understand the angry, seemingly unnecessary reversal of gender roles that "feminazis"  were proclaiming.

And my friend patiently explained to me that no, you don't have to be a feminazi to be a feminist. 

But see, even that in itself is anti-feminist, isn't it?

We were, again, drawing lines for what it means to be an acceptable woman--an acceptable feminist--and what it means to be an unacceptable woman.

Why is there a negative connotation to the term "feminazi"? Why is there a negative connotation to the term "feminist"? Isn't the term "feminazi" in itself misogynistic?

I think it has to do with the fact that the general culture is uncomfortable with women stepping beyond what their gender roles have prescribed them. The culture has moved in a direction where it is acceptable and almost expected for women to be feminists, but being a "feminazi" is still frowned up.

This might seem very obvious to some, but I actually haven't thought about the term "feminazi" in a long while. So, to make sure I actually knew what a "feminazi" was, I pulled up the Wikipedia article. Here are a few words used to describe a feminazi:

a committed feminist or a strong-willed woman

radical feminists

see as many abortions as possible

militants

quest for power

belief that men aren't necessary

well-intentioned but misguided people who call themselves feminists

the term came to be widely used for feminism as a whole

marginalize any feminist as a hardline, uncompromising manhater

hate men

dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant

an extremist, power-hungry minority

I've never met anyone who fits that description, though [Limbaugh] lavishes it on me among many others

bossy, hating men and femininity

hyper-vigilant to perceived sexism

vindictive

puritanical

The term was apparently, popularized by a dude named Rush Limbaugh, and I'll be damned if I let a man determine what kind of feminist I am.

Maybe I am biased because a militant women's group seeking to overpower the patriarchy sounds pretty lit and like good material for a new Netflix show, but like.

Tell me again why it's not okay to be a feminazi.

(my primary reactions to the list above are: "i wonder why," "sounds ok to me lol," and "who the fuck are you to say")

ANYWAYS.

"Feminazis," according to Mr. Limbaugh (who even is this guy) is an unacceptable way to be a feminist.

He is a man governing what it means to be a feminist (again, who the fuck are you), but let's be real, there are many women out there who draw similar lines, maybe for others, maybe for themselves. The popular "Am I not a good feminist if I __________" questions in themselves are anti-feminist. Once again, it is a show of how women are policing themselves and each other.

I'm not big on philosophy because I can't understand most of it, but Foucault made the assertion that policing and discipline in a modern society lies with the self, or an invisible, anonymous power embedded in society.

(Ok, I'm going to be honest, I didn't want to read through 30 pages of feminist theory and I barely understood the four pages that I did read, so if I'm wrong, don't hate me.)

In other words, men and women become the gender police for themselves. Even as women gain more rights and freedom, they continue to police themselves in a new way, like asking themselves what it means to be a good feminist.

(Bartky introduces the argument that there needs to be an upheaval of social norms to end the policing.)

(And okay, so, the more I read Bartky's Foucault, Femininity, and Patriarchal Power, the more excited I get, so I'm gOiNg To StOp mYsElf hERe.)

I ask myself this question often too.

Am I not a good feminist if I express vague disapproval at someone who switches boyfriends every other day?

Am I not a good feminist if I am grateful for men opening doors for me or offering to grab my suitcase for me on the plane? (I'm 5'2 okay, I have to stand on the seat sometimes, it's embarrassing.)

See, I appreciate chivalry and I don't think chivalry is dead because what does that even mean, but I also recognize that chivalry isn't the same thing as gender equality or liberation for women (or dare I say, liberation of gender?). But, gender equality doesn't mean that women and men do all of the same things and are assumed to be able to do all of the same things. Because we, as humans, have varying abilities, don't we?

The question of what the fuck is gender equality plagued me for an entire semester and bothers me even now but I just kind of stomp on it and make it go away. The easy answer to it, for me, is a fair division of labor agreed upon by both parties, ensuring there is no abuse of power within the relationship.

But that statement in itself is problematic because it introduces a possibility of stasis, of complacency that might revert to a new abuse of power.

(It's also not one that every feminist agrees on.)

But let's return to the question of what it means to be a woman.

I wrote that contrast is necessary for identification, but I fear the statement implies that women are defined in opposition to men, which is false. Like, non-men = women. And, since gender is a spectrum, that obviously is not true. But, since gender is a spectrum, is it necessary for us to identify ourselves? 

At the end of my notes, I scribbled a series of questions.

Why does it matter to me what gender people are?

Why does it matter to me what gender I am?

Is there a correlation between sexuality and gender? Especially since we are all on a spectrum for both? Are we socialized to choose? Is this or is this not evolutionarily favorable?

(I see now that the flaw in me writing blog posts is that I can't actually have a conversation about this and that's frustrating.)

(Also, I recognize that I live in an immense amount of privilege to be asking these questions and not, I don't know, fearing for my life.)

I briefly entertained the idea that women are essentially the oppressed party in the larger narrative of gender. But there are two problems with this statement. One, women are definitely not the only oppressed party. Two, everyone ultimately suffers when there is an accepted narrative.

But, the undeniable fact is that there is a common reality that people who identify as women live. It has nothing to do with anatomy, organs, chromosomes, hormone levels, brain structure, or sexuality. It is an experience that is placed upon us by the patriarchal society, regardless of whether or not we recognize it, based on how we present ourselves.

This is how the reflexive self began to develop, in Calc B, freshman year of college.

I try to talk about gender as removed from sex as possible, because I get terribly confused when I talk about them in conjunction with each other, but also because I do think there is a difference between the feminine experience and the female experience. I just don’t really understand it.

I wrote in my notes somewhere: Gender is a spectrum. You are your own individual, gender be damned.

I don't proclaim myself an expert on this matter. These are words that chased their own tails in my mind as I tried to understand how to function in an infuriating society that constantly made me angry.

The other day, I saw a Facebook post from a stranger who was talking about how their boyfriend didn't believe women were being oppressed because even though women get paid less, men pay for dates. And this led me to think about the wage disparity and how people always tell me, well, no, it doesn't exist. It's the woman's fault for not asking for a higher wage.

And I’m just kind of like, ???

A student of mine came to me one morning, a little disappointed and a little annoyed, because he had been shut down by a fellow classmate when he made a comment about the wage gap not being an actual thing.

(the thing about talking to students is that it's a lot easier to forgive ignorance and to actually have a conversation without getting angry.)

He said that he wished the classmate, a girl, wouldn't just be all angry about it and call him dumb.

I didn't know how to respond to that then, aside from agreeing that it is necessary to have actual dialogue around important issues and asking a few questions so he could critically think about gender issues in the U.S. 

But, I thought about it the morning before I got ambushed by the dogs, and I wish I asked him to think about why people get so angry talking about these matters.

I think the reason why it's so difficult to have these conversations is because--

God, imagine the privilege of not having to have these conversations and not feeling angry and humiliated because you are pulling out this vulnerable bit of you that's been attacked by Society and trying to make someone who is implicitly attacking you understand.

That's not a comfortable feeling, and adults can't even manage it so how is a teenager expected to?

The same feeling rises within myself when I talk about race and when I talk about gender. Some of it is internalized racism and misogyny, but a whole lot of it is not wanting to be vulnerable, and that in itself is a little fucked up (and maybe, misogynistic?). 

See, when I feel very strongly about a matter, I expect strong, rigorous, academic debate. I want to break down the logic in every sentence and refute facts and opinions with Better Facts and Opinions, complete with citations, and I don’t want to fall back on anecdotes even though I end up resorting to it anyways.

(I am also the annoying person who would do the Hamilton thing and be like i have the honor to be your obedient servant, A DOT CAI.)

But, so often, we don't have the luxury to do that. And also, very often, we are utterly consumed by the larger narrative that facts end up not meaning very much to us.

We are all part of an accepted narrative, and that, along with the social norms that come with it, is the enemy.

Men are not the enemy in feminism, which is why men need to calm the fuck down and get behind the feminist movement. Men are also suffering from this accepted narrative and gender policing that lauds toxic masculinity.

I'm not saying there's a right way to be a feminist, but I strongly believe there's a wrong way to be a feminist. I think being a feminist means you support gender equality, regardless of what gender someone identifies as. I think being a feminist means you want everyone to embrace their true selves. I think being a feminist means you stand with every individual, and so I think being a feminist should be the default for a human being.

But if a person identifies as a feminist and draws rules and regulations for how to be one, then that is anti-feminist.

(Come at me, feminist philosophers, I'm very zen and I'm willing to listen to you tell me about how society needs to see an utter deconstruction of feminism and masculinity.)

Be you, my friend. Be you and let other people be themselves. It's not like they're hurting you by being trans or gay or bi. 

Like jeez, why is that so hard.

(stop hating on Irene 'cause she's a feminist, she's fucking beautiful and i will fight you.)

I don't know, I love women. They are inspiring and beautiful, and the term "woman," as much as I've broken it down, actually matters because society has forced it to matter. And weirdly enough, as difficult as it is for me to truly identify with woman at times, I like being one and I'm proud to be a feminist.

But it's also a little scary to be a woman. There are the general things a woman has to worry about, like walking around at night or traveling alone or going to a bar alone or doing anything alone to be completely honest. But there are also the other concerns, like what does a family dynamic look like with my personality and my ideals? How do I navigate a patriarchal society in terms of work and relationships? Which values do I give up to make sure I can actually go somewhere? When do I tell a friend to shut the fuck up because he’s mansplaining? How do I respond to defensiveness without getting defensive myself? How do I ensure that my daughter lives in a safer, more equitable world? How do I ensure that my son doesn't turn out to be a misogynist? Like? Help?

(sos i drank too my caffeine and now my hands are shaking)

Feminist theory, crudely put, falls into two categories (fuck i’m literally dragging things out of my ass, i don’t actually know if this is true lol), with one firmly asserting that a feminist revolution is rejecting the societal definition of femininity and the other embracing femininity. 

(idk if there are only two camps, but these two perspectives definitely exist in feminist theory ok)

I definitely fall in the latter, because I can’t wrap my head around the rejection of femininity. Like, is that not misogynistic? Camosy’s Behind the Abortion Wars uses a similar argument to proclaim abortion as inherently sexist. It strips females of what has traditionally given them power, rendering them...males. Or some version of a male.

(i’m sold on camosy’s argument. don’t misunderstand, i’m definitely pro-choice, but i have thoughts.)

See, all of this is very complicated. Sometimes I see quotes about feminist theory and it’s so intellectually exhilarating that I just have to file it away and think about it on a day where I’m wired on caffeine. But even on those days, I feel like my brain falls short on trying to understand this very meta gender theory thing.

So, obviously, I don’t hope to convince you to believe in my ideal, because I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, if you have read this far, I leave you with the same thing I said a number of paragraphs back.

BE YOU AND LET OTHER PEOPLE BE THEMSELVES.

Recognize when you are causing harm, explicitly or not.

Recognize when other people are causing harm, explicitly or not, and engage them in conversation.

(these are actually goals and guidelines for me because i have no backbone and generally just fume in silence.)

(between me brainstorming this and me actually writing this, a number of different things have come to my attention)

(one of them is the erasure of non-masculine stories in history) (and yes that's obvious, but i also watched a bunch of TedEd videos about women so it's just very salient in my mind right now)

(another is the nth room south korea scandal, and i don't even know where to begin with that)

(Disclaimer: I don’t actually know what I’m talking about but I welcome counterarguments. I also realize putting a disclaimer at the end is really dumb, but I don’t want to interrupt my non-existent narrative flow. I feel like my take on gender is too simple and not nuanced enough, but honestly, I just don’t really get gender at times? So I really shouldn’t be talking about gender theory. Yet. Here we are.)

I LOVE WOMEN.

So here is a song from a woman that I recently found and fell in love with:

陳粒 - 无所求必满载而归 它让你受折磨 觉得痛 觉得渴 [life] makes you suffer, makes you hurt, makes you thirsty 觉得无路走 无处躲 makes you feel like there's nowhere to go, nowhere tohide 无所求也求不得 even if you want nothing, you can't even have that 当我昏昏欲睡 摇摇欲坠 but when i'm about to sleep, about to fall 却学会 放下错与对 是与非 i learned to put down right and wrong, yes and no 无所求必满载而归 if i want nothing, then i'll receive everything

(on a side note, i've done nothing but read a chinese, boys love light novel. i have read three chinese novels in my life, and all three were boys love. this doesn't seem right.)

(but also, my chinese literacy is basically at that of a fifth grader, if even, so i think it's fitting that i read some trash novels.)

(but this one talks about the psychology of sexuality and gender, and i'm all for genre novels spreading ideas about bEiNg YoUrSeLf.)

(GAH.)

[call-sign-shark]

Heaven In Your Eyes

Summary:  Beaten with guilt and shame after losing his temper again, Arthur's aimless wandering leads him to church. There she is and, after diving into her heavenly eyes, he is convinced God has sent him His sweetest angel to save his bastard soul.

Words: 2.6k

TW: Blood, a bit of angst, slight blasphemy and bad use of holy water, reckless x caretaker Inspired by the prompt "Where does it hurt? - Everywhere" by @the-three-whumpeteers

Notes:

✞ Timeline: between seasons 2 and 3

NEXT CHAPTER || Masterlist

The stumbling tall silhouette of Arthur Shelby was crossing through the thick haunting mist of Birmingham. As unwelcoming the town was during the day, it was nothing compared to night time. When sun faded behind the horizon, chased by the pale glowing face of the moon, the whole city turned into a cut-throat area. Arthur brought the neck of the bottle he was holding to his chapped lips and gulped down a mouthful of pure Irish whisky. The fire trail the beverage left behind it as it went down his throat reminded him he was alive — he could still feel something, even though it was the alcohol’s burning. An animal growl escaped from his lips when the bottle left them only for him to lean his back against one of the church’s gigantic concrete walls. A loud raven’s croak torn the silent veil of the night, making him swears. The gravel in his voice answered to the dull bird, which was watching him from a tree with his tiny and beady eyes.

"Fooking bird, laughing at me like the rest of ‘em eh?"

The raven — which was rather large for a bird — tilted its head to the side and kept staring at the drunk man with a cunning interest. Its black eyes, shining under the moonlight, seemed filled with both a wise glare and a mocking sparkle. Soon, Arthur’s curiosity for the raven’s unusual behavior turned into a senseless anger when he understood why the bird was focusing on him, his explosive rage strengthened by the incredible amount of alcohol he had drunk a bit earlier.

"It’s the damn blood is it? Stop lookin’ at me like I’m — I’m some kind of monster, or a beast or I don’t fookin’ know what else! Go to Hell!"

The bottle flew towards the raven but it did not flicker, as if it knew Arthur was not in the shape of being quick nor particularly precise with aiming. As the glass smashed into the ground, Arthur hit the wall behind him with the back of his head and let out a frustrated scream. No more cocaine, no more auto destructive behavior nor suicide attempts for two years straight, and tonight he fucked it all up. He was convinced he could get better, and God knows he tried his best to do so. Got sober from every poison he used to take, got a religious wife that was trying to turn the wolf in him into a sheep… Hell, he even brought her flowers every damn day. But then came troubles, taking the shape of his little brother, Thomas Shelby.

He asked him to do the dirty job — again.

With his calloused hands, he took another man’s life. At first Arthur thought he would not be that disturbed at the idea of killing someone, after all he had done that almost his entire life. Just one last time, he told himself, just one last time and I’ll go back to my little peaceful life with me wife.

Yet, the guilt and the shame that struck him after bashing the lad’s head against the edge of a sink until his face became a pile of squishy flesh soon became too much to handle.

As the last spurt of blood spattered his face, Arthur’s clouded mind became suddenly crystal clear: it would never stop. After that epiphany, the older Shelby brother contemplated how everyone he deeply loved tended to use him. For Thomas and the rest of the family he was a mad dog, the combat brute whose only times he could enjoy life without a muzzle were when he had to rip someone’s throat apart. For his father, he had been nothing else than a poor naive hound that would have done anything to receive his respect. As for Linda, her love was a cruel mirage he wanted to believe with all his heart — but the illusion had vanished in smoke. Whether she considered him as her personal test subject for Christian brainwashing or as a tool to get what she wants, Arthur could not tell. What he could tell though was that he knew she did not really loved him. She wanted to mould him at her will, but he was no lamb. He was a wolf, a beaten and lonely wolf, but still one. And there was no love for rabid wolves, only a bullet through the brain to cure the madness.

