#this was meant to be a small side thing while i finish an art trade

[squuote]

i just wanted to give him a cartoon mallet. for some reason

[soemriffxiv]

Roevember Day 11-13: Gold, Silver, and Bronze

Aether had a certain level of conductivity through various materials. Like electricity, certain elements were better at channeling aether than others, and even aspected aether preferred one kind of metal or stone over another. Electrical aether, for example, easily coursed through a copper wire, while fire aether was better to control in anything with a high melting point. 

Life aether was special, as it only held within organic, or previously organic materials. It quickly dissipated when conducted through any material that was not capable of harboring life. This meant that most healing staves are carved of wood, tomes of bound leather and paper, and planispheres of all three. Nouliths are the first deviation from that pattern, their cores composed of adder stones, a material seemingly rife with potential, but merely just flint run through by rushing water. Some scholars proposed that due to its vein-like structure, the life aether struggles to differentiate between it and other organic materials. Others argue if that is the case, why doesn't a sewer pipe also hold life aether? Many shouting matches occurred in this debate, with none coming out on top.

Regardless, it opens the hypothesis: if a mere stone is capable of transmitting life aether, then other elements might also be able to as well. 

Thus, Soemrifaeld was sent off with another assignment under his dad's name; bring back one item each of pure, raw gold and silver, along with the highest quality bronze alloy. Simple, all things considered, but he can't help the uneasy feeling he has that the last might prove to be an issue.

Naturally, as expected, gold and silver are not hard to come by, especially being unprocessed. Expensive, yes, but it isn't coming out of his pocket (not that he doesn't worry about his own father's budget, and if the man is so far gone as to forgo meals and rent in favor of his research). However, with bronze being an alloy, it’s mostly a matter of commissioning a blacksmith to craft a bar or two for him.

“Just bronze? That’s all?” The older man asks, face smudged with little spots of soot. Though Old Sharlayan is mainly academic types, there are those few who pursued trades, and even fewer who pursued arts. The man, a hyur named Oskar in his late fifties, has a small studio in the arts district, off to the side and out of the way of every other location in the city-state. 

“Yes, with no other additive, thank you,” Soemrifaeld responds meekly. He has a difficult time conversing with not only gruff men, but artists as well. Having to talk to a person that is both is pushing his social fortitude to its limits within record time.

Oskar squints at Soemrifaeld, brushing his chin with his hand and humming to himself. Soemrifaeld feels himself shrinking with each passing second, to the point where he feels he’s half the metalworker's height when he finally speaks again. “Simplest request I’ve had in years. Can’t complain.”

Soemrifaeld lets out the breath he’d been holding. What is it about these types of guys that make his anxiety spike and send his overactive imagination into a tailspin? He tries to will both his heart and stomach into a calm state of mind, as he’s told about the payment upfront and after the project is finished. 

“Can I ask what kind of gleaner job needs a piece this simple?” Oskar asks, after counting the pieces of gil handed over.

“Oh. Ah-” Soemrifaeld stutters.

“Unless you can’t. NDA. I get it,” he placates, Soemrifaeld feeling bad about being so visibly tense. 

It isn’t that he necessarily can’t. Some specific details are meant to be kept under wraps from outsiders, even from the gleaner’s themselves. Even had he not been informed by a summary paper, just the name of the researcher would have tipped him off enough to know exactly why these items are being requested. After all, his dad has been on this one single subject for the majority of his life. As much as he would be happy to hear he’s finally dropped it, has moved on and tried to reconnect with his ex-wife and son, Soemrifaeld knows his dad, even with the lack of contact. He’ll be at this till he’s figured it out, or dead in the ground. 

“Research into aetherical conductivity,” he says, after drawing in a deep breath.

“Hm, I see,” the man nods, “Strange that they have to get someone else to grab this instead of getting it themself.”

“Tell me about it,” Soemrifael grumbles, then blushes upon realizing he’s said that out loud, after Oskar barks out a loud laugh.

“Sounds like you’ve got a personal grudge,” he grins, and despite not knowing the depths, hits it right on the head. Though it might be personal opinion if “grudge” is an understatement or not. “Well, don’t let it tear you down. Sometimes you gotta work with shit clients. The pay isn’t good, the money is terrible, and you wouldn’t even wipe your ass with what they ask for.” Soemrifaeld’s face twists up at the man’s crass words, but listens on. “They get what they want, you come out on the other side a more bitter person. But you still do it, because sometimes you got nothing better to do. 

“You want my advice, though? Sometimes nothing is better than something. Sometimes you look at these garbage people with their garbage taste, and you just say ‘no’.”

Oskar lets the words hang in the air as he looks at Soemrifaeld for a response. He certainly does have a point, despite the foul mouth they came from. Even without saying a thing, Soemrifaeld has given the appropriate answer that Oskar was looking for.

“Want me to cancel the order?” He says with a grin, half joking, but also absolutely serious. Soemrifaeld sighs.

“Unfortunately I’ve already taken the job,” he says, very tempted to take the man up on his offer. Two thirds of the request have already been completed, as well, and this last one isn’t that bad either. Less so now, Soemrifaeld notices.

“Ah well. Shame,” Oskar says, taking the gil with him behind a door near the front counter. He comes back out a moment later. “It’ll be done within three days, come back then to pick it up, alright?”

Soemrifaeld nods and thanks Oskar, turning to make his way outside. Just as the bell above the door jingles, signaling his departure, Oskar calls out one last time, “If they ask you to be an errand boy again, tell ‘em to stick it!” As the door closes, Soemrifaeld holds up a hand in goodbye and tries to grin, though it likely looks more like a grimace.

Halfway down the street, nearly out of the arts district, Soemrifaeld leans against a wall for support. How he wouldn’t love to tell his dad off, oh, the look on his face would be… Devastating. The man’s already lost everything, even if most of it was his own doing. He really is just an errand boy, barely even a son. Still, is the rift wide enough between them that it can no longer be mended? Is it wide enough that completely severing ties won’t hurt? No, both roads lead to pain, obviously, and he’s too far in his life to deal with either side. Sitting at the crossroads is just fine. Who cares if it makes him a coward? There are more important things in his life than picking up the pieces left by his dad.

It isn’t important, even if it haunts him.

[banqdanfnfic]

which, as they kiss, consume | jjk

you just wanted to get a tattoo from your boyfriend

pairing: tattoo artist!jk x reader

genre: established relationships au, tattoo artist au, smut

word count: 4k

warnings: unprotected sex, biting, making out, grinding, licking, nipple play, jk has a lip ring, oral (f receiving), fingering, shy jk and oc, sexual tension, slight choking, slight aftercare

♫ : Streets by Doja Cat, Candy by Doja Cat

♡ Aesthetics: Playlist | Moodboard

He visibly chokes on his glass of beer as he almost snaps his neck to meet your gaze. He could say that you were awfully drunk and hence the sudden confession out of the blue, but behind your heavy lidded eyes, Jungkook could sense that you were serious.

“You what?”, he gulps abruptly, moving closer to your face, doe eyes pleading to repeat yourself.

“Yes Kook. I want that tattoo on my breasts. I’ve decided”.

It’s not that Jungkook didn’t have experience in his career with inking on different parts of a human body. He just had never given a tattoo to someone who is romantically associated with him and the thought of seeing you half naked made him chuck down the rest of his drink in one go.

The most physical he had ever gotten with you was a kiss shared occasionally since it’s only been over two weeks you had started dating. Okay maybe you made out once in his car but that’s it. It never got to the point of shedding clothes or anything intense.

“Are you sure?”

You giggle at the sudden hoarseness in his voice and nod positive. Ironic how his aura never matched his personality. His inked skin, athletic body proportions covered in black monochrome bad boy outfits gave out default energy that he is a local heartthrob with multiple chicks wrapped around his finger each night and a heavy demeanor to carry in his smirk.

You were one of those believers until Jungkook asked you out in the most hopeless romantic way possible after constantly visiting the café you work in, a few shops besides his parlor. He was a gentleman with respectful boundaries, warm hands to hold yours and sweet sensual kisses though you are pretty sure he probably has a good game.

For any outsider it looked like those cliché bad boy and shy girl love stories, but for real both of you were a good percentage of introverts.

Jungkook runs his tongue around his lip ring while he is stressfully ruffling his dark locks into a mess. He is trying to explain his reasons to postpone your decision considering how shy he got at this point. But then that’s exactly why you were requesting him with soft eyes, it would be so uncomfortable to be shirtless in front of anybody else. Or maybe it’s your way of saying the relationship is open for higher levels of physical affection.

After debating around in vain, he finally hums and clears one of his slots for his beloved client.

Friday approaches way quicker than you assumed and now your heart is beating in your throat. Right after you are done cleaning the tables, you have to make it to Jungkook’s parlor for your appointment.

Running on three hours of sleep, black under eyes even after a decent amount of makeup, you groan as you check yourself out in the mirror. You opted for a simple shirt and skirt (also known as the outfit you bought for occasions with Jungkook), light beach waves resting on your shoulders. Hoping that a few cups of coffee will save you, you stride across the street to stop before the infamous parlor he worked in. Hopefully the full body shave and chocolate body butter has kept its excellence on your skin below the clothing.

The door chimes as it opens with a dragged creak on the musky wooden flooring. It felt like an otherworld where air smelled like men’s perfume and faint tint of cigarettes. In other words, intoxicating.

You ask the first person you meet at the reception, one of Jungkook’s companions at the shop and he assists you to his cabin located at a comfortably remote location.

His space is hidden with a simple black curtain. You are met with Jungkook’s back facing you, working determinately on a client’s arm and cares to spare a glance only when the guy with you is informing him about your presence.

“This will be over in a few”, he grins to your face and goes back to focusing his coil on the skin of a woman in her late twenties laying down his chair. The vibration from his inking machine fills in the silence and you excuse yourself to sit on a small black couch beside them.

This was the first time watching him at work and now you can understand why people rumored so much about his attitude because damn it is intimidating.

Brows knit together and inked muscles flex as he drags the needles around for finishing touches. Meanwhile you can pretty much smell the drool from the woman who is shamelessly checking out your boyfriend. Though you are pretty sure Jungkook gets such glances more than he can count every day, you can’t help but feel jealous. Partly because of the childish possessiveness and partly because you want to be the reason behind his dark eyes and intricate concentration, in profession or not.

To stop from mentally throwing daggers on the client’s way, you grab a random fashion magazine from the side table and flip through pages, though other four senses are inclined on your man. With a close attention to his low sigh you conclude that he is done.

The customer with now a fresh tattoo on her arm is discussing random useless topics to get him to talk, a very vain job realizing how Jungkook doesn’t bat a friendly lash at anybody, especially to those who hit on him. To be honest a large part of the ink business was linked with the obsession to attractive people who worked here, even if it meant trading an area of your skin. You grip the edges of the magazine a bit hard, not able to contain the sanity particularly at the high pitch voice she mumbles in before finally leaving his cabin.

A little excited and a lot nervous, you stand up as Jungkook bids goodbye to the third person.

He is quick to notice your discomfort, though not sure if it was the woman or the thought of finally getting the tattoo, he knew you were nervous and surviving in several cups of espresso by the dark circles slowly showing through the faded layers of your concealer. But nothing pulls down the opinion he has about you, beautiful and simple, no dramatics attached.

“Hey are you okay?”

You nod as soon as you sit down on the black tattoo chair, shifting a little to find a comfortable position. He is taking out a box full of equipment and fine needles, already making you break a sweat at the side of your forehead.

But more than that, it’s the way he is sharp and professional that catches your attention more.

You have never seen Jungkook this serious before. The choice of his vetiver perfume digging through your nostrils was driving you insane. If he doesn’t smile soon, you are going to melt into a puddle at his gaze.

“Are you nervous?”, he smirks this time, a newfound reason for your worsening gut health.

It’s mostly going in cycles at this point. Every bit of his skilled motion causes a vigorous hormonal reaction which initiates his next set of effortless teasing.

“I’m a little nervous”, you say, fiddling with your freshly painted nude nails.

“Me too”

It’s something you least expect to come out of his mouth observing how confident he looks right now. He basically has you cornered with his gaze. But whenever he had been truthful about his emotions it felt like a hug.

“I can take off my shirt too, so that we are even. Is that okay?”

He said it so softly like he is handling a child and the duality of the situation had your mind fogged and limbs frozen for a few minutes.

“Yeah it’s okay” It’s far beyond than okay. It’s great actually.

Jeon Jungkook is ripped, a Greek God sculptured masterpiece covered in self designed artwork you are more than happy to wake up to every morning. He hears you gulp at the feast before your eyes while he discards his black t-shirt to a nearby chair.

Now you don’t know if this whole thing is supposed to warm your heart or make you play several erotic fantasies like a movie before your eyes.

Both of you share a small smile while his long fingers are tugging at the hem of your shirt and pulling it up over your head.

He almost wishes you don’t opt to wear a bra but he is met with lacy black, a-bit-over your-usual-budget fabric hugging the roundness of your breasts.

It seemed like you were way too competitive about today. Anything less than complete awe from Jungkook for you was straight disappointment, you don't want anything less.

Well it seems like it did from how blown his pupils were at this point. He peels his gaze off your chest with a sharp gulp to look at your eyes suddenly devoid of any fear and staring back at him with all ease. He is filled with an exapnse of warmth and he isn't sure why does spending just a little amount of time with you had such a grip on him. He can’t wait to propose the idea of getting a couple tattoo together soon and as far as you know how Jungkook is, he is very serious with his body art so apparently he does trust you a lot already.

“Where exactly are you trying to get it?”, his voice is a lot deeper suddenly as he waits for your fingers to guide to his canvas.

You softly trace the spot at the upper circumference of your right boob, “Here”.

You suck a breath through your nose as his own fingers are mimicking your gesture, lightly pulling down the lace to inspect the fitting of the design at hand.

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

Jungkook traces each word on your burning skin, now leaning dangerously close which was questioning your control to put your palms flat on his pecs. He doesn’t notice that though, his mind is busy creating his own fantasies about the women under him.

After two minutes and twenty four second long of inspection and mutual thirst, Jungkook is selecting a bunch of needles to set into the rotary machine. Five fine sharp like a painter's brush moves in and out at a set regularity as Jungkook tests it out.

The next of his actions had you flushed into a pool of crimson. He gently lifts up your resting torso with one hand while the other is unclasping the hook of your bra, making you half naked for the sake of the tattoo.

"I'm going to start", he says shyly.

You still have time to save yourself from the growing phobia for the object, but another unlogical part of your brain says it's a piece of cake considering you have a whole distracting full course meal in front of you.

It stings at first. Well, okay it hurts like hell but your face is devoid of any indication, except your right hand is gripping on the rim of the chair for dear life.

Jungkook on the other hand had never felt this much diversion of mind during his work. He knows that you are probably hurting very badly, especially for a first timer. He is biting into his lip ring, trying to get this over with for the well-being of your pain and his hormones.

After he had scribed one word into your dermis, you are no longer able to contain the ache so you give out a small squeak out of your glossed lips and the vibration of the machine at his hands stops as he looks at you.

"You want me to stop? ", he is relaxing his face as he cups yours with one hand. You don't want to answer that question, but the drumroll of the current situation is making your heart flutter and everything about the little burn on your chest is forgotten.

"No. It does hurt but I'll be fine I guess", you whisper. His breath is mixing with yours slowly as he is leaning more towards your face. If it isn't for a kiss then you are likely to be disappointed.

"It'll be over before you know it. I'll make it quick", and then he kisses you, a small act to get off the pressure of sexual tension between your bare upper bodies.

Before you think of any tongue in the act, he is breaking off the contact and returns to his position on your chest. He misses the pout that forms on your mouth but right now both of your heads are in cloud nine.

The pain starts again, only this time you are busy reliving how his lips felt in yours; soft, firm and controlled.

You gasp when you feel one of his hands cupping your right breast to further his design but it's lowkey an act empowered by lust which is straining behind the so called professional eyes.

You just sit there flustered out of your mind and then Jungkook is suddenly squeezing, full palm hiding your breasts like it's a protected treasure, but he isn't showing the slightest facial expression other than determined eyes and his lower lip caught between his teeth.

Fuck you can't take it anymore. Jungkook can feel your nipples harden against his hand and his brain isn't helping much to concentrate on the design. But by the grace of some positive karma left on his side, he makes it through the long text and when he is letting go of your chest and standing tall, your skin is popping out with redness on the places the text lays embedded.

He fishes out a mirror for you to look.

"It looks beautiful thank you Jungkook", you smile.

"Can I give you one more tattoo on your left one?", he asks while you are contemplating whether going through the pain is worth it, not to mention you really want to get back at a private space with Jungkook as soon as possible.

"It won't hurt I promise", and then he is kissing you a lot filthier than before; all tongue and teeth, while his hands are grazing on the skin of your waist, pressing a little firmer than before.

The coldness of his lip ring rivaled around your mouth, and you try sucking on it to which Jungkook responds with a growl and pushes his body adamantly against yours.

Skin to skin, you are lost in euphoria of everything happening and finally, you roam your eager hands around his body, to his pecs and the definition of abs.

As your fingers scraped against his scalp, Jungkook is biting eagerly down your jawline to your collarbone and continues his ministrations at a particular spot which is bringing out melodic moan variation from you.

He is going down your skin, licking on your left boob before he starts planting violet tattoos as he had promised. As if it couldn't get better, he is massaging the right breast, in a way to soothe pain.

He loses it when you stutter his name, but he is just a fucking tease when it comes to making love and doing anything in a public space is the last thing he wants to do. There isn't much room for all that he wants right now.

"Why did you choose this particular tattoo Y/n?", he rasps while he is planting small pecks on his artwork, and you reply when he is finally eye level with you

"I just felt like it's a good one", your breaths are uneven and mostly caught in your neck. He pecks your lips before speaking, "Those are lines from Romeo and Juliet".

He takes your hands to trace over a line of text among the many designs on his chest.

which, as they kiss, consume

"We pretty much have a couple tattoo now Y/n", his breath is matched with your pace and you are not very sure how to respond to this new knowledge.

"That's… hot"

You break into giggles along with him, he just can't stop dragging his lips around your skin, but he isn't able to word his feelings right now either.

"I have some aftercare healing ointment for the tattoo at my place, wanna come over?" Now that may be a little lame of an excuse to get his little friend out of his pants but you are too unfazed to analyse any of that.

His hands find place on your ass under the skirt as soon as the door to his apartment closes, and before you know it, you are in his bedroom, sitting on the soft mattress and tongue lost devouring each other.

While eagerly getting rid of every article of clothing, Jungkook notices that you don't have your bra on beneath the shirt, so it's probably back at the parlour, but none of you have the slightest care for it, might as well make an excuse with it later to fuck you in his cabin.

He is pushing you farther towards the headboard, him on top, grinding sensenslesy while your lips mould with his. Though he has his whole body pressed against you, you can't seem to feel his weight at the slightest, every one of his actions were just balanced and perfect.

As Jungkook goes down on you, his smile is evident against your skin, finally able to find out how every one of those scenarios in his head will come to look like. He lets out a satisfied hum being finally able to suck on your tits, your fingers finding place on his hair, twisting it out of stimulation.

His pelvis is flushed harshly against yours, grinding and rubbing against your pussy for as long as he is rejoicing the feeling of moving his tongue around both the nipples.

He stops rubbing after some point and you whimper at the loss but his fingers are soon to meet your core as a quick apology. All your later moans are muffled on his mouth once again.

Feeling the controlled movements of his fingers on your clit, you dig your nails down on his toned shoulders. It's becoming impossible to reciprocate his lewd movements of tongue on your lips at this point as the excitement between your thighs is growing every passing second.

Your mouth remains slightly parted as he removes his face to watch you squirm underneath, lips swollen, deep red and glossy from all the saliva.

He pecks at the shell of your ear before going down past your navel.

You haven't had much heads in the twenty years of your life, most of the guys being completely against the idea which made you feel insecure to bring up the topic in bed, but Jungkook does it like his life depends on it.

He growls at the sight of you dripping into his sheets and he seems to enjoy the idea of being the influence behind it. But none is going through your head at the moment, not the metal on his lips grazing against your folds, or the fact that Jungkook is grinning each time you cry his name, it feels unreal to feel something like this.

His mouth is wrapping against your entrance and he is balancing your lower body on his palms to help him reach the right depths inside you. While all you can muster up is the strength to grope the bedsheets in your fist and close your eyes at the pleasure.

Jungkook brings his head higher to give some attention to the throbbing clit, catching it between his teeth and triggering the bundle of nerves just the perfect dose to have your hips jolting up to his face.

He can't take it himself when you are now whining and chasing for your release, so he is slightly humping against the bed to get some friction.

He licks a slow stripe up till your abdomen and slowly raises to your face, already fucked out and dishevelled to keep up with his dominant orbs.

He swears he had never felt so much warmth and care for sex with any of his previous partners, in relationship or not, all he could think is how good can he treat the pleading eyes underneath him.

"Is there something you like that you want me to do?", he says, fingers grazing once again to your crotch to not deny you from his contact. Only this time he is exploring the tightness of your pretty cunt with two skillful fingers.

Is there? You are not sure. Or in other words you are too caught up at the sense of him fingering you. It's not like you had enough experience or people who cared enough to ask that question. It astounds you that never in this entire foreplay he asked for any favor for himself.

"I'm not sure…", you whisper and then maybe you have something on your mind " um I guess I would like to be choked" Okay this felt embarrassing.

He smiles before sliding his free hand from your lips to your neck, and applies slight force, careful to not hurt you in the slightest bit.

"Is that fine?"

"Yeah", you muffle through the decreasing course of air.

He pulls up your face by the throat to attach lips once more. He just can't seem to get enough of kissing you senseless. Then, the tip of his long ignored cock is teasing the length of your pussy twice before it's stretching you out to the brim.

Bodies flushed and hot, his pace is deep and slow, making sure to kiss the cervix every time he is inside.

He watches as your eyes close shut and flutters around whenever he is grazing against your sweet spot. Both of your ears lost and eager for the moans looming out of each other, his more like what he sounds at the gym. Nice observation Y/n.

In this span of sexual energy you shared, you can make some obvious conclusions. Sex with him was surreal, both in terms of domination and the care he had. Rocking against him and keeping up with his hips was attainable— Compared to the intense eye contact he tries to hold, or the way he cups the side of your face and rubs the pad of his thumb on your cheeks while he kisses you during sinking back in, or the way his eyes glow at the beauty of your body open for him. It makes you feel special and it's difficult to respond to these gestures when you never felt this way before.

Jungkook could tell that from your face, but he hopes he lasts with you enough to help you know the worth you hold. You couldn't think too much about anything when you are busy squeezing around his length and coming twice in the first ten minutes.

By the third orgasm Jungkook is nearing his own and he pulls out to pump a few times before coming on your stomach.

"Was it okay?", his voice is all over the place, still balancing his body on his arms while you are amazed by his strength.

"It was amazing Jungkook", you smile. You have known a lot about Jungkook over the few dates you spent with him. That he likes literature, classics and philosophy, designs tattoos as a subconscious thing, that his game is A-1, and he likes working out almost three hours a day. Good for you. But it wasn't until now you know him to be gentle, like he is afraid to crush you under a feather touch. You don't know him as someone who is staring deep into your face after a good fuck, speaks nothing, smiles widely, and plants a peck on your forehead before getting off the bed.

He does the honors of cleaning both of your bodies with a towel, it's not like you have any strength left in you anyway. And then pulls out an ointment from the bedside table and plops next to your body.

"There. You need this to protect the tattoo", he takes off the nozzle and applies a required amount against the words on your chest and massages against them.

"Now go to sleep Juliet", he mocks, pulling up the sheets over you both "good night".

You snuggle against his hard chest, kissing his pecs before resting on it, "Good night Romeo".

thank you so much for reading!! please leave a feedback!!

★ taglist: @pjmochii (dm, ask or comment to enter the tl!)

★ credits: @/rainbeary on spotify : songs that'll make you feel everything's in slow motion playlist

★ banner & boards: by me :)

a/n: this is my first time writing smut and i basically died of second hand embarrassment during the process. pardon for my untalented ass, i tried this wip continuously for a week and i seriously don't think it could get anything better though it's probably not much.

© banqdanfnfic 2021, all rights reserved. do not modify, translate, or repost my works. modification, translations, and/or redistribution of my works on any platform is strictly prohibited.

[felix21im]

"Ice Cold", a Leon Kennedy x reader fanfiction

As an Art and Design student all you want to do is just knuckle down and finish that one goddamn piece you've been working on for months. Too bad your time is constantly stolen by your Waiter job with minimal pay, but hey, at least the tips are good if you unbutton your shirt that one more time.

