#going back to my roots with the faux stained glass look

[little-miss-dumpsterfire]

I think I made you up inside my head - chapter three

Chapter three my select few darlings! Yes, it’s already on wattpad (sorry if you’ve read it already) but I like to share!

Are you ready kids?

Chapter Three - I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you

Trigger warning - mental health issues and blood/gore.

If you're not comfortable, please skip. 💛

******************************************

Sharp tears prickled in his hazel eyes as the ability to form coherent words seemed to escape him. He had known the minor details surrounding Lindsay's untimely death - a reality tv darling dropping dead was headline-worthy - but her family were tight-lipped about the exact circumstances of her demise. His mind raced as he tried to comprehend how Izzy had known all of this; her knowledge rivalled that of a fly on the bathroom wall. As if she could hear his innermost thoughts, Izzy answered his unspoken question.

"I knew the right people to ask," she told him, brushing the hair out from in front of her eyes, "I knew she didn't just die. I wasn't going to let her death be treated in such a blasé fashion."

Axel choked, the words lodged deeply in his throat. "Bu- I mean... how did you get the mirror?"

"I found it one day. It was in a box on my doorstep. Any sane person would leave it be, but if the media established anything, I'm clearly not seen as sane. So I opened it. I don't know who sent it to me. My money's on a producer who revels in the sadistic thrill derived from the torment and suffering we went through. I couldn't throw it away though, because what would be left of her if I did? She was already condemned to the ground. I wasn't going to be the one to throw her memory to the wind."

Izzy looked to her left, her reflection dimly lit in the glass cabinet on the far wall. "In my head... all I think of is when it's all over, is this how I'll be defined? The final victim of Total Drama... that's etched into my brain. I'll become another knick-knack in a hall of curiosities. We're no longer people in here, Axel, we're collectables."

Thoughts bounced around erratically in Axel's head - conflicting notions manifesting like an angel and a devil on his shoulder. In front of him was a woman who was struggling with the turmoil outliving all of her friends. Yet, the magnetic pull of the almighty dollar swayed his actions towards chasing stardom.

He lightly gripped her forearm, giving her his best convincing empathetic smile.

"Tell me the stories. Let the voices out of the purgatory that is your mind. Everything...one, everyone in here will not be relegated to the sidelines, I won't let that happen." Axel assured Izzy, his warm smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Ignoring the suspicion that washed over her thoughts - for the time being at least - Izzy continued walking down the aisles of shelves. Axel shadowed her, following a few paces behind, mindlessly fiddling with the items on display. Two tarnished faux-gold lockets sat near each other, the two halves of the 'BFF' heart separate from one another. As he went to push the two sections together, Izzy stopped him abruptly and pushed his hand away.

"No," she started, startling Axel with the sudden sternness. "They can't be together. They don't share a heart anymore."

"So what? They grew out of being obnoxious teenage girls and went their separate ways. Big fucking deal!"

She stared daggers into him, holding the shelving for support. "You've got no idea, kid. Just because the sun's covered, it doesn't mean your shadow's gone."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as appearances were concerned, Katie and Sadie were almost each other's doubles. Matching short pigtails with bright pink hair ties, coordinated short shorts, crop-tops and wedged sandals... the two looked like they fell from opposite sides of a funhouse mirror. To all of us on the cast, and the audience at home, no doubt, the only differentiating factor between the two was their build. Katie was slim and taller than Sadie by about four inches, whereas Sadie was shorter and carried more weight.

The two 'BFFL's sat together on the stairs leading to the dock, ready to film their segment for the opening sequence. Waiting for the crew to finish setting up the camera equipment, Katie busies herself with refastening her hair ties.

"Okay girls," an unseen producer informs them, "we need your best-infatuated expression. So give up wide eyes, big smiles, the whole nine yards."

The girls nod in response, awaiting their cue. Sadie clasped her hands against her chest - a wide smile plastered on her face - and Katie bit her lip coyly.

"And.... cut. Alright, move set to the dock for Beth's fire-baton stunt. Doug, remember the extinguisher this time." The producer called about. "Great job, girls. Especially you, Katie. That lip bite was dynamic."

Sadie looked to her right at her best friend. "Wait, you bit your lip? We agreed on a wide-mouthed smile."

"It's no big deal, I just wanted to try something different," Katie shrugged, readjusting her shoulder strap. "We can't always be the same, you know?"

Personality-wise, once you got to know them separately, it was like night and day. Katie was free-spirited, leading with her heart. Her passion for all things fashion was evident through her and Sadie's matching outfits and her behind-the-scenes chats with the likes of Lindsay and Heather. Sadie, on the other hand, was more logical, leading with her head. She was more likely to be the sheep as opposed to the shepherd. And when Katie was eliminated early? It was like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

Sadie sat on a jagged log at the campfire, head in her hands violently sobbing. Bridgette futilely offered her support, attempting to coax the girl from her hysterical state.

"Hey, Sadie, it'll be okay. You've got all us Killer Bass on your side." Bridgette lightly rubbed circles on the crying girl's back.

"No!" Sadie snapped at Bridgette, tears staining her cheeks. "It's not okay! I need Katie. When she's not near me, I break out in hives. She's my everything! I need her more than oxygen! Without her... I'll just die!"

Concerned expressions flashed on the faces of their fellow teammates as Sadie's wails echoed through the woods of Camp Wawanakwa. She clutched the debris from the dock closer to her chest; small cracks formed as wooden shrapnel shattered from around the edges.

What we thought back then was just a toxic 'uber' friendship between two sixteen-year-old girls was far more deep-rooted than any of us anticipated. Regarding Sadie... the best way to sum that up is to quote my dearly missed best friend Noah: 'Sadie is a whackjob with more baggage than an airport terminal'. But I suppose that is giving her a disservice. Upon Katie's departure, Chris was notified by Sadie's therapist of the extent of her mental state. I found out too because back then, well, let's just say you couldn't leave me in the dark for too long.

Sadie's childhood wasn't easy in the slightest. Her relationship with her birth parents was relatively non-existent. Therefore, she was surrendered into the custody of the state. The conveyor belt life of passing through the foster care system took a toll on the girl, with an absence of permanent parental love leaving holes in her heart. Her talkative nature and inhibitions to talk and hug strangers lead to her first visit to the therapist. She was a clear cut case for the child behavioural scientists: disinhibited social engagement disorder, an attachment disorder. Looking back, this was evident in all her future actions, particularly those with Katie.

The bell rang on the first day of their last year of high school. Sadie - dressed as per usual in fuchsia shorts and a striped crop top - eagerly skipped over to the locker of her best friend. As the locker door slammed and her friend came into view, the excited expression on Sadie's face dropped.

"K-Katie? What's this?" Sadie questioned, holding her sticker-covered folder flush against her chest.

Katie raised an eyebrow quizzically, straightening out her paper timetable to find her first classes location.

"What do you mean, Sadie?"

"I mean that!" the shorter girl exclaimed, gesturing at Katie's outfit. The taller girl had moved away from her typical Total Drama outfit, substituting it with a pair of denim jeans and a pastel pink cardigan.

"Oh, this? I just wanted to branch out a bit. I mean, matching outfits? What are we, twins?"

Katie giggled at her observation, with Sadie clearly missing the joke.

"Anyway, I have to get to English, but I'll see you around, yeah?" Katie chirped before walking off with two other girls.

Sadie stalked over to Katie's locker, using a spare hairpin to open it. Her heart broke upon looking at its contents. Gone were the photos of her and Sadie plastered onto her locker door. Cutouts from fashion magazines and runway shows lay in their wake and stuffed under a pile of books was the BFF necklace Sadie gifted her years prior.

Following their graduation, the pair had drifted apart. Katie received an offer to the most prestigious fashion school in Canada and left their small town for Toronto. Unbeknownst to her, Sadie followed suit and got a job at a sewing goods store. Sadie became Katie's shadow, desperately following her every move. Her morning routine was memorised, her coffee order became part of her mental wallpaper. Sadie's infatuation only grew, as in her mind, distance made the heart grow fonder. If only Katie knew that this distance was all of a few metres.

A harsh squeak dripped from the tired hinges of the ladder as Sadie climbed up the rungs, fastening something onto her wall. For her neighbours, the sound had become a part of their daily lives, as day after day, Sadie adhered more photos on the apartment wall. The collage of the lush green of leaves, the yellow of the bustling taxis and blue of the cloudless sky swirled around on the wall, catching a person's attention as they entered the room. A timber coffee table was neatly placed on the left, adorned with additional photo frames and miscellaneous decorations. The centrepiece to her display shimmered brightly when the morning sun shone through the gap in the curtains. Perched in a small, open velvet lines box was one half of a golden heart-shaped 'BFF' necklace.

Sadie took a step back and tilted her head, taking in the view from as many angles as she could. She had finally achieved the pinnacle of her undying love and infatuation for her former 'BFFL'. Neatly arranged across the length of the wall was a mural, dedicated to her muse, to the reason she woke up every morning. Candid photos of Katie walking down the street, exiting cars and meeting friends for coffee dates were carefully taken by the shadow she didn't know that she had.

A year and a half passed. There was a stark dichotomy between Katie and Sadie's lives. The final year of her fashion degree was approaching quickly, and Katie was not entering it alone. I don't know how many of us predicted it - probably Noah with his impeccable 'gaydar' - but Katie had fallen in love with an architecture student called Daisy. From what was depicted on their respective social media accounts, it was clear to us that they were enamoured with one another. The presence of another woman in Katie's life infuriated Sadie, as she believed that that position was reserved for her and her alone.

Then came the drop in the ocean that caused the whole tsunami. If it wasn't for Katie's selfless nature... well, I imagine things would've turned out a lot differently.

Katie sat cross-legged on the couch, a decorative throw rug draped across her lap. Their rescue cat, Archibald - a male calico - rested behind her head, purring with content as she opened her laptop. Her fingers barely touched the trackpad as she scrolled through her Facebook feed, bypassing ads for strange items and memes about the current political climate.

"Ekaterina," an auburn-haired girl walked through the doorway, a basket of washing in her hands. "I'm making something for lunch after I finish this washing. I'll probably use what's left in the fridge and make a frittata. D'you want some?"

"Ooh, yes please, Dais," Katie smiled at her partner, who poked her tongue out at the use of her nickname.

Katie clicked on her latest post to see who had reacted and liked. A smile crept across Katie's face as she clicked onto the picture: a photoshoot in a field on flowers where a bright ring sparkled on Katie's ring finger. She looked down at her left hand, still in a state of shock at Daisy's proposal. One name stuck out as Katie scrolled through the comments. She hadn't thought of them for years now and wondered what they were getting up to.

