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raaorqtpbpdy · 3 months

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Why Are Seers Always Cursed? (3)

Wesley Weston is a son of Apollo with the rare gift of prophecy.

Written for @crossoverdanuary Week 2024, Day three: Percy Jackson | Lake

This takes place shortly before Annabeth, Luke, and Thalia arrive at Camp Half-Blood, and while Wes is still in middle school, meaning it's set before the primary canon events of both series. You can also read it on AO3!

Chapter 3: Downhill Fast

First | Previous

[Warning for mild violence]

Over the next two weeks, Wes started to really get the hang of Camp Half-Blood. A few more campers had arrived, including another Apollo Camper close to Wes' age named Lee Fletcher. The two of them got on really well right out of the gate. Wes did not manage to get out of explaining to Archer that he had the gift of prophecy, but for some reason, Archer told him that it would be wiser to keep it secret from anyone outside of Apollo Cabin.

Wes wasn't sure why, but he was starting to get the sense that his ability was more dangerous than it seemed. Archer warned that people might try to take advantage of him, or pick on him because they saw him as having an unfair advantage himself. So Wes' powers of foresight became cabin seven's little secret.

Unsurprisingly, Wes demonstrated a knack for archery. He'd never done it before, but it was like the bow simply belonged in his hands. His cabin-mates were very encouraging and helped him with his form so the bowstring didn't snap against his forearm. They were also fun to play basketball with. Wes established a personal record of scoring 90 feet from the hoop. Nowhere near the cabin's record, but still basically a full-court shot.

He wasn't as good as the others in the infirmary, but he wasn't so useless that they sent him out. They mostly had him cut bandages and get things for them, which was fine by Wes.

When it came to singing camp songs, Wes was exposed for his awful singing voice, but he was picking up the ukulele remarkably fast, so maybe he had inherited a little bit of Apollo's musical talents. Not as much as Lee, though; he was a regular musical prodigy as far as Wes was concerned. At only thirteen, he could play several instruments and his singing voice was downright mellifluous.

The one thing Wes really struggled with in the Apollo Cabin was seeing his cabin mates as his siblings. Technically they were, but Wes already had siblings. These people were basically strangers in comparison. And it didn't really help that he'd made a conscious decision not to think of Apollo as anything like a father to him back when he was ten years old.

The Apollo campers were warm, and accepting, and he liked them a lot... but they weren't family. Not yet, at least.

Aside from that, the only thing that really bothered him about this place was the pine tree that wasn't there, the one he kept seeing on the crest of the hill.

He brought it up to Chiron once, in private, and Chiron told him that sometimes they couldn't know what a prophecy meant until it came to pass. Wes only begrudgingly accepted that answer. He didn't like it.

What was the point of seeing the future if it didn't make sense until it became the past?

That pine tree became increasingly frustrating. Even more so than the monster attacks. They weren't daily or anything, but there had been two so far, counting the drakon, and both had been taken care of with only mild injuries and no deaths. That pine tree though....

Once, when Wes saw it, there was something gold hanging in its branches, and a dragon wrapped around its trunk fast asleep. Then he blinked, and the golden thing and the dragon were both gone. Then he blinked and the tree was gone too.

At the end of the second week, there was a terrible summer storm. For some reason, while the storm raged, Wes' eyes were drawn to the top of the hill. Each time a strike of lightning lit up the darkness, the pine tree appeared, just for that instant, before vanishing again. That felt important, but Wes didn't know why.

He told Archer about it, but Archer just told him the same thing Chiron did.

He didn't like it any better the second time.

Then, one night, Wes had a dream. He dreamed about the pine tree. About lightning striking, about a hoard of monsters straight from Hades.

The forbidden child approaches, the dream told him. The forbidden child approaches.

When he awoke, he thought about telling Chiron again, but then he remembered what he'd said before.

"You can't always know what a prophecy means until it comes to pass."

Wes sure as Hades didn't know what a 'forbidden child' was, and Chiron had already said he had no idea what the pine tree meant. Maybe this was one of those things where he should just wait and see how it panned out, rather than bothering anybody with his stupid dreams again.

Although... the last time he'd had a dream like that, it had told him Apollo would visit his mom.

But Apollo hadn't been in this dream. Just that stupid pine tree and a bunch of monsters. And it wasn't even worth it to warn everybody of monsters coming because he had no idea when this was going to happen.

Maybe he should ask anyway.

"Hey, Chiron," he asked the centaur during archery practice, "Do you know what a forbidden child is?"

Suddenly, Wes felt as if he'd been struck by something heavy falling on him. He stumbled and let go of his bowstring and the arrow missed the target by a mile. As it left his bow, he could swore the whistling sound it made as it shot toward a tree trunk sounded like an apology.

"Sorry, kid," it said. "I hate to do this to ya. I can't defy my father, you understand." Then it pierced the tree trunk with a thunk.

"My, are you alright, Wes?" Chiron asked.

"I'm... fine, but my question."

"I'm afraid not," he said. "I suppose if a child were to be sired by one of the three most powerful gods they might be considered a forbidden child, since the three of them swore on the River Styx not to sire children. But no such child exists."

"What if one did?" Wes asked. "And what if they were coming here and a whole bunch of monsters were chasing them?"

"That would be preposterous," Chiron assured him. "None of those gods would go back on their word, not when it's so important for them to honor it."

"But I saw it happen!" Wes insisted. "I saw three demigods and satyr climbing that hill," he pointed to the camp's border. "I saw them being chased by a horde of monsters from the underworld. I heard the trees whisper that a forbidden child approaches. I saw it in my dream last night."

"Dear boy," Chiron said. "You may have the gift of prophecy, but not every dream is prophetic. There is no forbidden child, and no horde of monsters. I can assure you. I hope you'll be able to calm down now."

"What?"

This didn't make any sense. Chiron's advice was sometimes frustrating, but he'd never been dismissive like this. He knew what Wes could do, what he could see. He knew that prophecies should be taken seriously. So what the heck was this?

"Why don't you focus on your archery for now?"

"But...." Wes was too confused to formulate a proper argument. He shook his head, his face scrunched up in a mix of emotions. "Okay...."

Wes lifted the bow again and lined up his shot. This time, his arrow flew true, and landed right in the bull's eye. But again, the sound of the arrow taking flight was a whispered apology.

"I cannot defy my father's wishes," it said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

That night, Wes had the same dream again. The forbidden child approaches. The forbidden child approaches.

A few days later, on an otherwise ordinary evening, while the campers were enjoying dinner, it happened. An uproarious cacophony of monstrous shrieks and bellows shook the valley. The blue sky darkened as smoke rose up from the far side of the hill.

Wes sprinted to get his bow and arrows and followed the rest of his cabin mates to the ridge while the other campers headed for the hilltop.

They couldn't get ready fast enough.

They weren't even halfway to their positions when four figures crested the hill, three demigods and a satyr.

"Go!" one of the figures, a girl, shouted. "I'll hold them off!"

She stopped at the top of the hill, wielding a spear and a shield, and the other three kept running. She fought valiantly, slashing and stabbing at bat-winged creatures and hell hounds until they overwhelmed her, and she fell.

It was only then that the other campers finally got close enough to help her.

They were too late. Wes knew it innately. That girl was the forbidden child, and she was going to die.

Without warning, a bolt of lightning shot out of the clear blue sky, and struck the girl. Then she started to change.

As the battle raged around her, she grew bark and sprouted branches until a tall, proud pine tree stood where she'd once been lying, half-dead on the ground.

Wes had seen that tree before. This time, though, it was actually real. It didn't disappear when he tried to blink it away.

A pulse of light emitted from the tree, expelling all the monsters from within the bounds of the camp. Then the light faded, leaving an invisible barrier protecting all the demigods within its bounds.

Later, the three who survived explained what happened. The satyr, Grover Underwood told them all that Thalia was a child of Zeus, a forbidden child. He explained that ever since he'd found her, creatures of Hades had been chasing them. Hades himself had sent them, angry at his brother for breaking their pact.

Wes kept his anger contained until Chiron dismissed everyone. He waited until everyone else was gone. He stayed silent.

"Is something wrong, Wes?" Chiron asked, noticing that he wasn't going to leave.

"I told you this was going to happen," he said, barely keeping a lid on his rage. "I warned you about the forbidden child, about the monsters from Hades, all of it. You didn't listen to me. You told me it was just a dream.

"If you'd just listened, we could have done something. We could have put a group of guards up on the hill. We could have been prepared for this! Thalia Grace didn't have to die!"

"I'm sorry," Chiron said. "I don't know what came over me. I knew of your abilities, and yet... when you told me about the forbidden child, it was as if... ah... I see...."

"What?" Wes did not accept this apology. He glared viciously at the centaur.

"Did you hear anything else? That day you told me about your dream, or afterwards?"

His glare eased as he thought about it.

"Actually, right before I told you, when I stumbled and my arrow misfired, it sounded like an apology" Wes recalled. "And then again the next time I fired at the target. 'I'm sorry. I cannot defy my father,' is what it said."

"The arrow spoke to you?" Chiron repeated derisively, but he quickly shook his head with pained expression. "My apologies.

"It is the fate of all oracles that such great power must come at a price," he said. "Either one must make a willing sacrifice to balance out that power, such as the Oracle of Delphi does, living as a maiden her whole life in a cave. Or, the gift will lead the bearer to be cursed, such as Tiresias who was inflicted with blindness, or... Cassandra.

"I believe Zeus did not want the secret of his child to get out," he continued, "so he had his son Apollo inflict you with Cassandra's curse to prevent you from sharing what you knew, or rather, to prevent anyone from believing you, even if you did."

"What exactly is this curse?" asked Wes.

"That you may see the future, but that you cannot share it with anyone, for they will never believe you," Chiron answered. "It's a terrible curse. It means only you alone will ever be able to benefit from your abilities, but you cannot help others with them."

"Is there a way to break it?" Wes asked.

"I'm afraid not," the centaur answered mournfully. "A seer's curse cannot be broken. Even those who know of the curse will have difficulty overcoming it's effects. Even I... well, you've seen already. I have a strong enough will to fight my initial reaction if I'm ready for it, but my initial reaction will always be disbelief. I'm sorry, Wes."

Chiron's appraisal turned out to be right on the money. As much fun as Wes had at camp that summer, and as much as he learned and grew, his precognition became completely useless. Even his cabin-mates, who already knew about his powers, didn't believe his visions until they came true.

Sometimes people would even ignore things Wes didn't realize were prophecies. The entire Aphrodite Cabin got poison ivy, all because their counselor didn't listen when Wes said to take the other path.

The same thing happened when he went back home at then end of the summer. His mother, who always humored his hunches before, now fully dismissed them. His father would laugh like Wes was telling him a joke.

And the next summer, when he returned to Camp Half-Blood, it was the same story.

Now that they had a magic barrier, there weren't any monster attacks to keep their skills sharp, they'd introduced regular games of Capture the Flag in the woods. It was the perfect opportunity for Wes to use his foresight to help his team win, but when none of them would listen to him, he had to go ahead on his own.

He won the game for his team, but it wasn't as satisfying as he'd thought it would be.

It was a relief when he finally went home for the summer. He wasn't looking forward to starting high school, but outside of camp, there were a lot fewer situations where not being able to tell people about his visions was a serious problem. Or so he thought.

Strange things happened in Amity Park that year. There were monsters around town that everyone could see, ghosts, rather. Not from Greek myths, but from a portal to another realm in the Fentons' basement.

Wes tried to make it not his problem, he really did.

Until the night he woke up in a cold sweat with prophetic knowledge echoing in his brain.

Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom.

But no one would ever believe him.

#wes weston #fic #things i wrote #danny phantom #dp #dp x pjo #pjo #dp crossover #crossover #crossover danuary week #crossover danuary week 2024 #why are seers always cursed?

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sallownights · 11 months

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miss americana and the heartbreak prince

word count: 3.2k

CW: fluff, pining, leander prewett, sexual scenes?, ilvermorny mention lol

A/N: sorry i literally disappeared LMAO, i had the worst writer's block ever. made me want to cry. lol. anyways, hope im back. i hope my brain works. lol. plz send requests so i don't have to think about what to write next. ily. kisses <3. my girlfriend proofread this 😐

pairing: sebastian sallow x female!Y/N

The move from America to London wasn’t entirely awful. Moving my portkey wasn’t entirely what Y/N had in mind when she found out she was going to Hogwarts.

Moving from Massachusetts to London was certainly different. It certainly wasn’t something that Y/N minded. She missed her friends back at Ilvermorny but she was excited to start school at Hogwarts. Especially since her uncle was a professor there.

“Uncle Eleazar,” Y/N walked into her uncle’s office. His classroom was beautiful with trinkets around the place, his office the same way. It was full of different things Miriam and him had bought together or collected.

“Y/N,” Professor Fig smiled, he stood and hugged his niece. His embrace was as warm as a summer day. “How have you been settling in? Are you excited to be sorted tonight?”

“Yeah, but we both know where I’m going to be sorted.” They both nodded and said,

“Slytherin.” The pair laughed softly.

“Thunderbirds are just too similar. There’s no way that’s not what I’m getting sorted into.” Y/N smiles. She was wearing her old Thunderbird robes that looked fairly similar to Ravenclaw if someone wasn’t paying attention. Fig nodded.

“Nothing wrong with Slytherin. There’s some talented wizards in there. Did you have a chance to explore the castle yet or were you just talking with Professor Weasley this whole time?” Y/N smiles brightly at the mention of Professor Weasley.

“Her and I had some tea and discussed what I would be learning here this year and the difference in curriculum. I haven’t had much chance to explore yet.” Fig nods and walks out his office.

“C’mon, I can show you around before the ceremony tonight.” Y/N followed behind her uncle. Walking around the school was like walking into a fantasy book for Y/N. It wasn’t too different from Ilvermorny but the history was clear. It was palpable.

“So did you decide if you were to be sorted in front of everyone or in private?” Fig broke the silence as they walk through the Viaduct Courtyard.

“I was thinking private. I’m not wanting to take away from the first years. The sorting ceremony from my understanding is different than the Ilvermorny one, yes? You get sorted by… a hat?" Y/N's voice was certainly confused. Fig chuckles softly.

“Yes, the sorting hat. You were sorted by crests?” Y/N nods.

“Well, that’s one way to do it, I suppose.”

—

Y/N was right. Slytherin. Her uncle was prepared and put some Slytherin robes in her trunk before she moved in earlier. Fig walks Y/N to the Slytherin common room. She hugs her uncle before saying the password and entering the newly revealed doorway.

She steps in and walks downstairs. The dungeon was cool compared to the heat outside from the summer air. She took a deep breath as she reached the bottom.

‘This is my year. It’ll be fine.’ Y/N nodded to herself before walking to her dorm room to go to sleep.

“Hey!” A voice rang out. Y/N whipped her head around to the voice. It was a taller boy, freckles, nice build. He was holding a large tome and was walking over to her.

“Uh… hello," Y/N said awkwardly.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Y/N tilted her head at the boy.

“I was going to bed.” Her voice was confused but her American accent was clear as day. The boy’s eyes widen.

“Oh, Merlin. You’re the new transfer. Apologies. I thought you were a Ravenclaw,” the boy stuck his hand out, “Sebastian Sallow.” Y/N shook his hand.

“Y/N Fig.” She smiles at the boy. His freckled face was blushing, no doubt from the embarrassment of almost harassing a new student.

“Fig, eh?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “You’re related to the professor?” Y/N nodded.

“Uncle.” Sebastian nods.

“Ah…" There’s an awkward silence between the two before Sebastian speaks up again.

“Well, let me know if you need help with anything.” Y/N nods.

“Goodnight, Sebastian.” Y/N turned on her heel, her face heating up from the awkward interaction.

“Night, Y/N.”

Sebastian dropped his head and walked to his dorm where his best friend is.

“Ominis, I’m a fool.”

“Well, I’m surprised it took you this long to notice.

—

Y/N

The next morning, I woke up with a start. ‘New school, new friends, same… same me.’ I go through my new trunk to find where my uncle put Slytherin robes for me.

I walk out into the common room, seeing my roommates who wave to me and… Sebastian Sallow. He was reading a tome. I was planning on slipping out, but I heard the common room quiet as I walked in. Loud voices turned to whispers and I felt my face burn. I’m not used to this attention. I’m not used to any of this.

“You alright?” A sudden voice says behind me. I jump at the sound and turn around.

“I’m… yeah, I’m okay.” Sebastian was so tall. Merlin, he had to be at least 6’ 2… and he’s fit. Wait, isn’t that a term for hot? Oh my gods, am I staring at him? What do I say, I’m just looking at him. My face burns.

“H-How are you?” I try to not make a face at the stuttering words that leave my mouth. Sebastian smirks slightly. God, now he just looks like an asshole… but… but so fine.

“I’m good. I… wanted to apologize again. For yesterday.” Was he blushing? Oh, I think he is. He has really nice freckles. Oh, Jesus, I’m staring again.

“It’s okay! It’s alright. I can understand the confusion.” I smile at him. God, I hope I don’t look foolish right now. “Thunderbirds… and… all.” Yep. Foolish.

“Was that your house at… Ilvermorny?” Sebastian’s voice was so rich. It’s really nice actually.

“It was! We have different houses based on Native American folklore.” I love my old school. I don’t think I’ll ever stop, but being here now is good. It’s new. I need new. Sebastian has a smirk on his face… did I say too much?

“That’s interesting… is ‘Thunderbird’ like Slytherin then? Cunning, ambitious, and all those other bits?” He took a step closer to me and I felt my face heat up again. I must look like a fucking tomato. So, I just nod.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll fit in great.” Sebastian smiles broadly. It was infectious. No, more than infectious. What’s more than infectious? Viral? Contagious? No, those are just synonyms.

“Thank you,” I smile back at him. Someone appears from behind him. His eyes were like pearls. They were the most beautiful foggy eyes I’d ever seen.

“Hello, my apologies for interrupting. I’m Ominis, Ominis Gaunt.”

–

Sebastian

Potions class. Not exactly a dreadful subject, but certainly not my favorite. The new transfer was seated next to Garreth, For what reason? Garreth is rather annoying. With his… red hair… stupid jokes… and affinity for explosives, she would be better off sitting next to anyone else. Maybe even me.

…

She’s rather stunning. She tucks her hair back behind her ears whenever she was focused. Her lips were slightly parted. I bet her lips are so soft. She constantly has chapstick on her. I wonder what flavor she’s using today. Maybe pineapple…

After class, I walk with her to herbology.

“So, how did your Wiggenweld turn out?” I try to exude confidence when I feel like my heart is thundering out of my chest. I felt like my ribs were cracking under the pressure of the pulse.