Masterlist

Chapter 1: Bourbon

“That’s gotta be moved over like two inches to the left.” You muttered to yourself. Your eraser ran across the sketches and removed the pencil lines that you had created earlier. Studying interior design was one of the best ways to secure you that internship you’ve been working so hard for.

“Yoo hoo!” A whistle was heard from beside you, your fellow colleague and best friend tapped you on the shoulder, pulling you out of your study-induced trance. “You’ve got another table to serve. They literally just sat down so make sure that you greet them.” You let out a sigh, laying your latest drawing to the side. On the way to the table you check your hair in a mirror before putting on a smile. You can see two middle aged men talking while looking at multiple files placed on the table. You walk toward them. "Good evening, is there anything I can get for the two of you?"

The larger man with the shorter hair began to speak for the both of them. “Two bourbons please.” He said simply.

“Will they be with ice?” You ask, beginning to write down their drinks order on your small notepad.

“Yeah I’ll have ice in mine please.” The one with longer hair requested with a polite point and a smirk. The other man simply shook his head at the question of ice. You smiled at the two of them as you turned around. A few minutes later you return with both of their drinks and put them in front of them, being careful not to spill anything over their work-stuff. They both thank you with a small nod before you go around to your other tables. A few hours pass and people come and go but these two men still sit at their table, talking, drinking and taking some notes. You went over to their table a few times that evening to refill their drinks or bring some small things to nibble on, but you couldn't find out what they were talking about. It seems that as soon as you went over to them they changed the subject. “A super secret mission.” You chuckled to yourself as you stood at the bar, packing your study materials away. You can’t clean a bar with books and paper all over it.

While cleaning you heard someone clear their throat and you looked up. In front of you stood one of the men, the one with longer hair. “Oh my, excuse me. Can I help you with anything?” The man chuckled lightly and looked at the mess in front of you. “My friend over there and I wanted to get another drink before paying. But it seems you are quite busy here.” You looked at the mess and then at him and you couldn’t stop yourself from checking him out. It seems he noticed it, but didn't say anything. “I’m sorry for that, it won’t happen again. I’ll deliver your drinks to your table right away!” The man nodded and went back to his friend, sitting directly opposite them but also facing the direction of the bar. You let out a small sigh before putting the books away and preparing the drinks for the men. The man never said what drinks he wanted but considering the two of them have only been drinking bourbon, bourbon was a good choice. Before starting you tightened your apron, greatly exaggerating your waist, although you could barely breathe you knew that it made you more attractive to patreons. The patreons liking you equals more tips. While making the drinks you made sure to add enough ice in the second drink, so they just might forgive you for your behaviour. As you placed the two glasses on your serving tray you noticed the long haired man give you a small smirk. You went to their table once more and put the beverages in front of them while smiling at both of them. You also left a bill on the table before heading back to the bar, the echo of your shoes making you feel anxious as you walked, causing you to begin holding your tray in both of your hands in front of your stomach. On your way back you heard one of the men say something, which made the short haired one shake his head. You were wondering if they talked about something you did but didn’t want to be rude and ask them about it. It was pretty late already so only a few other people were still at the restaurant. You wanted to get home at some point that night so you hoped that the last guests would be leaving soon. Just as you thought that, you saw the two men you were serving get up and leave the restaurant. Before going through the exit door the man with longer hair looked back at you and gave you a wink. You let out a small laugh and shook your head. You went to the table they left from to clean up and collect the money. You noticed a small note with something written on it. A phone number, you realised. “Call me ;)” was written beside it. You looked around and put the piece of paper in your pocket with a light smile on your face. That smile quickly turned into a shocked face though as you noticed a massive tip laying next to the bill. You didn't even know what to do, so you just stood there looking at the money. As you looked at the flurry of green bills you could hear footsteps behind you and soon your coworker stood next to you, also looking at the money.

“Well, someone seems to like you”, they laughed “Maybe those apron and shirt tricks you do work too well.” You shook your head and left your coworker standing there as they chuckled at their joke.

A little while later the restaurant was empty thanks to the closing hours, and you cleaned the last tables. But before you had the chance to leave as well, you saw the door opening once again. “I’m sorry, we’re closed!” You looked up and saw the long haired man standing in the doorway. Other than just his hair you could instantly tell it was him, the fancy suit helped a lot. “Did you forget anything? I actually think you left too much money when you left with your friend.” You picked up the cash that was placed in an envelope under the bar and began to get the money out of it. “I can give it right back to you, if that's why you came back.”

The man shook his head and slightly chuckled. “No, the tip was meant to be like that. I was actually wondering..”, he stepped closer toward the bar you were standing at. “..Why didn't you text me yet.”

You had to laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I didn’t have the time yet because I had some work to do and you left that note like ten minutes ago!” You chuckled yet again. “Trust me I was going to call you!”

Now it was his time to let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, I'm sure you would have. Anyways, now that I’m here again and it seems your work is done, how about we get your favorite drink together?”

“I mean we are closed…” You raised your eyebrows and crossed your arms over your puffed out chest. “But I’ll let you get a drink this one time.” He seemed satisfied with that answer so he sat down on one of the bar chairs, followed by him tapping the empty space next to him. “At least let me make your drink before I sit down!” You playfully rolled your eyes and began pouring liquor into a shaker. You noticed him looking at his phone after receiving a message from someone. “Someone at home is missing you already?” You asked jokingly as you placed your fruity, yet strong, favourite drink on the bar.

He shook his head. “Not at all. Just my.. Colleague asking what I'm up to.” He put his phone on the counter. You went around the bar and pushed a glass towards the man and sat down on the empty stool beside him. “I never got your name. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” He smirked as he took a sip from the drink. “Not bad.”

You chuckled as you pointed at the name tag that was attached to your shirt. The man looked at you dumbfounded. “Well, this is awkward now. Doesn't seem like a fair trade anymore.”

“I’ll just hope that you were being respectful and you didn’t want to look at my chest.” You winked and couldn’t contain your laughter as you did up the buttons on your shirt, hiding the “money makers” as your best friend would call them. The man looked at your chest for a moment as you did up your buttons before quickly looking away. You could see his face get a little red, although you weren't sure if it was a reaction to what you just said or the alcohol finally showing effect. He cleared his throat and seemed to want to change the subject. “Ehem..the name’s Leon S. Kennedy, by the way.”

“Ooo S. Kennedy huh? Am I going to have to guess what the S stands for?” You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear as you talked.

“Go for it.” He laughed and took another sip of the drink.

“Uhhh… Steven?” A head shake. “Sam?” A no again. ”Sexy?” A chuckle but still a no. “Ugh I give up!”

“It’s Scott.”

“Scott, huh? Sounds kinda cute.” You laughed as you looked at Leon and then the clock behind him. “Even though we haven’t spent much of an evening together we’re going to have to call it quits, I have to lock up now.”

Leon turned around to look at the clock. “That’s a shame.” He turned back to face you. “Y’know I’ve got some drinks back at my place if you’re interested.” He raised his eyebrows as he asked for the date to continue.

You thought about the offer for a moment, you didn’t have any classes in the morning so maybe it would be fun. “Wine?” You asked and he replied with a nod. As the two of you stood up from your stools you quickly paced around the restaurant making sure everything was perfect. The lights were off. All of the switches were off. And finally the security alarm was turned on. You shuffled Leon along as you left the restaurant, making sure that he wasn’t trapped in there when you locked the door. “Alright, that’s everything!” You placed your keys into your work bag and slung it over your shoulder. As the two of you walked to the parking lot you looked down at your phone and secretly texted your roommate saying you were going to be out much longer than anticipated and that your location was being shared with them. Just in case.

Leon fished his keys out of his pocket and tapped a button on the car keys, causing a nearby car to light up. With the size of that tip that Leon left an expensive black sports car belonging to him shouldn’t have been a surprise. “Woah! What car is this?” You asked, not knowing anything about cars apart from the fact that most of them have four wheels.

“It’s a Porsche Nine-Eleven.” He replied. “It’s my favourite.”

“Your favourite? Meaning you have multiple cars?” You questioned. “Can I borrow one? I don’t even have a car.” You chuckled as you opened the door to the luxury car. Leon chuckled too as he got into his seat and tapped a few buttons on the dashboard. The entire car began to roar as it’s engine was turned on, making your entire body shake. Making your entire body heat up. “Is it hot in here or is it just me?” You asked.

He chuckled. “It’s because your heated seat is on. I can turn it off if you would like.”

As the car traveled you looked out of the window and when turning to your left you noticed that the lights in the car softly lit up Leon’s face as he drove the car. Showing off his sharp jaw and slight stubble.

After a twenty minute drive you step out of the car onto the gravel driveway and you hear the stones crunching underneath your feet. Leon walks up beside you and leads you up the stairs to the front door. Reaching into his front right pocket he pulls out his keys and unlocks the double doors, allowing you to walk through before he did so too and then close the door behind him. “Woah! You have such a cool house!” The large modern chandelier reflected onto the marble flooring in the entryway. Leon kicked off his shoes and pushed them over to the side of the wall, prompting you to do the exact same. “You have no idea how much I hate these shoes, they are so uncomfortable, especially when you wear them for twelve hour shifts without sitting down.”

“Why on earth do you wear them if they hurt you?” He asks as he takes off his jacket, hanging it up on a coat rack beside the door. He reaches out his hand to take off yours as well, to which you respond with a smile. You turn around and he carefully takes it off of you, followed by him then placing it on the coat rack next to his own.

"I don't have much to choose from when it comes to clothing. Just in general our work uniforms aren't really the best of the best."

Together the two of you went into the kitchen and you sat at a bar stool, leaning on the counter. As you waited for Leon to fix you up a drink you noticed just how empty the house has been so far. “Wow it’s quite empty, going for the minimalistic vibe huh?”

Leon shook his head as he placed two wine glasses down on the counter, both with ice. “I just haven’t gotten around to decorating this place yet.” He poured both glasses full and sat then leant on the counter in front of you, placing your drink next to your hand. “I mean I’ve only been here for like 3 years but I’m a busy man.”

You picked up your drink and almost dropped it after hearing that response. "Three years? You must be reaaally busy if you didn't have time for at least some decoration. What are you doing all the time anyway?" You took the drink and a small sip before standing up with it still in your hand. Leon looked at you kind of confused, but following you nevertheless. You walked around the kitchen, then the other rooms. You were talking nonstop about the stuff Leon could put on the walls, the floor or just anywhere really. He couldn't even say anything because it seems you were in your own world already planning the entire interior design of his house. Leon was following you through all the rooms as if he was actually visiting you and not the other way around. While planning the designs for Leon’s home you realised just how excited you were to do this officially as a job in the future. Creating your own interior design company and being your own boss was something you had in mind ever since you were a child. After who knows how long you both finished your drinks and also the house tour. You ended back at the kitchen where you started and both sat down on what seems to be the only chairs in this humongous house. Leon went away for a few seconds before returning with yet another bottle of what appeared to be some expensive wine. “You’re not just trying to get me super drunk so you can kidnap me, right?” You asked him jokingly, but also slightly worried. After all, what were you doing here in a complete strangers house?

“If I was going to kidnap you I would have done it already, buttercup.” You gulped but shrugged it off after looking at Leon, who smiled at you. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad being kidnapped by him. He's got quite the nice home after all. Leon stopped you in your thoughts as he handed you a glass of wine. "It's really good, trust me. Nothing against your favourite drink, but still very tasty." You took a little sip from the wine and looked at him with big eyes.

"Wow. This is actually really good. I've tasted many different brands of wine but never one like this. You do know your stuff, huh?"

He let out a small laugh which also made you smile. You didn't know if it was the alcohol but you suddenly felt really hot sitting so close to this handsome man. "Anyway, what are you doing besides working at that restaurant? I saw some school books at the bar earlier, were they yours?"

You nodded lightly. "I'm currently studying Art and Design but I needed some money to even afford all that stuff. So that's why I ended up at that restaurant." He looked at you, maybe even a little sad. But maybe you just started imagining things.

"You don't have any family that supports you or anything?"

You shook your head. "That's kind of a difficult topic. My parents aren't really what they used to be after.. well, let's just say some inconveniences." You took another big sip, showing Leon that you didn't wanna talk about it anymore. Even though he wanted to ask, he stopped himself before ruining the whole evening, or well, night. You sighed and looked at him. "On our tour I think we missed the bathroom. Mind showing me the way?" He nodded and led you through the house. As you were in the bathroom Leon went up to his workroom and picked up an envelope. He went downstairs again and hid the filled envelope in one of your jackets' pockets. After a while you rejoined him in the kitchen looking really tired. "Leon, I don't wanna sound rude but I��ve had a long day and I think I really need some sleep. Do you mind calling me a taxi?" He saw just how tired you were so he didn't try to make you stay any longer. He grabbed his phone, called you a taxi and gave you some money for it.

You wanted to decline, but Leon didn't want to argue so you had no chance but to pay with his money. "I brought you here in the first place so the least I can do is pay for your ride home", he said. You both then went to the entrance where Leon helped you put on your jacket. After that you both sat down outside on the stairs waiting for the taxi to arrive. Neither of you said a word, but it wasn't a weird silence, you both really enjoyed each other's company and after a few moments of sitting on the cold stairs a car arrived. Leon brought you to the door and you told the driver your address. You gave Leon a small wave as the taxi began to drive off...

[loreculus]

adventures in dragonspine

character(s): albedo

the frigid wind whipped at your skin as you trekked up the snow covered mountain, face pink and fingers frozen from the more than cold temperature. gripping the side of your cloak and wrapping it around your body further, you looked at the figure next to you to see if he was losing his battle with the cold as bad as you were. to your displeasure, he seemed mostly unfazed, rosey cheeks aside.

"albedo," you called your platinum-haired companion through shivers. "do you mind if we stop and rest somewhere for a bit? i'm dangerously cold."

the alchemist slowed his pace and flicked his eyes around the environment looking for a cave or cavity in the mountain to use as a makeshift shelter. spotting an opening to a small cavern, albedo reached his hand behind your back, gently pushing you towards it. the cave was small but not suffocating, it's walls protecting you from the unforgiving winds of the mountain.

"we should be able to rest here for a little while," albedo said as he started a fire while you set a blanket out for him and cocooned yourself in another.

"every time i come to dragonspine i say I'll be okay, and i am wrong every time," you say with a flat face. "i don't know how you do this all the time."

albedo smirked slightly at your remark, glad his back was facing you to hide his amused expression. "a trick of the trade i suppose." he turned to you and picked up the blanket waiting for him at his feet, draping it over his shoulders. he spoke again, his voice calm as ever, "maybe next time you'll wear an insulated coat instead of a fur-line cloak.

you gaped at him. "there's an insulated coat? an insulated coat!?" the fact that all of your previous trips up this mountain could have been warmer had you known makes you want to laugh and cry. "i really need to do better research."

the ends of albedo's lips tipped up, a small smile gracing his features. "no worries, i should have told you about them, i-" the man's words were cut off by a rumbling sound accompanied by an intense shaking that made your face high-five the ground.

hand pressing your forehead, you let out a trivial groan, breaking free from your cocooned state as you sit up to keep yourself from falling again. "what's happening?" you looked at the genius beside you.

"i cannot say for certain, but from the sound coming above us, i think it's an avalanche," he said, voice raised.

at his words, as if he beckoned it, snow came rumbling down, the white substance obstructed the entrance, leaving you and albedo with no way out. It all happened so fast, and you were wide-eyed at it all.

"are we stuck in here?" you asked, one part of you wanting to scream and another wanting to laugh hysterically.

"it would appear so."

eventually, the latter feeling won you over, and you doubled-over on the ground laughing. with happy tears pooling in your eyes, you tried to gain some composure. "sorry, albedo, had i known we would get stuck in a cave, i wouldn't have proposed we take a break."

"well, i am actually glad we stopped," he looked at you thoughtfully. "had we not, we would be under ten feet of snow right now."

you bounced your head left and right, as if weighing the options. "yup," you popped the "p" sound, "definitely happy to be in a cave right now." you then looked over to your bags and asked, "you wanna do some work right now to pass the time?"

albedo nodded, immediately going over to the bags and picking them up, placing them beside you and him as he sat back down on the chilled stone. he pulled out his sketchbook and pen, his eyes reflecting deep thought as he analyzed his art and annotations. you opened your notes as well, going over the properties of forging materials and imprinting the location of crystal chunks in your brain. that's why you came on this journey with albedo -- for he needed to return to his dragonspine research camp and you needed to gather materials to ascend your sword, it's current state not being enough for the battles you get yourself into anymore.

"hey, albedo," if he heard your call he didn't show it, but you knew he was listening anyway. "what did you need from your research camp up here?"

still in his position, he replied, "i left something when i was there last, it is--" he paused, mentally searching for a fitting adjective. "sentimental."

you gave him a look of understanding and pressed the subject no further. "hmm, what are you working on?" you knew you should not have asked, as distracting him from his work was sort of rude, but you loved it when he talked about his work -- his eyes brightened, his features softened, and his whole demeanor livened up -- even if only slightly.

he only meant to give you a basic breakdown, but he eventually began to ramble. although the content of his words were complete gibberish, his intonation and inflection were music to your ears. his voice, so silky and smooth, calmed your insides and warmed the frigid atmosphere of the cave.

"but, anyways," albedo's ramble had come to an end. "how do you feel about getting out of this place now?"

"get...out…?" you asked, a confused expression etched on your face. "why do you make that sound easy, i thought you said we were stuck in here?"

the alchemist chuckled, his mouth curving into a slight smirk. "i believe i said we appeared to be stuck, not that we actually were." with that, he turned and aimed his hand at the pile of snow covering the entrance. his hand glowed brightly, a brilliant gold light emitting from his fingers. the light pooled into a ball slightly in front of his palm, shooting out, dissipating the snow as if it was never there.

"h-how did you-"

albedo let out a big laugh at your dumbfounded look. "alchemy, darling."

"right, alchemy, of course." you shook your head vigorously and sucked on your cheeks as you slung your things over your shoulder and left the cave. "teach me that trick, albedo. i've needed a get out of jail free card like that on many occasions."

"i will, but let's finish our job up here in dragonspine first, eh?"

"yes, yes, of course."

[verai-marcel]

Of Dragons and Love (RDR2 Fanfic, Arthur x F!Reader, 18+)

Summary: Arthur didn't want to come to Strawberry, didn't want to help a certain sniveling rat escape his cell. So he decides to explore the town instead and runs into a mysterious woman whom he can't let go. 

Author’s Notes: I’m gonna take a moment and lean hard on my heritage to pull some inspiration from an old Cantonese opera. And we're gonna leave Micah in his cell because nuts to that guy. So pretend this takes place in chapter two when Arthur was supposed to go rescue him, but decided to do a side quest instead. This was written for the RDR Mini Bang! @rdrbigbang

Tags: Arthur x F!Reader, spoilers, Chinese mythology-inspired, alternate timeline, mild exophilia, insta-love, magic, smut, HEA

Word Count: 6,378

Accompanying Artwork: @danger-r-98-5 has made some wonderful art for this fic!

AO3 Link is here.

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

Arthur stepped into the small town of Strawberry and immediately wanted to turn around. He could pretend Micah was dead. He could just bide his time and wait for him to hang. 

As he rode through the small town, he passed the small jail and kept going to the visitor's center. Seeing the map of the nearby area tacked onto the wall next to the entrance, he hitched his horse and walked over to take a better look. 

"Welcome to Strawberry, good sir!" 

Arthur flicked a tired glance at the boisterous man before continuing his casual perusal of the map, waiting to see if he would leave. When the man remained beside him, he sighed, exasperated. 

"Hullo," he said without looking at the other man.

"Are you here for business or pleasure?" 

"Uh, just passin' through." It sure as hell wasn't for pleasure, and his business was his own. 

"Ah, I see. Well, please keep us in mind if you ever want to spend a day relaxing in our lovely town. This hotel is the coziest in West Elizabeth," the man boasted, gesturing behind him. "And the scenic Mount Shann and Owanjila Dam aren't too far from here."

"Alright."

"And Big Valley, just past the mountains, is a beautiful place to hunt and camp."

"Uh huh."

When Arthur continued to look at the map without any further inclination towards interacting with him, the man gave up on his sales pitch. "Well, I'll be inside if you have any questions."

"Ayup."

Finally alone, Arthur focused on the path that would take him to Owanjila. He'd been meaning to do a bit of fishing and commune with nature. Seemed like as good a place as any. 

Anything to postpone the reason he came here.

***

You weren't sure how you lived so long, not knowing what you were. You had been living with your mother for two decades, not knowing who your father was. Your mother didn't talk about him, and the one time you asked, she had simply said one thing. 

"He disappeared."

You didn't know what that meant exactly, and she did not explain. 

Until one day, on your twentieth birthday, he appeared. A large, scary looking man came to your door. Your mother paled and tried not to react, but when he held out a necklace and told her how sorry he was for leaving her alone, she broke down and cried. 

You found out that when she was young, your mother lived in a small house by a waterfall that fed a large lake. There was a growing town not too far from there, where she worked as a waitress.

One day, on the other side of the lake, a group of Chinese workers made camp as they worked on the railway that was coming through town. They were not welcomed in the town by most people, but your mother took pity on them and sold them food and other groceries, for a delivery fee. 

Somehow, your father had caught her eye, and they developed a secret relationship. When her parents discovered the love letter your father had written to your mother, she was kicked out of the house, without anything of hers to take with her. When your mother had gone to the camp to look for your father, it had been abandoned, the workers having left hours earlier to the next site. 

Broken hearted, your mother had thrown the necklace he had gifted her into the lake and left town, moving to Strawberry and giving birth to you. You had grown up here, made friends, had a few short dalliances with boys here while you grew up.

Strawberry was a small town, but there was a creek running through it, and when you had free time, which was not often these days, you loved to follow the creek to a waterfall and watch the water. You always felt an affinity with the water, felt like it always pulled at your very soul. You had learned how to swim with ease; your mother had said you were like a fish. 

Your father explained why he had left, and why he had finally come back. 

"I am a Dragon," he had said. "Great-great grand-nephew of the Dragon King of the North Sea."

He was an immortal creature, drawn to the belief of his people in a foreign land, looking for something to comfort them while they worked in dangerous conditions to make money to send home to their families. He protected them, guided them, and thus, had to follow where they went. When the camp left suddenly, he had no time to say goodbye and was nearly dragged away, the pull of his people’s belief taking him with them.

But now he was free, his people having finished their jobs. They had dispersed, either leaving for China or moving to San Francisco, where other Dragon Gods held domain and took over the belief of his former followers. So he started looking for his long lost love, who still cared for him deep in her heart, and traced the thread of emotion leading back to her.

He promised to take care of you and your mother from now on, and he made good on his promise. For the past five years, he had worked alongside the two of you, making your small farm plot healthy and fertile. 

It helped that he could make the sky rain whenever you needed it. 

He had also trained you in your small powers. Because you had been untrained for so long, your powers were weak, but over time, and with practice, they grew steadily stronger. You could breathe underwater. You could swim faster than humanly possible. And while you couldn't transform into a dragon, your hair became teal and your skin could shift into a bluish-grey tint. It was a bit unsettling the first time you did it in the mirror. 

But your most favorite power of all was the ability to shape nearby water to your will. At first, you could only move a small amount of water in a mug. But over time, you could move water in pitchers, basins, buckets, barrels, and even water troughs for animals. 

At this point, if you entered a pond, you could easily create ripples and small waves just by focusing on your energy and sending it outwards from you. 

Five years had passed since he had come back, and you had learned so much. Your life was so peaceful now that it came as no surprise when your parents announced that they wanted to move back to their hometown. Of course something had to change; that was the only constant in life, after all.

But you didn’t want to leave. You loved Strawberry. This was your home.

Your father had let out a breath, then smiled, much to your surprise.

“Owanjila does not have a spirit to guard it, since it’s a new body of water. Perhaps… you can become its guardian.”

“But I’m half-human,” you had said.

“So is Owanjila,” he said.

You nodded and smiled. Now you knew why he had been training you so hard all these years.

***

Arthur was pleasantly relaxed for the first time in a long time. He had spent all day fishing and gathering herbs after he set up a small campsite tucked away in the thicker part of the forest. It was quiet on this side of the lake, since all the travelers would go across the dam to take in the scenery. He was glad he picked a spot that was farthest from, for he didn’t have the energy to even say hello.

With a couple of large fish, he made his way back to his campsite, cooked up a fine meal with his freshly picked herbs, and spent some time writing and drawing before looking up at the stars before he fell asleep, the campfire quietly dying as his snores melded with the rest of the night.