As his skull buzzed with macabre thoughts, whose unpleasant noise reminded him of a furious beehive, a bewitching voice pulled him out of his auto-destructive spiraling. Standing at attention and listening carefully, he came to realize that someone was singing inside the church. Arthur’s eyelids fell on his steel blue eyes and the back of his head gently rested against the cold wall behind him, the same wall he had been previously smashing it with. A sighed escaped from his liquored lips as the angelic and hypnotizing voice, slightly muffled by the church’s heavy wooden doors, plunged him into a soft but oh-so-warm haze.

My heart is pierced by Cupid

I disdain all glittering gold…

Lulled by the sad melody carried away with Birmingham’s cold night breeze, the swarm of raging hornets in Arthur’s brain stopped crashing against the bony walls of his skull. Another sigh — relief this time, for the unbearable noisy thoughts and violent buzzing had vanished. His trembling fingers, numbed by the blows he had hit his target with one hour ago and still covered with half-dried blood, slid along his temples and slicked his hair back. The utter and feral anger he had felt was reduced to a void, for even his old heart had slowed its pace down in his ribcage.

There is nothing can console me

But my jolly sailor bold…

The tune, embedded with melancholy, soothed his troubled mind and to be honest, he could barely believe it. When that switch in his brain flipped, God knew he was not in control anymore - even dear Linda, who still managed to hush down some of his tantrums, could not tame the beast inside when it broke free a bit more fiercely than usual. Yet, this voice did so. This stranger, faceless and nameless ghost of the night, brought him back to sanity with the sole power of her voice. The words she was singing, with her a juvenile and enchanting tone, were wrapping his heart. Arthur sniffed and fought hard against the dawning tears that were forming delicate crystal beads at the corner of his closed eyes.

If he had been the jolly sailor bold, he would have thrown himself out of the boat to join the siren that was singing.

My heart is pierced by Cupid

I disdain all glittering gold.

There is nothing can console me

But my jolly sailor bold…

She repeated, sadder than she previously sang.

Her song sipped through his heart and filled the cracks with molten gold. Arthur’s lips stretched in an almost invisible grin without even realizing it — By her voice, he was convinced she could repair the damaged creatures like him and make them even more beautiful than they were before they had been dragged through the trenches’ mud and shit. He had barely came to his senses, almost miraculously sobered up, when silent fell again in the church. Arthur reopened his eyes, and shook his head - Had he dreamt? Had it been the whiskey singing to him? No, he could not be that crazy right? Not quite sure if he was starting to hear voices and see things, Shelby decided that he had to found out who had been singing to his very own soul. He wanted to see her, the girl who soothed his foul heart and his twisted mind. He wanted to know, no, he HAD to know, even though his whole being was fragile like a flickering candle flame caught in a hurricane and would probably shatter in million of pieces if she turned out to be an illusion.

Gathering all his remaining strength, Arthur grabbed the handle and opened the church’s door.

A shiver ran down her delicate spine at the loud silence that floated in the gigantic and empty church. The peculiar sweet yet strong scent of myrrh, wood and incense filled her lungs with its holy fragrance.

The vibrations of the last word she sang was still echoing in the room, swirling to the high and sculpted ceiling, from which marble angels were watching over her. If someone had told her that the only place she would find comfort would be a church, she would not have believed it.

Heaven had never been particularly fervent about religion, even less after the misfortunes it brought to her life, but she did believe in higher forces, whether they were good or bad.

More than a matter of faith, the church itself was an old friend of her. A gargantuan friend of stone, a holy titan, who always welcomed her, even during the darkest moments of her life.

What she liked the most were these lonely moments at night, during which she could light up a dozen of candles and sing her sorrow to the statues and colorful stained-glass windows. No gossip from the parish, no believers swarming like ants within these mighty walls. There was just her, the candle lights ,and the soothing silence.

For a few hours, she could finally retrieve a long-sought peace.

Brushing the varnished wood of the altar with her thin fingers and painted-red nails, Heaven let her mind drift and, suddenly, the world around her vanished.

She sank so deep in the abyss of her thoughts that she did not hear the creaking sound of the heavy door opening, nor the footsteps that followed. All she could hear were the 'Burn witch, burn!' that hundreds of villagers screamed at her as she spiraled down the woeful remembrance of her past. And despite her immaculate porcelain skin, Heaven bore the scars of their words deep in her soul.

Arthur made a few steps before freezing, his body refusing to come closer as if the aura around the creature that was standing back to him , right in front of the altar lightened up with dozen and dozen of small dancing flames, was too sanctified to be violated. Bathed in the soft and warm orange hue of candles, the long white hair of the woman fell down the small of her back like an ivory waterfall. Right above her the pale glow of the full moon coming through the stained-glass window formed a luminous halo around her head.

His breathing stopped, choking in his throat at such a divine vision. The gangster opened his mouth to speak but no words managed to come out. He had never been good with words anyway. Instead he moistened his lips and swallowed, his mouth dry. The white-haired girl had started to hum the same song she had been singing a bit earlier, not aware of his presence — and he did not dare to disturbing her as if he feared God’s punishment. He took another step, the wooden floor creaking under his sole.

This time the angel — because he was convinced it was one — jumped and turned around, an expression of utter surprise veiling her sweet face. Her fox eyes, adorned with two iris so fair it reminded him of aquamarine stones, scrutinized his slightest movements. She remained petrified for what felt eternity for her but, regarding him, time had stopped for good. Arthur finally inhaled sharply, coming back to life.

All those endless nights of crying, all those endless nights of praying in vain for something or someone to save him, and here she was…

His salvation.

He had asked God to send him, the most desperate sinner of all, His most beautiful Angel and He had done so.

The white-haired creature was not just pretty. She was otherworldly stunning, to the point it felt vaguely threatening. Almost ethereal in her short white dress, whose cut let her naked back for the world to see.

"I waited for ya." He whispered.

She blinked, her full and juicy lips opening with surprise.

He stuttered, looking down and decided it was better for her if he stopped talking. The gravel in his hoarse voice, as strong as it was, sounded indescribably frail. As if this tall and slightly threatening man could shatter at the angel's single touch. Now he felt stupid, clumsy with words, contrary to Tommy and his naturally eloquent and charismatic speech. In addition to the unpleasant impression of being a fool, Arthur’s own whisky-scented breath and the strong metallic smell of blood reminded him of his horrific appearance. Overcoming the awe she infused in him, panic started to kick.

Heaven frowned, and all of sudden the unwelcome stranger did not look that impressive anymore.

Swept away by the wind, her face relaxed and wrapped itself with a calm, almost placid expression.

She exhaled slowly through her nose and walked towards the gangster, who had brought his bloody hands to each side of his head and was now pulling his own hair in a desperate attempt to not lose track.

"Where does it hurt?"  She asked with a quiet tone, for she was concerned about all the blood he was covered with.

Arthur raised his gaze toward the petite white-haired doll who had just pressed one of her cold little hands on his.

Her ice against his fire made his legs weak and his heart miss a beat.

How his breathing calmed down at her touch was a mystery, but it did, though not quite understanding why she did not seem scared of him, he stuttered again, all flustered.

"Shhh, shhhh. Everything’s okay, take a deep breath," Her sly hand gently tightened its grip, willing to show him that she was here and was not going anywhere until he felt better.

"Where does it hurt?"

"Ev-Everywhere love. It hurts everywhere."

His hands, his face, his body, his brain, his soul, his damn tortured soul… It all ached too much, and too constantly for him to bear anymore. E-ve-ry-where, that was all he could say because pain was all he could feel.

Without answering, Heaven pulled him to the altar and invited him to sit on the marble stairs. The strong and fierce gangster followed her without the single physical resistance and gave in between her hands like a rag doll. All he did was look at her with his charming but oh-so-exhausted blue eyes as she tore the fabric of her dress near her thighs to soak it in holy water.

"Let me wash away the blood." The creature’s voice echoed in the vastness of the church, enticing and haunting at the same time — enough to send an odd shiver down his spine.

She had barely finished your sentence when she started rubbing the wet cloth against his hollow cheek to clean his pale skin from the dark red blood. Once again, he could not help watching her during the whole ordeal, all the while enjoying the fresh sensation of the holy water cleansing the dirt of his soul.

Not minding his stare filled with fascination, Heaven focused on her task, brows slightly furrowed and fingers blessing him with the softest and most caring touch someone had given him.

"Yer an Angel. I swear you are eh. " He finally said.

She quickly glanced at him, a sparkle of amusement shining in her cunning, aquamarine blue eyes, before she focus again on what she was doing.

"An angel..." Heaven repeated, faintly.

She could feel the weight of his gaze on her, gawking at her seraphic traits as though he had just realized what love was.

He looked at her, and to his greatest surprise, found Heaven in her eyes.

I'm super new in the Peaky Blinders fandom, so please bear with me... Especially since English is not my native language. To be honest I am kind of scared to post it so any comment, review, reblog or constructive criticism is welcome. Also, I'll be more than happy to meet people in the Peaky Blinders fandom! In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed some Arthur and Heaven. Still don’t know if I’ll write a full series or snipets of these two love birds.

[ladyxskywalker]

All in Favor of You

Poe Dameron x F!Reader

a morning spent tiredly missing poe, & desperately waiting for him to return

rating: T or M, allusions to implied intimacy & self love, mutual pining, love, romantic fluff, language

word count: 800 | late entry for blurb tuesdays @againstacecilia 💗 & inspired by a chat about pillows, & missing space boyfriends with @uwingdispatch 💗

"...Baby, I missed you."

Your tired eyes still have that certain way of falling when the morning comes, and you’re tensing just to wake from dreaming again. The planes of your chest, sensing itself all the more heavy at the delicate appearance of a new dawn, all because he hadn’t been right beside you there…

It’s been a struggle just to wait, having not heard back from him since a few days time, and you’ve grown the slightest bit worried. Holding out a subtle fit of hope that somehow, wherever he might have been, that he was safe – unharmed, and only just delayed from returning. The ring promised to you, dangling from around his neck each time you had been separated, still keeping itself close and warm in the space around his heart - eternally safeguarding it.

Perhaps flying high at speeds far above your heads, he couldn’t have had much time to think – not an hour wasted fighting for what’s right, and the hope for truly living; the clouds, and all their stars glistening in their sterling tints of nightfall, grasping hold of their gentle breadth, just as he slips right through them.

You imagine there to have been some kind of smokescreen at the height of lift off; a blur of fire and capable anguish whirring past, that for every swift moment drawn out there, he had witnessed an unwavering onslaught – protective warnings given to the other side, that there certainly were more of us.

Yet still, this is the part of war that becomes far more difficult than you could have ever thought to happen…

Feeling hopeless and alone in the confines of your room, where you were sure to have heard him and BB-8 messing around in the kitchen up early on weekends...

Clinging to your half of his dog tags as they slide against the softened valley of your breasts, they're the same ones he tends to nudge away with the insistent tip of his nose when grazing patterns to your skin. The perfect marks to claim you, pebbling effortlessly out from underneath the padding of his thumbs, caught up in all their aimless tracing.

And so you turn lazily inside the embrace of slacken rest, your sheets rippling around your bare curves when you do, paying no mind to them; gripping your pillow with an affectionate ache just for his touch and languid ways of kissing – your arms held tight around him, anticipating all of it. The heavy weight of his meandering limbs, slotting themselves in your closing space between; a stray feel of tenderness, wound beautifully with his eyes and how they reverently tend to deepen.

So often you’d find yourselves laying in bed enamored, an ease about the day, familiar and spontaneous; your fingertips threading seamlessly throughout all his curls – the wayward ones that escape you sometimes all at once. The plush edges of your lips, found caught between your teeth when you latch onto what you can make out of all his silver; a playful grin of his own alight across his face, when he’s been lost inside his own slanted kind of gravitation.

His scent remains forever woven upon your pillows; your cheek dampened from the pure and senseless act of missing, and it drives you further toward realms of the unbearable, where roaming in this simple way feels just as futile as all of your bad habits. Reminders from when he stayed the night last, clean from the warmth of all your fresh towels, awakened there in gentle passes now waning with a featherlight breeze, and the thin veil of your curtains. A heady bath you both had enjoyed together late into the early hours of the evening, engraved into your mind with every breathless moan he’s stolen away from you.

But what if for now this phantom way of having him just had to have been enough?

The gliding of your own hands, gracefully cupping at yourself there – so endlessly arching with your back?

The way you just begin to softly shudder, soothing the indelicate vision of your eyes closed; the distant comfort of your own fingertips, made sultry and encircled, spurred on by keepsakes of past entwined moments…

A self love, entirely unlike the real thing…

Made better when you have it.

Though, soon, there comes a quiet sound echoing out from the hallway – your front door latching itself shut with the distant swiping of your keypad, locking with his key…

Insistent footfalls, hurriedly finding their way into your room with a very exasperated flyboy, enjoying a little time of his own waiting there; his folded arms, crossed over the broad span of his chest, leaning just beyond your shared threshold.

“Fuck, Baby, I missed you.”

And he’s left standing there, eyes wide with fervor for however long he thinks you might not have noticed…

Wearing a shit eating grin right before you see him biting his bottom lip’s edge, in that endearing sort of way he always does it…

His skin, a little worn from the time he’s spent out there in the skies fighting, along with all the dew that comes with this heated sort of weather – all of it doing very nicely, with the way he’s just made eager work of his flight suit's undoing. The strain of his knees, soon dipping with your bed’s softened edges; sand falling from his boots when they land with an eager thud to the floor, his shirt quickly following after them.

The ties bound around his waist, all of sudden surrendering, into the collapse that comes from melded smiling, all in favor of you lying there…

… 🧡

a/n – thanks so much for reading ✨ ! I just felt like writing something stress free, no pressure kind of thing. & looking at it now, I think this might actually be similar to another fic I've written before, which I guess is perfectly fine - 2 pieces of cake to enjoy right ? 🥰 hope this brings you comfort or a smile. I'd love to hear what you think ! 💌 xo A

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[lifeline-au]

Your bones have outgrown your limbs grotesquely, bent into pretty shapes by a careless potter who leaves fingerprints all over their work. Ridges lay abundant and obvious inside of you, malformed hymns reaching upwards to hang aimless amongst the cosmos; stars you are unworthy of settling beside and unconsolable in their disgust at the sight of your ragged, peeling hands.

They are hole ridden. The day you lost was the day your soul fell into nothing, shattered and splintering much like the host. Seconds fall wasted throughout what is missing, and you grow senseless and unaware; carnivorous and snapping, as though all that is tangible must be felt tearing beneath your yellowed teeth.

Your hands hold tight, as you listen to the bile piled within thin misplaced jaws, spilling in ceremony towards a fragile mind.

It has been a while since your possession.

“We used to be an angel, Spamton.”

Light used to shroud me in an eternity of hope. Sin never choked me down, lungs filled with a foul void that was once solace, drowning in and of itself within one that does not need it anymore. My head is screwed on backwards and I can hear my throat dismembering itself at the coils. I can hear and all my features have caved inwards and now I am nothing.

I wear the face of someone who is not me. He is not me and yet he is.

My will is heaven's alone.

And my hands are weeping.

“Do you think you have ever been anything? Have you been more than dissoluted self indulgence?”

I am leaning closer. Sunlight eats at my body and leaves it both rotten and cancerous.

I am nothing and I am everything.

I am you.

“And you could have been me. Had you reached within the heavens. You do not want this enough.” I don’t think you are enough.

“There is so much more beyond this. Beyond the dark; you do not need to lay at everyone else’s feet, covered in your own blood. Their grief is illusionary, and you do not need it.”

You will never be free from the forbidden that has consumed you.

You are posed for a stringed flight that you shall never take. Falseness has encroached entirely upon your pathetic being.

You have been a fool.

“Goodbye, Lightener. Your ascension is imminent. Do not force yourself underneath their trickery.”

