#would never again write anything that rivalled the success of this play. having spent his life sitting on fences‚ Jean Anouilh found

[aellynera]

The Best Years of Your Life (Reeves x Reader)

THE BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE

(hey hey, this is my other submission for @wasicskosgirl and her 800 follower celebration! and yes, you read that right - it’s REEVES. i had a lot of fun writing it and i hope you enjoy reading it! CONGRATS Amanda!!)

Word Count: um like 6200ish oops it was supposed to be a blurb

Summary: They say the best years of your life happen in high school, but what do they know?

Warnings: Some language. Female reader implied but no pronouns/description. Teenage angst. Adult wistfulness. Mostly fluffy tho. No promises about proofreading. Frog murder. 

with the prompt - “Like what you see?”

It all started back in high school. Sometimes you wonder how often people say that, and if it’s really true or they’re just falsely remembering how things happened because high school is supposed to be the best four years of your life.

But in this case, it’s true. Because high school is when you met Reeves.

Sophomore Year. High School. A Friday. 

It was the third day of sophomore year, fourth period on a Friday morning, your last before the lunch break. Biology class was maybe the one you were least looking forward to, not exclusively because of the required frog dissection, but pretty damn close. Gross. And you never understood why the school year didn’t just start on a Monday, but you were new here in San Diego. Maybe they just did things differently.

It was bad enough being the new kid. It was worse when you walked into class halfway through the lecture, even if it wasn’t your fault. The timing of the move was weird, and you’d spent most of the first two days, and this morning, doing placement tests and talking to your counselor. 

And now you were being called out in front of the entire class.

“Ah, there you are,” your teacher announced as you walked in the door. “Everyone, this is our new student, please make them feel welcome. You can sit over there.”

Your eyes followed as she motioned to the empty seat at the lab table in the back of the room. Suddenly you weren’t sure if your face felt hot because of embarrassment or because of the boy in the other chair.

Dark, curly hair cut close on the sides but longer on the top. Deep brown eyes framed by long, long lashes. Full, plush lips curling up into his cheek on one side. A nose that, okay, maybe might be a bit oversized but for some reason worked on his handsome face and--

Well, shit. Definitely not the embarrassment.

You shuffled your way to your seat and slid into it with your head down. A few students watched you curiously but soon turned their attention back to the lesson. You tried your best to focus on what was going on, to not look to your left at the distraction next to you.

You weren’t very successful.

By now you thought you’d sneaked enough covert glances to know that we was wearing a leather jacket, had a small diamond stud earring in his left ear, a bunch of silver-studded brown suede wrap bracelets around both wrists, a silver ring on his right index finger, and oddly precise handwriting as he took notes. In between relevant facts the teacher was sharing, he was doodling tiny music notes in the margins of his notebook.

And he totally caught you looking.

“Like what you see?” he leaned over and whispered.

Your mouth felt drier than the Sahara but also somehow so moist you were afraid you might have actually drooled on yourself. You should have opened your mouth to respond but your brain refused to make the connection. Probably for the best.

At least, at first. When it finally caught up to you, the only response your brain could provide was, “Maybe?”

Now would be the perfect time for the floor to swallow you whole.

He just winked at you and his attention went back to the doodles around his notes.

You shifted your gaze back to your own notebook, but you don’t know if anything else of importance was said, and don’t remember writing anything down. The bell ringing sharply pulled you back to reality and you hastily shoved your books in your backpack, ready to escape.

Just as you were about to leave, a voice called out. “Hey, sorry about earlier. If I freaked you out or anything.”

You looked up. He was smiling at you, a little shyly. You bit your lip, your brain and mouth still refusing to connect.

He stuck his hand out. “I’m Reeves. You’re new here?”

“Um…” you smacked yourself internally. This was ridiculous, you weren’t really shy, you knew how to have a conversation, he was just introducing himself. You were going to have a serious conversation with your brain later about proper communication techniques.

It felt like hours had passed, but you finally pulled yourself together enough to respond. “Yeah. My- my dad got transferred for work, we moved here like a week ago. He literally dragged the family across the country. I’m originally from New York City.”

His eyes lit up. “Oh, cool! I always wanted to go to New York City!”

You found yourself smiling back.

“Do you...wanna sit with me at lunch?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “Maybe you could tell me a little about the city? And...about you, since we’re gonna have to commit heinous acts of violence on an amphibian together? I’d like to know who’s wielding a scalpel next to me.”

The giggle that escaped your throat could not be contained. This boy - Reeves - was adorable. “Oh. Okay, yeah. I’d really like that.”

The Present.

Poor Lenny the Frog never stood a chance. Then again, neither did you.

To be fair, Lenny was already dead when you and Reeves got your hands on him. Well, when you got your hands on him, because for the full first half of that specific class period, Reeves refused to touch him and nearly turned as green as Lenny once was. That’s when he insisted on naming your cadaver, because somehow giving it a name made it easier to deal with.

You were pretty sure Reeves was nuts.

By the middle of sophomore year, you were dead too, but not for the same reasons.

By the middle of sophomore year, you weren’t sure how you were still alive, because every time he looked over at you and gave you a sly smile during class, gave you that look, you felt your heart go taut and you forgot how to breathe and certainly, rightfully, should have been dead.

Your friend Alexis stuck her head into your bathroom. “Hey, we’re just waiting on Vanessa, and then we’re good to go. Drinks first? The show doesn’t start until 8 so we have time.”

You glanced up from your makeup and nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Alexis grinned. “Aaaaaah I’m so glad you agreed to go out tonight! It’s gonna be so much fun!”

“Oh, it’s gonna be something,” you muttered, going back to your eyeliner.

Alexis had been the first one to see the concert announcement about a week ago. A benefit show at one of the clubs down in Greenwich Village, some punk revival thing (for charity) with a bunch of different singers and musicians. Not normally your scene, but Alexis scanned through the names and suddenly remembered you’d known Reeves in high school. You said yes, he was in your class, and you’d been lab partners once. Vanessa squealed in excitement and Alexis announced you were going to the show. There was never any actual agreement.

Because of course Reeves was going to be there. And of course, you had to be too.

Junior Year. The Parking Lot. A Tuesday.

“I’m just saying, it was a ridiculous foul, and it should never have been called,” Reeves groused as you walked out of the gym.

“We also should have made like twenty more of our own foul shots,” you pointed out.

The Lake Howell Silverhawks had fallen to their arch-rivals in a somewhat glorious fashion. You didn’t even like basketball that much. But that didn’t really matter. The games were just an excuse to go out for burgers before and hang out with your friends during.

It was definitely an excuse to hang out with Reeves.

Junior year, you were both disappointed to find you didn’t have any classes together, but you still almost always ate lunch together. He’d come over to your house to study during the week and sometimes just to chill out on the weekends. Over the past year, he’d shown you all around the city and taken you to his favorite places. You told him all about New York, how you missed it and one day you’d go back, and all the famous sites and which ones were tourist traps that he was only allowed to visit the very first time and then never again.

You spent so much time together, even your mother liked to tease you about why he wasn’t your boyfriend.

It took a while for you to find the words to tell her it was because he was someone else’s.

As much as you liked to pretend she didn’t change anything, Randie Rustenberg changed everything. It was gradual, like a creeping vine of ivy, and she slowly took him over. There was no malice; it was just one of those things that happened. Reeves spent less time with you, his best friend, and more time with Randie, his girlfriend.

The girlfriend you desperately wished was you, because ever since that first biology class you’d had the biggest, stupidest crush on him.

Eventually you had a boyfriend of your own. Theo was a nice guy, he really was. Polite, friendly, had a good sense of humor, liked your family. And your family loved him. Your mother was so happy that you had a boyfriend, she seemed to forget to ask how Reeves was and if you’d seen him lately.

Of course you saw him. You saw him every day, in the cafeteria, at his locker, passing by in the halls. Sometimes you could find him playing the grand piano on the stage in the empty auditorium. Yes, if your mother bothered to ask, you saw Reeves all the time. Now it was just always with her.

Except this week. It was a break of sorts, no classes, just some sports and other school activities. Randie was on some trip with her parents for some kind of church function, and Theo was fishing with his dad on some lake up north. He’d told you where, but you honestly couldn’t be bothered to recall. So when a bunch of your friends and a bunch of his friends all said everyone was going to the basketball game, there was no debate.

As if there was any way you’d say no.

Sometime during the game, your friends wandered off to the snack bar and never ventured back. His friends started a game of hacky-sack under the bleachers. And you found yourself pretending to understand all the finer points about hoops strategy, cheering and yelling along with Reeves and having a great time, just like you used to.

“Where’d you park?” he asked as you left the gym and headed out into the sea of cars. You vaguely pointed in the direction of yours and he grinned. “Oh, good, I’m that way too. Come on, I’ll walk you.”

The faint glow emitted by the lampposts in the parking lot bounced off his curls and his eyes, when you could catch a glimpse, were bright beneath them.

As if there was any way you’d say no.

The walk wasn’t very far, but it felt like it was over in a second. You hadn’t said anything on the way, just soaked in the comfort of walking next to him as he kept commenting on the game.

He was waving his hands everywhere, looking at them as he talked as if his hand motions would make things make any more sense to you, in the middle of saying something about your center and how they needed to get better about blocking out when you finally spoke.

“Oh, shit.”

Reeves looked up at you. “What, you don’t agree?”

You dropped your bag on the ground and rolled your eyes. “No, my car is locked and I left my keys inside.” You pointed to the passenger seat. Your keys stared back at you derisively.

You both stared back at them for a moment, then he grinned. “Hang on, I got you.” He held up one finger and trotted off to his car, coming back a minute later with something in his hand. “This should take care of it.”

You took a step back. “Reeves? Um. Okay, why do you have a coat hanger in your car.”

He rolled his eyes back at you. “For emergencies, duh.” He quickly twisted the hanger into a hook shape and went to your passenger side window.

“And why do you know how to break into a car with said coat hanger?”

“Like I told you,” his tongue poked out between his teeth as he worked, “for emergencies. You think I haven’t locked my own keys in my car once or six times?”

“Did Randie teach you how to do this?” The words were out of your mouth before you could think. She probably had. She might have been churchy when required, but she was also responsible for about half of Reeves’s stints in detention (the other half just being him making the wrong joke at the wrong time and pissing a teacher off.)

Thank god he didn’t seem to hear you as he kept working at the lock. Finally you heard a *click* and he pumped a fist into the air with a little “yessss!”

And then you’re not really sure what happened. You bent down to pick up your bag and then you were standing up and Reeves’s face was literally about three inches away from yours and for the eight thousandth time since you’d know him, you forgot how to breathe.

Neither of you said anything for what felt like days. You just stared at each other under the dim halo of the parking lot lights.

“Here you go.” He took your hand and dropped your keys into it.

“Thanks,” you whispered.

“Like what you see?” the corners of his mouth quirked up, just the slightest little bit.

“...Maybe.”

And the staring recommenced. Were you two getting closer? Physically closer, you meant, of course you were close, you’d always been close. Well, at one time you were really close but then Randie Restenberg happened and it wasn’t fair that she got to know what those lips felt like and did he always smell this good or--

“Yo, Reeves!” A pickup truck full of guys skidded to a stop behind your car and one of his friends - Jake? Jack? you barely remembered your own name right now - stuck his head out the window. “Fight to the death ping pong tourney at Matt’s house! You in?”

Reeves bit his lip and closed his eyes for a second before he pulled back with a soft “I’m sorry” before turning to his friends. “Um, yeah, sure. Sounds brutal. I’ll meet you there.” 

The pickup sped off, tires screeching out of the parking lot. Reeves turned back to you, but you’d already gotten into your now unlocked car and started the engine.

You rolled down the window a fraction and gave him a weak smile. “Hey, um. Thanks for saving my butt. Now go kick theirs at ping pong, yeah?” Your face felt so hot, and for once you were grateful for the dim lights in the lot.

“You could, um, come along if- if you want.”

“Nah, I’m...I’m tired, I’m just gonna...um, head home. But I’ll see you tomorrow maybe?”

Reeves looked like he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. He just stepped onto the curb in front of your car, smiled, and raised his hand in a little wave as he watched you drive off.

The Present.

A series of shrieks and the slamming of the door told you Vanessa had finally arrived. It sounded like they were jumping up and down on the tile just inside your front door, which was ridiculous since you’d all just seen each other the day before. But typical.

You smoothed a pinkie under your eye, checked your makeup one final time, and went into the living room.

“Oh, you look hot,” Vanessa gushed. She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and plopped down on your couch. “Who are you trying to impress tonight?”

“Reeves, of course,” Alexis laughed, leaning on the kitchen counter. She sorted anything she might need from her big purse into a little evening bag as she talked. “You know we go to all his shows. And you know they went to high school together.”

You snorted. “That was a long time ago. I’m not even sure he’d remember me.”

Vanessa waggled her eyebrows. “You’re probably right, No offense, honey, but no one was that hot back in high school.”

He was, your brain supplied. Very helpful. You smiled wanly.

Vanessa continued. “But you were friends, right? You’ve never really talked about it. God, it must be so cool now to think that you were friends with Reeves back when he was an awkward high school teenager.”

“Reeves was never awkward,” you laugh. “It was kind of unfair.”

“But you totally had a crush on him,” Alexis offered.

Had? What do you mean, had? Oh my god, shut up, brain.

A pillow flew in your direction and you ducked as Vanessa giggled and Alexis rolled her eyes. “Come on, tell us something about him,” Vanessa goaded. “Wait. Was he, like, your prom date? That’s your secret! You totally went to prom with Reeves and you never told us!”

Senior Year. Prom. A Saturday.

The night was not supposed to go this way.

It was supposed to be limousines and corsages and dinner with dates and friends. It was supposed to be endless pictures while your mother told you how gorgeous you looked and how handsome he was and your father gave a thinly-veiled shovel talk about how he knew what happens on prom night and what would really happen if that actually happened. It was supposed to be punch and cookies and balloons. It was supposed to be dancing closer than the chaperones were comfortable with and kissing with tongue when they weren’t looking.

It was supposed to be the best night of your life. It was supposed to be fun.

Nowhere in your weeks of dreaming of this night did it involve sitting on a bench in the girls’ locker room, knees pulled up to your chest, while the party carried on in the gym just beyond.

It definitely didn’t involve crying.

The bass beats of the deejay and the harmony of laughter temporarily got louder as the locker room door opened, and then faded back into a muted thumping as the door closed again a second later. You could hear footsteps headed in your direction but before you could unfold yourself and wipe your tears away, a familiar voice called out.

“Hey, there you are!”

Being able to find the words to describe how he looked in his tux, his curls slightly tamed by some gel, the blue rose (of course it would be an off color, why would he pick something standard?) pinned to his lapel, his lopsided grin… Finding the words was nearly impossible.

Of course he would show up now. Because your night wasn’t already crappy enough and half the reason you were sitting there weeping instead of out there dancing was standing right in front of you.

You realized that wasn’t fair. It was probably more like, twenty-five percent of the reason, and it wasn’t his fault. But that didn’t make it any better.

“Why are you in the girls’ locker room, Reeves?” you sniffled.

He furrowed his eyebrows and his nose scrunched up in concern as he took in your mascara-streaked cheeks and puffy red eyes. “One of your friends said you came in here like half an hour ago and nobody’s seen you since. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Clearly not.” He sat down next to you. “Wanna talk about it?”

A deep, shaky sign left your chest. You didn’t really want to talk about how, earlier in the evening, you’d excused yourself to use the restroom and come back to the gym to find Theo dancing with...you didn’t remember her name, nor did you care. You didn’t mind that he was dancing with another girl, in theory, but it was another matter entirely when his hands were on her ass and she was sucking a deep purple mark into his neck. And he was laughing. 

A short, vicious argument ensued in the coat room after you’d cut in and dragged him off by the elbow. And it turned out that he’d been seeing whats-her-name for months, somehow, behind your back while pretending that everything was perfect with you. When he was supposedly visiting his grandparents? He was with her. When he had to work an extra shift? He was with her. When he got off the phone with you, saying he needed to get to bed early? He was calling her.

Prom wasn’t supposed to involve a very public break-up.

And things didn’t get any better when, deciding you needed something to drink, you went back into the gym and immediately saw Reeves and Randie, dancing cheek to cheek, arms snugly wrapped around each other as a soft, romantic song wafted through the air. Because of course he was with her. She was his girlfriend and Reeves wasn’t a detestable cheating asshole.

There was always another her.

You couldn’t handle it.

So you took off to somewhere almost guaranteed to be empty. You figured the locker room wasn’t really the kind of place kids would want to make out, and you were right. It was blessedly empty. Until now.

But you couldn’t tell him the second part, so you just went with the first. His eyes got wide as you blubbered through the sordid details of Theo being a complete and utter twat. Another quivery sob half-burst from you and Reeves got up. He grabbed a few paper towels from the dispenser and handed them to you as he sat back down.

“Thanks,” you hiccuped.

“I never liked him,” Reeves announced.

You found yourself choking on a huff of air. “What? Yes you did! Everybody loved him. That’s what makes it extra shitty.”

“Did you?”

“What?”

Reeves cocked his head and looked at you with an expression you couldn’t quite place. “Did you love him?”

Your mouth opened and closed but nothing came out. Why did you always seem to forget how to make words when Reeves asked you questions?

“What?”

He shrugged. “Everyone else loved him. Did you?”

You used every last ounce of willpower you had to not jump up on that bench and shout that of course you didn’t love Theo, you idiot, because I love you.

That would not make this night any easier.

The next thing you knew, Reeves put an arm around your shoulders and pulled you into his chest, hugging you soundly. He rested his cheek on the top of your head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re better off without him.”

You dabbed at your eyes. Nope, still couldn’t make words.

Minutes, hours, days. You had no idea how long you stayed like that, pressed to him and feeling him breathe beneath you. You no longer had any idea how long it had even been since everything crashed around you and he’d come to try and help you pick up the pieces. You just listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady, as the muffled music and joyful shouts of classmates went on past the closed door.

Finally he spoke again. “Hey, you wanna get one of those complimentary pictures?”

“What?” Oh, great. You were finally able to answer his question but you could still only come up with that one word? Stupid brain.

“Well, I…” he sat up straight and, after the briefest look into your eyes, he glanced away. Was he blushing? You weren’t sure. “I always kind of...I kind of thought we’d have a prom picture together. I mean, I just figured, y’know, we’d go with a bunch of friends, but I always hoped I’d get a picture with my best friend.”

The sniffles were back in an instant. Damn him. “Reeves, I...you really want to get a picture now? I look horrible, I can’t get a picture taken like this!”

He took the paper towel from your hand and gently dabbed at your cheeks. “You couldn’t look horrible if you tried. Come on, it’ll be fun. And just think how excited your mom will be when she gets a copy of it.”

Despite your best efforts, you had to laugh. “Okay.”

You headed to the photo area after you washed your face, Reeves helped you wipe off the stray streaks of mascara, and you reapplied just a bit of makeup to make yourself feel better. You were never sure what Reeves said to the photographer before the shots, but he seemed quite happy to take multiples. Reeves stayed pressed against your back with his arms down around your waist, hands clasped together in front of you, for each and every one.

At some point between the second and third shot, he leaned just a little closer into you and you suddenly felt his breath against your ear. “Like what you see?”

For maybe the first time that entire night, your face broke into a genuine smile. “Maybe.”

For a few minutes, your night was absolutely perfect.

The Present.

It was the greatest date that never was.

“No, Reeves was not my prom date,” you told your friends with a shake of your head.

You left out most of the other details, partly because you didn’t want to answer eight hundred questions from Vanessa and partly because, well, you just wanted those moments for yourself.

After the pictures, Reeves had asked if you would like to dance. Until then you didn’t realize it was possible for eyebrows to shoot that far up a person’s forehead, but yours were up for the challenge. You’d mumbled something about if Randie would mind, because you were sure she absolutely would, but he brushed it off. Randie had gone off with her friends when he came to find you, and he really wanted to dance with you, just one dance with his frog murder accomplice. And he said that with a straight face and a twinkle in his eye and there was no way you could refuse.

As if there was any way you’d say no.

One dance turned into two, and then several, until the girlfriend in question finally did show back up and Reeves was pulled away, leaving you with a soft smile and a mouthed “sorry”.

Definitely the greatest never-date.

After prom, life returned to what vaguely resembled normal. Your love life sucked and Reeves still had a girlfriend that wasn’t you, and you didn’t see him much. To be fair, the end of senior year and graduation did creep up pretty fast so there wasn’t a lot of time anyway. Graduation was there before you knew it; he cheered for you and you cheered for him as you each walked across the stage. You made brief appearances at each others’ graduation parties and talked a bit and then, once again before you knew what happened next, it was time to leave for college.

You went back to New York. Reeves stayed on the west coast.

And over the years, like so many other people before you and after you, you just fell out of touch.

“And anyway,” you asserted, “we were just kind of friends. Yeah, like I told Alexis before, we were lab partners sophomore year, and we hung out sometimes, but that was it. Really.”

Alexis snorted and Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “Mmmhmm.”

You threw the pillow back at her. “Mmmhmm.”

“All right, you two,” Alexis chided. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Somehow, you managed to get down to Greenwich Village without further interrogation and minimal shenanigans.

The Present. One Hour Later. Another Saturday Night.

The bar inside the club was pretty packed. Granted, it was a Saturday night down in The Village, so it wasn’t too uncommon, but you were honestly surprised that this many people showed up for a punk retrospective.

There were a few other relatively big-name acts you recognized on the bill, and a fair number of people were wearing t-shirts with Reeves’s most recent album cover on the front. There were even a few that had shirts with his face on it, which was frankly kind of weird.

“Looks like you’re not his only number one fan,” Vanessa smirked.

“I just enjoy his music,” you said off-handedly as you tried to flag down a bartender. “But anyway, tonight isn’t even about him. We’re just here to support charity, right?”

Alexis pretended to agree with you. “Right.”

You glared at both of them before turning your attention back to the bar. Yes, you came to every one of his shows in the area. When you had time. When you could take the night off. When you could rearrange your schedule and switch shifts at the last minute and promise favors to be able to attend them. When you maybe once or twice just called out sick because nothing else worked. So what.

They were really starting to get on your nerves. 

The bartender finally noticed you and took your order, and you looked around the club again while you waited.

Lots of people, ranging from just-allowed-to-buy-booze to mid-sixties businessmen. A few folks that looked to currently be in their golden years but were clearly once punks in their prime. Many people in black and chains and mohawks and neon hair and piercings, to the point where you honestly couldn’t tell who was a performer and who was a patron.

The one person you were looking for was the one that you couldn’t pick out of the crowd.

“He’s gotta be here somewhere!” Vanessa’s voice shouted from somewhere behind your shoulder.

“Vanessa, you’re getting a little weird about this,” you called back as you grabbed your drink and turned around.

“Like what you see?”

Eyes wide and mouth slightly hanging open, you almost dropped your full glass.

Vaguely, nearby, you heard the sound of glass shattering and shot a glance to your left. Alexis really had dropped her drink, and Vanessa was clutching onto her arm for dear life. She was holding her glass at a slightly odd angle and the contents were dripping onto one of her shoes.

The crowd silently pulsed backwards as one, clearing out around the four of you for a respectable distance. Several people watched curiously; surprisingly, they just stood back and stared instead of trying to get involved.

Reason Number One why you really couldn’t blame them: Reeves stood there, right in front of you. Literally less than two feet away, looking right at you. His mouth pulled up into his familiar lopsided grin, his hair still dark but shot through with strands of silver, curly on the top and shorter on the sides. His nose with the little dent, perfect on his face under those dark, luminous brown eyes and...holy shit, was he wearing eyeliner? He was wearing eyeliner.

Reason Number Two why you really couldn’t blame them: Leather pants. Under his old, faded t-shirt and black leather jacket (you were used to seeing him in brown, but you had to admit the black looked good) he was wearing leather pants.

Reason Number Three why you really couldn’t blame them: Quite simply, Reeves was standing in the middle of a bar in New York City and he was talking to you.

You blinked once, then twice. You may have blinked more times but all you could think about was the fact that, after all these years, your brain still couldn’t make words when Reeves asked you a question.

That same old question.

Suddenly you were grinning back, completely ignoring your friends and their dumbfounded squawking and sputtering next to you. You were smiling because even though your brain couldn’t make full sentences of words, it could pull one particular word out of the void and let it come out past your lips.

“Maybe.”

Reeves grinned fully now, his eyes lighting up and the crinkles at the corners deepening.

Someone - maybe Vanessa, maybe a total stranger, you couldn’t be sure - might have swooned from the sidelines.

“Always told you I wanted to come to New York,” he said.

“Always told you I’d go back.”

And the next thing you knew, the next thing that made any sense anywhere in your mind, was that Reeves had stepped forward, wrapped his arms around you, and placed the softest, sweetest, most heart-achingly gentle kiss on your lips.

You pulled away in a daze, felt the heat rising in your cheeks, as you heard a muffled choking sound halfway behind you. Definitely Vanessa.

Alexis and Vanessa’s eyes, already bugging out of their faces, nearly fell out of their sockets when Reeves turned to address them.

“Hey, ladies. I’ll come talk to you after the show, but for now, I just need to borrow your friend for a few minutes, okay?”

There were somehow still more bizarre, mostly inhuman noises that came out of your friends and even later, when they’d deny ever acting like that in front of a famous rock star (and rolled their eyes at you when you corrected them that he was a musician, not a rock star), it wouldn’t matter because you weren’t paying a single bit of attention to them them anyway.

You only had eyes for one person.

He took your hand and pulled you past the bar, into a little room in the back; the office, presumably. The second you were both inside, he wrapped his arms around your waist and looked you in the eyes. He just stared for a few minutes, or maybe hours, you weren’t sure.

It really didn’t matter.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that?” he whispered.

“Third day of school, fourth period biology class, sophomore year?”

Reeves smiled softly. “The second you walked in that door.”

“Why didn’t you?” you tilted your head to look at him. Okay, to gaze into his eyes. You tilted your head to gaze into his eyes and your subconscious hoped to any gods that would listen that you did not have actual hearts or stars in your pupils.

Not that it really mattered.

His arms never left you but he gave a little shrug. “Never seemed to be the right time. And then I had a girlfriend.”

“Yeah,” you laughed. “And I ended up with that lame excuse for a boyfriend. But do you know how long I’ve wanted you to do that?”

“When you couldn’t stop staring at me when you sat down at the lab table next to me?”

“Hmmm, maybe. But definitely when you told the teacher we had to have a funeral for Lenny.”

“Hey, Lenny was a fuckin’ hero,” Reeves batted his eyes at you innocently. “He performed a brave and great service to his country.”

“I am oddly happy you’re still an idiot,” you giggled.

“I’m ecstatic that you kept coming to all my shows in the city.”