***

It had been three months since your parents had left you here. They had sold the small farm and used the money to help you fix up a small abandoned fishing cabin out here on the far side of the lake, where you could hunt and gather on your own, trading furs and fish in town. Ever since you had become the guardian, the fish had spawned much more frequently and grew faster than normal, keeping you well fed. You figured it was a side-effect of the lake having a guardian spirit now.

You looked at your hands; yesterday, you had tripped on a step as you walked back from town, getting some small cuts on the palms of your hands as they had scraped against the gravel. Today, they had healed so quickly that there were no scars; you had never healed so quickly before. You wondered if your powers were growing and had walked into town earlier today to send a letter to your folks, letting them know what had happened.

It was late; the moon was high in the sky, and as bright as the electric lights in St Denis. You were roused from your sleep by the pull of the moon, and knew that it was time.

You took off your clothes and set them on your front porch. Walking to the water’s edge, you slipped into the water without a sound, the liquid embracing you as if you were an old friend.

“Hello, Owanjila,” you whispered as you walked deeper and deeper until you were completely submerged. Then you transformed, your skin turning bluish-grey, your hair shifting to a beautiful teal, and your gills appearing near your collarbone. You kicked your legs and swam gracefully through the water, spinning and twirling as you joyfully moved through the water as easily as you could walk on land.

Once you reached the middle of the lake, you bolted upwards, your legs kicking in unison with such speed and power that you broke the surface easily, your body shooting into the air. You let out a whoop of excitement, for it was only during full moons that you could fly this high out of the water; you had certainly tried other times. For a moment, the starry sky and the bright moon seemed impossibly close, and you held out your hands as if you could gather them all up and hold them tight forever.

Flipping backwards, you extended your hands in front of you and dove back into the water with barely a splash.

***

“Huh, whuzzah,” Arthur muttered as he was jolted awake by the sound of someone yelling. Immediately on alert, Arthur reached for his pistol and carefully made his way out of the tent, looking around. Seeing nothing but trees and rocks after circling his campsite twice, he was about to go back into his tent.

Another yell echoed through the trees. It didn’t sound like anyone in danger, more like… elation? 

His curiosity piqued, he quietly made his way towards the lake, following the sounds of the water sloshing around as if someone was swimming. Coming to the shoreline, he saw the full moon, reflected in the water, with ripples circling from the center of the reflection.

Unable to stop himself, Arthur found a nearby rock and climbed it to better see the center of the lake. Squatting down, he peered out at the water.

Something shot out of the water at breakneck speed, surprising him enough that he fell onto his ass.

For a split second, he saw everything clearly.

He saw her nude form, water glistening off her skin, the moon bathing her in a silvery light. He saw the look of ecstasy on her face as she looked up at the moon.

He saw her eyes as they met his.

Arthur’s heart skipped a beat.

Then she was gone, diving back into the water like an arrow, hardly disturbing the surface.

Sitting up, he crawled to the edge of the rock and peered at the spot, waiting for her to return. Part of him wondered if he had imagined it, and part of him hoped she was real. He had felt like he had seen something so evanescently ephemeral that his heart fluttered like a child seeing fireworks. He wanted to experience that sparkling feeling again and again. 

When his knees ached and his joints complained, he finally gave up, climbed off the rock, and returned to his tent. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but it didn’t come quickly as his heart continued to race. When he finally managed to nod off, his dreams were filled with a mysterious woman with an expression so filled with euphoria that he could almost taste her joy.

***

You were mortified. A man was camping around your lake and you hadn’t noticed? Granted, you were in town most of the day trying to sell some rabbit pelts, and then you had written your letter at the post office since you had run out of ink and bought some at the general store and didn’t want to walk all the way back to your cabin. 

But still, you hadn’t noticed. You supposed it was because he had no ill intent. It wasn’t that you could sense people, that wasn’t how your power worked; it was more you could feel out harmful intentions. People who came and went on the dam were usually harmless tourists and you took no notice of them. But occasionally that greedy mayor would come up here and consider building some cheap cabins out on the lake as tourist traps, and you would cause the lake to be extra choppy that day, splashing water on him if you were nearby. It was usually enough to change his mind.

You stayed at the bottom of the lake, waiting long enough before you slowly swam up again, moving towards the edge of the lake before you poked your head up from the water.

He was gone.

You sighed in relief and swam back to your cabin, looking around once more before getting out and back onto your porch. Grabbing your clothes, you got inside and dried off, thinking of the man’s shocked expression.

But what came to your mind most of all was that in the moonlight, you had managed to make eye contact. In that moment, your heart had pounded like you had seen something beautiful. 

Despite your embarrassment at being caught naked and in your half-dragon form, you wanted to see him in the daylight. You wanted to find out who he was, and why your heart had finally moved after all these years.

***

Arthur came out of his tent, bleary eyed as he yawned. He hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep, but he was, for better or for worse, used to it. The sound of a crackling of a fire and the sight of a figure sitting with their back turned was also something he was used to.

Until he realized that the fire had gone out last night and he had come to this place alone. Reaching for his pistol, he stopped when he heard her speak.

“I mean you no harm.”

Arthur, suspicious, for people who had said that to him before often would turn around and shoot him, put a hand on his pistol, but left it in its holster. Coming out of his tent and rising to his full height, he walked around to face the woman at his campfire.

When she looked up at him, he felt like he was hit with an arrow.

Those same eyes from last night met his, and he felt like the whole world slowed and became silent. All he saw was her, and he didn’t care about anything else.

***

His eyes were beautiful, like gemstones sparkling in the morning light. His hair was tousled from sleep, but it made you think of him in bed next to you. You swallowed. Why were you thinking of waking up next to him? You barely knew him!

But you couldn’t ignore the heat in your veins as your eyes traveled down his body. His very tall, muscular body. Oh gods, you felt your heartbeat quicken as you suddenly had a mental image of him climbing over you, his naked body above yours, his big hands holding your hips as he thrust—

“Can I help you, miss?” the man finally asked, his voice rough from sleep. His voice was like whiskey, flowing smoothly over your body and making you burn with need. He swallowed, and you watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat. Oh, to lick that sun-kissed skin…

You shook your head, both in answer to him and to clear the lustful images from your head. “I’m alright, I just wanted to share your campfire.”

***

“Oh?” Arthur asked, sitting down beside her to hide his body’s reaction to meeting her eyes. When he had met her gaze, he was hit hard with desire, the sudden image of her beneath him, legs spread, her expression of ecstasy for him and him alone.

For a brief moment, he wanted to take her, to guide her to the ground and thrust wildly inside of her like an animal.

But instead he reeled himself in; he wasn’t that kind of man. He didn’t even know why he had such a visceral reaction to her. All he knew was that she was sitting here with him now, and she was beautiful. When she turned away, he felt like he was suddenly lost, and wished for her to look at him once more with those mysterious eyes. He observed her as she poked the fire with a stick, wondering what she was thinking.

“So, uh, you live around here?” he asked, berating himself immediately for such an awkward question.

“I do, just down the shoreline,” she replied.

“Oh.”

She turned to meet his gaze, and he felt it once more. A pull, stronger than any he had ever known, as if she was hypnotizing him with just one look. Unable to stop himself, he leaned in closer, her lips beckoning him.

“What are you doing?” she asked curiously.

The spell broken, Arthur quickly leaned back and sputtered, “I, uh, I don’t know, to be honest.”

The woman smiled at him, and he felt his entire world light up with fireworks.

“What’s your name?”

“Arthur.”

“Nice to meet you, Arthur.”

She told him her name, and he repeated it just so he could say it out loud. He loved the way her name rolled off his tongue. He had shivered with desire from the way she had said her name. 

“So you saw me last night,” she said after a few moments.

He smiled nervously as guilt wracked him. “Uh, yup. I’m sorry, I didn’ mean to peek.”

“It’s alright, I should’ve been more careful,” she said, a wry grin on her face. “Usually no one camps here.”

Silence stretched between them as Arthur wondered what he should say, if anything.

She brought up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “And there’s not much to look at anyway,” she said self-deprecatingly.

“You were beautiful,” he blurted out suddenly. He couldn’t believe she’d think that. He wanted to burn the sight of her coming out of the water into his memories so he’d never forget.

She turned her head to look at him, and he felt the pull once more, but it was tinged with melancholy. It made his heart clench. He reached out and put an arm around her, pulling her into his chest, desperate to ease the pain. “Yer beautiful,” he repeated.

***

Surrounded by warmth, you sank into his chest and breathed in his scent. His natural musk, layered with balsam and leather, was soothing to you, made you feel safe and protected. No other man had affected you like this. Was this how your parents had fallen for each other? Was it an instant attraction?

You had been taught to follow your instincts, and something about this man made you want to keep him forever. To hold him tight and never let him go.

So you reached back out to him, wrapping your arms around his broad torso. Looking up at him, meeting his surprised expression, you leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were chapped but pliable as you pushed forward, pressing your body against his.

You were met with a startled grunt. He let you go and backed away, like a shy lady from an all too amorous man.

“Y-you barely know me,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“Sorry,” you said, shrinking back on yourself. Maybe you misread him, maybe he was just saying you were beautiful to make you feel better. Maybe you were just lonely and wanted to connect with him, the first man who had made you feel something in years.

“Look,” he said, leaning forward again, “it’s not that I don’t want to, I just think, well, maybe we git to know each other a bit more first before, uh, well…” He trailed off, gesturing blandly.

You laughed. Of course. He was shy. Standing up, you reached out to him. “Will you stay a while? My cabin is small but it’ll protect you from the elements better than your tent. And it’ll be warmer at night too.”

Arthur stared at your hand for a moment before standing up on his own. “Alright. I’ll pack up first.”

***

Arthur wasn’t sure how he was convinced to stay in a cabin with a woman he hardly knew, but every time he met her eyes, everything else fell away and all he wanted was to be with her. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, maybe a few days, maybe weeks. But he had never been so content to just fish and hunt and spend time with his sweet lady. He learned about her parents, who had been small-time farmers near Strawberry before they moved to her mother’s hometown, leaving her to live on her own. When he had asked why, she had said it was because she loved it here and didn’t want to leave.

He understood why; after the first few days of just roaming the land, living off its bounty, he was quite content to just stay and forget his troubles. She would go into town and sell his furs and pelts, and when he wasn’t hunting, he would help upgrade her little cabin, fixing up small things here and there to make her more comfortable.

He had insisted on sleeping on his bedroll on the floor beside her bed, at least for now. He felt like he was working up the courage to bed her, even though she clearly had given him an open invitation to her bed. 

Every night he thought about it.

And every night, he trudged to his bedroll and slept beside her bed like a faithful pet dog.

***

14 days had passed. The new moon would be out tonight, and you were itching to go for a swim.

But with Arthur here, you hesitated. He had seen you that first night, sure. But he hadn’t seen you clearly. He hadn’t seen your skin and hair color change, your gills at your collarbone, your preternaturally fast swimming. 

As you stood at the end of your little fishing dock that was connected to the porch of your cabin, you sighed. Watching the setting sun streak its beautiful orange rays across the water, you internally debated if you should show him so you could freely act as the guardian once more. You had been feeling stifled as of late, only able to use your powers while he was out hunting, and only in secret in case he might come out of the forest at any given time.

“What’s the matter, darlin’?”

You smiled. He had started calling you his darling or his sweetheart after a week of gentle caresses as he walked by, or even a casual kiss on the cheek as you went into town on an errand. No matter how much he said it, you melted every time. It was endearing and charming to you, even though they were simple words. The way he said them, the love and care he put into those pet names, was everything you wanted to hear.

Turning to Arthur, you saw that he was dressed in his usual blue shirt and black ranch pants, looking concerned. Seeing the care he had for your well-being made you come to a decision. He deserved the truth of you.

“I need to show you something.”

***

Arthur swallowed as his sweet lady began to disrobe right there on the dock. He was shocked to a standstill, unable to move as he saw every inch of beautiful skin exposed to his view. His pants grew tight, his throat dry, and his internal instinct to protect surged through him.

“Darlin’, what’re you…” 

He couldn’t utter another sound as he watched her usual skin shimmer and then shift to a blue-grey tint. Her hair became teal colored, and slits appeared above her collarbone.

“Gills,” she said as she pointed at them, shrugging shyly. “I’m a dragon spirit. Or half of one.”

Arthur could only nod in both shock and awe. He had suspected she was hiding something, but he would have never guessed it was something like this. He took in her form, human and yet not, familiar and yet bizarre. But still beautiful, wonderful, her.

“Do… do I disgust you?”

“No!” Arthur said, quickly taking two steps to stand in front of her. “Yer still the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”

Seeing her smile shyly and look away, his need to assure her only grew stronger. “That why you could swim so good?” he asked, reaching up to caress her neck, right above her gills.

She nodded again.

“What’d you mean by half?” he asked, curious.

“My father, he was a dragon, the great-great grand nephew of the Dragon King of the North Sea.”

Arthur nodded. “Oh. Okay then.” He didn’t understand what that meant, but it sounded a bit important.

She tittered. “I don’t really know how important that is either,” she said, answering the unspoken question. “But I can swim real fast, breathe underwater, and I can control water a little bit,” she said, her excitement growing with each word. She turned to the water and put out her hand.

Ripples started to appear, and they grew into small waves, rolling across the surface of the lake.

She turned back to him, a happy glow to her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re not disgusted by me.”

“I’d never be,” he replied, pulling her into his arms. His gaze traveled along her face, admiring her hair color, her bluish-grey skin, and the gills at her neck, before looking at her smile, full of self-confidence. She was radiant and it made her all the more alluring. 

“You’re beautiful, no matter what.”

***

This time when you kissed Arthur, he kissed you back, unafraid, bold, confident. He quickly took over, his fingers gripping the back of your head as he pulled your body closer to his. You felt the rough fabric of his shirt sliding along your sensitive nipples and moaned softly.

He suddenly wrapped one arm around your waist and one around your ass before picking you up with ease. 

“I need you darlin’,” he murmured before turning from the dock and walking determinedly towards your cabin. He maneuvered you inside and shut the door, not wanting any interruptions. Laying you down on the bed, he stepped away to light the lantern before returning to you, taking off his hat and flinging it aside.

You shifted back to your human colors, your gills disappearing.

“Yer magical,” Arthur whispered before resting his forehead against yours and closing his eyes, a wry grin on his face. You kissed him back, smiling in return, acknowledging his silly word choice and accepting his sentiment for what it was: a compliment. He shared your gaze for a few moments before kissing you back as he unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it open while he climbed over you. You could feel his impatience as he pressed his bare chest against yours, his kisses heating up and becoming demanding.

“Arthur,” you breathed as he moved down to kiss your neck, his lips tracing lines where your gills had been.

“Why’d I wait this long,” he muttered, mostly to himself, as he ran his fingers from your hip up your belly. His touch was feather-light, almost ticklish as he skimmed the underside of your breast before tracing circles around your areola. 

You writhed, whimpering softly. He looked at you, keeping his gaze locked with yours as he leaned down and took your nipple into his mouth. 

"Oh, yes," you moaned as his tongue played with you, distracting you just long enough for his other hand to caress the inside of your thighs. You parted your legs eagerly. 

You felt Arthur smile against your skin before he switched to your other breast, giving you the same pleasure as his hand slid between your legs, his fingers exploring your slit. 

"This honey fer me, darlin'?" he asked in a low, husky voice. 

"All for you," you whispered. 

He let out a soft growl of satisfaction before dipping a finger inside of you. Your hips lifted up towards his touch. Moving away from your breast, he kissed his way up your neck, to your cheeks, then to your lips once more. He took his time tasting you, his tongue languidly caressing yours as his fingers delved inside of you, his thumb brushing against your bud, each stroke driving you higher and higher towards your peak that was approaching rapidly.

You moaned his name, muffled as it was by his mouth on yours. He growled in return, pumping his fingers faster, his thumb stroking you with determination.

"Ah, ah, Arthur!" you cried out as you climaxed. As you felt the pleasure zip through your veins, you buzzed with power for a moment before it faded. 

You didn't have time to think about it, for Arthur climbed off the bed and took off the rest of his clothes. He was such a big man, with muscles from hard work, scars from a rough life, and a dangerous grace to him. He had power and knew how to use it. 

And right now, he wanted to make you release over and over again. 

He climbed over you, just like in your fantasies, and spread your legs, wrapping them around his waist. Taking his hard length in his hand, he slid the tip around your entrance, slicking himself up as he watched you tremble beneath him. 

"You sure 'bout this, darlin'?" he murmured, a slight tremor in his voice, as if he was holding back. He didn't stop sliding the head of his cock along your slit, up and down in a slow rhythm. 

"Yes, yes please Arthur, just take me!" you begged. He was driving you mad with his gentle strokes. You lifted your hips up, causing the tip of him to slip inside. 

"So needy, sweet girl," he crooned before he pushed forward, driving himself deeper inside of you. 

You writhed and winced as your body stretched around his girth. He was sweating, holding himself steady as he waited for you to regain your breath before inching forward some more. Patiently, Arthur watched your every reaction, taking great care to control his movements until his hips finally came flush with yours. 

He murmured your name, his lips brushing against yours before he kissed you. His hands cradled your face as he grinded against you, the heat of his body warming you up like a thick quilt. Deepening the kiss, he angled your head so he could devour you. A low moan escaped him as his hips shifted, building a steady rhythm of short thrusts. 

"More, Arthur," you said when he finally let you take a breath. 

"I'll give you whatever you need," he replied before lifting himself up, letting the cool air touch your body. He pulled his cock out almost all the way and waited for an eternal moment while he stared into your eyes, the lust blowing out his pupils. 

Then he slammed back inside of you.

Your pleasure-filled yell was stopped short by Arthur's swift uptick in pace. He was hammering his cock inside of your tight, wet channel, and he couldn't get enough. Not saying a word, he only moaned and panted as he drove into you relentlessly, taking just a split second to adjust his angle before continuing. 

"So good," he moaned before he got up onto his haunches, taking your hips in his big hands, his fingers digging into your flesh as he fucked you like a man possessed. He growled, a feral sound of pleasure, before he reached down and stroked your clit. 

"Need… to… see… you… let go…" he panted. 

You tightened your legs around his waist, meeting his thrusts with your own enthusiastic motions, reaching for your breasts and playing with your nipples before him. 

"Oh darlin', you look so pretty like that," he grit out, his face contorted in an effort to control his desires. He was so close. So very close. 

"Give me everything!" you gasped, your body shaking, on the edge of a precipice so high that you almost felt fear.

Feeling your body grip him so tightly, Arthur let out a passionate shout before he spilled inside of you. His eyes were wild as he stared at you, his mouth open as he drew in breath after ragged breath. He moaned as he thrust one last time before crushing his hips to yours, keeping his shaft inside of you for as long as possible. 

As he spent himself inside of you, you felt your core suddenly overflow with ecstasy, your body shuddering as you came around his thick cock. At the same time, your power unleashed, making your body glow a bluish hue. 

"Darlin'!?" Arthur panicked, sounding winded, his brow creased with worry. 

The power that had unlocked within you gave your vision a strange overlay of colors. And within the warm orange glow of Arthur was a black cloud in his chest. You reached out through the haze of your afterglow and pulled at it. 

He gasped and coughed. 

You pulled again. Now that you had touched it, you knew it was bad. It needed to get out of his system before it did permanent damage. 

Arthur grasped his chest. "What…" he trailed off as he coughed a few more times before you managed to heave out the black cloud from his lungs. You quickly quashed it in your hands. 

Looking up at him, you put your hands on his cheeks and kissed him, pouring the last of the glowing power inside of him. On some instinctual level, you knew you had healed him of something. Whether it was an old lingering illness or a new one that was just about to form, it was now gone from his system. 

When you finally pulled away, Arthur looked bewildered. For a few seconds, or a few minutes, you weren’t sure how slow or fast time was flowing, the two of you could only stare at each other, lost in that foggy place between dreams and reality.

"What'd you pull outta me?" Arthur finally asked, still a little breathless.

"Something bad. An illness, I think,” you replied. You took a deep breath before squeezing his hand. “Whatever it was, it will no longer hurt you." 

Arthur smiled and pressed his forehead against yours. "Thank you, sweetheart."

***

Arthur left a day later, telling you that he'd be back once he had taken care of some people.

You didn't see him for a long time.

Four months passed before you saw him again. He looked ragged, skinnier, as if he had been through hell and back. But when he saw you, he rushed over and fell into your arms, holding you tight as if you were the only real thing in his world. 

***

He told you everything. He confessed that he had been the one to help that criminal escape and shot up the town. That he had been chased all over three states with his gang. That he had stolen money from several trains. That he had been on a ship that had sunk and was stranded on an island for days before finding a way back. 

He told you about John. He told you about how he had helped him escape the Pinkertons, had ran with him all the way down the mountain before telling him where to meet his family. Then Arthur had set off, the long way around through the wilds of Ambarino so he could lose the men who were chasing him, just so he could get safely back to you.

You saw now that his eyes were unclouded, having seen his world for what it was. You saw pain and regret in his eyes, but you also saw understanding and a clarity that was not there before. He appeared to have finally found wisdom at a heavy price.

After he had told you everything, you cooked him a meal of steamed fish and herbs. He ate quietly, as if his confession had stolen all of his words from him. 

He finished his meal and sat in silence for a few minutes before looking towards you. "I ain't a good man—" 

You shushed him. "You are more good than not, Arthur," you said. "We all make mistakes. You were just trying to do your best. That's all any of us can do."

Reaching for his hand across the table, you grasped it and pulled it to your chest, placing it over your heart. "Will you stay?" 

Arthur smiled hesitantly. "You… still want me?" 

You stood up and leaned across the table to kiss him. "I'll always want you, Arthur. I love you."

He kissed you back. When he looked at you, his gaze full of gratitude. "I love you too, my sweet darlin'. Thank you fer believin' in me."

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

End Notes: I had to end it on a sappy note, of course. Hope you enjoyed that little romp with some folklore! 

[justcourttee]

Okay that "Love,Right?" oneshot was wonderful but now you've got me obsessed with wondering how all the boys would fight for Mari's attention and all trying to date her omg

On an off note, I hope this came out alright. I really wanted to answer your ask but I’m running on low fumes rn. Loved thinking about this too though! I would love to read a more thought out fic, but I have to imagine it would go something like this

I could totally imagine like them all being relatively close in age. Like let’s say, 

Dick 23

Jason 21

Tim 20

Mari 18

Damian 17

And Mari is almost done with her last year of lycee so she is in uber done mode until the batboys show up in Paris conveniently at the same time that the Wayne boys show up to scout out a potential new business partner. 

She first meets Dick at the gymnasium that Chloe’s father had built for her when she went through a gymnastics phase but soon opened it to the public after she had moved on to whatever interested her next. Marinette is there to practice swinging mid-air to move faster in battle and what better way to do that than over a safety net 40 feet in the air?

Anywho, Dick is just arriving to blow off some steam after a particularly long day of negotiating. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the Hawkmoth mission and the need for a cover, he would’ve abandoned Tim ages ago. He finished locking up his stuff and when he moves into the acrobat section that is always empty, he isn’t sure whether to be impressed or disappointed that someone is there first. She looked nervous as she finished tying her hair into a high ponytail, her eyes calculating as if she was debating if she could make the first jump.

He wants to tell her that there is an easier way to mount, but his curiosity gets the better of him. With one last look, she closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. Without warning, she takes off down the short walkway launching her whole body into the air. Dick is sure she’s going to fall, but at the last minute she reaches out, her hand grasping the bar as she uses her momentum to flip upward, landing gracefully on top of the swinging trapeze. 

Dick couldn’t help his cheers. Her eyes widened as she realized someone else was watching her and in what felt like slow motion, she lost her balance and fell onto the net below. Dick rushes over to make sure she’s okay, apologizing a million times a minute. They introduce each other and it’s like an instant connection. They spend the rest of the afternoon trying new techniques and helping each other improve their own techniques. 

When Dick returns to the hotel that night, he can’t help the fact that her first swing was stuck on replay in his mind. The next day, he rushes over to the gym only to find her there again. This time, he’s determined to get her number, and surprisingly (to him) he succeeds. They spend the night trading funny memes and tiktoks. After a couple of weeks, Dick decides to try and ask her on a date. They were already close friends, I mean she trusted him enough not to drop her from forty feet in the air, that meant she trusted him right?

He shows up with a giant bouquet of roses only to receive a text message that she couldn’t make it that day. While it was a setback, it didn’t mean he was going to give up. He would show up with a bouquet of roses every day until she was there to receive them. And only then would he ask her on a date, because I can totally believe that he wouldn’t want to do it over text. It’s in-person or not at all.