She clicked on their profile to compose a new message. Daisy walked up behind her and scratched Archibald's head before planting a kiss behind Katie's ear.

"Oooh, who are you talking to? Not your girlfriend, I hope," Daisy taunted, giggling breathlessly.

Katie threw her head back against the couch cushion and looked up at her fiancée.

"Yeah, I'm shopping elsewhere. I need someone who appreciates my nicknames!" Katie threw back, puffing her cheeks out comically. "No, you goose. It's this girl I used to go to school with. It's been forever and a day, and I thought I'd see how she's going."

"Sadie Calhoun... isn't she that one you went on that show with?"

"Yeah... I felt like such a poser back then. I don't think I've ever squealed since," Katie responded.

"Hey, people change. I had such a crush on you when I saw you on TV, and look now!" Daisy told her before walking away towards the kitchen. "I snagged the girl of my dreams!"

Katie laughed as she typed an introductory line, sending it through before closing her laptop.

*********

A sudden buzz from her phone against the wooden table shook Sadie out of her delirium. She had been sat before her photo wall, carefully cutting out photos of her face for what could have been hours. Paper scraps lined the wooden flooring like irregular speckles of snow as Sadie rose to her feet. Picking up her phone, her eyes shone brightly with its blue light as a squeal escaped from between her lips.

On her screen - behind the myriad of cracks and scratches - sat a notification that held Sadie's heart in a tight grip: Message request from Ekaterina Byers.

If this were a sitcom, I'm sure Sadie would've pinched herself at that moment to assure that she wasn't dreaming. But with one olive branch in the form of an instant message, Katie had signed her own death warrant.

Sadie opened the notification with bated breath, her cheeks aching from the smile that was cemented in place. Her heart fluttered with anxious butterflies as she read the message.

Ekaterina Byers:

"Hi, Sadie. I wonder if you remember me, probably not! High school seems like forever ago! Haha! 😝  I just thought I'd reach out and see if you wanted to get a coffee sometime and just catch up on life!"

The words swirled and danced before Sadie, who lovingly took in every single one with deep adoration and love. Everything she had wanted to tell her, the praise she had wanted to shower Katie in bounced around in her head. She placed her phone down, forcing herself to calm down before she wrote a response.

Sadie Calhoun:

"Oh, hi! OMG! Of course, I remember you! I'd love to catch up! You're the busy fashion designer, so you pick a time when you can squeeze an old friend in! 😎 💕" Watching the three dots in the bottom left corner caused Sadie's breath to hitch in her throat. She was typing... Katie was typing. They'd finally be reunited, not just from behind a camera lens. She felt as if she was in the painting 'The Creation of Adam', just a fingers touch away from her god, her whole world.

Ekaterina Byers:

"Haha, as if! I'm not there yet 😂  Would next Friday suit? Say about 9am at the Good Coffee Co. I need to hand in my portfolio at 8:30 so that'd work well."

Impulsively, acting out of desperation alone, Sadie immediately responded.

Sadie Calhoun:

"Yes! I'll be there! See you soon, Katie! 💕"

Sadie locked her phone before focusing her attention back to her craft. She picked up her scissors, skilfully manoeuvring around the edges of the photos. She stuck the product onto the wall and gazed upon it proudly. Hundreds of small cut out photos of her head were plastered on the wall, covering up any person Katie was with, replacing them with herself.

They did meet up, that much we do know. Testimonials from five different individuals confirmed that they saw the two girls at that café on Friday the 25th. What they talked about is up for speculation, because that stayed between the two of them. Why were testimonials needed if two young adults were just catching up over a cup of coffee? Because that was the last time Sadie Calhoun and Ekaterina 'Katie' Byers were seen alive.

Katie's eyelids drooped as she sat in the passenger seat of Sadie's car. Sadie - the 'good samaritan' that she was - had offered to drive Katie home after she suddenly felt light-headed following her coffee. Sadie parked in the driveway and opened Katie's door for her, helping her up as she tiredly hobbled towards the front door. Katie wearily collapsed onto the couch, her eyes barely registering the environment around her. She could hear faint crashing and shattering sounds as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She looked down upon the couch she was dozing on and sat up with a start.

"This isn't my house," she whispered to herself, scanning the room for any familiar objects. She froze in place when she spotted something utterly recognisable to her: her face. Hundreds of different angles of her face created a mosaic, a shrine to a friendship that was never meant to last.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Sadie smiled sweetly as she entered the room. "It couldn't be anything but. Not when the subject is as exquisite as you."

Confusion washed over Katie's face as Sadie approached her, a clothed parcel delicately held in her hands. Sadie reached up to caress her old friend's cheek; Katie snaked away from the touch, petrified of the girl in front of her.

"Hmm. That's the problem, isn't it?" Sadie soliloquised, her grey eyes meeting Katie's scared onyx eyes. "You stopped being Katie. You stopped being my best friend. I know Katie is living in those photos, not 'Ekaterina'. Katie wouldn't have left me. No, not at all. Forever isn't a term to just throw around."

Black tears dripped down Katie's face as she silently sobbed. "W-we were kids. What we were wa-wasn't healthy. We're two separate people, Sadie! I couldn't live being so connected to a shadow. I wanted t-to shine on my own."

"But I don't wanna be separate people! I want to be with you... to be you. To never be apart from you!" Sadie passionately yelled as Katie started to slump down in front of her. The world around her became dark as her lids closed tightly. As her consciousness drifted, a phrase echoed through her head.

"Don't worry now. We'll never be apart again."

*********

Excruciating pain emanating from her side woke her with a jolt. A dull haze covered her field of vision, but as she pulled her hand away from her waist, she could see it as clear as day. A warm layer of blood coated her hand like a glove. Her eyes slowly settled to the room she was in. Metres ahead of her was the collage of photos, but the furniture has been removed, leaving a wide-open space.

Her fingers felt around to find the source of the pain, coming across thick strands of string attached to her waist. A scream silently bubbled up inside her, threatening to explode.

Rough, uneven strands of double-wound fishing wire had been haphazardly sewn into both her and Sadie's sides, connecting them to each other.

A groggy smile spread across Sadie's plump cheeks as she revelled in her actions. "I told you we'll never be apart again."

An extreme shock was the only emotion Katie was able to come to terms with. Her body was statuesque; set in place by a fear-driven paralysis. A dryness inhabited her mouth, inhibiting her ability to swallow the truth in front of her. The room swayed and distorted around her - a prison cell painted with her face - as she forced her eyelids shut. This couldn't be reality. It was the sick dream of a girl trapped in the suffocating world of a teenage girl.

The pain Sadie felt in her abdomen only further fuelled her pleasure, letting every wave of pain wash over her in euphoric ecstasy. Her heart felt complete again as if she had regained a long-lost limb.

"I knew we'd become one again," Sadie hummed, intoxicated by being in Katie's presence. "Daisy was just a placeholder... keeping the bed warm for me. With every thread... every stitch... our closeness is now defined. We'll never be apart again. Best friends for life."

"...for...life," Katie mumbled, fresh blood weeping from her wounds.

Night and day passed slowly, the shadows cast from the pair forming contorted, misshapen dark splotches on the walls. A sickening warmth surrounded Katie, whose heartbeat pounded heavily in her ears. Her waist was bruising a deep purple, with the surrounding blood vessels snaking across her abdomen. Sadie was shaken awake by Katie's convulsions as her body became slick with a layer of sweat.

"Katie? I'm here, it's okay."

"I don't feel good... I want Daisy," Katie slurred, lazily searching the room for her partner.

The 'tethering' procedure was as wildly unsuccessful as one could imagine. Sadie's homemade suture kit - a sharpened metal knitting needle and fishing line - only managed to pierce through Katie's large intestine. Bile and stool seeped into her abdomen, eventually finding their way into her bloodstream. The coroner estimated she died two days later of septic shock.

A thin beam of light eclipsed the drawn curtains and rested on Sadie's face as dawn broke. Her hand moved softly to caress Katie's hand; a stiff claw lay in her wake. An overwhelming panic flooded Sadie's system as she attempted to wake the other girl from her 'deep' slumber. Half-lidded blood-red eyes stared back at Sadie, a trickle of dried blood pooled at her temple. Sadie's heart shattered like a golden locket as she cradled the limp body in her arms, pulling the skin taut around her suture wounds. The shadow had won. It had succeeded in snuffing out what was left of the light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What happened to Sadie in the end?" Axel asked, taking a minute amount of sadistic glee from the story.

Izzy turned to face the young man. A single tear crept down her cheek as she fiddled with her rings. "She refused to live without Katie. She starved to death, all the while she left Katie's decomposing corpse attached to her hip like a growth."

Izzy wiped the tear from her eye, suppressing sniffles as Axel glanced around the room.

"Hmm...Alright. Who's next then?"

#td #horrorfic #katieandsadie #wowee

[sass-and-suspenders]

Merlot & Mistletoe

GIF from big-brass-ego-deactivated201812

Pairing: Dr. Frederick Chilton x Reader

Author’s Note: Just some holiday fluff staring everyone’s favourite peacock

Frederick swirled his wine as he surveyed the room. As much as he loathed BSHCI’s annual Christmas party, he had to admit that the venue looked superb: white Christmas lights were strung about the room casting a warm glow, tasteful red and white floral arrangements adorned every table, and an impeccably decorated Christmas tree, one of the largest he’d ever seen, stood in the center of the room. From his position near the bar, Frederick spied a bunch of mistletoe hanging above the main doorway.

His mood quickly soured when his attention turned from the décor to his coworkers. All around him, his colleagues and their partners were enjoying themselves, which only seemed to amplify his own loneliness. Abandoned at his table while everyone else was mingling, Frederick began to list every insufferable thing about work holiday parties: forced small talk with coworkers whom he despised, barely edible food, overly loud Christmas music (and, god forbid, Christmas karaoke). Taking a sip of his drink, he added ‘wine only a step above grape juice mixed with antifreeze’ to his list.

And then he spotted you in the crowd and acknowledged that work parties did have some advantages.

In your bright red dress, Frederick was surprised he didn’t notice you sooner. You were surrounded by a group of people, talking animatedly with a large smile on your face. While he was too far away to make out what you were saying, he could hear faint sounds of laughter from the group.

You had started at BSHCI two months ago, filling-in for a psychiatrist on maternity leave. On your second day, you literally ran into Frederick, scattering the contents of the patient folders you were carrying across the hallway. It was during your stammered apology, as he helped you pick up papers, that Frederick first felt the butterflies in his stomach that always materialized whenever he saw you.