You pulled back slightly and looked at the ceiling. “You noticed?”

Reeves gave you that look. That look he always gave you, when you were teenagers, when you said something either completely ridiculous or completely profound. That look he gave you when he thought you might not be looking, even though you were always looking. That look that said he always had your back and you were his best friend. That look that you thought you’d be lucky to see one more time but probably never would.

That look.

“Of course I noticed. I thought about having security make you stay back, but that’s just...no. You always looked happy, and I don’t know...I just didn’t want to intrude, I guess? Just always wondered why you never stuck around after the shows, never stayed to talk to me, never came knocking on the dressing room door.”

You thought about that for a minute. You really did try, but you couldn’t come up with a decent answer. You were happy. Just seeing him was enough, you told yourself. Just hearing him sing was enough, just being in the same room with him, just being near. Just like it was back in high school.

Only it wasn’t high school anymore, and now that he’d finally, finally - after years of would’ve and should’ve and maybes - kissed you, you knew enough wasn’t going to be, well, enough.

So that’s what you told him.

And Reeves pulled you close, leaned in closer, and kissed you again.

You pulled apart, breathless again, and rested your foreheads together.

After minutes, or maybe days, or maybe hours, and definitely years - it didn’t really matter - Reeves was there. You were there. And for once, you were really there together.

“Like what you see?”

“...definitely.”

The Future. Any Day. Every Day.

You always thought, and your friends always said, that the best years of your life happened in high school. And to a certain extent, that was true and you believed in that notion for a very long time.

But ever since that night, that one glorious night in a Manhattan bar, you realized you were wrong.

The best years of your life were still happening.

~end~

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[ryukoishida]

QianQiu/Thousand Autumns Fic: In which gang leader!YWS and school teacher!SQ falls in love.

Title: You’re a Problem I Encounter Fandom: Qian Qiu / Thousand Autumns Characters/Ships: YanShen Rating: NSFW eventually Chapter: 1/? Summary: Yan Wushi was the proud leader of Huan Yue Group, one of the most influential syndicates in the underground world, who wanted nothing more than to see the world burn. His accidental encounter with the pure-hearted school teacher Shen Qiao was a problem he didn’t expect to get entangled in. A/N: A syndicate!AU that literally nobody asks for. It’s also been awhile since I last wrote a fic, so please excuse awkward/bad writing. Sobs. List of Chapters: [1] [2] [3] 

-

i. First Encounter

“Tie the pretty boy up nice and tight,” Sang Jingxing ordered his subordinates in a lazy drawl, his face half hidden in the shadow of the poorly lit room, but even the darkness couldn’t conceal the cruel smile crawling along the lips of the deputy leader of He Huan Group. As he stepped away from the wall and began walking towards his captive, his grin widening when he saw how much of a mess his men had made of the young man, his foot crushed the discarded glasses that’d been knocked off the man’s face during the brief but vicious fight.

There were no windows, just a lone, bare lightbulb swinging back and forth from the ceiling casting a meager glow of light in the underground chamber.

Glancing down at the half-conscious man bound at the wrists behind his back, Sang Jingxing grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced his neck to crane back.

“We don’t want you running back to your daddy so soon again, do we?”  

The only response he received was a pained groan. A sound that sent trills of excitement down Sang Jingxing’s back.

It had taken four trained men to finally take Shen Qiao down. By the time the scuffle ended, Xiao Se had an impressive bruise on his right cheek, Yan Shou had bloodied scratches along one of his arms, Huo Xijing had been elbowed directly in the solar plexus and was still recovering on the ground, and Bai Rong was smart enough to retreat just after receiving a blow that barely missed her eyes.  

After a valiant attempt at escaping, Shen Qiao was no match for the sheer number of guards Sang Jingxing had assigned to keep him under surveillance in the end.

“At least not before we get what we want, isn’t that right, my dear?” Sang Jingxing turned towards the woman with an overly saccharine smile.

Yuan Xiuxiu rolled her eyes at her partner’s theatrics, but after working and managing He Huan Group together for so many years, she was used to his antics by now, so she merely ran a hand through her wavy hair and replied, “I don’t care what you do with the boy – torture him, fuck him – do whatever you want. Just don’t go overboard. We still need him alive if we were to negotiate with Qi Fengge.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” Sang Jingxing said to Yuan Xiuxiu’s retreating back as the leader of He Huan Group slammed the cell door shut behind her without another word.

There were no windows, just a lone, bare lightbulb swinging back and forth from the ceiling casting a meager glow of light in the underground chamber.

“Ah… Shen Qiao. Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it was to steal you away under Qing Fengge’s nose?” he’d released his grip on Shen Qiao’s hair, and his head lolled forward like a broken, ragged doll. Blood streaks on his face made his complexion more pallid, and the only sign that he was still breathing was the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Sang Jingxing continued, circling his captured prey like a hawk. “I get that you’re his adopted son, but you aren’t even meant to be his successor, so why does he spent so much of his resources on protecting you?”

He wasn’t really expecting an answer, but he wanted to have fun with the boy first before he dived straight into business. With a leering, animalistic gleam in his eye, Sang Jingxing reached out towards Shen Qiao’s bruised face, thumb roughly brushing against the man’s lower lip as he tried to force his finger past the seam of his lips.

Though Shen Qiao was in no shape to fight back, he was not a man who surrendered as long as a drop of strength still remained inside him. He twisted away from his captor’s hand and swiftly angled his head to bite Sang Jingxing’s finger with a snarl, hazel eyes bloodshot from what little adrenaline still lingered in his system during the fight.

Sang Jingxing hissed in pain, fury flashing across his eyes as he yanked his hand back, and Shen Qiao felt a sharp blow across his cheek just a short second later. Taste of iron flooded in his mouth.

“Playing hard-to-get is cute the first time around,” Sang Jingxing muttered while inspecting the teeth marks Shen Qiao had inflicted on him, before he put his hand on Shen Qiao once more, “but I don’t have that much patience, even for a beauty like you.”

He wrapped his fingers around Shen Qiao’s neck and started to squeeze with real intent to hurt.

“Yan Wushi, how did you—!” Yuan Xiuxiu’s muffled high-pitched exclaim transmitted through the thin walls of the basement and was interrupted by a distressed scream.

Before Sang Jingxing could react or shout for backup, he heard the men who were stationed outside the cell yelped in surprise and agony, and two successive bodily thuds later, the cell door was busted open.

Two men strode in with confident steps. The one leading had a cold, lethal look to his maroon eyes, the streak of star-silver locks a stark contrast to his otherwise dark, slicked back hair. In between his index and middle fingers was a small silver blade, still dripping with fresh blood of his latest victims; he wiped the blood off with a clean handkerchief that the younger man standing just half a step behind him handed him with the kind of easy elegance that one couldn’t simply mimic.

“Sang Jingxing, has He Huan Group lost so much money these days that you can’t even afford decent guards anymore?” the older man sneered.

“Leader Yan,” the utter of the respectful title was pleasant enough, but they’d been rivals long enough to know that there was no amiability in this exchange, “what’s the meaning of this?”

“I heard you got yourself a new plaything,” Yan Wushi said, glancing over at the barely conscious Shen Qiao with one of his eyebrows raised, “is that him?”

“What is it to you?” Sang Jingxing asked, narrowing his eyes. His flexed his fingers instinctively, his muscles taut and itching to reach for the revolver tucked inside his suit jacket. If anything, at least he was certain that the bullet would find its target faster than Yan Wushi could cause any real damage with his infamous silver blade. It had been awhile since they last confronted each other face to face like this, but Sang Jingxing could never forget the scars and humiliation of defeat from their last meeting.

“Oh, calm down,” Yan Wushi chuckled, the other man’s subtle signs to initiate the first attack all too obvious under his trained observation, “I’m not here to pick a fight, unless you’ve already forgotten what that was like the last time that happened.”

Sang Jingxing pressed his lips tight, silent anger threatening to boil over in the form of whipping out his revolver and pulling the trigger, but he didn’t dare — not when he knew he’d already lost. The fear of losing once again to this man – this monster – was simmering at the back of his mind, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to get away with just a long, ugly cut along his back this time.

“That’s what I thought,” the corner of Yan Wushi’s lips curved up slightly into a cold smile, “let’s not waste any time here. I’ll take what I want, and then we’ll each go our separate ways, hmm?”

“Yu Shengyan,” the leader of Huan Yue Group commanded his assistant with a nod towards the bloodied man still tied up in the chair a few steps away from them. Without further instructions, Yu Shengyan quickly ran over to Shen Qiao and started to cut the ropes loose. With practiced swipes of his switchblade, it took him only a short moment before he freed Shen Qiao.

At this point, Shen Qiao had already completely fainted, and when released from his restraints, he fell forward limply into Yu Shengyan’s arms.

“What do you want with Qi Fengge’s kid anyway?” Sang Jingxing asked. Though he’d given up on trying to keep Shen Qiao in his possession, curiosity still got the best of him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Yan Wushi only said with a laugh.

Carrying Shen Qiao on his back, Yu Shengyan followed his master out of the dank basement cell, thrilled that he got to witness Yan Wushi scaring the shit out of Sang Jingxing and his minions, but mostly confused about the purpose of this confrontation. He didn’t know what to expect when Yan Wushi had suddenly ordered him to come to He Huan Group’s headquarters. To be honest, the young assistant had been half-expecting the gang leader to start a bloodshed for one reason or another — after all, it wouldn’t have been the first time Yan Wushi went off the rails due to the most miniscule of reasons — but he’d never thought they’d be rescuing a stranger.

They were rescuing him, right? Yu Shengyan was hesitant as he carefully placed the unconscious man into the back of the car before slipping into the driver’s seat. Glancing over at his master out of the corner of his eye, the young man almost felt sorry for Shen Qiao, for he recognized that particular look on Yan Wushi’s face.

It probably would not bode well for the man still unaware of what he’d gotten himself into by getting accidentally entangled into Yan Wushi’s life.

[narutogu]

Daylight

REPOST ON MY SIDE BLOG BECAUSE I COULDN’T FIND IT IN THE TAGS

FIND MORE OF MY WRITING @narutogwriting​

Pairing: Naruto Uzumaki x Sasuke Uchiha

CW: none

Length: 1.7k+

Summary: Sasuke’s been living in darkness for so long. Now he sees Daylight.

Inspired by Daylight by Taylor Swift

A bit of a rewrite of what happens immediately after Sasuke and Naruto’s battle in the end of the series

Just bros being bros<3

Darkness. He’s surrounded by darkness, but somehow he can make out the things around him. And he thinks that this makes no sense that he can see in the dark so he must be dreaming, but it feels so real. And it’s because it is real, the feelings. The memories.

It’s all playing out before him, his family slaughtered in front of his eyes. His brother’s words filling his heart with hate. Orochimaru whispering promises of power in his ear and Itachi dropping dead at his feet. Obito telling him the truth about the Uchiha massacre.

It’s all playing out before him all at once in and overwhelming succession. Over and over and over again and he can feel it. He can feel the darkness closing in on him more and more and he’s sure he’ll drown in it, and he wants to drown in it. Let the darkness close in on him, swallow him whole. He doesn’t care anymore. All he’s known is the darkness for so long, that it’s familiar. It’s what his heart longs for.

And then he sees himself, a child, walking in the blackness. He remembers that well, remembers what it was like to be all alone, suffering and it was like no one could see him. He couldn’t see anything, anyone else, in the blackness.

He’s watching himself at seven years old feeling the way he did now at sixteen, and he thinks it’s never going to change. Nothing is ever going to get better, and he’s sick and tired of fighting it.

He can feel himself leaving his body, and he welcomes it. Welcomes the thought of being nothing, ceasing to exist.

But then he sees it. Somethings caught his seven year old self’s attention. His young eyes are looking at something with longing and confusion and hope.

Sasuke looks too, because he wants that. He needs that, needs something to hold onto and hope for because he doesn’t think he can do this anymore. So he looks and he’s blinded by a brightness breaking through the dark. And the brightness is saying his name, calling for him.

Sasuke knows he has a choice and he has to make it now. The dark night or the daylight. And he chooses to walk into the sun.

~

His eyes open, and he’s in the Valley of the End, and he remembers now why he’s here, remembers what had happened.

His head turns when he hears his name again.

“I thought I lost you for a second.” Naruto’s voice is familiar and comforting, wrapping around him like a blanket. “I’ve been calling your name. Could you hear me?”

Sasuke could.

He feels a weird sensation, looks down and sees his arm has been blown right off. He expects pain, but there is none. He doesn’t feel anything but a tugging in his heart, like it’s trying to lift something heavy off of itself.

“So, I’m your one and only friend, huh?” Naruto asks, teasing, and Sasuke looks back at him. His arm is gone too, and their blood is draining out, trickling down the ground and pooling together. He looks worn, exhausted, and Sasuke imagines he must look the same. But despite this, despite everything, Naruto is smiling. That dumb idiot is always smiling.

“Why?” Sasuke demands, his voice weak and raspy, but he’s angry. He’s so fucking angry because now he remembers. He was so close to accomplishing everything, to entering the darkness completely, but Naruto never let him. “Why would you go through all this to stop me? When all my other ties were severed, I could never severe them with you. WHY!?”

Naruto’s laughing, because of course he is, and Sasuke wants to hit him again, but he knows if he moves, he’ll quickly bleed out.

“Is this what it takes to get you to talk? Your body can’t move, so now your mouth won’t stop?” Naruto’s teasing him, like this is all funny, some kind of joke, and Sasuke can’t understand it. He’s never understood how Naruto could find it in him to smile and laugh through everything. “You’re my friend, Sasuke.”

Naruto’s quieter now, more serious, and Sasuke’s staring at him intensely. That’s what Naruto’s always said, but what does it mean? What is it to be his friend?

And he can’t help but ask, demanding an answer. The words Naruto’s spoken to him over and over and over again since they were twelves years old. Friends.

A small smile tugs at Naruto’s lips. He finally turns to look at Sasuke too, and their eyes meet. Sasuke sucks in a breath, and something inside of him feels hopeful. This look that Naruto’s giving him, this moment they’re living in. Sasuke never wants to leave it, he thinks. He wants his life to be this. Always this.

“I couldn’t explain it to you…” Naruto admits. “I can’t understand it myself, what I feel for you. It’s just…” He considers Sasuke for a moment, his blue eye is searching Sasuke’s dark one, looking for something, and Sasuke hopes he can find it.

“I look at you, Sasuke. I see your pain, everything that you’re trying to hold by yourself. I see your loneliness, your hatred, your anger. I see your hurt, and it just… It hurts me.” And Sasuke can see it’s true, see the agony in Naruto’s eyes as he looks at Sasuke, looking at him like he’s all Naruto can see.

“It hurts, Sasuke. It hurts inside so fucking much, even more than any of my own pain ever did… I see you like this, and it’s unbearable. I just want to take it all from you. I’d gladly take all of your pain for the rest of my life if it meant you never had to hurt again.”

Finally, finally Sasuke gets it. He knows exactly what Naruto is talking about because he’s felt that too.

Since he was seven years old, he would see Naruto acting stupid, trying to get attention. He was so annoying, but Sasuke could never ignore him, and he was never sure why. He was drawn to something about Naruto.

They lived in a cruel village, shunned and outcasted by those who should have been protecting them, and now Sasuke knew it was because the very foundation of the Leaf was built on oppression and persecution. Naruto and Sasuke were set up to fail from the very beginning and yet…

Sasuke could see now what he could never before. From the beginning, he and Naruto… They were intertwined. They were always meant to cross paths, to be each other’s friend and each other’s rival. They were always meant to save each other.

Or maybe, even more, Naruto was always meant to save Sasuke.

“Is this heaven?”

The words bring Sasuke to, and he snickers despite himself.

“We fell asleep… We can’t even die right.”

“I can’t move! Dammit! I was going to hit you again!”

And now Sasuke’s laughing harder than ever, and Naruto is yelling something at him and Sasuke thinks this is right where he’s supposed to be.

“Dammit Sasuke! I’ll hit you again and again! No matter how many times it takes to get it through your skull!”

Naruto’s as passionate and loud as ever, and Sasuke wonders how he still has all this energy.

“I admit it, Naruto. I lost.”

And Naruto stops yelling then, staring at Sasuke with furrowed brows and a perplexed expression.

“Do you still think that’s what this is about? Winning and losing?” Sasuke doesn’t answer, so Naruto continues. “This is about being your friend, Sasuke. Saving you from yourself, just like you helped to save me from myself all those years ago…. Your pain, the betrayal… I understand now, Sasuke. I understand why you felt you had to do everything you did. I can’t blame you”

It’s Sasuke’s turn to be confused now, because he never imagined someone would understand why he left the Leaf, why he’d become who he was. He thought it was inexcusable, and now Naruto won’t even cast blame on Sasuke like he deserves?

“I get it now Sasuke. That’s why I’m going to do whatever I can to make it right, to take away your pain once and for all.” And Naruto is gazing into Sasuke’s eyes so intensely that Sasuke feels like he has to look away, but he’s locked on Naruto, completely lost in him.

“If you want to give up, be done with it, then we can die right here. I’ll take your hand and walk into the darkness with you.”

Sasuke’s speechless, unable to even take a breath as he stares at the blond idiot. The words are heavy, permanent, but Naruto doesn’t even flinch as he says them. “If you want to never return to Konoha again, I’ll go with you Sasuke. Wherever you go in this world, I will follow you. Or, if you want to change things, we will. Side by side, we can rebuild Konoha from the ground up. We can change this world together, Sasuke.

And Sasuke again wonders why. Why would Naruto sacrifice all of this for him? Why would Naruto stand by his side? Why was Sasuke Naruto’s friend?

“What about your dream? I thought you wanted to be hokage. But you would die with me?”

Naruto smiles, a sad smile full of pain and tenderness all at once.

“How could I ever become Hokage if I can’t even save my friend?”

Maybe their pain, their loneliness, their always feeling like outsiders has all been so they could belong here, together. They used to be just kids, alone and hurt and in pain, looking for something to help them make sense of the world. And now they had it in each other.

I will understand your pain from now on, Naruto, Sasuke promises to himself as he looks at the blond who’s shining so bright Sasuke almost needs to cover his eyes. All of your hurt, I’ll take that from you, too. And we can help each other heal. Together, like you said.

And Sasuke thinks that yeah, Naruto was right. This was heaven, laying by his side and knowing that neither one of them truly had to be alone. Not anymore.

Sasuke had spent the majority of his life living in an eternal darkness. And now, looking at Naruto, all he could see was Daylight.

[violetwolfraven]

Her Own Place

This is mostly just me writing some Katherine appreciation but yeah there’s some newsbians in here too. :)

Tw: a hint of internalized homophobia fueled by period-typical homophobia.

...

It was the day they won the strike, and just a few hours after that euphoric rush of victory, Katherine Pulitzer packed her bags and left her father’s house to find her own place, and no amount of pleading from either of her parents would make her stay.

She still had a contract to be a reporter for the World, signed that morning, but in anything other than a professional setting, Katherine would be happy to never either of them again.

Was she worried about that contract getting terminated in an attempt to get her to move back in? A little. But as Darcy so eloquently pointed out when she arrived at her friend’s house, every news desk in the city wanted the reporter who wrote the Newsies Banner writing for them. If Joseph Pulitzer tried to fire her, Katherine Plumber would find other work.

And if all else failed, she, Darcy, and Bill would open their own paper. They knew where to find inside information on what headlines sold the best, after all, and every newsie in the city would be happy to circulate their paper.

And there was the fact that Spot Conlon had offered to send some guys to rough up her father if he was stupid enough to actually fire her. While Katherine would honestly like to see that, she declined.

Just like she declined when Darcy asked her to stay, because while he was a good friend, she needed to find her own place. Not just in a home, but in the world.

She’d only come to Darcy because she needed time to find a women’s boarding house, and as soon as she found one in a part of the Upper Eastside that Jack deemed ‘not shifty,’ she was gone, living on her own for the first time in her life.

She was the youngest woman there, at 18. The other women seemed to find her a bit out of place, this young reporter with no husband and no contact with her father.

And most of them really didn’t like Jack, who always brought along spare papers when he visited and tried to sell to them, ‘just being efficient.’

Jack was probably also most of the reason they didn’t like Katherine, but she didn’t tell him that. Let them stare. It wasn’t as if she and Jack were doing anything improper, courting the way plenty of young people did.

Courting Jack was fun, in a way that got Katherine’s heart pumping and reminded her she was alive. It wasn’t much, given that she was now living on the only kind of reduced reporter salary a woman could make and Jack was making only a few dollars a week, but it was theirs, and it was exciting.

And Katherine didn’t love him.

She didn’t know when she realized it, but once she did, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The realization was probably helped along by how she and Jack fought. A lot.

They fought about where to go for an evening stroll, whether Kath should help pay for medicine when half the boys were down with the flu, whether Jack should walk her home when it was dark outside...

They weren’t exactly an ideal couple, though they were healthier than some Katherine had seen. She hadn’t missed how one of the women who lived in her boarding house always came back from visits to her family with bruises.

But she and Jack were two bonfires, and they always just goaded each other into burning higher and higher until they were boiling and scorching and scalding everything and Crutchie was yelling at them to take the fight outside.

Maybe a blaze was what was needed to get things done during the strike, but in peacetime, it was nothing but destructive. It was exciting, but it caused pain for everyone involved.

It was about when she realized that that Katherine realized that she didn’t love Jack.

She didn’t know if she ever had. Did she get a rush when she kissed him because she was excited by him or because she was excited by doing something her father and society wouldn’t approve of? Did she hold his hand in public so people would know she was his or just so other boys wouldn’t flirt with her for once? Did she enjoy letting him sleep over just to cuddle or because of the look on her stuffy old landlady’s face in the morning?

The fact that she didn’t know wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to her, staying with someone she didn’t love, but more than that, it wasn’t fair to Jack. Once Kath realized that, she felt guilty for ever leading him on that much, knowing she had only set him up for hurt.

So Katherine broke up with Jack, and she told him why, and she knew that he was only pretending he was fine, but she also knew that it was for the best. For both of them.

And to her pleasant surprise, breaking up with Jack didn’t mean she lost the friends she’d made through him, though they were none too pleased that Kath had hurt him. But Specs listened to her reasoning and told her she did the right thing. Albert still came to her for advice or to share some gossip. Les and Race still invited her to play poker like nothing had happened.

And Jack forgave her, eventually. He picked himself up and healed and found someone else. Davey was much better for for him than Kath was, and he was also a friend of hers, so she was happy that both of them were happy.

Kath was definitely glad that just because she and Jack weren’t together anymore didn’t mean she was alone. She had friends besides just Bill and Darcy, now, in Jack and his boys and girls. Those valiant, fearless kids who didn’t care where she came from, only that she was on their side.

“Run along to your children, then,” Kath’s father sneered when she refused yet another attempt to reconcile, knowing that he would never change.

Well, if those children were Kath’s, she was theirs. Their reporter, their friend, their king of New York, whatever. They were a family, and Kath was now part of that family. The newsies believed in her the way her blood family never had, anyway.

Her father saw it as Katherine choosing them over him. It wasn’t. It was choosing her over him, because he would never stop underestimating her and the newsies had learned not to.

That wasn’t to say that Kath needed them the way he thought she did. She didn’t need anyone. She’d clawed her way to the reporter position she had now on her own will and determination. She’d had to believe in herself, because no one else did. No one was opening any doors for her, so she kicked them down herself.

Kath didn’t need them. She didn’t need anyone. But like Miss Medda told her, they were nice to have, anyway.

Medda was uniquely qualified to understand Kath’s position, having gotten her theater from the money her oil brought, but kept it because of her own talent. Hell, she’d had it more difficult than Kath had, but still was willing to give advice to a young woman who was, to some extent, following in footsteps that looked like hers.

Medda gave good advice, on balancing friendships with ambition. Someone would always say that Kath’s success was all because of the newsies, and none of it was through any skill of her own, but it was her choice whether to hold her head high and keep doing what she knew she was good at or believe it when other people said she was worthless.

It was her choice whether to push away the people she loved so everyone could see she wasn’t leaning on them or to keep them close despite the people who assumed they were the ones holding her up instead of her standing on her own among them.

It was true that Kath and Medda had very different experiences, given that they came from two different industries and two different races. But they got along because they were both successful women who no one had wanted to see succeed, and the only people who did have faith in them happened to be an energetic family of newsies.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Not for Kath, at least, and she was lucky for that fact.

Bryan Denton was a world-class reporter, and though he worked for the Sun, he helped Kath out when she needed to get a story published and editors were hesitant to listen to her.

“It’d be a shame to watch good writing go to waste,” he said, and it didn’t matter to him that Kath was a woman or that she worked for a rival paper. And it didn’t matter to him that Jack came from nowhere when Denton asked for drawings to go with his stories or that Davey was a poor Jewish boy when he gave him for advice on possibly becoming a writer, too.

Kath liked Denton. They worked together on stories whenever there was a story that couldn’t be covered by just one person. He became... not a father to her, but an uncle, maybe. Not a mentor, because Kath didn’t need one, but someone to believe in her and help her get her writing where it needed to be when she couldn’t kick down the doors in her way fast enough.

It was Denton who suggested the story that would change Kath’s life for the second time. A piece on the working women of the city, which he didn’t feel qualified to write, himself.

Considering Kath’s experience was very different from most, she had to rely on interviews to write off of. But most of the women at her boarding house didn’t speak to her and the few girl newsies could only provide their own experiences and Kath wanted a range. She did interview the girl newsies, along with Medda and a couple of her showgirls, but she still needed more perspectives.

That was when she remembered that Davey had a sister, didn’t he? And she worked in a factory before joining her brothers selling newspapers.

Kath had seen Davey’s sister a few times, in passing, but she’d never really spent time with her until she sat her down for an interview and...

Sarah Jacobs. Witty, smart, funny Sarah Jacobs. The other newsies called her... honestly, Kath wasn’t sure if the nickname was ‘Saz’ or ‘Sass,’ but it hardly mattered. Like Jack and Davey, her nickname was more optional than the others.

Sarah was the most amazing person Kath had ever met, and by the end of that interview, her face was flushed and her heart was pounding and goddammit these were all the things she had never felt for Jack.

These were all the things that she wasn’t supposed to feel for another woman, and Kath was absolutely screwed.

She wasn’t blind. Besides just Jack sneaking around with Davey, she knew damn well why Race went to Brooklyn so much and why Blink and Mush disappeared from time to time. She could see how Smalls and Sniper blushed when they held hands, the two 13-year-olds badly hiding their little puppy love.

But that was them. That was other people. It was one thing when your friends were queer and it was another when you realized you might be, too.

Trusting no one but her oldest friend to confide in, Darcy, surprisingly, wasn’t very surprised.