—

“☞︎✌︎✋︎❄︎☟︎📪︎ 💧︎🏱︎✌︎💣︎❄︎⚐︎☠︎📬︎”

—

The voice is back again.

Ringing in your ears, pouring through your head. It promises a divinity higher than angels when it speaks, whispers into the ears of a hopeless cause. There is heaven in its voice, and this time, it bleeds into the marrow and bones of those who listen. He wanted this. And the light is blinding.

The puppet's hands are clasped tight enough to hurt. What more can one do in this place, but ache?

"You do not want this enough.”

For all the puppet's stubbornness and false pride, everything falls apart at those few words. The simple fact that he had something to prove was more than enough to sway him, in a quiet, indignant, "yes I do".

There is nothing left but It. Nobody else to prove something to, nobody else to chase after in a brilliant show of success, looking for appeal and praise and the wonderful, wonderful feeling of having done something right.

Now, there is nothing left to do right. [ H E A V E N ] is calling.

He answers with an unheard prayer.

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

[drowningbydegrees]

As it turns out, falling into bed with your very best friend who you are privately very much in love with isn't nearly so nerve wracking as waking up with them the morning after.

Read on AO3

He can’t remember the last time waking up was a remotely soothing experience. Geralt’s sleep muzzy mind has no other word for the body plastered against his front from shoulder to hip, the steady heartbeat against his palm where his hand is splayed out across someone’s chest. His nose is tucked against the nape of someone’s neck, and the scent is far too familiar to be jarring.

“Jaskier,” he rumbles quietly, his mouth miles ahead of the rest of him. The quiet, absent pleasure of waking up tangled with someone who smells sleepy and content and like they’re his leaves no room for reason. There’s no room for anything really, except to press a kiss to whatever patch of skin he can find, savoring the soft sigh it earns him.

Jaskier is… The night before rushes back to him, and Geralt almost jerks away, even though it would be entirely pointless to bother with that now. He cracks an eye open and is met with the disaster that Jaskier’s hair, mussed in the night by sleep, and by Geralt’s fingers buried in it before that. Even as worry begins to creep in, he sort of wants to do it again.

This isn’t the first time they’ve shared a bed. This probably isn’t even the hundredth time they’ve shared a bed. This is most definitely the first time they’ve done so with so little clothing between them, none to be exact. There’s only the blanket tucked around them both, warm and lovely and unexpectedly distressing.

Geralt isn’t sorry, per se. Jaskier’s chest rises and falls under Geralt’s palm in the slow rhythm of sleep. It’s the loveliest thing Geralt can remember waking up to, and therein lies the problem. An emotion fed only grows, and this unruly, sprawling affection is the worst offender. Stupidly, Geralt had thought getting this out of his system would quell it, but the longing reaches a fever pitch instead.

Jaskier is beautiful, all the more so for the way he shifts in his sleep, closing the gap Geralt has tried to put between them. Geralt could happily wake like this every day for the rest of his life, but it isn’t a fair thing to ask of someone who flits from one love to the next like a butterfly between flowers. He will not trap Jaskier in this just because he happens to be besotted. Somehow, the resolve not to try to keep this does nothing to ease the guilt welling up that he wants to in the first place.

Nothing Jaskier said the night before conveyed meaning beyond a playful desire to tumble into bed together. Moving the target now would only be cruel. He should be rolling out of bed, hastening them back to normal. He should be proving that this has done nothing to harm their friendship. It isn’t Jaskier’s fault, after all, the way Geralt wants to breathe him in and kiss him senseless and forget the rest of the world until the innkeeper boots them out.

“Geralt?” Jaskier startles the witcher from his worries, wriggling impossibly closer and laying a palm over his knuckles. “You okay?”

“Thinking,” Geralt replies vaguely.

“Well, don’t hurt yourself,” Jaskier teases, still warm and lethargic with sleep. Geralt almost manages to take advantage of the levity of the moment and extricate himself, but before he can, Jaskier rolls over so they’re nearly nose to nose. His fingers cradle Geralt’s cheek and any attempt to escape now would just be graceless. “What about?”

Geralt doesn’t know how to answer, so he only hums noncommittally and hopes Jaskier will let it lie. Of course, Jaskier being Jaskier, does no such thing. He takes advantage of the change in positions to tangle his legs up with Geralt. “I can’t tell you to knock it off if you don’t tell me what it is.”

“We should get going.” Geralt tries once more to escape, frowning when Jaskier shows no sign of releasing him. It’s silly of course. Jaskier couldn’t hope to hold him here if Geralt was set on leaving. He just can’t actually make himself do it.

“Was it that bad a night?” It’s an easy opening, an invitation to stray back to their usual banter, but Geralt gets no further than a raised eyebrow before Jaskier is clasping a hand over the witcher’s mouth. “Wait. Don’t answer that or I might have to smother you with a pillow and that’ll just be unfortunate for both of us.”

Right there, with Jaskier smiling at him, Geralt can almost believe they’re going to survive this. Almost, but almost still leaves a distance he cannot cross. As soon as Jaskier pulls his hand back from Geralt’s mouth, the witcher opens it. “They’re not going to let us sleep in forever.”

“They might if I convince them to let me play again this evening. We could move on tomorrow,” Jaskier ventures, but something in Geralt’s face must give him pause. “Oh do not look at me like that. The world isn’t going to end just because you stop to take a breath once in a while, Geralt.”

“That’s not…” Geralt starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish. There are no words that convey the razor wire sensation of facing down the impermanence of Jaskier’s affections, of realizing how deeply his own feelings run far too late.

“Shh.” Geralt knew what to do with impulse, with Jaskier’s mouth crashing into his, with Jaskier’s hands scrabbling at him to shed his clothes. He doesn’t know what to do with the tender, intentional way Jaskier regards him this morning, lips pressing to the witcher’s brow and lingering afterwards. Does it mean something, or does Jaskier grant all his lovers this subdued, aimless devotion? Lust was so much simpler than this aching sort of affection that puts down roots even as Geralt tries to burn it away.

Geralt doesn’t precisely surrender, but he resigns himself to the lazy attention Jaskier is so determined to lavish on him. If he lets Jaskier turn him away later instead of now, there will be at least this one pleasant thing to remember. So he doesn’t complain at Jaskier’s fingers combing through his hair, or the bard’s body pressed warmly to his. If every touch feels like a harbinger of their demise, it’s still hard to let go of.

He almost passes things off as okay, he thinks, until Jaskier kisses him. It’s a brief thing, immediately withdrawn. “Geralt?”

If realizing the hopeless situation he’s stumbled into was uncomfortable, the idea of talking about it is nothing short of torture.

“Well, you haven’t shoved me out of bed yet, so you’re not mad. Talk to me,” Jaskier coaxes, his expression so openly concerned and affectionate, Geralt could scream.

“It’s no-” Geralt starts, but Jaskier shut him up with a theatrically sour look.

“I swear if you say nothing,” Jaskier threatens aimlessly, an easy smile on his lips, but underneath, Geralt can hear the way his anxious heart threatens to vibrate right out of his chest.

“I don’t know what this is,” Geralt admits because that, at least, is safe. It’s nothing about how he feels in relation to anything. It’s nothing about the want that simmers under the surface despite his guilt.

Jaskier’s brows scrunch in a way that would be endearing if the entire ordeal didn’t feel so fraught already. “I don’t think I follow. I mean, I know having a conversation isn’t your usual wheelhouse, but it’s not exactly a foreign concept.”

“Not. That.” Geralt bites the words out, tight and clipped while he gathers his frayed nerves enough to explain. “You’re not in the habit of keeping people. I don’t know what you want.”

For just a second, Jaskier looks like he’s been struck and Geralt wants desperately to take the whole thing back. But the bard’s expression smooths out and then twists up in a wry smile. “Of course I don’t. What would I even do? Drag someone else along on our travels?”

There’s a point Jaskier is making. It’s right there. He knows it is, but it eludes Geralt anyway. “You could have stayed somewhere if there was someone you wanted to stick around for.”

Jaskier laughs, just a giggle at first, and then so hard that even his efforts to bury his face against Geralt’s shoulder do nothing to stifle it. “You are absolutely right. I could fall completely and utterly in love with someone and choose to stick around.”

“I don’t see how that’s funny,” Geralt says flatly, staring at the far wall of their room. The urge to curl around Jaskier and forget the whole stupid conversation in strong, and maybe he’d have been better off doing that in the first place, but he doesn’t surrender to it.

“Well, you’re one of the smartest people I know, so these moments where you decide to be an absolute idiot happen to be hilarious,” Jaskier teases. The bard must take pity, because his palm slides to cradle Geralt’s jaw, and Jaskier puts himself right at eye level where the witcher can’t look away. “Don’t you realize? I fell in love with someone, and I chose to stick around. It happened ages ago.”

Geralt has long since given up on trying to anticipate what Jaskier will say to any given prompt, but that is… somehow not even on the same continent as anything he might have expected. “What?”

“You really are determined to make this as difficult and stressful for me as possible, aren’t you?” Jaskier asks. There’s a tightness around his eyes when he looks at Geralt, leaving the witcher with the awful realization that Jaskier must be flying as blind as he is. He’s probably as unsure of Geralt’s intent as Geralt is of his. And yet… “I chose you, you ridiculous man. I always choose you.”

That… that explains a lot, actually. Geralt swallows thickly as Jaskier’s nose bumps against his. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

“Ah yes. ‘Hello my very dear emotionally… hampered witcher who will sometimes, on a very good day, admit that we are friends. Would it it complicate things overly much if I also happened to be completely, utterly in love with you?’” Jaskier huffs out a helpless, almost panicky sort of laugh. “Tell me Geralt, is there any time in the last few years where that would have gone well?”

Years? Now, confronted with the full force of it, Geralt isn’t sure how he even missed it last night, let alone for so long. Now that he knows it’s always been a bit painfully obvious. And much as he’d like to, he can’t really argue against Jaskier’s point that it probably wouldn’t have gone well to say so. “What changed?”

Jaskier sighs in that dramatic, overdone way he tends to when he’s being asked what he thinks is an exceedingly silly question. “You did.”

“Hmm.” Geralt doesn’t comment and Jaskier doesn’t press for further conversation. It’s peaceful, this thing blossoming between them, now that his most immediate concerns have been silenced.

That Jaskier laid his heart on the line and asked for nothing back isn’t lost on Geralt though. The words catch and stick on his throat, so Geralt writes them into the tender way he traces the curve of Jaskier’s spine with his fingertips. He presses them against Jaskier’s lips, jaw, throat with lazy, lingering kisses.

“So tell me-” Jaskier starts, the words interrupted by a soft sigh as Geralt’s thumb skims the divot of his hip. It’s an unmistakably promising sound all by itself, even ignoring that delightful way Jaskier presses into the touch. He finishes his thought, but it’s unmistakably breathless. “What are you thinking now?”

The recognition that this isn’t some fluke settles warmly around him. This could be always. There are so few things a witcher really keeps, but for now he’s willing to entertain the notion that this might be one of them.

“I’m thinking…” Geralt mumbles against the side of Jaskier’s neck, delighting in the way the bard’s fingers tangle in his hair and tug. “That maybe we’ll leave tomorrow.”

[naussensei]

Attack on Titan College AU

In which Bertolt and Reiner drag Annie into a party.

Once at the bus stop, Annie flinched at the address on her phone when she received Bertoldt’s text. She had never even gone close to that area. 

Bertold and Reiner would have to make up for this, she’d make sure of that.

For a fancy street, the house indicated in Bertolt’s message wasn’t as big as Annie had imagined. The streets were clean and clear of holes, well-illuminated, but the house wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Even so, Annie hesitated another moment before she knocked on the entrance door. She listened to the beating of some rap music slamming the windows, the loud chanting of a group of men, and a chill ran down her spine. What the hell were her friends doing in a place like that?

With a deep breath, Annie knocked, and the door was wide open in a second; a tall man with narrow eyes and a smug smile standing at the threshold with a drink in his hand.

“Hey,” he sneered, scanning Annie from head to feet with a smirk.

“Hi,” Annie’s voice was dry, her shoulders stiff. “I’m looking for a friend.”

“Well, you’ve found one,” he grinned, leaning with a hand over the threshold. “Wanna come in?”

“Hey, horse face!”

Another voice came from behind him; a shorter, angry-looking guy pushed the tall one aside, deep green eyes glaring at him. “Stop letting random people into my house, Jean!”

“Relax, Jaeger, she’s not a ‘random person’. I know Annie, she was in my political science class with Professor Smith.”

Annie couldn’t recall Jeans’s face, yet nodded regardless.

“Just come in,” the one called Jaeger said with a sigh, and Annie followed him. “I’m Eren, by the way. There’s drinks at the bar, make yourself at home.”

“I’m only here to pick up a friend,” she clarified, and dodged a group of people chugging their drinks in a scandalous way.

“Really?” Eren said casually, his mind was somewhere else. Even from a distance Annie could smell the alcohol on him. “Which friend?”

“Reiner Braun.” She looked around searching for her friends, feeling several eyes on her as they walked across the large room, suddenly aware of how her gym clothes were so out of place with the rest of the girl’s outfits.

Eren paid little attention to Annie, too busy keeping watch on his parents’ house.

“Hey! Sasha! Connie! Get off the table!” Eren yelled, alarmed at the sight of two people climbing onto the furniture. He excused himself and rushed towards her.

Annie was then left in the middle of the room, alone with nothing but an awkward feeling. Reiner and Bertold would pay for this, she told herself, looking for an empty corner to stand at and look for them. What did people even do in these parties? She watched more people drinking, some of them dancing. After rejecting drinks several times, Annie headed to the bathroom. If Reiner was drunk and wasn’t anywhere around, it could only mean one thing: he’d probably been sick.

The bathroom door opened, and Annie’s eyes widened at the sight of a short, blonde girl kissing another taller girl. She stood there frozen with a hand still on the doorknob; the girls recoiled as soon as they saw Annie staring at them.

“What?” Growled the taller one, darker skin flushing under her freckles. “You got a problem?”

“Ymir don’t-” The other girl gasped, holding her arm to stop her.

“I honestly couldn’t care less. You do your thing,” Annie said with a straight face now, and closed the door again. Where the hell were Reiner and Bertolt?

After searching most of the house, Annie decided they must have gone out to buy more drinks or something like that. She decided to wait for a few more minutes, and looked for a quiet place to sit. At the end of the living room, a lonely girl sat quietly on a couch with a plastic cup in her hand.

That was it. That was her spot.

“Hi,” Annie gave the girl a brief and polite smile as she took a seat.

The girl’s gaze was lost somewhere. As though she didn’t hear Annie, the girl rose to her feet and moved towards the table. From there, Annie admired her black dress and high boots, as black as her hair and nail polish. A second later, the girl came back with another plastic cup and offered it to Annie.

“Oh, I don’t drink, but thanks.”

“It’s apple juice,” the girl said. Unlike her tough appearance, the girl’s voice was surprisingly sweet. “I don’t drink either.”

Annie thanked her and took a shy sip from it with relief. It was indeed apple juice.

They both continued to drink in silence, awkward at first, then almost comforting. At least they were alone together.

“I’m looking for a friend,” finally said Annie. “Do you know someone called Reiner or Bertolt?”

The girl looked up at the ceiling as if trying to reach for something in the back of her mind. “Oh,” she gasped, and pulled out her phone to show her something.

Annie stared at the painting on the girl’s screen with a puzzled look.

“Bertolt painted it,” the girl explained.

“He did?” Annie’s eyebrows raised in disbelief, and tilted her head to take a closer look. He was actually talented, she hated to admit.

The girl nodded, and scrolled down the screen to show Annie another painting; a completely different style but equally stunning.

“Did you paint this one?” Annie asked, and the girl nodded again; a slight reddish gleam burning on her cheeks.

“It’s nice.” Annie said, and she meant it.

The girl put the phone away, and offered her hand.

“I’m Mikasa,” she smiled, “Bertolt and Reiner are my classmates.”

“Nice to meet you,” Annie shook her hand. For once, she was genuinely glad to meet someone new.

“Have you seen them? Do you know where they are?”