You turned your head, sensing someone’s eyes on you; realizing it was Frederick, you flashed him a smile. However, Frederick remained rooted in his seat, not daring to go over and say hello. Memories of the last time he mustered up the courage to speak to you flooded his mind. He had been a bundle of nerves, stumbling over his words and even calling you by the wrong name. You had laughed off his faux pas, telling him not to worry and then jokingly called him by the wrong name. That was perhaps what Frederick loved most about you: your kindness. Unlike everyone else in the hospital, you never mocked him. Come to think of it, Frederick couldn’t recall you ever saying a bad word about anyone.

In his seat, Frederick imagined what life would be like if only he were a little bolder. How he would be at your side, his arm wrapped around your waist; how he would proudly introduce you to everyone as his girlfriend; how you would go home with him at the end of the night; how he would find your red dress on his bedroom floor in the morning.

And then the thought hit him that you might already be seeing someone. You’d never mentioned anyone before, but Frederick still found himself anxiously turning his attention to the people around you, checking to see if they worked at the hospital or if there was someone unfamiliar who could be your date. A sense of relief washed over him when he didn’t find anyone, but it quickly dissipated when he observed one of the hospital’s board members lay a hand on your arm. Frederick bitterly noted that it was the youngest (and, according to the nurses, the handsomest) member of the board; the one with the pretentious name, the one who always parked his expensive cars haphazardly across multiple parking spaces, the one who was on the board due to his family’s connections and barely bothered to do any actual work.

His heart sank further as he watched the board member lean down to whisper something in your ear. While Frederick could hardly blame the man for flirting with you, he still found himself silently willing the massive Christmas tree to fall directly on Chauncey or Nigel or whatever his pompous name was.

It was in the midst of this death by Christmas tree fantasy, which now included the tree taking out several additional colleagues who Frederick found particularly unpleasant, that he noticed the nurse.

She wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, but Frederick had worked with enough criminals to notice the subtleties of human behaviour. Like, for instance, how the nurse’s wine glass was precariously full or how her gaze, which was focused on you, contained a predatory glint.

While Frederick was quick to piece together the nurse’s intention, he had no time to warn you. He could only sit and helplessly watch the scene unfold: the nurse pretended to trip, spilling her glass of red wine all over your dress. Frederick could tell you didn’t believe it was an accident (even from where he was sitting, he knew that the nurse would never win an Oscar), but you didn’t make a scene. Instead, you graciously accepted her fake apology before excusing yourself to go clean up.

With a mix of excitement and panic, Frederick realized that your path to the washroom would take you right past his table. His pulse quickened as you approached, the pounding of his heart drowning out all external noise. You were frowning slightly, head bent down, as you assessed the damage to your dress.

“Club soda!” Frederick exclaimed, the primitive part of his brain taking over, as you reached his table. He hated how his voice sounded an octave higher than usual.

You paused, turning to face him with a look of confusion. Frederick mentally berated himself; only two words into the conversation and he’d already managed to embarrass himself.

Clearing his throat, he started again. “Club soda will prevent the stain from setting. There’s some at the bar. I, uh, could go get it for you. If you want, that is.”

“That would be great -thanks!” You smiled brightly at him, and Frederick was sure he would develop heart palpitations from how quickly his heart was beating. “Meet me near the washroom?”

Frederick eagerly nodded, earning another smile from you. He knew it was irrational, but part of him hoped that, if he saved your dress, you’d start to see him in a different light, that maybe you would start to feel butterflies, too.

The instant you left, Frederick rushed to the bar, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. He feared that someone would swoop in and help you while he was away, causing him to lose his chance with you. When he found you, though, you were alone, blotting the wine on your dress with flimsy paper towels.

“Hey,” you greeted when you spotted Frederick lingering in the doorway. His arms were laden with bottles of club soda, making you wonder if there were any left at the bar. 

“Apologies for taking so long,” Frederick said stepping into the washroom, even though it had only been a few minutes since you last saw him. “I went to get some hand towels as well.”

“You’re amazing!” you beamed, helping him place the items on the bathroom counter. “I’ve had no luck with these paper towels –I think they’re actually making me look worse.” You gestured to a large splotch of wine on your dress.

“You look like a work of art,” he murmured as he studied you in your dress under the pretense of examining the stain. When he looked up at you, there was an unreadable expression on your face.

“I mean,” Frederick started to backtrack, realizing that he had voiced these thoughts aloud. “Your dress -it looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.”

He vaguely gestured to your dress as he prayed for the ground to swallow him up.

“Wine Whirlwind, 2019. Merlot on velvet,” You chuckled, drawing Frederick out of his embarrassment.

“Ah, yes, one of Pollock’s later works. I believe the MoMa is interested in acquiring it,” Frederick added, causing you to laugh harder. A feeling of pride shot through him when you laughed at his joke.

When the laughter died down, you and Frederick were left awkwardly staring at each other. Frederick fiddled with his signet ring, unsure if he was overstaying his welcome.

“So,” you said softly, touching the back of your neck and nodding towards the club soda. “Is there a trick I should know or…?”

“No trick,” Frederick shook his head. “You just pour it on the stain and allow it to sit for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” you paused for a moment before voicing the next thing on your mind. “There’s some wine on the back of my dress that I can’t quite reach -would you mind helping?”

You swept your hair away, revealing the dark red spot near your shoulder, as well as your neck. Frederick audibly swallowed. He envisioned himself placing kisses along the nape of your neck before unzipping your dress and letting it pool on the floor.

“Frederick?” You prompted, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

“Y-yes, that’s fine,” Frederick choked out, closing the distance between you.

As he carefully poured club soda on the stain, Frederick attempted to push the images of you and your alluring red dress out of his mind. He knew that his infatuation with you was one-sided, that he was only getting his hopes up with these daydreams.

“Did you know,” he began, trying to turn his thoughts to a more monotonous topic but nearly losing his train of thought when he caught a whiff of your perfume. “It’s a misconception that sprinkling salt on wine stains will remove them. Red wine contains tannins, and sodium chloride actually sets those types of stains.”

“Hm, I had no idea,” you answered, your eyes downcast and lips pursed as you focused on the giant splotch of wine near the hem of your dress. “It’s a good thing you’re here -a few people told me to use salt.”

“I’m glad my experience is useful. My experience with chemistry, that is. I don’t know all of this because I constantly spill wine on myself. I’m perfectly capable of drinking from a glass,” Frederick babbled. He hated how being around you seemed to turn his brain into mush.

“Well, however you came to know about it, I’m grateful,” you said, catching his gaze in the mirror, a faint smile on your lips.

Frederick felt his cheeks redden as he muttered something incoherent in response.

The two of you worked in silence for the next few minutes, with Frederick stealing glances at you. He couldn’t help but smile at your pursed lips as you concentrated on tackling the stains. He’d noticed a similar expression on your face whenever you dealt with complicated cases.

When the work was done, you turned to him. “Thank you again for helping me, Frederick,” you grinned, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.

“O-of course,” he faltered, feeling the familiar flutter in his stomach intensify as your hand touched his.

“I should probably go home…My dress needs to dry and, honestly, I just want to change into my pajamas and watch TV.”

“Right,” Frederick said, trying not to sound disappointed. He wasn’t delusional enough to believe that the night would have ended with you declaring your love for him, but he thought you would at least offer to dance with him out of pity. “Allow me walk you out.”

You nodded, taking his hand as you exited the washroom. Frederick tried not to read too much into the gesture, instead focusing on the way your hand seemed to fit perfectly in his. His small moment of happiness was soon interrupted; as you were heading out, the nurse was coming in from a smoke.

“Oh, I hope you’re not going home! Is it because your dress is ruined?” The nurse asked, barely attempting to conceal her glee.

Frederick gained a small sense of satisfaction at the fact that the pompous board member had abandoned her and was chatting up someone else.

“Thank you for your concern, but my dress is fine. Frederick ended up saving the day,” you coolly replied.

“I’m glad I caught you,” Frederick directed to the nurse. While you were fine taking the high road, he certainly was not. “I was glancing through my patient files and noticed that your notes are a mess. I’ll need you to re-write them.”

“But Dr. Chilton-”

“And while you’re at it, you can also upload the files into the new online system. I’ll need it done by Monday morning, 9am sharp.” Frederick stared her down, ready to add more tedious tasks if she complained.

The nurse simply nodded, albeit with a large scowl on her face, before she left to rejoin the party. He was sure she muttered a few choice words about him under her breath as she stomped off.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” you glanced up at him, your hand still intertwined with his.

“She was being malicious. She intentionally spilled that glass of wine on you because she was envious of the attention you were getting. I’m not going to let her get away without repercussions. Besides,” he added, lightening the tone lest you find out his feelings for you and reject him. “Who says I did it for you? Maybe, I was avenging the wine she wasted.”

“Please, we both know it wasn’t for the wine -it was basically burgundy-coloured antifreeze,” you warmly smiled before your expression turned more serious. “You know, it’s amazing how you can notice some things and yet be completely oblivious to others.”

“I’m not oblivious,” Frederick scoffed.

“Oh, no, you are. Example number one: you’re standing under the mistletoe,” you smirked, pointing towards the ceiling.

Frederick glanced upwards, finding the bundle of mistletoe he’d noticed at the start of the evening directly above him. He felt his palms become sweaty and he was grateful that his facial hair would partially hide the redness creeping up his neck and cheeks.

“You don’t have to kiss me,” Frederick quickly remarked. “It’s fake anyway, so it wouldn’t be bad luck. I don’t expect-”

“Example number two,” you interrupted before leaning in and placing a chaste kiss on his lips. Frederick barely registered what had happened before you were speaking again. “I’ve had a crush on you since we met.”

For once in his life, Frederick didn’t make a situation worse by rambling. Instead, he pulled you close and kissed you with all of the desire that built up over the last two months. With your lips on his, Frederick could hardly remember why he hated work parties.

In fact, he was looking forward to the next one.

Tag list: @madpanda75 @obsessionprofessional @madkingcrowley​ @im-like-reallythirsty @burningg-red @nikkijmorgan​ @misssirenlove​  @zoeykaytesmom @mommakat32​​

#frederick chilton x reader #chilton x reader #frederick chilton #chilton #hannibal #christmas fluff

[brandonkbills]

Ghost concert on Acid

Back in September a friend of mine introduced me to Ghost, showed me some of their more popular songs and music videos and my fancy you could definitely say was tickled. I was instantly drawn to the costumes and the theatricality of them. I’d continue to listen to their more popular songs like Square Hammer, Cirice, Rats, Dance Macabre etc.

He invited me to come see them with him on their Ultimate Tour Named Death in SLC, Utah. I was immediately down. I was so looking forward to this show but had no idea what exactly I was in for.