“I’ve known since we were kids, Katherine,” he told her, “Or, I suspected. All the other girls our age started looking at boys around 12 or 13 and you didn’t.”

When Kath responded that she didn’t recall seeing Darcy look at girls at that age, either, he blushed and told her a secret, and it almost made Kath want to laugh, how three of the biggest newspaper heads in the city had no idea their kids were queer.

Of course, having someone who knew who she fancied didn’t help Kath much, seeing as how she was almost certain Sarah didn’t even like women. Sarah was, by pretty much everyone’s definition, a good Jewish girl. She didn’t exactly seem the type.

That was, until Mrs. Jacobs found out Kath was planning on spending Hanukkah alone, and insisted she come over for at least a few of the nights, for one of which Jack was there, too, and spent a significant amount of it giggling in a corner with Les, clearly both in on some kind of conspiracy.

For that, Davey was fairly exasperated with him, but when the conspiracy came to light, Sarah didn’t seem to have any issue with it when she accidentally wound up kissing Kath.

That was Les’s fault for pushing her, but Kath wasn’t sure why until she saw the blush on the other woman’s face, and realized that in some not-so-innocent, twisted way, the boy had been trying to help his sister.

That kiss naturally caused a lot of thoughts, and no amount of talking with Darcy could fix it because for the first time in her life Kath could remember, something might actually be going her way.

She’d had to fight for everything she had in her life. For her position as a reporter, for her friends, to even have a life of her own and not be someone’s trophy wife. And now, cut off from her father’s fortune for daring to defy him, she fought for every story she got to put food on the table and pay her own rent.

Kath had clawed her way uphill through walls built by men who didn’t want her to reach the top and kicked down locked doors that wouldn’t let her in and the fact that Sarah might actually be easy didn’t make any sense.

It didn’t seem right, that Kath might get something she wanted without fighting so hard she barely won to get it. She’d fought for everything else around her in this little place she’d carved out for herself in life, so why should this be any different?

It took a talk with Jack, a talk with Davey, and a talk with a very annoyed Les, but after sorting through everything, Kath figured out that yes, she did want this, and yes, she could have it if she just let Sarah know that she wanted to try out being together.

And after only a few months... they weren’t trying anymore. They were everything the fairytales said love was supposed to be.

It was the day Jack moved out of the Lodging House, over a year after the strike, and Kath saw how Davey was moving in with him as everyone who couldn’t know the real reason assumed it was for financial reasons.

That very same day, she decided to ask Sarah to move in with her.

That very same day, only a few hours later, Sarah said yes, and Kath Plumber decided that she had found a place for herself in the world she liked to call home.

[lonelypond]

A Coffeeshop Christmas Carol, Ch. 4

NicoMaki, Love Live, 3.1K, 4/6

Summary: Maki and Nico struggle with their working relationship, Eli continues overthinking, and Umi saves the afternoon.

Read The Darn Script

Nico enjoyed working on sets. A ever changing group of students keeping up a steady bustle. And progress. Every action made a show one step closer to opening night. Right now, Nico thought, sitting in the back row, staring at the half built unpainted framework of the Christmas Carol backdrop, it could be any show, any era, anywhere, just waiting for actors to step onstage, the lights to come up and the audience to be brought into a world created from imagination. Amazing.

“Umi said you’d be here. You weren’t answering texts.” Maki’s voice announced as the door slammed against the wall.

So much for the theatre being a hushed, hallowed space. Nico giggled, refusing to look at the redhead who slumped into a seat one away from Nico and held out several pages. “Here’s your duet.”

“Duet?” The play was full of them. Nico thought it had been a clever touch. Scrooge gets a solo at the start, then duets, then a finale full of everyone’s voices.

“Marley-Scrooge. Didn’t you say it was the heart of the play?”

Had Nico said that? Probably. “What did you think of Nico’s play?”

“Haven’t read it.”

Nico spun in her seat, “Haven’t read it?”

Maki shrugged, “Not in the mood.”

Nico didn’t know she could grind her teeth, “How can you write music without knowing anything about the play?”

“Scrooge hates people, loves money, ghosts scare the love of money out of him so he reconsiders loving people. It’s the basic Dickens one, right?” The arched eyebrow had enough attitude to out diva a theatre full of leads. Nico had been enjoying the quiet, but she wasn’t going to back down.

“There” and Nico drew out every word, “are character nuances specific to Nico’s script.”

Maki blinked, “You do know composing is different from writing an essay about your writing choices. Just take a look.” Maki poked Nico’s nose with the score sheets.

Nico batted them away, “Play it for Nico..”

“I’m busy.”

“Nico is also busy.”

“I’m doing you a favor.”

That was too much for Nico, “You’re doing your job. Composer in residence. Assigned to provide music for Nico’s lyrics so that Nico can showcase her A Christmas Carol adaptation during the Christmas pageant.” Nico stood, stepping into the gap between them, “Nico spent years working on this. Show some respect.” Nico ripped the pages out of Maki’s hand, turned and stormed out of the theatre.

That hadn’t gone any of the ways Maki had anticipated.

###

Eli shuffled the cards, sitting cross legged on the floor of her studio. Let them pick? Would random be fairer? Was she overthinking? Why had Nozomi perked up so much when Nico had mentioned Umi singing? Shaking herself, Eli glanced at herself in the mirror, took out the scrunchie holding her ponytail together and let her hair fall. She was doing her students no favors getting so distracted. It had been so nice to flirt, to have someone NOTICING her. It had also been nice having someone concerned about simple things like if she was eating. It was too easy to get into the dance masochist mindset, pushing everything aside to spend all available time and energy on art. Eli had grown up in that environment, scrambling for attention and parts, obsessing over form and appearance, seeing every other dancer as a rival. It had brought out all her worst traits and when the opportunity to teach at an advanced level here had opened up, Eli had packed up her life as soon as she opened the job offer email. But it had still been lonely. The students were respectful, but responded to Eli’s professionalism by stepping back. And while there had been a whirl of introducing the faculty events, Eli’s commitment to the barre didn’t allow for much socializing.

And if she didn’t decide which students got which dances soon, she would have even less time for socializing.

###

Maki was in the undecorated, anti holiday booth, now labelled Professor Scrooge’s corner, facing the side wall, perpendicular to the entrance. In front of her, Nico’s script, a seemingly innocuous pile of paper. Her coffee was cold. It was obviously a slow afternoon because Nozomi had seemingly limitless time to stare at her. And was now approaching with a cup of fresh coffee. Nozomi sat down, dipped a finger in Maki’s old cup, and winced, “Missed opportunity there. Was a good pot. Brought you new.”

Maki sighed. “Thanks.”

Nozomi pushed the script with a finger, “Want me to read it to ya? We could make it a bedtime story kinda thing.”

Maki actually recoiled, her chair colliding with the wall, her face pale. Nozomi giggled.

Nozomi picked up a couple of pages, scanning them, “Hey, this is cute.”

Maki frowned. Cutesy Christmas had been her ongoing nightmare for the past two years.

“You’re going to hate it.” Nozomi winked, “There’s decorations everywhere.”

“Scrooge wouldn’t.”

“No, but Cratchitt does. A little oasis of merry. And then there’s Fred.”

Maki found herself willing an influx of student customers, noisy and boisterous and thirsty. Freds. They refused to appear on cue.

“What did Christmas do to you?” Nozomi wondered, this time out loud.

This had been a mistake, Maki realized. Too public. But if Maki had tried reading in her studio with the piano right there, the script would have had no chance at all. Maybe she could sneak into an empty classroom or the back of the theatre when Nico was finished with today’s building activity.

“Thank you for the coffee.” Maki put the script back in her bag, stood, picked up the coffee and fled. It was in a ceramic mug.

Nozomi leaned back, thoughtful. She wasn’t having much recent success with keeping an audience.

###

Nico sat at the rehearsal piano, the music Maki had written propped up. Inhale. Find the keys, play through once slowly to make sure she remembered which keys...there were a lot, this would be slow going. After a tangle mid keyboard over a question of chording, Nico closed her eyes, groaned, inhaled, and began again…

“Nico?” Umi Sonoda’s voice rolled in from the back of the theatre Nico had reclaimed after a quick walk along the Riverside trail to vent some anger.

“Hi, Umi. Nico will be with you in a minute. Or an hour.”

Umi had quickly reached the piano at her usual pace and now leaned over Nico’s shoulder. “Would you like me to play for you?”

“Do you have your violin?”

Umi shook her head, “Not with me and I won’t do it justice with my skill on the piano, but if you’ll forgive me sightreading, I can play it for you. If that would help.”

“Nico could have managed, but if you really want to do Nico a favor.”

Umi smiled as Nico vacated the bench at high speed, “If that is your wish.”

“Nico’s wish was for Maki to play it when she dropped it off and to have read Nico’s play but at least now Nico has something to audition actors with so Nico…

“Is Maki a problem?” Umi read through the pages once, returned them to the stand and began the sprightly lament.

Nico had one hand on Umi’s shoulder and was tapping along on the piano, shook her head, “Nico’s got it. Nothing a little more communication can’t fix. Nico likes to let artists find their stride.”

“Wise. Maki is dedicated, but new to collaborations.”

“Nico could tell.”

“How is she doing with the choreographer, Ms. Ayase?” Umi continued the conversation without interfering with the smooth flow of music. “I heard there was some friction over Maki’s decision to highlight the works of Duke Ellington.”

“Something which Nico supports. And I’ve been talking to Eli. She’s nervous about trusting her students so Nico’s been encouraging her. Newbie teacher nerves.”

“Ah.” Umi had played through twice, “You really do have things under control.”

“Of course, Nico is always on top.” Nico’s casual tone matched her lean against the piano, half paying attention, half planning duet combinations for the students who’d signed up to audition.

Umi choked on saliva.

That caught Nico’s attention and she quickly reviewed what she’d said, then grinned. “Nico is always on top of any…situation, Professor Sonoda. The Conservatory is a family institution, what else could Nico mean?”

Umi could feel the wink in the air and knew she deserved it.

“We will be avoiding the works of Cole Porter at the next gathering.”

Nico giggled, “Play the song again, please. Nico wants to sing.”

“Scrooge or Marley? I’ll take the other part.”

This was going to be a memorable afternoon. The prim Umi Sonoda in an almost playful mood, willing to duet with Nico on a Yazawa-Nishikino original.

“Marley.” The trickier part, especially as Nishikino had written it, surprising Nico who thought the lead would be the obvious stronger part. But no, Marley had a much wider range and so many emotional layers.

“Bah Humbug.” Umi declared in a ringing, stentorian tone that Nico would have never let pass from an actor on stage and the duet began.

###

A single dorm room had seemed like an ideal sanctuary for an only child like Shizuku, but right now, a passel of roommates would have been a welcome distraction from worrying about tomorrow’s audition for Professor Yazawa. Shizuku’s phone went off, she grabbed it like a lariat around the neck of a bucking bronco. Text. Kasumi.

K: Kasumin has dessert, let me up.

S: Trying to fatten me up before auditions.

K: ; )

S: I’ll be right down.

###

Maki had been staring at the text for half of Yo Yo Ma’s Bach Cello concerto, so an hour. Send or erase. But do it now. Closing her eyes, she pictured Nico storming out of the theatre, anger in her ruby eyes. As she kept reviewing the scene in her head, Maki realized she’d recognized hurt too. Auditions were tomorrow. Maki didn’t know much about the practicalities of theatre, but the day before anything was usually stressful. Biting the inside of her lip, Maki sent the message.

M: Christmas is still hard, but your script deserves my full attention. I’m sorry. I have another song ready for you. Are you still on campus? I can run it over.

Instant ping.

N: Nico is at home, could you please bring it by? A second song for auditions would be a big help to Nico.

Drop and run. Maki could do that. She didn’t want to spend another night in her studio, falling asleep at the piano. She could pick up a pizza to take home and then read the rest of Nico’s script.

M: Sure.

N: Nico appreciates it. My apartment is the upper floor of 2525 Cherry Blossom Lane.

N: if you haven’t eaten, Nico has leftovers.

M: I was going to pick up a pizza.

N: Save it for another night. Home cooked is better.

Maki grabbed her long coat, pulling a black beanie over her hair. Couldn’t hurt to be polite, could it?

###

Nico opened the door. There was warmth. And no holiday decorations, which was a relief. Maki had walked over, taking her time, which was a more than leisurely enough journey to be chilled. Nico still looked professorial, with a pink, wool cowl neck sweater and a ruffle skirt. Maki felt like an undergrad in her jeans and t-shirt, although her long gray cashmere coat could crash Carnegie Hall and fit into an opening night crowd.

“Hi, Maki! Thanks for running the music over.”

Maki nodded, glancing around the small apartment. The decorating scheme leaned cozy cute and pink, with pictures of Nico and people who looked a lot like Nico artfully placed around the room. A red framed black and white print was over the fireplace. A cute, gamine woman in black capri pants, a white turtleneck, and a wide belt with a star in the center, slinking playfully forward.

“Who’s that?” Maki asked.

“You don’t know?” Nico clucked as she shut the door, “Rita Moreno, Nico’s hero.”

Maki tilted her head, “Why?”

“EGOT.”

“Egret?”

Nico sighed, “Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony...only 15 people have won all of them.”

“Impressive.”

Nico shrugged, not really interested in things she already knew. “Sit on the couch, Nico will cook food, if you feel like playing what you’ve composed for Nico, the keyboard’s right there. Nico was working on the duet.”

“Do you want to win awards?” Maki was curious.

“Well, the Pulitzer will look nice in front of that print. They’ll probably give us each one.”

Such confidence. Maki had no response to it so continued the find out more about Nico quest.

“Have you always wanted to be a playwright?”

Maki heard Nico turn something and then Nico was standing in the archway of the kitchen. She’d added an apron with patchwork pink hearts scattered over it and was holding a whisk, “If you’re interviewing Nico, can it wait ‘til after the cooking? Nico is a master chef but omelettes take concentration.”

“Sorry.” Maki grabbed a pink pillow, also ruffled, and propped her chin on it.

###

Not an omelette, but omurice.

“Itadakimasu. Nico said and Maki muttered the same, pleasantly surprised by the Japanese custom.

“Childhood comfort food.” Nico smiled as Maki dug into her serving ravenously, “It reminded my mom of Tokyo.”

“When did she move here?”

“She and my dad did when I was a baby, before my siblings were born. Her job transferred her.”

“My family goes back and forth. My Dad is still on the board of the hospital we own there, but actually practices medicine here. I was born in Chicago though, he teaches at Northwestern.”

“Chicago is a great theatre town. Nico has visited once or twice.”

“Yeah, I always tried to see what the Goodman was staging, when I wasn’t studying.” Medical school and the accelerated undergrad program that had gotten her into medical school had left Maki almost no free time.

“Nico applied to Northwestern’s theatre department but got the job here instead.”

Natural pause in the conversation, both women eating and remembering separate experiences in Chicago.

Before things got awkward again, Maki decided to brave the thing she needed to address. Scraping her fork over the plate, she dove. “I didn’t mean to disrespect the work you put into A Christmas Carol.”

A pause. Nico leaned back on her couch, her legs underneath her, observing the woman fidgeting three feet down the couch from her, “Nico is listening.”

Maki scrubbed her hands through her hair in a manic burst, then sped through her next sentences, “I’ve just been trying so hard to avoid anything Christmas related and that’s nearly impossible this time of year and every time I open up your script, there’s Scrooge feeling the same way that I do about decorations and Fred being impossibly cheerful and…”

“You want Scrooge to take his cane and tear through decorations.”

Maki nodded, looking a little sheepish.

“Read the script. Maybe he does.” Nico grabbed both their plates and hustled to the kitchen, scraping them off. Maki heard the sound of the sink being filled. Nico wasn’t coming back right away. Maki decided to lean in the kitchen doorway and watch as Nico filled the dishwasher.

“Always stay ahead of chores.” Nico said in her best NPR announcer voice.

“Not looking for life advice.”

Nico chuckled, “That’s the polite way to say ‘you’re not my mother.’”

Maki laughed.

“Nico needs to get ahead before auditions. There’s a freezer full of meals, two months worth of instant coffee, every kind of medicinal tea Nico might need, and emergency brownie batter.”

“Are shows that complicated?”

Nico turned, eyes narrowed, “Have you never been part of a play or opera or…”

Maki shook her head.

Nico grimaced, “Oh, this will be fun for Nico.”

Maki was surprised by the sarcasm, and hastened to reassure Nico. “I’ll be fine. I’m very flexible.”

Nico raised an eyebrow. “Nico doesn’t need flexible; Nico needs prepared.”

Maki couldn’t imagine a situation involving music she couldn’t resolve, prepared or not. “Like I said, I’ll be fine. It’s a small ensemble.”

“Students are relying on us.” Suddenly Nico was right under Maki’s nose, eyes glowing like laser sights, “Nico doesn’t need “fine” or emo Christmas pity parties, Nico needs polished and professional. We have to put together a show over four weeks that contain several holidays. Fine is not what Nico wants to hear.”

“Don’t worry.” Maki stepped away from Nico.

Nico turned back to the sink, “Nico will worry less when you’ve read the script and finished the songs.”

###

Maki finished the song with a flourish. Nico had been unable to fight off a smile while listening so Maki thought she might have earned some points back.

“That was funnier than Nico expected.”

“Scrooge creeping up the stairs afraid of the dark should be funny.” Maki put the keyboard back on the low table and flopped back on Nico’s couch. “Plus, it’s a perfect moment for Scrooge’s charm to show through.”

“Scrooge isn’t charming. Scrooge is snarling.”

“And charming.”

“You’re going to make this gay again.”

“I didn’t see a song for the 20 questions type game at Fred’s party.”

“That’s because that scene gets the fun, flirty Blindman’s bluff song, which you would know if…”

“Maki read Nico’s script.”They said in unison. And laughed. Maki relaxed, just slightly.

Nico flopped back, turning her head and meeting Maki’s gaze. “I know it’s a lot and I appreciate what you’ve done so far.”

“It’s my job.” A soft, calm light in brilliant amethyst eyes, a satisfied private smile..

“It is.” A peaceful moment, quiet enough to hear the wall clock ticking, and then Nico’s face became a mask of horror, “And Nico’s job starts extra early tomorrow.” Nico stood, “C’mon, Nico will drive you home.”

Maki glanced at the time, past midnight. “I can walk home.”

“No one walks home alone on Nico’s watch, especially not in that neighborhood you live in.” As quickly as she said that, Nico had her coat on, keys in hand. “And the faster you get home, the faster songs get written.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Maki grabbed her coat, feeling an odd flutter as Nico held the door open.

“If you finish the Christmas Present duet by breakfast, Nico will give you a 24 hour pass about the script thing.”

“Don’t I get to sleep?”

“Nico will sleep for you.”

“You’re a tyrant, aren’t you.”

There was a wink and an arm slipped through hers and Maki was being skillfully guided down the stairs.

“Nico is a winner.”

Maki was beginning to believe it.

A/N: It's been a week. Or three. But I finished a chapter. Hope your Spring has something bright in it.

[acockius]

a christmas cliche.

here is my Thank God It’s Christmas gift for the lovely @justasupersonicwoman​! i hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it. it was lovely to get to know you a bit. major thanks to @dtfrogertaylor​ for another successful gifting event. we all adore you.

gwilym lee x reader;; 2,012 words;; no warnings

It didn’t feel like Christmas. For someone who always had their tree up and fully decorated by the first of December at the latest, you were certainly lacking the Christmas spirit this year. Everyone was well aware as to how much you loved Christmas. However, your mood as the big day came closer rivaled that of the Grinch. You were trying your very best to put up a front, but it was clear that you were having difficulty navigating your favorite holiday season on your own.

Your boyfriend was currently away filming a movie, and it wouldn’t wrap until just before Christmas Eve. This wasn’t anything new for you; you’d been together for quite a while now and Gwilym had been absent for extended periods times over the course of your relationship - just never during the holidays.  You were very supportive of his career, and understood why he couldn’t be there, but it didn’t make it any easier.

You’d spent Thanksgiving with your family, which in theory, was enjoyable. You hated having to answer questions as was to where Gwilym was, and what he was filming, and how cool it must be to be dating an actor. You’d navigated all of those questions with the best of ease until your Aunt Lucille piped up with a degrading statement.

“Maybe if you’re lucky, he’ll marry you.”

For your family’s sake, you made light of it. if you were good at doing anything, it was masking your feelings. You were beginning to think that you should get into the acting business yourself. After the guests had vacated your parents’ house, the comment hung over your head like a dark cloud.  You were curious as to what your loved ones thought after having spent three Christmases with Gwil, without any certainty of the future. You loved him, and you know that he loved you, but did he love you enough to want to spend the rest of his life with you?

As the days slowly passed by in December, the more bitter you became. You were thankful to have small conversations with Gwilym when he had a moment free, but they were becoming few and far between as December arrived He blamed it on the production working hard to get the movie wrapped so that they could get everyone home in time for the holidays. He swore he’d make it up to you, but the poor bastard had no idea how hard he’d have to work to do so.

A distraction was needed, so you did your best to throw yourself into work, but that even proved to be tricky. You had to go out of just to get there and back, as you were doing your best to avoid the town centre. The square stood smack dab between your metro stop and your office building, and it was filled with market stalls, a gigantic tree lit with thousands upon thousands of lights, and a skating rink. People from near and far gathered to explore the shoppes for small trinkets, pose with their loved ones for photos under the tree, and hold each other for dear life while they pretended they knew how to ice skate. Does anyone even really know how to ice skate? Your girlfriends had invited you on a ladies’ only adventure to take part in the area’s festivities, but it made you feel pitiful, so you declined their invitation. On the bright side, walking out of the way every day only contributed to your daily workout. 

You were beginning to notice that people were willing to profess their love during the holiday season more than any other time of the year. Logging into social media to see another friend posting an engagement photo or their pregnancy announcement seemed to be a daily occurrence. Suddenly, elf on the shelf shenanigans were no longer funny to you and if you saw another cute pet dressed in a Christmas outfit, you were going to snap your phone in half. A social media hiatus, it was. 

What you loved most about the holidays were the movies that seemed to play on a loop across several television channels and the songs that flooded the airways starting the week of Thanksgiving. After a while, you had to monitor what you did and didn’t watch or listen to. Your favorite movie, Love Actually? Completely off the table, as it made you long for Gwil even more than usual. You had to switch back to your usual playlist for a few days after The Eagles “Please Come Home for Christmas” brought upon a weeping episode. You found contentment with comedies such as Home Alone and Christmas Vacation, with an occasional viewing of the cartoon version of The Grinch thrown in. And as long as the Christmas song didn’t have to do with love, you were happy to listen to it.

Gwilym still wasn’t sure as to whether or not he’d make it home in time for Christmas. To say that it broke your spirit was an understatement. You were debating booking a last-minute ticket to spend the holiday with your parents, but they discouraged it. Why couldn’t they realize that you didn’t want to be alone? 

You sat at your desk on the day before Christmas Eve, staring out the window when one of the secretaries brought you a package. You began to tear it open, but before you finished, your phone began to ring. You nearly dropped the package when you saw Gwilym’s number on the screen.

“Hello?” 

“Hello, darling. Did you get what I sent you?” Gwilym asked.

“I’m actually in the middle of opening something now.” You held the phone between your shoulder and ear and pulled out a boarding pass. “A plane ticket... to Zurich?”

“That’s right. How’d you fancy spending the holiday with me in Switzerland?” 

A few of your coworkers lingered outside of your office, looking in and eavesdropping. 

“Gwilym Lee... What are you up to?”

“Come to Zurich and find out.”

The line went dead and you hung up the phone. Your work friends cautiously entered your office and took the rest of your work for the day, seemingly a part of whatever grand scheme that Gwilym had cooked up. You were met downstairs by a driver who was there to provide you with a ride to the airport, equipped with a packed bag, courtesy of one of your best friends. When you texted your group chat to find out who was the culprit, they all just wished you a good trip. You made a quick call to your parents on the way to the airport to say that you’d be in Switzerland for Christmas, but they already knew. Was everyone in on this Christmas surprise?

When you got to the airport and finished making you way through security, you had only 45 minutes before your plane would board. You were directed to the airline’s lounge - equipped with plushy chairs, champagne, televisions, and snacks. Everyone addressed you as “Mrs. Lee” but you were quick to correct them, more amused than bitter about it. You were too nervous to eat or drink anything but you enjoyed the privacy as you worked through your nerves. The feeling hadn’t subsided even after you were seated in first class, being offered champagne again by a stewardess who addressed you again as Mrs. Lee. You wound up working yourself up so much that you feel asleep from stressing yourself out and sleeping nearly the whole way there. 

When you arrived at the airport on Christmas Eve, there was a driver waiting with a sign that said, “Mrs. Lee”. You corrected the man too, but you were beginning to think that Gwilym did this on purpose. Did he think you’d be treated better if people thought you were his wife? You tried not to dwell, as you were so close to being reunited with your man. Nothing could ruin that.

The driver took you to a secluded cabin, surrounded by the most beautiful landscape. It had just turned to dusk, and was cold enough for a few snowflakes to fall. You hadn’t seen snow yet this year, and it seemed to be the perfect time for the first coating. As you approached the cabin, you saw a beautifully Christmas tree lit with bright white bulbs in the window. You could even smell the pleasant aroma of the wood burning fireplace. You had to roll your eyes, because it was a true Christmas cliche. It was everything you’d been fighting the entire season long.

The door to the cabin creaked open when you entered, setting your luggage right by the door. You took off your coat and hung it on the hook, settling yourself with a deep breath. You were stunned to see Gwilym when you turned around, adorned in maroon sweater and tan slacks.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Gwilym’s grin caused the skin around his eyes to crinkle slightly, and you felt your heart swell at the sight.

You ran to him, practically tackling him as you wrapped your arms around him tightly. Gwilym’s hand rested on the back of your head, cradling it when you finally looked up at him. He kissed you deeply, and you thought you couldn’t miss a feeling as much as you missed your lips against his. 

“Gwil....” You voice wavered and eye filled with tears. Gwilym quietly shushed you, his free hand caressing your cheek.

“Come.” Gwilym advised, taking your hand in his. “There’s fresh hot chocolate and I believe the cookies I baked are still warm.

“Is it swiss hot chocolate?” You playfully raised your eyebrows, earning you an airy laugh. 

“Of course it is!” Gwilym guided you into the kitchen, unveiling an incredible spread of Christmas treats.

You beamed, playfully nudging Gwilym’s side. “You’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Lee.”

“Only the best for you, Mrs. Lee...”

You giggled, leaving Gwilym’s side to go and fix yourself a mug of hot cocoa.

“What was that about?” you mused, pouring the hot liquid into a clear mug. You began to add marshmallows and peppermint to your drink before grabbing the whipped cream.