Mikasa pointed to the other end of the room, and Annie followed her finger with her eyes across the sea of people to find Bertolt and Reiner drinking from a keg of beer. Her jaw dropped.

“Come,” Mikasa grabbed Annie by the wrist and dragged her across the room through the crowd.

Annie didn’t protest, but her face became more and more red with every step she took, until she was stomping her way towards her friends.

Reiner was the first one to see her, and his face quickly shifted into one of concern. Bertolt only turned to her when he felt Reiner’s elbow digging into his arm; his face serious now as well.

“I thought you were drunk.” Annie hissed, arms folding, eyebrows raising.

“We are,” Bertoldt rushed to say.

“And yet you keep drinking.” She accused. “So you called me for what?”

She turned to Reiner now, her piercing glare had him shuddering. Reiner had always been the easier one to break.

Reiner gulped, a drop of sweat running down his face. He searched for Bertolt with anxious eyes as though pleading for help.

“He made me do it,” Reiner finally burst out. “He made me lie so you would come to the party.”

“Reiner, seriously?” Bertolt gasped, throwing his hands up in the air with frustration. “You didn’t even try, can’t you keep a secret for once?”

Reiner shrugged and Annie cursed under her breath.

“Whatever, we’re already here,” Reiner said, “Since you are here, too, let’s have fun.”

Annie sighed. As angry as she was, she had to admit this was better than staring at her ceiling at home.

“If I stay, will you promise I won’t have to drag you home all drunk?”

“Promise,” they said in unison, and raised their cups to cheer.

“You can’t cheer with an empty hand,” Jean barged in between the two, handing Annie a cup. She rejected it with an awkward smile, and Jean shrugged before he chugged the cup himself.

“She’s not interested,” Eren said in a condescending tone, patting Jean on the back, harder than he’d meant. Too unstable to keep his balance, Jean nearly fell forward, and a second later they were both exchanging senseless insults and aimless fists until they both landed on the floor.

“Eren, stop bothering him, you’ll get your ass kicked again,” Mikasa ran to restrain him. Another guy pulled Jean to keep him away from Eren.

“Marco, let go!” Grunted Jean, even though the only reason he was standing was Marco holding his arm.

The meaningless argument carried on for another moment, and as everyone’s attention was drawn to them now, Annie used that opportunity to slip away for a moment. Hell, she needed a moment of peace. Through the corner of her eye, she sighted a door that led to the backyard, and with smooth steps she sneaked out.

As soon as she stepped outside, a nice breeze blew against her face; the fresh air filling her lungs, and she sighed in relief. She moved towards the railing of the deck, and leaned against it, looking up at the sky; a perfect clear night above her. What was wrong with her? She wondered. Everyone had been so nice, yet there she was, alone in the backyard with a lingering feeling of unease in her chest. Or so she thought.

“It’s nice, isn't it?” A stranger’s voice jolted her out of her thoughts, and Annie turned to find a young man sitting on the floor. Wide blue eyes fixed on the sky and a warm smile.

Annie followed his gaze to search for what he was looking at.

“Funny how they seem like they twinkle, when it’s actually just the Earth’s atmosphere that makes that illusion.”

Annie said nothing, but her eyes widened as she stared at the brightest, shiniest star she could find. “Even that one?” she pointed, a hint of skepticism in her voice.

“You mean Sirius,” he chuckled in amusement, “even that is an illusion.”

Annie now turned to him, watching him get on his feet to move closer to her, carrying a cup with him, eyes still on the stars.

“That other one is Regulus,” he pointed at another star and his smile widened as he stared at Annie with eager eyes, as though waiting for a reaction.

“...cool.”

What else was she supposed to say?

He let out an awkward smile, and his pale cheeks turned suddenly bright red. “Not a Harry Potter fan, I guess.”

What a nerd, she thought.

“Not particularly,” she said instead.

They stared at the sky for another moment, until Annie felt the need to fill that unbearable silence.

“Why are you out here?” she asked without turning to him. “Too crowded inside?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Annie could now feel his eyes on her, and the slightest feeling of unease gathered in her chest. She couldn’t help but to subtly turn to him, only to look away again the next moment.

“Do you smoke?” he offered her a pack of cigarettes, and Annie shook her head in reply.

“Yeah, neither do I,” he sighed, putting them away. “These are Eren’s, really. Mikasa asked me to hide them from him.”

“Mikasa’s a talented artist.” Surely if he knew Mikasa he couldn’t be such an ass, could he? Annie turned to him again. He was close. Closer than a moment ago, and still staring at her, bright blue eyes reflecting the silver gleam of the stars. She ignored the feeling in her guts and refused to look away.

This seemed to amuse him. He lowered his gaze now with a shy smile, and took a long sip from his drink with a deep grunt.

“God, this is so bad. How can people drink this?” He squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips, making Annie laugh.

“It can’t be that bad…” She sneered.

“You see for yourself,” he handed her the cup, eyes still shut hard in disgust.

Annie stared at the plastic cup with curiosity for a long moment.

Was she actually considering his offer?

He quickly looked around, as if expecting to find someone, yet nobody else was around.

“Fuck it,” she sighed, taking the cup and giving in a small sip without thinking about it any further. As soon as the bitter liquid slid down her throat with a slight burn, she regretted her decision.

“So bad…” She winced.

It was now his turn to laugh. A sound so sweet and soothing to her ears, that Annie almost wondered if there had been something in her drink that made her heart skip and her stomach twist. A rush of blood crawled up to colour her cheeks, and Annie now shook in silent laughter.

The stranger now turned to her, and as their eyes met, a sudden spark flashed between them, holding them both in thrall.

Annie’s body loosened, and as the overwhelming warmth faded, she could finally realize what that feeling gathering in her chest was. Fear. She shuddered in fear. Something she hadn’t expecience in a long time. But it was a strange kind of fear, the kind that made her heart flutter and her stomach drop. She moved even closer, as though drawn by some magnetic force, until she could feel his breath on her.

“There you are!”

A sudden voice came through the door and they both recoiled instantly; a drunk Eren struggling to walk straight outside “Have you seen my cigarettes?”

“No, Eren, I have not seen your-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Eren lay flat against the floor.

“Shit, sorry,” the stranger excused himself, moving towards his friend. “Gotta go, but it was really nice talking to you.”

Annie watched him pick Eren up from the floor and disappear behind the door. It wasn’t until she saw Reiner and Bertolt come looking for her that she realized she hadn’t caught the stranger’s name.

-

From: When the Stars Blink Twice

Read full chapter here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32434150/chapters/80968576#workskin

[the-dream-team]

What I Would Do: I Would Do Anything

Fem!Jily February - Part 2 (Read Part One Here)

Read on AO3

Lily Evans had threatened Jamie Potter with detention more times than she could count, but Jamie never got tired of Lily’s narrowed eyes and assertive tone. Having been raised an only child, with parents so doting some may consider her borderline spoiled, Jamie found being put in her place unbelievably exhilarating. And no one put her in her place quite as Lily Evans did.

So, when Evans caught her sneaking into Hogsmeade on that glorious afternoon in March, and tried intimidating her with a month’s worth of detentions, Jamie couldn’t help but fall in love with her a little more. 

The crush was getting absurd at this point. As Sirius liked to ask over and over again, how long could a girl pine over her straight dormmate before exploding from the agonizing pain of unattainable attraction? 

Jamie suspected she already had exploded that day in Herbology third year, when she inadvertently admitted her feelings for Lily after two years of finding her to be the most beautiful and charming and combative girl she ever had the pleasure of knowing. Ever since then, she reckoned she existed only as the remaining wayward particles of who Jamie Potter once was, floating through space, inexplicably drawn to the fiery red-head who couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

So, when Lily pulled out the threat of detentions, and Jamie’s heart swelled with admiration, she expressed her hopeless emotions the same way she always had, with a joke.

“Oh, Evans, stop that, you’re making me blush! Merlin, what I would do if you ever switched your fancies.”

It was a self-deprecating joke, Jamie’s go-to whenever Lily was involved. The actual pain of Lily’s undeniable disinterest hit a little too hard, so creating a running gag out of Jamie’s desperation for something so impossible became her only response. 

Lily gave her a hard stare. “What would you do?” 

What would she do? If Lily Evans ever so much as blinked at the idea of flying for the other team? Jamie would snog her senseless. But that couldn’t possibly be what she meant. Lily was just being argumentative, as per usual. There was no way she would ever-

“What would you do if I told you I fancied girls. If I fancied you.”

Something in Jamie’s brain short-circuited. Words failed her. Her jaw dropped as any form of cognitive thinking skills abandoned her in her hour of need. If I fancied you echoed in her ears, teasing her as though Lily could possibly mean what Jaimie wanted her to. The word “if” smirked at her, jeered at the fleeting hope leaping in her chest.

But then the welling tears in Lily’s brilliant green eyes set off alarm bells in Jamie’s brain and reality reassembled itself. 

“Enjoy your time in the village, Potter,” said Lily with a crushed sadness that Jamie was all too familiar with. Rejection. Before she could say a word in response, Lily turned her back and started walking towards the castle. 

Instinct kicked in and Jamie let her swirling thoughts fall to the side as she chased Lily up the path. “Evans!” she shouted. “Lily, wait!” 

Without considering the consequences of being mistaken, Jamie reached out and grabbed Lily’s wrist, spinning her around to face her. Only when her hands found Lily’s cheeks and her impulse begged her to close the already small gap between them, did Jamie hesitate. What she wanted to do next couldn’t be taken back. She searched Lily’s face, begging for a sign that she wasn’t completely misreading the moment.

A beautiful smile burst from Lily’s lips and Jamie lunged forward, meeting those perfect lips with her own. Every cell in her body pulsed in rhythm with her soaring heart and Jamie felt a heat she’d never known before burst from her chest. The lost particles, once aimless and devoid of hope, now sprang back together, making Jamie whole once again. 

It was everything she’d ever wanted and more. A miracle. 

She pulled Lily closer and nearly squealed from joy as Lily’s fingers ran through her hair and found the nape of her neck. Those soft hands she had daydreamed about holding for years, now touched Jamie’s skin and affected her in a way more intoxicating than any poison could ever be. She deepened the kiss, desperate for the wonderful girl who drove her mad with desire for all those years. The satisfaction knew no bounds.

They finally broke apart for breath, but just as Jamie began missing the warmth of Lily’s body against her own, Lily pulled her in for a hug. 

“Hey Jamie,” she asked, breathless. “Do you want to get ice cream with me?”

Jamie laughed, tightening the hug, “Oh, Evans, what I would do to get ice cream with you.”

She took a step back, smiling so broadly Jamie couldn’t help but do the same. She reached out and grabbed Lily’s hand, interlacing their fingers, worried that if they weren’t touching for even a moment, she might lose her. Kissing Lily, touching Lily, being with Lily… it was too good to be true. 

They walked towards the center of town, sharing shy glances that felt so different from the passionate storm of kissing that had just taken place. Different, but exciting. There was something so sweet about the blush on Lily’s cheeks and the timid way she looked at their hands as they moved through the streets and towards the ice cream cart parked the town square. 

“Welcome back, miss,” said the server to Lily, and Jamie’s heart soared as her blush deepened. 

“It was so good, I had to come back for more,” she laughed. 

Jamie reached into her pocket and pulled out her coins, dropping them onto the cart. “We’ll take whatever the young lady would like,” she grinned proudly.

“Could we please get a mint chocolate chip cone… to share?” she asked with a forced confidence that Jamie found remarkably endearing.

The man nodded and quickly produced a perfectly scooped cone, which Lily graciously accepted before leading Jamie towards a bench. They sat down next to each other, their legs touching lightly. Lily took a lick of the ice cream and handed it to Jamie.

Jamie gladly took the cone, her heart leaping as their fingers touched during the transaction. She looked at the ice cream and went for a taste, suddenly aware of where Lily’s tongue had been before on the cold treat. When she looked back up at Lily, bliss flashing across those emerald eyes, Jamie couldn’t fathom why they had ever stopped kissing in the first place. She grabbed Lily’s face, pulling her forward and meeting her impossibly soft lips once more, consumed by the sweetness that had nothing to do with the ice cream.

“How long have you known?” breathed Jamie when they came apart. 

Lily grabbed the ice cream cone and took a bite. “About fifteen minutes now.”

“Fifteen- are you sure?” stuttered Jamie, suddenly nervous. “I mean, are you sure you know you like me? Are you sure you like girls?” 

Lily looked at her feet, embarrassed. “I’m sure,” she said, her voice unfaltering. “Especially after all the… you know.” She turned bright red.

“After all the snogging?” said Jamie with a grin, reveling at the moment, unable to resist a bit of teasing. 

“Stop it,” said Lily with a playful shove, “you’re impossible.”

“I’ll never stop,” said Jamie. She leaned over and planted a kiss on Lily’s cheek because she could and reveled in the way Lily failed to hide her smile. “I’m so happy I think I might be dreaming.”

“Really?” asked Lily, tilting her head. 

“Evans, you must be kidding me,” said Jamie with a laugh. “I haven’t been subtle about how I’ve felt about you all these years.”

“I assumed you were joking.”

“Well, that’s silly.”

“I have feelings about you too,” said Lily, looking up at Jamie, the sunlight playing in her hair like drops of liquid gold sliding down a waterfall.

“Only good ones I hope,” Jamie said, unable to help herself. Lily rolled her eyes in such a Lily Evans way that Jamie felt like she was flying. No, this was better than flying. This was falling. 

“Oh, shoot,” said Lily suddenly, glancing at her watch. “The mucus!”

“Mucus?”

“Yes, the mucus, I’m supposed to get this back to Professor Slughorn, he needs it for his lesson.” She gestured at the bag she had over her shoulder. 

“Well, lucky for you, I know a shortcut to the castle.” Jamie winked and grabbed hold of Lily’s hand, tugging her from the bench and leading them both to Honeydukes. 

Once they made it across the street from the sweet shop, Jamie reached into her messenger back and pulled out her invisibility cloak. “We’re gonna need this,” she said as she draped the fabric over her’s and Lily’s heads. Lily’s eyes grew wide as she realized they had disappeared to the world. 

“This is crazy,” she whispered, but Jamie silenced her with a kiss.

“There’s plenty of time to explain later,” she grinned. 

They snuck through the front door of Honeydukes, making sure not to set off the welcoming bell, and tip-toed through the stacks of candy. Jamie spotted Remus’ favorite chocolate (the entire reason for her trip to Hogsmeade in the first place) and snagged a few bars as they passed, leaving a few coins behind on the shelf.

Lily watched in awe at Jamie’s comfort making her way through the store, and Jamie couldn’t help but show off by grabbing a lollipop from a rotating stand handing it to her with a smirk. Lily rolled her eyes again, but a smile still played on the corners of her mouth, so Jamie flipped another coin onto a countertop and led her smoothly to cellar stairs. 

In a minute, they had slipped through the secret passageway undetected and found themselves in the tunnel leading back to the school. She slid the invisibility cloak off and shoved it back in her bag, reaching out once more for Lily’s hand. 

But she only met air. Lily stood next to her silently, staring at her outstretched hand. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Jamie, feeling her heart drop into her stomach. 

Lily’s eyes shifted back and forth between Jamie and the end of the tunnel. She took a step towards Jamie, placed her hands on the sides of Jamie’s face, and tenderly kissed her. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs in the best way possible. 

When they broke apart, Lily took a deep breath. “I’m scared.”

Of course. She was scared. 

What happened between them, happened in the outside world. Away from the school, away from their friends and classmates, away from their lives. No one in Hogsmeade batted an eye at her kissing another girl in the streets. They didn’t have any preconceived notions about who she was and who she was supposed to be with. Something heavy began weighing on Jamie’s heart, begging her to come up with a joke, downplay her feelings, save herself from what looked like inevitable heartache. 

“That’s okay,” she whispered, reaching out to caress Lily’s cheek, stroking her smooth skin with her thumb and willing time to slow down and allow Jamie to live in whatever small moments with Lily she had left. “It is scary. We don’t have to be… anything… if you can’t right now. Or ever.”

“No!” said Lily, reaching up to lay her hand on top of Jamie’s. “I want to be something.”