“Oh, I think it turned out well. It was something we made back at Ilvermorny, so I had a bit of an edge.” She smiles. God that smile could kill me. Her teeth were perfect. Is that a weird thing to notice?

We walk in silence to herbology. God, she smells so good. Orange? Tangerine? I have no idea. Some kind of citrus. She’s like sunshine. She’s like my sunshine. And my moon. Maybe my stars too.

Oh Merlín, I sound like a lovesick puppy. She’s just my friend. She’s a pretty cool friend too. Like… sure, she’s really pretty, funny, smart, stunning, talented, and just positively radiant. She’s just a friend though. Yeah.

—

Y/N

“Did you want to go to Tomes & Scrolls?” I looked over at Sebastian.

“Ha! Like you need to ask.” Sebastian offered his hand to me. He… mmm… he offered his hand. I took it. They were calloused, big… warm. The soft smile that graced my lips was involuntary but not unwelcome.

Sebastian smiled down at me and squeezed my hand. God, I hate him. These stupid butterflies that fill my stomach. The way his idiotic smile makes his eyes crinkle. His dumb laugh that makes my heart beat faster

Watching his fingers trace the spines of the books. I wonder what it feels like. The soft touch. Am I getting turned on in a bookstore? What the fuck is wrong with me?

Oh Merlin, am I sweating? I feel like I’m sweating. Can he feel my hand sweating? My hands are so fucking clammy.

“You okay?” Sebastian’s voice broke my thoughts. He could break so much more- what… the fuck am i thinking about.

“O-Of course!” I smiled brightly, in hopes he doesn’t notice the red on my face and ears. He put his hand to my forehead and frowned slightly.

“You sure? You’re a bit flush.” I nodded weakly. His touch sent sparks to every nerve in my body. It always did. Merlin, I hate him so fucking much. Why is he so pretty? why?

“I’m sure! Just a little warm,” I felt my face flare up with embarrassment. Sebastian just nods. I’m glad he doesn’t press, but I know he wants to.

We continue to shop and walk around Hogsmeade. Every bag I’ve gotten Sebastian has taken from me. He hasn’t let me carry any.

“Seb, cmon, I can take them. I feel like you’re struggling.” His arms were straining a bit in his jacket. My eyes shoot over to look before going back to his face. I will not be caught staring. Not if it’s the last thing I do.

“I’m fine, love,” My eyes widened at the pet name. My face got immensely hotter. Is… is he blushing too? No… oh my god, Y/N… say something.

“O-Okay.” We begin walking back to the castle. The sun was setting, the sky was a beautiful mix of pinks, oranges and yellows. I took a moment to look out. I could feel Sebastian behind me. His cologne was so… stupidly attractive.

The silence was so comfortable. The night was beginning to cool down and I moved my hands to my arms to warm them. Sebastian was rustling behind me and I felt his jacket get draped over my shoulders. Merlin, if he makes me blush one more time… I will… do something. Sebastian’s arms wrap around my waist and his head moves to my shoulder. Against my better judgment, I lean against him.

“There’s something just so peaceful about sunsets. Sure, the sun goes away, but it always comes back the next day. Even if we can’t see it. It’s there.” His voice was low and husky in my ear. I couldn’t do anything else but nod. Staring out at the sky, I felt myself getting lost in it. Felt myself get lost in Sebastian. I hold myself in his arms.

What I would give to freeze this moment. To just… be here with him. Is this foolish? I’ve only known him for three months and I’m already putty in his arms. I feel more helpless than I have in years.

I feel his hands slide across my stomach to my waist and I turn around before he pulls back fully.

“Sebastian…” My voice came out quieter than I wanted it to. His eyes were so beautiful, especially in this light. His freckles danced across his face and gave him the boyish charm I’ve grown to adore.

“Y/N…” I felt him move closer. Our bodies were pressed against one another’s. My heart was practically beating out of my chest. Can he feel it? I lean in and shut my eyes. Oh Merlin, his lips look so soft.

“Y/N!” Sebastian and I jump back from each other. Amit was waving from a bit away. I put my head in my hands and look back up.

“Amit, hello,” My heart was pounding. I felt like my nerve endings were on fire. I took a small step toward him.

“Hello! I’m headed to an astronomy table, are either of you wanting to join?” I closed my eyes. I wasn’t upset with Amit. It’s probably a good thing that he stopped us from… kissing.

“Oh, uhm… no, I’m alright…” I look over at Sebastian. Sebastian shakes his head. “Yeah…. We’re uhm… we’re alight, Amit. Thank you, though.”

Amit nods and walks off. Sebastian and I don’t look at each other as we get my bags and walk back to the castle.

…

Fuck.

—

Sebastian

I was outside watching Y/N and Natty play summoner’s court. Things had been a bit awkward for a while after… uh… you know.

Leander kept walking by and talking to the girls. Something about him just made my blood boil. I don’t know if it was his bad hair or his even worse personality. Natty and Y/N had parted ways after they finished playing again. I began to stand off the grass, collecting my things. I saw Leander walk up to Y/N.

‘Mmmm. Interesting.’ My thoughts were already running wild. What if she liked him? What if she liked his shitty hair? Or his bad dueling skills? What if she didn’t want to be around me anymore because she dates him? I shake my head, trying to clear these thoughts from me.

I try to keep my distance as they talk. I try not to look at them. Y/N is her own person. She can do what she wants… and I’ll be there. I’ll be whatever she needs me to be. Friend, dueling partner… something more. Gods above, I wish to be something more.

I was snapped out of my thoughts as Leander put his hand on her arm. She moves away from him and Leander steps closer to her. I try to keep my cool, I feel myself moving toward the two.

“There a problem?” I heard my voice. I felt like I wasn’t controlling myself anymore. Y/N is a perfectly capable witch. She’s strong. She’s smart. She’s… stunning. Y/N can take care of herself, but everything in me was screaming to protect her.

“Nah, Sallow, just having a chat with Y/N.” Leander stepped closer to her and she stepped back again.

“Doesn’t look like she wants to talk.” My voice was low and a bit strained.

“This doesn’t concern you, Sallow. Her and I are fine.” Leander takes another step toward Y/N before I put myself between them. My hand goes to Leander’s chest, pushing him away.

“Back off, she obviously doesn’t want to talk.” My heart was pounding, I was too nervous about her being hurt. About what he would do to her.

“Oh? Playing protector? Never took you to stoop so low just to get laid-” Before Prewett can finish his sentence, I throw a punch against his jaw. I watch him stumble backwards and onto his back.

“Leave her alone. She’ll talk to you when she wants.” I was towering over him. There was something almost satisfying about protecting Y/N. She’s capable, sure, but… I want her to feel safe. I turn back to her and check to make sure she’s alright. I know he didn’t do much but… who knows.

“Are… are you alright, love? Mentally, physically… emotionally?” She nods softly and I hold her face to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Maybe to feel her skin against mine. Maybe both.

“Seb, I’m okay. Are you?” Her hands moved to mine. I held onto her face softly. I couldn’t bear to think of her being hurt. I nod.

“I thought… I just… I don’t know. I… I got worried.” She nods.

“I know, but I can handle myself.” I close my eyes and breathe deeply.

“I know, I just… want to… protect you sometimes.” She nods again and moves my hands from her face. She intertwines our fingers and leads me to the Undercroft. When we get there, she holds my hand softly, examining my knuckle.

“I’m okay, Y/N. Promise.” She sighs softly and stands up straight. Her fingers brush back and forth on my skin. I could feel heat rising through me. She moves closer to me and wraps her arms around me into a hug. I hug her back gently. She’s too precious to me to hurt.

“Seb?” Her voice was quiet. I could listen to her all day. I don’t care about what, but I would just listen.

“Yes?” My voice matched her’s. I moved my hands back to her face softly. I ran my thumb softly over her cheek. Her skin was so perfect, so smooth.

“Why do you want to protect me?” Her voice gets quieter, almost to the point where I can’t hear it.

“I- well- uhm…” I stutter, the familiar heat rising through me again. “Can I… show you something?” Y/N tilts her head before nodding. I take a deep breath.

…

My lips meet hers. Her lips were covered in some kind of chapstick but I didn’t care. I wanted more. Needed more. I held her face softly as we deepened the kiss, my hands moving toward the back of her head. I felt her arms wrap around me as her body gets closer to mine. I moved my hands down her body, savoring every moment. This is all I’ve wanted for so long. For six agonizing months. I hear her gasp softly as my tongue finds hers.

I don’t know how long we stay there for, in all honesty, I don’t care. I was with her. She was with me. That’s all that mattered. We pull back after what seems like hours. Our breathing heavy from the lack of oxygen.

“Y/N… I like you. I’ve liked you for so long.” I kiss her cheek gently before moving to her jawline and down her neck. I hear her sigh softly and her hand moves to my hair.

“Seb- I-I like you too.” I smile against her skin before kissing the nape of her neck. I move back to look in her eyes. I kiss her gently.

“So beautiful. You’re mine, yeah?” I murmur against her lips in between kisses. I feel her nod and whisper.

“All yours. Always been yours.” I smile and kiss her sweetly again. I pull her down onto the lounge and kiss her deeper. I move her hands above her head as I get on top of her. I kiss down her neck and bite softly, eliciting moans from her.

“I’m… going to go.” Y/N and I flinch as a voice calls out from the gate.

“Ominis?!”

#sebastian sallow #hogwarts legacy sebastian #sebastian sallow fanfiction #sebastian sallow x mc #sebastian sallow x you #ominis gaunt #sebastian x reader #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow x y/n #i actually hate leander prewett #Spotify

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jungle-angel · 2 years

Text

Out in the Middle: Part 1 (Rhett Abbott x Reader)

Summary: You and Rhett decide to spend some time with some old family friends and let the kids run loose. The trip turns out to be some of the best memories you ever make

Tags: @fanboygarcia @nobody7102 I know you guys probably haven’t seen Yellowstone yet but I couldn’t help myself and this is only part one (lol)

Bozeman, MT

8:30 am

October 2022

You and Rhett could hardly wait to see the looks on the kids faces when you finally reached your destination. You had all gotten up at the crack of ass, loaded the kids all up into the truck and schlepped it on off to Bozeman to beat the rush of traffic on the highways.

But you knew the trip would be worth it in the end.

Three of the kids rode with you while the other three rode with Royal and Cecelia and Amy with her dad. You were grateful that the littler ones would sleep the whole way through, but you pitied Royal when Tatum and Tanner would start playing the “stop-hitting-yourself” game. The first time around, Rhett had almost dislocated his shoulder trying to discipline the two little monsters.

“We almost there?” you yawned.

“Almost there darlin,” Rhett told you. “One more turn off and we’re there.”

“Oh thank God,” you sighed.

One more turn off and the destination began to approach. As soon as you saw the sign that read: Dutton Ranch, 5 Miles, a heat of excitement began to well up inside you. “God, the kids are gonna freak when they see their cousins,” you remarked.

“Which oughtta be good seeing as they’ve been locked in a car for six hours,” Rhett chuckled. “But I hear you. It’ll be good to see John and the others again.”

You couldn’t have agreed more. Even just the thought of the kids running around on that vast expanse of property, completely free of all the problems of the world made you happier than you had ever been.

When at last the land came into view, you and Rhett let the others follow behind you as the trucks made their way up the drive to that imposing log house at the top of the hill. God, Bozeman was gorgeous in the fall, the trees burned bright shades of orange, red, yellow, green and brown, the pines looming and towering into the bright blue field of sky. The mists of early morning rolled over the hills and mountains like the tails of ghosts wisping their way across the crests.

At last you pulled to a stop, waking Hannah and your second set of twins, Franklin and Harvey. God, they were getting big, already two and a half and getting into everything. Hannah of course jumped from the truck when she saw John, Beth and Rip all making their way over.

“PAPA JOHNNY!!!!!!!!” she screamed.

John laughed as he scooped her right off the ground. “How’s my favorite grandniece?” he laughed. “You and your brothers and sisters up to no good?”

“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good!” Hannah answered.

“That’s what I wanna hear!” John said proudly, high-fiving her and shooing her off to the barn before the other kids nearly football tackled him. The other cousins came charging up from the stables, eager to see everyone and cause as much mischief as they could.

“You two thought you’d get away without me coming to see you?” John joked.

“Hi John,” you chuckled as he caught you in a tight hug, the smell of leather, hay and horses lingering in his jacket.

“Uncle John, good to see you,” Rhett said before he too was caught by his uncle.

“Heard you had a hell of a rodeo before comin up here,” John remarked. “How’s the shoulder?”

“A little bruised but I’ll live,” Rhett laughed half-heartedly. “How’s everybody else?”

“Can’t complain,” Beth answered. “Kids are all driving us up the wall. I went to go and get Evie and Joey after work from school and all their teacher did was complain that they were covered in mud.”

“Oh c’mon, let the kids be kids,” Rhett scoffed.

“Oh! Oh-ho now, do we hear a Rhett and (y/n)?” a woman’s voice asked, coming from the porch.

You screamed when you saw Monica running to you with her arms open and Kayce holding a four month old baby girl in his arms. “You told us you were gonna call before you got here!” Monica exclaimed.

“I promised no such thing!”

“Yes you did!”

“No I didn’t!”

You and Monica bantered back and forth before Kayce came over to greet Rhett while John did the same for Royal and Cecelia, the two of them shooing Amy and the other kids off to the stables to play with their cousins. “You slimy little son of a bitch,” John chuckled. “How are ya?”

“Not a complaint in the world,” Royal answered. “Still fightin with that bitch, Carline Warner?”

“Yeah, Beth had it out with her about two days ago,” John answered. “Thomas did too but he kept it a little quieter.”

“Is he here?”

“Comin by with the grandkids around eleven,” John told him. “We’ll have more midgets on the property than we’ll know what to do with.”

Royal laughed as everyone made their way into the house to catch up, yourself brimming with excitement at the fact that you, Rhett and the kids would get to spend an entire year here.

#rhett abbott #rhett abbott x reader #outer range #yellowstone tv #outer range yellowstone crossover #royal x cecelia abbott #amy abbott #perry abbott #original child characters #john dutton #beth dutton #kayce dutton #rip wheeler #rip x beth #monica dutton #kayce x monica

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glorious-spoon · 2 years

Note

"You know that's not what I meant." or 4. "I'm here, aren't I?" for buddie, if it sparks anything 💖

ficlet for u, feat. pining eddie and pta car-washes :D

- -

Buck shows up nearly ten minutes late, bleary-eyed and clutching an enormous travel mug of coffee. He’s wearing flip flops and swim trunks and a thin white t-shirt that promises to put an end to Eddie’s already precarious grip on his sanity once they get started.

“I honestly didn’t think you were actually going to show,” he says, looking down at the volunteer clipboard that Shivaya the PTA secretary left him with, which he’s suddenly very grateful for just because it gives him something to do with his hands.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Buck yawns, scruffing a hand through his unruly curls and peering out over the milling crowd of the Durand School PTA’s Annual Car Wash Fundraiser. It’s mostly all parents, although there is a chipper cadre of teenage girls in bikini tops who appear to be filming something for TikTok on top of the oversized granite school crest out front.

And now there’s Buck.

“Yeah, so you need to sign in,” Eddie says, shoving the clipboard at him. Buck doesn't take it from him, just leans in close to Eddie’s space to scrawl his name on the next line. He smells of something vaguely tropical and there are streaks of white across the bridge of his nose and in his eyebrows, like he had the forethought to put sunscreen on before he got here. Eddie won’t have to remind him to do it, or offer to help him, which is a good thing. Definitely.

“Promised Chris I’d do this, anyway,” he says when he steps back.

“You have to learn to say no to him.”

“Nah, I’m angling for the title of cool dad,” Buck says on another yawn. He takes a long drink of coffee like he didn’t even notice what he just said, or the way Eddie’s insides are suddenly twisting themselves into complicated knots. “Where do you want me?”

There are a lot of professionally inappropriate and personally catastrophic responses Eddie could give to that question, but instead he gestures vaguely toward the other side of the parking lot, where Shivaya and Dan are struggling with a tangled vipers’ nest of garden hoses and assorted attachments. “Help them get the hoses hooked up? I figure you can probably manage that.”

“Professionally qualified,” Buck says, and pushes his coffee into Eddie’s hands with a bright grin. Eddie watches him jog over to start helping set up, and when he takes a drink of Buck’s coffee he’s not that surprised to find that it’s unsweetened and heavy with cream, the way he likes and Buck hates.

Yeah, he thinks, watching Buck laugh at something Shivaya says as he helps wrestle the hoses apart. Yeah, he’s definitely fucked.

#buddie #buddie fic #prompt fic #my fic

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lovedrunkheadcanons · 6 months

Text

Chapter Contents

(Arranged Marriage Fic) Read on AO3

RATED M

A predator knows how to hide in plain sight; A lion will camouflage with the Saharan grass next to a herd of grazing zebra; A bolas spider will emit chemicals akin to female moth pheromones to lure prospective male moths towards its web; A thousand year old cursed spirit will split his essence into twenty fingers and scatter himself to places forgotten by man, ready to be made whole. Predators understand that to hunt their prey, you must first lower their defenses. Give them a false sense of security. Dupe the fools into believing they are safe and sound and the danger has passed when it lies waiting on their doorstep. Hungry.

Satoru didn’t trust the finger outright. He wasn’t so naive as to think it could ever be that simple. His plan was to monitor. Cursed objects had to be monitored for twenty-four hours when found. Kumari was strong, but if anything were to go wrong she wouldn’t stand a chance, and his wife’s behavior only made him more suspicious, hence why he took the finger home (and maybe also to appease his inquisitive nature). Hannah thought nothing of it when they returned. It’ll be gone in the morning, she thought and cozied up beside her husband on the futon later that night. Satoru would take care of everything. He always did.

So she thought.

From the time she was small, since the tender age of five or six, Hannah had been hearing voices. One hears many voices when inheriting The Sight. Mostly last breaths and dying screams. A curse cackling by the carnage of torn bodies. All of them disturbing and violent and horrible. So why would this be any different?

It rasped somewhere far in the distance. Thames. Over the pine crested peaks of Mt. Takao, the mokoshi penthouse roofs, and the torii gates. Thames. It blew across the school yard, rustling passed the trees, billowing near their house, sighing through the eaves, through the walls, just outside Hannah’s bedroom. Rattling her eardrums.

She heard claws scrape across the floor, repeating a name no longer hers.

Thames.

Satoru’s arm was wrapped snugly around her torso, holding her dear, yet she had no trouble breaking free and rising from the floor, leaving him sound asleep on the futon. “Mmph,” he grunted and stirred at the feel of something missing, but then switched positions and grew still once more, snoring contently on their shared pillow.