“Everyone was calling me that. Did you tell them to do that or something?” You took a little sip to not burn your tongue, coating your top lip in whipped cream.

“I think it has a nice ring to it.” Gwilym rebutted, voice strong and smooth.

“Okay, but I’m not your wife.” You reminded him, licking your lip clean.

When you finally turned your attention back to Gwilym, your eyes darted down the mid level, where Gwilym was down on one knee. He had a velvet box in his hands, showcasing a sparkling diamond.

“It never occurred to me how much I could long for you while being apart during the holidays. From what I’ve heard, these past few weeks haven’t been easy on you either. I can’t promise my career won’t take me away again during these months but what I can promise is that I’ll be working hard to build a life for us and the family I hope that we’ll have. If you’d do me the honor of being my wife.” 

Gwilym’s blue eyes seemed to pierce through your entire body as he waited for an answer. You certainly didn’t expect for your wretched holiday to end like this. You’d harbored such an anger for this man while he was away and let the monster known as loneliness consume you. it was the reassurance that Gwilym was yours that changed the terms of the situation. 

“Please say something...” Gwilym nervously mumbled.

“Of course I’ll be your wife.” You beamed, setting your hot cocoa down so that Gwilym could place the ring on your finger.

This time, you did tackle him to the ground. You kissed him, letting go of the pent up aggression and emotion that you’d been harboring since Gwilym was gone as your lips moved against his. When you finally did pull away, you pressed your forehead against his and smiled.

“Mrs. Lee does have a nice ring to it.”

[megaboy335]

Mega’s 2019 Top Anime List

Another year of anime has come and gone. This year I ended up watching a lot less due to the over saturation of Isekai and light novel anime, but there was still plenty to enjoy. As usual I consider any show that ended this year as a contender to be on my list. This is simply my opinion and there will be spoilers below.

1) Pokemon Sun & Moon

Starting this list with a show I watched for 3 years, Pokemon Sun and Moon was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with the Pokemon anime. It took the best aspects of XY and added loose animation to the mix. Ash and friends have never had so much personality as each episode brought the characters to life in new ways with funny facial expressions. As an adaptation of the game, Pokemon SM did better in some areas compared to others. The trials were simplified or restructured to account for Ash’s classmates being trial captains in the game. While the Kahuna battles were spaced out very far apart in the anime. I always thought it was strange that in-between major story battles, Ash barely ever thought about the challenges.

The two major story highlights of the anime are Lusamine’s arc and the Pokemon League. Lusamine’s story was the main plot of SM and it played out almost exactly like the game. Her downfall to her Ultra Beasts obsession and then Lillie knocking some sense back into her mom is still an emotional highlight of the series. In any Pokemon anime, the Pokemon League is what brings meaning to Ash’s entire journey through the region. SM’s league is similar to the game where it’s the first league of the region. The rival pairings and matches were completely predictable, but it ended with two big surprises. First, Ash was actually allowed to win for once (matching your character becoming the first champion in the game), and secondly he had a full 6 v 6 match with Kukui. It spanned 3.5 episodes with Ash’s Litten completing its character arc by reaching its final form during the battle. It was a rare match where both parties are battling it out for fun and it ended with a flashy finale of two hype Z-moves. Pokemon SM will be remembered for its simplicity, yet ambitious approach in always showing something new week after week.

2) Mob Psycho 100 Season 2

Mob-Psycho continues where it left off in season 1. The main protagonists have come away from a battle with Claw and now daily life resumes. This season featured a love story, Reigen’s arc, deeper exploration into psychic powers, and the return of Claw. Just like in season 1, Mob continues to excel in two major areas. First is of course the animation. An average episode of Mob is literally that one stand-out episode of a one cour anime. Psychic power usage is often a reflection of emotions and they are animated in different ways depending on the characters thoughts in a particular scene. There were so many highlights this season that it would be impossible to list them all.

Mob’s second strength is the character writing. In season 1 Mob was a boy struggling to create his own identity. This season Mob actively tries to break out of his shell and become his own unique person. We see this through his efforts with the fitness club, again when he separates from Regien, and again as he shows everyone that having psychic powers is no substitute for personal growth or status. Mob is no longer a timid boy like he was at the start of the series. He can now stand on his own two feet and help others who are struggling to get up. Considering there is still a little more manga left to cover, I can only hope it gets one last season to finish out the story.

3) Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

In order to understand the appeal of Kaguya-Sama, just for a second imagine if Death Note was a romantic comedy. Both of the protagonists are locked into a battle of wits to outsmart the other in the events of daily life. The mere act of choosing a vacation spot, going somewhere, or giving an item to each other suddenly becomes a high stakes duel. Kaguya-sama follows Kaguya herself and Shirogane as they try to avoid being the first to admit their love for each other. The side characters only help to add wildcards to each battle such as Chika being able to change the tide of battle with a single phrase.

I enjoyed seeing how absurd each battle would become week after week. The presentation is simple, yet very effective in this anime. Resources were definitely allocated for use in certain places for maximum impact. The voice acting also helped a ton in selling just how important each battle was in the minds of the characters. Overall, the series knows how to play with your expectations. Some battles turn out as expected, some with a twist, and others end on some kind of middle ground. However, each battle brings them a little closer together. I can’t wait for the next season in April.

4) Run with the Wind

Almost all sports anime revolve around high school students trying to become as good as possible and win nationals before the 3rd years graduate. However, Run with the Wind takes a different approach to this formula. It focuses on a group of college students who, at the start at least, would rather do anything else than run. It takes about half of the show before our group of characters even get on the same page about running. I enjoyed how this anime put us into the heads of each character. Some have personal reasons for not wanting to run, while for others it was something trivial. However, by committing themselves to the team they each gained a new outlook on themselves and those around them. It was quite literally an uphill for the team to reach the level of success they got at the end. The final run brilliantly showed how each character learned from the experience and how the time they spent on the team was a positive life changing moment. Run with the Wind shows that it's never too late to try something new.

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

Jojo is back on the list after an extended break between parts 4 and 5. Compared to previous stories, Part 5 is most similar to part 3. There is a quest to clear and it involves the main group traveling across the land and defeating enemy stand users each step of the way. The differences between part 5 and its previous stories becoming apparent right away. First off, the protagonist is not a traditional Joestar. He is the son of Dio born from when he had Jonathan’s body. Secondly, the group of main characters are not exactly good guys. As mafia members they display a sense of unity, but lack the high integrity of previous Jojo characters. A connection they all share is being looked down upon in society, but placing a place in the world through Bucciarati’s squad.

The aspect that makes or breaks a JoJo story for me is usually the villain. I consider Diavolo to be the weakest of any villain across the various JoJo stories. During the early arcs of the story, Diavolo comes off as an interesting character. He has a mysterious personality and will clearly stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden, including killing his own daughter. The series then adds layer of complexity when we meet his alter ego Doppio. The two personalities are clearly distinctive, but the line between which one is charge can be murky. However, his character intrigue quickly comes crashing down as the final arc fully brings Diavolo into the limelight. The story comes down to who can control the stand arrow, which is a sharp contrast to previous villains who drove the final arc on the back of their eccentric personalities. While JoJo part 5 is still a good anime, it will always come near the bottom of my favorite JoJo parts.

The Year of High Profile Weekly Shonen Jump Anime Adaptations

As the 2016-17 hits from Weekly Shonen Jump have aged up, all of their anime dropped in succession this year. I am a huge fan of the magazine, so here’s a section with some quick thoughts of their anime.

The Promise Neverland - The anime changed the escape arc from a mental battle to a horror series. While animation is definitely better suited to playing with the idea of show don’t tell, the result ended up being telling the story through a different lens. While I appreciated the idea, I feel it came up short. The loss of Posuka Demizu’s art was another major blow to the mood they were trying to create.

Kimetsu no Yaiba - When the manga first began, I never imagined it would become a 1+ Million seller. Ufotable brought their top class digital effects to a manga that at a quick glance would make anyone think it would be the last series to get such treatment. The anime brought a lot to the table and greatly helped to bring the manga to life. It was a great experience from start to finish (episode 19 is a major highlight of the year). I’m looking forward to the upcoming film.

Dr. Stone - Compared to the other Jump anime this year, Dr. Stone’s animation and presentation stuck very close to the manga (if not even inferior to Boichi’s creative spreads at times). The aspect that sold this anime best was the voice cast. They brought so much life into the characters and conveyed the passion each one has for science and learning. I enjoyed seeing Senku create his inventions in animated form.

Bokuben - This might not exactly be considered “high-profile”, but I can’t help but find myself impressed by the anime week after week. It adds a few touches here and there to better tell a cohesive story and occasionally adds a scene or two. I appreciated the heart the anime brought to the series through the seiyuu. Introducing a new seiyuu unit from the cast was also a nice bonus as well.

Best OP/EDs of the year:

1) One Piece Opening 22 - The One Piece anime has changed dramatically under Tatsuya Nagamine. This opening is fast paced and filled with future story teases. It changes the format by cutting the op run time down to 2 minutes and includes clips of the episode. The final sequence of Luffy vs. Kaido always gets me hyped each to watch the episode each week. 

2) Mob Psycho II Opening - This opening feels like a natural continuation of the first season opening. It once again showcases how the show is full of creative animation and unusual characters.

3) Mix Opening 1- Mitsuru Adachi is known for his nuanced writing of giving characters the space to convey their thoughts. This opening fully shows these traits through its sequence of character shots that feel like a natural usage of his writing style. 

4) Kaguya-Sama Chika Ending - Cute song and amazing choreography. There’s a clear reason why this swept across the internet last winter

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Opening 2 - Not only is Traitor’s Requiem a very cool name for a song for this part of the story, but the plot teases are perfectly timed in the song. The opening animation also kept on giving with the villain version and Giorno later recapturing the opening.

This brings 2019 to a close and another decade comes to an end. As my way of recapping the decade, here is a list of my top shows in each post I have made since I started posting them in 2014:

Space Brothers

Hunter x Hunter

Kill la Kill

Nisekoi

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3

Sore ga Seiyuu

Death Parade

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3 (Second Half)

Hibike Euphonium 

One Punch Man Season 1

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4

Mob Psycho 100 Season 1

Yuri on Ice

Konosuba Season 1

Sakamoto Desu Ga?

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Tsuki Ga Kirei

Re:Creators

Ero-manga Sensei

Owarimonogatari (the Monogatari series in general)

Hugtto Precure

A Place Further than the Universe

Yuru Camp

Dragonball Super

S.S.S.S. Gridman

[lady-plantagenet]

A Bygone Era - Chapter 6.

A fictional account written by me of Lady Isabel Neville’s life told through the points of view of her and those who knew her.

Points of views so far include: Anne Beauchamp Countess of Warwick, Lady Anne Neville, George Duke of Clarence, Lady Isabel Neville and Richard Neville Earl of Warwick

R&R, if you please<3

Chapter Text

15th August 1469

The Ladies of Warwick would grow tired in the coming days. Anticipation layed claim to their blood like a merciless tyrant, confounding all senses and transfiguring the muted colours of the garden into short sharp bursts of violets and reds unfolding their eyes, as their imaginations were left to run wild.

No woman was more well-versed in the practice of biding one’s time in dignity than the Countess herself. Her hands would be bound to the busy business of adorning her daughters’ sleeves. The mind would set itself upon matters of feoffee to uses . As a young girl, the needs of the heart would be met through the valiant deeds immortalised in The Grail Stories, her tired index finger tracing each engraved line for semblances of her husband’s character in De Boron’s poesies. Fodder for girlish fancies that now lay in the shallow grave of her youth, made colder with each miscarriage wrought on her person.

Her daughters trailed behind her as they left the resplendent terraces for the vaulted chambers, just as the sext sun began to claim its highest throne. The silks from their gowns flashed behind them like straggling snakes made subserviant footmen, occasionally overlapping in clashes of colour. Fresh bristol silk as red as the maiden’s hair, somber foliage patterned on crane-coloured satin for the mother and Indigo brocade dripping in richness and detail for the Duchess who would not deign it any other way.

Isabel’s boudoir at Warwick possessed an inverted ceiling, which made it a favourite backdrop for her daughters when they played at castles. It was their third place of repose for the day already, and one that would well shield their complexions from browning.

Anne was sat close to the oriel window, busily attending to the wrinkles of her labour - a baby’s smock. The green and murrey stitches, straighter than any stitches that had ever preceded them, glistened in the summer sun like cool jewels against the fire of her hair. She smiled gleefully.

Isabel, congruous to her usual character, made her pace slow and when finally appearing before them, had her hand placed visibly over her flat stomach as if two days shy of confinement. Her long dark hair shifted freely under the bare confinement of a frontlet emanating the carriage of the Virgin herself.

Anne eager to please held out to Isabel the flimsy cloth ‘Issy, tell me you like it, there you may have not noticed I added a little bear cub, can you make its likeness?’

Isabel propped her feet upon their father’s stool with a flourish before accepting the offering with delayed movement. She held it against the sun, nails critically grazing the handiwork for fault.

A daughter dark and pale with fashionable sadness in sage eyes, another with skin of honey and milk and hair like copper, full of vitality and goodness, as she. Had I not known them better I would have thought Isabel fit for mother’s old title of Gloucester and Anne, a bride for Clarence. They once seemed like the sun and moon. Annet felt a certain fondness for her new son-in-law, as much she would begrudgingly admit if held to question, but now that Isabel was free to take to him as a lawful wife, she started seeing vestiges of his hopefulness and flamboyance take root in her.

‘Daughter dear, how sure are you of your being with child?’ asked Annet ‘Only a week passes since your monthly course was due’

Isabel retrieved the smock to Anne, a brief inclination of her head conveying enough gratitude to inspire reassurance in Anne, just. The frock did little such for the Countess. ‘As to your knowledge, father and George tarried in Calais near a week after we were wed. I can assure that the nights we had as man and wife were spent most fruitfully. If a child had not been begotten already, it would defy the workings of god and nature’

Annet shot a look at Anne, who was desperately trying to trap the giggles in her throat, but with little success. ‘Isabel, you need not blaspheme and above that, being a woman wed does not entitle you to such vulgarity’.

Isabel stared back at her and redness took root over blanched features. She was once again her teenaged daughter, who would not have dreamed of retorting back to her mother.

‘What have you taken to amuse yourself with today?’ asked Annet willing a motherly warmth remedy her tongue.

Isabel produced some papers, the wax of the scarlett seal bearing two crows and a lion was unbroken.

‘Are you truly planning on reading George’s letters to us for the third time?’ Jested Anne. Annet smirked in hidden gratefulness for the opportune timings of Anne’s defiances when they rarely did arise.

‘This is new news. Fresh news. A messenger brought it some hours past. If you both determine to be this way then I see no reason to share its contents’ she said with newfound boldness.

‘Go on then Isabel’ prodded Annet patiently

‘ Dear Heart,

I write to you a jubilant husband eagerly bequeathing unto you the bestest of news. Your father and I have captured Edward and are but a day’s ride from Warwick. Edgecote Moor is proof enough that God smiles upon our work and your uncle at Olney has now given us my brother. I think it would amuse you much to see our Edward fallen into the guise of our prisoner, his hands bound and unable to wright any more mischief upon this kingdom. I have mentioned to your father that the Oubliette would do perfectly, but he thinks me jesting and will not entertain the suggestion.

I once again say that my only regret is that you were not there beside me to witness for yourself the cries of ‘A Warwick! A Clarence’ as we rode through Kent and even London, though they say the South loves Edward. As you know Sir John Conyers was slain in the melée, which may be the only regret I carry with me, having found the northerner rebel’s loyalities most touching. Withall, it is now more certain than ever that you will be Queen. Engage in your revelries as you ought to as you shall be the finest and most beloved’

Isabel pressed the letter to her chest and drew a deep breath smiling blissfully . The theatrics of the gesture ran deep and true, even Annet admitted to herself, seeing an unusual raise in her daughter’s hooded eyes. They were now the Despencer green. Annet noticed from a wandering shimmer that escaped the window, how sprightly a new wife’s eyes could be.

The reminding realisation of her daughter’s youth once more hit her with a blunt fervour. She thought that perhaps, innocence indeed trumped experience in virtue, for the latter’s lesser value never stilted the joy of the former. She remembered all too well the pangs of emotion she felt when reading her husband’s triumphant war letters in what felt like another era, however, it was never like this.

She only saw the children who a season past were sneaking bonbons from the pantry now playing at war and crowns. Unjaded and unfortified hearts are liberal in their joys which, however much they rival the shallowness of a horse trough, also have it in them to overcome the Pennines with hope alone.

‘Ah Anne, when I am Queen you shall be joined in the second to the best match in Christendom’ Annet heard Isabel say and knew better than to ask who Isabel in fact considered the foremost eligible suitor.

‘Oh truly Issy?’ Asked the hopeful child

‘Yes. Gloucester’s cowardice will be forgotten like a dandelion would readily its pappus’ Isabel passed to Anne her unguent so that she may too pride herself with soft hands, within lay crushed amethysts among a cornucopia of older herbs. ‘A French prince perhaps, now I never much liked them, however, father says it is an important country to appease. Calais claims more of your childhood than it did mine. One only need hear your French. It even surpasses mine, I daresay unsurprisingly so’

Annet raised an eyebrow at that, in surprise as much as in amusement. She did not think she would hear Isabel admit that Anne could best her in anything, while still here on earth.

‘Thank you dear sister, I am readily committed to forget Richard. Tell me, how can one brother so valiantly cross the channel in defiance of the king for love, whereas the other would not even dare ask him twice?’ Edward, the cold calculating king, denier of love, prohibitor of the happy marriage. My, what a fanciful image these two weave.

‘I would tell you if I knew Annie’ chuckled Isabel shaking her dark head in disbelief ‘Richard clearly would rather his brother than a wife he loves. If I were you I’d say “good riddance”’

Hands tightened around the stout wooden arms of the Countess’ chair while an errant foot involuntary kicked at the rushes freeing a herbal scent. ‘Truly, had cat’s brain been slipped into your porridges this morning?’ She noticed both her daughters suddenly veering their faces away from each other and towards her, startled by her exclamation.

‘Gloucester was not yet a man when Clarence first defied the king, what would you have a twelve year old do, Isabel? I know that to attempt to veto your musings would be in vain, but you are no Queen yet and as such must not alienate anyone of the house of York, not in thought nor in deed’

Isabel nodded quietly, Annet saw in her face the crestfallen expression George wore the five years past. Wide eyes sparked with dismay rather than dulled by contrition or diminished pride. ‘Yes, we have all seen the French price of loyalty. Jesus wept, you think any of this I did not know before? As you said, let me muse in peace’

Just as in St Omer, a curtain of silence swept over the room only to be availed by the Sunday tintinnabulations of the bells in St Mary’s Church. The peal of Anne’s voice added to the chorus, ‘But this letter dates three days past. Why are they not here?’

It would be like George to sacrifice clarity for flare. ‘Best read the rest’, prodded Annet

‘Very well then’, Isabel conceded

’ Beloved one, I bid you goodnight presently at Kenilworth where I tarry for a day in the dispensation of justice. Two snakes heads are to be taken off by matins tommorow, they are those of the witch’s father and brother John - married to your aunt Katherine. I believe that is explanation enough for why though I am near, you must wait a day or two to rejoice in my return -‘ the letter slipped unceremoniously through stunned fingers.

Annet was at once at her side ‘Isabel! Isabel!’, she shook her by the shoulders freeing her raven hair from its frontlet and into the pallour of her face.

‘I did not want this mother’ she whispered faintly behind a shaking fist ‘What would god think, what would-. Oh jesus, have mercy on us’

‘God smiles upon them’ Annet found herself quoting George ‘he is the almighty and the Queen’s kin would not have been put in their path if he willed it any different’. Hands were now placed about her daughter’s collar as if she were a horse caught in a storm needing to be steadied.

‘You would say the same for my grandfather of Salisbury. That god willed him lynched and cut down, rotting in the squalor of Wakefield?’ She would have drawn her hand indignantly to her chest had her mother not enclapsed her wrists into a steely grip.

Soothing her daughter, she realised, had all the wisdom of a cripple instructing a mute on how to walk. Annet briefly looked away. She, the cripple here, was unsettled rather than horrified. Yes, feeling naught for a man and his young son being strung up like poultry is unsettling.

Have I no heart, have I relived this moment too many times, just to find that everything that is to be felt, I felt, yet none the wiser for that?

‘I would not. That you do know perfectly well. Now, your father has done great good. His place in God’s kingdom is assured. Clarence is young, he has many more years to uncover the long, winding road. As for you, you have no part in this. Your soul is not tarnished, worry not for yourself- selfish practice it would be if you did’

Pale green eyes stared back into hers streaked with bronze. Anne was ever more a joy to her than Isabel, the bond was obvious. But in moments like this, her attentions covered aught but Isabel in their griefs and worries. ‘If you’d only know mother! It was George’s path that placed exclusively into my consideration. Father as well, but certainly not myself and my soul. I think of my wretched powerlessness. On how often I will find myself able to do nothing to ensure that George may walk the golden path with father when the time comes - that even before that he will be cursed here on Earth like a Henry Fitz-Empress’

The Countess stood up, the crane-coloured thistles in her skirts gathered around her like a ghostly garden against the windowed backdrop of a coming storm. ‘Oh but there is much to do. Be his wife and love him, be England’s Queen and keep its peace, bear the King a son and secure his succession. Do this and there will be no more deaths. I vow this to be true’.

‘Lo- mother, sister, the King!’ shouted Anne across the room. The warm wind from the Campion hills was in conflict with the sudden onpour, noisily banishing the raindrops to the windows in opaque watery blankets. Annet did not need to be with her husband and attendants below to know that the gravel was still hot. She could make Clarence’s likeness: the rider of the black destrier whose curls streaked golden by the sun stood on one end. Her husband’s return she saw not with the eyes but felt instinctively. Her eyes would not have demasqued the downcast man for the king had he not so towered above all the others.

‘Isabel, tidy yourself your ki -‘ no, brother by marriage. For heavens sake, what to call him? ‘ Edward is here’ she finally settled on.

Isabel was looking too, the Byzantine garnet pendant she was gifted by George as a wedding night gift, claimed what little light came from outside in its opulence. Her face showed no sign of duress and no sign of tears. Annet sighed with contentment and now relief for Isabel’s imperturbable exterior, how she would have hated a crying daughter. One to remind her every waking hour that she was no son.

A white bolt of silk was fashioned onto Isabel’s head into a chaperon and they made their way down to the great chamber for their last excursion about the castle. The three men passed the threshold and when the women curtseyed, the befudled Countess thanked chance they came at once as none of them knew for whom the deference should be intended.

Isabel was the first to rise, greeting George as a wife. A wife’s devotal duty. Surely none could gainsay her for bypassing the King .

Any neutrality was however broken when George in spite of- or rather because of- his brother’s presence drew Isabel towards him pressing his lips lingeringly against hers.

The King did not need to do more than narrow his dark eyes, and fear was struck into the walls themselves. The stalwart grey stone which saw all their childhoods and marriages unfolded, all but this giant of a man, who in them saw nothing but the betrayal that had passed against kings. No two kings were as different as Edward IV and Edward II whose Sir Gaveston was sentenced to die in this very castle. Yet fate is wrought with irony.

‘Cousin, welcome to Warwick Castle’ said The Countess who was in no mood for a confrontation regarding honorifics . ‘I have made ready your lodgings at Caesar Tower. As soon as it started to rain I bid the servants prepare a bath, if you please’

The morose nod he then gave was greater confirmation of his capture than any tied rope could have given.

As he was escorted away, she fell into her husband’s arms in a strange variation of their reunion customs. ‘Is it done?’

‘I know my clever Annet better than to ask which you did mean- the deposition or the executions’ The Earl joked, cracked lips forming a warm smile ‘Yes, the deed is done’.

Drops fell into his collar as he shook his head at George, clucking, who instead chose his plain tattered boots as his focus ‘For the love of Christ George, I know you did add that to your letter to Isabel. I told you: platitudes and naught else should be there. Have you spared any though on-‘

George met his eyes and answered with, ‘Thought on what? That news would get out and Edward would find out?’ The smirk that gathered, sat as naturally on his soft lips as a dagger in a babe’s hand.

Read the rest here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22268239/chapters/57406180

[emilx311]

Senju Tobirama has two names, one known only to a handful of people. Turns out, this can make finding your soulmate a bit difficult. 

Written for MadaTobi week prompt Soulmates. Tobirama's second name here is Tetsuo which means (according to the list I found) wise hero or wise man. To make it easy to read I tried to stick to Tobirama for the most part, but anytime Tetsuo is used it is referring to Tobirama. 

If you enjoy my fics please help support my writing! 

There was something very few people knew about Senju Tobirama. Well, really there were many things about the younger Senju brother that were not widely known, but the most important one was his name. Not his everyday name, that one had spread well beyond the boarders of fire country attached to tales of his battle prowess, his invented jutsus, his various feats, and monikers such as ‘the white ghost’. No, it was his true name that remained a secret.

Many had forgotten, but the previous lady of the Senju, Butsuma’s soulmate, was a Hatake and the Hatake could be a superstitious people. They believed that names had power and so every child of the clan was given two names. The first was their secret name, their true name. This name was a secret, given only to those closest to the person. The second was their everyday name, the name the general public would know them as. Though she had left her clan to help her husband and soulmate lead his, the lady Senju held on to some of her traditions. When each of her sons were born, she carefully selected two names for them. In their public names she followed the traditions of the Senju. In their private ones she followed her heart. When they were alone with her, she would use only these private names, would remind her children of the power they contained and why they should take such care with them.

Hashirama had always been a true son of the Senju. Though he respected their mother and her traditions he did not believe in them. He remembered and guarded the name she had given him as a gift but saw Hashirama as his name. After she passed, only his brothers would use his other name and soon even they began to stop. Soon it was all but forgotten, used only as an occasional loving nickname.

Tobirama was his brother’s opposite in many ways and this was among them. He had taken after his mother the most, both in looks and temperament. He listened with awe to her stories and committed them and her beliefs to memory. He’d never seen “Tobirama” as anything more than a cover, a shield created to protect his true self. Tetsuo was the name he regarded as his for it was the name his mother had given to him out of love.

Tobirama was a duty. Tobirama was having to be the spare heir. Tobirama was having to be his father’s soldier. Tobirama was having to fight and kill. Tobirama was stomping his emotions down so they would not get in the way of what had to be done. Tobirama was the aches of wounds and bruises and hours spent training and pushing himself to be better.