Jamie exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Oh, thank Merlin.”

“Do you think we could keep this between us? For now?” Lily looked up at her with shame in her eyes. Shame that Jamie wanted to crush away into nothingness. 

“Of course,” she said, “I won’t tell a soul. Not even Sirius.”

“You would do that?”

“I would do anything for you.” Jamie hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was too late. It was the truth. 

Lily looked like she might cry again, but there was a beautiful smile on her face. She leaned in, slowly, and pressed her lips against Jamies with such tenderness, she could feel how much Jamie’s words had meant to her. 

“Thank you,” said Lily with a final hug before they walked back to the castle, hand in hand. 

For weeks, Jamie lived on cloud nine. She spent her days exchanging knowing glances with Lily across classrooms and crowded corridors and her afternoons sneaking off to hidden sections of the library and broom closets. At night, she lay awake, just a four-poster bed away from the girl who owned her entire heart and being and dreamed of running her hands through her hair and making her laugh.

Sirius complained that Jamie seemed distracted, Remus questioned her uncontrollable smiling, and Peter wondered why she stopped having the time to help him with his Charms essays, but Jamie just laughed them off. She had kept secrets for them before, now she could keep one secret from them. 

Especially when that secret made her so damn happy.

The feeling of being wanted by another person in the same way she wanted them, was incomparable. And for that person to be Lily Evans? She didn’t know how she had become so lucky. Keeping their secret was easy, as easy as loving Lily. And she did love her. She always had. And every minute she spent kissing and talking and teasing with Lily, her love grew more ferocious. 

Jamie was scared of bursting. She had exploded once before, and that couldn’t happen again. 

So, when Mulciber approached Lily one morning in the Great Hall, spewing disgusting words and hateful rhetoric, Jamie restrained herself. 

Not completely, of course.

“Why don’t you piss off, Mulciber,” called Jamie from down the table, making sure to avoid Lily’s eye. 

“Oh yeah, Potter?” sneered the Slytherin. “What are you gonna do? Throw your bodygaurds at me?” He motioned at Sirius and Remus, who both jumped up at the provocation. Jamie stood up, too, and motioned for her friends to retreat. 

“No, I don’t need them,” she chuckled, “I’ve learned a few things from Evans about how to deal with you.” Jamie whipped out her wand and in a flash, struck Mulciber with a silencing charm. He grunted but pulled out his own wand to cast the counterspell.

“How dare you, Potter!” Mulciber shouted, fully taking his attention away from Lily, who stared at Jamie with concern. She sent her back a smile, trying to convey a sense of confidence. 

“Oh look, Mulciber,” laughed Jamie, knowing she was pushing her luck, but happy that the boy’s attention was as far away from Lily as possible, “you learned from your past mistakes! Luckily, I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve.” She flicked her wand and within seconds, soap bubbles poured out of Mulciber’s mouth. “That’s for your dirty tongue.”

“Dirty?” spat Mulciber in between the bubbles. “You dare call me dirty, you filthy queer. You’re below even the dirtiest Mudbloods.” The words stung, Jamie couldn’t deny it or hide the pain from her face and she faltered. “That’s right, at least the Mudbloods have each other,” he continued. “You, on the other hand, are a freak of nature, destined to be alone, completely unlovable-”

He was cut off by a flash of light as he was hit square in the back by a body-binding curse. As Mulciber fell to the ground, Lily appeared behind him, her wand outstretched, a fiery explosion behind her eyes. 

“She’s not alone,” said Lily, loud and clear for the entire Great Hall. “She’ll never be alone.”

“Lily,” said Jamie quietly, her heart pounding furiously against her chest.

“And you’re wrong, Mulciber. It’s so easy to love Jamie. She lives her life with so much joy and compassion. She’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met, but she plays it down with jokes that are so funny, you’ll be laughing at them for days. She’s loyal and brave and so good. It’s so easy to love Jamie.” She took a breath. “I love Jamie. I love you,” she said breathlessly. 

The words felt like magic. Jamie could barely process what Lily had said before she was met with Lily’s lips, kissing her with such ferocity that Jamie immediately forgot they were surrounded by the entire school. It lasted for an eternity and a second all at once, but eventually, they parted.

“I love you too,” said Jamie, shocked and amazed and happy. 

They stared at each other with matching grins, lost in their own happiness, exploding together into their futures.

[seadeepywrites]

Stormborn

Character: Fathom Tidechaser Words: 2345 tw: drowning, death of a parent, graphic depiction of blood

In Fathom’s scattered memories of that night, it begins with the railing. It tears like wet parchment, giving way with a shriek. Lia and Fathom tumble after it into the raging sea.

A single bright flash of lightning illuminates the tableau: Lia’s tangled hair around her head as she struggles to stay afloat. The tattered ship tossing and heaving above them, its sails rattling, hissing. Splintered chunks of wood around them in the darkness, and his mom’s hand reaching out to him, pale against the night-black waves.

Fathom’s chest clenches with fear that isn’t for himself. Even amid the howling power of the storm, he knows the roll and pitch of the waves. He is plunged beneath the surface, and it doesn't matter — he can breathe in saltwater like air — but Lia can’t, and she is floundering.

Fathom strikes out toward her, desperate strokes with trembling arms through frigid water that is whipped into spray by the gusts of wind. He knows better than to cry out — saves all his breath for swimming — and he is the fastest swimmer onboard — and it is still not enough. The waves are as tall as the ship’s prow, throwing him up and plummeting him down, and even when he knows where Lia is, he can’t seem to get any closer.

The wind screams in his ears and the thunder rumbles and between one moment and the next, his mother is gone.

Fathom ducks underwater, taking in heaving lungfuls of the sea, wriggling downward away from the seething chaos above him. It is quieter here, but dark as sin, and the relentless currents are far too powerful for his small body. And Fathom’s heart calls to his goddess, begging Melora for her aid, but part of him already knows — Melora takes away as much as she gives. One boy’s hopes are nothing, when compared to the furious power of her storms.

Fathom swims through the darkness, straining his eyes and his muscles until he’s lost track of which way is up. Dizzy with fear and exhaustion, he isn’t even sure what he’d do if he saw his mother. If he could do anything except embrace her and sink to the ocean floor by her side. 

At some point, he collides hard with the side of the ship, knocking himself half-senseless. His limp body spins away from the hull, only to meet in the next wave trough with a jagged spar of wood that rips through his neck and shoulder with an all-consuming pain that Fathom is almost too numb to feel. It is excruciating, but his mind has drifted away from the part of him that still swirls bonelessly in the sea. Lia is gone. He has already lost. What else can the water take from him?

When Fathom finally loses consciousness, it is a sweet and alluring relief.

***

Fathom feels like he’s been cast in iron, every limb too leaden to move. He can’t even open his eyes far enough to focus them. He is lying on a deck — that much he knows. Flatter and steadier than the abyss of the ocean. Beyond that, everything seems — hazy.

So Fathom just lies there like a stranded jellyfish, unable to string together a complete thought. There are hands. They grab and prod at him roughly.

“Kid’s alive!” someone shouts from far, far above him. The first half of their next sentence is snatched by the wind. “...very long if we don’t get that cut closed up.”

Oh. Right. The blood, swirling dark in the puddles around him. It’s from the gash in his neck. The stains spilling over his chest are— bad. Something will happen. Something like that last glimpse of Lia between one wave and the next. 

Fathom lifts one shaking hand to the wound, his fingers slipping in his own slick blood. He can feel the way his shoulder is separated, the muscle and bone in ridges and valleys. He explores the terrain with his fingers, and some dull instinct reminds him it shouldn’t feel this way. It should be smoother. Connected. Whole. 

More sounds from above him. Exclamations. His eyelids flutter, and all around him he can see light. A teal the color of his skin, bright as the sun-sparkle on the water at dawn.

As Fathom’s eyes roll back in his head, his hand drops away from his shoulder to flop on the deck at his side. A warmth swells up from everywhere and nowhere, surrounding him. His shoulder wound burns even hotter, scalding through his fragmented consciousness. The pain and the heat intensify.

Fathom passes out again.

***

The next time Fathom wakes, it is quiet. As quiet as things ever get at sea, which is to say that the waves shush softly against the hull and the ship groans. But the rocking movement of the waves is gentle, and there is warm sunlight on his face.

Fathom rolls toward the light, cracking his eyelids open. The grimy porthole shows a gem-blue sky, unmarred by clouds.

“You’re awake,” comes a gruff voice from the other side of him.

“Hearugh,” Fathom says. His voice is an indistinct rasp. He swallows against a parched throat and tries again. “Harry?”

A grunt of acknowledgement.

Fathom tries to roll back over, twisting his head to look for the sailor, but a crushing pain grips him like a giant fist. He gasps, seeing stars. Breathing shallowly, he waits for the agony to subside before trying again.

“Careful there,” says Harry. The rugged face he was expecting materializes above him. Calloused hands help Fathom turn onto his right side, facing away from the porthole.

Fathom lies there for a bit, awareness of his surroundings spreading slowly outward from him like widening ripples in still water. He is swaddled in rough gray blankets on a padded bench, in a cabin on the ship that he only recognizes from a few brief trips. An enormous chest bound with brass locks is shoved in the corner, dried bunches of herbs hang with twine from the rafters, and Harry is chewing on the end of a pipe as he squats on a nearby stool, staring back at Fathom with a contemplative expression.

“Lia,” Fathom whispers, squeezing his eyes shut as another bolt of pain lances through his head. He keeps his eyes closed, afraid of what he’ll see on Harry’s face.

Harry’s hand rests heavily on Fathom’s shoulder, rubbing small circles. Fathom can feel the edges of his wound pulling against each other, an agony sharper and brighter than his throbbing headache, but he doesn’t object. 

“She’s gone,” Harry says, voice rumbling low in his chest. He doesn’t say it tentatively, or softly, but there’s a blunt kindness to it. He doesn’t apologize, and Fathom doesn’t ask him to explain. They both already know the way these things go.

Fathom just lies there. He doesn’t say anything in return, but Harry doesn’t pressure him to. After a few minutes, Harry stands, clomping over to the chest. Fathom hears its lid creak open, and the clinking of glass bottles.

“If you can,” Harry says, returning to Fathom’s side, “drink this.” He nests the potion bottle in the crook of Fathom’s elbow, and returns to his stool.

There might be tears slipping sideways down Fathom’s face to dampen the pillow, but then again — it might just be his always-damp skin. Wherever the seawater comes from, it never stops flowing, no matter how thirsty or tired or cold he gets. Just another one of the questionable gifts from his birthright as a genasi. And what fucking good did that do him, if he couldn’t save her?

Fathom cries himself to sleep, and when he wakes up he does it all over again. He eats the food Harry brings him and pisses in the lidded bucket under the bed and shambles around the cabin like an undead creature. Days pass, and sometimes Fathom’s wound shimmers with teal light and knits itself together a little further, and Fathom doesn’t care in the slightest.

***

Eventually, Fathom leaves Harry’s cabin. He doesn’t return to the bunk he shared with his mother, preferring to sit at the prow of the ship for hours at a stretch. The wound at the base of his neck is healing much more quickly than should be possible, leaving behind only the faintest traces of irregular scar tissue.

On deck, he can hear the crew whisper to each other, some in tones of compassionate concern and others in superstitious fear. Fathom can’t explain it to himself, much less speak to any of them — he has no words inside him in those days. Just a quiet, boundless grief, as all-encompassing as the horizon he stares out towards in the same way his mother does — the same way she did.

At the prow, wedged in the narrow triangle of boards, Fathom can feel every rise and dip of the waves like he weighs nothing at all. Like a bird riding the long currents of wind, traveling between continents. He falls asleep there most nights, rocking up and down, hearing the familiar symphony of sails snapping and wood creaking. 

When his aimless thoughts do coalesce, he finds himself thinking of religion. Some sailors on board scorn clerics and organizations of that sort, while others use their precious time during shore leave to donate money and make offerings at even the shoddiest of local temples. When thunderclouds gather on the horizon, however, there is not a man among them who will not murmur at least a word or two to the goddess of wilderness and the sea.

Fathom himself believes as his mother believed — without question and without any particular reverence. It’s not a crisis of faith that fills him, as he watches the wake trailing endlessly outward and backward from the ship’s prow. It’s simple truth that Melora exists, that she lives inside him, that he was created a genasi by her strange providence. The only thing Fathom wonders is why. 

It doesn’t take long after that to recognize that the teal light which heals him at odd intervals is connected in some intimate way to the parts of him that thrum with the song of the sea. As a water genasi, Fathom has always been able to perform some simple magic, no more exceptional than the tiefling cook who can make his voice boom over the clatter of the galley or their elven captain who lights campfires on shore with an incantation and a gesture. Fathom might be young, but he can already tell: this is different.

Is it prayer that he offers to Melora over those long weeks sailing toward the old continent? Fathom has recovered a few words, mostly to refuse offers of comfort or company from his crewmates, but he does not use them for this. He holds the shell his mother kept inside her pillow — Harry retrieved it for him, since he has not entered their bunk since the storm — in his palms like he’s cradling a wounded animal, like he’s safeguarding pirate treasure, like it will whisper answers.

Fathom learns to concentrate when his shoulder throbs and aches, to call forth light from the depths inside him. He traces the spiral painted on the shell from scalloped edges to swirled center, over and over and over, until he is lost in a trance where thought escapes him entirely. By the time the crow’s nest spies land, Fathom can rotate his shoulder without any pain. He can also cause a coin to shine as brightly as a lantern for up to an hour, and stitch together tiny rips in his clothing simply by concentrating. Keeping the shell in his clammy hands at all times, even when he sleeps, he shares none of this with another soul onboard.

When the ship docks in Aranth, Fathom talks briefly to Harry, and then to the first mate. He slips down the gangway on the second night of their stay, carrying nothing but a heavy satchel in one hand and the shell in the other. He knows he won’t leave the sea for long. He also knows he can’t stay on board with a ship full of people that know him as Lia’s funny-colored son.

Fathom works for three weeks on the docks, hands as calloused and quick with sailing knots as those of creatures twice his size and age. The most exceptional event during that time is when he swears at another kid in fear and fury, after the kid’s stupid mistake almost capsizes a small rowboat holding a mother and her infant twins. As Fathom clenches his fist and grips the shell in his pocket for reassurance, ghostly flames lick across the other kid’s skin. At first, Fathom is just as confused as everyone else — the flames look like the strange luminescent glow that sometimes flickers upward from ships’ masts during a storm, but the night sky is clear and this kid is less than five feet tall. And then he recognizes the cold shock of power in his gut for what it is, and he runs.

When the fuss dies down, the cleric at the temple tells him to travel to Talok and swear himself to a life of service there. That actually sounds boring and terrible, but Fathom nods and packs his bags and boards the next ship that plans to make the crossing — well, the next ship that will sail there and will also accept a small teal-skinned boy with white curls who is clearly lying about his age. Fathom proves himself quickly, and none of his shipmates ask any questions, and when he stays on board after they reach Talok, nobody cares one way or the other.

It is the beginning of nearly a decade that Fathom spends on the water without his mother, but most of the time he doesn’t feel lonely in the slightest. Beneath his feet and all around him, there is always the sea.

[cowboyshit]

Frayed and Worn

Characters: Hangman Adam Page, Matt Jackson

Summary: Matt misses Nick, TK tells Matt he’s tagging with Adam against Jericho and Sammy, and Matt and Adam get into an argument

Rating: Teen I guess (nothing happens but some arguments and cussing?)

Length: 2,288 words

Available below the cut or on Ao3 HERE

Disoriented.

That’s how he felt without his brother. Like he was in a dream where everything seemed normal, but there was one tiny thing off that kept telling him this wasn’t reality. That was how Matt Jackson felt as he walked the long cement-brick lined walls of the back hallways of the building they’d rented for that evening’s Dynamite. Automatic, his hand reached for his phone – he’d kept grabbing it and clicking the screen to see if Nick messaged him – yet again, no message.