Somnolent, Hannah stood and walked towards the entrance, a thin nightgown strap hanging loosely off her shoulder. The door slid open by its own accord, but she did not return to the only person who could grant her safety. Out to the beyond she wandered.

Each step felt lighter than air down the tatami woven corridors, the shoji panels. Door after door after door, adjarring without interruption, her silhouette a mere shadow across the many lantern-lit halls. The voice beckoned louder. Thames. It wanted her. She would answer.

She came to a halt at the twelfth door, riddled in spell-tags. The incantation Satoru recited could be traced back to the earliest of jujutsu, some say since before the monolithic Jōmon began texturing their clay with bands of rope.1 Ancient jujutsu was the purest form of sorcery for good reason. Untainted. Indomitable. Satoru had mastered the secret incantation quicker than his predecessors. Nothing on heaven or earth should’ve been able to cross those barriers and remove those spell-tags.

Hannah did so without lifting a pinkie.

The barrier didn’t object to her presence, and the paper tags unglued themselves, one by one, scattering to the floor like a pile of white autumn leaves. The door slowly parted. Inside over by the corner was the sealed box. That’s it now, come here. Come to me. Five steps and she was hunkered down in front of it like a curious Pandora, nescient of the evil she was about to release upon the world. She flicked open the notches.

The floor beneath collapsed.

Hannah felt she was falling…

falling.

Her bare feet hardly made a splash in the blood water, wading just above her knees. Something ripe mushed between her toes. The air stank heavily of decay and iron. Though her eyes were transfixed by the large blackened ribs scaffolded above like an animal enclosure.

On a mound of bones, human and beast, buttressed and stacked high, was a notch arranged into a dais. The eery crimson light, emanating from God knows where, began building in strength, and the bone-filled graveyard started to unveil its secrets. She saw the outline of a figure seated atop the bones. Something like four monstrous arms, two sets of eyes, tattoos, and a mouth where a stomach should've been.

Regaining her wits, Hannah’s head began to throb. Her knees quaked. Blood ceased circulating to her legs from the cold water. She couldn’t feel the oxygen exit her lungs, nor her heart crumble and un-crumble like a reused plastic bottle.

“W-Where am I?” she croaked.

She saw one of its two mouths twist into a wry, sinister grin and suddenly felt she had unintentionally signed her death certificate. That’s not human, she thought. Not anymore. An alien life form. A freak of nature. Demonic.

“Woman.” the four-armed demon drawled above its mountain of skeletons, man and beast. “Did Uraume send you?”

Hannah stayed silent, struck paralyzed from the waist down.

“Are you a challenger?” it spoke again.

Tendrils of fear clamped around her throat. “A what?” she said dumbly.

The demon gave out a snorting laugh, “Guess not,” and rose to its feet. In a flash, it was standing in front of her, frame hulking and grotesque, roughly seizing her face between a mass of blackened claws, hooking a thumb to her lower lip. Hannah drew mute. The malevolence in its four vermillion eyes was a raw, insatiable sort.

“Weak,” the demon crooned, and stretched its mouth into that awful, predacious grin that conveyed unspeakable harm. Something knife-point sharp tapped her lower back.

The last thing Hannah heard were cruel peals of laughter before the world was swallowed inside a scarlet sea.

A goodnight’s sleep was a hardfought luxury for a jujutsu sorcerer. Not that it mattered much. Satoru sucked at sleeping anyways. Always had. Always will, so it didn’t take much for him to become gradually aware that the primal, gut-wrenching screams ringing in his subconscious were not a figment of his dreams, but real.

Oh so terrifyingly real.

The Six Eyes wielder could recall the time he witnessed the late cauterization of a grown bull, back when the estate was in the business of raising livestock. Most dehornings are performed when the bull is a calf to reduce infection and long-term pain: chemical solutions,"tubes," saws, keystone dehorners, you name it. But the rancher they hired cared little for the well-being of their cattle, and thought axing the bull’s horns with an old splitting maul and cauterizing the wound with a branding iron was the method of choice; highly illegal. Satoru watched him tie the bovine’s head down in a compromising position and with zero remorse start chopping. The agonized lowing that left the animal with each forceful thwack of the maul. The blood. Satoru couldn’t remember much of what he did afterwards, other than running to Makoto in tears. He freed all the estate’s livestock the day he became clan-leader, suppressing childhood trauma he hadn’t told a single soul.

Now twenty years later, Hannah’s tormented screams reminded him of that one bull.

There was no escaping it.

Wide awake and panicked, he twisted himself over to see his wife thrashing wildly on the bedding, her screams not of fear, but of pain; vocal chords cracking and clicking from too much exertion. She couldn’t catch her breath.

But what alarmed him most were her eyes. Hannah’s frightened eyes were like two dying stars, glowing a bright, ember red, inflamed and leaking a flood of tears, staring wide open.

He grabbed her by the arms, shaking, voice pleading for her to wake up, but every attempt failed. She scrambled to get away, wincing whenever his fingers came too close to touching her back.

This did not go unnoticed. Holding her at an angle, Satoru ever so gently slipped a hand underneath and felt his body grow cold at the sensation of something warm and sticky soaking the satin nightgown, the tang of rust. He began praying, Please be sweat, please be sweat, and slowly removed his hand.

The palm was coated so thickly in blood you’d think it was fresh paint, staining the once white futon into a dark, sickly grenache that would never wash out. With trembling hands, Satoru mustered the courage to flip her over and see what his heart earnestly wanted to deny.

Bile rushed to his throat. It was worse than he could’ve imagined.

Gashes like a jagged cuneiform were scrawled all along the expanse of her back; phantom claws, five tallies each, plowing deep into the skin, digging for purchase. Hannah sobbed more violently than ever. Her pallor was like stained glass left exposed to sunlight, faded and drained of color. Blood. Blood everywhere.

To his frustration, Satoru’s eyes detected nothing wrong. He saw no neon trail, no grimy residuals, an invisible enemy he could not see and could not fight; a true ghost. The band of gold on his finger started burning.

What is this?

Hannah’s strangled cries were growing weaker by the second, either from fatigue or something far more life upending. Her lips took a bluish hue from the oxygen not circulating to her brain and the rest of her body, hazel eyes glassy. If he didn’t act now, she’d be gone forever.

“Stay with me, Hannah.”

Satoru scooped his wife in his arms, her cries faint and disoriented, and ran like hell out the door.

“Please, don’t die.”

Chapter Contents

#jujutsu kaisen #satoru x oc #jjk #jjk fanfic #gojo satoru #gojo x oc #gojo takes a wife #satoru gojo

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nikarie5 · 6 months

Text

How to win at extracurriculars - Snippet

General rating: General audiences, reference of mild pining but no boats afloat.

Cast: Olli Halli, Cole Reyes

Description: Headcanon and set-up at end, because it makes more sense there to me(?), but essentially, the new rookie gets assigned to a veteran lineman for the Lions' annual fall team-building and community engagement activity... which happens to get Percy extra credit for math class.

Big thanks to @lumosinlove for the characters, @noots-fic-fests for organising, and @hazelnoot-analyst for organised archiving :) -- "Bear right over crest. Bear right over crest? Where? Where is the bear? How do they know it will be standing right there when we all drive through this section of the stage?”

“No, Cole, there is no bear. That is a driving instruction.”

“It would be a lot more fun if there were a real bear.”

“Somehow, I think arranging for that surpasses even the Lions’ budget for team-building and community events.” “How do they figure this as a team-building and community engagement anyway, it’s just two or three of us alone in our cars? Plus, I guess some Lions’ staff manning checkpoints.”

“I guess one of Coach’s kids, maybe Charlie?, did something like this a few years ago for a math class, and offered to keep doing it for extra credit and getting his drivers’ license faster. Then Percy picked it up and built it into a fundraiser, and combined it with driving lessons so that he could get a learner’s permit at fourteen, or something like that? I dunno. All I know is, somehow, we end up doing this each year the weekend before the season opener. Coming up to an intersection, need the next instruction rookie.”

“Stop, T, right.”

“You sure? The sign says dead end.”

“Hold on. No. Stop, T, left. Sorry Olli.”

“Geez, they sent us a D-man who doesn’t know his right and left? Caray.”

“Geez?”

“You’ll pick it up. Loopsisms are contagious.” -- In which the Gryffindor Lions organisation sponsors a small car rally through the fall foliage each year. Rookies get assigned to co-drive for veteran linemen, ostensibly as team building. Community members can participate, students from local high schools get extra credit in their math classes for participating, juniors can get some extra supervised hours towards their driving license, and a good time is had by all. Loops and Moody used to get really into it and go all out with silly competitions like frisbee tosses or apple bobbing at their checkpoint. Nat and Lily would drive around delivering coffee to checkpoint teams, while Sirius would pretend to get lost so he could keep returning to the PT checkpoint multiple times throughout the afternoon. Winning community team gets to join a team dinner at Sid’s.

#lumosinlove #sweater weather fanfic #coops #fic fest #fic-o-ween #hazelnoots

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soap-lady · 1 year

Text

I was sick and this is why I’m late, don’t @ me

Hello, everyone!

Thank you all for waiting. I’m shocked anyone is still reading this fic but @arylace and I are incredibly grateful to those who like this story. I was ill which is why this was late. Not the flu or Covid, just a virus that kicked my butt.

Taglist:

@fantasiame, @g-arya, @lavenderjunes, @charlietheepic7, @ahenix, @delectablycoolscientist, @kaseykay17, @vio-march-0327, @mewwitch, @vixen-uchiha, @coolspidermanmusicflower, @lady-bee-fechin, @raeuberprinzessin, @symwinter, @frieddonutsweets, @seraphkitty, @friendsofthefairies, @nickristus-dreamer, @khneltea, @jumpingjoy82, @fan-written, @woe-is-me0,@corporeal-terrestrial, @queenmjean, @theymakeupfairies, @dorkus-minimus, @idk-j-go-with-it, @aespades, @swiftie-miraculer13,@moongoddesskiana, @arty-shadow-morningstar, @ahalloweengirl, @the-navistar-carol, @bigpicklebananatree, @novicevoice, @nerd-nowandforever, @certainmuffinbagelcalzone, @irontimetravelflower, @jjmjjktth, @dopefestsuit, @morning-wolf-designs, @alcoholic-barney, @just-living5, @chocolatecatstheron, @another-cancer, @hammalammadamdam, @ichigorose

Worthy Opponent Chapter 20

Jack Watson allowed himself to be tugged along by Felicity Dupin. “So what’s this thing I have to see without Holmes around?”

She stopped so fast he nearly ran into her. Looking over her shoulder she asked him, “Do you really want to be around Barry when he’s being a colossal horse’s ass?”

He needed less than a second to think about it. “No.”

“Well, come along then.”

She grabbed his hand again and pulled him with her. He smiled at the back of her head. He wondered if she knew how pretty she was when she was taking charge.

Felicity guided him past study rooms and a tea parlor (some of the students were British after all) to a small closet whose door knob was on the wrong side. Jack watched as she turned the knob counterclockwise and the knob slid away to reveal a keypad. She grinned up at his surprised face. “Secret clubhouse. It’s only available to members of the Founding Families. What I want to show you is here.”

Jack smiled at the idea of generations of Holmes, Watsons, Dupains, Marples and Poirots having meetings in a hidden room. “Cool, but why?”

She shrugged then punched in the code. “Secrecy. Protection.” She glanced up at him. “I’m sure the Nazis or the Central Powers would have loved to have taken the world’s most famous detectives prisoner. Or just kill them.”

He nodded and the door slid open. Felicity glanced down the hall in both directions, grabbed his arm and pulled him in before the door slid closed.

Jack’s eyes widened as LED wall sconces lit up as they passed and turned towards Felicity. “Wow. This is…a lot.”

She laughed. “What? Did you just now realize you belonged to a secret society?” She continued to walk down the hall while he followed behind her, feeling like a hick. “There’s all sorts of secret tunnels and hidden rooms in here. It’s how we survived the Nazi occupation. There’s probably secret places in all three schools.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Don’t feel bad. Even Barry only knows about half of them.”

“So that’s yet another thing he can hold over my head. Goody,” Jack muttered as they approached an ornate oaken door with the school’s crest carved into it.

She paused as she was turning the knight’s helmet in the Holmes family crest upside down. “Do you really care? That he knows stuff you don’t?”

He thought for a moment. “Nah. Despite what he thinks, my life doesn't have to revolve around him.”

“Mais non,” she replied with a saucy wink and turned the pine tree in the Dupin family crest right side up. The door opened and they stepped inside.

Jack paused. “Aren’t we going to shut the door?”

Felicity shook her head. “Why bother? No one knows to get in here if they’re not one of the founding members. Not even the Headmaster.” She grinned and he was struck once again by her confidence. Playful, where Holmes was arrogant.

“Besides,” she began to flip switches and lights and an unseen fan whirred to life, “it’s always stuffy in here until the fan’s been on awhile. Come on and sit down.”

Jack looked around, surprised at the size of the room. It was easily three times what he was expecting and light and bright where the Headmaster’s office was all dark wood and Turkish rugs, this room had blond parquet flooring with matching recessed bookcases. The walls were eggshell blue with silver fleur-de-lis stenciled on top of the paint, very French. This room was more Dupin’s style while the Headmaster’s office was very Holmes. Jack wondered if there was a Watson room somewhere.

The furniture was a mishmash of styles, clearly scrounged from other parts of the school. The chairs and the couch were no doubt vintage but they had been reupholstered and were lovingly polished. Some Dupin family retainer probably maintained the place, no doubt someone trusted by the school and Felicity’s relatives; someone who could keep a secret. Jack wondered if there were any Watson family retainers running around. He made a mental note to ask Felicity later.

There were a few modern touches too; sleek black metal desks with ergonomic chairs and desk or laptops lovingly built by Jayden. A Cola Style Machine took up one corner while a small kitchenette with a microwave, steel refrigerator with a matching stove filled up another. There was another door that led to what Jack assumed was a bathroom.

“Cozy, huh?” Felicity spoke up after he was done looking around. She smiled, eyes going soft. “Barry suggested having a professional redo the room but he would have done something grand and posh and boring. I wanted something simple and Seabert and Elinor voted with me while Jayden abstained. Welcome to the Founders Room, Jack Watson.” She motioned in the general direction of the soda machine. “Fix us something to drink, please. I want to show you something but I have to find it first.”

“Sure,” Jack crossed the room. The drink machine had a built-in ice maker with cup dispensers underneath. He was beginning to feel a little grubby when he thought about the kind of life of luxury the other kids must have taken for granted while his mom struggled. Fortunately none of them were snobs; except maybe for Barry. He had vague recollections of his former life but everyone but “Filly” was a blur. He mostly remembered his parents fighting, when his father was home at all.

“What kind?”

Felicity stopped searching for a moment. “Surprise me.”

He nodded to himself and fixed two drinks; lemon cola for himself and Orangina for Felicity. The coffee table had an inlaid marble top so he looked in the drawers in the kitchenette for coasters. Finding two he put them on the table and set the drinks down.

Felicity found what she was looking for on the top shelf of the third bookcase and padded over to the couch where she sat down and patted the seat beside her.

Jack took a seat and looked over at what Felicity had in her lap. “Is that an actual photo album? Like pictures taken using actual film and developed?”

She nodded. “Yup. The staff’s a little old-fashioned around here, in case you didn’t notice. So…yeah. Real pictures developed from actual film. She opened the album and slid it so it was balanced on both of their legs. “Take a look.”

He did and saw a miniature version of himself in the class uniform posing with a group of kids of similar size. There were around twelve children sitting in two rows with six children in each row. The taller children sat behind the shorter children. He recognized himself, Barry, Jayden and Seabert. Jayden wore his hair plaited and Seabert hadn’t quite grown into his ears. One of the others might have been Nick Charles IV but he wasn’t sure. The last boy reminded him of Marlowe. He was seated by Jayden Spade and looked angry. Jack sat next to Barry and looked bored while Barry looked annoyed. He was probably upset that Watson didn’t immediately fall down and worship him on the first day of school. He grinned at the thought.

He looked for Elinor and Felicity next. He smiled at Felicity when he spotted her. She’d worn her hair short back then after Barry had “accidentally” gotten gum in her hair. Elinor had wanted to cut her own hair to show support but her parents hadn’t let her. Instead she started braiding it and having it pinned up to look like it was short. Aubrey had done the same but with microbraids. He was sure Felicity had appreciated the effort. Elinore sat in front of Seabert while Felicity claimed the spot in front of him. He grinned. Even back then, the battle lines had been drawn. Flick and Jack versus Barry.

Felicity nudged him with her shoulder and also smiled at the pictures. “We were pretty cute, huh?”

Jack looked over at her. He could still see the mischievous girl she’d been and felt sorry he’d been yanked away to America by his mom. “Yeah,” he finally answered. “But we’re damn hot now.”

She laughed and looked over his side at the album. “How could we not be?” She peered down at his younger self. “Your cheekbones were unfairly sharp, even back then.”

He chuckled. “True. Then again, even with a bowl cut, you were still the prettiest girl in the class.”

“I know.” She pretended to preen and they laughed together again.

Looking at these photos made him recall other things. Like the time they’d build a detective’s office out of cardboard at Jayden’s house. The sleepover at Seabert’s where he’d confided to Doctor Poirot about his parents’ arguing. All of them getting their butts kicked at Operation by Aubrey.

He also remembered how Felicity and Elinor used to share their lunches with him when his parents had stayed up the whole night fighting and neither remembered to make him one. He and Felicity would sneak off to have secret “best friend” picnics when Jack needed to talk. Barry would follow them and give Jack half of his lunch because “his cook always made too much anyway.” Barry later confided he deliberately asked his cook for extra for an excuse to get away from all the people who chased him and tried to kiss him during recess. At the time Jack and Felicity thought he was just trying to brag about how popular he was but now he wondered if Barry sometimes wanted a break from the spotlight.

He flipped through the photos, smiling at some and outright laughing at others. They had all gotten into trouble together and pulled each other out of it as well. They’d stuck together, even when fighting each other.

Jack turned to the last page and the smile fell off his face.

The last picture had to be of his last day. The entire class was sitting around a table. There was a cake in front of his younger self, but he wouldn’t even look at it. One arm was around a crying Felicity who was clinging to him and the other was patting Barry on the shoulder. The blond boy looked like he was at a wake, not a party. His haunted eyes were better equipped to be in a painting of a dying Victorian child, not a living, breathing boy. Hazy memories of that day flashed in his mind, of how everyone seemed to give space to the three: Felicity, Barrington, and Jack sharing their final moments.

How the lunch ladies made berry cookies because Barrington thought it was funny, for Flick and Jack had black-blue hair like rich and sweet blackberries. How Barrington was called Barry by friends, a berry cookie stained in purple-pink and white chocolate, for Barry was the palest of the three, that filled their mouths in sweetness that wasn’t so saccharine. A little tin filled with recipes of all of Jack’s favorite foods from Barry, meticulously organized by category, season, and then alphabetically; so his new school could cook the best for his Watson.