Tetsuo was none of those. Tetsuo was the joy of reading, of experimenting, of learning and creating. Tetsuo were the secret soft smiles he saved for his brothers, Touka, and later Mito. Tetsuo was wiping away his brother’s tears and whispered words of apology and forgiveness in the night. Tetsuo was drawing up drafts of treaties he wasn’t sure would ever be signed and plans for a village he doubted would ever exist. Tetsuo was promises to do all he could to help make Hashirama’s dreams a reality. Tetsuo was being able to let his guard down. Tetsuo was playing with and teaching the clan children. Tetsuo was carefully bandaged wounds, and kind words, and warm eyes.

Tobirama was the face he presented to the world, but Tetsuo was his heart. However, Tobirama had not only embraced the name his mother had given him, he had also embraced her warnings. Tetsuo was vulnerable in a way Tobirama was not, not only to spirits but to other humans, and so he kept Tetsuo tucked away. Only when he was alone, or with the small handful of people he trusted completely, would he allow Tetsuo to emerge.

His soulmark did not help in this regard. He’d kept it hidden since it had appeared, a task thankfully made easier by the fact it was on his upper thigh. It wasn’t that he feared he would never meet his mate, nor was it because he was ashamed of having a male’s name. He also did not suffer from the common fear in shinobi that their match would die before they could meet. He did not agonize over the possibility it could be a civilian. No, in these ways he’d been luckier than most. He’d known who his mate was since the moment he’d first seen the elegant writing sitting starkly against his pale skin. Madara was, after all, a rather unusual name.

No, Tobirama hid his mark precisely because he knew who it was for. He didn’t want his father to know he was matched with an enemy. Didn’t want to hurt Hashirama even more by revealing his soulmate was the boy Tobirama had been forced to part him from. He didn’t want to give Touka anything more to worry about-especially not something that could distract her during a battle. He assumed Madara was doing the same since the other never said anything. He continued to fight Hashirama and only ever glanced at Tobirama when checking on his younger brother. So, though deep inside Tobirama Tetsuo mourned for the chances lost, he forced himself to push past it and put such things out of his mind.

And then everything changed. Tobirama, who was always, always, Tetsuo deep in his heart, found himself with the perfect opening to kill Izuna. And yet, as he lined up his strike, all he could think about were whispered promises to his brother in the dark, were the documents and plans he had drawn up in case of the impossible. His brother’s stories about Madara echoed through his mind and the mark on his thigh seemed to burn with possibilities he’d never been able to let go of fully. And so, instead of following through, Tobirama moved his sword so it ended up clashing off Izuna’s. His rival stumbled back, well aware of just how close to death he had come.

The rest of the battlefield had gone silent. All eyes were on them, including their brothers’. They had all seen where Tobirama was aiming, had all seen the inevitable end, and they had all seen Tobirama change his strike at the last possible moment. After a few seconds that seemed to stretch on for eternity, the silence was finally broken by Madara screaming his brother’s name as he rushed over. He was shaking as he checked Izuna over, and the relief on his face when he found no serious wounds made Tobirama’s heart clench. His shocked, thankful gaze met Tobirama’s for a second before Hashirama sensed his opportunity and rushed over to ask Madara for peace once again. And this time, this time with his little brother alive in his arms only thanks to a Senju’s mercy, Madara said yes.

Things moved quickly after that. The treaties Tobirama had so carefully written and rewritten were brought out and signed. And, when Hashirama managed to talk Madara around to creating the village they’d dreamed about as children, he was prepared and dumped all the plans and schematics he’d painstakingly researched and created in front of them. Hashirama had blubbered about how he was the best brother ever, and even Madara had seemed impressed. Construction on the actual village started soon after, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, Konoha had started to look like a proper town. Hashirama had never been so happy, not even the day he’d met Mito, and Tobirama shared hi brother’s joy. It truly was an amazing achievement…and yet he couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Even as their clans had settled together into peace and they learned to work together, Madara never approached him to talk about their bond. He tried to put it out of their mind and focus on his work (and there was always so much work that needed to be done) and he was, for the most part, successful at doing so.

Madara could barely believe that this was real some days, felt like he’d been living in a dream since that fateful battle. His heart had all but stopped in his chest when he’d seen Tobirama line up his strike, but then the Senju had changed course. Instead of being dealt a fatal wound Izuna had walked away with nothing more than a bruise. And then they had actually managed to create peace between their clans. He and Hashirama had been able to make all their childish dreams into a reality better than anything they’d ever imagined. Konoha was beautiful, everything he’d ever wanted and so much more. And, this too, he had Tobirama to thank for. Madara was slightly ashamed to admit that he’d never believed Hashirama when the other had told him, had sworn, that Tobirama also wanted peace. The younger seemed so cold, so quick to fight, so willing to kill that he’d been unable to trust the other could ever truly want peace. He saw now how wrong he had been.

It had been Tobirama who had written the original drafts of the treaties they had signed. Treaties that were truly fair and equal, that left neither clan weaker than the other. It was Tobirama who had done the practical research they’d needed. Tobirama who had drawn up blueprints and plans they were able to construct off of, plans that had clearly taken years of work to create and refine. He thought of Tobirama slaving over books since they had all been children in order to give his elder brother a real chance to see his dreams though and was forced to admit that he’d been wrong. Tobirama did want peace, Tobirama did support their dream and was willing to work harder than anyone to see it through. And, after realizing all this, Madara began to wonder what else he was wrong about when it came to the other man.

The answer that that, as it turned out, was just about everything. As the village grew, Madara had gotten into the habit of watching Tobirama. At first, it was simply because of curiosity. He had wanted to see what the other man was actually like. He was surprised to find himself more and more entranced the more he saw. He was less surprised to realize how wrong most of his impressions of the man were. Tobirama could be cold yes, but more often than not it was not malicious. He was a busy man and he preferred to get straight to the heart of things. But he was always warm to those he cared about. He always had a smile for the Senju children that flocked to him, and later, for the children outside the Senju that began to join them. He was beyond patient with them. Madara had seen him teaching a group of them some basic Katas once while visiting the Senju compound, carefully explaining and kindly correcting them. He was also always willing to answer questions, no matter who they were from.

Tobirama was fierce, but Madara saw more and more that this did not mean he craved fights. He would not allow others to walk all over him, he stood his ground when challenged, but he never started confrontations himself. Well, that was not quite true. If he got wind of someone bullying another, especially if the victim was one of those he considered his, he would seek out and ‘correct’ the behaviour. But, without his old prejudices blinding him, Madara was able to see that this did not make him quick to fight, but rather, quick to protect. And that, well, that was something Madara could respect.

The more Madara watched, the more he could understand the traits he’d once been reviled by. This included the other’s tendency to go straight for the kill in battle whenever he could. Tobirama like to nip things, especially problems, in the bud and make sure they would not be repeated. Going for the kill meant he took out a threat permanently. It meant that the enemy would not be able to hurt him or his, meant that someone else would not have to deal with it later on, meant that he did not need to fear an attack by an enemy he’d thought down. It was not that he was a monster trying sate his bloodlust, it was that he was taking the quickest and most efficient root to protect his side and end the battle.

The longer Madara watched and the more he saw the more he understood, and the more he understood the more he found himself unable to look away. Before he knew it, months had passed and Madara realized he had fallen in love with Senju Tobirama. For anyone else this would not have been a problem, but Madara was an Uchiha. A clan of fire users, they burned with all the passion of their jutsu. And they believed very strongly that their largest passion should be reserved for their soulmates. It was unheard of for an Uchiha to look elsewhere while their match still lived, and Madara knew his did. The ink over his heart was still as dark as it had been the day it first appeared; Tetsuo spelled out in neat, efficient strokes. And Madara did yearn for him, for this mysterious man that had been made to fit him perfectly in a way no other could, but he was not here! There was no one among any of the clans to join Konoha baring that name and Tobirama was right there!

Tobirama was right in front of him, also still lacking any sign of a match, and Madara could see so clearly all the ways they would fit each other. A year ago he would never have believed it, but he knew now that Tobirama would be able to match him passion for passion. He could, and did, stand his ground unflinchingly even when faced with the worst of Madara’s tempers. Tobirama was intelligent, hardworking, and beyond dedicated to the causes and people he considered his own. He cared for their village and all the people in it just as much as Madara did. He was also strong, able to go toe to toe, and occasionally even beat, Izuna and hold his own against Hashirama or Madara himself. It didn’t help that the Senju was absolutely beautiful. Lean and pale he was like moonlight given form, except for the twin gems he called eyes. So, Madara found himself caught in a sort of limbo where he watched and wanted from afar, almost wishing that his mark would fade so he would be free to approach. The whole thing left him feeling guilty and wrong-footed which was in turn making him even more irritable than normal. This, ironically, ended up being what brought everything to a head.

It was a lovely day and Hashirama had decided that his brother and best friend both needed to relax. To this end he had wheedled, and nagged, and begged, and pouted, until they had both agreed to come with him to the onsen after work. Tobirama, as was his habit, made sure that the towel around his hips was secured in such a way that it covered his soulmark. While he did this every time he visited the onsen it was especially important this trip since the two people he was with were also the last two people he ever wanted to see his mark. Hashirama would cry and try to push them together, and Madara…well, just because Tobirama had forced himself to accept that Madara didn’t want anything to do with him or their bond didn’t mean that he wanted to hear the other man say so.

“Oh hey, Madara, I don’t think I’ve ever seen your soulmark before!” His brother was exclaiming, peering intently at the Uchiha’s chest. Tobirama was quite surprised since he had assumed that Madara would have found some way to cover or hide his mark as Tobirama did. He was also confused; this was not how his brother would react to seeing his name on the other. He’d been so certain, the Uchiha’s handwriting even looked the same, but maybe, maybe he’d been wrong? Maybe there was another Madara out there, or, maybe he had a broken bond. Maybe he was matched to Madara, but Madara wasn’t matched to him. “Have you found them yet?” Asked his oblivious brother.

“Obviously not!” Madara snapped. “I’ve asked around, but apparently there is no one named Tetsuo anywhere in Konoha”. Tobirama stumbled and almost fell as he walked towards them, much to their obvious surprise. He didn’t really care though, not when he was able to catch sight of Madara’s chest himself. It was there, written as if by his own hand in black ink above the other’s heart. It was there and it explained everything.

“Tetsuo” he whispered, almost reverently. He then followed that up by facepalming and saying, “I am such an idiot!” He’d assumed that because Tobirama was the name used most often it would be the name on his mate’s mark. That had become especially true after Hashirama met Mito and she’d had his common name on her. In hindsight it seemed obvious, of course the mark would read Tetsuo! The marks were linked to their souls, to their purest essence and, at the core, he’d always seen himself as Tetsuo, not Tobirama. Mito’s mark had read Hashirama because that was the name his brother saw as his, not because it was the one more commonly used. And of course Madara had never approached him, he had no idea that he had a name other than Tobirama, let alone that it matched his mark and that they were soulmates!

“Tobi-Tetsu-oh, OH!” Hashirama exclaimed, looking between the two of them in shock. He hadn’t even thought, but yes, now that he looked again that was definitely his brother’s handwriting and Tobi had always been so careful to hide his mark, even from Hashirama! He hadn’t realized at first because, like his brother, he’d expected the name written on his match to be Tobirama. “Oh, I’m so happy!” He cried, tears dripping down his cheeks.

“What?” Madara asked, glancing between the two Senju. “What are you talking about? Have you both gone crazy?!” He ignored the thought in the back of his mind, the idea that they were reacting like this because they knew who his soulmate was. He also ignored the hope, worry, dread, sorrow, and longing churning inside him. That, at least, seemed to bring them back into reality. The brothers exchanged a look.

“I’m just going to um…go somewhere that is not here” Hashirama finally said, all but fleeing. Madara was getting even more confused and now he had only one possible source of explanation.

“What the hell Senju?” He demanded, placing his hands on his hips and giving Tobirama a look which clearly conveyed, ‘explain now’. Unusually for him the Senju seemed to fidget under Madara’s glare. He looked hesitant for a moment before seeming to reach some sort of decision.

“I’ll explain, just-not here” he said. Madara finally remembers that they were in the changing room of a public onsen clad only in towels and had to agree that was fair. The two quickly changed back into their clothes and then Tobirama grabbed his hand and they disappeared. They reappeared in the living room of a house Madara had never seen before.

“My home” Tobirama answered his unspoken question. “Please sit, I did promise you an explanation”. Madara follows the suggestion while Tobirama stays where he is, leaning on the wall facing Madara and still fidgeting. The silence stretches on before Madara makes a pointed ‘well, get on with it’ gesture. Tobirama takes a deep breath and does.

“As you likely guessed by our reactions, Hashirama and I know who your soulmate is” the younger Senju starts off with, and Madara swallows. “I will tell you who it is, but there are some things I have to explain to you first.” Madara is surprised, but nods, willing to listen. Perhaps his soulmate has health issues, or is on a long-term undercover mission?

“The Hatake, like every other clan, has certain traditions and beliefs not well known outside the clan. One of these is that they give every child two names. They believe that true names hold power, so all children on their blood are given an outside name they can use instead of their true name” Tobirama explains. Madara is confused, while interesting this history lesson on the Hatake does not seem particularly relevant. “What many forget us that our mother, Hashirama’s and mine, was originally a Hatake. She gave up much from her clan when she wed father, but she did not loose the beliefs she had been brought up with. So, when she had her children, she gave us each two names.” Here the Senju pauses and seems to brace himself before starting directly into Madara’s eyes.

“Tobirama is not my name, not really. It is my outside name, the name I was given to shield my true name so it could not be used against me. My true name, the mane my mother gave me out of love, is Tetsuo, and I am your soulmate” he confessed.

Madara felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He was frozen to his spot, unable to react and unsure how he would even if he could. Emotions flew through him, there and gone only to be replaced a moment later. Shock, he’d found his soulmate? Anger, his soulmate had been in front of him, had known all this time, and had done nothing?! Relief, he’d found his soulmate! Confusion, his soulmate was the man he loved? Awe and wonder, Tobirama was Tetsuo, was his soulmate. The man he loved and his soul’s match were one and the same!

“Madara?” Tobirama’s concerned voice finally roused him back to reality. He blinked his eyes a few times and was surprised to feel a few tears escape. Tobirama (his soulmate!) was crouched in front of him, face twisted in worry with an arm reaching out for him, but now quite touching. “Madara?” He asked again.

“I’m okay” Madara assured him, “just surprised. But-” here he hesitated, but he needed to know. “But if you knew we were soulmates-you do have my name, don’t you?-why didn’t you say anything before now?” His heart pounded in his chest and he held his breath, waiting for the answer. Tobi-Tetsuo looked embarrassed.

“I, well, to be blunt, I thought you weren’t interested” he explained. Madara blinked, rather taken aback, and Tetsuo rushed to elaborate. “I do have your name, always have. During the war I assumed you would never be able to want a Senju and then when peace came and you never said anything, I figured it meant you weren’t interested in me, so I tried to respect that and stay away. I never even thought that the mark might read Tetsuo, never imagined you might not know.” By the end he was blushing adorably and Madara’s heart was swelling with happiness and hope.

“You want this? Want me?” He has to ask, has to be sure.

“More than anything” Tetsuo whispered, voice thick with emotion, and Madara can’t resist anymore. He grabs the man he’d been loving from afar for months and drags him into a kiss. Tetsuo responds enthusiastically, and doesn’t protest even as Madara drags him closer and closer until he’s sitting on the Uchiha’s lap.

“Mine” Madara whispers reverently once he’s finally pulled away from the other enough to speak. “My soulmate”. Tetsuo beams at him.

“Always” he swears and, for the first time, Madara feels complete.

[etjwrites]

OC Backstory Week 4 - Skills

What is the capability they are most proud of?  When and how did they realize their proficiency? And how did their skills help them?

Write about one of these situations: the moment in which they realized how capable they indeed are (or that moment where someone else realized it).

@yourocsbackstory​

You're kidding right? What special skills do I have? Better question is, what skills don't I have? I'm not being cocky. I'm just that good. Some people might say I'm over confident, but I prefer the term experienced. Practice is great and all, but natural talent never hurts either. I really have to pick just one? Okay, how about instead of simply telling you a story, I show you as well?

“For someone who claims to hate human stuff, you're awfully good at it,” Seri said as she watched Bo win two out of three games of chess against Ken.

“My school work's done, I've memorised all my parts for recitation night already, and Nyss is out wooing his newest potential mate every other evening – what else am I supposed to do during frix season?” A grin quirked across Ken's face, and Bo snarled at him. “Don't you start.” Seri collapsed into giggles, doubtless remembering the same thing as Ken, the night they'd tried catching frix sprites in the middle of second frix. Now that they were old enough to know better, those two wouldn't stop teasing Bo about it. “But still,” she said through her laughter, “You go on and on about how terrible human things are, and yet you're better than Ken at most things he shows you. You can even understand English – I tried, but the squiggles all swim in front of my eyes and the sounds don't make any sense to me. It's totally not fair that you and him have your own secret words for things.��� “The Innah understands English as well, so it's not as great as it sounds,” Bo muttered. Seri was right though. Human stuff was so weird, but so terribly fascinating, and his competitive nature wouldn't let him fail at anything Ken introduced to him. Plus Bo had been mean enough to him when he was a kit, it was the least he could do to indulge Ken's interests a little now that they'd put their antagonistic past behind them. “Doesn't your brother have a stash of human things?” Ken asked, looking mournfully down at the game he'd lost. Bo nodded and crossed his arms in smug success. “From his friends in Ethaba, from before. He keeps it all locked up since he was afraid I'd destroy it when I was little.” “You would've,” Ken said, and Bo shrugged his acknowledgement. “But not now. May I take a look? The Innah saved what she could,” he gestured to the chessboard, “but there's little else I have to remember everyone by.” “Sure. Like I said, Nyss keeps his stuff packed away, but Teacher Irja just spent all week showing us how locks work.” Bo popped his claws and grinned. “I think I can get us in.” Ten minutes later, Bo, Ken, and Seri sat around an opened chest, nervously looking over their shoulders at the loft's door every so often as they rifled through the contents. There wasn't much: a few pictures of Nyss and his deceased human friends, some clothes and human gadgets, and three books. But beneath it all lay a large wooden object with a hole in it. Bo picked it up and tilted his head. It was hollow, echoing when he rapped on it, and had a long neck with soft, thin strings. “That's a, a guitar!” “Gi-tah?” Bo rolled the unfamiliar word around on his tongue. “It looks like a jilnaan.” “But it has an extra string, look.” Ken ran his fingers over them and they made a horrible clashing noise. “And a jilnaan is solid.” He started fiddling with the pegs, plucking at the strings as he went, until the sounds he produced weren't so distress inducing. “It still plays!” he announced, picking out a traditional klia'an melody. He was slow, and his fingers slipped on the strings. “Give it here,” Bo said, hating how badly he needed to try the human instrument – he couldn't let Ken keep butchering “The Lament of Lady Lanae.” Ken smiled and relinquished the guitar without a fuss, making Bo narrow his eyes as he realised Ken had probably misplayed the song on purpose just to get Bo to show him up. But the guitar was firmly clasped between his hands, and he might as well play it. Bo popped the claws on his right hand and began to pluck the lilting melody which told the story of Lady Lanae crying over her poisoned sister. It took him a few minutes to figure out where all the notes were, but after a few times through, he was playing the lament without any difficulties. “This is way easier than a jilnaan,” he said after his fifth perfect performance. Ken and Seri stared at him like he'd grown a second tail. “That sounds so beautiful,” Ken breathed, and Seri nodded, astonishment brightening their faces. Bo's ears flattened at the praise, but he didn't stop. The pretty melody flowing from the human instrument was intimately familiar, and yet so different, soft and resonant like rain drops on a hollow tree. He couldn't stop, couldn't get enough of how captivating the strings sounded when plucked together. “You're really good!” Seri said, and glanced at the door again. “But we should probably put it back before Nyss returns and is cross with us for disturbing his things.” Bo growled, gripping the guitar tightly. “This stays with me.” He couldn't explain it, but the way it made him feel – he hadn't felt so at peace since before P'rraa had died. “I need it.” Seri raised her eyebrows at him, but didn't bother to argue, knowing how Bo was once he'd made up his mind. Ken's smile – which had never quite left – grew wider. “You see? Some human things are good.” Maybe. But Bo would never say as much aloud, not if even Ken bribed him with a hundred guitars. He ran his claws over the strings again, fighting against the shiver that ran through him. The guitar was his now. Nyss would just have to accept it.

What, no applause? Surprised a Klia'an can play so well? This is isn't the same guitar of course – that one's safe back home in the Hinnom Forest – but it's still pretty special to me. Music – it's so. . . healing isn't it? After everything that's happened, it's nice to hear it – to make it, once again. I kind of fell out of playing as Igis prep started devouring my time, but I've recently gotten back into it. Well, in lieu of clapping, I guess I'll take the tears I see on some people's faces. Once more?

@igotablankpage @musicofglassandwords @elaynab-writing @sheabutterskyes  @alcego-writes @valdifarniente @writeanapocalae​

00 - Intro || 01 - Family || 02 - Friends || 03 - Rivals || 05 - Loss || 06 - Home || 07 - Free/Secrets

[fivie]

Rating Tacky Christmas Movies

Halloween is over and so it is officially, irrefutably The Festive Season now and the TV is already showing deliciously low-budget Christmas movies and my plan is to watch as many as possible and also rate them, so that you can better choose which ones to inflict upon yourself!!

Today’s maiden outing was A Gingerbread Romance. See my scorching review below.

(There are spoilers.)

This one really dragged me in with its honestly amazing premise, which is that main character Taylor, a successful architect, is selected by her firm to represent them in an apparently high-stakes competition to design and build a life-sized gingerbread house, for which task she is required to team up with a baker. And like first off, that’s hilarious, and secondly the film really duped me for a hot minute into thinking it was going to be way more interesting than expected, because obviously Taylor is the uptight career-driven character who needs to learn the true meaning of Christmas and the baker is going to be her obligatory love interest who is going to teach her - and the baker is revealed to be a hot French lady. Logically I knew this was not going to pan out the way I wanted it to, this is a Hallmark movie, but for a second there- But no, Hot French Lady turns out to be a Bitch, naturally, and teams up instead with Taylor’s rival, so, whatever, saw it coming, I’ll just write the superior fanfic where Taylor and hot French lady baker get together and teach each other the true meaning of Christmas through their beautiful unfolding love, IT’S FINE. 

So enter back-up baker Adam, our hetero love interest who works in a bakery where he is creatively stifled and who is a single father to his daughter, Brooke. Christmas movies love single dads, don’t they? I guess it’s to code the male characters as Sensitive and Wholesome, and also the kid/s always take a liking to Main Character which helps hurry the romance along. Anyway the guy playing Adam is like, a hunk but kind of a bad actor, but honestly everyone in this movie is a bad actor so he’s in good company. He and Taylor argue about her design for the gingerbread house because she wants it to be “cutting-edge” and he just has weirdly strong opinions about Christmas and stuff being traditional and the sanctity of gingerbread and blah blah a lot of this stuff should have been cut from the movie but we have to see them arguing so that we get that this is going to be One Of Those romance stories. You know this movie had three writers? And YET.

Anyway Taylor insta-bonds with Brooke and continues to have what I think is intended to be flirty-antagonistic banter with Adam but it’s all so flat that it’s not entirely clear. And like, I’m just saying, but Taylor and Hot French Lady had a way more immediately antagonistic vibe and would’ve had a way more interesting relationship arc BUT WHATEVER, IT’S FINE. Also the movie does that THING where the first time you see Adam at home, he’s with his kid and also a woman, which is clearly meant to make you go ‘wait, he’s MARRIED?’ but then later the woman is revealed to be his sister. Only, when movies do this, it usually involves at least one other character getting caught up in this misunderstanding - but not here!! Taylor only meets the sister once and is immediately introduced to her as Adam’s sister and honestly she doesn’t do anything except mildly puzzle the audience at the start and should not have been in the movie at all, that’s my hot take. ANYWAY, as the movie progresses Adam and Brooke start dragging Taylor to every Christmas-related Thing around town because they’re so horrified that, because she travels around a lot with her job, she’s never home for Christmas and so doesn’t really celebrate it much. That is the extent of Taylor’s Christmas Sin, by the way - she doesn’t hate it or anything, she’s just a woman who lives alone and is usually in another country at Christmas time, but in a Christmas movie this is unacceptable!!! Also they decorate her entire house and get her a huge Christmas tree without asking her if any of that is cool first and she’s like ‘WOW!! (:’ and I was like ‘what the fuck!!’

An important thing to note about this movie is that it takes place over 10 days. They have 10 days to design and build this life-sized gingerbread house, and in between they find time to go ice skating and browse the Christmas market and have painfully stilted conversations. Neither of them seem to have to go to work, not even Adam, who works in the retail industry, and it’s Christmas. They also have 10 days to fall in love, as a Christmas movie demands. And it’s...it’s real bad, folks. There’s no chemistry between Taylor and Adam, every stop on their journey to romance feels totally unnatural, neither of them know how to emote properly, and the whole situation is probably summed up by the fact that my flatmate and I burst out laughing at their extremely sterile kiss at the end of the movie. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

There are no real stakes in this movie - Hot French Lady and Taylor’s architect rival are set up as antagonists at the start, but they ultimately do...nothing. There’s even this whole weird part where a security guard at the gingerbread house competition (yeah) makes some remark about how he’d be in big trouble ‘if anything were to happen to one of these houses’, and I then spent the whole rest of the movie waiting for Taylor and Adam’s house to get sabotaged, or for the baddies to fix the competition, or something, but no, I was a fool, there is no plot. The only stakes-adjacent thing is that, should Taylor win the competition, she will most likely get a big promotion that will see her sent to work in another country, because designing a big gingerbread house is how you get a promotion in the world of architecture. This is firmly established as being Taylor’s Lifelong Dream. And wouldn’t you know it, she and Adam win the competition, the supposed antagonists are weirdly good sports about it, and Taylor is informed that she is being promoted and she’s going to Paris. (Once again I pause to reflect that this would not have been an issue at all if Hot French Lady had been the love interest. They could have gone to Paris together. GOD.) Adam is devastated that this woman he has known and bickered with for 10 days is leaving to pursue her dream instead of spending Christmas with him and his daughter. In between all this Adam also finds out that his own Lifelong Dream of owning his own bakery is coming true, but he seems pretty unmoved by it so, whatever I guess. 

Ultimately Taylor decides not to be a selfish monster and gives up on Paris to come back and spend Christmas with Adam and Brooke. Apparently there are other awesome architecture projects coming up in their own city, and I assume her saying that is supposed to make me as a viewer feel better about her decision, but it did not work. You’ve known this man for 10 DAYS, TAYLOR. And then they share the most comically soulless kiss in history, THE END.

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Top lines from the movie:

Taylor: (with madly waggling eyebrows) Desperate times...call for desperate measuring cups.