It wasn’t that Nick was ignoring him. He was home, side-lined with an injury he’d sustained at Revolution at the hands of Adam Page. A flicker of annoyance crossed Matt’s face, lips pulling in a line of dissatisfaction. He clenched and unclenched his hand. It was hard not to answer to the anger inside his gut the second anyone harmed his brother. It was even harder with the way Adam had been behaving lately.

 His own voice from after Revolution echoed briefly in his mind.

“What the hell is Adam’s problem?”

“Well,” it was Kenny, spoken quietly, and an uncomfortable look crossed over him when Matt’s dark, angry stare turned toward him. “I just think there’s a lot of… I don’t know, misunderstanding and tension, and what happened at that interview beforehand didn’t exactly help matters.”

“He’s the one who started it!” Matt’s incredulous shout had bounced off the small, confined space of the medical room he, Nick and Kenny were occupying after the match.

A look of argument crossed Kenny’s face before he seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it, looking away before he sighed and shook his head.

“What? You got something to say Kenny?”

“I’m too tired for this shit right now, Matt.” He’d slid off the medical bench, careful of his newly wrapped, broken finger, and glanced over his shoulder just briefly at the brothers. He lingered for a moment, like he wanted to say more, then shook his head and walked out of the room.

Matt frowned, shaking his head and turning down another long stretch of hallway. Around him the production crew were bustling around, preparing for the upcoming show and they seemed to know to give the solitary buck a wide berth. Murmurs of dissent in the Elite were growing in number, and Matt didn’t like the way that sat inside him. There was enough to worry about with the Inner Circle and Dark Order, he didn’t want to feed them anything that might clue them in to a potential thread they might tug to unravel it all.

“Hey, Matt!”

Glancing up, the sight of Tony Khan’s smiling face brought momentary relief. Tony talked about a thousand words per minute, and Matt sometimes had to work so hard to keep up with him he knew he wouldn’t have time to ruminate over the damaging thoughts circling relentlessly in his head. He offered a slightly more tired, but still honest smile. “Hey TK, what’s up?”

“Adam’s down a partner tonight, Kenny still isn’t medically cleared. It’s Jericho and Sammy, so I need it to be someone from the Elite. Can you tag with him tonight?”

“Are you… wait, are you serious right now?” An incredulous laugh left Matt in a huff, brows pulling inward as he studied TK’s face for any sign of a cruel joke.

He wasn’t joking.

“Yeah, Matt, I’m serious.” He said the word with weighted authority. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes TK found subtle ways to remind his EVP’s who owned the company at the end of the day. “Whatever beef you two have, learn to get over it for tonight. I’m down two of my top performers in the Elite and we’ve got to push this feud to the forefront before Blood and Guts. You don’t have a match tonight, so I need you to step up and tag with Adam.”

Another breathy, disbelieving breath pushed hard from his lungs and he shook his head before rolling his eyes. “Well, does Adam even know about this?” Surely Adam would have argued against it.

“Not yet.” Tony said, fishing his phone out of his pocket as it started to ring. He glanced at the caller on the screen and then back up at Matt. “I have to take this. I’ll get someone to find Adam and tell him. You just get to the ring when you’re needed, okay?”

He didn’t give Matt any time to argue, clicking to answer the call and shooting him a look as he brought it up to his ear that said: Figure out how to be okay with it. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.

With his hands pinching his narrow hips, Matt ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, shook his head and reached for his phone. Within mere seconds he had the text conversation with Nick shining brightly up at him and his fingers began to fly, ranting with rage at the incredulity of the situation. Two and a half sentences in, his fingers froze, and he glanced back at what he’d written, thought of Nick miles and miles away, stuck at home recuperating, and the tense set to his shoulders dropped. He clicked to highlight what he typed and deleted it, locking his phone and stuffing it back in his pocket.

Nick didn’t need to be bothered by it. He’d see when he watched Dynamite and Matt could take comfort in knowing all his frustrations would be validated afterwards. He’d probably have a ton of text messages ready for him as Nick watched from home. The ache of not having Nick by his side stung again and Matt set off in an aimless direction, wanting to get out of the line of sight and away from anyone who might come and talk to him. He went for the first door he saw that seemed to lead to an unoccupied, smaller room.

Only it wasn’t unoccupied.

“Great,” he said out loud, drawing the blue eyes of Adam Page up his front from where the cowboy sat lounging on a large black storage container. The curious light in them was immediately snuffed once they recognized Matt, and they burned almost immediately with irritation. The comfortable way he’d been sitting left too as he straightened his back and lifted his chin, glaring Matt’s way. One half of the tag team title belts sat beside him and Matt’s eyes inevitably fell to its luring shine.

Adam noticed. He pulled the strap, tucking it in a little closer toward his hip.

Their eyes drew back toward each other and Matt knew he needed to leave the room instead of continuing to test the taut pull of tension strung between them before it snapped. Already the energy was building and pushing at the walls, filling every empty crevice in the room and making him feel as though his heart was pounding a little harder.

“I’m tagging with you tonight. TK’s call.” 

He tested it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Adam immediately spat, and that pure, hot hatred in his tone churned something bitter in Matt’s stomach. When had this happened? When had they gone from friends, from brothers, to this? Had Adam always hated him? 

“Wish I was.” Matt said and pulled his eyes away. There was so much more he wanted to say, but it seemed like every time he tried to talk to Adam, things went sour and got worse and worse. Especially when it was just between themselves.

“Well,” Adam rolled his eyes and lifted a cup to his mouth to take a swallow. It wasn’t a clear, plastic cup that let him see what Adam was drinking, but Matt didn’t need three guesses to know what it probably was. Adam shoved himself hard off the storage container and gathered the belt, hoisting it with a comfortable ease on his shoulder. He’d grown accustomed to its weight. Matt tried to ignore the way his stomach turned, and his own shoulder ached, wanting to feel that familiar, comfortable weight on it again. To stop letting everyone down who’d looked to him and Nick to be among the first of the tag team to hold them. Adam took a step as if he meant to move past Matt, and Matt stepped toward the side to give him the space to do so.

But Adam paused in front of him.

“Get used to standing on the apron, because I sure as hell won’t be tagging you in.”

“Adam are you serious?” Matt scoffed, staring at his profile. “You’re so caught up in your bullshit that you want to try and take on Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara by yourself?”

“Yeah, Matt, I’m serious.” Adam said and turned so he and Matt could stand face to face. The overhead lights glittered playfully on the belt and tried to draw Matt’s attention, but he clenched his jaw and glared into Adam’s face instead.

“You can’t take them by yourself.” He heard the incredulity and doubt in his tone but did nothing to soften the blow. This close, he could see the way Adam’s eyes brightened with the challenge.

“Like you’d be any fucking help to me.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” They both knew he wasn’t, so Matt didn’t pause long enough to expect an answer. “Do you really think I’d just hang you out to dry with Jericho and Guevara?”

He had a brief flash back to Adam, pinned by his body weight against the ring canvas. His fingers clenched and unclenched, remembering the way it felt to have his fists come down again and again and again and again… How he’d been overcome by some senseless rage that he lost comprehensive thought until Nick physically pulled him away and threw him back against the ropes. Matt remembered the way Nick had looked at him. It was one of the things Nick did best, communicating without words strong enough to check his brother’s rage. Without Nick, Matt struggled to restrain himself.

His eyes refocused on the present. Hangman was watching him.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re capable of these days, Matt. But I sure as hell know I don’t need you, I don’t need your brother, I don’t need Cody - hell! I don’t even need Kenny! I got this. All on my own.”

“All on your own, huh?” Matt laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Yeah!” Adam’s voice was sharp, a sudden increase in volume that smacked the walls and reverberated around them. “On my own, Matt. Just like I pinned you at Revolution and just like I saved yours and Cody’s ass from the Inner Circle last week. On. My. Own.”

They were so close their bodies were almost touching. Mere inches, maybe even centimeters, lay between their heaving chests as they took deep breaths and glared into one another’s eyes. Matt could feel the heat rolling off Adam’s body. Out of the corner of his eye the shining, unfocused haze of the belt on Adam’s shoulder tried to lure him again. Matt refused to give in to the urge to look its way. He wouldn’t give Adam the satisfaction either, knowing he would pounce like a ravenous dog feasting on what he perceived to be true: all Matt cared about was taking the belt from him.

That wasn’t it. Not exactly.

“You’ve become a real dick lately, you know that Adam?”

Adam’s brows jumped upward and a smile smeared across his face. “Oh, I’ve become a real dick?” He pointed at his chest and raised his brows higher, creating wrinkles over his forehead. The smile pushed a little wider across his mouth. The humor Adam wore had a bite to it. “Well, I suppose you only have yourself to thank. I’ve learned from the biggest one of them all.”

Hurt and anger exploded inside Matt, and it took everything not to raise a fist and swing right then and there. It’d be satisfying to wipe that taunting expression off Adam’s face, and it’d be satisfying to get the energy built up inside him out by swinging wildly when Adam fought back. He didn’t care who was goading who, he just knew it’d feel damn good to stop thinking and holding himself back and just let Adam have it. There wouldn’t be Kenny or Nick come to break them up. Who knew how long it’d be before someone heard the commotion of them fighting and came into the room to break them up? How much more damage could they inflict on one another?

Another few, tense seconds crawled by before Adam lifted his paper cup and drained the rest of whatever he’d been drinking, eyes staying locked with Matt throughout. When he lowered it, crumpling it in his fist, Matt’s eyes went from Adam’s mouth then back to his eyes. The blue there was dark and troubled. He turned away without saying another word and reached for the door.

“It’s Inner Circle versus The Elite, Adam.” Matt said at his back as Adam turned the handle, hating the defeated, tired tone he could hear creeping into his voice. His back suddenly ached worse than it had all day. Or maybe it wasn’t just his back, but his entire body. His heart. Everything felt heavy. He didn’t bother turning to look at Adam’s back. “We have to do it.”

Adam laughed dryly and started to open the door. “When the fuck is it going to get through your heads I’m not apart of The Elite anymore?” Matt didn’t answer and Adam didn’t wait around for him to. He took off through the open door, leaving Matt alone to stomach the sour taste on his tongue.

[overcaffeinated-creative]

250 and/or 161 >:3c

Title: Divinity on High

Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Kanan Jarrus, Hera Syndulla, Alijah Kastor

Rating: E or possibly M. I’m going higher just to be safe

Prompt Fill: 161. Goddess

Warnings: Dissociation, Derealization, Possible Blasphemy 

Summary: One of the slow moments between Ahsoka, Kanan, Hera, and Alijah when their schedules align for everyone to be together. Hera has Alijah talk art to keep her in the moment.

The captain’s room of Ahsoka’s ship had been transformed into their own sanctuary. Ahsoka provided the bulk of the mismatched fabrics; Alderaanian silks, woven blankets from Shili, and furs she knew were cured in the Mandalorian way. Hera found Rylothian incenses at a spaceport three jumps back. Alijah thought she remembered them from a ceremony she attended many, many years ago. Kanan crafted another playlist for them. Something with instrumentals and soft chants, in anything but Basic, to help mask the sounds of the ship. She brought candles (the kind that would not set fabrics alight if upset) and ropes upon ropes of soft lights.

Emotions and pheromones mixed with the atmosphere to leave Alijah barely tethered to her body. Forbidden passions and warmth melted her scant few bones into wax puddles. The air and the Force itself hummed with the same bewitching tastes. What had been an ache deep within grew to something of a distant memory in seconds. It would take nothing to slip away in this moment to ride a high even the best Spice could not give her. Everything would disappear in favor of the safety of her lovers pleasures.

“You still doing okay, Love?” Hera checked in from somewhere above her. It took a second to remember her head rested on warm jade thighs.

“Drifting some.” The fingers combing through her short hair tried to send something down her spine. Everything muffled the feeling. “Everything feels so good.”

“We all want you with us.” Hera’s voice washed over her in a warm, commanding haze. “Stay focused, please.”

“Hard.” Pulling herself back into her body was difficult. “Everything Feels.”

The fingers slipped from her hair to cup her face then turn it toward her. “Would talking help?”

Ahsoka gasped from across the room then purred. Alijah’s sensitive hearing picked up Kanan’s pleased sigh.

A wordless nod was all Hera needed to help. Strong hands sat her up before pulling her to rest between her legs. Cool shoulders were pulled back to rest against a soft, warm chest. Powerful arms crossed over her own chest to keep her upright. Hera’s chin rested atop her shoulder to assist in keeping her up right. Wiggling lekky draped over both their chests.

“How would you draw this?” Her breath was burning up against a long, delicate ear. “Tell me every detail.”

Several moments went by while Alijah tried to pull her Being back into her body. Most of her felt as if it continued to float around the room with the same aimlessness of the smoke curls. Hera asked (commanded because Alijah follows those better) to stay so she would. Each beat of Hera’s heart would be an anchor. The rise of her chest would help draw her emotions back while the accompanying exhale pushed away the Haze. Together they would piece Alijah’s Self back together.

Alijah drank in the appearance of her subjects. Ahsoka was seated atop her desk as if it were a throne. Her montrals and lekku served as contrasting outline to her body. White and blue blushed nearly black lekku (oh so soft to touch and kiss and feel) outlined a red ocher and white marked body (built of gorgeous muscle). Cabaret red lips parted and twisted to show white fangs. Kana knelt between her parted thighs with his hair messy and body marked. His tanned skin was taut across a beautiful flexed back. Purpled love bites intermixed with the red trails of scratching nails and the true bites marks across his shoulders and back. She knew his chest, hips, and thighs bore the same signs. Rich, brown hair tumbled twisted his Ahsoka’s hands so she could easily direct his sinfully clever mouth. 

“Detailed sections.” It took some time to trust herself to form coherent sentences again. “Four parts or maybe five. Soka from her eyes up. Kay’s face from his nose up; attention on his eyes. Her hands fisted in his hair. The flex of his thighs from profile. Maybe her calves around his shoulders. Or, his hand holding up her thigh.”

Hera’s low laugh was heard and felt throughout Alijah’s whole body. “No lips?”

“Lips aren’t unique from looks.” It had become a game for them. Hera made the statement prompting Alijah to kiss her senseless. “Lips feel and taste unique only. But, you can see what makes eyes special.”

Kanan gives a low groan muffled against Ahsoka’s thigh when she pulls his hair just right.

“How would you display those pieces?”

There are so many options to consider for a display like that. How big would her canvases be? Where would she even have to display them? For how long? Before she lost the mood entirely Kanan and Ahsoka lit up in the Force.

“Staggered. Parts aligned but not entirely.” Pale pink cheeks flushed red with excitement. “So it would need five. Soka’s Eyes, then Kay’s, Hands, Thighs, and Kneeling at the very bottom.”

“Why?” 

Alijah twisted in Hera’s arms to look up at her face. Her lips were still kiss swollen and a much riper pink than normal. They were also twisted into a smirk only highlighted teasing green eyes and lowered black brows. She knew how loaded of a question it was to ask an artist to explain their work.

“The Goddess sits above all.” Alijah’s started her with her hands resting on Hera’s upper arms before slowly moving higher. Cupping her cheeks she stole a chaste kiss before moving on to cradle the back of her head.

“The Worshiper shows Devotion.” One hand ghosted from the base of a lek to the very tip. Raising it to her lips she peppered her skin with kisses but stopped to trace the white patterns with her tongue.

“Divinity guides the Mortal.” Hera moved hugging her close to almost digging her fingers into the freckles across her hips.

“Mortal holds up the Divine.” Alijah fell backward to rest on the soft blankets. The hand still cradling Hera’s head ensured she followed suit.

“Strength willing Kneels to the Divine.” Thighs move to straddle her hips with Alijah’s hands resting on her hips. One thumbs absentmindedly strokes up toward the white patterns on her sides.

Hera went to asked another question but Alijah leaned up to kiss it from her lips. She was back into the Moment and would enjoy every second of it.

[sasorikigai]

If our muses got in a fight, who do you think would win? || @desxderium​ || accepting 

Send me a ♦ if you think yours would win

💥|| Being unapologetically himself is a virtue in itself; no doubt, which is a measure of acceptance of all the finite characteristics that makes him, him. The catch perhaps, is that he may adjust the intensity of each attribute he has in accordance to each relationship. With his rank embroidered on both of his shoulders with the sigil that feels more like a full regalia, the crowning accomplishment he had garnered, still young amidst the numerous lower ranked officers senior his age. Commander Hanzo Hasashi does not like to let go of all that makes him; nor cares if the fine, precarious balance that makes him amidable, yet rather demanding and obstinate. 