Flick had made charm bracelets for the three of them; a silver girl in between two silver boys with beads of pink, teal, and purple. How Jack’s charm was a music note, as he always showed how better he was in music than Barry. How Barry had a little crown because Flick said “your royal pain in the butt” one time he won in chess. Flick's charm was a little horseshoe because she took to equestrian sports like a duck to water. There were some smaller charms for other things, a little Eiffel Tower and Big Ben; green, yellow, and cyan beads for their other friends.

There was a banner behind him that read “We’ll miss you, Jack!”. Only the adults in the room were smiling and even those were strained. It was incredibly depressing to look at the picture so he closed the book and handed it back to Felicity without a word.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she took the book back. “It’s been years since I remembered we even had this album. I’d forgotten that picture was in there.”

She stood up and put the album back where she found it then sat back down.

She sat at the end of the couch, as far as she could get from him, almost pressing herself into the couch. His chest tightened when he noticed how upset with herself she was. She hadn’t done this on purpose, he realized. She just wanted to share what she thought were happy childhood memories.

Jack slid cautiously and slowly to her side of the couch. He spoke gently to her as if to a scared fawn. “It was an accident. Besides,” he tried to give her a reassuring smile but wasn’t sure how successful he was, “it’s stupid to be mad at you for showing me an old photo. I barely remember what happened last year, much less eight years ago.”

She smiled again, small but sincere. “Thanks for that.” She stood up and grabbed their cups to throw away. He just sat there, feeling like an idiot for not being able to make her feel better but afraid of just making her feel worse. Finally he said, “Are you hungry?”

Felicity came back and grabbed the coasters. “I could eat. Besides, we haven’t stocked the pantry in weeks.”

Jack twisted so he could see her over the back of the couch. “Would you like to have dinner in the student cafe with me?”

She put the coasters back in the kitchen drawer then turned around to stare at him. “This isn’t a date, is it?”

“Nah.” It was hardly the time. They were investigating a murder.

“Oh.” She didn’t look the least bit disappointed. “No problem.” She walked past the couch and to the door without waiting for him. “I’m not sure if you could keep up with me anyway.”

“What?!” Jack stood up and saw she was laughing at him. He grinned and said, “Well, Barry can’t either.”

“Not by himself anyway,” she inclined her head towards the door. “Come on.”

*****

It’s not odd to hear the advice, “put yourself into the character’s shoes” if you’re an actor. The concept of being the very person you are meant to portray bleeds a sincerity that the audience can resonate with. The very idea isn’t odd for Felix, he was aware of its existence; his father had told him once. He’s tried to mold his acting to be like that, not a puppeteer moving a character along, but to be the character when performing. How peculiar were these feelings? The bitter taste of jealousy and envy coexisting in watching the scene being played before him. When did Barrington Holmes begin and Felix end? There were shining lights and people scrutinizing his every move but all of that washed away. Unimportant, and unnecessary variables that didn’t pertain to what he felt. Why was the feeling sad and bittersweet? Felix couldn’t understand. His brow furrowed as he peered into the room from a window.

*-*-*-*

Barrington Holmes felt silly and unsure standing outside his dorm building, at night, and peering in from the window. No different from a poor pauper who’s peering into a window of a middle class family and seeing a tender moment while struggling in the cold. Their smiles were so bright, easily shared and given to one another as they sat huddled to one another. Twin plates filled with food and sparkling glasses clinking in toast as they sat to eat and chat.

A book was on the table and both of them were talking about its pages. Why did this scene feel closer to a distant dream? The rival, the distant friend; a part of fate that elected to move together in tandem leaving him behind. It was strange, he wanted to break that tranquility. March in and force the two who sat with such warmth to each other in harmony to acknowledge him. He wanted their attention, their time, anything they could grant. He would gladly take a miniscule fraction of what they shared equally, for they obviously saw him as a lesser member. After all they always were happy to exclude Barry at every turn. Try as he might to integrate everyone in the Spades as equals, Flick and Jack always kept more of a distance. If he walked in…. stepped into that light. Would he be welcomed? Or would he be regaled by the shadow that followed him firmly?

Fear pierced him, what if he were shunned? For someone like Barrington Holmes who was nothing without his name, his family, that precious legacy; would two who cared not for those things look at him favorably? He already felt like a failure every hour that passed without granting justice to Professor Akunin. Did they notice that failure? Did they both rejoice in the times they were alone without them? Barry wasn’t an idiot, as much as everyone has been whispering as of late. It felt as if there was slowly a noose circling around him. The rope slowly ever so slightly tightening more and more around his neck. He was nothing without victory, a wash up Holmes who can’t do one case. They were all looking at Barry to come up with a plan to find the villains. All they’ve seen is a member of the Holmes family who loses his cool more often. What whispers are spoken about him? A cold shiver left Barry as he tried to breathe but he couldn’t. Why was it so hard to breathe?

“I got you.” A voice cut off and Barry felt himself floating for a moment, before it registered, he was picked up. Quite literally when he realized his face was within inches of Eleanor Marple’s. To Barry’s shock, she was carrying him in her arms and walking away from the window.

“What happened?” Barry asked, surprised his voice was hoarse.

“You fainted, Barry.” Seabert sounded off, stepping around so Barry could see him easily. “We’re getting worried, man.”

“When did you last eat?” Elinor asked, concerned. “You’re shaking.”

“Eat?” Barry asked, confused, they had a case to do. When on earth can someone expect him to eat?

“Yes Barry, eat food and not chug energy drinks like no tomorrow.” Seabert chastised. “You also don’t look like you’ve slept in days.”

“Pot, meet kettle.” Barry deadpanned, knowing it was a weak deflection of the conversation. Yet quick to bring up the dark bags of both Seabert and Elinor. They weren't getting enough sleep either. “Where are we going?”

“The kitchens. You’re going to eat what we put in front of you.” Elinor answered, increasing her strides. “It’s 30 minutes to curfew so the area’s practically deserted. Then you’re going to take a nap, I know nothing I can say will convince you to sleep the entire night away. We’re compromising on a nice nap. Effective immediately, Seabert and I are starting operation BB.”

“I hate Operation BB; Babysit Barry. It’s not a good plan, Elinor.” Barry pouted, resting his head on her shoulder.

“I may not be a Holmes in levels of planning, but Operation BB has kept you alive so far. Or do we want a repeat of two years ago when you almost developed a heart murmur from all that excessive caffeine?” Elinor reminded Barry as Seabert went ahead and opened the kitchen’s side door for the two of them.

“As your best friends, it’s imperative that we keep our illustrious leader alive.” Seabert quipped with a smile locking the door behind them.

“That was only until Watson would join us again.” Barry reminded the duo, sinking further into Elinor. He started noticing how hungry he was. If he really has been neglecting himself; they're going to be insufferable.

“He hasn’t.” Seabert pointed out. “Not really, Jack is still an outsider to us. He might be considered a Watson by blood, and that's it. A Watson, but he isn’t ours yet. He doesn’t understand the pressure and expectations we deal with. He doesn't understand the history or importance; he's riding coat tails without thinking what got him here, thinking he's above all of it and reaping the privilege. He doesn't get that our privilege is also a responsibility and work; work that he should be sharing in. Work that he’s been adding onto your plate instead.”

“He really hasn’t.” Barry attempted to defend. It sounded weak to his ears.

“You’re the planner, Barry,” Seabert reminded Barry Holmes as he dove into fixing a plate for the three of them from the remnants of the night’s dinner. “I’m the profiler, you lay down the tracks for us to run in; and I see the obstacles we make for others and ourselves. Jack Watson is adding to your plate when he should be sharing our burden.”

“You can’t argue with us Barry, we know all your ticks.” Elinor reminded Barry, setting him down on a chair.

It was a well-practiced routine. Elinor and Seabert whisked Barry away when things got too overwhelming. The kitchen staff was well aware of their escapades and tended to leave some things out with chairs on a little table when Seabert would alert them of a late dinner. As long as everything was cleaned afterwards and the trio had always done so.

*****

“And…cut!” Amelie called out. She clapped happily. “Brilliant work, darlings.” She smiled at Luka and Marinette. “I could feel the melancholy and nostalgia as Felicity and Jack grew closer.” The two blushed and looked at each other, then blushed harder.

She turned to her son and two of his closest friends. “And you three!” She clasped her hands together and beamed a wide, loving smile tinged with pride. "Wonderful! You were perfect! Lifelong friends, looking out for one another. Seabert, who seems silly, actually being observant. Elinor, a kind soul with both physical and emotional strength. Barry might be conflicted over his feelings towards Jack and Felicity for the moment but he knows there are at least two people in his life he can always lean on when he needs to.”

“Even if he grumbles about it,” Claude pointed out.

“Even so,” Amelie began and stopped when she saw the look on Marinette’s face. She gave the girl a gentle, reassuring smile. “Did you have something to add about the scene, dear?”

Marinette frowned, then began to speak; hesitant and first and then with more confidence. “It’s just…all the characters are supposed to be friends, right?” She looked unsure.

Allegra found herself nodding. “Right, and?”

Marinette’s brows knitted together in confusion. “But…it also seems like Elinor and Seabert are more on Barry’s side than Felicity’s. I mean…” she bit her lip and both Felix and Luka found themselves staring at her mouth. “They’ve all known each for the same amount of time, minus Jack of course. Shouldn’t they care about Felicity’s feelings as much as Barry’s?”

“Marinette has a good point,” Luka was quick to take her side. “Felicity is a direct descendant of Auguste Dupin, the man who founded this society they all belong to. His heir should be the one with the most prestige, the one everyone listens to. She should be the leader.”

Luka looked around. No one’s heart music seemed upset. Some of them even harmonized with his, like Marinette, and to his surprise, Claude’s. He went on. “But because the adventures of Sherlock Holmes became more famous because the original Watson wrote more of his down, he’s more famous. And in the eyes of the world, famous means better.”

“Hence why Felicity resents Holmes,” Marinette spoke up.

Allegra looked at Felix. His eyes seemed unfocused, his lips pressed together. He was still in-character. If he were to speak up, it would be Barry who spoke, not Felix. She decided to speak up for him.

“And the Holmes and Watson from each generation have been partners, working together. This generation’s Watson,” she pointed at Luka, “dropped out of sight eight years ago so it’s been up to Seabert and Elinor to take care of him instead. Felicity is Holmes’ rival so having to care for him would just make her resent him more.”

“And being a profiler with psychologist parents, Seabert has to be able to get into the heads of criminals and victims, so he’s probably high in empathy.” Claude joined Allegra.

“And Elinor has a strong protective streak and a black belt in several forms of martial arts,” Allegra continued as she gave her boyfriend a wink and a grin. “She likes Felicity and considers her a friend but because she’s so used to taking care of Barry in Jack’s absence,” she pretended to scowl at Luka, who smiled back. “She’s naturally closer to him.”

“Both Elinor and Seabert take care of Barry but also resent Jack because they have to do what they consider to be his job.” Marinette offered.

“Yep.”

“And Jack, who hasn’t been around any of you for eight years, who’s been raised with a lot of resentment towards the Holmes family chafes at the idea of being forced into a role he never asked for,” Luka deftly summarized the main character’s backstories and was rewarded with a smile and a fist bump from Marinette.

“Exactly!” Amelie stood up and twirled around. “Conflict within the group while trying to solve the murder of a man most of them considered a mentor! Years of bitterness! Jealousy! Perhaps a budding romance?” She winked at Luka, who looked amused. Marinette pretended she hadn’t seen. “It adds drama and tension, just as much as car chases and sword fights!” She kissed her fingers. “Magnifique!”

She was looking at Felix, who still seemed in his own little world. She remembered how she used to get so caught up in a character and dear Geralt had to coax her back to herself. Usually it involved a cup of tea. Smell was the closest sense to memory after all. She left the group after giving Claude and Allegra a look they recognized as Felix is stuck in his role. Look after him until I come back. They nodded while their two co-stars just looked confused. She walked up to an assistant and requested some tea and snacks for her son. They nodded and walked away.

“Hey, Felix?”

A gentle hand rested on his shoulder and he looked up into Luka’s gentle blue eyes. They gazed down at him with concern as they looked him over. The logical part of his mind knew the other boy was only trying to help and just wanted to show his concern. Luka was a good guy; he was kind and cared about people. He also had a sharp sense of humor and a wicked wit. He was beginning to think of Luka as a friend.

But Felix was also Barrington Holmes right now and Barry resented how close Jack was to Felicity. How the person who was supposed to be his partner and equal barely tolerated him. Jack and Luka merged together and suddenly Felix didn’t want either of them putting their hands on him.

“Don’t touch me!” Felix snarled, knocking the gentle hand away and causing Luka to hit himself in the face. The sound of flesh hitting flesh brought him back to himself as his co-stars gasped. The crew tensed. They’d seen Felix and his mother struggle to pull themselves out of a character’s mindset but it never resulted in a fight. They waited to see if they needed to intervene.

Felix blinked, seeing the shock on Luka’s face. Marinette froze for a moment before turning red. She looked like she very much wanted to throw hands and had to be restrained by both Allegra and Claude.

The shock faded from the older boy and Luka looked disappointed, then angry.

Well, shite.

Felix wanted to apologize or explain, whichever was the least embarrassing and wouldn’t break the fragile relationship he’d formed with Luka and Marinette. He could tell Luka understood what he wanted to say but by the time his voice returned Luka just shook his head and glared at him.

“We’ll talk more when you’re more like yourself again,” was all Luka said as he turned away. Marinette had shaken off both the people holding her back and followed him but not before throwing a nasty glare at him over her shoulder.

“Excuse me, FeFe.”

Felix was just about to try and call them back but before he could say a word Chloe calmly strolled up to him. He was just about to speak to her when she reached out and flicked him hard on the nose.

“Ow!”

“Chloe!” Claude squawked, “he was just lost in character!”

“I know,” she replied, “that’s why I did it.” She looked up at Felix. She wasn’t upset or surprised, just calm and matter of fact. “So are we talking to Felix now?”

“Yes,” he rubbed his nose and looked in the direction Marinette and Luka retreated. “Thanks, Bitchois.”

“No problem,” she told him, a little bit of her old snobby self coming out, “I’ll use any excuse to hit you.”

Claude opened his mouth to speak but Allegra wisely put her hand over his mouth. “We should clear the set and get ready for the next scene before Felix alienates anyone else.”

*****

Amelie had had her set designers (paid extra, naturally) create several lounges for the cast and crew to use. Each department had their own and there were several set aside for cast members based on hierarchy. Even the plainest was nicer than most “green rooms” on other productions but no one denied the main cast was nicer. This was mostly because the Quantic Kids had brought a few luxury items from home. Most of the time Marinette and Luka spent their free time with their friends in the music room but today by unspoken agreement they wanted to be alone.

They wandered around and found themselves in an unused private room. Marinette quickly texted Amelie to let her know where they were and for her permission to use it. The director quickly answered in the affirmative; she seemed to understand there was a bit of tension on-set and some time apart was probably the best way to diffuse it.

The room wasn’t as luxurious as the Quantic Kids room but it still had a well-stocked refrigerator, an entertainment center with a television that took up half a wall, as well as several movies and probably a dozen streaming services. There were also three overstuffed sofas and a recliner in shades of blue and teal only a few shades darker than the walls. Marinette noticed (to her amusement) the room also had a tea-making station and a four person dining table made of blond wood and matching chairs.

Luka hadn’t thought to grab his guitar before coming into the room. He mostly wanted to get away from Felix before he said or did anything he’d regret or get him fired. He wasn’t ashamed of being a delivery driver but he couldn’t deny the salary was incredible and he was finally able to pay for some renovations for the ship his family lived on. His mother insisted he put most of what he earned away but she couldn’t deny that two teenagers needed privacy and therefore their own rooms.

He unlocked his phone and scrolled through his apps until he found one that allowed him to play guitar on mobile. Strolling over to the couch he sat down and patted the seat beside him and smiled at Marinette. She sat down beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder to peer at his phone. Luka smiled and began to play the electronic strings. She listened quietly, recognizing the tune as the one he’d written. There was something gentle and almost thoughtful about it. She closed her eyes and listened in silence for a few minutes.

Luka looked away from his phone and towards the lovely girl on his shoulder. He barely contained the urge to stroke her cheek or brush the hair off her forehead. She was so sweet and kind; incredibly smart and talented. He watched as shoulders eased a bit then stiffened. The poor girl couldn’t let herself completely relax, even when it was just the two of them. It made him want to…

“You can lie down if you want,” he offered.

Her eyes popped open and she looked at him in shock. Marinette blinked up at him. He smiled back and the two of them had a completely silent conversation. She understood that he was inviting her to lay down and relax for a few minutes or longer if she needed to. He was offering to look out for her, even though he knew she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

“You do a lot for everyone around you,” he told her. “You’re more than welcome to let me be strong for you. Just for a little while.”

She smiled gratefully as she took off her shoes then laid down on her back with her head in his lap. She gave his waist a grateful squeeze then closed her eyes.

Luka continued to play for her, watching as she began to allow herself to relax. She clasped her hands across her stomach and sighed in contentment.

She lay still and he continued to play what he was beginning to think of as “their” song, adding notes and little flourishes as he continued. New notes danced into his head as he played. She smiled as she listened and he became bold, adding an allegro piece, then a pianissimo, anything to see her smile like that.

“Filming today was…intense,” she said so quietly he barely heard her.

He stopped, pausing the app. “Um…yeah. I didn’t know Felix got so lost in character he forgot who he was.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her face had gone from relaxed to troubled and he wondered what was on her mind. “Not just him.” She frowned a bit. “That was the closest I’ve ever seen you to actual anger. Not since…”

She stopped and he didn’t have to listen to the music in her heart to know she was worried about him.

Luka didn’t respond at first. He was thinking to himself, trying to decide how to explain his thoughts to her. “Let’s just say…” he began, not sure how much he wanted to tell her. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, least of all with her. ..I used to have anger issues and leave it at that for now.”

She nodded in understanding and he began to play again but the mood was ruined.

He waited until he could stand the silence any more. Her good opinion mattered more to him than he cared to admit. He’d rather drop his guitar in the Seine than lose it. Then again, he hated keeping secrets from people he…loved.

“Hey,” he said finally, “tomorrow is Reshoot Day but as far as I know we don’t have any.”

Marinette’s eyes opened again and she gazed up at him, looking curious.

She waited for him to speak and he cleared his throat. “So…would you like to come over and hang out? On the Liberty? Mom will be in and out so we’ll be…you know…chaperoned. Kind of.”