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Taylor: (Complaining about being made to design a gingerbread house, which feels like something of a step down from her previous architecture projects.)

Adam: (Deadly serious and deadpan) There’s nothing shameful about designing a gingerbread house.

-

Overall rating: A promising premise, but bad acting, a poor script and the tantalising possibility of much more interesting lesbians let it down. Kind of funny but for all the wrong reasons. 4/10

[patty-writes]

yay another blog who writes for knb!! Can I have Kise having a crush on a girl who doesn't have trust in guys and think kise is the type to not get serious in a relationship and gets bored easily? Thank you so much c:

I mean, she’s not wrong, though.

→ Word count: 1,895

Spotting you in the college cafeteria wasn’t part of his plan (just like noticing how pretty the colour of your sweater suited your hair) and yet, it has quickly became a routine. Everyday, during the lunchtime, Kise Ryōta would wander to the cafeteria and involuntarily look for you—for the face which has been stuck in his mind for the last few days.

Tuesday wasn’t any different—or so he thought until you sat by the table next to his and acting as if he was nothing but the thin air, you began eating your lunch while chatting with friends. It was something so small and insignificant it shouldn’t have been the reason for experiencing a sleepless night, especially considering the photo session he had early in the morning.

“Your skin does look surprisingly dull today, Kise-kun,” stated the girl standing next to him, trying to apply the powder to his cheeks and eyeing him with a careful gaze, the one which allowed her to notice every single imperfection to cover with makeup. “Did you not sleep well?”

“It’s nothing,” he giggled and closed the eyes, feeling the relaxing touch of the soft brush on his skin. “I just had a lot of homework.”

“Homework?” It was hard to contain the laugh hearing such words from him. “I didn’t know you’re so hard-working outside of the job.”

“What can I say?” Kise peeked at her, giving her one of his most charming looks from under the fan of darkened eyelashes. “I’m full of surprises.”

In the end, all he could think about was you and despite his lack of natural interest in anything related to college, he had to admit that it was starting to get rather troublesome. Especially for his beauty.

“Wow, you really look like shit.”

Kise sent a lethal glare at his friend who only shrugged at his reaction and brought a ball of rice to his mouth.

Friday was the day which Kise has spent mostly on dwelling inside his own mind, lost in thoughts and fighting with himself whether it was or wasn’t a good moment to ask you out. He couldn’t recall the last time when he experienced such dilemma, since he could remember girls of all ages were longing for his attention, ripping the hair out of their rivals’ heads only to receive a single glance from him and the smile of his pearly white teeth. How could it be that right now, he was staring at the glass full of orange juice held in the hands and considering if he had a chance.

If he, Kise Ryōta had a chance! What a ridiculous turn of events.

It wasn’t the love-from-the-first-sight kind of thing, on the contrary, he was more than sure that he had missed your presence many times, passing by you on the college halls and not even realizing that you were here. It slowly started to change since the day he saw you sitting there, in the cafeteria, drinking some hot beverage and reading the notes from the lectures.

When he thought about it later, it was somehow inexplicable, the reason why did he even look at your direction remaining a mystery for him. You just were there, your aura drawing him so strongly as if you were shouting at him. And what annoyed him the most was the fact that you weren’t shouting at all. You weren’t even talking to him.

Hell, you weren’t paying the slighest amount of attention to him!

You had to know about his existence, there was no doubt about it. You were present during some matches he played (either by your own will or forced by friends, he couldn’t tell), you looked at him in the eyes when he accidentally brushed your arm on the crowded hallway and apologized after, you saw the magazine cover he was on, so he couldn’t understand—what was he doing wrong? Why weren’t you interested?

“Your princess is going out.” The statement brought him back to reality in an instant, chaotic gaze looking for you between the other students but you weren’t there anymore. “It really hit you hard, didn’t it?”

Kise drank a sip from his glass, wanting to save from time to answer his overly curious friend.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell you don’t. You’ve been staring at this girl for the whole two minutes straight, no wonder she left. And you weren’t even blinking, Kise-kun! Like some kind of creepy lizard or something…”

“Shut up,” he pouted crossing the arms over his chest.

“Why won’t you just ask her out?” The question sent shivers down his spine, the one and only question he was so afraid to hear. “I’m sure she won’t decline.”

And I’m not, Kise thought.

For the first time in years, he felt the unpleasant knot in the stomach, the one which appeared before the first casting, leaving the unspoken inquire in his subconsciousness: what if I’m not good enough?

Kise’s pride was built on the very strong foundations—or so he thought until you managed to shatter it to pieces with a barely few words. He knew his value, supported by the thousands of compliments he was receiving during his relatively short career as a model, he wasn’t self-conscious and, most importantly, he wasn’t afraid.

Fear didn’t paralyze him no matter how troublesome the sessions were, how many influential people he was meeting, how big the next challenges were. He could be considered as fearless in some way—a blind oaf in another, but either way, he managed to grow proud and successful. Certain that there was nothing he couldn’t do, nothing he couldn’t accomplish, nothing which could prevent him from achieving his goals.

Seemingly, nothing but winning your heart.

“I’m sorry but I don’t return your feelings.”

Kise was still standing in front of you, speechless and unable to move, completely not expecting this kind of answer. Well, maybe somewhere deep inside he was, but he was trying to convince himself that it was simply an unreasonable anxiety, nothing more, nothing less. Even in his worst nightmares he couldn’t imagine being treated this way, especially not after bringing you the prettiest sunflower he found in the shop and the cup of your favourite drink, especially not by you.

“Huh?” Was his first answer, not the most clever one but he couldn’t think of anything else.

Your eyes were absolutely mesmerizing, taking away his free will and the ability to think straight.

“I said, I don’t return your feelings,” you repeated, not sure whether he didn’t hear you or was just the personification of the stereotypical blonde model, full of perfectly carved muscles and the lack of brain.

“I-I heard what you said,” he smiled cheerfuly with no amount of happiness in the golden eyes. “I just wasn’t expecting that. But don’t worry! I’m not going to push you or anything, but can I ask you: why?”

You peeked at the girl who was passing by through the park, prehaps recognizing Kise and wondering whether you were his girlfriend.

“Because I don’t like you that way.”

“But why?”

You frowned. There was something about his current expression which reminded you of a golden retriver who has just been scolded. Contrary to the popular belief of him being always so confident, the image in front of you was now completely different. Kise wasn’t acting like a jerk, as you expected him to—he looked surprisingly and genuinely hurt.

“And why it’s so important for you?” you passed the buck. “You don’t even know me and there are plenty of other girls waiting in the line.”

“But I don’t want any other girls, I want you.” Kise immediately bit his tongue. “But not in a creepy lizard way, more like I-want-to-love-and-appreciate-you way. No awkward staring.”

“What are you talking about…?”

“I’m talking about my feelings! From the very beginning, I have been talking about it, because damn, I can’t sleep without thinking about you, I can’t eat without thinking about you, I just can’t stop thinking about you and you’re completely right saying that I don’t know you, I won’t deny. But the point is, I wish for nothing more than to get to know you better, to learn what do you like to do, what do you like to eat, what kind of music do you listen, what kind of movies does make you laugh.”

There was a short pause when Kise exhaled deeply, once again lost in the thoughts and wondering whether did he ruin everything by such an free statement.

“I want to see this precious smile of yours more often because you look the cutest then and it’d be even better if I could be the reason for your joy. I want to listen to your voice talking about your day, help to cheer you up when you’re feeling down and bring you flowers—the ones you really like the most because I’m still not sure whether the sunflower was the right choice but—”

“You’ll grow bored.”

The words you said hit him like a sharp slap on the cheek.

“You always do,” you added.

Denying you would be a lie and he had the honest intention to not lie to you. He knew he might have not been acting fair in the past but this time it was different and if he could only prove you that, he would do everything in his will to show you his devotion.

Without further explanation or waiting for his reaction, you turned on the heel and walked away, leaving him alone on the street, the paper cup in his hand not warming his skin anymore.

The sound of incoming message caused Kise to reach for his phone and unlock the screen only to notice the unknown person trying to communicate with him. He truly wasn’t in the mood for any flirts tonight, not after what he had heard from you and the worst part of that was that, he simply couldn’t do anything to change your mind. You wouldn’t believe him either way, considering it as another way of trying to win your heart only to step on it after few months or sooner.

But he would never, ever hurt you. The mere possibility of your crying face made the blood boil in his veins.

Eventually, he turned around so he was now laying on the stomach on his bed, bored gaze wandering through the icons on the phone until it reached the thumbnail from the incoming message which must have been… no, that’s impossible.

Kise sat up, opening the communicator and rushing to check whether it was truly you, your name and surname visible right next to the icon. He could feel himself sweating all of a sudden—and just after he took a shower!—the thoughts exploding in his head, creating dozens of possible scenarios of what could you want to tell him. Were you mad at him? Did you want to permanently dismiss him? Tell him to never approach you again? Or maybe, just maybe, have you made your mind up and…?

He took few deep breathes to calm himself down before mentally preparing for every possibility. He still couldn’t believe it, how did you manage to have such a huge power over him? Over his mind? Over his heart?

With the trembling fingers, Kise opened the message.

[vegalocity]

Her own way of Talking

Here’s my contribution to the ‘Silly Songs with Ladybug’ Challenge (Thank you @lnc2 for starting this up! It was a blast!) Now I shall present to you all, a tender fluffy Kagaminette story to the narrative of Gitchee Gitchee Goo from Phineas and Ferb.

(AO3)

If someone had walked up to Marinette three months ago and told her to her face that she'd fall out of love with Adrien and end up dating one of her biggest rivals for his affection, she would have laughed in their face.

But honestly, she supposed she should have known better. She was just fourteen when she'd fallen for Adrien, feelings change, especially with puberty in the mix.

But with Kagami neither of them had any proper expectations beyond 'just seeing where it went', no fantasies or agreements of marriage and children and hamsters. If there was anything good about a person's first love it was the one that was all-consuming. The one where you can revel in the sheer insanity of love and go wild. But when that love fades you can approach things in a far deeper, gentle manner. Not be overwhelmed because nothing is for the first time anymore.

She'd very recently given up on approaching Adrien when Kagami had first approached her. She'd told her that she'd spent far too long under the assumption that she'd been toying with Adrien's feelings and stringing him along, and that she'd like to get to know who she was as a person without that assumption skewing her perception.

And...well... while Kagami was indeed still rather reserved, she was far from the Ice Queen Marinette had thought she was. She wasn't one to cut corners or play nice, if Marinette asked for critiques on a dress, Kagami would give them, she wouldn't let Marinette get down on herself for simple things, and was always challenging her.

Always pushing.

She ended up teaching Marinette some basic footwork for fencing in hopes of it improving her coordination (it didn't, but it made it easier to catch herself) and in turn Marinette had taught her Crew Stitches, so she could mend her own athletic ware without having to take it to the tailors every other week because someone got a little too out of control with their Sabre.

And while the innocent yet all-consuming affection of last time hadn't conquered her brain again, a bubbly warm feeling had started to spread in her gut in its place. So she wasn't even surprised by herself in so quickly accepting Kagami's invitation to a date of their own.

And... it was fun! They had fun. She even heard Kagami laugh when she'd tripped over a chair leg getting up to go to the bathroom.

Kagami had done her best to shuffle around her schedule to spend time with her, and while Marinette sometimes had to be the unreliable one to go off and Do Ladybug things, she appreciated the time they could spend together.

She had her own way of doing things, her own way of saying things. While sometimes that was 'extremely blunt' other times that way was almost surprisingly roundabout.

She struggled to express herself on an emotional level. That much was obvious from the moment Marinette met her. When she felt anything deeply she couldn't express it conventionally.

While there were times that that was a bit of a challenge, and Marinette would wish that Kagami could just give it to her straight, to stop trying to sound so objective and pick apart details and efficiencies, and just say if she likes the skirt or not, she really wouldn't change it.

It was... cute. It kinda reminded her of...

“You know something?”

The memory came unbidden and Marinette chuckled into her dress mannequin as it resurfaced. But the light chuckle turned into a full snort when she looked over the edge of the mannequin to peek at Kagami.

She'd picked the worst time to get her girlfriend's attention, as Kagami had literally just begun to eat one of the cinnamon rolls her parents had insisted she bring up to her room with them—under threat of coming up themselves to deliver the damn things—and she caught her with powdered sugar on her lips and cheeks bulging with pastry.

The first time Kagami let loose and allowed herself to be less than prim and proper around Marinette was maybe a week before she'd asked her out, and it had been amazing.

Kagami held up her free hand to signify she needed a moment.

“What?”

“Well heh, it was just something I remembered from when I was little.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, one of my cousins is deaf, and when I was about five, he was maybe seven, he decided he didn't really like the FSL for 'I love you', it was 'too simple' and 'boring' so he came up with his own way to express himself.

“He'd grab someone's hand, and squeeze it three times. He wouldn't sign anything or write anything down, three squeezes in succession was his way to give affection. He grew out of it after awhile, but I just remembered when he first started using it, I thought he'd decided to start hating me when I went to hug him goodbye and he tugged on my braid.” She chuckled again. “I cried the whole car ride home, I was so upset.”

“I see...” Kagami hummed. Marinette didn't expect much of course, Kagami was never one to laugh at anecdotes, but the small smirk that lit up her girlfriend's face in amusement was vindication enough.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Marinette jumped when, a week after a silly story to get a smile out of her girlfriend was shared and immediately forgotten about, the eraser tip of a pencil was tapped against her shoulder.

She turned behind her and Kagami was leaned over the table, pencil in her hand.

“What's up?” They were usually smart enough to keep chatter on the down low, but granted it was study hall, so long as the two of them were quiet they weren't about to get into any trouble from M. Dubois.

Kagami's lips pinched together, barely noticeable to anyone who wasn't used to reading her, and she shrugged. “Nothing, you had a bug on you.” she whispered back.

The two of them were watching one of Marinette's favorite old movies, and honestly, with the day Kagami had described to her—her normal responsibilities as the eldest daughter of the Tsurugi family, twice the amount of personal fencing practice than usual, and several hours of helping her mother transcribe documents into Braille because some asshole decided it would be smarter to paper mail a blind woman important documents rather than send a PDF she could put through her text to speech computer—she'd known she needed some time to unwind.

And thankfully, that at least had been what came to be. Kagami wasn't one much for physical affection, but when Marinette came over at her call with a duffel bag full of her fluffiest pillows and a small army of sappy period pieces and cheesy rom coms, Kagami had practically melted against her. And so here they were, sitting before the TV in Kagami's ���frankly massive—room, Watching Elizabeth Bennet absolutely destroy Mister Darcy with her eloquence alone.

Kagami's head was rested against her shoulder, her back supported by Marinette's side. Marinette herself was propped up against her giant stuffed cat, and the two of them wrapped in the fluffiest blanket Marinette could find in Kagami's house.

It was so... peaceful, that Marinette had almost missed it when Kagami's hand had slid over one of hers.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Oh...

Her glaze snapped to Kagami, whom was still focused on the movie, but they weren't exactly in a darkened room, and the light blush just barely dusted across her freckled cheeks was hard to miss.

A bubbly, excited feeling built in her gut. The kind she remembered one thriving in when she was fourteen and dizzy in the waves of a first love. But it didn't last long, it settled into a comfortable warmth in her chest, but all the same a smile came up to her cheeks unbidden.

She tilted her head to rest atop of Kagami's, and turned her hand so she could hold hers in turn.

“I love you too.”

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 49.7-49.10

Every so often I manifest an incoherent plan to stop watching YouTube, borne out of some inchoate idea to do with productivity, but then I’ll watch a video so mundanely profound and inspiring that gives me more of a creative boost than any amount of time I would save by not watching 20-minute explainers on Game of Thrones lore. On this occasion that video was this, on the toolbox fallacy.

Simply, as the Passion of the Nerd puts it in his video, its the idea that one can’t do (x), until one has (y) - or, the lie one tells oneself in order to put off doing something, whatever that something may be. In my case, as is so often the case, the (y) is time. I haven’t written a blog for early two months, and in that period I told myself repeatedly that I was just waiting for that big long stretch of time where I could sit down and get everything done at once. 

But that never happens, and the longer you go without starting, the bigger the pile gets, so eventually it becomes impossible to get through everything at once without a parcel of time so monstrously huge it is terrifiyng in its own right. 

And thats where the fallacy comes in - you don’t need everything to be perfect in order to get started, and once you’ve started, you don’t need everything to go perfectly either. You just need to start. So lets get started.

Episode 7 - Jesus, Oxford vs Manchester

I live in Manchester now (aside: before I got my job here I applied for a PhD at ManUni with a guy called Dr Kiss, a sliding doors moment which could have resulted in my failing to qualify for a University Challenge team for a record eight times in a row, assuming it was a three year doctorate), which should make them my second team, but to be honest they’ve probably held that title for a while anyway. Like Michael Schumacher in his glory days, or Roger Federer in his prime, the University of Manchester produced consistent levels of supreme performance in the Challenge between 2005 and 2014 that gained them many fans, myself included. 

They reached nine out of ten semi finals in that time, and brought the fight to the Oxbridge duopoly with four series victories. Jesus haven’t had anywhere near as much success in the Paxman Era, but won the penultimate Bamber series against Imperial in 1986.

Manchester are mascotted by a bee, the buzzy symbol of the city; and Jesus are sponsored by a jumper? Thats what it looks like anyway, it might just be a bit of draping with the college logo on it. A lot of the Oxbridge teams do this, but there may as well be nothing there because its pretty half assed. 

Its the Jumpersquad who unravel the night’s first clue, with Cashman taking the ten points for the Cashmere Collective. Manchester equalised with the next Starter, and moved into the lead with a full set on the third. A delightful picture round on Premier League football team finishing positions followed, but Manchester could only manage one (I took the hat-trick, naturally). I always enjoy it when the setters put the sports questions into inventive UC formats.

The Mancunians would get into triple figures before Jesus could build on their opening points, but two Starters in a row got them out of the quagmire, and a third, the music round, brought them within thirty points again. However, they were helped out a little bit by Paxman allowing ‘They Must Be Giants’ in place of ‘They Might Be Giants’. I guess accuracy doesn’t matter as much when its merely pop culture.

This would prove the end of Oxford’s comeback though, as Manchester surged ahead with eighty five of the next hundred points to seal the victory with plenty of time to go. They must have known they had it in the bag as well, because at this point they sat back and let Jesus race for a high scoring loser spot, which they may well get.

Final Score: Jesus, Oxford 145 - 185 Manchester

Episode 8 - Durham vs Trinity, Cam

Durham reached the semi finals last series, the third time they have done so since they won their only title of the Paxman Era in 2000, having also claimed a Bamber Trophy in 1977. Trinity won under Jeremy’s stewardship in 1995 and 2014, along with a victory in 1974, making this a match-up between two of only three teams (the other being The Open University) to have won the Challenge in both of its iterations. 

Adding further weight to the not-so-mythical myth that Durham is a surrogate for Oxbridge, the Northern team have also got a jumper-y object as their mascot (at this point I have realised that there is a proper word for what those things are, but I’m in too deep with this jumper thing. Is it just a banner? A sigil?). I’m glad to see that Trinity have tried though, and are proudly displaying what looks to be a hand-knitted bear (possibly Sooty from Sooty and Sweep?).

Durham charged out of the blocks with four of the first five Starters and ten of their first twelve bonuses. Trinity would have to wake up soon if they didn’t want to get blown completely away. Fortunately they heard their alarm clock when it next went off and in the blink of an eye they were ahead. 

Wait, surely not... *checks notes* No, I was right first time round, following a 90-20 opening stint, Trinity went 80-0 to turn the game on its head. Now it was Durham’s turn to feel shell-shocked, but they took the next Starter and we were level again. A hundred each. The game was being played like rugby, with one team smashing forward until the momentum could be stopped, at which point the tide would flo the other way. Scintillating quizzing.

The turnovers started coming faster, with a frenetic back and forth developing. It was Trinity who finally managed to stamp their authority on proceedings, opening up a significant lead with only a few minutes remaining. Durham would need to work even quicker than in the early stages to add further topsy-turviness to this topsy-turvy match, but they couldn’t manage it. A brief spurt at the death may however be enough to drag them into the play-offs.

Final Score: Durham 145 - 200 Trinity, Cam

Episode 9 - LSE vs Courtauld Institute of Art

Like I said in the introduction, the longer you leave something before starting, the more difficult it is to start because of how much you’ll have to do once you start. Another issue with this blog in particular, is that the more you have to do at once, the more difficult it becomes to not just write the exact same things over and over again. If I do one per week then even if I do repeat myself word for word then I don’t realise because seven days if far too long to remember anything for, and ignorance is bliss etc. With a big batch like this one then it becomes painfully obvious how many times I use the word Starter, even if it is somewhat necessary.

Oh well, lets start with a recap of the two teams previous appearances... LSE made the final in 1996, losing a high-scoring match against local rivals Imperial. They made the semis two years later, and the quarters in 2009, meaning that they’ve been elimiated at every stage of the competition apart from the second round. For Courtauld, it would be a success to be knocked out at that stage, having lost their only two matches, in 2015 and 2018.

Courtauld took the first points of the evening with the amusing fact that the Nobel Peace Prize hasn’t been awarded on a number of occasions due to a lack of deserving recipients (could they do the same with the British Prime Minister?). LSE fumbled a science starter, leaving the board (in this case the circuit board which makes up the buzzers) wide open, but Courtauld can’t even guess, which amuses Paxman no end - “they don’t study a lot of that [at an art institute], do they?”.

They know Shakespeare though, and take the picture Starter on one of his ‘lost rhymes’. The match ambles on slowly, at a far more leisurely pace than last weeks (a good thing about this batching is that I can reference the previous games with the confidence that I’ll be understood), and its Courtauld who are ambling slightly faster than their London counterparts.

With a few minutes remaining, LSE decde to give it a go, with Engels cheekily waving Paxman on after another science Starter was left unanswered. I just spent about fifteen minutes trying to make a gif of this, but the websites kept crashing and the one I did make was only loading as a picture here. So if you can just imagine it that would be great.

Final Score: LSE 90 - 145 Courtauld

Episode 10 - Goldsmiths vs Southampton

Goldsmiths lost on their first Challenge appearance, and made it to the second round last year, the only other time they’ve made it to the televised rounds. If they continue their current trajectory they’ll make it to the quarter finals this time out, which is the furthest their first round opponents Southampton have made it in the Paxman Era, in 2014.

The Southampton mascot, a fluffy deer, has fallen off of the table between the middle players and has consequently gained some camoflague so you have to squint to figure out what it is. I don’t know if it was placed there on purpose, or if they simply didn’t notice that their mascot resembled that scene from Bambi. Goldsmiths have a teddy bear who is wearing graduation robes, indicating that they award degrees to cuddly toys - where will the liberal agenda take us next?

Paxman informs us that Goldsmith’s Sibley hails from the same Canadian town as human PA system Eric Monkman, and when he introduces himself you can detect a similar lilt to his accent, but without the sense that you’ve accidentally sat on the volume button. 

It is he who takes the first Starter of the evening, and indeed the second too - perhaps he does bear some more relation to his noisy neighbour. Goldsmiths took two more on the bounce to go 70 points clear. They were unlucky not to be further ahead, having guessed wrongly between both York and Leeds and Southampton and Portsmouth on the picture round (with no other clues its pretty hard to tell the difference between 20 miles on an unannotated map).

Maybe it was the mention of Southampton (and its misidentification) that woke the Southern side up, but they claimed their first points on the next Starter, along with two bonuses on the Lake District that I knew too, but only because I was literally in Windermere at the weekend.

Once they’d figured out that you need to buzz in and answer questions in order to win the game, Southampton were actually pretty good, and their confidence seemed to grow with every point they put on the board (in this case the circuit board which makes up the - hang on, I’ve already done this one, haven’t I? See, I told you this whole repeating malarkey was difficult), and they polish up two of three bonuses on haikus which describe chemical elements (I missed the explanation of the question format when I watched this the first time, so was astounded that they had even been discussing anything with any conviction. “Just doing your job holding plants together. No fireworks, no fuss”. I mean, what is that on about?)

In fact, just as Southampton remembered how to play, Goldsmiths forgot, and they only managed to shake themselves of this malaise twice more for the rest of the match, allowing Southampton to canter away, mostly unchallenged. 

Final Score: Goldsmiths 95 - 175 Southampton

Phew! That was a big one - well done if you made it all the way to the end. I still have two more to catch up on, but I haven’t even watched those episodes yet so I’ll just do them as regular posts, hopefully tomorrow. 

I’d also like to give a huge thanks to Tough Soles who are supporting me on Patreon! (sorry for falling so far behind - I’ll catch up soon)

[collecting-stories]

Secrets | Steve Rogers

(Marvel ask anon) I'm sorry, I didn't check your Masterlist and it days what you write for there. I really like your Steve writing! Could I have a Steve x fem!reader where she works independently and her work is simular to Jessica Jones except she doesn't take anyone's money and never meets face to face so no names. She could work at an art shop and that's how Steve meets her. (Someone gave him a gift card?) She doesn't even know who he is and he really likes that? And maybe he could (1/2)

(2/2) startd picking up on small things but he just thinks he's paranoid. She does good things, but has trust issues and overdose it with boundaries. Tony somehow finds out and recruits her behind caps back? Honestly you can change as much as you want because I know it will be great! I love your writing! Thanks 🙂

Secrets | Steve Rogers

"I think you might be in the wrong place," You comment, watching the back of the guy who had walked through the door of your work almost half an hour ago. This was the second time in a month you'd found yourself saying the same thing. This time the guy who turned to look at you wasn't just some random stranger perusing the store.  

Last time the man who'd been on the receiving end of your snarky comment had been standing in front of the same display of oil paints for twenty or so minutes, staring at the different shades you had on hand. He looked like he should have been lifting weights at the gym or maybe shopping two stores down in that health mart that had popped up.  

"I'm sorry?" He had asked, turning around to look at you. Alright, you'd thought, he was ridiculously attractive. You came around the side of the counter and made your way over to him.  

"You look a little lost, did you mean to come in here or are you trying to find a gift for someone?" You asked. He was like those people who came into Starbucks at Christmas to buy giftcards for their family and stumbled through a coffee order trying to decipher a menu they treated like a foreign language. Maybe a girlfriend was really into art or something.  

"I meant to come in here." He replied, "a friend of mine got me a giftcard here for my birthday."

"Artist in disguise." You muttered, fiddling with a crooked piece of the display.  

"Sorry?" He said again. He heard what you'd said but figured he'd play it off.

"Hmm?" You glanced over at him. Definitely should be a gym right now. Where these the kinds of guys that hung out at gyms in Brooklyn, why didn't you go to the gym? "Oh nothing. So, can I help you find something?"  