In the parking lot he offers me some LSD and he was expecting us to just microdose but feeling brave I decide on taking the full tab. Things feel pretty normal as I groove to Twin Temple, the Satanic doo-wop band who’s opening for them. I look over to my friend, he has another tab of LSD on his fingertip and offers it to me. We both take an additional tab, we’re going in balls deep now.

Twin Temple ends their set and the audience waits with anticipation. I start to really feel something as I watch the people in the pit from the seats above; they move around like their own living organism. Suddenly, black out. The audience roars eagerly waiting for the show to begin. They kick it off with Ashes immediately followed by Rats and just rock my dick off immediately but even the instant dick rocking couldn’t prepare me for what was to come. Cardinal Copia is just mesmerizing to watch on stage. It’s immense fun to watch him dance around and sing all so passionately, and his intense sexual charisma is just hypnotic. He’s especially delightful in between songs. He holds the audience in the palm of his hand. Then he ominously utters “We’ll see how well we get to know each other” I now know shit’s gonna get crazy. The Cardinal asks the crowd “Are you all feeling tingly yet?? No? We’ll get you there.” I’ve no idea what that’s about.

I’m now tumbling down deep, dark mental roads during this badass satanic spectacle. The two Ghoul guitarists begin a riff off. A Heavy Metal Ghoul Duel if you will. My mind’s digging far down into my soul as these two masters of their instruments pull out deep rooted interpersonal quandaries from within my psyche. It’s like each guitarist is a little ghoul on my shoulder and each have their turn making their solos a chance to make their case. The Ghouls guide me down this train of thought as the black guitar Ghoul leads to the thoughts “You’ve always been curious of Satanism but that’s not you. You’re really not a Satanist.” I’ve never seriously considered the thought of being a Satanist. The Ghoul with the white guitar brings me to “Oh? And Why’s that? What exactly about it do you not agree with?”. I think to myself “Oh shit”. I don’t disagree with any of their ideas necessarily. Independence from Religion and being the Master of your own reality sound pretty fuckin cool to me. I stand in awe as these two ghouls shred opposite the stage from one another across the checkerboard floor. It’s like a mental chess match and it’s no question that by the end of it the white guitar ghoul was the victor. “I’m just tripping, I’m on drugs.” I think to myself. “Just because the white ghoul won the guitar battle doesn’t mean I’m a Satanist now...but also it doesn’t mean I’m not...I’ll keep an open mind”. The song continues to rock on and they just absolutely dominate the arena. After the song, the audience blows up with applause. I clap. Man, I clap so hard. I clap so hard I can hardly feel my hands and before I know it, I feel this insane vibrational aura around my hands. The Cardinal speaks with certainty “Oh yeah, You’re feeling tingly now”.

Holy fucking shit.

Miasma starts. I’ve never heard this song before but I’m instantly digging it and jamming away and then Papa Nihil appears out of thin air in a cloud of white fog with this epic fucking Saxophone solo. This is easily the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever witnessed. A Satanic Pope with sunglasses fuckin blowing everyone away on a Sax like Bill fucking Clinton on late night. What could be cooler?? It’s equal parts mind blowingly ridiculous and hilariously awesome.

Now I’ve been to concerts where during a song I’ve thought to myself “This is fine but I can’t wait for the next song”. This is not one of those concerts. I’m totally enthralled by every single set entry. Every single god damn song’s just incredible. The whole show is an audible and visual feast. There are times I catch myself just gazing into the stained-glass style mural in the back. There’s a faux painted portrait of Papa Nihil in the center of the mural. Spirit starts. Papa Nihil’s forehead breaks into fractals and starts to dance and weave into itself infinitely. I begin to suspect Ghost has tons of fans who trip and it’s just a thing that Ghost is aware of. I don’t know how true this is. Either way the idea is entertaining.

From the Pinnacle to the Pit has me staring at the stage during a guitar solo as I literally feel my fucking face melt off. Meanwhile slowly forming a grin on my face like some crazy demon man just to have a *POP* sudden burst of fireworks into a blackout that slaps that silly fucking grin off my face and my jaw nearly drops to the floor.

I start to notice that some people just are not as into the concert as I am. I’m assuming they are just Mormons and/or other religious folk who showed up unaware of how inherently Satanic Ghost’s music is.

Spöksonat begins, it’s very dark on stage but there are these bright blue/violet shapes beaming out from the darkness and some people around me get headaches and exit. I interpret this as weak-minded religious sheep/mormons whose meek minds can’t handle Ghost’s awesome and enchanting music. They’re too buried in their illusory faith. Again, idk how true this is but I love to believe this. It’s definitely what I believed at the time of the trip.

He is starts. I begin to realize. This is my new faith. I am in awe. The song is composed and performed with such conviction and love, I think to myself “If this is Satanism’s attempt to convert me and this much effort was put in to this to make it this beautiful... I just don’t want to refuse.” The next song begins. Mummy Dust. Which in the Cardinal’s words is “So gosh darn Infernally fucking heavy that it will not only wobble your asses but it will TICKLE YOUR TAAIINNNTS” and tickle my taint it does.

Kiss the Go-Goat is yet another excellent groovy jam but then Dance Macabre comes on right after, ooooh shit buddy I get excited. I start clapping and dancing, I stand up on the stairs, grab the railing and whip my hair around. I dance my god damned heart out and as I dance I see the Cardinal walk to the left side of the stage and he looks right at me, I fucking felt it. He nods approvingly and returns to performing. I finally feel like I fully understand the lyrics as I see this song live. “Just wanna be, wanna bewitch you all night”. That’s Tobias Forge not just saying he wants to be with us all night but he wants to enchant and perform for us all night because that is what this brilliant master of his craft was born to do. He has as much fun as the audience does at these shows, if not, more. This song would’ve been a damn fine closer but as stated in the lyrics, he didn’t wanna end like that.

Square Hammer hits and it hits hard. People are losing their minds, myself included. Still riding the energy of that last song, I head bang my soul out of my damn body. Once again, I fully understand the lyrics. “Are you on the Square? Are you on the level? Are you ready to swear right here right now, before the devil?”. I realize absolutely fucking am. When the show ended The Cardinal waved everyone goodbye and you could see how thankful he was for an audience and I’m still not sure if this was the drugs or a special effect (pretty sure it was the drugs) but each band member appeared to have strings like a marionette while waving goodbye and bowed to the audience and the audience appeared to having strings too. It looked like a lighting effect but I still have no idea how that happened, most likely a hallucination. So fucking cool regardless.

I left the arena drenched in sweat, baptized into a new yet familiar world. I don’t see life the same way I did before (but hey, that’s LSD for you). I realized through this trip how badass the symbol for rebellion against tyranny really is. Along with the profound nature of freedom from religion and realizing self divinity; that you the individual possess powers of a god and most importantly, I just had a good fucking time. My first Ghost concert was a religious experience and one hell of bash. They’re easily my favorite band now and I’ve been listening to all their albums on repeat and I can’t wait till I can see them again.

#the band ghost #cardinal copia #lsd #acid #rock concerts #ghost #ritual #psychadelic

[scabopolis]

emma x killian au: a bit of disaster, a bit of magic

Holy moly! This (really needs to be edited one more time, but we’ll save that for AO3, shall we?) monstrosity is my gift to @hollyethecurious​ for the @cssecretsanta2k19​ (thank you for your tireless work on this!), and is my first attempt at Emma x Killian fic (eek!). 

Hollye, what a joy to chat with you over the past month. I present to you a wordy as all getout friends to lovers fic that takes place over six holidays (five holidays with a bit of disaster, and one with a bit of magic), a soupçon of Captain Cobra, and brief appearances by older brother Liam, as well as (one hopes!) romance and a whole host of other good things. Hope it brings some joy to your season. And I’m thrilled to be able to start following you on Tumblr now and send messages without fear!

And I swear -- post-road trip, a more edited version will also appear on AO3. Happy holidays!

---------- title: a bit of disaster, a bit of magic fandom: once upon a time pairing: emma x killian word count: 12,400 | AO3 link: here ----------

summary: When Killian and Emma first meet on Thanksgiving she has some rather unsavory words for him. But then they somehow manage to navigate a series of holiday disasters together. In so doing they also stumble upon a bit of holiday magic.

Thanksgiving Or, the holiday where Emma calls Killian a pervert

As far as holidays go, Killian finds this Thanksgiving to be relatively textbook. Liam and Kate both made far too much food, took utter delight in teasing him for his lack of love life, and then he went home laden with abundant leftovers. 

Only for things to rapidly become significantly less than textbook. It all started when he poured himself a glass of wine at home. 

Home: the place wherein he poured himself the aforementioned glass of wine as he began to wind down for the evening, and then somehow proceeded to spill all but a single gulp on his bedding.  Bedding: the freshly laundered, high thread-count duvet and sheets, put on the bed this morning, now soaked with Malbec. 

With one set of sheets in the hamper and the second set wine soaked, Killian tossed back the remaining gulp of wine and resigned himself to an evening of doing laundry. On Thanksgiving. 

In retrospect, Killian knows he should have just taken his brother and sister-in-law up on their kind offer to stay the night, but he’d found himself emotionally overwhelmed by the end of the night. Over dessert and coffee Liam and Kate informed him they were likely going to start trying for their first kiddo in the new year. And as excited as Killian is at the prospect of having a little nephew or niece to dote on next Christmas, it also served as a reminder of how close he’d gotten to having it all once. And how it doesn’t seem at all likely he’ll ever get that close again.

These kinds of maudlin thoughts are exactly why Killian poured himself that glass of wine. Wine that, as Killian holds the clean sheets up to the light in the laundry room, quite remarkably seems to have not stained. He does the complicated hand twisting and folding technique his mum once showed him and sets aside the fitted sheet, reaching for the flat sheet. 

Killian hears the door to the shared laundry room open behind him as one of his neighbors enters. He slides his stacks of laundry together to make room on the folding table and is about to greet whoever walked in, commiserate over their fate of doing laundry on a —

“So, is this a normal thing you do on Thanksgiving, you sick pervert?”

Okay. Maybe not. 

He turns around slowly to meet the steely gaze of one of his neighbors whom he’s seen from time to time in the mail room and hallways (and once in a rather lurid dream he still feels guilty about). “Do I normally do laundry on Thanksgiving? I wouldn’t consider it a tradition as such, but —”

“No. I mean steal women’s underwear.”

“Pardon?” 

She steps closer only to swipe a pair of his briefs off the table. The pair of underwear is, admittedly, a little absurd, but nothing quite warranting such a vitriolic reaction. They’re the rare white elephant gift he actually opted to keep. Aside from being the most comfortable pair he owns, he quite enjoys the whimsical print of yetis sledding and decorating Christmas trees. He takes a step towards her and she backs up.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks.