She smiled at the earnest look of concern. “I’m pretty sure I could fight you off if you tried anything.”

Marinette tried not to laugh at the relieved look on his face. With all the movie training and private training she’d done with her Mom, she could probably wipe the floor with Luka if she had to.

She poked him in the stomach. “Besides. I trust you.”

He chuckled, the sound rumbling pleasantly in his chest. “What if I wasn’t worried about you but myself?” He clasped his hands to his chest in mock concern. “What if you’re after my virtue?”

Marinette blinked at him then burst out laughing. He laughed back.

*****

Felix heard the two laughing before he even opened the door. Their two voices blended so pleasantly it was almost as if they were made for each other and he had to push away the sudden stab of jealousy.

He stopped his thoughts before they could continue down their strange path. That was counterproductive. The three of them were only temporarily friends for the sake of the production and if he didn’t stop confusing his feelings as his character and his feelings as a person it would be difficult to extract himself after filming was over.

Plus, it would hurt like hell. He remembered how he would confuse his part with his true self as a child and nearly cried when he realized his castmates didn’t actually care about him. He told himself he didn’t care, that he’d grown callouses over his feelings to prevent feeling vulnerable and that was that.

Felix took two large deep breaths to calm himself and composed his face to look as contrite and regretful. After he was sure he was ready he rapped on the door and waited politely for someone to answer.

“Who is it?”

Marinette. Of course it would be Marinette who spoke first. She was the leader of her little friend group, the one they looked for to give them everything from advice to pep talks to protection.

“It’s Felix. May I come in, please?”

“Are you here to apologize?”

Now it was Luka who spoke, Her Majesty’s Lord Protector, even if he was redundant. Marinette didn’t need a knight nor a representative but he could appreciate the other boy’s concern. It was clearly one of the ways he shows affection. That and playing music and understanding everyone’s “heart song”.

He rolled his eyes because he knew they couldn’t see him and answered, “Of course.”

“Come in then.”

He turned the knob and walked inside, closing the door after him. He forced himself to relax his posture. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong. Not on purpose anyway.

Marinette and Luka were sitting together; not quite cuddling but still very close. She looked receptive to hearing him out but there was a sharpness in her eyes that told him she wouldn’t be fooled by lies or acting. He respected how perceptive she was, even when it worked against his interests.

Luka looked like his usual self; mild and gentle, doing his best to put everyone around him at ease. Felix had been fooled like everyone else into underestimating Luka because the older boy seemed so harmless. But now that he knew him better Felix could see a tiny glint deep in the other boy's ocean blue eyes that warned him. If Felix did anything to harm or upset Marinette he’d probably get his arse handed to him.

Felix took a deep breath as if he were about to undergo an unpleasant task and said, “I’m sorry.”

Marinette raised an eyebrow, looking regal in a pleated black skirt and pink blouse with black horizontal stripes. Luka had ditched his usual distressed jeans for gray denim shorts and a loose-fitting gray shirt with broad black horizontal stripes. Separately they would have looked good but together they looked…like a matched set.

“For?” Luka spoke up.

Felix pointed to a chair across from the couch they were sitting on. It might have been presumptuous of him to ask to join them. “Do either of you mind if I sit down?”

They looked at each other and then back at him, shaking their heads. “Thank you,” he said a bit dryly. They were making him feel as if he were having an audience with the Queen, except he wasn’t seven and his collar wasn’t itchy.

He sat and crossed his ankle over his other knee. He sighed and began to speak. “For being rude and disrespectful while still in character.” He sighed. “It was unprofessional and neither of you deserved it.”

“We know that-” Marinette began but Luka laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She smiled and apologized. “Sorry. That was rude. I’ll let you speak first and then tell you what I think when you’re done.”

Felix nodded his thanks at her and Luka and began to explain. “You see, I’ve been acting since I could learn lines. Usually for my father. Small parts at first but then larger and more complicated as I got older.” They nodded but didn’t interrupt.

He continued. “Any I’m sure by now you two have noticed that when an actor is in character sometimes they forget who they are. Especially if a scene is very long or emotionally intensive.” He shrugged and looked a little sheepish. “Usually Mom or one of my friends can pull me out of it but I, as Barry, was feeling jealous because I was being left out of the Jack and Felicity bonding. That boiled over into my ‘true’ self,” he made air quotes, “and I lashed out at you before I, or anyone else, could bring me back to myself.”

Felix stopped and looked at them expectantly, waiting for them to speak. A part of him nagged at him, it sounded strangely of his fathers voice caressing his ear. Telling Felix to truly explain. Followed by Griff in his posh 'a knight of virtue would be honest. To obfuscate with half truths is unbecoming of the very notion of courage.'

"I….Also…." Felix tried to begin. his throat closing in on him. Emotions rampant within him: anger, jealousy, resentment even coursed high. It was hard to show vulnerabilities to most. The select few being done so after careful consideration and the years of loyalty to prove it. But he felt compelled by something to actually tell the truth without a gimmick.

"There's a little bit more to it really." Felix managed to say one thumb tracing his signet ring as if trying to invoke courage to spill into him at this very moment.

"As you know…this project means a lot to us here at Graham Films." Felix began once again bolstered by seeing Luka giving an encouraging nod at Felix. "It is my father's last script. That alone makes his project worthwhile. But on a personal note, to me, this is both an honor and a punishment to play. My father wrote this for me, as his son, and not for me as an actor."

"The genre and themes are personal favorites of mine. Yet the characters…most of the Spades were written by our influences. Barrington Holmes is both a character to play, and also my fathers inspiration using me as the source material." Felix gave a dry chuckle at the thought although he knew it to be true. "It's easy playing as Barrington because I am Barrington Holmes in many aspects. This part was written for me by my father. So much that half of my improvisation is more me playing moments where I get to change my word for once." Felix added, worrying his ring.

"We reminded you of something." Marinette concluded which caused Felix to color shamefully.

"Yes." Felix confessed.

"You were seeing Adrien….weren't you?" Marinette asked curiously. Memories of that fateful day of Felix impersonating his cousin popping into her head. Luka almost heard the halting screech of a cello from Felix's heartsong as the blond froze.

"Correct as always Fl-Marinette." Felix nodded when he unfreeze some thirty seconds later.

"This wasn't about you, please believe me that the last thing I'd want is to disrespect you both. Not only as actors, helping me live up to the thought of doing my father's work justice. But with our tentative friendship on the line it is a horrible happenstance that things aligned where acting pulled my true emotions freely. Especially when you two are not the object of my ire. I really do apologize about this."

"Chloe flicked you?" Luka asked curiously.

"I was an arse, it's well deserved." Felix nodded. Now having confessed everything and leaving the choice in their hands.

“We’re not going to say it’s okay-” Marinette told him.

“-because it’s not.” Luka added.

“But you weren’t being deliberately rude or unkind.” Marinette kept on, “I didn’t notice that you were still thinking like Barry and weren’t yourself. I’ll try to be more observant next time.”

“But it’s still up to you to let us know if you need space and we’ll back off.” Luka smiled at him. “But yeah, I’ll try to read you better next time we film an emotionally tense scene like that again.”

Despite himself Felix was a little relieved. He’d apologized, explained his actions, and they’d forgiven him. “Thank you both for understanding. I’ll work harder to be less…’up my own arse’ as Allegra would say, during filming.”

As he stood up they also stood with him. His shoulders ease as tension he didn’t even know he was feeling dissolved. “Well…thank you…” he offered Marinette his hand. “I’d like to say it’ll never happen again but I’d be lying. It just might but I’ll do what I can not to let it.”

“See that you do.” Marinette’s smile was kind as she took his hand. He gave her a tentative smile back and then she used his hand to pull him towards her and into a hug. He squawked in protest but she was warm and soft and smelled of vanilla sugar and cinnamon. He tried to breathe her in without being obvious about it.

Felix heard movement and suddenly Luka’s long arms were surrounding them both, pulling them both towards him and hugging them both gently but tightly. Bay rum suited the tall boy more than lavender. Felix hoped neither of them could smell his sweat. He was feeling a bit awkward but still enjoyed the hug. It was comforting and he didn’t want it to end just yet.

“Fair warning, Felix. If you do this again, we reserve the right to beat you up.” Marinette pulled away just enough to give him a wicked grin. “I hope I don’t have to remind you I’m a martial artist with fencing experience now.”

“I’m not a martial artist but I was raised by a pirate so I know how to street and knife fight. And sometimes I fight dirty.” Luka’s smile wasn’t as sharp as Marinette’s but Felix had no doubt Luka would hurt him if pushed, friend or costar be damned. Especially for Marinette’s sake.

Felix gave in to the urge to roll his eyes. “Right. It’s hardly fair of you two to threaten to double team me.”

“Yes it is!”

He just sighed and pretended to grumble under his breath. These two were perfect for each other.

*****

Meanwhile, Adrien and Kagami sat alone in an abandoned corner of the set, wondering what the hell was going on.

An hour ago they had been watching quietly as their friends, Adrien’s cousin, and his cousin’s friends had been filming a scene together. It seemed to go well, or that was what Aunt Amelie said. Then suddenly Felix was arguing with Luka and Marinette, even snapping at the tall boy when he asked if Felix was all right. Then everyone disappeared and left the two of them there, forgotten.

Adrien was quiet as he cuddled into Kagami’s side. Normally she enjoyed it when her boyfriend was physically affectionate with her but she was certain his closeness was more about seeking comfort than it was about showing her how much he cared. As much as she cared for him, it occasionally irritated her that she was the only emotional support Adrien had. Well, perhaps besides that hulking bodyguard but the man would not or could not speak. She sighed inwardly. Kagami might not be any more in touch with her emotions than Adrien but she would try to understand.

“That was…intense,” she said to her boyfriend and winced. Intense? That was the best she could do? She wished she had Marinette’s tact or Luka’s emotional awareness but she didn’t and her blunt way of expressing her thoughts would have to do.

Brusque or not, Adrien recognized her words as an opening and invitation to talk. “That’s putting it mildly.” He sighed but didn’t elaborate.

Kagami was silent until she began to feel awkward again. “You know, my mother was an actress once.”

He perked up. “I remember! She was in ‘Solitude’ with my mom.” He smiled but it faded quickly. “She and my mom acted together only once though. It’s a shame. I thought they were both good.” He sat quietly before realizing it was his turn to keep the conversation going. “I didn’t know my mom and your mom had been friends for so long. She looked a lot like you when you were younger.”

“Yes,” she agreed. It was strange to see her own face staring at her from the film her mother and Mme. Agreste had been in. It made her wonder if she would grow up to be as strict as her mother was. “According to my mother, she had to make the movie in secret. Her grandparents were born shortly after World War II and did not want her associating with Americans.” She chuckled. “They saw all people of European descent as Americans, or at least just as barbaric.”

Kagami didn’t want to dwell on the similarities between her mother and the grandparents she’d barely known so she hurried on. “She did tell me once she struggled to ‘get into character’ because pretending to be someone she wasn’t didn’t come naturally.” She frowned as she continued. “She also said it was equally difficult to get out of character because she found herself able to see the world from her character’s perspective; it wasn't easy to return to her own.”

Adrien huffed a laugh. “So, your mother had a rebellious phase too, huh?” He grinned at his girlfriend. Tomoe-san was more complex than he gave her credit for. “So now I know where you get it.”

She mock-glared at him but he gave her innocent kitten eyes until she gave up and laughed at him. He laughed back.

They were silent for a minute until Kagami suggested. “Perhaps…your cousin has the same problem my mother had? It’s possible he was simply stuck in the mindset of his character when he lashed out at Luka.”

Adrien considered her words and then said, “maybe I should have said something. Tried to draw him out.”

Kagami shook her head. “No,” her words were blunt and she explained, “it’s possible you could have helped him but it’s equally possible his hostility towards you would have come out instead.”

He nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right.” “It’s just…” he sighed and put his arm around her to draw her closer. “I know. I get it. I did a lot of stupid shit, even though it was inadvertent, and hurt my relationship with Felix.” He frowned, managing to look handsome even when he was miserable. “But he won’t let me mend things! He won’t accept my apology, he doesn’t want to spend time with me. I couldn’t get him to come over for dinner even if Father would let him inside.” He sighed and pressed his face into her shoulder. “What should I do, ‘Gami?”

Several responses came to mind but the one she decided on was; “Nothing.”

That surprised him so much he took his arm from around her shoulders and pulled away. “Nothing?”

She affirmed. “Let him approach you when ready. Don’t force him to be around you if he doesn’t want to. Be polite and professional if you have any more fencing lessons with him and don’t pressure him to spend time with you.”

Part of Adrien thought she had a point. “But-”

“You’re backing Felix into a corner, constantly putting him on the defensive,” Kagami pointed out. “That’s why he lashes out; he feels as if he has no choice.”

He opened his mouth but she gently laid a finger on his lips. “Stop treating him like an opponent and return to the en garde position until your cousin makes a move.”

Adrien smiled, appreciating the fencing metaphor. “I’m so lucky to have a girlfriend as wise as you.”

She smiled back. “Yes. You are.”

She leaned forward and he closed his eyes, meeting her halfway for the kiss.

Their lips met just before someone cleared their throat and interrupted them.

*****

The production company had updated its security procedures. Nathalie not only had to leave her bag, tablet and phone behind but received a pat down by a female security guard. The woman wouldn’t let Adrien’s bodyguard accompany her (she claimed Amelie had only left one pass) but Nathalie could swear she heard the woman flirt with the man as she walked on in search of Adrien.

She was met by a red-haired man who said he was her escort. Shit. There went her chance to snoop or contact Mlle. Rossi. She couldn’t stand the girl anyway; she wanted to climb the ladder by sycophancy or social advancement rather than hard work.

Her musings about Rossi were interrupted as the man talked into a radio and received some sort of response. He looked at Nathalie. “Mrs. Graham de Vanily and her son would like to see you off if you don’t mind waiting for them.”

“Not at all,” she replied. Felix and his mother probably wanted to make sure she left without stealing anything or causing trouble. Ironic, considering what the boy had done during his last visit to his uncle’s home. Nathalie wisely kept her opinion to herself.

As they reached the current set she spied Adrien and Kagami in a tender kiss. Although her face remained impassive she felt her heart melt just a little bit. He was growing up so fast! She knew Gabriel had approved of his son’s relationship with Mlle. Tsurugi for business reasons but the girl clearly adored the boy and Adrien reciprocated. Nathalie secretly loved seeing her charge happy. She hated to break them up but unfortunately she had a schedule to keep and romance was a low priority to Gabriel if it didn’t involve his wife.

She cleared her throat and the two broke apart; Adrien guiltily, the Tsurugi girl with reluctance. Nathalie didn’t miss the way the young woman glared at her. She didn’t care.

“Adrien, Mlle. Tsurugi, it’s time we were away.” She adjusted her glasses. “We’ll have a few minutes to say goodbye to your aunt and cousin and then the two of you have a practice match before dinner with your father.”

Adrien perked up, just as Nathalie hoped he would. “Father?! Really?” His face shone in a way it rarely did if he wasn’t around his girlfriend.

“I’m very happy for you, Adrien.” Kagami’s face didn’t look happy to anyone who didn’t know her well but her eyes shone.

Nathalie gave in to the urge to smile at the boy she’d known most of his life. She didn’t have the heart to tell him it was an interrogation disguised as dinner. Let him be happy for now.

*****

After Felix left Marinette and Luka, pleased that their relationship had been repaired, a hand grabbed his shoulder and jerked him into the shadows.

He twisted, trying to get away until a voice spoke up; “It’s just me, Houdini.”

He stopped struggling and looked up at her. “A little less cloak and dagger next time, Hel.”

Helen rolled her eyes and dug a small box out of her pocket. “I had to switch materials but I think you’ll be pleased with the results.” She opened it and showed him its contents.

It was a perfect reproduction of the brooch Marinette had thought she was making for his mom, down to the matched pearls and lapis lazuli. Yet again Helen had impressed him.

What he was thinking must have shown on his face because his favorite cousin had grinned, looking incredibly pleased with herself. “It’s something, right?” she bragged. “It’s diecast metal because what I wanted to use wouldn’t cure for a few days and you said this was a rush.”

Felix held out his hand and she placed the box in it. “Diecast metal?”

She just shrugged. “Eh, it’s a lost art.”

He took it out of the box and examined it, turning it over and looking for flaws. He found none. It was indistinguishable from what Marinette had created and had the proper heft and color.

“It’s perfect, Helen.”

Helen smirked. “I’m so very pleased you’re satisfied.”

All he needed now was two things; for Ms. Sancoeur to wear the peacock brooch today and an opportunity to make the switch.

*****

This set was hot.

Nathalie willed herself not to sweat but that didn’t stop her stomach from feeling a bit queasy. She tried to focus on Adrien’s question about dinner; what he should wear, what they were having, should he stop by the Dupain-Cheng bakery for a light dessert. She tried not to snap at him when he asked if Kagami could attend as well but his face was beginning to blur.

No! Not now! She had to hold it together and appear calm and self-assured. She could not embarrass herself in front of Graham de Vanilys. Besides, Gabriel depended on her, as did Adrien. She would not falter.

“Why, Ms. Sancoeur! How very good to see you again!” Amelie swept in with her usual aplomb, her son and his friends trailing behind her. The woman’s smile was wide and welcoming but her son looked smug and superior as usual. The boy’s friends looked more curious than friendly but at least they weren’t hostile.

Nathalie’s eyes darted quickly, not seeing Chloe Bourgeois nor Lila Rossi. Neither girl was shaping up to be a particularly good pawn and she would advise Gabriel to cut his losses. Paris was sure to have its fair share of entitled yet stupid young people he could use instead. Someone more reliable.

The ever perceptive Felix noticed her attention was diverted. “Something wrong, Ms. Sancoeur?”

“I don’t see Mlle. Dupain-Cheng anywhere,” Nathalie lied smoothly. “M. Agreste wanted me to pass along his congratulations on securing her first internship and a starring role at the same time.” Only Adrien and his girlfriend seemed to believe her.

Amelie seemed content to play along. “Yes, isn’t she wonderful?” She beamed as if she’d given Marinette her talent personally. “So very talented. We were lucky to get her.”

Nathalie gave a nod, even as it made her dizzy. “M. Agreste says he’ll be watching her fashion career very closely from now on. He’s a big believer in nurturing talent.” She wondered what Amelie would say to that.

The woman didn’t react as Nathalie had hoped. She just smiled and replied, “Well, I hope he won’t be too disappointed when we snap her up. Really, Gabriel should have offered a contract as soon as she won his little contest.”

Adrien picked the wrong time to speak up. “I’m sure he was worried about putting too much pressure on her. Father has always praised Marinette’s talents, even to the Style Queen herself.”