"I'm not too familiar with oil paints but I thought I'd give them a try. I'm just not sure..." He trailed off, glancing at the display then at you.

"Well, you've got the right girl for the job. I can definitely help you out there." You replied. You began to explain the differences between acrylic and oil paints, watching him intently as you spoke. He seemed fascinated with the idea of the medium and was just as engrossed in your explanation as you were in telling it.  

You needed to meet more people like him. Normal, friendly, rather innocent seeming. He wasn't overly complicated. Just a simple guy from Brooklyn who was fit as hell and liked to draw, what were the odds there. He introduced himself as Steve Rogers and you gave him your name, telling him to stop by whenever he wanted.  

The man who stood there in front of you now didn't require any introduction. You'd recognize Tony Stark anywhere. The iron man, as he was most famously known. He took of his blue tinted glasses, the ones that you thought made him look like he was doing a Bono impression, and walked over to the counter.  

"Name's Tony Stark."  

"Yeah, I know that." You replied.  

"Well then, we can cut the formalities. I've heard some interesting things about your business."

"Selling art supplies?" You took an exaggerated look around the store.  

"Your 'other' business." He replied, trying and failing to look discreet.

You rolled your eyes at him, trying to seem nonchalant about his mention of your side work. In truth, you were a bit miffed that he knew anything about your after-hours job. It was hardly a year after the battle of New York when you'd found yourself in an accident and then, when you woke, you realized that something had changed within you. For all you knew of it, you had superhuman strength. Something that rivaled The Hulk (without the green monster) or Captain America (without the wholesomeness).  

New York after the battle was left in ruins and it wasn't good people with good intentions that were making a head way in the city. It was men who meant to do harm to the neighborhood, targeting the less fortunate who'd lost too much to recover in the battle. So you put your power to use, acting as somewhat of a reluctant vigilante. There was even an ad in the newspaper for your services. Just a number and a message 'In trouble? Call x-xxx-xxx-xxxx'  

"I don't know what you're talking about." You said.  

"I know you do though. And I'm here to ask for your assistance. And also, to offer you some answers to what your powers do." He said, reaching into his pocket and taking out a card, "think about it."

You were still thinking about it, later that afternoon, when the door to your shop dinged and Steve walked in. He came up to the counter, just as you slid the business card under the magazine you were reading. You were too slow though, he caught sight of the Stark symbol on the edge of the card.  

"What's that?"

"What's what?" You asked, leaning your elbows on the counter.  

"Nothing." Steve replied, shaking his head.

In the month since you and Steve had first met you had spent a lot of time with him. More than you usually allowed yourself to spend with people. At least since the accident. Even still you were careful about him. He only came around to your work and he didn't know where you lived. You avoided spending time with him outside of work hours. You didn't give him an address, a last name, or even a phone number. While you were too busy keeping yourself safe from anyone who might discover your secret, Steve had started to pick up on your odd behavior.

He didn't want to pry, well...he did want to pry, but he promised himself he wasn't going to. Natasha had told him that it was best to make sure you felt safe around him before he went asking questions about why you were so private.  

"It's not like you're in a relationship Cap, I mean, she's allowed to have some secrets."  

And secrets were fine with Steve, he still hadn't told you that he was Captain America. Really, he had no intention of doing so either, which was why Nat was so adamant that he let you not tell him simple things like where you lived. So he dropped the subject of the business card hidden beneath the magazine that was laid out in front of you.  

For at least another month.  

Until Steve was sent in on a recovery mission for SHIELD that turned out to be more complicated than he had expected. Part of that complication was the mercs that he was meant to be pursuing using technology no one knew they had. The other part of the complication happened toward the end of the mission. SHIELD agents had been sent in and, because of that conversation with Tony a month ago, you were part of that team of agents. And as you ran through an underground tunnel that was more of an elaborate set of hallways, you nearly collided with Captain America, who grabbed you by the shoulders and said your name.  

You tried to step back and pull away but he kept a firm grip on you. "how do you know my name?" You asked, alarmed. Fury had addressed you each by number. As the Captain had earlier in the night. He gave no indication that he knew anyone's name, especially yours. You hardly had a badge.  

He let go of you with one hand, reaching up and undoing his helmet. As it dropped to the floor you took a step back, this time successful. "Steve?"

"What're you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing! Just ordinary Steve from Brooklyn my ass, you're Captain America!" You snapped.  

"I've been Cap for seventy odd years, it's not exactly a surprise to most people." He replied. "Now what're you doing here? Did SHIELD send you to trail me?"

"Down in a tunnel?"

"You know what I mean? Have you been surveilling me?" Steve asked. The real question was 'did any of those lunches together at the art shop mean anything to you'.  

"No I..." You figured your best explanation for this whole situation would be action rather than word. How were you supposed to ask Steve to trust your word that you were some super strong mutant of a human and that's why you were here; because SHIELD was honing your abilities.

You were given the perfect opportunity to show him when Hydra operatives came around the corner. He turned and pushed you behind him, purely out of instinct, but you disregarded his silent request to stay back. Instead you did the exact opposite and surged ahead. Steve didn't have much time to react as he continued to fight against Hydra with you but there were moments when he caught himself taking a long look over at you and not concentrating on the opponent at hand.  

When he saw you down in the tunnel the last thought he had was that you were superhuman. That was even less of a thought when he saw you in the art shop the first time he wandered inside. But when the fighting was over and everyone was safely back on the quinjet, you with them, he couldn't help but stare at you, wondering how he'd missed it. He had a million questions running through his head but mostly he just wanted to know if you were being honest with him. Had you really not known he was Captain America?

"What?" You asked, feeling uneasy that his eyes were on you. This was your first mission with SHIELD, a training run to see if you were capable of becoming a real agent and the stunt you pulled in the tunnels with Cap was a surefire way to get your badge revoked. You would be back to square one, a rogue vigilante with unexplainable powers living in New York City.  

"What?" He asked, looking over to you.

"You keep staring at me, what is it?"

"Did you really not know I was Captain America?"

"I never really paid attention in school so, yeah...I didn't know." You continued on, feeling like you needed more of an explanation, "This happened a little after the Battle of New York...I was in an accident and next thing I know, I can fucking lift a car with one hand. Stark knew, somehow, about the work I did at night. He recruited me to SHIELD. When we met, hand to god, I was just working at an art shop and keeping watch over my little part of New York." You said.  

"That's why you kept so many secrets from me."

"I wanted to tell you Steve, trust me. But I just couldn't. I thought at the time you were just some ordinary guy. And I liked how ordinary I felt when it was just us spending time together. You never told me you were Captain America."

"For the same reason." Steve admitted, taking a seat beside you.

"Guess we can't go back to that."

"Not exactly but...it'd be better this way. No more secrets and trying to hide things from each other."

"Lunch tomorrow at the art shop?" You asked, leaning your head on his shoulder and wrapping your arm around his arm.  

what?

[missytearex]

To Read List - Narry

This list is purely for myself to keep track of everything I still want to read. Its gonna change as I actually read though them and find more stuff to add.

Find fics I’ve already read here.

Narry

It Feels Like Years by wasp

It's easy to stop thinking, worrying, when he's with Niall, like it's all on instinct. (Community college!AU where basically Niall and Harry fall in love and there's kittens and cuddling for warmth and woo-ing and Liam and Louis are hopeless).

good enough to eat by brokendrums

Niall meets Harry on the set of Masterchef and is instantly attracted to him, even if he is a bit of a dick and far too smug for his own good. He finally cracks his determined exterior and a pretty mind blowing set of blowjobs later they start tentatively seeing each other, only Harry is far too invested in the competition and he just doesn’t have time for distractions like Niall

A MasterChef AU.

does it almost feel like nothing changed at all by estrella30

“You don’t have room to talk,” Louis says, pointing a finger at Harry and narrowing his eyes. “Seeing as how you were seventy five million years late to the meeting today.”

“Well I’m bloody well here now!” Harry shouts. Everyone goes quiet, Zayn even manages to pause whatever Robert Downey Jr. is doing on the telly, and it’s right then, in the middle of the first split second of quiet since Harry arrived that he hears it.

“Wait,” Harry says, cocking his head to the side and listening more closely. “Is that a baby crying?”

OR: Niall gets a baby left w him and Harry moves in to help him take care of her

And Maybe by CharacterDevelopment

“I want to kiss you,” Harry says slowly and nerve-wrackingly honest.

Niall blinks at him. “What?”

“Kissing. I want to kiss you, put our lips together, do the mouth tango, play tonsil hockey—”

Niall interrupts him. “I know what kissing is, Harry.”

“Well, you asked,” Harry says, defensive.

Broken-Hearted Boy by NarryMusings

Niall has watched Harry get his heart broken time after time, again and again. Harry just wants someone to love him. But Niall has always loved him and now that he's finally fed up with Harry not seeing it, Niall tells him.

If We Don't Leave This Town by EvilFriendOfMine

Harry moves to London and begins working at a small bookstore, when a blond-haired, blue-eyed Irishman runs into the store to hide from some no-so-friendly looking men. A relationship sparks but it's anything but easy as Harry has to deal with Niall being a key member of the London Irish Crew, along with his two friends, Louis and Liam. But Niall dreams of getting out one day and taking his friends and Harry with him, but leaving is a lot harder than any of them ever thought it would be.

a little drop for me by littlemissmeggie

Niall was amazed how much had changed in a year, how it didn’t hurt anymore. He’d been drowning in heartache and pain for months and suffocated by the weight of his sorrow.

And then he’d met Harry and been scared and heartbroken again, worried to love and hesitant to be loved. But Harry hadn’t left. He’d showed Niall what unconditional love—romantic unconditional love—felt like, whether out of naive innocence or stubborn determination, Niall wasn’t sure.

or...

If anyone asked Niall how he thought he would meet the love of his life, he wouldn’t have said that he expected to find him lying naked on the beach when he went for a walk at sunrise while on holiday.

future full of yesterdays by fliptomybside

Niall studies astrophysics, Harry studies Niall.

the parting line by from

Harry and Niall get married for a year to save twelve-thousand jobs (and maybe a couple of lives).

feels like home by outwardbound93

Harry shouldn’t feel so much like a little boy tucked into his sister’s side when he spent most of last night twined around Niall in his bed, competing to see who could get the other off more times. But growing up doesn’t seem to work like that. It’s not a switch that gets flicked, it’s like seeing where you want to go and building yourself a bridge to that place. Sometimes where you end up is nothing like you expected, and sometimes it’s like coming home.

out of the woods by countthestars

“Hi,” the boy says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the counter, body language open in invitation. Niall half expects him to tip his chin up and bare his throat, but instead his smile grows wider, pulling crookedly at his mouth.

Niall's Kitchen by countthestars

Niall and Harry both have youtube cooking channels, and accidentally become rivals. An epistolary fic, of sorts.

must have been the mistletoe by countthestars

“Hey, Harry,” Niall says, voice low and conspiratorial. “Look up.”

“What?” Harry whispers back, because there's a lot to look at up there, blinking lights and boughs of garland and... “is that mistletoe?”

“'Fraid so,” Niall confirms. His lips twitch like he's fighting a smile, but he keeps a straight face as he taps his finger against his mouth. “It's bad luck not to kiss someone underneath mistletoe.”

hold me closer tiny dancer by countthestars

Dancing isn't really Harry's strong suit. Niall doesn't really care.

The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows by KelliDiane

Unlike other kids of successful, wealthy parents Harry isn't skating by on good looks. Nor is he fifty piña coladas deep in Hawaii. Instead he spends his time learning, whether it's by reading a mountain of texts or hands on at his father's lab. There's an unspoken understanding between his father and himself that he'll take control of the company when his father no longer can. Harry would rather be well versed when he does, science really does interest him. If it interests him because it's genuinely cool or if it interests him because his father pays some kind of attention to him, well.

or

Another superpowers fic that nobody asked for.

remember that time on the bus by estrella30

“Yeah, sure,” Harry says. He smiles and shrugs happily. “I’m good with that.” He gestures to himself on the couch. “You want to like—like now?”

“No! Not now, I mean. One day. In the future.” Niall chews on his thumb and shrugs. “When we’re bored or something.”

Harry snorts a quiet laugh. Only Niall would think shagging a mate would be a good way to kill some time when bored on the bus.

Well. All right. It’s not as if the thought’s never crossed Harry’s mind.

or: harry and niall start shagging

stay, stay, stay. . . (stay.) by badjujuboo (miztrezboo)

Niall keeps a gun by the bed now.

Harry doesn't think Niall knows he knows.

OR an au of the on the streets/gangland type description, drug and alcohol use, violence offscreen, past rough sex (barely mentioned), romantic sex (because we need both sides), somewhat discussed unprotected sex, guns and being shot at and shot, and minor character death (because its a gangland fic and i'm sorry?)

show me by zouee

"i was thinking..." harry begins, scratching the back of his neck hesitantly. he feels niall's eyes on him and his cheeks start to feel hot. "what if we made a sex tape?"

the one where niall and harry are roommates who are close to broke, and are desperate to do anything for money.

high on a pleasure wheel by brokendrums

Niall wakes up the morning after the Billboard Awards married to Harry. Too hungover to face the media storm, he takes up Harry’s offer to drive him home to LA.

the taste was sweeter by brokendrums

On his 18th birthday, Niall travels into the future and ends up meeting his 24 year old self.

only talk about a bruise by brokendrums

With the eclipse fast approaching, the pack is thrown into crisis. New to it all, Harry tries to find his place.

see me in a new light by brokendrums

Niall joins the production team for Planet Earth II and Harry has an interesting proposition.

my remedy for yesterday by brokendrums

It’s been three years since One Direction finally parted ways. Three long years where Niall’s stayed away from home on a never ending holiday. Three years since he’s seen Harry in the flesh and not just splashed across the tabloids or overplayed on the radio.

Niall’s just docked his boat in Ibiza, ready to soak up the sun, when an unexpected accident brings Harry into his life again. And while Niall recuperates on Harry’s patch of sandy white beach old feelings start to emerge, not all of them pleasant.

If we dream forever, whatever happens next by brokendrums

Niall meets Harry on the train and can't stop thinking about him. Then one evening when they get off the train, Harry invites him back to his.

all of the places i ain't ever been by theamazingpeterparker

Harry takes his dinner back to his bedroom, determined to chip away at his book that he came here to write. He’s not sure what it really is yet but he knows he wants it to be in the countryside, maybe a love story without the distractions of a city or a corporate job or a huge population to get in the way.

Or, Harry rents a room on a farm in exchange for working as a farmhand.

something softer than us by theamazingpeterparker

He almost told him then, leaning forward like the thought hit him with enough force that he'd say it out loud. He had bit his tongue, let Niall carry on his explanation against the backdrop of a setting sun across the river from the ballpark. Harry supposes then that he'd loved Niall for a long time now, anyway.

Niall's cat's name is Lunchbox, Louis has definitely been in love, Zayn won't shut up about the Antonine Plague, and Harry doesn't know how to tell Niall that he's in love with him.

dear, i'm always running towards you by goreallegore

He blocks it all out, the cheers, the profanities of overzealous fans from the opposing team, and focuses on one thing, a soft gravelly voice, “Good things take time.”

Or; Niall plays for FC Barcelona, and Harry's a photographer.

a better beginning by goreallegore

Zayn and Liam are attached to the hip, Louis is always putting his foot where it's not needed, and Niall and Harry are ever so quietly in love.

a rising tide like an hour glass by goreallegore

Harry climbs over him, his legs slotting on either sides of Niall, his body flush against Niall’s. He nibbles on Niall’s lowerlip, then licks the seam of his mouth and causes him to elicit a soft - needy - moan. No feelings in the Glade, Niall remembers. Or, he doesn’t. It’s all kind of a haze to be honest.

Or; Niall and Harry are runners.

cook up a recipe for my beating heart by goreallegore

“So, what say wanna live with me? I’ll cook Sunday breakfasts,” Niall says.

“And I’ll make your favorite pastry,” Harry replies.

“Tarte Tartin.” Cause that’s what their love is. A bit of sour and sweet.

Or; Niall and Harry cook.

can't believe I captured your heart by goreallegore

Niall shrugs, “thanks, couldn’t bear living on campus after freshmen year. So moved in here my second year with me mate.”

Harry nods, pausing to repeat Niall’s words in his head, “wait, you’re not a second year?” Please don’t say senior. Please.

“Third year.” Thank god.

Harry sighs in relief, “so ready for the movie?”

Or; Niall likes movies. And Harry is just trying to figure himself out.

baby, we're like a time bomb by goreallegore

“You know that frown thing doesn’t suit you. Look like a lost pug or summat,” he chuckles, his grip tight on the steering wheel.

“I like pugs,” Harry answers simply, and Niall has to turn and look at the boy next to him and it really shouldn’t surprise him because he has known this since day one, but Harry is beautiful. Even the frown that has found a new home on his always smiling face looks pretty – could call it painfully beautiful.

“I do too, though, I like happy ones. Don’t you?” he prods, and that does it as he turns, again, to find a smiling Harry, “there it is. I knew there was something missing.”

Harry ducks his head, avoiding Niall’s gaze, “you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Flirting.”

Or; there are timers, but Harry and Niall are too in love to care.

the whole world is sleeping, but my world is you by goreallegore

“Say if I were to leave for forever, would it be okay?”

Niall reaches for Harry’s hand, intertwining their fingers as if the gaps between their fingers were made to be filled by each other, “Only if it makes you happy. ‘Sides, I’d probably follow you to ends of time. Can’t afford losing me best mate.” A slight blush decorates Niall’s cheeks and the dim lighting of the room makes the boy look – ethereal, Harry thinks. Harry is completely endeared by the sight before him.

Or; Harry lives his dreams and Niall helps him save them.

the name forever on my lips is yours by goreallegore

“What did you forget?” his voice was small, Niall was afraid that Harry might’ve not heard him but the look on his face said the opposite.

“I never clearly told you how I feel about you,” Harry stopped to pull out a journal from his back pocket, “I wrote about it you see.” He was holding a battered moleskin that seemed like it had ink all over it. Niall had seen it before but never dared to ask what it was; but now that Harry stood in front of him shyly flipping through the pages, he realized what it was. Niall felt like he was running short on air.

Or; Niall is a modern day Prince and Harry is no damsel in distress.

First Person by Gorgeous Nerd (gorgeousnerd)

Harry doesn't know why Niall wants to see him when he loses a year of memories. But Harry can't go anywhere else.

Follow You Through The Dark by disarm_d

Harry discovers that Niall is a vampire and has some valid concerns.

the mad ones (pool party remix) by irishmizzy, miss_bennie

Harry buys a car in NYC = OT5 road trip to LA. 24-hour diners, shit hotels, Polaroids, golf, line dancing, and too many people in the backseat: this is what dreams are made of.

Christmas Wishes by narrywings

Harry's hoping to go home for a quiet Christmas - but everything gets derailed when Niall calls unexpectedly.

It's Christmas. That Means We Have To Hold Hands. by holyzarrialltrinity

"As the day went on, Niall started worrying less about the way he felt. All he knew is that being around Harry made him feel happy. And being with him in the best city on Earth was even better. It made him forget for a moment about all the stuff back home. He just wanted to be with Harry for however long they had. There was some unspoken romance happening between the two of them and they both could tell. But instead of words, they just held hands really tight."

Niall hates his family. Harry barely has one. But when you spend time with someone new in the greatest city in the world, there's always room for a little change in your life.

love actually is all around by storuns

A small smile appears on Harry’s face and he scoots closer to Niall, resting his head on his shoulder. Niall wraps his arm around him and moves his hand up to rub his shoulder, earning a couple of coos from Louis and Liam across the table. Harry laughs and throws French fries at both of them. He looks up at Niall and grins as he watches him throw his head back in laughter. For some reason, a warm feeling overwhelms his chest and he feels like hugging Niall tightly and kissing all over his face. But, of course, he has control and all he can do is imagine it in his head.

Or the one where Harry and Niall go to Mullingar for Christmas, and stuff happens.

Time Has Brought Your Heart to Me by fakeheaux

Harry meets Niall, and feels a connection, so he gets to know him just a bit more.

Or the one where Harry and Niall are soulmates.

hear this heartbeat breaking through by acastle

He feels another shock of warmth, much more intense, much more overwhelming, as he looks at him. Watches Bailey cling on to this person tightly, laughing as he’s lifted off the ground. He doesn’t know how to describe it, but he’s sure. Very sure, that it is a positive feeling. He doesn’t know how to react to it, really.

(In which Harry is an amateur boxer, raising his son on his own after the hardest few months of his life, then he meets the piano teacher with a beautiful heart.)

a rush inside i can't control by dramaturgicallycorrect

all seems to stay for as long as he can -- that what it feels like to Harry, like Niall’s only ever there until he can’t be there anymore, until something’s tugging him away and he has to follow. Every day he seems to be able to stay longer, sometimes up to hours at a time before he’s tugged away. Every time he goes, Niall leaves his glasses on the kitchen table like a promise.

[Or Harry’s rented a cabin by the woods in Mullingar to write his new album and he doesn’t know that both of his muses are Niall.]

the world still turns by dramaturgicallycorrect

It’s not like he’s not seen any of them over the last eighteen months -- he has – but certainly not all once, not like the way it used to be. Not even the 2015 Way It Used To Be, because even before Zayn left they’d all pretty much tried to do their own thing. Like Just Starting Out Way It Used To Be when they were too scared to let go of each other because they didn’t have anybody else.

Niall had always had his family and the crew and all, but most days it felt like it was just the five of them and nobody else. And the world was laid out in front of them for the taking and they didn’t know who they were or who they wanted to be. Some days Niall still doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be and he thinks that’s just as comforting as it is terrifying.

You’re not supposed to have it all figured out by age 23. He thinks people forget that sometimes.

[Or Niall organizes a lads’ holiday to see if they still fit.]

let's start right now by dramaturgicallycorrect

He turns to Harry. “Do you mind, like. Can I take a picture of your driver’s license?”

“Yeah,” Harry says easily, fishing his wallet out and presenting him with a California license to match his California plates. He has got an LA address, Niall notes as he snaps a picture. He’s got longer hair in this picture, waving down to brush his shoulders, a far sight from the short crop he's got now. It looks just as good on him, he notes almost subconsciously.

He texts the picture to Louis as Harry puts the license away, give this to the police if I go missing ..

What have you done Neil?? comes Louis’ answer quickly, but Niall ignores it, looks up to find Harry looking back at him.

“It’ll be fun.”

“Promise?”

Harry tilts his head. “I never make promises. You’ll just have to trust me.”

[Or Harry's a professional cross country road trip driver, and Niall is his latest fare.]

call this what you like by dramaturgicallycorrect

“Who was that?” Laura asks, something sly on her face that Niall quite wishes she’d wipe off.

It twists Niall’s stomach anyway, to say, “My mate Harry,” when the truth of it is mates aren’t supposed to catch your breath in your chest talking to them.

He doesn’t know what to do with the feeling, so he presses it away, deep into that box of other nasty feelings he doesn’t want, the ones that haunt him, the you’re never going to get a gig, the you’re going to end up alone.

The thing is, it doesn’t feel like a nasty feeling. It feels like something he should explore instead of hide, because it feels good. But he’s felt it, maybe just once or twice before, and nothing good’s ever come of it. Not a single person’s understood. So Niall locks it up tight and swears he’ll lose the key.

[Or Harry’s looking for love in all the wrong places, and Niall’s not meant to be looking at all.]

only fools rush in by darlingjustdont

niall holds up his hand to show off the band, unthinkingly pushed onto his fourth finger. harry stares at it. “i woke up with it on my thumb.” “did i get one?” says harry, now staring at his own hands. there’s a simple silver ring on his left hand. “oh fuck, i did. holy fuck, niall. i think we got married.”

a post-zayn, non-hiatus au where niall and harry accidentally get married in vegas. it's a bit problematic, mostly because niall's been in love with harry for a long time.

once in your life by wearecities (falsetto)

There’s a moment of silence where Harry considers just passing out right there, head hanging off the bed, because the alcohol’s finally catching up to him in the most unpleasant way. “When we’re thirty?”

“When we’re thirty.” Harry repeats. His eyelids are slowly drooping closed, fingers going slack around the beer he’s clutching. He’s just slipping over the edge when there’s the rustle of material and he squints open one eye to look at Niall.

"We’ve done stupider things.” Niall shrugs.

Niall and Harry make a marriage pact.

and we're starting at the end by dessertmeltdown

The first time Harry sees Niall he's bouncing around bootcamp with a guitar.

See You Later, Boy by marcel

One day, Niall runs Harry over with a skateboard.

Maybe With Me by threeturn

Harry tries to help Niall hook up. Set during the American leg of the TMH tour.

Turn all your grey skies blue. by mogigraphia

Niall's a new single dad, and Harry's his daughter's teacher at the daycare.

it’s kind of our routine by somerdaye

Niall only gets to kiss Harry on New Year’s, and does not in any way want more than that. Really.

You and I Misbehaving by BlackWave

Harry and Niall bake and fail to be proper human adults.

Everything Comes Back To You by Narryornarry

Niall and Harry go to Mullingar, and fall in love in the process.

a true thing by from

NYC, December 2014. Nothing lasts, especially not a shared tub of cereal milk ice cream, but they’re Harry and Niall, and they'll move on with the new.

find a way out of myself again by mozartspiano

harry can't go home so he makes a new one.

AU set in montreal, canada.

Mastering the Art of Friends Cooking by el_em_en_oh_pee

Niall has spent years of practice preparing for his appearance on the Next Food Network Star. He expected his life to change as a result of it - just not quite in this way.

Always Wanna Blow Your Mind by jibrailis

Harry accidentally buys a ring that gives him special sex powers. It’s terribly confusing for everyone involved.

Uncertainty Principle by jibrailis

He didn’t expect this: Australia, the vineyard, and Niall who won’t look him in the eye.

and show me why you deserve to have it all by intherubble

Genetics could go eat a dick as far as Harry is concerned. He just wishes he still had one. (written January 2012)

I Can Be Your New Addiction by estrella30

And that’s another problem. Harry is way too aware of Niall right now to get entirely comfortable. He’s just…

Niall is just there – right there – and Harry is having all sorts of ridiculous thoughts about him.

days grow on colorful trees by criminiallar

He’ll miss nights when they scroll through their phones side by side and Skype with their friends from opposite sides of the room, and he’ll miss leaning over whenever the mood strikes him, nudging his nose against Harry’s jogging bottoms that he’s taken to wearing around the house and looking up with a hopeful grin and Harry leaning back on his elbows with a flourish of his hands before he tips over, smiling at the ceiling with a, “Have at it, then.”