The second Wayne she meets is Jason.

Muggings in Paris weren’t common with Ladybug and Chat Noir around, but it seemed to be Marinette’s lucky day as some guy just decided that a high school girl had enough money in her little purse to steal. As he backed her down an alleyway, a small hand knife pointed at her, Marinette was considering her options.

She could always try to run. After all, the guy was big and bulky, it would be hard for him to keep up with her and she doubted he wanted her bag enough to actually put up a fight. Just as she was eyeing an opening, a small sound echoed through the alleyway, one she was quite familiar with. The guy’s face looked mortified as he turned slowly to face his attacker. 

The man said something in a hushed tone to the guy that Marinette couldn’t quite make out. Whatever it was though, it was enough for her would-be assailant to book it out of the alleyway without a glance back. Assessing her newest threat, Marinette decided that this guy was more punk than thug. She was safe for now. 

He asked her if she was okay and if she needed anything as he adjusted his gun back into his waistband. Marinette was fine, but she was curious as to how he smuggled a gun into France. 

“Ah. My American accent give me away Princess?”

His french was flawless, but it was clear that he wasn’t from the area. He joked that his adopted father was rich enough for the national security to look past it. At least, she was pretty sure he was joking. 

He asks if they can grab something to eat, just because a pretty girl like her shouldn’t go hungry. Marinette is tempted to decline, but her curiosity gets the better of her. They end up going to a small diner near her parent’s bakery where they spend the night flirting shamelessly, both tinging their compliments with enough sarcasm and insults that the people around them couldn’t tell if they were together or if they were related. 

Exchanging numbers, the two continued to meet up for weekly dinners at that same diner as they bond over hating people and insulting/admiring each other. When Jason finally realizes his flirting may have shifted from mocking to an actual crush, he's conflicted. It’s just a couple months, at most a year in Paris, but would that really be a reason not to try? He starts bringing her small gifts to the dinners, starting out small like her favorite dessert or small rocks that reminded him of her, but he soon gets more elaborate like bringing her his favorite books to borrow and throwing in a new set of threads for her sewing machine. 

He hopes that when she looks at the small gifts that she’ll start associating him with the things that make her happy and just maybe, she’ll fall for him too. 

I think you guys already know where Tim is going but I have to do this 

Marinette frequents a small coffee shop near the hotel that the Wayne Boys are staying in. She would just drink the coffee that her parents serve in the bakery, but they refused to let her load up her drinks with enough caffeine to get through her day. 

She always shows up at 7:00a, after all, she’s gotten better at this punctuality thing over the years. The owners already expect her at this point and already have her drink ready before she even steps foot through the door.

One morning, one of the owners ask her to deliver a coffee to the young man that fell asleep at one of their tables. 

“He’s the first person I’ve met whose order rivals yours Ms. Dupain-Cheng.”

Marinette is impressed as she inhales the strong black coffee wafting from the mug. He definitely amped it up with two expresso shots and maybe a pump of hazelnut? If he could taste it over the bitterness of the expresso, she would be impressed.

As she sat the cup down on the table, she slid into the booth in front of him, patiently waiting for him to stir. Watching his soft exhales, Marinette felt at peace. She had never seen someone sleep so softly without moving a muscle. As quietly as she could, she brought out her sketchbook. She got about halfway through his frame when his soft breathing stopped. 

Her eyes snapped up to find his blue ones studying her cautiously. Of course, she mutters out apologizes at a million miles a minute, trying to explain that she needed practice for her living art class and that she was just dropping off his coffee and she was so sorry for drawing him without his permission. As she finally trails off, Marinette is more confused than ever. She thought he was awake, his eyes studying her, but now she wasn’t so confident. She was pretty sure he was still half asleep, assuming she was some sort of hallucination.

He reached out, draining his cup of coffee without coming up for a single breath.

“I didn’t think I was this sleep-deprived. Please beautiful sleep-induced entity, draw me if you must.”

Marinette bites her lip trying not to laugh as he tiredly pulls out a laptop, typing away at seemingly nothing. 

The next day, Marinette finds him in his same spot, already two empty mugs occupying the table. As she orders, she’s sure to grab an extra one for him before joining him once more. This time, Tim is the one to apologize as he realizes finally that she is a real girl and not a hallucination. 

Marinette laughs it off and the briefly chat about their lives. As Marinette gets up to leave for her morning classes, she promises to meet him for coffee the next morning. Surely enough, as she walks through the door, he’s already at their booth. He waves her over, motioning to the coffee mug holding her go-to order. They come to an agreement, he allows her to draw him for practice, she offers him the occasional advice. There is sometimes small talk, but it’s mostly just full of comfort that they found in each other’s presence. 

After weeks, Tim finally decides that he wants to get to know this beautiful coffee angel. He starts by asking her to meet at a bakery that he had been dying to try. As he arrives at the bakery, Marinette sheepishly admits that it was her parent’s bakery. Tim feigns ignorance, but that smirk he gives her makes her reconsider the innocent sleep-deprived man she had met weeks earlier. From now on, he has breakfast with the Dupain-Cheng family every morning. After all, your in-laws have to like you first before you can try anything else, right?

Finally, we have Damian. 

They meet in the living art class. He had already taken something similar at Gotham Academy, but he was curious to see the French side of something he cherished so dearly. 

At first, he hates her. She reminds him of a mixture between Dick and Tim and in all honesty, he only volunteered to pretend to be a foreign exchange student to spend the majority of the day away from his brothers. 

He slowly begins to change his mind though as he is partnered with her for a partner draw project. The teacher forces them to spend all of class drawing each other how they feel the world should see their partner. It involved a lot of sharing and as she became more confident in him, he slowly felt himself opening up to this strange girl as well. 

It was going fine until one day, two of her old classmates entered the classroom, trying to pick a fight with Damian. He remembered one of them, yes the sausage haired girl, her name was Lily perhaps? She tried to ask him out and he turned her down, hard. Now here she was, crying the fakest tears he had ever seen as some ombre haired woman was chewing him out. 

He was fine going on ignoring them, but then the ombre haired woman reached out for his notebook, tearing it from his grasps. She glanced over it for a second before raising it above her head and slamming it into the ground. She lifted her foot to stomp on it, but she never had a chance to finish. Before Damian had even moved a muscle, Marinette was standing above her, a murderous look in her eyes. The sausage haired woman helped the girl to her feet as they retreated quickly, both of their faces pale as they sent empty threats in Marinette’s direction. 

With a sigh, Marinette picked up his notebook, dusting it off gently before handing it back to him, apologizing for her ex-classmates. He wanted to let her know that he didn’t need her to look out for him, that he could handle it, but his mind flashed to the look in her eyes. If anything, his interest was now piqued by the girl. 

As the project came to an end, the moment of truth had finally come. Damian showed Marinette her portrait. He had drawn her as mother nature, warm and protective of her children and cold to anyone that threatened them. He would be lying if the small blush on her face didn’t boost his pride. When she showed Damian his portrait, he couldn’t help but let his jaw drop, even slightly. 

He looked like a medieval knight, posing on the defense, a slight trickle of what looked like blood dripping out the corner of his mouth. 

“I’m sorry, please don’t think it’s weird. It’s just the more you talked, and so passionately too about how you wanted to protect everything dear to you from your family to your pets, I couldn’t help but get swept away in this idea that you were some gallant knight-”

He cut her off with a single look as his face broke into a grin. He loved it. Everyone always described him as a demon or a baby bird, but a gallant knight, it was certainly a first.

That night at the hotel, he would search google for the best ways to ask out a girl. After all, he sure as hell wasn’t asking his brothers.

Permanent Tag List:

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[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[ellgrimm]

Sweets (OHSHC bakery AU)

He lightly dusted the rectangle of dough with fine, white flour and ran it through the sheeter one last time. Mori peeled the slightly bouncy dough off the machine bed and placed it on a tray lined with a piece of plastic film. Wrapping the film snuggly around the croissant dough, he smoothed out the indents impressed by his fingertips. He scooped the tray off the maple wood table and spun around gracefully, with habitual movement, to slip it into the fridge along with the other identical trays of dough.

With that done, he slid out of the floury work apron and traded it for a fresh one he kept tidy for sales at the front register. He washed his hands and checked for any errant streaks of flour on his face. Satisfied, Mori walked out from the fairly austere kitchen and into the world of rich woods and shining glass cases that was the customer-service side of the French patisserie shop and cafe.

Haruhi was in the middle of preparing a cup of drip coffee for a patron. Another customer just arrived at the pastry counter and stood politely, waiting to place his order. “Why don’t you see to our guest, Mori?” she asked cheerfully, as she held a gooseneck kettle and slowly circled hot water over the fresh coffee grounds, keeping an eye on the weight of water being poured. A rich, gold-black coffee dripped out the bottom of the cone filter into a ribbed glass pitcher.

Mori turned to face the pastry case and reflexively picked up a set of tongs. He performed a test click: *click*. Then he looked out over the top of the case and said in a deep and calm voice a phrase he had said at least 500 times before: “Good afternoon, what would you like today?”

But there wasn’t anyone there?

He scanned left and right.

Then he directed his gaze down and his heart skipped. A pair of enormous, caramel eyes were looking up at him from underneath a glorious mop of flaxen hair. The boy spoke, blushing a bit, in a voice that rang out clear and light, “Good afternoon! I would like one tartelettes aux fraises, please.” His French was pretty good, or at least it sounded good, Mori thought. “For here,” the boy added.

“Of course,” Mori replied, as he carefully lifted the mini tart off the ceramic tray. A glazed strawberry, sliced and fanned out over piped pastry cream, sat like a glistening red jewel. He placed it on a round plate and brought it over to the register counter. “Anything else today?” Mori asked.

“Can I… get a caffe mocha?” the charming and petite lad said reluctantly after reading through the coffee menu.

Mori caught the hesitation. “Yes, sir. How many shots of espresso?” he asked attentively.

The caramel eyes wibbled a little, damply, and he burst out suddenly “um? No shots? Please?”

Mori was relieved. Now he understood what the problem was: the menu did not list “hot chocolate.” He made a mental note that he should suggest a menu update to the manager. Making cute boys cry was already not his preference; and this boy in particular deserved the world, he immediately and definitively decided.

Mori nodded and completed the cash part of the transaction. “I will bring your strawberry mini tart and no-shots ‘caffe mocha’ to you in a minute, sir. There is a table with a nice view by that window, if you like.” He gestured to a small, round table that offered a glimpse across the street of a park with a duck pond. A coveted sight in urban Tokyo.

The boy smiled and practically floated over to the promised seat. He caught sight of a mama with her raft of ducklings zooming past and gasped with delight. Mori had to work incredibly hard to suppress a grin. It was everything he had hoped for.

Haruhi noticed. She noticed a lot of things, to be clear. Here, she was shocked and intrigued that Mori had said the longest continuous string of words than she had heard at any point over the past two years since he had started working here.

To be honest, she had been surprised when Kyoya had hired him on, considering how much talking is often involved in customer service. Kyoya, in an uncommonly forthcoming reveal into the inner workings of his mind, succinctly told Haruhi once that “diversity is a strength.”And that meant, in stark contrast to longtime coworker Tamaki’s effervescent and somewhat scattered personality, a staunchly grounded giant who is almost religious in keeping up on the daily labors of a bakery is certainly an asset.

Haruhi grabbed a silver dessert spoon and placed it and a napkin on the wooden serving tray, next to the strawberry mini tart. She winked at Mori as he finished making what was honestly a hot chocolate. He grunted softly, as if to say “hush, you.”

---

He came in every day that week. And every day he tried a different sweet pastry. As far as Mori could tell, he loved them all equally.

And Kyoya saw no objection to adding Hot Chocolate to the official cafe menu. “It’s not seasonally appropriate, but there has been an anti-caffiene health trend picking up lately,” he said decisively.

On the last day of his work week, Mori once again watched the boy leave the shop for the day. This time, the boy, busy looking at his phone, bumped into a trio of well-built, strong young men. He started to apologize for running into them, and Mori panicked a little, instinctively leaping over the counter and dashing past the other customers sitting at their tables. A blur of hyperactivity in an otherwise amazingly calm and inviting space.

And then Mori stopped, his heart beating hard.

“Haninozuka-sensei! We are so very sorry for getting in your way!” the trio barked, stiffly and respectfully bowing. Honey smiled kindly and waved them off.

“Oh, no, it was my fault entirely! I must have been busy with my own thoughts,” Haninozuka offered brightly. And after a quick exchange of pleasantries, he turned and walked up the street.

The trio lingered and talked amongst themselves. Mori tried not to listen, sort of. But he desperately needed to know more about this Haninozuka person. Their… sensei?

“Sensei was so...” Said the first one.

“I know! He’s been such a goddamn hardass at the dojo lately. I wasn’t expecting it.” The second offered.

“I was ready for him to beat us up right here on the sidewalk.” The third expressed, now relieved.

Mori was dumbfounded. This bubbly slip of a lad who giggled at baby ducks and was afraid to ask for a coffee without coffee... was apparently also a brutal martial arts teacher? He couldn’t possibly... and the name was familiar, but he couldn’t finish the thought.

Mori swam in his thoughts for a minute, completely adrift in the dissonance, before Tamaki finally caught his attention and brought him back to earth. “Mori-senpai!” he practically sang, “you left this winsome young lady before giving back her change~”

Mori’s eyes flashed and he looked back, embarrassed. “Very sorry, miss.”

“Um, well, I don’t mind!” she chirped. And she honestly hadn’t minded. He had been athletic and lithe --like an action hero-- when he vaulted himself over the counter, and it had made her think spicy thoughts she would never say aloud. Not something she had expected to experience during her trip to the nicest pastry shop in the ward, but it was a surprise she would treasure for years.

---

It was an agonizing week before Haninozuka came back into the patisserie.

Mori spent every shift that week dutifully doing his work, to the best of his ability. But his ability had degraded because a solid half of his brain was fixated on this mystery. Cute? Cruel? Sweets? Sensei? It consumed him, and he was beginning to hate himself for it. It had been much easier to do this job before he had someone he so looked forward to being around.

Then Mori caught himself. Sure, the work was easier before, when he had been habitually focused entirely on the tasks. Separating eggs. Measuring flour. Shaping butter into thick slabs. Pouring coffee and picking croissants out of the case. Even washing dishes. It had become a somewhat mindless rhythm.

But Haninozuka had made him want to come to work. It made the work feel more purposeful, somehow. It was like Mori had a specific audience in mind when he wiped tables. An audience he wanted to feel safe and comfortable and happy in his domain.

But what if Haninozuka was a bad person? Those three guys had been so sure that this was an unusual side to him. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for their comments to color his idea of this boy. But he also was afraid it would be foolish to not heed their words. Surely they knew their sensei better than Mori could possibly have gotten to in a handful of hours over a few days?

But eventually, he did come back.

This time, he was escorted by the trio from before, as well as a new face. The fourth person, who had similar facial features to Haninozuka, but was a bit taller than him, also had a permanent scowl topped with a grown out bowl cut and glasses, and he was nervously eyeing Haninozuka, watching to see what he would order.

Mori was ready to push the register icon for in the hot chocolate part of the order, and jumped ahead to asking “What pastry would you like today, sir?”

Haninozuka, looking resolute, jaw clenched and without the usual gleam in his warm eyes, stated plainly “I’ll take a plain croissant and black coffee today. Thank you.” The bowl cut kid visibly relaxed a little.

Mori felt the pain in his unusually flat voice, but only nodded. “Excellent choice. Is this together or separate?”

Once he finished taking the group order, they paid and left to go sit down at a pair of tables outside on the sidewalk, well away from the previously frequented pond-viewing seat.

Mori turned to the task at hand. He brought out a set of wooden half-trays, one for each order, and selected pastries for each guest while Haruhi got to work on the drinks. Mori used the tongs to pick up the plain croissant and paused. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. It felt so wrong.

He put it back and selected a hazelnut and chocolate ganache filled croissant instead. It looked nearly identical on the outside, especially if you weren’t paying close attention. Only a small seam with chocolate peeking through could be noticed, and even then, that was on the bottom side of the pastry.

He then turned to Haruhi and said, without room for question, “make the black coffee a hot chocolate. And put all the drinks in to-go cups.”

Haruhi smiled, and used a marker to write “black” on the paper cup that would be destined to not, in fact, have any coffee in it whatsoever. She was already thinking similarly, but had been waiting for Mori to declare it officially.

Haruhi helped Mori carry the trays of drinks and pastries out to the sidewalk tables. He carefully placed the correct one in front of Haninozuka and gave a half smile. Haninozuka barely noticed, staring dead ahead, bracing himself for what would be an absolute trial of bitter drink and plain food. She distributed napkins and utensils appropriately. They both chimed “Thank you, please enjoy,” and turned to head back inside.

“Why don’t you wipe down table 3?” prompted Haruhi, who magically produced a clean damp rag and offered it to Mori. Table 3 was inside the shop, but aside from the large pane of clear glass, was right next to the sidewalk tables. The audio was barely muffled. Mori took the cloth and singlemindedly started wiping at a table that was cerftifiably already clean.

Haninozuka tremulously started with the pastry. He nibbled cautiously at one corner. He sighed.

Mori cursed silently. “You have to take a bigger bite to get to the filling!” he thought.

Haninozuka couldn’t bring himself to try a sip of black coffee yet. He went back to the croissant. This time a luscious double whammy of chocolate and hazelnut hit his tongue. His eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

Haninozuka Yasuchika, his brother, was taking a bite of his own pastry and found the kouign-amann satisfactorily salty as well as only lightly sweet. He grabbed his latte and brought it to his lips, then paused. He couldn’t help himself. Squinting suspiciously through his glasses, which light glinted off of even though they were all fully sitting in the shade, he prodded verbally “what about your black coffee, Mitsukuni-san?”

Mori kept pushing the cleaning rag over a now polished strip of an already spotless table and watched intently. “Mitsukuni” he thought to himself. “A nice name. And… I feel like I know it?”

Mitsukuni tried to not lament the inevitable ruination of his surprisingly edible, nay delicious, croissant. He reached for his cup and brought it closer. Holding his breath, so as not to overpower his sense of taste, he sipped delicately. Yasuchika grinned.

“Why it is perfectly tasty, brother! As usual, I mean.” Mitsukuni smiled, practically florid.

Yasuchika was caught between doubt and relief. His alien brother had so obviously hated giving up sweet things this past month. How could anyone go from entire cakes to once piece of (albeit very nice) plain bread? And from the most syrupy, whipped cream-bedecked drinks to black coffee? It was an unprecendented transformation. But on the other hand, Yasuchika felt accomplished. He had singlehandedly pressured his older brother to reform his ways. It was for the best, obviously. What sort of dojo is led by someone who would do anything for a chocolate bar? The lack of self control was shameful.

The other three guys were completely oblivious to the intimate details of sugary drama. They had simply thought it would be a good idea to bring their sensei to the only place they had seen him happy in recent memory, as part of a quiet campaign to improve the captain’s mood. Practice had gotten shockingly intense this past week, and, if they were to survive next week they needed their sensei to ease off a touch. Not that they could EVER say so to his face.

Mori checked that Mitsukuni was happily enjoying his hot chocolate and pastry, and that Yasuchika remained none the wiser. Satisfied, he decided the table’s newly worn hole was deep enough and turned back to his work behind the service counter. Haruhi winked and said nothing.

---

It was almost another week before Mitsukuni came back to the patisserie. Mori had been more patient this time. He felt firmly confident that Mitsukuni would find his way back when he was ready.

And his patience was rewarded, in a way.

Mitsukuni staggered in, after dark and only twenty minutes before closing. His eyes were bleary and his countenance groggy and listless. Mitsukuni, usually so sprightly and upright, dragged his bookbag on the ground and pulled up to the duck-watching table. Mori wasn’t sure what to do. Hand the man a hot chocolate as usual? Or… ask how he was doing???

Mori decided to walk over and offer some direct, compassionate human interaction. “Good evening,” he said, simply.

Mitsukuni looked up, with dark circles under his eyes.

He slammed his hand on the table, which startled Mori for but a moment, and said “I wanna shot!”

“...” said Mori.

“Of chocolate syrup, I mean. Like, a couple pumps in an espresso glass.”

Mori left and came back in an inhumanly fast turnaround with exactly that, and offered the teeny glass full of viscous sugary syrup to Mitsukuni, who promptly sucked it down and smacked the glass upside down on the table. “Another!” he garbled.

Mori didn’t remember grabbing the entire syrup bottle, but it was in his hand already. He decided not to think too hard about that and just left the entire thing on the table and walked away, back to cleaning up behind the counter for the night.

Well after the shop closed, with most of the lights off, save for the one over the register, Mori was done closing with one exception. Mitsukuni was finishing the last of the chocolate syrup. He had perked up considerably, and was now waving his arms animatedly, talking fast about his troubles.

“And Chika-chan comes up to me, and says, you know what he says?” Mori did not know. “He says that real men don’t like sweet things! He tells me I won’t be able to get any respect from my men if I keep eating midnight cakes and carrying candies in my pockets!”

Mori assumed Chika-chan must be the grumpy boy in glasses from the other day. He couldn’t say he liked him, particularly. Or, to be more precise, he didn’t like anyone who dared tell Mitsukuni that his respectability was dependent on having “appropriate” and “masculine” interests.

Mitsukuni blurted out a final exclamation of “Chika doesn’t have the balls to talk shit about Usa-chan, though!” and he… passed out.

Mori didn’t know who this Usa-chan was, but he did know that the shop was closed and that Mitsukuni needed to go home. But where was home?

He decided to try something. He looked up the name “Mitsukuni” along with the words “Bunkyo ward” and “dojo.” The search results were conveniently helpful, offering a website that encouraged serious karate students to sign up under the tutelage of Haninozuka Mitskuni.

“Oh. He is really that Haninozuka,” Mori thought to himself. Ages ago, there had been a falling out between their families. Once a close bond through fealty and eventually marriage and bloodline between the Haninozuka and the Morinozuka families, had been broken a couple generations back. The stories we still told, the wounds still fresh. Mori hadn’t even thought about them as “real” since they had become more of a background radiation to his life than a pressing influence. Until today, that is.

He grabbed the leather book bag and slung it over his shoulder, and then picked Mitsukuni up gingerly. Mitsukuni remained unconscious, a few smears of chocolate around his mouth. A legendary sugar crash.

Mori locked up the shop, without even having to put the boy down. He walked towards the Haninozuka family dojo, which was close by.

The lights were on. It was fairly quiet on the grounds. Only once voice was shouting from inside the dojo training hall as they practiced the forms.

Mori called out. “Excuse me. I have your sensei.”

A surprised face poked out. It was Yasuchika. “My… sensei? Oh, you mean my brother, Mitsukuni.” He looked suspiciously at Mori. “Who are you? What did you do to him?”

“I work at the French pastry shop up the street. I didn’t do anything, he was just very very tired.”

Mori purposefully “forgot” to mention his name. And he didn’t want to stick around to find out what Yasuchika really thought of him, especially with their families at odds.

Instead, he gently deposited Mitsukuni’s slumbering form on a training mat and put the book bag down next to him. Mori looked into his calm, round face and committed it to memory. Then he issued a quick departing bow and turned away, leaving the compound. He didn’t look back with his eyes, but a small part of him looked forward with his heart, in a complicated way.

He couldn’t shake that, despite it all, he still wanted to see this Haninozuka back at his patisserie and cafe. He walked home, tired.

[spiltscribbles]

Any chance you could give us some Arabic speaking Remus headcanons? Loved your latest fic ❤️ 📚

OMFG gorgeous sugarplum! I legit only just was reminded of this while scrolling through my inbox right now! But my heart is finna burst!!! Thank you SO SO much and yes I would love to give some Headcanons about this! Especially since the next long story I’m working on includes this dynamic, and I’m so excited about it!! However, common disclaimer that while I am Arab and culturally Muslim even if I don’t practice like the rest of my family lol, I am Palestinian and not Syrian. So with every identity there are different experiences and customs no matter how closely intertwined. So I apologize for any inconsistency   that a Syrian may read and disagree with, and please feel free to correct me<3 <3

.-

The FIC this HC is from 

.-

So first off some background on his mum in the story 

I chose the name Vivian based off a friend of a friend who’s uncle married a woman by that name back in Palestine,  so it’s definitely extremely uncommon, but a fully Arab lady was named it, so like it’s my defense bahaha. But it also means lively, and coupled with Hussein as her maiden name which means beautiful, it just fit her personality to a t!! 