“I’m not certain what is happening here.” 

“What’s happening is, you’re a sick fuck.” 

He frowns. That seems, to put it mildly, uncalled for. “Okay, hold on now —” he takes another step towards her

“You stay there,” she demands, pointing a finger at him.

He holds his hands up in a placating gesture. He has so lost the thread of this conversation. And he really should have just stayed at Liam’s house for the night. “I won’t come near you, lass, but if you could return my trunks I would —”

The indignation on her face makes her appear incandescent. “Yours?!”

“Yes, mine.” 

His neighbor starts sputtering and then she goes silent, her jaw clenching in a way that is, if he were to be honest, rather intimidating. Still, Killian does (for some unknown reason that would likely require a good amount of therapy), what he so often finds himself doing whenever he meets his match: he smiles.

His smile only makes the frown lines on her face deepen. 

“Look,” he says, in his most sensible tone of voice. “Do you really believe I would be daft enough to steal your undergarments and then remain in the laundry folding them knowing any moment you might return?” 

It’s only for a split second, but her features relax as she considers his words. Then she full on glares at him, clutching the briefs in her fist. But then her eyes dart to one of the dryers on the wall. 

“Have a look,” he says, gesturing with his head to the dryer.  

“Don’t think I’m taking my eyes off you for a second.”

“I would despair if you did.”

She remains true to her word, keeping one eye on him as she opens the dryer and roots around inside. He knows she’s found what she’s looking for when he hears her groan. “Fuck me,” she mutters to herself, and then pulls out a pair of briefs identical to his own. 

She groans again. “This isn’t possible.”

“Yet here we are.” 

She shuffles over and hands him back his briefs. Killian has to actively work to keep in his laugh as he watches her remove her clothing from the dryer and start another load. From the way the pink in her cheeks burns brighter, she’s aware of his gaze.

“So, is this a normal thing you do on Thanksgiving?” he asks. And there’s that rather becoming jaw clench of hers. “Accuse men of stealing your underwear, I mean?” 

She remains silent and Killian decides to show mercy, finishing up his folding and stacking the clothes in his basket. His neighbor gives him a wide berth as she carries her laundry basket on her hip and leaves - no, flees - the room. But not before she mutters an apology. “Sorry if I, uh, said — you know?” 

“Now, what could you have possibly said?” he asks, all faux innocence.

If possible, her blush gets even brighter. “Happy Thanksgiving.” 

Once back in his flat he texts Liam the whole story. As he putters around, remaking his bed and pouring himself another glass of wine, he bursts out into little chuckles of laughter replaying the scenario. Laughter which Liam echoes in emoji form once he responds. Frankly, this woman is Killian’s hero (Liam's too, as he offered to buy her a gift basket for helping keep Killian's ego in check). Maybe he’ll see her in the mail room and can assure her of her place of honor in Jones family lore. 

He’s settling into the couch with a book when there’s a knock. Killian frowns, his eyes darting to his wall clock. It’s somehow only half-eight, but he isn’t expecting anyone. He looks out his peephole and smiles at the sight of one his young neighbors holding a platter of baked goods. They’ve only chatted in the elevator and occasionally in the halls but Henry is a warm and charming young man, and Killian always looks forward to their interactions. Which doesn’t explain why he —

“Mom, get your butt over here.” 

“You knocked, he didn’t answer. He’s probably asleep.” And then the woman from the laundry room comes into view and it all makes a little more sense.

“When you mess up, you apologize. Those are the rules.” 

“The rules for what?” she asks.

“For life.” 

“Who taught you these rules?”

“You did.” 

She huffs out an exasperated laugh, but wraps an arm around Henry’s shoulder and pulls him close. “God, why couldn’t I suck more as a parent?”

Killian decides to put her out of her misery and answer the door. Young Henry looks delighted at his appearance, and his mom appears miserable. Like she wants nothing more than to sprint in the other direction. 

“Mr. Jones! Happy Thanksgiving! This is my mom, Emma.” 

“Sir Henry, Happy Thanksgiving to you.” He looks to Henry’s mom. “And to your lovely mum.”

Henry shoves the platter of treats at him and Killian bobbles it before holding it steady. “These are for you!” Henry needlessly explains. It’s a platter teeming with pumpkin pie, cookies, and some sort of toffee almond concoction that looks delightful. “My Aunt Mary-Margaret is the world’s best cook,” Henry says. 

“Well, thank you, Henry. And please give my thanks to your aunt.”

“I will. Now my mom has something she wants to say to you.” Emma looks ready to protest but then Henry smiles up at her, his grin wide and toothy and she shakes her head, affection for her son apparent. “Goodnight, Mr. Jones.” 

Emma watches as Henry walks down to the end of the hallway, unlocks the door, gives his mom a thumbs up, and walks inside. Once inside, Emma turns to him and mumbles something barely audible. 

“I’m sorry. What was that, love?” 

She huffs out a breath, fluttering a strand of her hair in the process. “I said, I’m sorry for calling you a pervert.” 

“And?”

“And for trying to steal your underwear?” 

“What about for calling me a sick fuck?” 

“I did not!” she protests, but at his look her brow furrows in concentration. “Oh my god. I did, didn’t I?” She shifts her weight from side to side and he’s pretty certain he hears her mutter another curse word under her breath. She looks up and locks eyes with him. For a moment all he can think is wow, green, but she starts talking again. “Look, Henry and I had a really great day at my sister’s house but then I got this message from my ex, Henry’s dad, and to be honest it sent me into a bit of a tailspin. So then I go grab my laundry and there you are with a very peculiar pair of underwear and all I could think was ‘not today, asshole’ and then — well, you were there. I’m sorry.” 

“You’re forgiven, Emma.” Then it’s his turn to frown, gesturing towards the direction Henry walked as he leans against his doorway. “How did you know who I am?” 

“Oh, I mentioned what happened to Henry and he asked me to describe the neighbor.” 

“Smart kid.” 

“Yeah.” She fidgets again, kind of shaking the tension out of her hands as she rocks back on her heels. “Well, I…that’s all, I wanted to say, so…”

“Nice to meet you, Emma. And Happy Thanksgiving.” She backs away from the door giving him a perfunctory little wave. For some reason, after he closes and locks the door, he finds himself looking through the peephole to watch Emma’s retreat. She lingers outside the door for a second before smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand and then does an entirely unbecoming and yet endearing full body shake and flail, tossing her head back and groaning. She appears to catch herself, and Killian watches as she looks to his door. Her eyes close in resignation. “You saw that didn’t you?” 

“Every single second.” 

“Happy Thanksgiving, Killian.”

Christmas Eve Or, the holiday where Killian almost freezes

It’s a working theory of hers, but Emma is willing to argue with anyone who cares that Christmas Eve is far superior to Christmas. The whole day is filled with baking, and listening to Christmas music, and lighting every baked good themed candle she owns. Plus! she doesn’t have to wake up to an overeager eight year old shaking her at dawn. It’s wonderful. 

As she stores the vacuum in the hall closet (one last round of pre-festivity cleaning), her phone vibrates. She pulls it out of her pocket, smiling when she sees it’s a text from Killian.

Texts from Killian: another thing that is wonderful these days, if not unexpected. 

11:12 AM - Killian to Emma My oven is on the fritz. Can I use yours for a bit? 

11:13 AM - Emma to Killian Define ‘a bit’…

11:14 AM - Killian to Emma Ok. Less ‘a bit’ and more ‘a while.’

11:15 AM - Killian to Emma And by 'a while' I mean the rest of the day.

Emma snorts at that one.

11:17 AM - Emma to Killian It’s all yours. Though, I thought your fruit cake would be in door stop mode by now?

11:19 AM - Killian to Emma For the last time, woman, it’s not a bloody fruit cake.

When Killian proudly told her and Henry over Saturday morning pancakes he was preparing a classic Christmas cake for their Christmas Eve celebration, and then proceeded to explain the weeks long process behind making the cake, Henry frowned. “I think that’s a fruit cake.” 

Which was the first, but certainly not the last time, Killian insisted: “It certainly is not!” And then Killian proceeded to explain, again, what a Christmas cake was. 

From Killian’s explanation of how to prepare it, though, there shouldn’t be any baking required today. Which begs the question as to exactly what Killian is doing. As the host of the event, Emma is only responsible for appetizers (thank you Trader Joe’s), and booze with the rest of the guests bringing the meal.

A meal which apparently includes a British man she met a month ago, bringing a fruit cake to the Christmas Eve celebration with her family and closest friends. What is her life?

Dare she say it, life is pretty great these days. And Killian is definitely part of why that is.

After their ignominious beginning, she and Killian found themselves bumping into one another constantly. If they didn’t cross paths in the mail room, hallway, or elevator, it was Henry - her kid who would find a way to make friends with a paper bag if given the opportunity -  who started inviting Killian to join them everywhere. While on their way to the movies it was a “hey, Killian, wanna come?” More than a few times Henry went to check the mail as Emma cooked dinner and when he returned Killian was with him. “I told him all about your chicken and dumplings, mom!” 

Somehow Killian joining them for chicken and dumplings turned into the two of them texting throughout the day — Killian in between clients at the physical therapy clinic, and Emma whenever she needed a break from real estate contracts — and then a second glass of wine once Henry went to bed. Apparently, unbeknownst to Emma, this was all leading to Killian celebrating Christmas Eve with her family and friends. Oh, and coming over the next day for Christmas morning pancakes. 

Despite what her sister and brother-in-law would like people to believe, Killian is only spending the holidays with them because his brother left for his in-laws earlier in the week and Henry didn’t want him to spend the holiday alone. That’s it! If it was more than that, would she be okay with Killian coming over while she was in her cleaning clothes? Obviously not. So, suck it universe. 

Killian shows up ten minutes later looking fine and not at all biteable in a truly horrendous Christmas sweater that no one has a right to look as…completely adequate…in as he does. His arms are laden with grocery bags. 

“All this for a fruitcake?”

“Christmas cake. And no. That has been done for some time, as you well know. I told Mary-Margaret I’d make Yorkshire puddings to go with the prime rib. And Liam would disown me if I didn’t make mince pies.” 

“How British of you.” 

“Well, I am British.” 

“You know what I mean.” Emma grabs him an apron so he doesn’t mess up his Christmas sweater and as he makes himself at home, she buzzes around getting the apartment ready - pulling the folding chairs and table out of the closet, making sure Henry has enough clean clothes to wear for dinner, etc. Henry spends the day floating in and out of the kitchen to bug Killian. He plays his video games for a little bit and then is back to the kitchen and gets annoyed because there’s not enough room for him to make a sandwich. He is only appeased when Killian reveals he brought over leftover Chinese. 