The mood of the room shifted as Chloe’s neglectful, impossible to please mother was brought up. Felix’s companions went from neutral towards Adrien to disdainful when Audrey was introduced as a topic.

Nathalie wondered if she should try and add to the conversation when Amelie looked over her shoulder and beamed. “And what perfect timing! Here is the young woman herself. Hello, Marinette, dear. Are you ready for the next scene?”

For a nanosecond Nathalie swore the girl looked uncomfortable but then the tall blue haired boy (his name escaped her but he looked very familiar) laid a hand on her shoulder. The girl blinked and then smiled. “You bet!”

“Ms. Sancoeur was just saying that Gabriel sent along his congratulations on your triumphant designing and acting debut!” Amelie spoke up. “Apparently he’s very impressed.”

“As he should be,” the blue haired boy squeezed Marinette’s shoulder and the girl blushed.

The three teens with Amelie began to sing Mlle. Dupain-Cheng’s praises. “Marinette designed the school uniforms for all the school characters,” a blonde with long braided hair put in. Her blue eyes narrowed at Nathalie and she felt even less welcome.

“Not to mention some of the fancy ball gowns for a very pivotal scene!” A blue eyed brown-haired boy smiled but didn’t seem to want her there either.

“And her performance is some of the best acting I’ve ever seen for someone with no experience.” A very handsome brown skinned young man praised his co-star. His face was neutral but Nathalie still felt watched and judged.

Suddenly everyone but Felix and Marinette herself were talking over each other, giving the young designer one glowing compliment after another. The girl just stammered and blushed and tried to get everyone to stop. Felix looked…

Concerned?

For her?

He cocked his head to one side, then the other. His brow furrowed he asked, “Ms. Sancoeur? Are you all right?”

Nathalie felt sweat drip down her face and the small of her back. She felt hot and the room began to tilt. She dimly heard Adrien call her name and suddenly she was dropping.

Most of the room cried out in alarm as the usually unflappable woman began to droop.

“Catch her!” Felix called out abruptly as he and Luka stopped the woman from hitting the ground. Once they were sure they had her they gently lowered her to the floor.

Adrien just stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the woman who helped raise him. He began to shake as his face went pale. Kagami grabbed his arm and dragged him to a chair before he could also faint.

“I’m calling one-one-two!” Allen pulled out his phone and began to dial. Amelie, Claude and Allegra stepped back to give the others room.

Felix kept his head and removed Nathalie's jacket and used it to cushion her head. He looked over at Luka. “Can you help me roll her so she’s on her side? Please.”

Luka nodded then removed the jacket of his uniform costume. Together he and Felix turned the woman on her side to keep her airway free and then Luka used his jacket to cover the woman to prevent shock.

Felix checked her vitals. “She’s breathing and has a pulse” He opened her mouth. “It looks like her mouth and throat are clear.” He looked over at his cousin. “Does Ms. Sancoeur have a history of fainting spells, Adr-”

He stopped. Adrien clearly wasn’t going to be of use to anyone.

Adrien was spiraling, completely unaware of his surroundings or what was happening a few feet from him. Nathalie fainted again, just like his mom used to do. She was having dizzy spells and even though his father would tell him it was no big deal and she just needed rest, he didn’t believe it. It was just like when Mom disappeared. Nathalie was sick too and soon she’d disappear and he’d never know what really happened to her-

Kagami’s hand hit his cheek with a sharp crack.

Amelie gasped but Kagami ignored her.

“Adrien,” she commanded, “I understand this must be upsetting for you but your caregiver is ill and staring into nothing is incredibly unhelpful.” Her voice was stern, not a trace of compassion or empathy left. “She needs help and sitting here useless does nothing to aid her.”

Amelie huffed in indignation at the treatment of her nephew and even Claude and Allegra looked sorry for him. Felix and Luka were too busy trying to treat the woman and Allen was giving the emergency service operator directions.

Marinette was more than used to handling crises, even medical ones, so she came to Kagami’s side and smoothly intervened.

“Kagami? I know you’re just trying to bring him around with some tough love but is it alright if I try something too?” Her expression didn’t plead but she would respectfully back off if asked.

Kagami thought about the request before nodding. She knew she could trust her.

Marinette slowly and carefully crouched in front of Adrien, who had barely registered the slap. “Adrien? Look at me.” He met her gaze without thinking. “Listen to me.” Her blue eyes were calm and serious but still kind. “Breathe. Slowly. In through your mouth and out through your nose.” He obeyed.

She gently took Kagami’s hand and laid it over Adrien’s. “We’re here for you. Feel her hand on yours. Listen to my voice. Remember to breathe.” She watched as Adrien’s pupils contracted. She relaxed her shoulders and then asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

He nodded and then his face fell. Nathalie had collapsed. He was useless. Again.

Marinette did her best to give him a reassuring smile. “Adrien. Help is on the way. We’re going to get Ms. Sancoeur to the hospital.”

“Will-” his voice cracked. Yet another person who raised him was fading and he’d done nothing. “Will she be okay?” He whispered.

He sounded so forlorn, like a lost child. She felt sorry for him despite his past enabling.

Marinette couldn’t answer and looked to Kagami.

Kagami took her boyfriend’s hand and caressed the cheek she had just slapped. “We’ll follow her to the hospital. Then we’ll see.”

He gulped and nodded before pulling both girls into a hug.

*****

Felix was rather proud of himself. He hadn’t predicted Ms. Sancoeur would give him such a dramatic opportunity but everything had turned out just as he wanted so he couldn’t complain. The switch was made and the original peacock brooch was resting comfortably in his pocket with no one the wiser. He'll ask Chloe to see if she can catch anything on the cameras and alter it; just to cover all his bases.

He couldn’t wait to find out what was so special about this brooch.

Aaaand that’s it!

See you soon!

#worthy opponent au #marinette dupain cheng #felix graham de vanily #luka couffaine #quantic kids #amelie graham de vanily #adrien agreste #kagami tsurugi

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saveourskinship · 7 months

Text

Thankathankathank youuuuu @akorah for the tag 🥰

Three Ships:

Dramione. Because kissing someone furiously while grumpily saying "You. It's you. It's always you but... Why does it have to be you" is my jam, bread, butter, marmalade and vegemite [marmite if you're heathen ie smutty]

Zutara. Because they make each other better. They move each other forward. Because fire. Because water. Because lightning. Because ice. Because scars. Because healing. Because because because.

Skam and Beadie. This is cheating because they are original characters I am writing. They are not even a couple but God help me am I the hell leaving space to write my own fanfiction about them. Maybe an HEA where they don't all die at the end. *shrugs*

First Ship:

In anything: Barbie and Action Man. Before I was even in school my sister and I would steal our brother's Action Man as Barbie's partner. Ken's job was Beach. Our Barbie needed a man with a plan.

In media: Sora/Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. I used to devour fanfic about them. Shout out to the one which sticks in my brain and introduced me to My Chemical Romance when Kairi got married to Squall because of something to do with Mickey being an little shitprick which I think was because of some soul signature nonsense? I can't remember and anyway Demolition Lovers was their wedding song and the bane of my mother's existence - Save's Emo Phase was born.

Last Song:

Girls Like You - The Naked and Famous (shit, this is actually a lie, but it's the last 'proper' song I listened to since I don't count the demo I'm making for my friend's satire girlpunk band she decided to create last night as a real song yet. It just has boop-boop-boops. Night Lunch can pull off songs with only doof-doofs and boom-booms. I cannot. So the demo won't be real until Sasha does the drums at least.)

Last Movie:

What A Girl Wants. Look. It's Amanda Bynes. I love Amanda Bynes. It is also Colin Firth and blue blood upper crust English vibes (done poorly, sure, but still). The last chapter of rose-petal compliments is needing all the help I can get it right now.

Currently Reading:

Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir

Lesbian necromancers in space. Need there be another reason?

Currently Watching:

Jujitsu Kaisen Season Two (Gojo, my love. I salivate, I wither, I breathe so much ecstasy I lack oxygen and die.)

Taskmaster NZ (rewatch. Like, no shade to my country or anything [said under the world's largest umbrella] but fuck we're shit.)

Last Thing I Wrote:

Like, as in finished? Because otherwise it would be this, right?

I wrote delivery instructions for a food order earlier today. Can't have done it very well because the driver still got confused and had to call me.

In terms of Things with Titles that are Complete™️, then an original folktale called.... fuck, what did I call it? I can't remember. It's about an unnamed protagonist and a boatman though. Still waiting on my rejection emails from the magazines I've submitted it to 😂

Currently Writing:

Let's skip over the arseholiness of me saying that I'm currently writing this again, shall we? (Let's not turtles-all-the-way-down my mentioning it either.)

Okay. Here we go:-

rose-petal compliments: dramione. Quiet luxury, Hermione is wealthy. Set in the Muggle world.

sacreligious inferences of a midnight paradise: dramione. Trope soup. Marriage law/fake dating/date or die. (Plus a bunch more tropes because why not?)

The Absolute and Total Defeat of One Draco Malfoy. Multi-ship. Crack. Crack from crest to cunt.

What's Owed When. Dramione. Unexpected Pregnancy. France. Delectomancy. Draco pines so hard he's basically a forest.

foil&fall. Tansy (Teddy Lupin/Pansy Parkinson). Fluff. Epistolary.

Untitled warfic. Dramione. My attempt at All Plot, No Vibes. Yes, you read that right. I'm trying to write something with NO VIBES ALL PLOT. (Draw a pentagram and sage for me, I bloody need it.)

The Environmental Suicide Club. Original YA speculative fiction. This is the one Skam and Beadie are from. Grief. Environmentalism. Nihilism. Set one generation in the future. Everyone dies at the end. A Fun, Very Good Time! Completely unmarketable! Wheeee!

Untitled socmed. Theomione. Writing this one with @they-call-me-megs A bunch of fun and one we return to when we're struggling for inspiration elsewhere.

Aster, the Star-Sailor. Original children's series. Sci-fi, pirate adventure. Came from writing the Tansy and I fell in love with it. Thanks, Pansy.

Fate and Free Will series. Urban fantasy six-book series. Currently undertaking a massive rework of the structure.

wander/wonder. A Luna Lovegood POV story Christmas visual novel. Story is written and am hoping I can finish the video in time for December.

There are a few more but these are the ones I work on a least a little bit every week.

Tagging @they-call-me-megs @thusatlas @paandreablack

#save's unhinged life #writing #fanfic #congrats on getting here gods i can blather on can't i

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jewishbarbies · 4 months

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Absolutely people will say the pine crest thing is a "zionist plot" or something bc it is a very expensive private school. Which is why they can tell kids not to come back if their families are being that antisemitic, they don't want their money. Which def sucks for the kid :/ and that being said. The pine crest admin also sucks and is super strict and has been getting worse in recent years and almost allowed barron Trump as a student so like. Both are true lol

Also to be clear (sorry to spam you), the pine crest admin is NOT jewish. It's not a Jewish school itself. Just a lot of jewish students

i feel like the son shouldn't be punished for things HE didn't say, even though the school not wanting to associated with his parents is understandable. it's a bit of a weird gray area for me. like at least for this situation, did they pay for another school year already? because if he didn't say anything, and they already paid, they should be allowed to stay until they get the schooling they paid for. if not, i guess it's up to the school, but again it's a gray area for me just because the kid seems innocent and it's unfair the family is forcing him in front of cameras to defend the mother's disgusting posts.

#Asks #anonymoose #antisemitism #i don't know what the proper solution is #i just feel bad for the kid

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midnightdonghyun · 10 months

Text

Butterfly ｡˚ ° KDH

Pairings ｡˚ ° Donghyun x Daehwi

Characters ｡˚ ° Omega Donghyun (ab6ix), Alpha Daehwi (ab6ix)

AU ｡˚ ° Omegaverse

Genre ｡˚ ° character exploration, friends to ??? kinda lovers, childhood friends, forbidden romance kinda

Warnings ｡˚ ° None

Word count ｡˚ ° 3k

Summary ｡˚ ° Donghyun is not happy with his presentation and has withdrawn from the world and from the friend he met in the woods as a child. Seeing a reminder of said friend has him out in the forest again... and the two get to talking after a few years of separation.

Notes ｡˚ ° Not proof read lol. Sort of a plot in this one. Idk if i wanna keep this concept like canon? It's a fun dynamic to play with for sure and i like both their charcters but dunno if i should mate them or not

Masterlist Masterlist

Omegaverse Masterlist

Sometimes Donghyun would wake up and feel like he was suffocating on his own scent. He smelled like an isle of fruit, and everytime anyone commented on it he felt nothing but shame. It was a constant reminder. Anywhere he went, anything he touched, it smothered him. He picked up a pen and it was left with a coat of jelly. He smoothed the wrinkles in his pants and they were smeared with jello. He stopped touching other people years ago. He would feel so guilty leaving them with red and orange fruit stains.

A person can’t smell their own scent, but Donghyun was convinced otherwise. Why else would he wake up choking on perfumed air? Maybe it was in his head. Maybe it was his own fear. Or maybe it was the handful of plums the Lord so graciously handed him.

Donghyun didn’t want plums and oranges and strawberries. He prayed for tall glasses of salt water. But this is what he was given. This is what he had to live with.

Even now, staring at the black ceiling waiting until his breathing slowed he had to lie in a bed with apples and grapefruit.

Donghyun always wondered why he was plagued with nightmares. Why he woke multiple times a night trembling and drenched in sweat. He can’t even remember what he dreamed about. If there were faces or demons, if they were bloody with guts or traumatic with lost family members. He just… can’t sleep.

He sat up. Imaginary cherries rolled across the warped wooden floor.

What was the point of trying again? He would just stay awake. Everything was so fitful. Ghosts that he couldn’t remember in his sleep. The crushing weight of failure during the day. It’s like he was stuck in limbo. One foot in the Garden another in Hell. God even gave him a pomegranate to remind him. Look at what you did to man.

The floor was cold, and the light outside was blue and silver. A full moon.

Yellow and blue, Donghyun turned his desk lamp on. Its light was soft, but it took a second for his eyes to adjust to the sudden warmth. His room was small. All of their rooms were small. That’s just how boarding school is, he supposed. Twin bed, desk, a dresser, a radiator, garbage can.

He had been inside other rooms before. They had cork boards with memories bottled into tickets and pictures of their pets. They had framed photos of their parents, siblings, aunties and uncles. Some had old family crests. Some of them had gifts from home. Hand knitted blankets that smelled like their dams, small baskets of their favorite snacks they couldn’t in this small town tucked away deep in the pines.

Donghyun was an orphan. His walls had a calendar and a crucifix. His bed had a synthetic blanket that the school provided. His desk had textbooks and notebooks.

He felt so very alone, and when he started smelling so sweet he understood why he was abandoned. Who would want this?

The few personal items he had weren’t much. There was a bible bound in leather with gold lettering. There was a rosary with white, pearly beads. There was Celery, a worn stuffed rabbit. And then there was Celery’s rosary, of course, currently wrapped around his plush neck. That one had plastic yellow beads. He had a few books of his own. A few outfits.

It’s not like he needs much. It’s not a very holy thing to have so many possessions, anyway. Donghyun was content with his minimalistic room, but… maybe one family photo would be nice.

He’ll have to repent for the jealousy later.

But there was one more thing. His eyes fell on it standing all alone in the dim yellow light that washed over the desk. It was pushed a little farther back, a memory lost to a corner, school and bible studies had taken precedence.

It was a butterfly. Blue. Carefully pinned inside its black frame. It was easy for Donghyun to see the care that went into it. It was a gift from someone special to someone special. Truth be told he hadn’t thought of this person in years.

They were kids when they met. Donghyun had crawled out of the window after one of his nightmares. Lost himself deep in the forest. He was a child then. So was the boy he met. Skinny. Pale. Donghyung was afraid of him at first. Some kind ghost. An evil spirit to entice him into sin or lead him into a lake and drown him. But he was just a boy. A strange boy unnaturally comfortable in the dark woods.

He said his name was Daehwi. He said he was from a village farther up the mountain. He said his family thought of Donghyun’s boarding school as a religious cult. A place full of false prophets and lies. Donghyun was deeply offended at first, but it didn’t last long. They met nearly every night for a long time. He would go into the forest and talk to his friend under the moon. It didn’t matter that Daehwi thought Donghyun was living in religious bondage and following lies and it didn’t matter that Donghyun thought Daehwi was a heretic spreading harmful pagan ideas and living secluded in the woods like a freak. They just worked somehow, and they both learned not to question it much.

Things fall apart when you question.

Daehwi loved butterflies. He pinned their corpses and hung them around his cabin. That’s what he told Donghyun, who thought it was a little strange at first. But Daehwi gave him a gift. And Donghyun wasn’t one to question gifts. It was like a piece of his soul that he entrusted Donghyun with.

Donghyun swayed, still looking at the little soul in the black frame. It was important to Daehwi. Why hadn’t he gone into the forest recently? Why did he stop years ago? If he went back would this small child still even be there? And what would he look like now?

Donghyun was moved to pull on proper pants, socks, shoes, and a jacket before he even really considered what he was doing. Sister Catherine said that sometimes the Lord works in hidden ways. That He pulls you into actions you would never take and when that happens all you have to do is trust Him and follow what He’s pulling you towards. Donghyun steeled his faith as he pulled his first floor window open.

In a last thought he pocketed the white rosary, and then he swung his feet out his window and carefully lowered himself into the shrubs below.

It was a dream, or maybe a memory. He always conflated the two.

The air had a bite to it. Needles swayed in the wind above his head. His feet worked from memory, and everything was bundled in the silver gauze spun by the moon herself. Donghyun started to fret. Would Daehwi even be there anymore? Had he forgotten too or was he bitter with Donghyun’s sudden abandonment? What would he say to him if he was there? He hoped they wouldn’t fight.

The tree they met under was still there. Daehwi said it was a bigleaf maple. It was massive and covered in moss. Thick branches sprawled in all directions and seemed to encompass the entire sky when you stood under it. A leafy Atlas bearing the brunt of the stars on its bark. A few of those branches had collapsed recently, breaking off from the trunk and horrid angels. They were still attached by a few woody tendons, and the entire scene made Donghyun think that something had died in that tree, even though it remained alive above its dragging limbs.

“Softwood rots in humid places like this.”

Donghyun started and turned towards the sudden voice. He appeared silently, as if he had melted from the moonlight. He did that the first time too, when Donghyun was lost and on the verge of tears. He stared for a second, a little awed at the moonghost standing in front of him with his hands in his pockets.

He wasn’t very tall and nor had he bulked up. He was still fairly pale and his eyes still had that clear, freezing gleam.

Donghyun didn’t know what to say. The words that came out were a little stupid, but what was he supposed to say?