She was born into a pretty secular family in Syria in the late 1920s, so there was a lot going on in that time period. But her dad was pretty influential, working in the government and such. Vivian was also the youngest of four girls and three boys so she was pretty spoiled tbh

She attended a boarding school in France through out her adolescence and decided to go to university there too, so she’s fluent in both Arabic and French, with pretty great English as well. Though she wasn’t exactly white passing, even though like a bunch of Syrians/Palestinians/Lebanese folk she was somewhat fair, she had distinctly Arabian features, like the large almond shaped eyes and thick lashes and thicker brows, and a long, largeish nose, accented by full lips. So she experienced a good amount of jeers and discrimination, especially when folks found out her surname. So I think she’s able to relate to Remus in that sense of being a wolf at least, and later on  when he comes out as gay.

It was 1950  when she and a few of her girlfriends went to Wales for holiday after completing university. The second Lyall first spotted her in the woods while she was trying to make it back to the cabin near the Irish Sea with her mates, it was something like love, because duh. She was a fucking knock out!! A babe and a baddy! Literally so far out of his league its ridiculous! But on Vivian’s side,  she was mostly just amused and a bit enamored by this cocksure Welshman who had the most endearing of crooked smiles that their son would inherit a decade later. So obviously she didn’t make it easy on him, but eventually she let him take her out on the last night of her trip, and was pleased to find out that they had the same sort of humor and the same passion for their careers and even the same love for the outdoors too.

 They had a long distance relationship for two years while she went to grad school so she could teach about classics while Lyall himself was rising the ranks in the Ministry for regulation and control of magical creatures— Unbeknownst to her, the Floo network  was very helpful with the distance. Just thank God Lyall himself is a Muggle born because he really had to fake the hell out of it lol.

So just to speed things up they got married on a lovely June evening in  1955,  subsequent to  Vivian excepting a professorial job in Cardiff after Lyall told her about the Wizarding world. At first Vivian thought e was tripping on some subpar edibles until he proved it by transfiguring her snuff box into a lovely broach that she kept for the rest of her life, So after Vivian was convinced, she became  absolutely enthralled by all of the magic so completely. 

They were trying for a few years when she finally became pregnant with Remus in 1959, and they were both so over the moon (pun unintended).

So like I said above, Vivian’s family are pretty secular, so I see her mostly practicing the cultural aspects of Islam. For example, every Friday— which is the equivalent to Sundays being the holy day  for Christians— she lights up the instance that she always keeps herself stocked up on after her annual trip to Syria, instead of the typical candles she ordinarily prefers.  And Remus swears that for the rest of his life whenever he smells it, he’s back to being a baby, puttering around the house and watching her dusting the shelves while humming quietly an Arabic song that’ played out the gramophone  by a man who’s music would soon become regarded as the song of the people. Or Remus would recall being snuggled into her lap while she read him a novel on the windowsill. Or he’d simply remember listening to his parents laughter fluttering in the air while he fell asleep by the fire, subconsciously making the flower buds closest to him bloom with his untapped magic.

Remus’s first clear memory— thanks to the endless pictures— is when he was around four years old, before the attack, and they were staying in Vivian’s home town in Damascus. While the men congregated out doors for cigars and cards and the women in the living room chatting while snacking on watermelon seeds, his older cousins— who were all girls— dragged him off to one of the bedrooms and doted on him because he was the baby of that side of the family. And he remembers walking out in a set of one of their heels and a headscarf wrapped around his head which made his Mama and Tata and Aumties laugh out loud and croon over him, and all his uncles and Sido call him Aumty Remus.

The attack by Greyback happened soon after they returned to Wales, and I’m not gonna touch on it becs I’ not finna depress myself. But it was a January morning after his first transformation and he remembers that when he woke up, he saw the cookies stuffed with dates resting on his bedside with a glass of milk that Lyall had put a cooling charm on. And they’re indulgent treats that Vivian makes for both Eids every year even though they don’t celebrate them in any other way lol. But the cookies always reminds him of family and of feeling safe in his mother’s arms, and they still work to make him feel better even after the worst thing he has ever experienced in his short life.

Remus’s love of poetry came from both sides of his parents, but it was listening to his mother recite the story of Majnun Layla in it’s original Arabic that really made him glow for the art form, and brought him to discovering his favorites like Auden and Neruda. 

There’s a ornate, wooden prayer box that has been past down on the Hussein side of the family for five generations, it was originally  meant to hold a Qran but for the past three it’s simply just been a beautiful piece of decoration. So when Vivian gave it to Remus when he was headed off to Hogwarts, little Remus asked McGonagall to help him with locking  charms so it could become a safe place for him to keep his most cherished of nicknacks ant momentos, so obviously,  she silently added a charm to keep the wood nearly unbreakable and the extension charm atop of that, like Hermione with her bag, so that he could keep as many happy memories as possible inside of it, and she prayed that there would be so many that it threatened to burst. 

The last time Remus opened the box was in 1996, when he was putting away the ring Sirius gifted him as a match to his own in some feeble promise of forever only weeks before James and Lily’s own engagement. 

Once during first year, he and the lads were staying up late, trading stories about how they got their most ridiculous scars— after seeing the one that scraped across Remus’s left shoulder blade— But it got to a point where they were all feeling a bit nippish, so they went down to the kitchens for some of the chocolate pudding that was served during dinner that night. And Remus idly asked the house elves if they could make him a batch of Kinafa because he was getting home sick and missed when he and his Mama would dash over to the city whenever they were feeling antsy, and she’d take him to their favorite hooka bar after buying a round of the dessert— which is basically sweetbread stuffed with cheese— from down the block. And they’d stay sitting beneath the starlight, and talking about her job and his lessons from school while she’d let him try a discrete puff or two and they’d laugh about everything and nothing at all.

The next time they stopped by the kitchens one of the younger house elves presented him with the snack gleefully, and it tasted fine, just not like how they do back home. So Remus smiled warmly at Tipsy, the house elf, and thanked her with real sincerity.

But his face must’ve betrayed him because after easter break, Sirius plops down a fresh batch of them on Remus’s bed before leaping into his own, casually mentioning that he saw how grossed out Remus looked when trying the one the house elves made, and it was from a restaurant close to Grimmauld so it’s not that big of a deal, and then he rushed to cursing at James for stealing his favorite pen and swearing that  if he broke it he’s gonna have hell to pay. Remus had only blushed and chuckled  with a small smile on his face when he cut himself a small piece and finished the half sheet off with the rest of their house later that night during an impromptu party that the Marauders would become infamous for in later years.

It was the summer after second year when all the marauders visited Remus back home in Wales and when they heard Vivian call him Qamar practically every other sentence, which of course lead to endless ribbing and eventually  to his nickname of Moony— even though it’s so fucking obvious and Remus loves and hates it in equal parts. God his friends are so fucking stress inducing!

Remus teaches the other marauders funny Arabic curse words and they use them in class so that they can talk shit about particularly disgusting Slytherins without them being any of the wiser. (Yes I did do this with my friends, and I’d do it again! POW! POW! POW!)

It’s from Vivian that Remus has an affinity for coffee as strong as shit, but also prefers his tea weak— specifically two sugars and a dash of milk. But seriously, if you’ve ever tried Arabian coffee you’d understand, that shit is so fucking strong it’s literally a hate crime LMFAO. But yeah, this habit is definitely a point of contention between him and Sirius— who’s actually so fucking posh no matter how much he wants to be punk, and he stands by only drinking black tea— like Merlin intended— and saying bugger off to any and all coffees. “Leave that shite to the French and Americans.” And Remus would try to keep himself from making eyes at him from across the table, because God Sirius is hot when he’s all fiery  and impassioned, even when it’s about the dumbest, most inconsequential shit.

Something that’s sort of funny is that Remus was the first among them to become a fucking pot head and could drink them all  under the table even though Sirius himself has got two stone and three inches on him. But Remus still refuses to eat ham, purely because he never grew up eating it and doesn’t care too now. Sirius had to specifically ask Euphemia and Monty to make turkey for Christmas dinner their sixth year just because he knew that Remus’s head would probably implode with the decision between being rude and not eating it or forcing himself to gag down the unfamiliar meat.

When Remus is really, really fucking drunk he definitely spends the night only speaking in Arabic! (Don’t look at me I’m trash just because I stole this from my own life lmfao) But yeah, it’s really fucking hilarious and Sirius swears to God he’s so fucking in love with him while listening to Remus ranting in the unfamiliar language. And he’s like positive that half the time he’s actually just cursing Sirius out but he doesn’t even care because it’s SO! DAMN! CUTE!  And sometimes Sirius decides to speak French at a drunk off his arse Moony, who occasionally replies back in a stiff staccato before returning back to the easy Arabic. And it’s just a mess.

Ok so sadness warning

In my head, Vivian loses her fight against breast cancer the July after the Marauders graduate from Hogwarts, and afterwords Remus gets a tattoo of her name in Arabic on his chest, and the word for soul on the nape of his neck. He locks away that battered copy of Magnun Layla in the wooden box she gave him years ago, along with a woolen  scarf that smelt like her perfume.

 It’s Sirius who buys a set of prayer beads to hang off her photo above the mantel in the flat he and Remus share, and when Remus sees it he literally feels like  he might crack open with tears, but opts to kiss Sirius thank you instead, and they stay tangled on the sofa for the rest of the day in quiet contemplation.

One night, in late 1979, while  the war was only getting worse and worse—  Sirius was hit by a cutting curse to the ribs. And it was really fucking bad, but thankfully James got him to his house in time for Lily to help and heal. He slept for the most part for nearly an entire day, but remembers snippets. Like when Remus had sprinted into the room with fear painted all over his soft features, and when James put a cooling cloth to his head. But most distinctly, Sirius recalls Remus gingerly lying besides him and Sirius talking gibberish at his boyfriend while Remus plunged his entire face against his back, eyes wet with tears and body shuttering as he squeezed him softly, saying something quietly in Arabic. Sirius obviously didn’t understand like 99.9% of it, but he did catch the word “Habibi,” which he instantly remembers as an old pet name Vivian use to call Remus with so much love it made her entire countenance sparkle. It’s an endearment  that means beloved, or darling, and it feels like Remus is begging Sirius to stay with him and Sirius’s throat is still raw from the screaming, so he can only  reply by dragging Remus’s hand up to his mouth and kissing his knuckles tenderly. And he knows that whatever he does for the rest of his days, he loves Remus Lupin with every cell in his body.

Oof this got mad depressing…. Chow anyways, I can add a picture of the container you’re suppose to use for the instance if anyone wants that?

Thank you again dear Nonny!!!

Ask Me For Headcanons About A Story I’ve Written Or For One You Want To See Written

[elsanna-shenanigans]

August Contest Submission #7: The path of the rose

Words: ca. 3,500 Setting: Canon Lemon: no CW: None

The path of the rose

The climb was steep; it was slippery, the narrow - barely threaded path, treacherous and unforgiving. Elsa’s hands were bandaged in bloodied rags, same as her feet, but the aching from the blisters had dulled days ago. When she finished climbing the side of the sharp ridge, she stood alone on the edge - almost defiantly - overlooking the great misty valley ahead; the whiskers of fur around her neck fluttered at the wild wind’s mercy, mirroring the few short locks of hair that framed her sunburned cheeks. 

Her pale lips were chapped, her arms bruised and cut, but her determination was stronger. Only the last step remained; only one final test to overcome.

Before she descended into the white unknown of the mists, she took out the small silver locket that hung from her neck and stared at the tiny, hand painted portrait of a copper-haired, care-free smiling girl. 

‘I will be home soon.’ Elsa thought; her image was the only warmth she needed deep into the mountains.

-ooo-

As each blast crossed the air, they all bursted into sparkling droplets, like diamonds shining under the gentle winter’s sun.

Anna watched - wide-eyed and riveted, as the girl danced in the middle of the forest’s small clearing.

Each movement brought another glimmering streak of pure white ice; as she moved, as her body twisted and her feet shifted elegantly, waves and pillars and spirals rose and fell on the whims of her hands’ motions and the determined gaze in her blue eyes. 

Badly hidden as she was - alongside the bushes that covered the edge of the forest’s clearing, it didn’t take long for the other girl to notice her. Those same crystal-blue eyes peered at the blushing redhead curiously, tilting her head as if she was looking at some harmless, cute critter.

Anna had seen those clothes before, if only in the few times her father had allowed her to accompany him to the northern market. The round strips of fabric falling on the sides of the skirt, knotted at the small of the girl’s back, the sleeveless, blue and brown shirt and the strange, spiral-shaped bracers that covered her forearms, only the Magi - the outsiders - wore such refined clothing. 

Once she noticed those exotic, sky-colored clothes, her hands immediately pulled at her dirty apron and plain long skirt, her feet shifting around shyly.

“Hello.” The girl’s voice was crisp and clear when she came closer, standing right underneath the trees’ shadows; small dots of light coming from the foliage peppered her face and shining, white hair. “Who are you?”

“Anna!” She squeaked. The Magi girl nodded, and after a few awkward seconds, Anna offered her hand, which the other shook, a soft smile pulling at her lips.

“I’m Elsa. Elsa Northwind.”

-ooo-

No matter how much her mother tried, Anna refused to be caged in the peaceful but boring rhythm of life in her small village. Sneaking out into the woods became a form of art for her: sometimes, all she needed was for Iduna to turn her head as they went about their business at the market for Anna to slip out of sight.

Anna’s teen years passed in a mixture of the smell of freshly-baked bread at her family’s tavern and the almost minty smell of pine needles from her excursions into the forest, accompanied always by Elsa. They would see each other in town as well every now and then, whenever Elsa’s people travelled down the mountains to trade with the villagers, but the harsh gaze of her mother kept them apart; at least, whenever she was around. Anna didn’t care about her parent’s prejudice, of course. Elsa’s magic was marvelous, a miracle that should be cherished and admired. It held great power, great dangers too, yes, but also, so much beauty that words sometimes failed her to describe it.

As time went by, Elsa’s powers grew stronger, and more intricate. She gave Anna small trinkets of ice that never melted: small delicate snowflakes, small mounted-knights like the stories the redhead found so fascinating and that soon littered the wooden desk on Anna’s room, and when the redhead’s fifteenth birthday arrived, a blushing Elsa travelled on her own all the way to the edge of town. Hidden behind a barnyard, her trembling hands put a pair of earrings and a simple but shining necklace on Anna’s hands.

“Thank you…” Anna whispered as she put the earrings, feeling her heart swell and expand, as it always did whenever her friend was around. 

“It was nothing,” Elsa smiled shyly, and then, her eyes went wide as Anna kissed her cheek, grinning brightly at her while her hands pulled nervously at her twintails.

It was a smile as bright as summer, Elsa felt. She had begun to understand what those feelings were, the ones that swirled and slow-danced in her belly any time she was alone with Anna. Unbeknownst to her, Anna too had begun to understand.

-ooo-

Small ripples broke the calm surface of the lake as Anna’s bare feet rested at its edge, mirroring Elsa’s. 

The world had stilled around them; the setting sun at their back enlarged the pine’s shadows, and the birds called their farewells for the day in casual chirpings. It was a feign calm, however, an illusion of peace like the lake’s surface, for underneath feelings stirred and moved around like wildlife.

Anna’s hand covered Elsa’s, and when she turned to look at the blonde, as naturally as a leaf’s fall, they leaned closer to one another, until their lips met shyly. Aged 17, Anna had her first kiss. Aged 17, she kissed her best friend for the first time.

It was as soft of a touch as she had imagined.

She cupped Elsa’s cheek as their kiss held strong, the sudden rupture of a years long-tension lifting her with the warmest of feelings. When they finally separated - the orange tinge of dusk blazing on Anna’s hair, Elsa’s smile was shy but sincere; her pale hand played with a curly lock of copper hair, the other raising to caress a freckled cheek with her thumb.

“Just like that…” She whispered, making Anna smirk at her.

“Yes…” she leaned forward again, whispering into Elsa’s lips. “Just like that…”

Their second, and their third kiss were even more sweet. A shared dream, finally made true; a joining of hearts, a bridge being built between two souls.

They held a small ceremony a few months later, not in the traditional ways of Anna’s people - whom would never bless their union - but in the Magi way, in the aftermath of a sleepless night, both sitting in front of a small fire, holding hands with a long shawl draped around both their shoulders.

Anna’s hair was braided, same as Elsa’s, with small red and blue ribbons, each one taking the other’s colours.

Neither of them had wanted to wait. It was clear there would never be someone else; Elsa’s soul reflected on Anna’s eyes, and vice versa, as the oldest of the Magi pronounced them soulmates, bound by the will of the land and the ancestors of their two bloods.

-ooo-

The first time Anna visited the Magi campament had been during the harshest winter in recent memory. Caught under the heavy storm - the snow hail thick and inclement, Elsa had insisted they went back towards her home instead of risking the travel through the forest and into Arendelle’s lands. Barely protected by Elsa’s magic, they managed to arrive before Anna had passed out. Her wavering consciousness, however, registered a few things as they dragged her towards what she presumed was Elsa’s tent: the weird cone-shape of the stone and wood structures and the curious gazes of the mages they came across.

Once inside, she was put in a bundle of furs - the same colours, she noticed, as the ones on Elsa’s winter coat - and momentarily left alone in front of a small fire. After she managed to regain some body heat so she could stop shaking, she looked around. Her love’s home was sparse, but that didn’t surprise her: she knew how little Elsa cared about wealth or status. There were a few things of note, of course: she saw some of her childhood paintings hanging above the floor-levelled bed, as well as the bead necklace she had made her after their… Anna blushed, thankful it would most likely go unnoticed given her whole face must’ve been red from cold exposure and the tent’s fire.

Finally, Elsa came back, holding in her hand some herbs that she quickly threw into the pot above the fire. After she sat down next to Anna, she hugged her, taking a few wet strands of auburn hair out the way before kissing her temple.

Now inside the safe confines of Elsa’s tent, Anna finally relaxed, leaning into her love’s embrace.

After a while, as sleepiness began to dampen her thoughts, she turned to gaze at the small assortment of trinkets close to the bed, and the blonde’s eyes followed her curiously.

“Do you know…?” Anna asked shyly, looking at the bead necklace. Elsa’s smile turned into a smirk, and that told Anna that she, in fact, knew its true meaning.

Each bead on it was meant to signify each year of her life before a couple consummated their marriage. It was an old tradition that her village still carried around and that she had wanted to preserve herself.

“Of course I do.” Elsa said, leaning forward and giving her a long, drawn out kiss that tasted of longing. Anna could understand why. They could never be together, as her mother and father were. They could never walk around town hand in hand, nor would they live the joys of motherhood… but it was something she had made her peace with, same as Elsa.

They had each other, and that was enough. For her, their marriage was real, as real as the stars in the night sky, as the snowy mountains and the glimmers of light from the morning dew.

Before both shed their clothes and shared Elsa’s bed, long hours passed, full of gentle kisses and whispered words, filling the humble dwelling with warmth. Anna knew of what lay ahead, but for the moment all she could do was to embrace her lover’s naked form, holding on to her and praying for the future to be gentle, to spare them of heartbreak and loss.

-ooo-

“You shouldn’t be here!” Anna hissed - yet unable to stop her smile. Elsa only smirked at her, her hands precariously hanging to the wooden frame of her wife’s sill. Thankful that the window didn’t creak too loudly, she fully opened it, allowing the cloaked blonde inside.

Elsa pulled down her hood, letting her waist-long hair fall down her back freely; it sparkled under the single candlelight that humbly lit the room.

“What if someone saw you?” Anna asked, trying to keep her tone down and putting her hands on her hips while her brow furrowed (and yet, still smiling). The young mage rolled her eyes playfully, waving her hand airily as ice tendrils encircled her fingers, turning black at the end.

“Mist spell,” she stated matter-of-factly. Nonetheless, seeing that Anna’s frown was still in place, she leaned forward, planting a quick peck on her lips, gently putting her hands on her freckled arms and gently rubbing her thumbs over her work-tanned skin.

Anna finally cracked, joining their foreheads and softly sighing while her hand caressed Elsa’s cheek.

“You should be preparing…” she muttered.

“Hush…” Elsa put a finger on those rosy, enticing lips, gazing into her wife’s worried eyes. Gently, she touched the small blue ribbon that hung from a small braid on Anna’s auburn hair.

“I brought you something.”

From her satchel, Elsa produced a single, red rose, of a shade not crimson but rather hanging in between the color of dusk and of blood. Before she gave it to Anna, she used her magic to envelope it in ice, the kind that had taken her years to master - if only to make her friend happy that her gifts would not melt.

Anna’s retort never came, much to Elsa’s joy. She fully knew that if she had allowed Anna’s questions to continue, both of them would cry. Elsa didn’t want that; she wanted her last memory of Anna before she began her journey to be one where her beloved smiled, where her light reached her eyes and her cheeks came alive, highlighting the freckles she had come to adore.

Suddenly, Anna embraced her, pulling her face against the crook of her neck.

“When do you leave?” Anna muttered, her voice thick and constrained. Her embrace tightened, a gesture that Elsa reciprocated fiercely.

“Tomorrow.” 

“Promise me…” The brokenness of Anna’s voice carried such a heavy weight Elsa’s heart could barely withstand it. Elsa nodded for a response. 

Her efforts had been for naught; the first tears began to fall from her eyes, soon followed by Anna.

The quiet summer night witnessed the two lovers say their farewells and claim their last, desperate kisses before Elsa vanished into the darkness. She did not tell her wife a small fact, one she wanted to keep a secret until she came back. She had gotten the rose from the same small clearing where they first met, more than a decade ago.

-ooo-

Each Magi - born of a unique element - knew of the trials that awaited for them the moment they came of age. Elsa had anticipated - and dreaded in equal measure - that moment.

A lonesome travel towards the white heart of the world, Ahtohallan, where her worth would be tested. Even with her magic, it would take her months to arrive there while sorting all kinds of danger: the great beasts of the North, immune to magic, and outcasts and renegade mages who had failed in their own paths.

The few ones who came back became full members of her tribe, wielders of power beyond belief.

She had prepared her whole life for it, and when the time arrived, she began her journey, armed with only her small satchel and her wits.

Then, when she finally reached the white valley - full of barren twig trees and ice-shards coming out the ground, taller than a man and so pure they contained every color imaginable, her resolve was tested.

This final trial, however, she failed.

-ooo-

Anna, aged 24, remained stubbornly single as the years rolled by - as it was the nature of time in such a small village - much to the chagrin of her mother and the enjoyment of the gossiping matrons. She didn’t care about the rumors, of course, and she didn’t give explanations to her mannered but firm rejections of the few men who had tried to court her.

None of them had seen her as she looked longingly into the night’s sky from her room’s window. None of them knew of the tears she shed when alone, of the shattered dreams and the broken illusions; none of them knew of the flower patterned she had kept, or the new one she had knitted for her - meant as a humble gift for when she returned, both resting in the depths of a wooden chest below her bed.

Elsa had not come back. Every gift she had given her had melted; even her parting rose had, but the flower - unfrozen and weak - had not died.

In the two years that had gone by since she left, Anna had turned to her everyday life, not in search of solace but in search of purpose. Her night’s at her family’s tavern were busy, and she had tried to share the simple joys of her people; she had tried to see past her grief, but a part of her never could. The moments of loneliness that remained were all filled with gleaming memories - full of the pale color of Elsa’s hair and eyes, full of the memory of her smell, of her lopsided, teasing smiles and the feeling of her skin, her hands and her lips.

She never allowed bitterness to rot inside her. Instead, she tried to smile when she remembered her, to honor her memory by living as fully as she could, as fully as someone who had lost half her soul and all her love could.

Outside the tavern, in the small backyard, Elsa’s rose now lay amongst many others, bushes and many kinds of flowers arranged into a vibrant garden that Anna took care of.

She didn’t care about the future. All she had was her own life, and those memories she had bowed to keep alive. It was all she could do, for now she knew miracles did not happen, and life’s cruelness left nothing behind.

And still, she kept on living, and remembering, each and every single day.

-ooo-

Anna yelped, pulling her pricked finger into her mouth. Stopping herself from cursing, she quickly dismissed the injury and continued her work, trimming the small branches of the flowers in her garden, careful not to touch the one that remained in the center, the one whose color resembled the tone of her own hair.

She continued to work under the heavy summer’s sun, pulling weeds, nursing the dirt and watering her small kingdom of color. Unconsciously, she whipped the back of her hand over the white cloth over her head, leaving some dirt marks on it.

From behind her ear, hung a small braid with a blue ribbon on it.

After a while, the pain from kneeling became too uncomfortable; after all, waiting tables at the tavern all night was hard on the small of her back. It was only when she stood up that she saw the cloaked figure standing right next to her garden, and Anna yelped once again, taking a step back while clutching her chest with her hand before her eyes properly looked at the lean person standing just there, who looked back at her with clear-blue eyes.