“Why did you bring so much extra food?” she asks, ignoring Killian’s disapproving stare as she bites into a cold eggroll. She’s pretty sure he also brought over a gallon of milk and what looks like leftover roasted vegetables. Weird. 

“Do you know what the two of you are like when you’re not fed?” Killian shudders in horror, and Emma smacks him in the back of the head. She also pinches mince pie filling to be a brat.

When she comes out in her loungewear, after having showered, there is the most wonderful smell of cinnamon in the air. Before she even asks Killian hands her a mug of mulled wine. How did she even get this and what does she have to do to keep it forever? Emma freezes at the thought. By this she means his friendship. Obviously.

Once Mary-Margaret and David, then Ruby and Mulan arrive, the evening, dare she even thinks it, is borderline perfect. Continuing the British Christmas theme, Killian brought Christmas crackers from World Market. Henry got so excited at the hat and little joke in his that he hug bombed Killian and the poor man spilled his hot chocolate down the front of his sweater. Henry apologizes profusely, but Killian assures him it’s okay, losing the sweater for just a black tee underneath. Which, again, is fine and makes Killian look fine and Emma really needs the commentary in her head to quiet down. 

“Hate to see a Christmas casualty,” David muses as Killian tosses the sweater aside. 

“True, but good things tend to happen to me when I do laundry on a holiday,” he replies. 

And Mary-Margaret gets this wide knowing grin, which Emma does not care for at all, but her heart is currently beating fast enough that she lets it pass. 

The high-point of the night might be when Mary-Margaret serves slices of Killian’s Christmas cake alongside her caramel apple pie. Ruby holds up her plate, sniffs Killian’s cake, and with a perfectly cocked eyebrow simply asks “Fruit cake?” Henry almost falls out of his chair laughing. 

Mulan and Ruby are the first to leave, needing to get to Granny’s where they’re staying the night. Killian offers to stay and help clean up but Emma refuses. The man spent all day cooking in her kitchen – she’s not going to make him clean, too. But when Henry hugs him goodnight and tells him they’ll see him for pancakes, Emma has to admit she’s a little sad to see him shuffle down the hallway back to his own apartment.

Henry proceeds to line up his mom, his aunt, and his uncle, debating as to who deserves to read to him that night. David wins the privilege outright when, upon Henry asking each of them to share their Percy Jackson voice, he actually recites from memory an excerpt from the book Henry is currently reading. Fucking show-off. 

Mary-Margaret doesn’t even wait for them to leave the kitchen before she looks at Emma like she must say something or she’ll burst. As Emma is want to do, she ignores it. No wonder David lobbied so hard to get the bedtime story invitation. The two were in cahoots. As they do dishes, Mary-Margaret keeps dropping conversational breadcrumbs =, waiting for Emma to take one up. Which Emma steadfastly fails to do. So Mary-Margaret stops being subtle.  

“So, Killian was here all day, huh?” 

“Yes.” 

“Huh,” Mary-Margaret says, drying a wine glass and setting it aside. “Interesting.” 

“Stop.” 

“Stop what?” 

“You know what you’re doing.” 

“Do I?” 

“God, you’re annoying,” Emma says, smacking her shoulder with the back of her hand. 

Mary-Maragret frowns and does it right back. “I like Killian.”

“He’ll be thrilled to hear it.” 

“And I think you like Killian, too.”

Emma glares at her. “Well, he’s my friend.”

“Who you very much would like to be a naked friend.”

“Mary-Margaret!”

“What?” 

She steals the towel away from Mary-Margaret and snaps her with it. “Can we be done with this conversation?”

“No. Because I have something important to say to you.” Emma groans and Mary-Margaret takes a step forward, placing a hand on either side of Emma’s face. “I know you think you’ve got this bruised and battered heart. But that’s not true, Emma. You have the most open heart of anyone I’ve ever known. And I don’t know how you do it, but as someone you let see that big beautiful heart, I just need you to know how lucky I am to have you in my life. Anyone would be so lucky to have you. So be brave.” 

Emma feels her eyes go glassy and seriously! Mary-Margaret has been in her life for more than twenty-years. How does she always do this to her? She reaches forward and hugs Mary-Margaret tight, blinking the tears back.

“I love you,” Mary-Margaret says. 

“Shut up.” Emma holds her even tighter. “I love you, too.”

After Mary-Margaret and David leave she gives Henry a final tuck into bed then takes a moment to look around the apartment. The space feels emptier than when the day started. It must be the come down from an almost perfect night. Right? Not like she’s feeling morose because there’s a person down the hall who she very much wishes was still currently in her apartment. Someone to perhaps share leftover pie and a glass of wine with. That would be absurd. It’s just that the whole night felt a little magic, and now it’s over.

Emma blows out the living room candles and that’s when she sees it — Killian’s ugly Christmas sweater draped over the back of the couch. Which Emma immediately decides she should return to Killian. It’s urgent. That sweater could mean a lot to him. Or, something. 

She locks up the apartment door and heads to Killian’s. Knocking on the door triggers a feeling of panic and she’s tempted to drop the sweater and run. But then he opens the door and his already bright eyes somehow get brighter. This was the right decision. 

“Emma! What are you —” 

“You forgot your sweater.” 

“Thanks, love.” 

She immediately notices that his apartment is very dark. Was he already getting ready for bed? This early? She stands up on her tiptoes to peek, and his smile falls. Killian wedges himself into the doorframe, closing the door behind him and obstructing her view. Emma narrows her eyes. 

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Nothing.” 

“Do you have someone over?” 

“No. I’m just —”

“Why are all your lights off?” 

“Being energy efficient. Climate change.” 

“Really?”

“Yup.” 

“Huh. Fine, then. You should probably stain treat this,” she says, and hands him the sweater. 

“Thank you.” He reaches for it and the moment he does Emma pushes him aside to crash into his apartment. All the lights are off. He's lit a few candles, and oh fuck. Does he have someone over?

“Killian, your lights are off.”

“What do you call those?” he asks, pointing to the three-wick sugar cookie candle Mary-Margaret got him.

“Killian.” It’s a tone that usually convinces Henry he in fact does need to wear socks with his shoes but simply causes Killian to smirk at her. 

“Maybe I want to romance myself, Swan.” 

“Gross. All your lights are off," she repeats. "Even the light on your microwave.”

He looks like he wants to protest but must sense she is in a particularly stubborn mood because he stops himself. If she weren’t trying to get him to fess up Emma would take a moment to gloat that the look always works. 

“I was working on a project this afternoon and think I crossed some wires,” he says, running a hand through his hair in, she presumes, some mild embarrassment. 

“More than your oven is on the fritz," she realizes, making sense of why there is currently milk in her fridge. "Isn’t it?” 

“Seems that way.”

“Well did you —?”

“Aye, I tried, but it didn’t work, and with the holiday the electrician isn’t able to come until Thursday..” 

“Well, why not call —?”

“How do you think Leroy is going to feel about me doing an undisclosed wiring project and killing the —?”

“—yeah, I get it. Look, I need to get back to Henry, but pack a bag and I’ll see you soon.” 

“Do what now?” 

“It’s going to be 12 degrees tonight, Killian. You are not staying in this apartment without power.” 

Emma watches as he mulls over her words, considering whether or not he should abide by them. “I could sleep on your couch and then away to my flat in the morning.” 

She shrugs. “Or, you could pack a bag.” A little voice inside her head, the one that sounds suspiciously like Mary-Margaret is cheering her on. Telling her to press a little more. That it’s worth it. “Come on, Killian. You can’t freeze to death on Christmas Eve. Imagine how that would play on the evening news.” 

He laughs, shaking his head in that way he does. If she isn’t mistaken, it's tinged with a little more affectionate every time. “Depressingly, I imagine.” He breaks eye contact long enough to look down at his slippered feet. For all the times he’s made her blush in their month of friendship, it is ridiculously rewarding to see the tinge of red on his cheeks as he looks up at her. “I’d love to join you and Henry for Christmas.” 

Emma dashes home and checks on Henry. He is, predictably, still fast asleep in that way he most frequently is — legs akimbo and sticking out of the blankets like he’s preparing to start running the moment he wakes up. 

As she waits for Killian she changes into her pajamas and makes two hot chocolates, adding an extra large dollop of leftover whipped cream to the top pf each. 

Killian’s knock is borderline inaudible and it makes her smile, how she knows he’s being careful for Henry’s sake. She takes his bag and invites him to get comfortable on the couch — “it will soon be your bed, after all” — and, as has become the habit, they face each other as they sit there. There’s a lot she loves about their friendship, but high on the list is the way their conversations always start in the middle rather than at the start. She loathes small talk. 

“Your family and friends are lovely, Swan.” 

“Eh,” she says, scrunching her nose in consideration, “they’re alright.”

“You and your sister appear rather close in age.” 

She nods. “We’re only a year and a half apart.” Killian smiles, like he is happy to accept that as a complete answer if she so chooses. And maybe it’s that she’s listening to her sister, or maybe it’s Christmas, or maybe it’s that Killian faintly smells of his sugar cookie candle, but she takes a deep breath and sets her mug on the coffee table. “I’m adopted, actually.”

He hesitates, uncertain. “Emma, I didn’t mean to —” She doesn't want him to be uncertain. 

“I was with a family for three years and they couldn’t keep me. I was so young that my social worker really didn’t want to put me in a group home, so they opted for short-term care while they searched for a permanent solution. But at the end of the two weeks, when they got ready to move me to a new home, Mary-Margaret had an utter fit. Refused to let anyone near me when she found out they wanted to take me away. And then she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into her room, barricaded the door, and we hid under her bed. She was five.” 

“You remember all that?”

“I remember her grabbing my hand and us hiding. Mary-Margaret remembers some and my parents filled in the rest.”

“So after that?”

“They decided to adopt me.” 

“That’s quite the story.” Killian gently places his mug beside hers and he inches closer. His hand hovers over hers for only a moment before he settles, giving her fingers a little squeeze. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“Please don’t let this go to your head,” she says, and rotates her palm to squeeze his hand right back, “but you’re really easy to talk to.” 

“Well, don’t let this go to your head, but I can see why Mary-Margaret did what she did.” 

There’s a teeny part of her that doesn’t want to inquire further, but she blames her damn sister and her damn hope speeches for asking, “And why is that?” 

“Because I think you’re the type of person it would be impossible to say goodbye to.” 

Emma doesn’t know about that — a whole host of boyfriends might say otherwise — but she believes he believes it. Sitting across from him on the couch, his lack of electricity, and the two of them in their pajamas, Emma feels almost a glimmer of magic come back into the room. 