Happy Genius Heroes by BlackWave

Niall is an aspiring evil genius (who isn't very evil at all). Harry is his pretty assistant. Liam is the visiting friend and Louis and Zayn are meddlesome superheroes.

it's the way we are together by roofpizza

Harry leans against the shelf and opens his mouth to say something witty and probably super sexy when Niall interrupts him with a snort. “Do those kinds of lines get you anywhere?”

“Most of the time,” Harry shrugs, and it’s true, because he has quite a bit of charm, and it tends to work in his favor, despite his cheesy lines. “I’m charming.”

“I suppose you are,” Niall laughs, and Harry can’t help the smile that spreads across his face.

you don't need me anymore by outwardbound93

Rain riddles the sea like bullets and the dark storm clouds hang just above ceiling height, but Niall doesn’t have the panicky crushed feeling he sometimes gets. The little house feels cozy with his baby asleep in the next room and Harry’s lip jutting out in a pout.

Or, Niall becomes a dad.

hold on by outwardbound93

Funny, Niall thinks, that for all their success ordinary terrible things happen to them just like anybody else. Girlfriends get tired of the fans or get panicked about too much commitment, and bandmates slip going into the pool and lose five years’ worth of memories.

i sing you like a song i heard when i was young by disequilibrium

Niall never thought he’d find his way back home. But then, the wind works in mysterious ways: a stranger at the door, an impossible escape. A whisper that changes everything, forever, again.

always be your boy by saysthemagpie

In retrospect, becoming part of the world’s biggest boy band might not have been the smartest move for someone with Niall’s 'special condition,' what with the whole never-aging thing and the insatiable thirst for human blood.

Niall's a vampire. Harry's his human boyfriend. Harry thinks he should probably become a vampire, too.

Sad Blue Eyes by Mcwarr

“To the rest of the world, Harry had no qualms with being an absolute asshole but when it came to Niall, all bets were off.”

the one with all the football by irishmizzy, miss_bennie

Senior year was supposed to be the best ever – that is, until Louis goes through a breakup over the summer and Zayn starts acting weird. With everything falling apart, Niall, Liam, and Harry are doing their best to keep it together, but it’s easier said than done. If nothing else, at least Niall’s got Harry.

[2015 One Direction as told through an American College AU]

and you know in your heart it'll be worth it by outwardbound93

“At home, we sleep on the,” he points at the ceiling. “The top, so we don’t float away.”

Niall laughs. “The ceiling, you mean?” He traces the line of Harry’s dimple. “I figured you slept inside a castle, like in the pictures of what Atlantis looked like.”

“I doubt that’s accurate,” Harry says. He palms Niall’s thigh, running his hand down to his knee, where he pauses to feel out the unfamiliar bones with his fingertips. “Otters sleep holding hands so they won’t drift apart, did you know that?”

“What, are you an otter?” Niall asks.

“No, but it might not be too bad,” Harry says. He lays his head to rest on Niall’s chest, over his heart. His fingers tangle with Niall’s in the sheets, his skin tanned and smooth, Niall’s pale and scarred.

"Eh,” Niall says. “It’s not too bad, I guess.”

We Could Be Enough by balefully

One Direction reconvenes after two years at Niall's cabin in Connemara for Christmas. Niall and Harry haven't spoken during the break, but they relearn each other and fall into something they never expected.

Super Beautiful Sex Machine by jibrailis

Niall Horan, porn star.

you're the truth i can't explain by takesmeunder

When Harry gets hired to be Niall Horan's celebrity photographer, he's expecting a learning experience and a chance to see the world. Determined to keep his business and personal lives separate, Harry tries desperately to keep things professional. The last thing he's expecting is to fall for a rockstar.

Relatable Content by makesomelove

Harry glances down at the floor, then up at Niall, lip curling up in a bashful smirk. Niall wants terribly to kiss him. The opportunity is right there in front of him, and it's the worst idea in the entire world.

It would reach the press. He'd be in the news - CEO and Founder of BeepFodder Niall Horan Sexually Manipulates Underlings. His mum has an alert for him on her computer and she'd see it and have a heart attack. They'd lose sponsors. Even if they didn't publish the footage, it'd still exist. It all still would have happened. Harry would know Niall likes him. The thought of the most vulnerable spots in his heart being captured on film and shown to millions of people makes Niall sick. Going through with this in a legitimate way would ruin his life no matter what.

in the golden afternoon by bisousniall

Niall can talk to flowers, but his life is pretty uncomplicated despite this. Until Harry shows up.

A Spell That Can't Be Broken (orphan_account)

He hears the people around them whisper, saying that he's got this boy under a tragic spell. Niall thinks they've got it all wrong. It's him who's caught under Harry's spell.

[Niall's a witch, Harry doesn't know this, and it's all on Niall if this blows up in his face.]

watch you on the red horizon by littlecather

“Just us,” he murmurs. “If - we’re talking about, like. Always.”

Harry nods. “Just us,” he repeats, voice a cracked whisper.

It's 2018, a year after One Direction has ended. Niall and Harry may or may not accidentally become soul mates.

Yoga To Be Joking by mdashes

The tags explain everything, I think. (Yoga, Autofellatio)

slow and steady (your hand fits in mine) by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

Niall slips the case shut, running his fingers along the top until they reach the handle. “Would you come with me?”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Right now, or in general?”

Niall decides to humor him. “In general.”

“Always.”

---

Or: Their first Christmas since the accident, and Harry promises to take care of Niall.

i'll pull you closer by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

“You’re a fish,” Harry says.

“Am not.”

“You have a tail.”

“ ‘m not a fish.” Niall sounds vaguely affronted. “I’m a siren.”

“Uh huh. Care to elaborate on that?” Harry snips.

“Well,” Niall says thoughtfully, “I’m supposed to seduce you with my voice, lure you in, and then viciously devour your flesh.”

till you know that the words are right by el_em_en_oh_pee

Somehow, at this stage in his career, waking up with breasts and a vagina on the morning of the biggest show of his life doesn't even seem that comparatively weird to Niall.

Welcome to the Jungle by peerpressure

Harry, Louis and Zayn are in a band (it's not an indie band and definitely not a tribute band).

Harry falls in love with Niall a little too hard and a little too fast. It's not very punk rock.

we're on fire now by leitmotifs (orphan_account)

In which Harry and Niall are two of the best spies in the world, except maybe not really, because they're enemies and one is not supposed to fraternize with the enemy, but it keeps happening anyway. Liam is very exasperated.

i won't be on my own by sakabelle

Harry takes a quick trip back to London to care for his ailing boyfriend.

Benefits by sakabelle

It begins at Jay and Dan's wedding. It's supposed to be a laugh, really. Niall and Harry showing up there together because they've got no one else to bring.

It continues because Niall's always got to have some sort of fling going on whenever they're home from the tour. It's just that Harry never expected that he'd be one of those flings.

Holding Me Hostage by sakabelle

Niall Horan is content to keep to himself for his thirteen month prison sentence. He's content to stay out of trouble. Content to do his time and get out. But within the walls of HM Forest Bank, everyone's got a secret. Everyone's got a purpose. Everyone's got to get through their time somehow.

Which is how Niall finds himself with a lot more problems than he ever had on the outside.

To the Stars by sakabelle

The last place Niall Horan wanted to be was a first class passenger on the Titanic, headed to America. His father was forcing him into a life he didn’t want, full of business meetings and ritzy parties. Simply put, he was miserable.

Until he met Harry Styles. A passenger in steerage who would turn his entire life upside down.

A Titanic movie AU.

Piccadilly by anb123

Based on this prompt: fic where niall is a famous pop star who takes the tube every chance he can get, mostly because it’s one aspect of his life that makes him feel more normal and harry’s the cute college student who also takes the tube, has absolutely no clue who niall is, so when niall grins at him from the other side of the car, harry just thinks niall’s a normal lad flirting with him by niallharold on Tumblr.

Famous Niall & uni student Harry meet on the tube. Life ensues.

show me your love (orphan_account)

niall and harry go to las vegas as best friends and go home married.

and if it's quite alright, you could be my way of life by lizzybean

A comfy cozy, post break up, slightly golf!AU where Harry fills all the cracks and gaps left in Niall's heart.

A Slide Into First by siempreniall

Niall's a minor league star baseball player, Harry's in love with him, Liam makes really good hot dogs, Louis's a mascot wrench, and Zayn shows up to pull everything together.

Love Muffins by alexenglish

A story about something at first sight. In which Niall didn't call, Harry stress bakes, Louis meddles, Zayn and Liam are... Zayn and Liam, and everything works out in the end.

What's A Fella T' Do? by iwanna_seeyou_undoit

Pretend!Boyfriends AU where Harry doesn't own any trousers that don't have holes in them, Niall is the only one who can drive, and they definitely aren't shagging.

take me with you by outwardbound93

“I’m dating Niall,” Harry blurts out in the middle of their interview with Scott Mills. Liam’s, Louis’s, and Scott’s heads all swing around to him. Niall doesn’t so much as blink.

If it's torn we can stitch it up by ifzi0531

Niall shifts his feet nervously. He still doesn’t know if this is the right decision but he stares back at the small name card in his hand. “Hi, it’s Niall. The one from juvie. You gave me your card, and asked me to call you if I ever needed your help.”

“Hi, Niall! What can I do for you? Are you in trouble again?”

Niall shakes his head like he always does when people are asking him questions. It’s what he does, giving them non-verbal answers. But then he realizes he’s talking through the phone, so he speaks out loud again. “I-,” Niall trails off, tightening his grip on the phone. He stares at the ground, hoping that the ground would swallow him. “My mum kicked me out of the house.”

or

The Orange County (O.C) AU

how to make two lovers of friends by petals

The first time they meet, they hate each other. Or, Harry hates Niall. The second time they meet, Niall doesn't remember Harry. He says he did. The third time they meet, they become friends. They're friends for a long time. And then they're not. And then they fall in love.

Or a When Harry Met Sally au

My Kiss Can Mend Your Broken Heart by PigSlay

After Zayn leaves the band, Niall withdraws into his head. He tries his best to keep up appearances (both in public and in front of the boys) but it's not hard to notice when he falters. Harry is the first one to do something about it.

and the history books forgot about us by roofpizza

for the prompt: A timeline of how narry came to be narry from X-Factor bootcamp to the OTRA tour.

or

Niall is having the worst day of his life.

it's not just where you lay your head by disequilibrium

Harry chuckles a little.

“I am. Cry at everything. Sad movies, the lot.”

Niall smiles.

“Yeah, I know.”

And he does know. He’s sort of started to know Harry like the back of his hand. He might even go so far as to say he’s his best friend. And that makes everything else all the more difficult.

friends just sleep in another bed by littlecather

“Just - I’ve just been hanging out with Harry. A lot - slept over a couple of times.”

“You slept over?” Dougie echoes.

"Not like that," Niall rolls his eyes - even though it kind of is.

Tour starts; Niall and Harry grow closer.

Know Your Place by siempreniall

Niall's place in life has changed a lot. He's always left trying to figure out where he truly belongs, with whom he truly belongs. It just takes a few tries and a few life-changing, impossible events for him to get it right.

Everything Comes Back To You by alliecat23784

A canon compliant fic where Harry and Niall are very much in love and manage to keep their relationship strong while both touring the world at the same time.

(And I’m queer for math!) by softly (alexenglish)

No no, we aren’t breaking up! You didn’t let me finish. I’m gay for YOU.

all the time before i knew you by littlemissmeggie

“I’ve heard you like Scrabble,” said Niall. He considered Harry. Maybe Louis was right and he and Harry would make good friends.

“Yeah.” Harry nodded enthusiastically, eyes lighting up. “I go to the Scrabble club at my library.”

“I think I’ve got a Scrabble set round my flat somewhere,” Niall told him. He shrugged and shot Harry a crooked grin. “If you don’t mind playing with a set that’s almost certainly missing a few letters.”

“Oh,” said Harry slowly, understanding seeming to dawn on him. A flicker of something Niall couldn’t identify crossed his face. “Um, that might- that might be a challenge. I’d better- I’ll probably stick with the sets at the library.” He gave Niall a sad, apologetic half-smile. “I should get back to, um, back to wardrobe."

“Don’t be offended,” said Louis, moving closer to Niall. “It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s Grimshaw. Fucking twat.”

Up-and-coming model Harry Styles falls under the charms of his long-time celebrity crush, emotionally manipulative Nick Grimshaw. After some poking and prodding and meddling from his friend Louis, Harry befriends fellow model Niall Horan and soon realises that friendship—and maybe true love—should be a bit more like this.

if I got a condo on a cloud then I guess you can stay at my place (orphan_account)

“I think I can make it. Wait so are we gonna have to hold hands and stuff?” Niall asks Harry and Harry blushes and looks down at his feet awkwardly.

“I- you don’t have too. You can just hover.” --

Harry can't just show up to his sister's wedding where his ex boyfriend is going to be without somebody with him, I mean he can't just loiter around the chocolate fountain. So that's why he enlists Niall's help.

The Wedding Singer by littlecather

It's not that Harry doesn't believe in love, exactly - he just thinks that romance and marriage and all that comes with it are overrated. Niall has sung at over a hundred weddings, and is determined to prove Harry wrong. After all - there's a reason for all those songs.

Frenemies by alteringegoism

Harry hates Niall. Niall hates Harry. But Harry wants Zayn and in order to get to him, he’ll have to go through his best friend Niall. Harry will just have to kill Niall with kindness. That’s if Niall doesn’t kill him first. Oh and Liam and Louis are getting married.

When I Close My Eyes, All the Stars Align by FallingLikeThis

Harry Styles looks out the windowed wall of his penthouse apartment, staring down at the teeming masses that bring life to the streets below. Any one of the people down there could be his soulmate. Or, who knows, his soulmate could be halfway around the world. Or dead already. There’s no way to know, really, since Harry’s affliction is so rare. He bears the soulmate mark. It occurs in maybe one in a million people. He’s one of the chosen few who has one, single person that’s meant for them. Everyone else has the freewill to love whoever they want but if Harry ever hopes to find true love, he’ll have to go through a damn scavenger hunt to get it. And as if that wasn’t enough, he has a time limit.

Or a Beauty and the Beast Au in which Harry's only beastly qualities are his hair and his bad attitude and Niall arrives to spy on him for his sister but ends up staying for so much more.

baby, you don't know what it's like by peerpressure

Harry tries really, really hard to only see Niall as a friend.

It’s not working very well.

Because Niall is simply amazing and Harry is so stunned that he’s even allowed in his presence. And also because he wants to suck his dick. Just a little. But he also wants to cuddle him and maybe share food and fight for blankets and press cold feet against each other and shampoo each other’s hair.

Harry just wants to be with Niall.

(In which Louis is a good friend, Liam is kind, Zayn is always stressed, Niall is the new guy and Harry falls in love)

let's spin the world around by jamesniall

"Superlatives are just about putting the word más before an adjective or a sustantive. Like más grande which means bigger, or más fuerte, which means harder" Niall says, looking pointedly at Harry and Harry is 99% sure he's doing it on purpose.

"más rápido means faster" Niall continues, "Are you getting hard from this, Harry?" and if Harry would have had something in his mouth he would have spilled it all over Niall's face.

Or, Harry learns spanish thanks to Niall's dirty talk.

Maybe You're My Snowflake by pintsandguitars

Harry Styles loves the snow. Niall Horan loves the stars. And somewhere between snowflakes and night skies, they start loving each other.

For Rayvans: Uni! au where Harry doesn't have anywhere to go for Christmas break, so his roommate Niall invites him to spend the holidays with him. (bonus if they end up sharing a bed in Niall's small childhood room).

A head for business and a body for sin by flickerbyniall

He first time he caught Harry’s eyes was about an hour ago, the boy was eating some strawberries from the buffet table around the corner, oblivious to the fact he was standing out in the crowd with his rebellious look.

or Harry goes to a Gala and can't take his eyes off the boy wearing a leather jacket.

Searching by littlecather

Niall has been hired by a magazine to track each employee's searches on Google. Harry uses Google a lot.

wide open spaces by outwardbound93

“Well,” Harry says at the end of the day. The sun sets late in Texas like it doesn’t want to go, clinging to the scrubby flatlands with the last reaches of striped sunbeams. Niall leans on the broom and watches Harry fidget with a bundle of notecards he has to fill with peoples’ heartfelt sentiments. Love notes, apologies, get-well-soons, Harry’s got them all. “Will I see you tomorrow, then?”

Niall props the broomstick against a shelf holding a bunch of little green plants he doesn’t know the name of. The shop is bursting with green leaves, colorful blossoms like pops of candy mixed with buttered popcorn at the movie theatre, and at the heart of it, Harry. Harry, with his languid speech and that one curl that stubbornly sticks out on the side of his head that Niall always wants to twirl around his finger and that smile that arrives in a flash or unfurls slowly.

“Yeah,” says Niall. “I’ll be here.”

this could be the end of everything by basementhero

The Norns remembered each cycle of time and would recount the tale if asked: Harry and Niall were not the first of their kind, nor was it the world’s first attempt at existence. Some cycles were short while other stretched on for tens or hundreds or thousands of millennia. It was always the same in the end, though, no matter how many intervening years it took to get there. Baldr always fell; the giants always attacked, and the realms of Yggdrasil—the world tree—were always plunged back into the void after Ragnarök, waiting for rebirth.

But not everything was so set in stone; at least, it didn’t seem to be.

(or: Niall and Harry are immortal deities, but even gods are subject to fate.)

We Could Be The Ones Who Matter by jibrailis

Harry and Niall both get weirdly intense about things, and by things, they mean competitive Scrabble.

lovesick boys will write you lovesongs by narryblossom

When Niall walks through the gate at Dublin Airport at four in the morning, jet lagged to hell and back, he feels like he’s home. He thinks he’s never felt so happy to hear an Irish accent, and he certainly has never been so happy to have no fucking clue what he’s doing.

(Well, he has some idea of what he’s doing, he just isn’t sure it’s going to work out the way it does in his head.)

(An AU where Niall dreams of his lost love and finds himself going home to search for him.)

let yourself be enchanted by acastle

“Which means, I’ve got a Charms post to fill. And do you know who he suggested for the job?”

Harry doesn’t trust the wide beam on his face, and Louis goes on, “Well, he’d told me about this bloke. Class of 2011, student rank number three but top at Charms of his class, Hufflepuff, prefect, atrocious Quidditch player, but he makes a great treacle tart-”

“He suggested me?” Harry says blankly.

(Hogwarts and co-teachers AU, all in one.)

Along the Way (Something Changed ) by catrinahart

For the last five years, singer turned actor, Harry Styles has had Niall by his side to help manage his incredibly crazy life. They met and quickly became the best of friends. Then people start asking questions, making Harry think, what do they see that he doesn't?

and days gone by by outwardbound93

Niall catches himself glancing at Harry in the backseat. The tops of buildings are lined with Christmas lights like the iced piping on a gingerbread house, and the crisp sharp light of a winter night makes Harry’s skin look warm and soft.

riverina by outwardbound93

Harry looks up at Niall, the sharp, almost antique lines of his face thrust into regal beauty by the stadium lights. Harry’s ribs press against the size of his heart.

Or, a royalty!au where Niall's a prince and Harry's the reporter that writes about him.

let me photograph you in this light by storhan

“I like that one,” he says, turning the camera back around to show Harry the picture he took earlier that day of Niall reading. Harry also finds himself smiling, he quite likes that one too.

“Me too,” Harry says softly.

Or, Harry's a photography major and Niall is his muse.

something so magic about you by storhan

Niall's a single father and Harry's his neighbor who never seems to wear a shirt.

St-st-stuttering by asaprockme

In which Harry has a stutter that he just can't control. Niall doesn't mind.

I'm not trying to stop you, love by littlecather

If we're gonna do anything, we might as well just ...

Niall and Harry are the only ones left on campus over the Christmas holidays, and even though they've never really hung out before, they manage to spend most of the week holed up in Harry's room, together.

the piano man’s playing some old melody by littlervoice

Harry is a piano player. One day his neighbour puts in a request.

Do you want to come to the gym? by maxette

Niall is Harry's personal trainer: a romantic comedy without the middle forty-five minutes of misunderstandings.

running around in love again by mozartspiano

they meet at a coffee shop on valentine's day. it's all a horrible cliche.

You Feel Like Home (You're Like a Dream Come True) by roughvoiced

Niall sighs and unwraps the scarf from around his neck. "A plus one," he repeats. "I need one."

“For what?” Harry asks, watching as Niall unzips his coat, letting it slip off his arms and drop to a rumpled pile on the carpet before slipping off his shoes and striding over to Harry, plonking himself down on the sofa beside him and snuffling up under his arm, waiting for Harry to pull him in close before he speaks.

“Greg’s wedding.”

or, the au where Harry offers to be Niall's plus one and ends up with a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Another Auld Lang Syne by colbyjack

"We drank a toast to innocence We drank a toast to now. And tried to reach beyond the emptiness, But neither one knew how.”

-

Harry and Niall are old flames who eventually find each other again, of course, because the universe doesn’t want to give up on them.

Stacked Against You by siempreniall

Niall hates the library. All of the computers are always taken, the stacks make him feel claustrophobic, and his short attention span has never given itself well to studying anyways. The cute boy at the information desk makes it all worth it, though.

i want you so much (but i hate your guts) by siempreniall

Niall doesn’t know what he’s still doing there. This isn’t really how he likes to spend his Sunday nights. He doesn’t want to be yelled at and made to feel guilty for something that happened months ago. All he wants is to leave, really.

heartbreak hero by acastle

“So you want me to hear your side of things?"

"Yes, that would be a start."

"Fine,” Niall steps forward, so he and Harry are practically nose to nose. “Come back tomorrow at 8, so you can air your side of the situation on my segment.”

In which Niall is a love guru of sorts on the radio, who thinks love is the bane of the world, and Harry is a fuckboy who’s lovely, surely, but is not the best boyfriend in the world, not by a long shot. His girl breaks up with him while on air with Niall, and Harry isn’t having that, so he forces Niall to help him win her back.

(Alternatively, Niall’s Guide On How to Win Back the Girl, patent pending. It should work, in theory.)

Home is Wherever I'm with You by ziamfcks

Niall is blind and Harry works in a coffeeshop. It's love from the start.

Intensified by Absence by littlecather

Niall smiled, the action uncontrollable. “Hey, time traveller,” he said softly.

Harry blanched, his eyes growing a little wide, but he cocked his head to the side with confusion. “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand across the back of his seat for Niall to shake. “I’m Harry. What’s your name?”

The Time Traveller's Wife AU.

My Dearest Love by badjujuboo (miztrezboo)

His teeth hurt. Ached really. Like this thrumming underneath the veneer that wouldn't cease. Wouldn't be calmed no matter how many pain meds he's taken, no matter how much oil of clove he's rubbed onto them.

His dreams. His dreams were strange, too. Bloody, but without violence. Just a warm, wet, thick feel to them. And red. So much red.

He should have expected it. Should have made plans, sought guidance, kept himself away but. . . .

He’d never been to good at any of those things. Especially the last.

hands that hold me by lostgirl152

Niall was always too interested in Harry's hands

6,359 miles by acastle

“Why, why’d he send me that?” Harry murmurs, and Nick looks up from the screen. “What does he want me to do? I don’t-”

“Idiot,” he flicks his phone back to him. “Make a reservation. He wants you to go there.”

(Niall and Harry were sleeping together, until they aren’t, and then Niall disappears into a tiny island in the East. Then he asks Harry to follow him.)

i forget where we were by littlecather

“You,” he says thickly, swallowing. “You don’t - you don’t remember.”

“Not the last three years,” Harry tells him simply. “Sorry. What was your name?”

“Niall,” he mutters, face suddenly dark. “I’m Niall, I’m Liam’s assistant."

Harry wakes up to find he has retrograde amnesia and a perfect life - seemingly.

he is the lamb, she is the slaughter by trishapocalypse

“Niall, what did you do to me?” Harry repeated, quieter, slower than normal, and he looked up at Niall from under his eyelashes.

Niall froze, reaching a hand up to rub at his eyes, blinking rapidly as he stared at Harry. “What’s that?”

“This?” he asked, gesturing towards his chest. “Oh, you know, just breasts!” he snapped, picking up the pillow and throwing it back at Niall. “What did you do to me?!”

(Or: the one where Harry wakes up a girl and it's clearly NIall's fault.)

Through the Screen by sunshineflying

In his free time, Niall Horan likes to subscribe to his favourite camboy, Harry Cox. When he moves to uni he's not sure how he'll manage to watch the weekly show with a roommate. Things become even more complicated with that roommate is the one and only camboy of his dreams - Harry.

The Whole Shebang by BakerGrey

Niall lives life like it’s a daydream, Harry’s just in love, and Zayn’s painting pictures of Louis’s boyfriend.

laughin' loud on a carnival ride by el_em_en_oh_pee

Harry looks around the fairground. They’ve already done the putt-putt - Harry got tripped up by the windmill, but Niall almost lost his ball at the clown hole because he didn’t want to look straight at it - and the zipper and the gravitron and the spinning teacups. The Ferris wheel looms, past the inflatable slides and the yo-yo, and he wants to go to that, he does, but - Ferris wheels are always romantic in the movies, and Harry isn’t sure that Niall wants romantic from this. “Funnel cakes?” he suggests, instead.

i have lightning by sarcangel

“Have you ever eaten a raw olive?” Harry asks. Niall can actually taste them on his breath, green and briny, mixed with vodka and actual bitters; Harry still needs to breathe to live, after all, and still has no concept of personal space.

in the lonely cool before dawn by mozartspiano

Niall is the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House. Harry is his assistant.

A West Wing!AU.

like your favourite tune by words_unravel

It's just another summer for Harry - an unexpected flat mate, Louis being an idiot, and Liam hiding away in Wolverhampton.

....okay, maybe not just a typical summer then.

The River and the Deep Green Bend by liquidmeasure 

Harry studies the card for just a moment. It’s all brightness and blooming growth where the last card was darkness and destruction: a child, fair haired and laughing and riding on the back of a horse, his arms outstretched and basking in the light of a yellow sun.

“See? Not all bad." Jesy taps at the image on the card and nods. "Him I like. Look at him casting his light, nourishing the four little flowers in the back. He's an engine, burning brightly. Illuminating the dark corners. He's growth. Newness. Reconciliation...” Harry shakes his head and moves for the door. Opens it just as she says, “for all five of you.”

There’s a flutter and a commotion from behind him and then Rover is winging past him through the door, making her way out into the dark. The night air is cold on his face and it feels like relief. Like an escape.

“Four of us.” Liam sounds a little uncertain.

“What was that?”

“There’s just four of us, not five.”

“Oh…” her voice trails off as Harry steps out into the moonlight. “Well, like he said, it’s mostly bullshit anyway. Can’t get everything right.”

A Dark Tower AU for round 4 of the 1D big bang.