He refuses to show any signs of weaknesses, for the magnified despair and suffering of the past had shown enough of his vulnerabilities and powerlessness that the solemn, rather morose and gloomy enforcer of the law to show misery to be larger than life. Perhaps he understood all too well of the ‘grandeur of dooms’ as suffering became inevitable and constant. To protect the public at all cost, he must utilize his body, mind and soul to solder and become adamantine, to make a mighty spectacle of it and still rise from the hellish, war-ravaged rubble. 

A loud, albeit meaningless scream of his veins swell in the unending silent void beneath his gritted teeth, as the world renders into a shimmering, starkly noticeable disarray in the face of the endless dark abyss of the night. The celerity of punches barely graze by, and even if his own jabs and haymakers are thrown with aimless, purposeless might and way too slow to inflict any real damage upon her flesh, her overly reciprocated counters are devastating enough to render him senseless. He’s a fortified bulwark; he’s got the verticality of his height and resistance from the hard, smooth musculature, for he looks more like a linebacker than a quarterback. He can very well take barraging assaults and get away with barest bruises, the smoldering fever saturating him in magmatic flames and slick perspiration. 

If he wholly committed himself in this physical undertaking, the full testament and scope of his training, he would make it out from the close combat relatively unscathed, in order to cause roaring spectacle of firing at least three near-fatal shots in one’s throat and upper spine, completely paralyzing the opponent in two seconds flat. In other words, with the combined street-smart of being the greatest hitman the Syndicate has ever seen plus the accumulated amalgam of knowledge he had taken advantage along with his position, there was practically almost no one who could ever come close to let him taste an ephemeral hint of decay and death. 

Yet, how he stumbles with arms out, desperate for a feel of something solid - boxing ring rope, even the ground as it begins to slicken with their sweat - as the underside of his ribs ache. He needs to keep his guard up, even as his heart hit against Becky’s extending cross, hitting hard against his ribcage. How his blood beats like surging magma in his veins, swallowing emanating smoke from the fuming volcano with every strained breath. Hanzo whips around, as his biceps tighten, curling fingers ascending with such force that would knock her out if it fully connected, then he’d extend a devastating cross soon thereafter as he flits around a sharp ninety-degree angle. But it would be him that would end up knocked over on his hips, then all appendages sprawled like a starfish, as only a frustrated grunt would eject as the extended viper’s hook that would easily read his move would send him below. The entire time, he had held back, both with speed and power, for it would defeat the purpose of their sparring if he would break a bone or even worse, crack a skull. Despite it all, it’s him that is in a delectable haze, as sharp adrenaline further accelerates the foggy sensation as if senses were gouged out and clouds were filling his head instead. 

There was a long silence, before the expanse of his broad torso settled comfortably, maintaining the slowed rhythm as the deepened valley of his pectorals narrowed. A glint of light winked, a glow growing to blaze as Hanzo feels her ungloved hands caressing his chest. Four eyes bright, fearful and fearsome clash, before mellowing down and becoming sheeny. How his beautiful, sun-drenched olive skin spots with stars, glistening like the earthly night sky. “You fucking beat me fair and square.” There would be time the truth will eventually spill, but not tonight. 💥|| 

[womenintranslation]

From WWB:

Editor’s Note:

We're celebrating the Nobel Prize in Literature of longtime WWB contributor Olga Tokarczuk, who first appeared in our pages in 2005 with an excerpt from her wrenching tale of wartime survival, Final Stories, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. She then returned in 2008 with this short story, "The Knight," translated by Jennifer Croft. Tokarczuk's explorations of relationships under pressure, whether political or internal, combine a keen sense of character with a sure hand at narrative to capture the essence of humanity. As a couple's alienation plays out over a chessboard, Tokarczuk's deft portrayal of feints and attacks maps a marriage at stalemate. We hope you enjoy "The Knight," available only on WWB.

—Susan Harris, Editorial Director

A WWB Exclusive:

The Knight

Fiction by Olga Tokarczuk

Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft

At first she tried struggling with the locks, but they were obviously not in sync, because when she managed to turn the key in one of them, the other stayed locked—and vice versa. The wind came in gusts off the sea, winding her wool scarf around her face. Finally he set down both bags in the driveway and snatched the keys out of her hand. He managed to get the door open immediately.

The cottage they had always rented was right on the sea, among holiday cabins that all looked alike, that were bustling and noisy in the summers, open to let the air through, surrounded by parasols and plastic chairs, and little tables with radios and newspapers—now they were all boarded up, tight as a drum, sunk deep into a winter coma. This one was a little more opulent, though—it had a fireplace and a large deck that looked out over the beach. The deck was covered with sand, so as soon as they got inside she took up a broom and began to sweep it away.

"Why are you doing that?" he said. "It's not like we're going to be sitting out on the deck at this time of year."

He unloaded the food from one of the bags and put it in the refrigerator. Then he turned on the TV. She protested.

"No, please, no television."

She wanted to say something else, too, but she restrained herself.

There was a dog with them, a fox terrier—lively, restless, and unruly. As he was making a fire in the hearth, the dog dragged several pieces of wood out of the basket, tossed them into the air and caught them as they fell.

He yelled at her.

"She's cold. She's just doing it to warm up," she said.

"Yeah, sure, and I get to clean it up."

"She's just a dog."

"She gets on my nerves, 'just a dog' or not, I mean she never quits. She's hyperactive. Maybe we ought to slip a little something into her food. Bromine, Luminal, something along those lines?"

"She didn't used to get on your nerves."

"Well, she does now."

She carried her bag upstairs, to the small, icy bedroom. She sat down on the bed, which was covered with a blanket. Renata, "that dog," bounded after her and leaped up on to the blanket. She looked into the dog's gleaming brown eyes. She felt a lump come to her throat, and a sudden pain, all over her body—a momentary, piercing pain.

Something was happening with time, she thought, something not good. It was coming unglued, peeling apart. Two great tectonic plates of time were falling away from each other with a bleak rumble, casting a chasm between "then" and "now" for the next several million years. "Now" was silent, with jagged edges—deep sleep at night, and remnants of anger on waking, as if a war were being waged in that sleep. "Then" seemed constant and rhythmic from this vantage point, the light sound of a ping-pong ball striking a smooth table, a cloth of moments in which each thread was part of a larger pattern.

She realized that the easiest way to begin a conversation was with "Remember when . . . " because there was something mechanical in this, like the movement of a hand soothing a baby, like turning on a radio station that plays only soothing music—all those sounds of songbirds, waterfalls, whales. "Remember when" took them back to one place, together. It was always an emotional moment, like when you ask someone to dance, and they answer with a gleam in their eye. Yes, let's dance. It was clear they were telling each other long-established versions of the past, a very familiar narrative, already recalled many times before, absolutely safe. The past is established. It can't be changed. The past is a mantra learned by heart, the foundations of memory that are tiled over with funny little stories of recollection. Like the one about how he used to shell nuts for her and set them out on leaves in the garden. Or when they both bought the same pair of white jeans—that was a long time ago, now they would be two or three sizes too small. Or her red hair, that layered cut that was fashionable then. Or when he used to have to run after his train when he was parting from her. The farther back you went the more stories there were—evidently with time they'd lost the ability to mythologize the little things in life, sentencing reality to the commonplace and the trivial.

Once the fire was burning, they started making dinner, like a well-synchronized duet, she dicing the garlic, he washing lettuce and making dressing. She set the table, he opened a bottle of wine—it was like a dance, a perfect dance in which your partner's movements are so familiar that you cease to notice them, and then your partner disappears, and you're left to dance with yourself.

Then Renata slept by the hearth, the orange glow of the fire drifting over her frizzy coat. The expanse of the evening ahead suddenly seemed unbearable, heavy as a filling meal just before bed. His gaze wandered involuntarily to the TV, and she had a sudden urge to take a long bath, but since this was a special night, their first, they still had untapped reserves of good well. But he was careless.

"Shall I open another bottle?" he asked, but he realized immediately that more wine could ruin the order of things that had gradually been falling into place, that after drinking more wine there would be the familiar sense of discouragement, the feeling of being weighed down, the oppressive atmosphere, the senselessness of human speech, the desire to escape. The need for a conversation that would stop making sense after a few sentences, since they would have to then define all the words they had used over again. As if even their languages diverged.

"I think I'm OK for now," she answered in an artificially cheery tone.

So he took out the chessboard. He felt relieved to find it, among some old books standing on a shelf by the TV. Chess, too, belonged to their collection of "Remember when"s.

They always played in silence, in cold blood, unhurriedly, making the games last several days. He took black—he always took black—and she lit a cigarette. He felt a needle-sharp pang of anger: he hated it when she smoked indoors. He said nothing. There was nothing wrong.

Opening; the first game out of habit, automatic, both of them knowing what every next move would be. It occurred to her that she knew how he thought, and this shocked her. She felt faintly nauseous—the wine had been very dry, bitter. She let him win, and he knew she had let him win. He yawned.

"Let's play again," she said, arranging the pawns. "But this time we have to really try, really focus. Remember the time we played for a week?"

"That first Christmas, at your parents'. We couldn't leave because of all that snow that'd fallen, everything was just covered in it."

She remembered the smell of the cold room where her mother kept all the things she baked every holiday, covered in dishtowels.

They made two moves, and the game stopped. It was his move, so she went out onto the deck to smoke. Through the glass he could see her petite shoulders, draped in a wool scarf. He hadn't made his move by the time she came back.

"Shall we give it a rest for today?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Are you ready for bed?"

He felt again all the artificiality of this question, as if it really mattered to her that she didn't sound indifferent.

"I'm just going to check the forecast, and then I'll make the bed."

He turned on the TV, and things became more ordinary, somehow. The tension between them diminished when each of them went about their own lives. He opened another can of beer. He flipped through the channels, and he was gone.

She went to wash up.

The electric heater warmed up the little bathroom quickly. She set a few toiletries on the shelf below the mirror. She leaned toward the shaving mirror and examined the faint red veins on her cheeks. Then she made a thorough inspection of the skin on her neck and chest. Looking herself in the eye, she removed her makeup with a cotton pad. Only once she had undressed did she remember that there was no bathtub here, the bathtub was back in town, here there was just that unpleasant shower separated from the rest of the bathroom by a plastic shell-print curtain. She felt like crying, and she was furious with herself when she realized she was clearly overreacting, that you simply do not cry for lack of a bathtub.

When she crept into the bedroom, she saw that the bed had not been made, and that the linens were lying on the chair, neatly folded, cold and slick. There was a hum from the TV downstairs. Her rage gathering strength like an avalanche, she began to make the bed, struggling with the corners of the sheets, her physical exertion matching her anger—it was like they were singing a round. It seemed to her that this anger was a general one, an aimless fury, but then, out of the blue and to her great surprise, all at once it became a blade—like in a cartoon—pointed downstairs toward the sofa where there was a man sitting with a can of beer, and like a swarm of enraged bees it plummeted down the wooden steps and into the living room. She stood at the doorway and saw the man's head—he was sitting in profile—and for a moment she thought that materialized malice would pierce him through at the temple, at full speed, and the man would just stop moving and then slump slackly against the back of his chair. Dead.

"Hey, could you give me a hand?" she shouted from upstairs.

"Coming," he said and stood reluctantly, still gazing at the TV screen.

By the time he made it upstairs, she'd already calmed down. She took a deep breath.

"Aren't you going to wash up?" she asked calmly.

"I took a bath before we left," he said.

She lay on her back between the unpleasant, cold sheets, which felt damp. He went to turn out the lights. She heard him shut the door to the deck and put a trash bag in the bin. Then he got undressed and lay down on his side of the bed. They stayed like that for a while, next to each other, but then she drew closer to him and laid her head on his chest. He ran his hand along her bare arm with paternal tenderness, but by the next time he touched her, that tenderness had completely vanished—it was just touching, nothing more. He rolled over onto his stomach, and she put her hand on his back as if to restrain him. They'd been falling asleep that way for years. Whimpering, Renata settled at their feet.

He got up first, to let the dog out. A gust of icy wind tore into the small living room. He watched the dog run off toward the sea, chase away two seagulls, relieve herself, and return. Gusts of wind were surging in from the sea. He put the water on for coffee and waited for it to boil. He cast a glance at the open chessboard and checked to see if there were still any live embers in the hearth, but the fire had gone out completely. He poured the coffee, added milk and sugar—for her. He went back upstairs with the mugs and slipped back in between the warm sheets. He sat up as he drank, leaning against the headboard.

"I had a dream about a plane full of napoleon cakes," she said, her voice hoarse from sleep. "There was already snow on the ground, but it was sort of pink."

He didn't know how to respond. He rarely had dreams, and when he did, it was never anything he could describe. He could never find the right words.

After breakfast he took out his camera and wiped off both lenses—they were supposed to be going for a walk.

They put on all the warm things they had with them—fleeces, boots, scarves, and gloves. They headed down along the beach, toward the dunes, to the point where the wooden cottages disappeared, and there began the kingdom of grasses quivering in the wind. He crouched down and took a picture of a heap of driftwood tossed up by the sea—it looked like the bones of an animal. Then he looked through the lens, turning around and around. She left him behind and walked right along the edge of the sea, her footprints leaving slight indentations in the sand that were instantly destroyed by the water. Renata kept bringing her sticks and nudging her legs with them, but whenever she reached for one, Renata would growl and refuse to give it up.

"How am I supposed to throw it for you if you won't let go, you stupid dog?" she said.

Renata gave up the stick she'd plundered—it soared high and came right back to its spot between her teeth.

The woman realized she was under observation, that the round eye of the lens was trained on her. Briefly she saw herself as the man saw her—a small, dark figure against a background of shades of white and gray, an angular shape with clear contours. He'd caught her red-handed. Had she done something wrong? He was hiding his face behind the camera and aiming at her—like he was holding a gun. She should have been used to it by now—he had always taken pictures of her, but again she felt that same infuriation that had taken hold of her the day before, over the bed. She turned away. He caught up with her, and they walked on in silence. The wind absolved them of this silence, breached their lips and forced them to squint. The longer they were silent the less there was to say, and the more relief there was in that silence. His thoughts wandered off to the left somewhere, toward the sea, flew above the hulls of the fishing boats, and alighted on islands, in foreign countries, wherever. Hers went home again, into drawers and inside handbags, cast a glance at the calendar, and figured up bills. It wasn't a painful silence. It was nice to have someone to be silent with. With a kind of elation she thought, "This sort of silence is an art," and she repeated this sentence to herself several times. She liked it.

"Look," he said to her, pointing out a dark cloud that was racing along the land so low that the tips of the pine trees nearly snared it. He suddenly felt the urge to take this picture, this cloud and woman, both sullen, both swollen with a thunder that would never sound, lightning bolts that would never strike.

"Stay there," he shouted, stepping back to the waterline and looking through the lens from too close.

All he could see was the woman's face, distorted by the wind, a wrinkle down her forehead, lips livid from the cold. The wind fixed her hair to her face; she made maladroit stabs at brushing it aside, at doing something with her face, but it was all in vain. The shutter clicked. She turned away displeased.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Everything looks great now." He stepped a little farther back, until the water was squishing in his boots.

She was infuriated with herself for trying to pose, for caring whether or not it turned out well. With a camera held to his face he gained a kind of unjust advantage over her, and it seemed to her that he was sizing her up, evaluating her, reducing and objectifying. She'd never really liked him taking pictures of her—she was defenseless against that glass eye he donned like a mask; she sometimes got the impression he could see right through her, that he was promising her something along the lines of eternity, that he was immortalizing her, but that for all that he was sapping her strength. She surrendered more and more to him. She was always astonished by those women who worked as models, by all those young girls who would pout as he photographed them, throw back their heads, fully aware that they were putting something up for sale, not that they were someone, but that they had something to sell, like eager little saleswomen. Just merchandise. No wonder he slept with them. Did he know how much power he had thanks to that camera? His face was full of life then, but only then. She saw him again in her mind's eye, with a beer, in front of the TV—and then his face was a blank, as if there were simply nothing there.