Christmas Or, the holiday where Emma almost accidentally murders Killian

Killian wakes up to the sound of giggling and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. The gas fireplace is already switched on, as are the Christmas lights, and he’ll have to ask Emma later how she managed to prevent Henry from crashing into the tree in his excitement to get at his presents.

“I’m going to set the table, so go ahead and gently wake Killian —” And that should prepare him, but he doesn’t hear the rest of Emma’s prompt as a hurling mass of eight year old runs into the living room and jumps on top of him. “Oof,” Killian groans. “Merry Christmas, Sir Henry.”

Henry leans his face down and grins. “Merry Christmas, Killian.”

“Henry, I said gentle!”

“Yeah, but you kinda winked when you said it.” 

Killian manages to sit up just enough to watch Emma try and deny that she did in fact encourage the barbarism of her child. He raises an eyebrow in question and she responds in the first true “harumph” he’s ever heard in real life. 

“Breakfast is ready,” she says. 

Killian sits at the table and apparently the Swans take their Christmas breakfast seriously. Fresh fruit, and coffee and — shit, he forgot to mention something, didn't he? he thought she knew?— breakfast burritos smothered in avocado and tomatillo salsa. 

“So, what’s the plan for the day” Killian asks, and then takes a sip of his coffee. Emma passes him the bowl of fruit, and — of fucking course — there’s bananas in it. He pours a little on his plate and hopes he can get away with just coffee for breakfast.  

Henry explains that they always eat breakfast first because his mom thinks delayed gratification is good for him — “I stand by that,” Emma says — and then he and his mom exchange presents, and then they play boardgames, and then have Christmas Eve lunch leftovers, and then they go to a movie and have popcorn and milk duds for dinner.

“Milk duds play what part in delayed gratification?” Killian asks, pushing his plate, he hopes discretely, aside.

“I’m not a monster,” she says.

“Why aren’t you eating your burrito? Aren’t you hungry?” Henry asks.

“I’m not a big breakfast person.” At that precise moment, Killian’s stomach growls louder than it’s every growled before. Liar, it seems to proclaim. He sighs. “I’m actually allergic.” 

“You are?” Emma asks. If her wide eyes are anything to go by, she is horrified.

“To burritos? That sucks,” Henry says. 

“No, not to burritos, but the avocado on top.”

“No you’re not.”

He laughs, because of course Emma would argue with him about his food allergies. “I assure you I am.”

“But when we got lunch last week, you ordered that sandwich with avocado on it.” 

He doesn’t think he should be as flattered as he is that Emma remembers that. “I took that one to go. For Liam.” 

“But…but…” and then she drops her fork to her plate and covers her mouth with her palm. “Oh my god I could have killed you!”

“Emma…” 

“I almost murdered you on Christmas.”

“I can assure you…” 

“That I almost murdered you? Because, yeah, figured that one out.”

“It’s not nice to murder people, mom,” Henry helpfully comments then reaches for Killian’s plate. “Can I have this?”

“It’s all yours.”

“What else are you allergic to?” Emma asks.

“Nothing.” She doesn’t seem to believe him as she sits with her arms across her chest, challenging him. “Seriously. Just the avocados.” And then quietly adds, “And kiwis and bananas.”

“So the fruit is also poison,” she says. “Anything else?” 

“Latex.” The instant he says the word he regrets it. It’s true, completely, but with the way Emma is looking at him it feels a little…inappropriate to say.

“Latex,” she repeats. She doesn’t break eye contact as she takes a sip of coffee and sets her mug aside. “Interesting.” 

“Why is that interesting?” Henry asks. 

Emma maintains eye contact, but her cheeks go a little rosy. "Well, um, see the thing is…" she trails off. 

Killian cuts in. “Because when I go to the doctor, sometimes the doctor or nurses wear gloves with latex in them.” 

“That’s not interesting,” Henry says.

Emma makes him an omelette and then proceeds to apologize all morning. After they open presents (Killian will remember the look of delight on Henry’s face for all his days), she also makes a quick batch of chocolate chip muffins and insists he eat several. The rest of the day unfolds just how Henry said it would. Except Henry didn’t mention he’d only make it two-thirds of the way through the movie before falling asleep on his mom’s shoulder, curled up in the seat. As he snoozes he kicks his feet out into Killian’s lap and Emma rolls her eyes and helps herself to the rest of Henry’s popcorn. 

“No personal space boundaries,” she whispers.

When they make it back to Emma’s, Henry wakes up just enough to shuffle to his room. And much like the night before, they find themselves on Emma’s couch talking over the day when she reveals she has a present for him. 

“We said we weren’t buying presents, Emma.” He completely bought her a present but was planning to bend the rules by giving it to her on New Year’s Day. Surely New Year's Day presents are a thing somewhere. Right?

“It’s just a little something,” she says. 

As Killian opens the gift he registers the novelty print first, and he is almost certain he knows what she got him. It’s three pairs of underwear in rather absurd prints and patterns. The same exact brand and style she tried to steal from him on Thanksgiving. 

She grins as he laughs tossing the paper aside. “Did you know you can get them personalized?” 

“Excuse me?” he asks.

She takes one of the pairs out of his hands and shows him the inner waistband. There it declares in embroidered thread "Property of Killian Jones."

“Just in case someone else tries to steal your underwear.” 

“Nonsense, Swan. That’s our thing.” 

The silence stretches between them as Emma rests her head on the back of the couch, her face turned towards him. Over the course of the night they’ve moved close enough to one another that their knees are touching. How did that happen? 

“Killian, I want to tell you something.” 

He swallows. “You can tell me anything you want, Emma.” 

“I —” she begins, and then cuts herself off. “I —” she begins again before stopping, letting out a frustrated groan. She offers him a tentative smile. “I want to thank you for doing everything you did for us today. It meant a lot to Henry.” She pauses, and it looks like she's going to say more, but she simply adds, “And to me.” 

“Of course, love.”

“And I’m sorry for almost killing you.” 

“I fully intend to use your guilt to my advantage in our relationship for years to come.” 

She smiles. “The electrician is coming tomorrow?”

“He said he’d arrive somewhere between 7am and 3pm.”

“Nice he could narrow it down for you.” She looks away and fiddles with the hem of her sweatshirt. “Do you want to stay here again tonight?” 

“Aye,” he says. “If you'll have me.”

"I'll have you," she whispers, her lips tinged with a smile.

And he knows he shouldn’t be disappointed. Staying the night on her couch is wonderful and generous and it means another day of getting to wake up with the Swans. But there was a little part of him that thought she was going to say — he’s not entirely sure what. Strangely enough it’s the feeling of disappointment that confirms for him a long held suspicion of his. That with Emma the more she gives him, the more he wants. Every smile she gives makes him want 1,000 more. Every story she shares makes him want to share 1,000 of his own. He’d do anything for her to know he understands her. And he’d never intentionally hurt her. And that this Christmas was one of the best of his life, and is there any way she’d be willing to give him her New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day, and perhaps Flag Day, too? 

Boxing Day Or, the holiday where Emma breaks herself

For as relatively calm and almost perfect as Christmas was, the day after is completely different. 

Henry comes running into Emma's room at 8:00 AM insisting they don’t have enough batteries. When she calmly reminds him about the extra supply in the hall closet, he runs off without a thank you. A little later she’s pouring herself coffee and Henry runs into the kitchen, grabs the poptart package out of her hand and runs out again. “I’m putting together my legos!” he shouts. 

“We are leaving in one hour, Henry.” Silence answers her from his bedroom. “That means shoes, scarf, coat and gloves.” More silence. “Henry!”

“Got it mom! One hour!” Door slam. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling the beginnings of a headache. Killian barely stifles a laugh as he watches the sequence of events from the coach. 

“How much for you to take him off my hands for the next two to three years?” she asks, trying to ignore how cute he looks waking up in her apartment, sleep rumpled with hair sticking up every which way. 

“You want me to bring him back as a pre-teen?” 

“Good point. What about one of those boarding schools in Switzerland rich step-mothers always want to send their kids to? You know those ones in movies with the Olsen twins?”

“You’re truly trying to cast yourself as the stepmother in this situation?” 

“Shut up and come get your coffee.” 

She can see why Killian and Henry get along so well. Much like her son, Killian can’t simply stand up and walk into the kitchen. No. He bounds off the couch — she has no doubt he was tempted to hurdle it simply to prove he could — and then swaggers towards her. Does he always lead with his pelvis? God, why is she thinking about his pelvis? Once he’s in front of her, his mess of hair appears even more riotous and her fingers actually twitch with the urge to smooth it down. Instead she hands him a cup of coffee and picks hers up again. If her hands are busy maybe she’ll keep them to herself. And why did she think having him sleepover again was a good idea? What was she thinking? 

Well, to be honest, she knew what she was thinking originally. But then late last night he shared why it is that Christmas is usually a hard season for him — a reminder of losing his mom as a child and his fiancé just two years ago — and all she could think about was how lucky she was to have walked into their laundry room that night. 

Killian is a big one for eye contact — she knew that the day they met in the laundry room and it’s been confirmed a million times since — and it has a very squirm inducing impact on her insides. His heavy lidded eyes make everything twist up, and flutter, and race in a way that is almost painful. But like a good kind of painful. 

“What’s your plan for today?” she asks. 

He shrugs. “Betray your kindness for a bit longer and wait for the electrician to arrive. Yours?” 

“Henry is going ice skating with a few of his friends. I’m going to go for a run after I walk him to Avery’s, but no plans after that.” She clears her throat as her pesky thoughts urge her to ask him to spend the day together. Naked, a part of her brain unhelpfully suggests. 

“You’re going to walk in this weather? And then run in this weather?” 

“I snagged a parking spot right in front and Avery’s family only lives a few blocks away. There is no way I am sacrificing my parking spot.” She turns away from Killian to top up her coffee. “And running is good for me. Helps me make sense of my thoughts when they’re all muddled.” 

“What is making your thoughts muddled?” he asks.

She freezes for a second, the question taking her by surprise, and then turns around slowly. And holy fuck why do his eyes have to be so focused on her and so damn blue?! It’s oppressive, his eye color. “I didn’t say —”

“You kind of implied.” 

“I did not.”

“You did.” 

She bites her lip to stifle a laugh, shaking her head. “You know it’s moments like these that remind me you’re the baby brother.” 

He laughs, nodding his head in concession. “True. But in this case my persistence is motivated by my own selfish curiosity."

“What makes you curious?”

“I’m curious about all sorts of things. But I have to admit that my thoughts have also been rather muddled these days.” ” He taps his lips, thinking, and that is not fair. “For instance, I’m curious about what you wanted to say to me last night. Before you stopped yourself from continuing.”