“You’re still here.”

Daehwi narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t been. I gave up awhile ago.”

“Fated,” Donghyun took a step closer. “God wanted us here. Together.”

Daehwi cocked an eyebrow. “Your god, maybe.”

Donghyun shrugged, lowering himself into a squat. They used to sit here for ages. Neither one of them cared about how damp their pants got or how the cold would start burning into their bones. They would be too focused on each other. Too busy listening and talking. Daehwi always did all the talking back then. He would tell Donghyun about the stars they couldn’t see under the tree. The butterflies he liked the most. The saints and gods of his religion. How to slaughter a lamb ethically and painlessly. He was without God, but he was fascinating.

He was silent now, regarding Donghyun cooly. Was he angry they stopped meeting? Had he waited in the forest night after night in vain? Donghyun had told him he might stop coming. That things were getting more and more complicated the more he thought about puberty. About presenting. About his future. Did he understand?

“I like to think of Him as everyone’s god,” Donghyun said softly.

Daehwi scoffed. “Of course you do.”

An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. Daehwi looked off in its direction as if he could watch it take flight from here. Even the air around him felt icy and tense. Donghyun traced his angular jawline, eyes moving from his small ear to the tip of his chin. He had grown well. Donghyun wondered about him. His identity, his education, what had happened in the few years they cut each other out.

“My friend, talk to me.” Donghyun’s voice was almost a whisper in the cedars, tangling in the small vine maples and getting lost. “What have you been up to these days? What happened?”

Daehwi’s gaze turned back to him. Donghyun winced. It was dripping with something he couldn’t exactly put a word to. Apathy? Hatred? An unsanctioned marriage between the two?

“I waited, for one thing. I waited for my friend to come back, but he ran off with my gift.”

Donghyun could only flinch and grimace. Gifts were so important, in both of their secluded little sects. Pieces of the soul. A promise from one person to another. The start of a dialogue between the two. He had ghosted a courtship.

“Of course then I realized we were kids mimicking things we knew nothing about and that it never meant anything in the first place. And that hurt for awhile. But you get over it eventually.” He shrugged stiffly looking off into the black distance again.

Donghyun was silent for a few moments. These things had to be navigated so carefully. He was crossing a river by jumping from one small rock to another. They were so wet… covered with wigs of algae and robes of fresh water. A quick sign of the cross and he had to jump.

“So much happened. So much I wanted to die.”

Daehwi’s head turned slowly back in Donghyun’s direction. His gaze was still pained, but a little softer. Donghyun wondered if he ever really got over it.

“What happened?”

“I wanted to be a priest.”

“And why can’t you?”

Donghyun sighed and stood up. There were so many smells in the air. Moss. Water. Wet bark. The forest was alive with scent. It was easy to hide out here where the wind blew everything away so quickly you could barely catch a whiff of it. It’s not like a classroom behind stone walls where you could smell everyone in nearly every adjacent room. So he stepped closer, almost closing the gap between them, and pulled down his coat collar a little and baring his neck in a dramatic flair.

Fruit.

Daehwi’s nose twitched.

“They won’t let us in. Too… compromised. Prone to sin. Made to serve God in other ways.”

“An old stereotype.”

“Religions are full of that.”

Another awkward silence. Daehwi cast his gaze downwards. Donghyun wondered if apathy was his protection the way isolation was his. The wind was picking up, and the treetops were rocking now. Donghyun crossed his arms and shivered. The air started to smell a little bit like rain.

“Do you hate me?” Daehwi’s tone was flat. Emotionless.

“No… why would you say that?”

He shrugged, the leaf litter seemingly more interesting than Donghyun’s face. “I just thought you were supposed to.”

Donghyun didn’t know what to say and hugged himself tighter.

“When you left, I guess I thought you were tired of hanging out with someone your people damn to hell.”

Donghyun kicked at the rotting leaves. He guessed it was true. Daehwi wasn’t even baptized. Where else would he go? But that’s not what the religion is about either. There are core tenets of understanding. Of love. Of forgiveness. Donghyun forgave Daehwi the day they met. Shouldn’t He have?

“Well… what do you think of me?”

Daehwi finally shot him another glance. “I think you’re misguided.”

Donghyun sighed again.

The world around them grew steadily darker. Clouds were blowing in blocking the weak rays the moon could provide them. Donghyun began to dread the walk home. Daehwi was a always a mindreader. He smirked a little, finally lightening out of his pensive and emotionless mask. “Need me to walk you home? Gonna get lost again, little kid?”

“I’d appreciate it. I can’t see well.”

They walked in a single file line. Donghyun was cold and unsettled. He wasn’t sure where they stood. They were talking at least, but it didn’t feel like how it should. Daehwi was upset. Their religions were a wall. All Donghyun wanted to do was climb over it, but he was too scared to find a foothold. He was on one side of the river, and he was too busy fussing over the stones in the middle to even try to cross.

Stone walls and lights in the distance. Daehwi walked him all the way up to his open window, and the rain finally started to fall.

Donghyun swayed, unsure, but desperate to extend some sort of olive branch.

“It’s gonna pour.”

Daehwi grunted in agreement.

“You should… come inside.”

The smaller man studied him for a moment, eyes traveling across Donghyun’s facial features, scrutinizing. Looking for something. But God had other plans. The rain picked up quickly, going from a drizzle to something steadier with threats to let loose into a storm.

“Yeah,” Daehwi agreed, and they climbed into Donghyun’s dark room before they could be drenched. Donghyun shut the window. Daehwi loitered until Donghyun turned the desk lamp back on.

The shrubs outside rustled and rubbed against the wall. Daehwi sniffed.

“It’s bare in here.”

Donghyun shrugged. “What did you picture?”

“A nest at least. You’re such a fucking monk.”

Donghyun let himself laugh a little. “I was raised by nuns, I guess it shows.”

Donghyun could smell him in here. He smelled like a mass on the beach. Incense, pews, salt water, sand. It was infinitely better than fruit, but Donghyun briefly wondered what they smelled like together. Cranberries growing in the ocean? Pineapple on white sand? A hidden apple underneath a church pew?

The butterfly on his desk. Daehwi was running his fingers across the top of the frame. “This was my first one. It’s crooked. I’m better now.”

“Make me a new one.”

“If I do, you can’t leave again.”

Donghyun reached into his coat pocket, feeling the beads he stashed earlier. The rain outside persisted, running down the window like steady lanes of traffic.

“Do you forgive me?” Donghyun asked gently.

Daehwi turned to him, crossing his arms. “For leaving? If you don’t do it again.”

“You said we were kids.”

“We were. It didn’t mean anything except hurt feelings then. If we do it now,” he quirked a brow again. “It’s for real.”

Donghyun took a deep breath. “And you don’t… care? About me?”

A brief look of confusion crossed the younger man’s face before it was back to apathy. “What’d you mean?”

“That I… that I’m… like this.”

Daehwi’s brow creased. “If I cared I wouldn’t have even walked you home. Shouldn’t you be more worried about God?”

Donghyun shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Silence.

“I prayed to be a beta.”

“That sounds like you.”

“I wanted to preach so badly, Daehwi. I don’t know what to do now.”

Daehwi shrugged. “I don’t know either.”

Donghyun wasn’t even sure a courtship between them would work. It was a matter of religion. They weren’t converting each other. One wasn’t about to drop his belief entirely. They were both feverish with faith. And that made Donghyun afraid. But he pulled out the white rosary anyway and offered it to Daehwi.

“It’s important to me.”

Daehwi looked at it pointedly before slowly taking it from him.

“And if I decide you aren’t for me?”

“Give it back to me.”

Daehwi nodded. “I’ll hold onto it for now.” He hesitated before stepping closer, twisting his head towards the shell of Donghyun’s ear. “You smell good, by the way.”

Donghyun shivered.

Daehwi glanced outside. The rain weakened a little. The night was growing old. “It’s the full moon, Donghyun. I have things to attend to.”

Donghyun nodded. “Just come back?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. A heavy pause, each unsure of how to proceed around the other. Each made a little dizzy by the other’s scent, each afraid of spitting at their faith, each terrified of ending up alone.

“Lend me an umbrella?”

A cloth torch passed from one hand to another. Sound and wind filled the room when the window open and then Donghyun was alone again, just as suddenly as he had left the room earlier that night.

Deep down he knew they wouldn’t last. He just hoped their fling would be worth it.

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sigmastolen · 1 year

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friends!!! today was a great bird day, capping a pretty good bird week-or-so

ok so first, one of the recent rainy mornings (last friday maybe) when i was driving through the park on my way to work, i looked at this one tall, barren tree and i saw what i'm pretty sure was a great horned owl huddled in its branches -- it was a big raptor silhouette with what looked like the horns on its head, and we've heard great horned owls calling at night before, but i never imagined i'd see one!

i did a birdfeeder craft some weeks ago and brought home the extra birdseed bc it was a 10 lb bag and i wasn't about to leave it at work for the resident rodents to get at, and i've started putting a couple handfuls out on the backyard fence (cinderblock, so there's a nice wide top), and most days i see sparrows (house, white-crowned, song, chipping) and/or mourning doves come and eat it and they're so cute and it makes me so happy

i've mentioned the red-tailed hawk that lives by the freeway eddies on my way to work before, but friday and saturday i saw two red-tails hanging around that area, which was pretty exciting (red-tails tend to be solitary so mum and i speculate that they're hooking up)

which i guess brings us to today's walk in the park! at first it was raining lightly so no camera today, but i did bring binoculars. on the way there, going up the hill, an entire flock of waterlogged cedar waxwings flew from a barren tree across the street to a leafy tree right above my head, which was the closest i've ever seen them. and then after we crested the hill i checked out the barren tree that i saw the owl in (lots of birds like to sit there so i am in the habit of looking whenever i pass) and not only was there a male american kestrel in that tree, but a red-tailed hawk was sitting in a tree nearby (probably the one i've seen by the fire station and the elementary school -- it seems to hold the east end of the park). and then there were the usual assortment of crows, yellow-rumped warblers in fine breeding colors, western bluebirds, black phoebes, dark-eyed juncos, various sparrows, various hummingbirds (we mainly have anna's and allen's but i'm not discounting rarer ones), geese (canada, egyptian, feral domestic), and mallards... until i crossed under the road to the other part of the park and saw a red-shouldered hawk (it seems to hold the southeast area but i've seen it perched in the adjacent neighborhood as well). i started following it from tree to tree bc i'm obnoxious, and while i was watching i heard another hawk start to yell. the first hawk flew towards it and i saw it land on the same branch as another red-shouldered hawk, and then it mounted the second hawk and they copulated! then one hawks flew away (i think the first one, the male) and i lost it, but i started following the second hawk instead as she went from tree to tree, calling periodically. eventually she went to the high-up crook of a pine tree, holding a pine stick (w/ needles) in her mouth, which she put into the nest she's apparently making there, and she spent some time up there, tamping down the sticks and making adjustments. after a few minutes she started going from tree to tree again, and shortly after i had to go, but it was so cool a;skdjf;

and then there were more of the usual little birds on the way home that i hadn't seen on the way there in the rain, including house finches, lesser goldfinches, more sparrows and bluebirds, and probable bushtits, california towhees, and hutton's vireos.

oh and also while it was still raining there were also thousands, nay, millions of ants on the sidewalk! probably their nests were flooding and they were trying to get out, maybe with their eggs? pictures to follow. it was pretty crazy! and while i was watching the red-shoulder at the nest site there were also two squirrels having a noisy confrontation and jousting at each other along a tree trunk. none of the usual lizards today, though - too cold and wet.

#vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas #i love birds #raptors raptors everywhere #critters not otherwise specified #my local fauna #long post

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aureliusinspo · 1 year

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GUTRAIDH SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT & WIZARDRY,

LOCATION ✶ scotland, exact location unknown and spelled to repel mugglekind HEADMASTER ✶ amelie onneas, since 2017 FOUNDED ✶ around the 8th century FOUNDERS ✶ adisorin gutraidh & axius gutraidh

SCHOOL FACTS,

adisorin and axius were brother and sister, and the school was founded from their desire to teach more than just their younger siblings.

the school itself resembles inverness castle.

the school colors are white and brown, and animal on the gutraidh crest is a pine marten.

school motto is sapere aude, meaning 'dare to be wise'.

gutraidh is where the contineo balls are held each year, but over the last twenty years there have been three balls held at alvred ( 2014 ), managold ( 2015 ), and thiudreiks ( 2016 ) respectively during a mysterious closure of the gutraidh school.

no one is certain why it was closed for three entire years, but when it opened back up, the school had a new headmaster and all new professors.

#extras: worldbuilding.

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writingcorvid · 1 year

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Skin And Bones

It was an odd thing, when that letter arrived. It was mid-October, and during a bored day of being cooped up in my apartment, I had a letter come through the mail slot. The return address was some insurance company I can’t remember the name of, and enclosed within were the details of an inheritance. It took me a couple of reads to remember exactly who it was talking about; a semi-distant relative of mine, an uncle on my mothers side. We didn’t see much of him, as he spent most of his days living in a sequestered little valley way up north. My mom didn’t talk about him much though, as he was much older than her. In high school by the time she was old enough to have memories that lasted that long, and he was long gone to college before she was even ten.

Details get muddy there. He had a habit of falling into weird, esoteric occult-type stuff, from what I heard. A common fear among my grandparents was that he joined a cult, and that fear transitioned into him potentially becoming the new Ted Kaczynski once he wrote a letter saying he was going off grid. Bought a plot of land near some mountains up north, and decided that a more simple life was better for him. Thankfully, no such thing happened, but contact from him was sparse. Cards came at Christmas or for important birthdays, more often than not arriving either a week early or week late, and usually accompanied by some odd gift. A necklace made from a bucks antler, a wolf’s tooth, or something similar. Well-made, to his credit. On my 18th birthday, he even sent me an old buck knife. Weird, but not totally irresponsible.

It became clear though that over time he was doing worse and worse. His handwriting became a bit less smooth and more scratchy, occasionally repeating words or even entire sentences. The quality of the gifts at Christmas became worse and worse, and before long, they stopped. And of course, the letter I held in my hands that day confirmed what happened. He passed in his sleep at a hospital in the nearest town to where he lived. The exact specifics were a bit muddy, and it was hard to tell exactly why he was there. The main suspects were either some sort of accident like falling down a hill, or even being attacked by an animal.

I earned a small settlement of cash, but alongside that, I earned the right to his property up to the north. Life had me burnt out, and I welcomed a change of pace. Not as if I had anything else to do, I did have to head up and see what I wanted to do with the property anyway, be it to keep it, rent it out, or just simply sell it. I talked to my job, and they gave me a month off as “grieving” time. The next day, I packed some bags, loaded up my car, and drove northward. The drive itself was almost 6 hours, and it was an interesting change of scenery. My familiar urban setting of tall, bland office buildings of steel and glass, to the occasional humble farmstead every few kilometres, and eventually finding large, mountainous hills around me.

I swapped towers of metal and glass for towers of stone, capped with snow. The property itself was within a small valley between two such hills, driving up a dirt road and cresting around the outside of a quaint little pond. Tall pine trees surrounded me on each side as the car gently rocked back and forth as I approached the house. Or at least, it’s what my uncle called it. It was well-made for sure, but quaint. Humble and simple, a log cabin with a faint metal chimney stack emerging from the far left side. A bit to the right and behind it was a small wooden shed, a wire of some kind running from underneath the shed door to the back of the house, and partially obscured by snowfall. I could see a few small windows running along the side of the house as well, curtains drawn. No lights appeared to be on.

The shed was the first place I checked, hearing a low rumbling as I approached. At first I was scared, thinking it was some kind of animal growling or something. I pulled open the door, and thankfully my fear was abated. Just a generator rumbling, with plenty of full gas cans beside it, and the generator itself seemed to be quite stocked up on fuel. From there, I went to the front of the house, and to the door. I walked up, unlocked the door, which I had the shoulder-check to get to properly open. Suppose that meant it kept the cold out well enough.

The space clearly hadn’t seen much use in a while. A small but fine layer of dust covered just about everything I could see, with a few of my uncle’s old things still present. A spare coat and pair of boots sat next to the door, a couple family photos hung up on walls or sat on shelves. To my left was a wood stove next, and to the right of that was a large window, facing out into the woods. There was a bear-skin rug on the floor, with a few chairs positioned there, and a small table with a radio on it. Suppose he used that to keep up with current events.

To the right of the furniture was a large bookshelf, crammed full of various books, old and new, with seemingly no rhyme or reason behind organization. Survival guides and manuals were intermixed with books about indigenous legends, and the odd novel for entertainment. Mostly horror and mystery type stuff, if I had to guess about them.

A hallway led down to the right, revealing a doorway to a kitchen on the right, another closed door beyond that, and two other doors on the left, and a last one at the end of the hall. The first on the left was a bathroom, then a bedroom, and a simple closet space. Turning to the final door on the right, I was instantly hit with a foul stench and almost gagged as I turned to open the door. I covered my mouth and nose with my coat before opening up the doorway.

I was met with a room buzzing with flies and filled with old, rotting meat. Clearly some sort of butcher room for whatever animals my uncle caught and killed to eat, evidenced by the pelts, furs, horns, antlers and other such inedible pieces. It seems he didn’t have the time to clean it up before being hospitalized. I retreated outside before I gagged too hard and began opening the windows and doors to start wafting out the smell.

I spent the next hour or so pulling in boxes and bags from my car, both to package up my uncle’s old belongings and to unpack my own things for the month I’d be staying here. A room filled with half-rotted animal carcasses definitely won’t help the resale value. I thanked God and myself that I packed some masks, though they didn’t do much to keep the smell out, and I began to remove what was left out. I wasn’t too sure how to dispose of it all. I was certain that uncle just tossed pieces out to decompose and feed the soil or wild animals, but I doubt he threw it several garbage bags worth. It took me another hour just getting what I could into garbage bags without vomiting, and dragging it out as far into the woods as I could without getting lost. I didn’t want a bear or something to follow me home, after all.

I plugged in a fan next to the room to air out the smell through the open window, grabbed a mop and plenty of soap, and began to wash it down. By the time I was done and the smell was finally beginning to dissipate, it was well into the night hours. The moon was high in the sky, and devoid of light pollution in the surrounding area, I could clearly see both it and plenty of stars. A beautiful sight to at least put a bit of a better mood into a day mostly filled with what felt like endless driving, or half-rotting gore. After liberally spraying air freshener around the room, I retired to bed. Sleep came surprisingly easy with how tired I was from the day’s work.

The next day, I took a very long shower to fully make sure the stink of rot was washed out of my clothes, and walked over towards the butcher room. The smell was slightly better from last time, but definitely needed more time to air out. I turned to leave, but noticed something just outside the window. I walked over to get a better look, and was more than a bit confused by what I saw. Hanging from a partially protruding nail was what looked to be a dreamcatcher. Small but ornate, sticks and twigs held together by blades of grass used in place of twine.