"Don't take pictures of me," she said, dourly. Without a word he redirected the camera at Renata and ran after her for a while; the dog kept slipping out of the frame, zigzagging, trying to throw him off the scent.

He felt wounded. Sometimes she could utter the most neutral words, and it would feel like she had just punched him in the face. How did she do it? He felt like a little boy around her, like a child. He never knew when she was going to hurt him. He has mastered only one effective counterattack: hiding his king behind the other pawns, and when it came to her, that incalculable woman, he would simply ignore her, sidestep her, actively not notice her, not respond, not look, disregard, evade, keep her at a distance like in a photograph, and in so doing keep her in check—an angular figure against a background of shades of gray. There would follow, then, an incomprehensible turnaround on her side—she would fall into his arms, shrink and become a lonely, helpless little girl with graying hair, she would weaken, subside, surrender. She would grovel, just like Renata.

He ran after the dog. Renata had found a good-sized stick, clenched it in her teeth, and was now begging. He seized one end of the stick and lifted up the dog, who was hanging onto it. Renata knew this game. This was the lockjaw game. The resistance game. He began to spin around and around with the dog hanging from the stick, flying at waist-level. Then he heard a shout and saw her running toward him. He slowed down, and Renata landed safely in the sand. The woman ran up to him, her face distorted by rage.

"What do you think you're doing? Are you insane? You're going to hurt her! Do you just have no idea? Why are you so stupid, stupid?" she shouted. "Have you just completely lost it, you fucking asshole?"

He was thunderstruck. He thought she was going to hit him. Renata—stick still in her mouth—was swaying slightly.

"Fuck off, you crazy bitch," he said quietly and started walking home.

He felt like crying. A sort of outraged sob was welling up in his insides like something you had to cough up. He'd go home, he thought, pack up and take off. Or not pack up, just leave everything there. He'd take the car and take off. Go back to town. That was it, it was over. She could manage just find without him. She was still young, let her find somebody else, let her do whatever she wanted. He thought how he had tried his best, and this he found moving. He had tried his best.

When she got home, he was sitting in front of the TV drinking beer. She took off her coat and put the water on.

"Tea?" she asked.

"No," he muttered.

"I'm sorry," she said and suddenly felt very weak as if she were walking in the sand, as if she were getting bogged down, feet sinking. Never, never did he apologize to her first. She lit a cigarette.

"Could you not smoke in here?" he said.

She went out onto the deck. The kettle whistled; she didn't hear it. He got up and turned off the stove. There was a program on TV about farming. Renata kept dragging the tinder out of the basket, tossing it up and catching it in the air.

"What do you think, how's it going to end?" she asked and sat down in the armchair next to his.

"What's going to end?"

"All this, us."

He shrugged. He looked up at her, but he couldn't bear the sight of her insistent, searching eyes.

"I'll get a fire started," he said.

He crumpled some newspaper and set it in a pile, and then he laid down some twigs. She handed him the matches. He could sense that she wanted to tell him something, but he didn't make a sound. He wanted her to say something, but at the same time he was afraid that her words would slip out of control again. He knew how to penalize her, and he did—he went upstairs and lay down on the unmade bed, trying to read some old magazine. He was relieved to find an article on computers, but he didn't understand very much of it. Then he noticed an ad for a vacation in Turkey, which reminded him of their last trip together, to Greece—everything blurred, overexposed, like pictures that hadn't turned out. Her tanned, almost naked body. Making love in the hotel room—their last time. The shock of his own embarrassment. He realized he couldn't remember her any other way, and that this vacation several months ago was his earliest memory of her. That in the repeated "Remember when"s the people he saw were complete strangers. He fell asleep in astonishment.

When he woke up, she was gone. The dog was gone, too, so he thought she must have taken her to the dunes. Still, he checked to see if the car was still there. It was. He turned on the TV and half listened to the news. It was getting dark out. He made himself some scrambled eggs and ate them straight from the pan in front of the TV. Then he opened a beer and listened to the messages on his cell phone. Nothing interesting. He saw her come in, face flushed from the wind. Renata rushed at him in greeting, as if it had been years since they'd seen each other. The woman looked at the empty pan.

"You've already eaten?" she asked with some dismay. "You ate?"

He realized he ought to have waited for her.

"Just a snack," he said. "We could go to the Chinese place in town."

"I'm not hungry," she said and hung up her jacket.

Then why are you asking, he thought furiously. He knew why. So that she would have a reason to get upset. "Temper tantrum next. Don't eat anything if you don't want to. I don't give a shit," he told her in his head. He took pleasure in this kind of imagined conversation. He changed the channel, but the next one was fuzzy, so he tried to find something else, but there were only two. There was no escape.

She came back from the bathroom after a little while, hair combed, makeup probably retouched. He could smell fresh cigarette smoke on her—she had obviously been smoking in the bathroom like a schoolgirl.

"Shall we finish the game?" she asked.

He agreed. Seeing the perfect symmetry of the chessboard was soothing. The joy of the existence of rules. The sweet possibility of thinking over every move. The predictability of surprises. The feeling of control like a gentle, cerebral caress. He was adding wood to the fire when she said, "Hey, the white knight's gone."

They leaned under the table, pushed back the chairs, and searched the cracks between the cushions. He peered into the basket of wood.

"Renata. She must have run off with it," she said. "Look in her bed."

She shook out the dog's blanket—several pieces of kindling and the plastic stopper from the sink fell out, but there was no chess piece.

"Maybe she took it out into the hall?" he asked hopefully.

They started a systematic search. He went through the trash; she went out onto the deck. They pushed back the table.

"Was it still there when you went out?"

She couldn't remember.

"What did you do with the knight, you stupid dog?" she said, leaning over her.

"She probably chewed it up," he said.

He poured two glasses of beer. They sat down at the useless chessboard. Then he came up with the idea of using a small piece of wood as a playing piece—he broke off a piece and laid it on the vacant black square. She hesitated.

"I'm not playing with kindling," she said.

"Then I'll take white."

"But we'll have to start all over gain. Won't we?"

"No," he said. "I don't want to play anymore."

She thought it would be best if they got up right now, got their things together, and went home, but she didn't have the courage to say so. It also occurred to her that he was the one who had taken the chesspiece. Or that he had somehow knocked it off. She didn't say anything—she just slumped back into the couch cushions.

She knew he would go away now, abandon her—be absorbed by the TV or go upstairs and sleep again, or start to fiddle with his camera (thank God it was too dark now to take pictures) or start to read, or call people, or send them all text messages—and she knew that this was inevitable. She wanted to cuddle up to his blue-checked shirt, but she didn't have the strength to get off the couch. His hands were busy putting the chesspieces back into the box. Fine dark hairs.

He glanced at her.

"Why are you crying?" he said. "Over chess, over that knight?"

He sat down next to her and put one arm around her. The other arm hesitated for a moment, staying in the end where it was, on the armrest of the sofa.

"It's better to be left than to leave someone," she said suddenly. "Being left gives you strength."

"I'd say the opposite," he said.

"You don't understand."

"I never understand anything."

He got up and went into the kitchen. He asked about wine—shouldn't they have a little drop? She said yes.

She had everything she'd say now already in her head. Sentence by sentence, and the justification for every sentence. And notes on every sentence. He would have to respond somehow. It would be impossible to sink back into silence. When he came back he handed her a glass and sat down on the sofa. He must have known what she was thinking. That they would talk, and it would end, as usual, in a fight. Then Renata, that providential dog, began to whine at the door. He got up to let her out.

"Go on, you stupid dog," he said. "What did you do with the knight?"

Renata leaped out into the darkness with a yelp. A sharp gust of wind blew a thin trail of sand through the open door. He heard the voice of the television behind his back and felt relieved. So she'd turned on the TV.

"It's too bad we don't have the guide. There might be a movie," he said.

She refilled their glasses, although they weren't empty yet. She was suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion.

She stretched her legs out just like him and propped her feet on the low coffee table. There they sat, side by side, sipping wine until the movie ended, an amusing old mystery about an older lady who killed off her enemies with arsenic. She was reeling a little as she went up the stairs.

"I'll be there in a second," he said, but she knew he wouldn't be. He would sit there, as he often did, until morning. Plunged into the ghostly light of the screen, absent, glued to those flashing pictures like a cat—he always turned off the sound. She knew what would happen, and it was good to know. Soothing. Perfect, fully rounded certainty. A smooth glass ball in her palm. She sank heavily into sleep.

He lay down on top of her as if on grass, with his whole body, his whole weight. There was her familiar smell, her special softness. She sighed. His body responded by habit, with desire. She embraced him, as if she were holding on to him. She said something, but he couldn't understand her. He slid a hand across her hips.

"I can't breathe," she whispered.

He hesitated. He stopped. He realized that underneath him was not a woman, not a wife, not a woman's body, but a person, that he wasn't lying on top of a woman, but on top of another human being, another someone, specific, individual, inviolable. Someone with clearly defined boundaries but who beyond these was fragile and prone to ruin, delicate as watercress, like the thinnest wafer. Her sex had vanished—it had ceased to be important to him that she was a woman and his wife—she was like a brother, a comrade in suffering, a companion in pain, a neighbor facing the same looming, unidentified threat. A stranger who was at the same time extremely close to him. Someone who is nearby, who stands there and looks across the fence, someone you wave to on your way home.

This discovery was so unexpected that he felt ashamed. The sense of desire that had welled up within him now ebbed away. He rolled off her and lay down beside her. He drew her towards him, by the arm, and pulled the blanket over her. She was crying. She said something about the knight, about the knight having been lost. It occurred to him that she'd had too much to drink.

Her head was hurting. She got up quietly and went downstairs to let Renata out. He was curled up asleep, cocooned in the blanket, far from her, at the very edge of the bed. She took a handful of vitamins and aspirin. She felt worn out, wrung out. First she spent a long time brushing her teeth; her hair was mussed up from the night before and sticking out all over the place. Eyes swollen. Had she been crying? Yes. Overreacting. She gave the skin on her stomach a hard pinch. This pain was a relief, it opened the floodgates of a mollifying self-hatred. As a child she'd heard that you could catch cancer from pinching. Some adult had told her that, she didn't remember who, when boys were pinching girls' breasts.

When she came down, he was sitting on the sofa, in just a shirt and no pants, reading the paper. He'd made her coffee.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said back.

"What are we going to do today?"

"Is there anything we have to do?"

"We'll have to get our stuff together this afternoon."

He turned the page.

"How do you feel?"

"Fine," he said.

After a pause he added, "You?"

She didn't feel like talking anymore. She started to leaf through a magazine. Suddenly the clouds parted, and a whole sea of blinding light flooded the room. She took a cigarette and went out onto the deck, although the very idea of smoking made her feel sick. She forced herself. She saw Renata at a distance. The crazy dog was throwing herself into the water, trying to bite the waves. Stupid animal, she thought. She was shivering with cold.

He went upstairs to put on his pants. He would have been very happy to start packing now. He had so many urgent things to do. He felt reinvigorated. As he passed the bed he saw her pajamas with the teddy bear on the front and for an instant, an instant finer than the layer of November ice on a puddle, he found the same tenderness in himself that he had felt sleeping with her nightshirt while she'd been away. This tenderness, like the desire he'd felt that night, was a habit. He shook his head. After all, she had cheated on him. Anger, a wave of anger he knew well by now, arrested his movements. He became an animal ready for battle, tense, attentive. He put on his pants and tightened his belt. It wasn't even about her anymore—let her do whatever she wants—it was about him: never, ever again would he let himself get hurt like that. He remembered that agony, but thanks to it he felt stronger now somehow, as if he had gone to war and come home safely. On his way down he saw her from the stairs huddled on the sofa, no makeup, eyes swollen. A strange thought occurred to him. I wanted her to die, he thought, and that's why she's gotten so ugly.

"I'm going to go take a couple of pictures," he said.

She said she'd go with him. He waited on the deck for her to get dressed. They went in the direction opposite that they'd gone the day before.

"Look," she shouted to him over the wind and pointed to something he'd already seen: a white band of sky over a navy-blue sea and whitecaps that looked like they'd been painted there by a Chinese artist. Then a flash of sunshine like lightning.

"There must have been a storm last night," she said.

There was a lot of trash on the beach: strips of algae, tree branches, sticks, interspersed now and then with unexpectedly colorful plastic things. She walked behind him and thought that from behind he looked the same as he had looked back then, but she knew it was just an illusion. Nothing could be restored. What's happened once can never happen again. Never. Lightning never strikes twice. She was suddenly struck by the significance of that cliché. There was nothing to be done about it. For a moment she wanted to bound after him and tug on his jacket, turn him around to face her, and then it would turn out that—what? What would it turn out? She slowed down, while he walked quickly up ahead, he and the dog and the camera getting farther and farther away, so she didn't try to catch up with him now, she just sat down on the sand. With some effort, turning her back to the wind, she managed to light a cigarette, and then she sat there in despair, thinking systematically of everything that would never happen again: their hands touching, that spark, sometimes accidental and sometimes greedy, eagerly awaited; the excitement of his scent, and of nestling into that scent; the knowing glances, each reading the other's mind; the same thoughts at the same moment; the calm, confident closeness; hand in hand, as if this were their natural and only position; delight in the shape of an ear; the nightly vine-like clinging to each other's body, treating it as a kind of case for one's own. A long morning. Drinking beetroot soup from the same bowl. The surge of desire on a walk in the park… The suitcase you take into the world with you contains things you can only use once, like those magic charms in fairy tales, like fireworks. Once they go off, once they go out, there's nothing you can scrape back up out of the ashes. That's it.

She thought she would tell him all this when he got back, but as they were walking home she realized that it was banal, that she would be ashamed to share something like this. He would just smile, because it would be as if she had sung him the words of some popular song. Nothing more. Yes, all her despair was simply banal—evidently despair was another thing you could only experience once. All subsequent despair would just be a Xerox copy. And maybe there is some mysterious line in life that you cross unknowingly, unintentionally, and from then on everything is just a lousy replay of what's come before it, which once had come into being fresh and new, but which can now only occur as pastiche, a second-rate paraphrase. Maybe that dividing line from which life only flows downhill was actually right here, today, on this beach, and from here on out, from this day forward, there would be blurred copies of them taking part in their lives, fuzzy reproductions, ordinary forgeries, poor-quality fakes.

They went home in silence, and the wind absolved them of it just as it had done the day before. He walked ahead with Renata and she behind, her face flushed from the wind.

Renata tried to go inside with something in her mouth. He blocked her path with his foot.

"What do you have, you rotten dog? What'd you find? A smelly old bone? A dead fish?"

He forced her mouth open and took out a piece of pale, polished wood. It took him a minute to realize what it was.

"Look what she's found!" he cried out in surprise.

She walked up, took the saliva-wet figurine from his hand and wiped it off on the mat. It was a chess horse, a white knight, but not the one from their set. This one was smaller, nobler, stouter, probably hand-carved. Its little open mouth was turned up, and a crack ran along the whole length of it.

"I don't believe it!" he said. "Renata, where did you get this?"

"It's from the sea," she said. "That washed up from the sea."

"I can't believe it," he repeated and glanced at her quickly, timidly, to avoid keeping his eyes on her. "How could a little horse like that have ended up in the water? And white, just like the one we lost? What are the odds?"

They both went up to the kitchen sink. She washed it off carefully and then dried it was a tea towel.

They set it on the table and examined it as if it were a rare insect. Renata too—she seemed pleased with herself. Then he put it on the empty square where the little unwanted piece of wood was still lying. The knight looked out of place amongst the other pieces, like a mutant.

"Shall we play?" he asked.

"Now? We have to go now," she replied, but she took off her jacket and sat down uncertainly.

"Whose move was it?"

She didn't know. They sat for a moment longer over the open chessboard, and then he said, without looking at her, "I was just kidding."

© Olga Tokarczuk. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2008 by Jennifer Croft. All rights reserved.

Read more by Olga Tokarczuk in WWB

From Final Stories by Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Read the excerpt. A First Read from Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Read the excerpt.