Anna’s teal eyes widened; the small shovel on her gloved hands fell with a soft thud.

The cloaked figure took off her hood, revealing a woman of delicate features: prominent cheekbones that complimented the small, badly cut locks of pale-white hair.

Anna thought herself mad; surely, the summer’s heat had made the apparitions of her dreams come to life. But if so, why did Elsa look so weary? Why were her arms covered in soiled rags, and why were her feet bare and dirty?

More than that, why was her beloved’s - her wife’s - face covered in scars, her cheeks sunburned?

But perhaps it was a feverish dream, she reasoned as her breath failed her, for Elsa’s eyes remained the same: gentle and caring, shining with a light of their own, the light that had made her fall in love for her as the years of her childhood went away and her feelings grew as they both did. 

Elsa stepped inside her backyard, kneeling in front of the roses. Her index finger graced the petals of the red rose, and when she turned to face Anna again, a long path of tears had already made its way down her cheeks. Unsurprisingly, Anna sniffed loudly, the hard beatings of her heart drumming against her ears.

“You kept it…” Elsa said, her voice failing her after that single sentence.

If this was truly madness, Anna was glad she could give away her sanity just for the chance of this moment to continue. Whatever was the case, she couldn’t wait; she had waited long enough.

Anna raced the few steps that separated them, practically jumping into Elsa’s open arms.

“Ouch!” Elsa whined a little, even if her smile was as big as Anna had ever seen it.

Anna peppered kisses all over her, all over the bruises and scars that marred the perfect skin of Elsa’s cheeks; her hands clutched her face, not willing to ever let go as they exchanged kiss after kiss, laughing and crying all the same.

She didn’t care about the astonished glances of the few onlookers. Whatever the world held, it didn’t matter to either of them anymore.

Anna would gladly live her life as an outcast, would rather go back to Elsa’s tribe and begin anew than to be swayed by people who didn’t matter. What could matter more than to have Elsa miraculously in her arms again, to feel her warmth and the intensity of her ocean-like gaze, full of love and full of life.

She had so many questions, but those were for later. As Elsa happily cried, murmuring muffled words of devotion, Anna knew the path that brought her back also didn’t matter; what mattered was this instant, made happen by the will of her wife, who had come back to her, never a moment late.

-ooo-

After she reached the heart of the world, the heart of winter, Ahtohallan, Elsa had been given a choice; to give up her heart, her memories, to share the power and might lay dormant in her blood.

She knew that choice was no choice at all. The ancient presence had not cared nor passed judgment when she made her decision; after a brief flash of light she found herself laying in the ground, staring at the clear blue sky. Deep in the wilderness of the northern mountains, she knew the path back home would take her a long time; her chances of survival - being stripped of all her magic - little to none.

All she could do was persevere, and so she did, travelling back through an entire continent, just to keep her promise. After all, it was to Anna to whom she had promised.

[carriagelamp]

~ Queer Lit 30 Day Book Challenge ~

I decided to do this challenge I came across for June! Originally it was designed as a “day-by-day” thing, but my June was way too hectic to do a write up every single day… so I decided to make a nice compilation for the end of the month instead!

This is perhaps not the “purest” form of the challenge but I wanted it to be personal for me. Growing up when I did and where I did, I had very little exposure to queer books, especially age-appropriate queer books. That being said, there’s some books on this list that are really only “queer” by technically, or through a secondary character rather than the main character. I debated whether to include these but finally decided that, yes, I would. I owe it to myself. Even though some of these books that aren’t “as queer” as other, they were (or are) really important to me as a queer person and my journey is understanding that, so I wanted to acknowledge them!

More info about the books and the challenge under the cut!

Day One: First Queer Book You Remember Reading

Color by Taishi Zaou and Eiki Eiki

Remember how I mentioned a lack of available, age-appropriate queer books? I was one of those kids who was definitely exposed (probably too young) to queer manga/yaoi. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, especially as a wee ace teen, but it was the best I had at the time and it meant the world to me at the time, to see same-sex relationships even if looking back on them is very “YIKES”.

I’m sure I read others before this, but Color is one of the first that I really remember and which I a) actually owned and which b) wasn’t completely repellent in hindsight! I haven’t reread it in probably over a decade so I have no idea how it stands up, but at the time it read like a much more “realistic” account of two teenagers developing a crush and starting a relationship and as a questioning teenager it really helped me realize that this was a real, viable option.

Day Two: Queer Book That Reminds You Of Home

The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag

I hummed and hawed about this one for a long time because honestly I tend to read books that make me feel far from home. I decided to go with The Witch Boy though because it’s a story that challenges gender norms and stars a large family out in the woods, running wild and exploring magic, and honestly it gives me vibes that remind me of vacationing with my extended family. We’re also partially ginger and inclined to run wild in the woods. If we knew magic we’d have used it for sure.

This book is about 13 year old Aster, who lives in a family where the women all become witches and the men all become shifters. Aster, however, has no interest in shapeshifting and instead finds ways to study magic and learn the arts of witchcraft while constantly being pushed out by his female relatives… though everything might change when a new danger, that may or may not be connected to Aster studying magic, begins to appear.

Day Three: Queer Book That Has Been On Your TBR Too Long

Beneath The Citadel by Destiny Soria

That was an easy choice, this has been sitting on my bookshelf for months, staring at me accusingly every time I enter my room. I’m really excited to read it (Magical heist? Rebellion? With an asexual protagonist? Yes please) but for some reason I have not gotten around to it. Some day, baby, some day.

Day Four: Queer Book With A Name Or Number In The Title

George by Alex Gino

George is an absolutely charming middle grade novel about a child named George who the world perceives as male… but who knows she’s definitely a girl. The novel begins when her class decided to put on a play about the novel they had just read: Charlotte’s Web. George is desperate to play Charlotte, her favourite character, but isn’t even allowed to try out because it’s a “girl’s role”. George and her best friend struggle with how to handle this problem and manage George’s secret amid elementary school and home drama.

This book is really adorable – it was a nice, easy, cozy read for an adult, and would also make a great read aloud to elementary-age children if you want to introduce them to transgender characters.

Day Five: Queer Book Where The Protag Has A Fun Job

The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris

Not actually a queer protagnoist, but a queer side character who plays a major role in the series. Mister Vernon, one of Leila’s fathers, has arguable the coolest job: he’s a retired stage magician turn magic shop owner, which is complete with large rabbit, hidden room, and tons of fascinating gadgets to help a young practical magician learn their trade. He is hands down one of the neatest character in the series and is a major catalyst throughout the series.

The first book follows Carter, a runaway orphan who practices street magic to get by, as he runs away from his horrible uncle and winds up meeting a gang of magic-loving friends in a small town. Hiding from his uncle is only the beginning though, and the mysteries surrounding the town and Mister Vernon become thicker and thicker as the series goes on.

Day Six: Favourite Queer Graphic Novel

Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

There’s lots of fantastic queer graphic novels out there, but I have to name Check, Please! as my favourite (and not just because I’m Canadian and am legally obligated to at least show interest in a hockey story). Check, Please! is the friggin cutest story about Eric “Bitty” Bittle, former figure skater and avid baker, who joins the Samwell University hockey team. The story is told in the form of Bitty’s vlog as he recounts the bizarre quirks of the Samwell hockey team, his struggle to overcome his fear of checking, and his growing crush on the team captain, Jack. Seriously guys, this is cavity-inducing sweetness and you can read it all online for free, here on tumblr @omgcheckplease or at its own website, checkpleasecomic.

Day Seven: Queer Book You Often Reread

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Another book I haven’t reread in years, but this was the first queer novel I ever read (and owned!) so I read it obsessively, first the copy from the high school library and then my own copy (which is, let us say, well-thumbed by this point). It was pure fluff, in an aggressively diverse, relentlessly accepting, rainbow-coloured high school and it was exactly what I wanted in high school, and it still makes me happy whenever I remember it. It’s a straight-up high school romance, pretty traditional to the genre, but it has the most delightful supporting cast you could ever ask for. Maybe I should reread it again this summer…

Day Eight: Queer Book With A Happy Ending

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

This was a bit more of a “yeah it was fine” book for me, but honestly… queer people deserve some average, run-of-the-mill YA fantasies. As far as my normal reading preferences go, run-of-the-mill YA fantasies are my bread and butter. And this one has a cute sapphic romance to go with it. It’s about Denna, a princess with a dangerous secret: she has a magical Affinity for fire, despite being betrothed to the prince of a kingdom that aggressively prosecutes and fears magic-users. So now Denna is in a strange land, trying to hide her increasingly volatile magic, solve an assassination that rocked the kingdom, and deal with the growing connection between her and the prince’s wild sister, Mare. It has court intrigue, a murder mystery, horses, and lots of confused sapphic pining so it’s totally worth picking up if you want a light summer fantasy adventure.

Day Nine: Queer Book With (Over) 100 Pages

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

I decided to try to get as close to 100 pages as possible! River of Teeth is a 114-page novella that I haven’t quite finished (work and covid stress happened) but which I am fucking losing my mind for. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s peak alternative history, about queer hippopotamus-riding cowboys in Louisiana during the early 20th (late 19th?) century. Like… I don’t know how to emphasize how unbelievably cool this book is. Genderqueer demolition expert with a giant crush and a penance for making things blow up and attempting to poison guests when they’re bored?? Check. Gay gunslinging hippo-riding cowboy with an angsty backstory (and also a giant crush)? Check. Sexy, fat, badass lady con artist with an albino hippo that she spoils? Check. Like damn guys. I’m not done the book and I’ve already bought the sequel because I know the second I pick it back up I’m not gonna stop until I’ve ploughed through it all. This book is the epitome of “refuge in audacity” and “rule of cool”. Is it over the fucking top? Absolutely but that’s the point.

Day Ten: Favourite Queer Genre Novel

The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare

I’ll be honest, I’m a little shaky on what counts as a genre novel (isn’t… everything… a genre??) so I decided to interpret it as “slightly trashy YA supernatural fantasy” because that sure is a hella specific genre I’m weak for.

I really thought I was done with the Shadowhunter novels, I thought they were a goofy series I left behind in teenagerhood that I could look back on with amused indulgence. And then I found out that there was a novel specifically about Alec and Magnus and! Oh no! Ding dong I was wrong. I fell back in hard because listen… I love them. They were one of the first canonical same-sex relationships I ever read about in an actual novel, they meant a lot to me then and still mean a lot to me now. I have nothing to say to defend myself here except that this book wrecked me and I can’t wait for the sequel.

Day Eleven: Queer Book You Love In A Genre You Don’t Read

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connel

I am very rarely a slice-of-life / romance genre sort of person. I like my stories cut with a heavy dose of fantasy, scifi, action-adventure… something. So a graphic novel that’s not only a romance, but one about an unhealthy relationship and infidelity is like… super outside my usual range of reading material. But it was very much worth the read! The art was stunning, and the complicated emotions it tapped into really touched me. I’m very happy to have read it, and was so damn satisfied by the end.

Day Twelve: Queer Book With A Strong Sense Of Place

Belle Révolte by Linsey Miller

Linsey Miller is one author I very actively follow, I love her works and they always have very distinct, complicated worlds with unique societies and magic systems. Belle Révolte was her latest book and followed a prince-and-the-pauper type of story, in which wealthy Emilie des Marais is determined to learn noonday (magical) arts in order to become a physician, someone who can actually work to make her home a better place… but this is not something a proper lady would ever be allowed to do. So she flees her finishing school and meets poor, but magically gifted, Annette Boucher and offers her the chance to switch places. Annette goes back to school as “Emilie” and gets to hone her skills at the midnight arts while Emilie will use her name to sneak into medical school and fight her way up the ranks to physician. This is a challenging enough task, with rebellion roiling just beneath the surface and the country about to slip into a arrogant war that threatens the lives of hundreds…

Day Thirteen: Queer Book That Really Made You Think

Our Dreams At Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

This is a four book manga series that is completely breath-taking. It’s touched by magical-realism and completely drowned in visually stunning metaphors and symbolism. Seriously, I’ve reread these books multiples times trying to digest how the wide variety of symbols overlap and contradict and compliment and challenge each other. I still haven’t really gotten a solid handle on it, it’s very fluid, so yeah… definitely makes me think.

The story starts with Tasuku Kaname who believes he may have just been outed as gay by a high school friend, and feels like he’s watching his entire world crumble around him. He is seriously considering taking his own life, when he runs into the mysterious woman “Someone-san” and winds up leading him to a drop-in center that’s run by a local non-profit, and is also a hub for a number of queer people in the community. The books follow Tasuku as he grows, learns, makes mistakes, and confronts his feelings, along with a number of other members at the drop-in center. It is completely beautiful, optimistic, but also quite stark and harsh at its look at homophobia and transphobia in modern Japanese society and how it can effect people in different ways. I just bought book four and can’t wait to read it and see how everything ends.

Day Fourteen: Queer Book That Made You Cry

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Holy shit guys. Listen. Listen. If you don’t read any other book on this list, please consider reading The Marrow Thieves. It is hands down the best book I’ve read so far this year. Another book that doesn’t have a queer character as the protag, but as one of the main supporting characters and listen, his story fucking destroyed me as a person. That romance just… aaaaaaah. AAAAAAAAH.

Anyway. The Marrow Thieves is a Canadian dystopian novel. It takes place in a post-climate change world in which society has been ravaged – partially due to the wildly different and extreme weather patterns, but also through a strange disease that has spread through the population that has left people completely incapable of dreaming. Now unable to rest, process their lives, and dream of a future, people are being driven insane and only one group appears to be immune: North America’s First Nations people appear to be unaffected. And so they begin to be harvested, rounded up and collected in “school” in order for people to suck the marrow out of them to give to white people afflicted by this disease. The Marrow Thieves follows a First Nations boy named Frenchie as he flees the recruiters and tries his best to survive in this post-apocalyptic like wilderness, banding together with other First Nations people who are heading north, where they hope to find communities of their own people with whom they can shelter and start to rebuild their lives.

It’s a YA level novel, not very long, and such an insanely good read. I cannot emphasize enough PLEASE GO READ THIS BOOK. 

Day Fifteen: Queer Book That Made You LOL

Mostly Void, Partially Stars by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Welcome to Nightvale always makes me laugh and it was a lot of fun to get to read the transcripts of the episodes. I’m a sucker for novelizations/transcripts of shows. It was a nice nostalgia trip and gave me an excuse to go back and relisten to some of my favourite episodes too! If you’ve never gotten into Nightvale… hey, it’s a classic! Podcast is fucking stunning if you’re into podcasts, and if you’re not but would enjoy a weird, queer, eldritch horror comedy then try the book! It’s the first “season” compiled in text form, exactly how it’s heard in the show.

Day Sixteen: Queer Book That Is Really Personal To You

Jughead volume 1 by Chip Zdarsky et al

Including this one because gee golly it sure did make me want to fight a lot of people for quite a while. It was one of the first stories I ever found/read that had an explicitly asexual main character… (and a character I already really loved! Which I now got to feel an even stronger connection to! It was so fun and validating!) so it was super awesome how like half of tumblr decided for a year there that this was apparently a cardinal sin. Imagine… one single version of old, long standing comic series deciding to retcon a character to represent a heavily under-represented community… imagine being so fucking angry about that that you decide to start a hate campaign on the internet. So much fun to live through that as an ace person. Anyway, these comics were nothing amazing but I sure do love them aggressively out of pure spite, even now that the aphobia on tumblr has died back down I will hold this to my chest and adore it.

Day Seventeen: Favourite Queer Book Sequel or Spin Off

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

Honestly do I even need to say anything here? Is there any queer person who hasn’t read Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue series? If you are someone who hasn’t read it yet… go do that?? Absolutely stunning, one of my all-time favourite book series. It’s the perfect combination of hilarious and goofy, intense action, heartfelt character development, and a dash of “wait was that supernatural or??” This sequel was fantastic, this time focusing on Felicity, Monty’s sister, and her quest to become a physician despite being a woman in the 18th century. Awesome look at femininity, feminism, asexuality, and race. (Also… OT3? OT3.)

Day Eighteen: Favourite Queer Book By A Favourite Author

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

One of those “ehh is this technically queer? Not really but close enough, it is in my heart” books. It was one of the books I read as a teenager when I was still beginning to seek out and try to explore queer lit in so much as I could.

Terry Pratchett is, hands down, my favourite author, and though he doesn’t tend to write explicitly queer literature, his exploration of gender through allegory is top fucking tier. Everything to do with the dwarves in his series is fascinating, and a really great challenge/critique/exploration of gender, and this is the book that takes it to the next level (and brings in at least implicitly queer characters). It’s about Polly Perks, who lives in a small, war torn nation, choosing to join the army in order to find out what happened to her brother. However, as tradition dictates, she can’t join as a girl… so she disguises herself as Ozzer, a young man. There’s a lot of twists and turns, and as always Pratchett delivers fantastic humour and just absolutely delicious satire.

Day Nineteen: Queer Book That Changed Your Life

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson

This was the book that made me realize that I, as a queer teacher, could have queer kid lit in my future classroom. Maybe a comparatively small revelation, but a really important one to me. It made me realize that this didn’t need to be something I kept a secret in my professional life and which could really positively influence children, especially queer children. It was the first queer children’s book I ever bought.

Day Twenty: Favourite Queer Book Series

Candy Color Paradox by Isaku Natsume

Alright… I’ll admit it, this isn’t actually my favourite series, but I’ve used my favourites in other spots. And this is a good one! Definitely more of an actual “yaoi” than the other manga I’ve included (here there be sex) but it has a very different vibe that what I’m used to from that type of manga. The main pair are actually both capable, mature adults, with careers they actively care about, and who get together in the first volume! 

The rest of the series is less about them angst-ily toeing around their relationship, and much more about them learning to grow as a couple and balance their work and relationship and society. It’s funny and sweet, and I really enjoy these two losers. It’s a very low-stakes enemy-to-friends-to-lovers story, in which Onoe (a reporter) and Kaburagi (a photographer) are paired up on a news story they’re supposed to dig into together. What starts as a bickering rivalry gradually becomes respect, friendship, and love~ Onoe is a gremlin of a protag, so he’s a treat to follow.

Day Twenty-One: Queer Book That You Recommend A Lot

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

To repeat myself: Linsey Miller is awesome! This is my favourite book of hers, the first of a duology. It’s kind of like an intense, edgy Tamora Pierce novel with murder. In this world, the Queen has a team of assassins known as the Left Hand. They’re an elite group that keeps the Queen safe and does the dirty work that needs to be done to protect the kingdom and keep the encroaching nations at bay. When the assassin Opal is killed, a contest is announced to find the new Opal. People from all over come to complete for the honour of being one of the Queen’s royal assassins, including gender-fluid thief Sallot Leon. Sal has some deep motivations to become Opal that go beyond a loyalty to their kingdom, but they’re going to have to survive their competitors if they even wants a chance at it… (Sal generally goes by either she or he in the books, but I’m using they in this instance since it’s in a more general sense.)

Day Twenty-Two: Queer Book That Made You Take Action

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Uhh, I don’t really have any books that made me take action per se, but this one sure gave me a lot to think about. It’s about deep sea mermaids who originated from the pregnant slave women tossed into the ocean to drown during passage to North America. From those dying women, this race was born and were taken in by whales, raised and protected until they could descend into the deep ocean waters, to form their own safe society. Their collective past is so painful though that as a species they’ve developed a very short term memory. But a people can’t live without any ties to their roots and so one of them, the Historian, holds all the memories for their entire species and shares it with everyone once a year so that the community can be connected to their ancestors before once again returning the memories to the Historian for safe keeping. Yetu, the current Historian, is so overwhelmed by these memories, that she can no longer take it – she flees her people, her responsibilities, and her pain and escapes to the surface instead...

Day Twenty-Three: Queer Book By An Author Who I Killed Is Dead

Cybersix by Carlos Trillo

I cannot emphasize enough, this is not actually a queer comic, it is in fact a very homophobic, transphobic and sexist comic written by a horrible person.

That being said, he’s dead and I own it now the TV series was essentially about a genderqueer superhero and a very confused bi biology professor who has a crush on both personas. I had a passionate crush on both personas as a child, and I will cherrypick this comic until I die in order to enjoy the only kickass genderqueer/genderfluid noir antihero I’ve come across. I am valid and I am not open to debate or discussion. Do not read this comic it’s horrible (but consider watching the show).

Day Twenty-Four: Queer Book You Wish You’d Read When Younger

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

This is such an incredibly soft story with the nicest art. There’s so much understanding and compassion in it and its exploration of gender and self-confidence and being true to yourself would have been very reassuring to me as a child, especially by late elementary/middle school. 

Day Twenty-Five: Queer Book In A Historical Setting

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

A retelling of Achilles’ and Patroclus’ relationship from childhood to the Trojan war. So yeah, you can imagine that this was also a candidate for Day 14 :’) I haven’t read this one in years but god it was lovely and emotionally destroyed me as a person.

Day Twenty-Six: Queer Superhero Book or Comic

Overwatch: Reflections by Michael Chu and Miki Montillo

I don’t really read superhero stories very often (the comics have always driven me a little bonkers, trying to find a way to enter the totally unapproachable Marvel/DC canons, and the MCU burnt me out years ago for every other sort of superhero story) so this is the closest I can get. Tracer’s a superhero yeah? Anyway, I, like every other queer person in the Overwatch fandom, lost my fucking mind when this dropped for Christmas a few years back and officially declared Lena Oxton not only the face of the entire franchise but also a lesbian. It’s an adorable little comic and Tracer’s girlfriend is a sweetheart.

Day Twenty-Seven: Favourite Queer Children’s Picture Book

Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack

There’s a number of sweet queer children’s books that are popping up these days, but this is my favourite just because it’s less about “explaining the gays to children” (though those books also have their place) and more of a cute little fantasy adventure in which the actual protagonist is gay. It’s about a prince who sets out to find himself a bride who can help rule by his side, but it quickly becomes clear that he isn’t interested in any of the girls. Instead, when a fire breathing dragon threatens his kingdom, he meets a brave knight who fights along side him. It’s very supportive and the art is lovely.

Day Twenty-Eight: Queer Book That Made You Feel Uncomfortable

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

This is a book with an asexual protagonist that I was originally really excited for. I know there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy this book and connected with it, but it didn’t do it for me. Maybe because my expectations were too high, but the protagonist’s experience with asexuality was vastly different than my own and the narrative voice ended up rubbing me wrong (and let’s be honest, slice-of-life romance is NOT my usual genre at all). So it’s not “made me uncomfortable because it’s Bad And Wrong” more just… totally vibed wrong with me. Maybe the perfect book for other people but definitely not for me, I had to return this one unfinished because it’s portrayal of asexuality just made me so deeply uncomfortable.

Day Twenty-Nine: Queer Book That Made You Want To Fall In Love

The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice And Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

This book had to make it on here somewhere, and honestly it could have gone in a lot of different spots, but I chose to put it here because the relationship between Monty and Percy is so incredibly sweet and authentic it really does make you want something like that. TGGTVAV (for anyone who has somehow not heard of it) takes place in the 18th century, and is about Monty, his best friend (and crush) Percy, and his sister Felicity going on a final “hurrah” tour of Europe before Monty's father finally tries to pin him down in England and force every part of Monty that’s deemed “unacceptable” out of him. So Monty intends to live this summer up… until everything goes off the rail and the three of them are suddenly fleeing across the continent with assassins at their heels and a strange, stolen artifact in their possession.

Monty has a lot of growing to do in this novel, and that’s one of my favourite things about it. For his and Percy’s relationship to ever have a chance, Monty needs to learn and change and actually communicate with other people, and it makes the relationship feel strong. Not a fluffy, surface level romance that often happens in YA but something built from the ground up by two friends who really want to make it work. Ahh, it’s lovely. One of my favourite novels.

Day Thirty: Queer Book With Your Favourite Ending

My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame

A two-book manga series that was completely stunning. It deals with queer relationships and homophobia in a very stark, real-world manner that you don’t often get in manga, while still being incredibly loving and sympathetic. The book is about Yaichi, a single father whose estranged brother (Ryoji) recently died. One day, a Canadian named Mike arrives, introducing himself as Ryoji’s widower. Mike had come hoping to visit his late husband’s homeland to try to get some closure, and Yaichi ends up inviting Mike to stay. The whole story looks Japan’s societal biases, through Mike’s experiences, Yaichi’s thoughts, feelings and prejudices, and those of his daughter who adores Mike. 