I didn’t recall seeing it yesterday, but I figured it wasn’t too out of place. Uncle was very much into this bizarre spiritualistic type of stuff, so I thought nothing of it. I decided to let it hang while I opened up the window and let the fan continue to air out the horrid smell. In the meanwhile, I turned to the main area and began to put together my uncle's old things that I figured no one would want. Better to be donated and get some use. He was all about taking as little as he could and giving back as much as he could, so I figured he wouldn’t mind donations of old clothes, boots, and coats.

I had gotten about 45 minutes into packing boxes full of my uncle’s old belongings, before I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I assumed I had just left the window open for so long that I got cold, but it wasn’t that. Everything else felt about room temperature. A sense of unease washed over me, a sensation like I wasn’t alone, a creeping dread in the back of my mind.

Was it just some odd bout of homesickness? Being out in such alien and unfamiliar territory? Or was something truly wrong here? I sat up a bit more and looked around the room, and I swore for the briefest of moments that I saw an antler outside the main window of the living room. I blinked, and it was gone. I instantly shot up, grabbed my coat, and ran outside.

I ran around to the side of the house, and before I rounded the corner, the smell hit me. I turned and saw the bag of rotting animal parts I had dragged out last night. It was now sitting, slumped up against the side of the house, ripped open and about half of the gorey mass within now gone. Not spilling out across the ground. Gone. The bag was ripped into, but why was it still so bizarrely neat? Why was it here? How was it here?

There was not a track in the snow nor a drop of gross meat-drippings in sight. With a huff I grabbed a pair of gloves and began to drag the remains back out into the woods, this time turning the raw pieces of carcass out into the snow and aimed to dispose of the empty bag once I had gotten home.

I walked back towards the house, and saw another one of those dreamcatchers. Hanging right above the door, which was still open a crack. I froze outside the doorway, my heart stopping and breath hitching in my throat. I was certain that there wasn’t one there before. I wasn’t taking any more chances, and pulled out my phone to take a picture of the front of the house. Two dreamcatchers, one at the window of the butcher, and one just outside the main door.

I went back inside and thoroughly examined every inch of the house with my old buck knife in hand. Thankfully, nothing out of place, nothing missing. Not even a speck of out of place dirt. I checked the closet, bedroom, every possible crawlspace where anything could have hidden, and thankfully found nothing.

Thankfully, nothing else had really happened through the rest of the day either. At some point I made myself some dinner with some edible food stored in the kitchen, but most of the day was spent continuing to pack boxes full of stuff that no one else would take. I decided to leave the books. No TV or cell phone signal out here, so books would probably be the best thing to pass the time out here. Not that I was really complaining, I had plenty of books I had been meaning to read for a long time and simply haven’t had the time. May as well utilize my month off to the fullest.

I was done by the early evening, so I sat on one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs and began looking through the books for anything of interest. I wasn’t surprised to see Hatchet there, and began reading that. It seemed fitting, considering the circumstances. I sat there, read, and did my best to relax for the rest of the evening. But now that I wasn’t focused on work, that bizarre, creeping fear crept back into my mind as I processed the day's events. Why was there another new dreamcatcher? I was gone for only about half an hour, how could someone have come by and placed it there, without a trace? And doubly goes for the rotting bag of meat.

I was only able to get a couple pages into the book before I really stopped reading, and did my best to think about it all. Eventually I decided to just sleep on it, sprayed a bit more air freshener into the butcher room, and went to sleep. Maybe those dreamcatcher’s aren’t so bad, as sleep came fairly quickly to me. That or I was more exhausted than I realized from packing boxes and lugging another bag of rotting meat around.

I awoke on my side facing towards the window, and almost screamed when I saw it. Another one of those dreamcatchers. How many of those things were there? How were they getting there? I sat up with a shock and ran towards the window, looking outside. Still no tracks as far as I could tell.

I looked back up more at it, and my heart fell into my stomach as I looked closer. It wasn’t just made from twigs, sticks, and leaves anymore. Small bones adorned the bottom, hanging like some kind of macabre windchime. I quickly went out, throwing my coat on and ran out towards the back of the house. I took another picture of the back of the house, and then the sides. I was already certain that dreamcatcher wasn’t there already, but that was definitive proof that I truly wasn’t going insane. There should be only 3 dreamcatchers, definitively, and now I have evidence of it.

I looked around the side of the house and found no tracks that really indicated anything. Only what seemed to be deer tracks based on the hooves, but I wasn’t any sort of hunter or expert tracker. They sort of snaked around the house in a weird pattern, almost like the deer wasn’t entirely sure how to walk yet. But they seemed too large for a newborn, and it wasn’t dragging snow like it was lame or limping. Eventually they snaked back off into the woods, disappearing through the treeline.

I decided I had enough of whatever weirdness was going on, and got in my car, driving off towards the nearby town. A quick little trek for some food and drink to stock up a bit better, and I bought some trail cameras to place around the property to hopefully get a better understanding at just what seemed to be going on at night around here. Whatever it was, it was quiet enough to not wake me despite being so close to the house, and it didn’t leave tracks, but I knew something had to be going on out there.

I pulled into the valley to start driving towards the house, and saw a deer of some kind staring at me from behind a tree. I think it was a deer, anyway. It stood almost awkwardly, and its eyes shone like tiny yellow pinpricks in the dark cover of the trees. It just stood there, staring at me as I passed by. I checked the rearview mirrors, and the thing was gone. Just thinking about it sent a chill up my spine.

Once I arrived at the house I unloaded the food, and then took a little trek in the woods, both to get some fresh air and hopefully clear my mind, but also to set up these trail cams and see if they would catch anything.

I had three of them, and set two up at the front left corner, and back right corner of the cabin respectively, capturing one of the smaller sides as well as either the front or back of the house. The third I brought in deeper with me to where I dropped the bag of rotting meat, which thankfully was almost completely gone save for some pink-colored snow where I dumped the contents out. I set it there, watching out around that area, affixing them all to trees and stumps to get as clear of a view as I possibly could have. I hoped that it would work.

I made my way back to the house and sat down on one of the chairs in the main room to relax, and my eyes wandered to the bookshelf. Chock full of weird, esoteric type stuff, as was fitting for him. Plenty of old folklore tales about old Indigenous myths and other such things. Was he onto something with all of this? I didn’t consider myself very spiritually inclined, but even I couldn’t help that he knew something more was going on out here. And he was closest to this place than anyone else, much more than I was at the very least. Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as we thought.

I leaned over and turned on the radio, seeking to drown out my thoughts with music in an effort to relax. Some kind of oldies station came on, cheesy but the nice tunes helped to recenter my mind and help me relax a bit. And I didn’t know much about old radios like this to really desire to flip between the various channels. Overall, not the worst thing I could have been listening to at the moment.

I closed my eyes to relax, and in doing so, let my mind wander a bit too much, and wound up falling asleep. I began to stir awake, hearing a low thud of some kind from outside. It came again, much louder, and I jolted awake. I rubbed my eyes to let them adjust, and they turned to the window to try and garner what time it was. It was pitch black outside, as far as I could see. I got up and stepped outside, only to be practically blinded when I opened the door. It was about mid afternoon, the sun beaming right down to the front of the house.

At first I was confused, and then absolute terror set in. I ran over to the side of the house, and almost fell flat on my ass when I saw what was there. It was a carcass, draped across the side of the house, of what looked to be a young moose by my guest. An entire back leg was missing, and it looked like it had been torn apart by… something. I wanted to assume maybe a pack of wolves or even a bear, but why was it here? How was it here? Did it try to flee up the side of the house only to succumb to its wounds? I ran out to the trail camera on that side of the house and retrieved it, bringing it inside to see the photos.

It was obviously still bright out when the photo was taken, so it was blurry. I couldn’t see much of the treeline itself, but I could see the spot where its body would end up. The motion activated camera took only one picture, the moose body mid-motion, almost as if it was being launched towards the roof and edge of the house. It offered no insights, but at least it confirmed one thing for me, and it’s that something, somehow, put the corpse there. Or more aptly, managed to launch the corpse there.

I sat down for another few minutes, gathering my thoughts and courage to get back out there, as the steady realization that I so willingly ran out towards… Whatever caused that settled into my mind. I counted myself lucky that I wasn’t strung up and torn apart like the moose just outside.

I took a breath and collected myself, slipping back outside as I cautiously crept to the other side, thankfully seeing nothing else except the torn apart carcass of the moose, still oozing blood along the side of the house. I walked over and placed the camera back where it was, and not taking my eyes off of the moose. I found what looked like a large tree branch, and used it to push the body off of the side of the house, falling and crumpling to the ground with a few wet, stomach-churning slaps. I did my best to hold back a couple of gags.

I simply stood there in amazement and bewilderment at the body. What could have done such a thing to it? I looked up at the edge and saw it worn away at some of the wooden logs that built up the house, denting and splintering off some pieces. Moreover, what the hell was I going to do with an almost entire moose carcass?

I paced back and forth as I considered my options. Should I call somebody? What would I even tell them, that a dead moose fell on my roof? It looked young and a bit small, so I could have dragged it out into the woods to decompose and let other woodland animals eat it. Clearly my fears of not letting a bear or pack of wolves or some other predator too close to the house were unfounded, as they were content to chase a moose all the way over here.

Eventually, that’s what I settled on. Maybe if I gave them some food they’d be content to leave me alone? I know I’ve heard people talk about not wanting to feed wild animals, but I assumed that was more for urban settings so they don’t run into people's backyards and trash. Here, the animals were already in my backyard. If anything, I moved into theirs. I assumed that if I gave them the food, they’d see it as some kind of peace offering and leave me alone, play nice? I dragged it out a bit further into the woods just so that I wouldn’t be disturbed by wolves or bearings tearing it apart.

But… I had no clue how correct that assumption was. After another thorough shower, I went to bed, doing my best to get the image of that… torn apart animal out of my head, and I awoke to an animal call. It was still the middle of the night, pitch black as I looked out the window. This time not a stand in for another moose corpse, this really was the outside as I could see the trees bathed in the moonlight.

It sounded like some kind of animal call, I think? I couldn’t place what it was, but something about it sent a chill up my spine. Was it sick or injured? Starving?

I heard it again, this low, dissonant wail. And that’s when I realized it almost sounded like a person imitating it. Fury filled me as everything sort of clicked in place to me. Of course, this must have been the prank of some dipshit teens with nothing better to do. Probably caused my uncle to have an accident. Impudent little brats.

I got dressed, threw on my coat, and grabbed an old rifle that was hung up on one of the walls for hunting. I stepped outside, and began yelling into the night.

“I know you’re out there, and I’m armed! This is my property, so I’ve got the legal right to shoot at anyone trespassing!” I started barking out, hoping that they wouldn’t be able to tell that I had absolutely no idea how to shoot a gun. I heard footsteps, twigs breaking and leaves crunching.

“Come on out here and show yourself!” I barked, when they stepped out into the moonlight, staring right at me. Not a person, not entirely anymore. My heart dropped in an instant and my eyes practically bulged out of my skull.

A humanoid figure stood at the edge of the tree-line, staring right at me. It looked like a woman, but emaciated, and impossibly tall. She was wiry thin and looked to only be skin and bones, but she must have been almost 8 feet tall. Maybe more. She wore only a simple loincloth across her breasts and groin. Her head wasn’t human at all. Some kind of deer skull, with massive antlers, and pinprick yellow eyes staring right at me. Her hands ended in massive claws that would no doubt tear me to shreds. And her legs were large and furred like some animal, ending in hooves.

I almost fell over in sheer shock as I scrambled back inside, slamming the door shut behind me. I heard more footsteps, and watched as the figure came to the side window. I gripped the rifle and kept aiming there, hoping it would serve as some intimidation factor despite being completely empty, I think, and myself having no clue how to even fire it. It stood there, staring at me. It’s head tilted as if in curiosity. The small, glowing yellow eyes didn’t blink. And just like that, she turned and walked back into the woods.

I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath. I held it so long I almost passed out, and my heart was beating so fast that I could feel my head pounding. I swear I could almost hear it. My hands were shaking and I fell down against the wall, doing my best to process whatever the hell I just saw. I pinched my forearm to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, just in case. But I was still there.

I sat huddled up against the wall until morning came, completely still until I heard any sound which made me jump. Once morning came I made myself the strongest coffee I could stomach to give myself a bit of energy, before heading back out there. I could see the prints it left, and quickly took a picture of them. They looked like hooves of some kind, and almost the same size and type as the ones left around the outside of the house the previous day.

I immediately set out collecting the trail cameras, thankfully not encountering that… thing the other day. As I set out to collect the one where I’ve been dumping the various bits of gore. The remains of the body were gone. I gathered all three up, brought them back, and began to review the footage. The one on the right side of the house didn’t catch anything interesting, just a hare of some kind running away and a couple of nocturnal birds swooping by which caused the motion sensor to activate.

Next, the one observing the dumping grounds. A few pictures were taken of me dragging the moose carcass out there. A few small woodland creatures passed by, taking small nibbles. And then she wandered into the frame, and tore it to pieces. It was a horrifying feeding frenzy as she tore into it, taking another leg, and leaving the head nothing more than a stump. She dragged it back out of frame, and then walked past the camera towards the house. The third and final cam caught her there as well, walking out of the treeline and beside it, her strange, furred thigh almost completely obscuring the camera's view.

My eyes wandered back to the bookshelf as I recoiled back from my seat after looking at the images. He really was onto something. I kneeled before it and pulled out book after book, flipping through the pages, before finally finding what I was looking for.

A wendigo. That’s what she was. A creature of Indigenous myth, a person who transforms into a monster with an unending thirst and hunger for blood and gore. Believed to be a sort of divine punishment for those who partake in acts of cannibalism. They’re driven mad by an uncontrollable hunger, only truly lucid in the final moments after devouring a kill. They’re so hard to find because they rarely leave any trace of themselves. They devour everything. Down to the skin and bones. Fairly ironic, as they themselves typically look wiry thin and emaciated, another sign of how such ravenous hunger consumes them.

Part of me was absolutely horrified and counting my blessings at the fact that I wasn’t torn apart at my doorstep. I read a bit further, and did manage to find one interesting tidbit. Strangely, those that willingly feed wendigo are often known to bring it back to some semblance of lucidity. It knew that I was the one feeding it, that’s why all it did was stare at me. It was perhaps even friendly towards me. Or as close as an 8 foot tall ravenous monster could be.

I sat there and thought, more and more. Previously this was an entity thought to only exist in fairy tales and old indigenous folklore. And I had living proof of it, walking around in this valley like it owned the place. If I had concrete evidence of such a thing… I’d be world famous. I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this ever again. I had photos here, but I knew I needed more than just some trail camera photos that people would think are just doctored images.

I went out into the town again that day, got myself a proper camera, and picked up some pieces of raw meat from the store. A whole chicken, a pack of ground beef, some cuts of pork, everything. I set an alarm on my phone, laid down, and took a nap to recoup my strength. My phone began blaring at 8 AM, and I quickly pulled out the meat, and went out.

I freed the raw meat from its packaging, and began throwing it out onto the ground in front of the house. I retreated back inside, holding my camera, and sat, and waited. I must have sat there for about an hour before I heard the footsteps again. I peered through the tiny crack in the door I had kept open, watching and waiting. She slowly wandered out, before falling to all fours like some animal, sniffing at the meat. I didn’t give her an opportunity to even take a bite before I fully stepped out to take a photo.

Only to discover that I had left the flash on. A blinding white light shone across the front step and illuminating her. She instantly screamed and recoiled, a horrid sound like the death cry of some sort of bird. I froze in place as she stood on all fours and charged at me. I tried to run back inside, but too little and too late. She launched herself at me, sending us both tumbling to the ground.

She was straddling me, and I let out a scream, absolutely certain I was going to die as I instinctively raised my hands. Through them, I could see even like this, her antlers almost grazed the roof. She huffed down at me, an exhale that washed warm air across my body, and she leaned down. Her mouth opened, unveiling a surprisingly clean maw. Two rows of jagged, razor sharp teeth filled it, and a long, inky black tongue came out. It dragged across my fingers, licking them. I hadn’t noticed some juices from the meat leaked onto my hands.

She licked away, almost polishing them. The sensation was almost ticklish, until she stood up, and crawled back outside. She quickly devoured the meat I left out, and I stood there, shocked. My eyes wandered to the camera. Shattered on impact, the photo gone.

She ate, and then looked back to me, and wandered over. She fit herself barely inside the doorway and stood up at her full height, looking me over. She was bent over in order to fit in the abode, staring at me with the same curious look.

I wasn’t sure what to do, and all I did was stare back. Her eyes wandered around the dwelling, before she sat down on the floor, crossing her legs. She reached out and grabbed me, pulling me into her. My head sat against her chest as I now sat on her lap. A content sound, not unlike a purr emanated from her. Some small, affectionate thanks for leaving out the food for her to at least partially satiate her hunger.

We stayed there for a while, and I wasn’t sure if I stayed out of fear or curiosity. But at least she knew not to bite the hand that feeds.

And so, that became our routine. When the snow began to melt, I started a small garden. We had, bizarrely enough, a bit of a relationship. She kept pest animals away from the garden. In turn, I fed her whenever I went out into town. Some nights she lived out in the woods.

Others, she was with me, reconnecting to some small semblance of humanity that lay within her, somewhere. As strange as it sounds, we loved each other. She began to imitate my voice, a scarily accurate mimicry that she used as best as she could to communicate with me. I showed her music, books, art and technology. She seemed mostly confused, and seemed to care more about me. That was all she really wanted. Just to feel the warmth of someone that wasn’t fleeing in terror from her, or trying to hunt her, calling her a monster.

I never did take another photo. Maybe it would have helped for the memories, as the month began to come to a close. It took a while for her to understand that we wouldn’t be seeing each other again for a while. I planted a small kiss on the top part of the deer skull, and she let out that familiar, happy purr.

It was then that I told her that I loved her. In truth, I did. She most definitely was unusual, but I figured that some irregularities were exactly what I needed at this point in time. No better way to break the monotony of the life that I lived. She told me back, in a croaky imitation of my voice.

I packed my things, and she presented me with one last dreamcatcher, which I happily accepted. She watched as I left.

She left me with a lot of mysteries and questions about the world. But I knew one thing. And it’s that I couldn’t wait to see her again, and I drove back home with a smile on my face. Maybe I’ll see about making my job a bit more long distance.

#romance #horror elements #tw cannibalism #tw gore #wendigo #writing #my writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #monster #monster girl #monster lover #slow burn

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