Seriously, this is one of the kindest, most earnest looks I’ve ever seen to internal prejudices that critiques them without demonizing the person who feels them. Instead it lovingly embraces grief, growth, and love. This series made me cry multiple times, was good enough that even my straight brother practically ordered me to go out and buy the second book when he finished the first, and the ending was just *chef’s kiss*

Honourable Mentions

A few books I really wanted to fit on my list somehow but couldn’t quite manage it, so here: All Out an anthology of historical fiction short stories about queer teens. The Tea Dragon Society series and Princess Princess Ever After, graphic novels by the amazingly talented Katie O’Neill. Heartstopper a webcomic turn graphic novel by Alice Oseman about a pair of rugby players. The Different Dragon a cute picture book in which the boy has two moms and which is about accepting different ways of being. And Lady Knight a part of Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series because because Kel is word-of-god aro(and/or ace) and I’ve adored that series and Kel since I was about thirteen so by god I’ll take it.

- 

Now for those that wanted to do their own challenge, I found it on @gailcarriger’s blog.

[harrysgoldrush]

chapter 2: styles v vegan contract

masterlist

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part 1

Y/N Y/LN.

In her final year of law school and already planning on getting her LLM in Environmental Law and Politics. A true force to be reckoned with. Tom had told him that much the moment he closed the office door behind him.

Tom’s office was one of the bigger advisor’s offices on campus, with his desk pushed up against the left wall furthest from the door with two mismatched embroidered chairs that he had stolen from the Tisch School of Arts last year. A giant bookcase covered the whole back wall with books sitting on top of each neatly organized row. The right side of his office was occupied by a worn leather couch that had only fit through the narrow door by some miracle. There was a coffee table with some of the school’s different magazines and newspapers and a small black fridge that always had sodas and Tom’s leftovers.

Harry could imagine her taking naps on that sofa, falling asleep as she plotted her next protest, asking Tom for advice while he answered emails. She wouldn’t even knock, she’d make a beeline to the fridge to grab water. Except she hated those bottles. What did she do instead? Maybe she would finish Tom’s salad for him, his wife always brought him one for lunch and he only ever ate the “exciting” parts before he tucked it away in that fridge.

“Harry, she’s in two of your classes this semester,” Tom had laughed, setting his reading glasses down on his desk as he sat back down. “Your Public and Private Governance Seminar and International Trade and Investment Law and Policy Seminar. Those are small classes, I’m surprised you two haven’t met before.”

Sinking in his chair, he held his back closely as he defended, “We have met before. Last week at Sloan Energy.” 

“Ah,” Tom hummed, clearly entertained at Harry’s reaction. Scooting his chair closer, he closed his laptop so he could look directly at him. “She’s been leading that protest for a while now, I think it will be six weeks this Friday.”

“Is there any way to stop her?”

“From protesting for Green Energy? No.” Taking a deep breath, he rubbed at his neck and added hesitantly, “I suppose you could always talk to her? She’s reasonable enough, she just switched advisors this semester because she wanted to make Mark’s workload lighter; he’s semi-retired now.”

Tom went on to check in with Harry about his internship and how his classes were going so far but Harry could hardly focus, feeling himself drift towards the question of the hour: how could he convince her to move the protest?

From the short interaction he had had with Y/N and Tom’s high praise, he was beginning to think that he was Sloan Energy’s last hope. Why else would they turn to him, an intern, when they had a whole team of more than qualified lawyers? And why had Tom thrown him to the wolves, knowing that another student was leading a whole movement against the company?

Before he could ask, Tom was standing up and shaking his hand. “You’ll have to keep me updated on Sloan Energy and the protests. I’m eager to hear what happens.”

“Yeah, Tom I will. And thanks again for telling me about the internship.”

Tom was quiet for a minute, his smile frozen and his eyes narrowing before he nodded. “Of course, Harry. Jeff Azoff is an old student of mine. When he reached out about looking to hire students, I immediately thought of you. Pays a lot more than that paralegal you’ve been working for since your first year here.”

As Harry was leaving the office, he was surprised to see a new blue bin right next to Tom’s trash can. A single plastic salad bowl sat in it, still dripping water as if it had just been rinsed clean. 

“Is this new?”

“It was a gift, actually. Just got it last week.”

The first thing Harry did after his meeting was text Sarah and Mitch, asking what they knew of Y/N Y/LN. Walking briskly down the hallway, Harry’s searches on Instagram and Facebook proved to be a waste of time. Twitter was useless, with only a few pictures of protests with faces blurred and no mention of her. As he waited for the elevator, Harry opened a new note on his phone and began to type down everything he knew.

Studies Environmental Law

No social media.

Protests when not in class

In my governance and policy seminars

Meeting tonight????

Throughout his Financial Regulation seminar, Harry could hardly focus as their guest speaker outlined the history of finance regulation in the US, wondering how he had never noticed her in his classes. In the sea of sleek and professionally dressed law students, she was like a rainbow colored rocky shore. The only thing standing between him and a guaranteed job after graduation was a strangely dressed classmate.

As soon as they were dismissed, Harry unlocked his phone, relieved to see that Mitch knew her pretty well, having dated her old roommate last year. 

She was always really weird about showers. Her and Katie got into this huge fight at the end of the year because Katie had bought a Keurig and I guess that’s bad for the environment. When Y/N got mad about it, Katie locked herself in the bathroom and ran the shower for an hour. By the time she came out of the shower, Y/N had moved out.

Definitely weird.

Sarah had had class with her before and seemed annoyed at Mitch’s response.

It’s called being environmentally friendly, Rowland. Y/N has been practicing zero-waste since high school. She’s not weird, she’s thoughtful. My first year when I was dehydrated, she took me to the hospital and went to all of my classes for me to take notes. If I wouldn’t be risking arrest and my degree, I’d be protesting with her. She’s a better person than both of you combined. If she wasn’t so busy, she’d be top of our year easily. Why are you asking about her, Harry?

Ignoring her question, Harry put his phone away and kept walking, though he wasn’t entirely sure where to go. He hadn’t been able to convince Tom to give him her schedule although he could probably ask Jeff. And what was that meeting later tonight? Was it with Sloan Energy? Was that why they weren’t expected at the office today?

He wasn’t complaining, in fact he was beyond thankful to have a night to catch up with his studies and term papers, knowing he wouldn’t be getting much sleep either way.

Deciding to get a coffee to keep him warm while he plotted, Harry ducked into the Starbucks across the street and stood in line, making awkward eye contact at an old professor of his who was sitting with a much younger woman. Looking away quickly, his eyes landed on a basket with a sign that said ‘Reusable Cups $3.99’. 

Suddenly, he felt inspired.

Pulling his phone out again, he quickly typed into his search engine ‘is coffee or tea better for earth?’ with a surprising yet logical result. Grabbing two of the reusable coffee cups, Harry smiled widely at the barista.

“Um, just one coffee black. And whatever your healthiest hot tea is.”

Soon, Harry was walking briskly towards Sloan Energy, hoping Y/N wasn’t at her meeting yet. He had only seen her a few hours ago with her bright colors and worn fabrics but as he got closer to the building, it felt like it had been years since he heard her familiar voice, thanking the small gathering around her through her red and white megaphone. The hot drinks in his hand had managed to only spill minimally on the frantic trip across The Village, surviving the packed subway and crowds of tourists.

She was easier to spot now that he knew where to look. The crowd was smaller than it had been the day before, with a few slowly easing out of the group to get somewhere warmer. As Harry made his way to her, he was glad he didn’t have his internship today; he blended in much better with his dark jeans and black zip tie shirt with NYU School of Law embroidered on the chest.

He waited as she informed the group of tomorrow’s meeting times before approaching. It was just them now. Y/N didn’t seem too surprised to see him as she lowered her megaphone and walked towards him, one eyebrow raised as she took in the two white reusable cups in his gloved hands.

“What is this?”

“Green tea,” Holding it out to her, he pulled it back just as quickly and examined the two cups before holding out the other one. “This one’s green tea. Thought you might be cold.”

“No, I meant why are you bringing me a drink?” When he didn’t respond, she asked with a cautious smile, “Did you poison it or something?”

Shaking his head, Harry glanced towards the main doors of Sloan Energy as she took the drink from him, taking a sip before humming. “It's good. Thanks. Harry, right?”

“Yeah. Harry Styles.”

Looping her free hand through the wrist strap of the horn, she wrapped her bare hands around the warm mug as she looked up at him. “Well can I help you, Harry Styles? Or do you just like to watch?”

“Do you want to maybe grab a drink?” He asked, feeling colder with every second he stood under her cautious gaze.

“Besides the one you just gave me?” Smiling, she glanced at the watch on her wrist that looked more like a piece of wood before she cleared her throat and took another sip of her tea. “I have a meeting in an hour so I probably shouldn’t be drinking yet.”

Harry could feel his shoulders droop unintentionally and watched as her eyes widen before she added quickly, “But I’m starving. Have you eaten today?”

She had taken them to a vegan place only a few minutes away, leading them to a table without hesitation, leading Harry to believe she had probably been here a few times before. He was beginning to notice how attentive Y/N was, from the corner of his eye he could see her casually observing him as he read the menu above the counter.

 “Hope you don’t mind vegan, I always come here when I’m in the area.” She suddenly apologized as she dug through her backpack, taking out a much smaller back with her name sewn into it. “Their fries are really good, they’re air fried. The salads are pretty good too.” 

They were quiet, with her eating her guacamole burger as he used the bamboo utensils she had handed him once he sat down with his salad. 

“Don’t worry, they’re clean.” She had explained when he gave her a curious look. They’re safer than actual utensils, they last long. Better for the earth than those plastic things they give out here. Don’t even get me started on the metal stuff.”

The bag she had pulled out of her backpack had turned out to be a pouch with handkerchiefs, bamboo straws and bamboo utensils. The clinking he had heard earlier in her bag turned out to be mason jars.

“So, you just bring those with you everywhere?”

“Pretty much. I’m just doing my part to lower our carbon footprint. I bring my own containers and utensils mostly. Some places around here are getting better. Chloe, the manager, uses plates that are made of recycled materials and then recycles them again when they’re used.”

Nodding, Harry stabbed at his salad thoughtfully. “So why are you protesting Sloan? No offense, but don’t you have better things to do? Like study?”

“Why do you intern there? Aren’t there less morally corrupt businesses you could work for?”

“They’re one of the most successful energy companies on the East Coast--” He began but her sharp laugh was back, cutting him off quickly.

“And one of the most environmentally harmful energy companies in the US. It’s 2019, who uses coal anymore?”

“It’s not that harmful to the environment, it’s a natural resource.” He was glad he had paid attention to his Oil and Gas seminar last week. He only hoped she hadn’t. “Mining and burning the coal doesn’t harm the surrounding earth.”

“Uh, ever heard of global warming? They’re burning fossil fuels that are destroying the atmosphere. It’s not just cows.” She had been paying attention. Finishing off her sandwich, she took her final sip of her tea and looked at him expectantly. 

“What?”

“Just say that they’re paying you a shit ton of money to intern. You don’t need to defend them to me, I’m not going to change my opinion until they change their system.”

Sighing, Harry nodded, not knowing what else to say.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re here then?” 

He set down her bamboo fork, a sign of defeat. He hadn’t prepared as much as he should have.

“I need you to move your protest.”

“Because?”

“If I get you to move your protest from their front doors, they’ll give me an actual job on their legal team once I pass the bar.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that, her voice laced with pity and uncertainty.

“Yeah.”

After an excruciatingly long pause, she nodded. “Okay.”

“What?” Harry was more than surprised as he watched her shrug and wipe at her hands with the dark red cloth she had laid over her lap when she had started eating.

“I’ll do it.”

“But?”

“I have conditions. Obviously. Do you have any paper?”

He shook his head and watched her begin to dig through her backpack. “What? Are you drawing up a contract or something?”

“Yep,” Pulling out a pen and an old flyer for one of the first protests with the words ‘recycled paper’ stamped on it, Harry watched as she began to write messily on the black back side of it. It was bright yellow and her pen ink was a dark blue, her handwriting long and looped which he found fitting. “Today’s the twenty-fifth right?”

When he hummed in agreement, she continued. “Okay. This contract is between Y/N Y/LN and Harry Styles. Y/N Y/LN has agreed to move her protest permanently from outside of Sloan Energy on the understanding that Harry Styles will educate himself on eco-friendly behavior and practices zero-waste to the best of his ability. Styles must also make an effort to change Sloan Energy from inside, beginning with recycling bins within the building. Once he is hired, Styles is expected to push for green energy. How does that sound?”

 “That sounds like I’m doing a lot more than you.”

“Do you want them to hire you or not? I’m doing you multiple favors here, Styles.”

“Can I read it over and get back to you?”

She nodded before quickly scribbling something at the bottom of the contract. After she slid it across the table, he realized it was her number.

“So we can meet outside of my protesting hours should you Don’t think your bosses would be too happy to see you fraternizing with the enemy.” She was smiling now, one full of mischief that made him feel like she was letting him in on a big secret. Harry couldn’t help but smile back, not quite sure what he might be agreeing on.

As she packed up, Harry was tempted to ask her where she was headed, but she beat him to it; it was like she could read his mind. “Don’t follow me this time, okay? Twice in one day should be enough for you, my own apartment is lucky to see me once.”

He didn’t see a point in disagreeing with the girl as she left the small café. Looking around, it was as if all of the charm of the room had vanished with her, the pink walls now looking faded, the table sticky, the chair uncomfortable cold. 

By the time he got home, it had only gotten colder. His roommate, Ed, was an aspiring musician who had decided tonight was the perfect night to hold a private concert in the shower, his only audience being the last of their cold water. Shivering, Harry simply changed into warmer clothes and sat at his desk, putting on an old rock station before he got to work.

Jeff had asked him yesterday to begin looking into Energy Law and he had a paper due in two days that he had yet to start. Choosing to begin on the latter, Harry got to work, cranking out three pages before he remembered the folded up flyer in his coat pocket. Deciding now was as good as ever to stretch his legs, he walked back to the living room to grab it from the coat rack, his eyes tracing over her handwriting that reminded him of  kindergarten teacher. 

Adding her number, he typed out a short text and paused for a moment. If he texted her, that was it. He’d be agreeing to do whatever it is she laid out in this contract of theirs. Still, if he wanted the job, he knew he had to at least try.

hey, it’s harry. how was that secret meeting of urs?

Returning to his desk, Harry was surprised when his phone pinged. He didn’t take her for a quick responder. His smile fell when he saw it was a text from Jeff. He never texts, he was an email addict. He had a template for almost anything.

What the hell did you do, Styles? Y/N Y/LN just left the office. Moving the protest to washington square.

Before he could respond, his phone pinged again, her contact name flashing at the top of the screen.

have you decided when you want to meet to sign the contract? :)

tags: @berrynarrybanana​ @brwnskin-bunnyteeth​ @harry-is-my-medicine​ @detroitkiwis​ @theresthingsthatwellneverknow @fromyourstrulyh​ @cassiopeiaskies​ @ggaayyyong @mortumnoctis

[simp-for-spencer-reid]

Favors- George Weasley Fanfic Ch.2

Chapter 2: Establishing Ground Rules

The three champions had been announced the next day with a twist: Harry Potter was named as the fourth champion. It was shocking enough to Essie that Cedric was named Hogwarts’ champion, but it was unheard of for there to be two champions from one school. Essie couldn’t imagine being in Harry’s shoes, having all that attention and being forced to compete in something when he was so young. Essie had heard rumors going around the common room about how Harry even got his name in the goblet in the first place. 

Essie ate breakfast that morning with Cleo and Gwen. As Essie was reaching for toast, the owls came flying in from the Owlery bringing mail with them. Her own owl, a Boreal owl named Napoleon, was flying over the Hufflepuff table carrying a small letter. He settled on the table, holding his foot out for Essie to take the letter tied to his leg. Essie undid the small knot of twine holding the piece of paper. Unraveling the small scroll Essie read the note.

Essie, would you accompany me to Hogsmeade before the first task? -G

Essie looked at Gabriel, who was sitting a ways down the table, staring at her while he picked at the food on his plate with a fork. Cleo and Gwen were over her shoulder, asking her who it was from. 

“Who do you think?” Essie rolled her eyes, before scrawling her answer below the question: Thanks, but NO. As she charmed the note to turn into a small paper plane to return to the sender, it turned from the direction she threw it at Gabriel towards the Gryffindor Table. She watched, mortified as it landed in front of George Weasley. 

Her face grew hot while Cleo and Gwen gasped in shock. She watched as Fred clapped him on the shoulder, encouraging George to open it. In a state of panic, she pulled her wand out as George reached for it and sent a jinx that made the note burst into a small flame and smolder into ashes. 

The twins turned their heads toward Essie, who gave a meek wave in response. George stood up, and made his way to the entrance hall after giving Essie a pointed look. Cleo and Gwen nudged Essie and whispered between them. Essie excused herself and followed him out of the great hall. 

“I can explain,” she spoke hurriedly as she tried to catch up to him. “I thought that was from someone else-” Essie was cut off by walking face first into George’s chest as he had turned around quickly. 

“If you don’t want to go, you could’ve just said so,” he smirked at her, “I just figured since we’re ‘exclusive’ now, maybe we should go on a date.” 

His statement made Essie go red and she wasn’t sure if it was from anger or what else, but she was definitely flustered. She pointed a finger at George’s chest.

“I- You don’t- That was a one time thing, I don’t expect you to keep up that, that lie.” Essie crossed her arms over her chest. The bell chimed from the clock tower and could be heard throughout the main floor of the castle, signaling the end of breakfast and the beginning of classes. 

“Let me walk you to class.” George gestured for Essie to walk. “Think of it as a trade off. It’ll keep that git Truman off your back.” he said it as if it was the most obvious thing.

“And what do you get out of it?” Essie asked him warily, walking down to the greenhouses for her Herbology lesson. 

“Eh, I’ll think of something,” George replied, shrugging and putting his hands in his pockets. Essie hummed in response.

“So,” Essie started, “how long are you in for?” She supposed she should get all of her information. Admittedly, it would be nice to not have to worry about Gabriel Truman. It would give her plenty of opportunity to focus on her work without avoiding him.

“Well, Truman seems quite insistent. Probably best to keep it up for the year- for your sake at least.” 

“Right, well. I suppose we can meet later to discuss some ground rules?” Essie suggested as they approached the greenhouses. Ravenclaws that shared this class were walking by the pair as they stopped to continue their conversation. 

“Ground rules?” George scoffed. “Like what?” he rolled his head back in disbelief.

“Yes, boundaries, if you will.” Essie retorted. “If you’re going to be my fake boyfriend then I need to establish some rules for you.” 

“Woah, now you’re calling me your boyfriend? We’ve only just started seeing each other, Essie.” George laughed dryly at her. 

“Oh, piss off.” Essie shoved his shoulder. She began to walk into the greenhouse.

“See you in Defense Against the Dark Arts, sweetheart!” He yelled after her. Her face turned red as some students looked her way. Essie focused her attention on the lesson about the Whomping Willow. 

Her next class was Charms with Slytherin sixth years and their first lesson of the year was nonverbal spells. Professor Flitwick stood on his pedestal of a large stack of books, talking about focus and using your imagination. 

She had passed by the twins on her way to Defense Against the Dark Arts. They were sitting on either side of a younger Gryffindor, showing him an array of little candies. Their trick candies, no doubt. 

“Boys. Class.” Essie called to them in her demanding Prefect voice. They mischievously grinned up at her in response before passing the boy a bright green candy and standing up to get to class. Essie picked a seat amongst the other Hufflepuffs, but Fred and George sat at a desk to the right of Essie. 

Mad-Eye Moody was pacing at the front of the class, lecturing about Shield Charms when another paper airplane floated under her desk and hit her in the ankle. She reached down and picked up the plane, unfolding it as discreetly as possible over her roll of parchment that held her notes. 

Rule number one, don’t fall for me too hard ;) 

Essie made a quick glare towards the twins catching George’s smug face. She hurriedly scribbled her response.

As if. 

Rule two: don’t call me sweetheart. 

After she wrote back, she folded the note back into a triangular plane and placed it back on the floor, quietly muttering the enchantment to make it fly under the desks and through pairs of legs to get back to George. 

She saw him snicker when he opened it, writing back. Essie turned her attention back to the board, taking notes of what she missed in the moments prior. She felt the plane hit her ankles again.

Rule number three, I get to use the Prefects’ bathroom

Essie scoffed a bit louder than she liked. Her deskmate, giving her a look. 

Not a chance.

She sent it back. George’s response was quick.

We’ll work out the kinks- figuratively and literally ;)

Essie crumpled the parchment into a ball and shoved it into the pocket of her robes. 

The end of class couldn’t have come quick enough for Essie. As soon as Moody dismissed them, she hurried off to her Potions class, which was also shared with sixth year Gryffindors. George had jogged to catch up to her.

“About the Prefects’ bathroom,” George was now walking backwards, to maintain eye contact with Essie. 

“Not gonna happen.” Essie reaffirmed.

“Not even once?” George smiled at her, pushing his luck. Essie thought about it, deciding that maybe once wouldn’t hurt. 

“Fine. You can access my bathroom once. Use your pass wisely.” Essie advised the ginger boy. He looked over her shoulder and spotted Gabriel Truman: who was watching the back of Essie’s head, observing her and George’s interaction.

George now turned around, letting his hand fall on her waist over her robes. He slightly tucked Essie closer to him. Fred was now joining them, coming around Essie on the other side. 

“You know, I can’t seem to figure out how you would choose my brother, when you could have the arguably better looking twin.” Fred joked. 

“Hey, we’re identical!” George briefly removed his hand from Essie’s waist to swipe at his brother- who dodged the attack. George placed his hand now on Essie’s back. 

In their shared Potions class, Snape discussed that this exam they were going to take would be a similar difficulty to their N.E.W.T. exam at the end of the year. He would grade this exam as though it were the N.E.W.T.s. Essie decided she would do whatever it takes to pass all of her N.E.W.T.s at the end of the year with Outstanding marks. 

Trying to shake George and their new deal from her head, she got to work on her Potions exam. It was a whole roll of parchment, about two feet long. Each question was a short answer. 

Time ticked by, and Cedric Diggory was finished first, handing Snape his exam and leaving the room. More Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors had passed in their tests, getting to leave class a bit early. Essie was barely halfway finished. Fred and George had stood up to give their work to Snape, who sneered their dismissal. 

Twenty minutes later, Essie finally completed all the questions of her exam. Letting out a long sigh, she walked to Snape to hand her exam in. It was the sweetest release being able to walk out of class still early. It meant an early lunch before her History of Magic lesson with the Ravenclaws. 

As soon as Essie stepped foot out of the dungeon that Potions was held in, she was met with her two ginger acquaintances. The two of them took a spot on either side of her, discussing their latest prank up their sleeve.

“I was thinking we give Neville one of our trick wands,” Fred told his twin. George replied with his agreement, and the two continued talking over Essie’s head about their mischief.

“You do realize you’re talking to a Prefect about your plans, right?” Essie raised an eyebrow. 

“Do you see a Prefect around?” Fred joked, looking directly at George over Essie’s head, and jokingly looking around him.

“Fred, I can’t say I do.” George also started looking around. “Not one that would tattle on us anyway,” George lightly nudged Essie in the side. 

Fred stopped walking beside them to talk to Neville about a trick wand- not letting him know that it was a trick wand, of course. 

Essie walked to the Hufflepuff table to grab a quick lunch. George followed suit, plopping down next to her, and taking a sandwich from one of the platters.

“So you’re only going to give me one pass to use the Prefect’s bathroom?” George clarified.

“If you’re lucky.” Essie smirked as she bit into an apple. The pair grew quiet as they began to eat.

“How do you think you did in Potions?” George struck up a new conversation.

“Reckon I did better than you,” Essie quipped at him. 

“You’re a feisty little Hufflepuff, you know that?” George stated, taking another bite of his sandwich.

[thesaltysocialworker]

The Words (TH Edition)

So this is my first Tom Hiddleston fic, be gentle. I don’t normally write about celebrities but I wanted to give it a try thanks to some encouragement from the wonderful @just-the-hiddles​. :)

I’ve also used this song before in a Loki fic, but it’s my favorite so I decided to recycle because it’s good for the enviornment. 

The Words

Word count: 2427

Synopsis: You meet Tom during his run in Betrayal while living in New York. After a whirlwind romance Tom has to return to London, and you make the decision to stay in New York. But will a song you composed and put on his phone before take off change your minds about a long distance relationship? 

Warnings: Mentions of Sex.

It was never easy to say goodbye to him, it was harder because you didn’t get to say goodbye alone. The world had to be there at every stage, every difficulty (some which they had created) of your relationship with Thomas Hiddleston. You strolled hand-in-hand through the airport after he checked his bags, finally he was to the gate where he would board the plane taking him to London while your career kept you in New York. The two of you had yet to breach the subject of whom would move where and it was starting to get that point. The two of you longed to be in the same place; to wake up in the same bed, to eat meals together to have a place of peace where you didn’t have to worry about flashing cameras and the paps.

“This is me.” Tom smiled sadly. You almost thought to ask him for one more stroll through the concord, but you knew he needed to go through security now or he’d miss his flight. What a shame that would be. It was stubbornness, you were both unwilling to give up your careers; he an actor, you an up and coming musician. You were both work horses; devoting either every minute to your career or to each other. “Have a safe flight, Tom. Please call me when you land?” You asked, awkwardly shoving your hands in your jeans pockets as you glanced up at him. “Are you sure? It’ll be nearly two in the morning here when I land.” He questioned.

“I’m sure. I won’t sleep if I don’t know you made it home safely.” You saw him soften, his guard dropped and he moved to wrap his arms around you. You wrapped your arms around his neck, your fingers toying with the bronze curled curls that would soon be chopped off and colored black for the Loki television series. You’d miss the beard, the curls, you’d miss Betrayal because at least it kept him near. He kissed you, his hands cupping your face and holding you there until you were near breathless. But you were always breathless around him.You could see his reluctance to get on that plane. “It won’t be that long, you’ll see. I’ll come visit in two weeks. It’ll give you enough time to get settled at home and in some sort of schedule.”

“That’s two weeks too long, Get on the plane with me. Please.” He whispered, you could hear them calling for his British Airway Flight to start boarding. “Tom, I don’t even have a passport on me let alone a change of clothes.” You were shocked that he even posed the question. “Right, should’ve had my melt down at the house where you had time to pack a bag.” Tom teased, though there was a little bit of bitterness to his voice. You sighed as he moved towards security, letting them scan his bags. “Tom-“ You called out his name, and he turned to look at you. “I put a new song on your phone. Will you give it a listen and let me know what you think?” You asked, and he found the timing odd. “Yes, of course.”

Then he was gone, disappearing down the concord towards his plane and London. You should’ve told him the truth, you should’ve told him you loved him.

  Tom had convinced himself that it was best to not date another performer.  But then he met you, and he had tossed that notion out the window. You were an extra in a Broadway musical, he’d met you at a party and the rest was history. The two of you spent nearly every moment together when you weren’t working. It’d been a fast, exceptionally passionate romance. He knew he loved you, he knew it the moment he met you. He’d been breathless, watching you dance with your friends in a little black dress with a grin on your face. Your passion for music, for art, for life inspired him. He’d been you, once. When his fame was new, and he was trusting and less jaded by the reality of his new position.

The ugly reality was that he knew this moment was coming, he’d been dreading it. He knew that Betrayal would end. He knew he’d need to go home to his family for the holidays or else be faced with questions about what he was doing and why he was staying in New York. But it felt empty without you. He should’ve told you the truth, he should’ve told you he loved you.

When the plane was in the air, Tom finally thought of your words when he went through security. Your song. He grabbed his headphones and put them on, drink in hand, and scrolled through the playlist you’d created on his phone. There was song added at the bottom called The Words. It was a sweet piano melody, and he listened intently. Trying to take in the lyrics intently as he closed his eyes and relaxed into your voice. With each beautiful note, you transported him back to another time, another place.

 All of the lights land on you

The rest of the world fades from view

And all of the love I see

Please please say you feel it too

And all of the noise I hear inside

Restless and loud, unspoken and wild

And all that you need to say

To make it all go away

It's that you feel the same way too

 And I know

The scariest part is letting go

'Cause love is a ghost you can't control

I promise you the truth can't hurt us now

So let the words slip out of your mouth

 He was brought back to the moment he discovered you were his safe place. It’d been an exhausting night, a two-show day and then fans screaming his name at the door. He’d spent nearly an hour at the stage door trying to appease people. It hadn’t been enough, there were still people pushing the barricades at the door and screaming his name. He was tired. When he got the car his driver started driving him to his flat. “No. Can you take me someplace else instead?”

 That’s when he found himself at your apartment door. You were shocked to see him there as you stood before him in your pajamas, but welcomed him inside with tea. “You look exhausted, Tom.” You placed the cup of tea, and a few cookies before him. “I feel it, love. Things are moving so fast. I feel like I very rarely get a moment to just breathe. It gets overwhelming at times, the world watching your every move. People constantly screaming your name.” He felt like an idiot saying that to you, especially since you were still reaching for your own fame. “Were you planning to stay the night?” You asked, leaning against the counter as he finished his tea. “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

 “Why don’t you go take a warm shower and then meet me in the bedroom?” You suggested. “That sounds wonderful, that sounds wonderful.” He stood in the warm water, wondering and waiting to see if you were going to join him. Eventually, he figured out you weren’t. But as he stepped into your bedroom you figured out why. You had turned down the sheets of your very plush bed, it looked like you had taken the time to light every candle in New York. The room was warm and inviting. You stood by the side of the bed, gesturing for him to lay down. “I think you could use a massage. I can’t whisk you away from your troubles, but they don’t have to exist tonight in this room.”

 He wanted to tell you he loved you in that moment, but it seemed to soon. Tom climbed onto your bed, laying on his stomach. Your hands over his back, working the knots and tension out of his shoulder with lavender and vanilla massage oil. He was relaxed, practically asleep by the time you finished your ministrations. Then you lay beside him, looking at him with a small smile. You expected nothing in return, you simply wanted to see him happy and relaxed. “You’re too good for this world.” Tom sighed, pulling you closer to him. Your soft warm body seemed to meld against his and the two of you fell into a comfortable sleep.

 And all of the steps that led me to you

And all of the hell I had you walk through

But I wouldn't trade a day for the chance to say

My love, I'm in love with you

And I know

The scariest part is letting go

'Cause love is a ghost you can't control

I promise you the truth can't hurt us now

So let the words slip out of your mouth

 “I want you to move to London with me.”

 The words fell from his lips one evening as the two of you lie in bed together, limbs tangled together after an intense love making session. You were silent, your hand resting on his chest right over his heart. You’ve had your eyes closed, and in the dim lighting of the room he could see your eyes slowly open. “We haven’t even been together six months or a year yet, Tom. That’s a huge commitment. My career is here. My agent is here-“

 “I won’t be here, you and I won’t be together. I can find you another job, another agent in London. I need you with me.” He danced around the words again, the words he really wanted to say. He really wanted to tell you he loved you but he was terrified it would frighten you further, driving you away quicker. “I don’t want to have a career built on the fact that I’m Tom Hiddlestons girlfriend! I want to be successful on my own merit. I want my music to touch people, to move people-“

“Then for Christ’s sake, find your agent and job in London! We’re running out of time, y/n!” He could feel the sand slipping through the hour glass, feel the time running out on the clock and he was starting to panic. “Is there an expiration date on our relationship, Tom? If I don’t go back to London with you is this it? Is this an ultimatum?” He was shocked, so shocked he didn’t speak. He hadn’t meant to pressure you into this. He was just trying to express how much he cared, and he was bad at that. You moved out of bed, shimmying back into your undergarments and throwing on your clothes. “No, no, no! C’mon, y/n! It’s not an ultimatum.”

“It certainly feels that way!” Your retort was sharp, and you tried to put your jeans back on. In the dark of the bedroom you had a hard time seeing and you missed a leg. You stumbled, and Tom caught you before you slammed against the floor. “I’m such a klutz.” You whined, and Tom couldn’t help but chuckle as he helped you upright onto your feet. “You’re just as scared as I am, aren’t you?”

He called your bluff, and even in the dim light of the room he could see your face turning scarlet. His little spit-fire, who never hesitated to tell him what you thought or felt. There was silence between the two of you before you meekly responded in the affirmative. “What if it doesn’t work, Tom? What If I move there with you and it we fail? What if you don’t want me anymore?”

“I can’t ever think of a time when I wouldn’t want you.”

 I know that we're both afraid

We both made the same mistakes

An open heart is an open wound to you

And in the wind there's a heavy choice

Love has a quiet voice

Still you mind, now I'm yours to choose

 It rained constantly in the forty-eight hours since Tom arrived back in London. It was a bitter, cold rain that seemed to match the gray haze of his mood. The house was too quiet, you were too quiet. He’d called a few times, left a few text messages and you hadn’t responded. He should’ve said the words, he should’ve told you he loved you. He should’ve carried you onto the plane. He should’ve booked two seats. Anything to show you that he really wanted you to come with him, even if only on a trial basis.

 He lay in bed for a long time and listened to that song of yours on repeat while waiting for the phone to ring so he could just hear your voice. It felt like it had been a whirlwind five months. It felt like a haze, like a dream. Had it even been real? Your beautiful voice in that recording spoke to him, you must’ve been real and not just the elaborate fantasy of a desperate man. You truly were too good to be true; his match in every way. He cried, he screamed. He tossed things out of his suitcase and still you weren’t here. It changed nothing. Eventually, in sheer frustration, he got out of bed and moved to let Bobby out before throwing on a sweatshirt and sweatpants. He started making tea and making breakfast. Then he heard Bobby barking, and a knock at the door.

 Tom moved towards the front door, hearing a meek knock on the door. He pushed open the front door and there you stood, drenched to the skin with your hair dripping and shivering. You had a suitcase with you. He simply stared for a moment, unable to speak. “I’m sure I look a mess. I couldn’t think about anything but what I should’ve said when you left that night. I love you, Thomas. I love you so much and I want a future with you even if I have to change my own to do so. You were right, I was afraid. But I’m here now.” There was still silence, and you shifted from foot-to-foot uncomfortably. “Could you say something before I combust here, love?”

“I love you too, y/n. I thought you’d forgotten about me or moved on, that’s why you weren’t answering my calls. Come in before you freeze to death. Let me get you tea, and warm clothes.” You crossed the threshold into Tom’s home fearlessly in that moment, and his life.

 And I know

The scariest part is letting go

Let my love be the light that guides you home

And I know

The scariest part is letting go

'Cause love is a ghost you can't control

I promise you the truth can't hurt us now

So let the words slip out of your mouth

Please consider supporting the starving artist/social worker if you’re able. :) 

[tastyliltina]

Splintered (VORE)

A/N:  FINALLY got finished with an art trade between me and fubardish *cries*. Writing big bit hard today and I’m super happy to have gotten something done!! Got to use one of my newer chars, Kenny, too! Which is always a blast tbh!! I love writing with my sassy little spitfire~. Flams belongs to Kubes, and Kenny is mine!!  

If you want a story like this for yourself, check out my commission page!:   Want a story like this for yourself?  Check out my commission page!  tinascommissions.carrd.co/

“Ah, here we go!”

The tiny voice caught Flams’ attention. Flams felt a sharp tug, and groaned as a painful pressure eased. His tongue moved to the swollen area, bumping against a small figure. He caught a tang of blood, intertwined with the pleasant flavor of chocolate, and sighed as something warm and alive moved back across his tongue, eventually to his teeth, and out. Finally, he could close his lips-and he did. His tongue grazed every bit of his mouth it could, and he hummed as he enjoyed the last of the warm and mocha-like taste.

“Thanks, Miss Chris…” Flams murmured. A hand moved to his chin, rubbing the swollen and scruffy skin. He glanced to the slobber-soaked figure on the counter, and to the impressive tree branch at her side. He’d had that in his gums all day? No wonder it had been so painful…

“And this is why we don’t eat trees,” snarked another voice. Flams’ expression flattened as he looked to Kenny, sitting in a guest chair beside his cot. He rolled to face the human, raising a brow at her.

“There’s plenty of other things I could eat, y’know,” he smirked, smiling like he normally did. It felt good to smile-since the splinter incident, it had been hard to get his mouth to cooperate. His gaze fell to his little savior, and he sat up in the cot. “Uh-is there anything else I need to do for this?”

Chris, who had seemed to busy herself at a computer on the countertop walkway turned. Flams squinted, but even then he couldn’t make out what the screen said...granted, it was the size of a fingernail to him-perks of being a giant.

The human vet tilted her head, then shrugged. “If you’d like, you can ice the side of your face to help with that swelling...and try to not eat anything crunchy or tough for a few days. Other than that, there’s not much to do.” Shrugging, the brunette faced away from Flams, and clicked the screen on the tiny laptop. “But um, if you must know-“ Chris turned to Flams, a mischevious grin on her face. “eating humans, safely of course, is a viable option. As long as they don’t have sharp weapons,” she grinned.

Kenny bolted upright, staring at Chris bewilderingly. “Wh-the fuck is that supposed to mean?!” The darker-skinned woman snapped.

“Flams knows what I mean~,” Chris hummed, and Flams nodded. He knew exactly what Chris meant...and was surprised she knew that was his next question. Though, he guessed she’d had an idea he enjoyed a temporary human snack..., considering she’d spent the last twenty minutes in his mouth….and by how much he’d drooled.

“Noted~,” Flams crooned. Much to Kenny’s chagrin. Before she could give Chris a hard time though, Flams reached out and nabbed the feisty human by her jacket. “Come on, toffee~. Now that I’m all better,” he bought the writing human closer to his face, grinning, “we can have some fun~.”

“GOD DAMNIT!” Kenny roared, but she didn’t have much choice as Flams lowered her into his free hand. He cupped it around her and moved to leave. But...he thought better of it. Instead, Flams made a loose fist around Kenny, ensuring the human couldn’t get away while he signed out. He walked to the raised platform, where Chris was busy at a laptop.

“Thanks again for the help, miss Chris. I’ll see you around-...maybe get a proper taste without the splinter.” Flams smiled, and chuckled as he stepped out.

~~

Kenny scowled. She glared at the walls of skin around her, scowled at the dimly lit interior of Flams’ fist. Dappled light shone shone through the gaps in Flams’ fingers, enough for her to see...but not enough for her to peek at anything around the digits. Stupid giant-she punched against his hand, though it did little good. His hand remained curled up, keeping her perfectly trapped inside the warm and humid space. It smelled like smoke. Most of Flams did, but the ashen scent was almost impossible to ignore so close to the big guy.

She glanced up as Flams spoke, from the sounds of it to the clerk at the front desk. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the palm of his hand, sneering as though Flams could see it. He couldn’t… Giant ginger bastard.

But, soon enough, Kenny felt her organic cage shift. Flams’ fingers remained curled around her, but the sway of his footsteps loosened their grip just a bit. Kenny kicked a foot out, bracing herself as the fire giant made his way wherever he was going. Kenny heard a door chime, and close, felt the air become heavy and warm. She sighed. Maybe now the big guy would let her go…

He didn’t. At least, not at first. Kenny was trapped in Flams’ fist for a while, she couldn’t tell how long-save by the sweat dribbling down her brow. Flams’ hands were always so warm… It was a good feeling, being so toasty, but she was getting tired of the leathery sight of skin and fingers.

“Hey!” She barked. “Are you gonna let me out at some point, asshat?”

Flams’ hand shifted, slowly unfurling before light spilled in. Kenny squinted, shielding her eyes as the fingers spread out, leaving her in the open air. She scowled. “‘Bout time…”

“Oh, don’t act so smug yet~.”

Kenny blinked, glancing up at Flams. His lips were parted in his telltale grin, and a mischievous glint in his eyes made Kenny shrink back. He was planning something. Shit.

“Now, since you decided to be such a bother at my appointment….” slowly, the living platform lowered. Kenny sat up as Flams’ hand settled onto the ground, leaving Flams kneeling over her. “We’re gonna play a little game~.” Flams’ palm dipped. Kenny slid onto the ground, grunting before she pushed herself up and glared up at the redhead.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning...you better start runnin’, toffee~.” His grin broke into something more predatory, and Kenny didn’t need an explanation for that expression. It was hungry. The kind of look that meant if she didn’t book it, she’d end up being lunch.

“Oh...oh fuck you!” Kenny sneered as she whirled. She darted towards what looked like a treeline, hating how unfamiliar the area around her was. Hard to run when she didn’t know where she was going… Still, Kenny continued to sprint forwards. She didn’t bother looking back. Flams always gave her a head start-only fair; he’d take a few footsteps to catch up.

~~

Flams watched the little human run, crossing his arms. As rude, bitter, and fussy as Kenny was, Flams couldn’t help but like the little spitfire. She had fight. She had balls, more so than most humans he knew. But she was...reckless. There were things Kenny did, the way she carried herself that worried him. She almost had no concern for her safety. So...he figured it was good to put her in her place. Better her get it from him, someone who wouldn’t hurt her, rather than with a stranger.

Besides, he could never turn down a good chance for a wiggly snack~.

Humming, Flams rocked back on his heels, looking to the sky with a frown. It was getting late...he wouldn’t drag this out too long. Just enough for bedtime to roll around. Having Kenny as a midnight snack was always fun~. Even if his stomach paid for it the next morning. Tiny punches were painful after a while… A hand brushed his chin, thoughtful. Maybe he could make some nice stew to try and amend any teasing...and prevent Kenny from giving him another temporary tattoo somewhere regrettable.

With a smirk, he stepped forwards. That was enough time. Flams closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. His feet turned, leading him in the direction of a familiar smell. Coffee cake. Rich, bitter, and all Kenny. Eyes opened, Flams began his trek to track the little human down.

Flams always forgot how fun it was to hunt until he was in the act… Something about following the twisting, winding trail of smells awoke something in him. Reminded him of something he’d been missing. Something primal. Granted, hunting a friend was a lot different than hunting a deer, or an animal. Friends were special. Friends were tasty. But they weren’t food. Kneeling, Flams parted a group of trees, peering through the branches before letting them return to their settled position. He was getting close.

He brushed his hands off, pursed his lips. Chuckling, Flams let the words of a spell roll off his tongue. Nothing special, just something to help him sneak around a little better. It was hard to ambush someone who could feel your footsteps a mile away. Besides, Kenny’s reactions were so much more fun when she was surprised, and Flams loved it when she shrieked at him~.

~~

Kenny pressed herself into the bark of the tree, head snapping in the direction of any sound. She hated this. Hated it when Flams pulled this shit; why was it her responsibility to entertain the big bastard?! Hands curled into fists, Kenny snorted. It wasn’t like she enjoyed this….enjoyed being treated like a snack. Even if Flams kept an eye out for her; and if being eaten wasn’t so bad, once she got over the smug smiles, teasing, and slime.

“God damned bastard,” she growled. Kenny leaned to one side, peering out over the canopy of leaves. They swished with a warm wind, shifting the fragmented light around her. She sighed. Slowly, she peeled herself from the tree, and moved to the next one. Like before, she kept her back pressed against the bark. It felt good to have something at her back. Felt safer.

The further she moved along, the more paranoid Kenny became. She hadn’t felt the ground shame in a few minutes. Flams liked to stop and think, she knew that much but he didn’t take this long. Right? Did he take this long normally? Kenny growled, shaking her head. Needed to stop getting caught in her thoughts and focus on getting the hell away.

She ran to another tree. Back pressed to it. A part of her knew she was only dragging out the inevitable. Still, she kept going. Moving from tree to tree, pressing herself against each one as she went. Waiting. Listening.

Kenny wasn’t sure how many trees she’d moved between when she felt it. Eyes on her back. She whipped around, eyes widening at the sight of two golden abysses. Eyes. They flickered mischievously, the black pit of Flams’ pupils honing in on her.

“FUCKING SHIT!” Kenny whirled on her ankle, prepped to sprint, but was stopped by a pair of hands. She smacked into one of them, scrabbles back, and was caught by the back of her shirt. A frustrated yell escaped her as she was jerked into the air, legs kicking at the empty space before her. Soon enough, she was held in front of Flams’ grinning face, his lips pulling back in a smirk.

“Ooh, gotta watch that tongue, toffee…” Flams rumbled, his free hand moving to his waist. “Don’t wasn’t that bitterness makin’ you taste fowl, now…”

“Kiss my ass, red,” Kenny snapped. She lifted her hand, giving Flams a full display of her middle finger.

“Ouch, oh, my frail feelings,” his hand moved to his chest. The sarcasm made Kenny’s eyes roll. “Really, I’m hurtin’, kid.”

“Ain’t your kid.”

“No...but you can be my treat~.”

Kenny glared at him. The giant licked his lips, making a point to pull them back so she could see. She hissed, legs and arms flailing as Flams’ fingers brought her closer to his face. Kenny came to a swinging stop over Flams’ face, and her chin dropped to sneer at him.

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t~,” Flams purred. His fingers loosened a tad, dropping Kenny ever so closer to his maw. She yelped, tried to pull herself up and away from those teeth and what lay beyond. The pressure at her back loosened. Kenny gasped, only given a moment’s peace before she dropped.

Her arms windmilled, legs fought the air. The air got hot, heavy, and she smacked into something sticky. Before she could place up front down, Kenny rolled backwards, only stopping when the ground lifted under her. She untangled her limbs from their awkward position, instincts digging her hands and feet into the tongue beneath her. There was a moment of peace. Kenny caught her breath, then launched herself forwards.

Before she could get very far, the ground lurched under her. Kenny face planted, grunted, and groaned as the living bed of muscle raised her to the top of Flams’ mouth. She squirmed, trying to push the invasive tastebuds away as Flams got himself a taste. The ramping rumbled around her served to show Flams was enjoying himself. Dumb, stupid, giant red headed bastard.

Kenny sputtered. Flams’ tongue lifted up, the tip running along her face and drenching her in the drool pooling around her. She let out a hiss, slapping at it with a disgusted scowl. Already she felt the heat and drool slopping her bangs into her face, no doubt soaking through her bun...and her clothes.

Yet, despite herself...she tried to restrain her reactions. Kept her kicks close to her chest, her hands away from his gums. Flams’ mouth had been really sore at the doctor’s… No point in making things hell.

Flams’ tongue lifted again, arching downwards. Grimacing, Kenny rolled on her back. The arch opening to the back of the throat was getting closer, and she was sliding down fast. Breaths blasted like wind, gurgles of organs below joined their melody. It was the sound of her fate being sealed. Her legs scrabbled, trying to push herself up and away from the living cavern.

Kenny closed her eyes. There wasn’t a point trying to see now...not until she got where she was going. Her feet slid into an open space, the rest of her fell after. She landed with a grunt, and was promptly sucked down. Muscles squeezed in on her, squishing her arms and legs together, and forcing her down. Everything got tighter for a moment, and Kenny squirmed, knowing it was Flams pressing his fingers to his throat. To feel her. Bastard.

Another ripple of muscle yanked her down, tugging Kenny along like a child down a slide. If slides weren’t living, breathing, greedy giants. She growled, barely able to hear herself think around the chorus of Flams’ body around her. Breaths, organs, and the beating of his heart drowned out any sensible thought-until something grabbed her feet.

~~

Flams sighed as he felt Kenny’s weight plop into his stomach, a hand pressing against his middle. He chuckled, patting at the middle human as he murmured the proper spells. Couldn’t have Kenny suffocate or hurt...or have anything happen to her. Once the spells were finished, Flams dropped his hand.

“There now, that wasn’t so bad~,” Flams stretched and glanced around, figuring the best way to get home. He began the walk back once he found it, ignoring the little punches and kicks to his guts. Kenny’s steam never lasted long once she was tucked away. She’d fall asleep, pissed as ever, and let him get some rest.

Something itched at him. As he walked, Flams poked his middle. “You good in there?” After a pause, he heard a muffled voice.

“The fuck you mean?!”

“I mean,” Flams frowned, “ya’ weren’t as...kick-y as you usually are. Kinda felt like a noodle. You okay?”

It was quiet a moment. Then, there was an eruption of punches to his middle, and Flams’ nose wrinkled. Good to know she was fine now.

“I wasn’t-I was plenty kick-y!”

“Not really,” Flams frowned, scanning the tree line as he walked. He wondered how he looked, walking along and talking to no one. “You’re plenty fighty now, but earlier you weren’t.”

“I’m FINE!” Kenny’s voice was shrill. Much more so than normal...almost...embarrassed? Flams scratched his stomach. Odd. Why would she be so afraid to hide how much or little she was fighting? Shrugging, Flams sighed. He’d deal with that later. Kenny was fine, and back to her fighting spirit. For now, his only focus was getting a nap.

“Alright, whatever...just makin’ sure we didn’t need another doctor’s appointment or nothin’...” The sight of his cabin in the distant was a welcome one, though Flams made himself a note to visit that little vet again. She seemed sweet...in more ways than one. “I’ll letcha our after I get a nap, ‘kay?”

Flams didn’t get a response...didn’t expect one, either. But he smiled. What a day to get a splinter…