How did he —? 

“I’m curious about why you’re taking such shallow breaths right now,” he continues, sidling closer to her. 

“They’re not —”

“But really, Emma, I find myself wondering if you would be interested in knowing what has my thoughts muddled these days?” He moves even closer as he reaches behind her to set his mug on the counter-top.

She takes a shaky breath. “I might be.” 

“Then ask me.” 

Okay. So, last night she chickened out. Sitting on the couch with Killian — the fire going, and Henry asleep, and Killian sharing his life with her — Emma had every intention of doing herself, and Mary-Margaret, and every human being who finds men attractive proud by telling Killian that she thinks about kissing him. Thinks about it a lot. So, she's smart enough to see this moment for what it is: a second chance. Another opportunity to get it right. Because Killian wouldn’t be leading her like this simply to reveal his thoughts were muddled with — fuck, she doesn’t know — whether or not he should finally bump Russian Doll to the top of his Netflix queue. 

(He should, by the way, but that isn’t the point. The point is, he’s trying to lead her somewhere and she has to decide if she’s going to follow.) 

She sets her mug down and takes a deep breath. “Tell me?” She doesn't mean for it to come out like a question. 

“Emma,” he says, leaning in and resting a hand on her hip. “It’s you.” 

Now, here’s the thing. Nothing in Emma’s life has ever resembled the plot of a romantic comedy. Every time she let herself think — secretly and only in her head and only like three times — “maybe this is my big romance!” it crashes and burns and turns out the guy only looked at her with stars in his eyes because she kinda reminded him of his ex. Until she met Killian. Because no sooner does he whisper the words “it’s you” — and holy shit that is some Mr. Darcy level stuff — her son comes crashing into the room, dressed for ice skating and holding his jacket. Then he’s tugging on Killian’s sleeve and telling him he has to play Smash Brothers with him because he’s been practicing and he’s finally going to beat him but he’s only got fifteen minutes left to prove it.

Killian looks at her, a little helplessly as Henry drags him away. She smiles to reassure him it’s okay. They’ll get to talk soon. Right? At least that’s what she keeps telling herself as she gets into her running clothes and laces her sneakers. 

“Henry,” she says, walking out of her room. “Time to go kiddo. I told Avery’s mom we’d be there in 10 minutes.” Henry must be losing to Killian. It’s the only explanation for why he so readily sets the controller aside.

“See ya later, Killian,” he says, and tackle side hugs Killian before sprinting for the door. 

Emma grabs him by the hood of his jacket and pulls him back before he can bolt for the door. “Henry. Gloves.” She gestures to the coffee table where they’re waiting for him.  

“Oh, right.” 

As they walk out of the building, Emma is trying so hard to listen to Henry’s enthusiastic play by play of the game he just played with Killian but all she can think of is the fact that Killian is in her apartment. Waiting there for the electrician (and her?). Sitting there on her couch. Unless the electrician arrives while she’s on her run he’ll be there when she returns. What is she going to say? How do they even pickup that conversation? 

It’s this state of distraction that she blames for missing the patch of ice on the sidewalk outside their apartment. She slips and lands hard not even certain of what happened.

“Mom!” Henry shouts, immediately at her side.

“I’m okay, sweetie,” she grits out, trying to catch her breath. “I just slipped.” Except for when Henry tries to help her up her knee buckles and pain shoots up her leg. Shit. She sits on the sidewalk and takes a deep breath, not wanting to scare Henry. 

“Mom, are you okay?”

“Can you do me a favor, bud?” She pulls out her phone, scrolling through the contacts. “Talk to Killian and ask him to come down, okay?” Maybe she should be the one to call but she kind of feels like crying and needs a second to gather herself. To focus on not bursting into tears from shock and pain. 

After Henry hangs up — “Killian come quick! Mom fell!” — Emma steels herself and calls Avery’s mom to explains what happened. Thankfully she tells Emma they’ll just swing by and pick Henry up, no problem. 

Killian comes running outside, not even wearing a jacket the idiot, as she hangs up with Avery’s mom. Emma has to stop him from picking her up and bringing her inside immediately.

Her whole body shivers; the sidewalk absolutely icy and freezing. “We need to wait with Henry,” she tells him. 

Once Henry leaves, Emma reassuring everyone she’ll be just fine, Killian helps her up. He wraps her arm around his shoulder and she leans into him as he takes her weight and walks her inside. It’s amazing how being in pain can zap all sexual tension from an encounter because Emma isn’t thinking about Killian with his hand on her hip in the kitchen. Not at all. All she's thinking about is how nice he is, and how thankful she was that he was there to help and, okay, fine, maybe being in pain can only zap 80% of the sexual tension. Still. That’s a lot less sexual tension. 

Once back in her apartment Killian settles her in the armchair and props her leg up on the ottoman. He buzzes around, bringing her water and ibuprofen, and then asks to see her ankle. She supposes this is kind of his area, so she nods and does her best to hold in a wince as he removes her shoe and sock. He moves her ankle gently from side to side and she braces herself for the pain but it actually isn’t that bad. Until he presses on a spot at the top of her foot and —

“Holy shit that hurts!,” she exclaims.

“Good news is it’s not broken.”

“Feels broken to me.” 

“Probably just a really bad sprain but I can take you to get an x-ray if you want.” 

“Or?”

“Or I collect some supplies from my apartment and I’ll wrap it myself.”

“That option is free?” she asks. Killian nods. “I choose that.” 

“Keep this elevated.” Before he leaves for his apartment, he notices her struggle to get her other shoe off. He sighs affectionately, unlacing her shoe and setting it aside. Without asking he reaches for a blanket on the sofa, one he used the night before, and lays it over her lap. “Back in five minutes.”

The moment the door closes behind Killian tears spring to the corner of her eyes. Yes, Emma’s in pain, the ibuprofen not quite kicking in yet as she feels her ankle throb. And, yes, her butt is a little cold, but that doesn’t really explain why she starts to cry. These past couple of days have just been a lot. In a really great way, but it’s still a lot. 

The tears must be something Killian notices when he gets back because in a flash he crouches in front of her, resting a hand on her uninjured ankle. “Hey now, what’s this?”

She shakes her head, not really sure how to explain. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” 

His raised eyebrow and tightly drawn mouth indicate he doesn’t believe her, but as she dabs her eyes with her sleeve, he takes to unpacking the supplies he brought over. The truth is that it’s not nothing; more like it's everything. It’s that his apartment is down the hall and when she demanded he come stay with her and Henry he could have refused, or used his spare key to stay at his brother’s, but he didn’t. And that while she has yet to hear an explanation concerning his “it’s you” statement, she has a feeling it’s something good. It’s everything to her — the ways both big and small he chooses her and Henry. And it’s only been five-weeks but she wants more. She want more weeks. 

He wraps her ankle up then fits her to the pair of crutches he brought over. As he helps her stand, she stumbles and accidentally puts pressure on her ankle. She hisses at the sudden pain, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Careful, Emma,” he says, running a hand up and down her back in comfort. She looks up at him; his eyes are all soft and concerned. “You okay?” 

It’s you, too, she wants to say. I don’t know how or why, or even what it means, but it’s you. She nods. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

New Year’s Eve Or, the holiday where Killian meets the ex

“So tell me about this party, Sir Henry.”

Killian’s noticed that when Henry has a lot to say, he has a habit of taking a deep breath and then clenching his fists at his side. It's like Henry’s little body is bracing itself for an onslaught of enthusiasm. “Well,” Henry says, fists clenched, “Aunt Mary-Margaret and Uncle David have this big farmhouse that is so cool and my friend Roland and his dad, and my other friend Violet and her dad, and my other friend Gideon and his mom, are all coming over too and we’re having a big party. And then after we eat so much food, we’re going to play sardines inside with all the lights off, and then after that we’re having a campfire out back, and then after that…” 

Killian does his best to listen — really, he does — Henry’s enthusiasm is genuinely delightful so it isn’t hard to be interested. Usually. It’s just that as Henry is talking Emma walks out of her room dressed for the evening in a tight black dress and he kind of loses his head a bit. Actually finds himself staring at her, which he only realizes when she catches his gaze and smiles. 

“Breathe, kid,” she says, breaking their stare. “Your aunt texted and said they’ll be here in five minutes. Got all your stuff?”

“Yup!”

“Go get your shoes on, then.” Henry runs off and Killian watches as Emma inspects Henry’s pile of belongings, confirming to her own satisfaction that Henry won’t be without a change of clothes or toothbrush. 

“This party sounds fun, Swan. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather spend time with your friends and boy there?” 

“Nope. We’re going to Ruby and Mulan’s, and we’re dancing until at least 1:00 AM because that’s when they bring out the dancing snacks.”

“Dancing snacks?”

“Donuts and coffee for the drive home. It’s the best.” He’s about to point out that there exists these wonderful things called donut shops that allows one to purchase a donut and coffee at a time that is not 1:00 AM, but her phone rings.

Emma halts her process of shutting off lights in the kitchen to answer. 

“Hey Rubes.” As Ruby talks, Emma refreshes her lipstick in the hallway mirror. She pauses the action, groaning in aggravation at something Ruby says. “Seriously?! Can’t you be total dicks and tell them to leave? Since when? Fine! Be good people! Yeah, we’ll be there in about thirty.” 

Emma hangs up and Killian tries not to laugh at Emma’s quietly muttered, “Well, shit.” She told him a few weeks ago her resolve to never swear in front of Henry gets a little weaker with each passing year. 

“What was that, love?” 

“Apparently the sister of one of Ruby’s co-workers invited herself to the party — much to everyone’s annoyance because Zelena is apparently awful — and then proceeded to be even more awful by bringing along her new boyfriend who, pause for dramatic effect, happens to be my ex.” 

“No.” 

“Yes,” she says, finishing her lipstick and dropping the tube into her purse. “And Walsh being Walsh, he’s too much of a —” Emma trails off, her eyes darting down the hallway to see if Henry is coming — “fucking narcissistic dickhole to leave once he realized whose house he was at. I know he’s only staying to drink booze and leer at me when I show up alone. Sure, he’s the one who got drunk one night and cheated on me, but I’m the one who is going to have to deal with him.” 

“But you’re not showing up alone.” 

“Yeah, but you’re my friend date. Not my date date.”

Killian’s heart clenches a little at that entirely accurate explanation. 

Hard to believe it was only five days prior that he and Emma were seemingly on the emotional precipice of — well, something. He’s not entirely sure what, because first Henry interrupted their conversation, then Emma sprained her ankle, and then, as he was in the midst of applying his physical therapy degree in perhaps the most important context of his entire life, the electrician called to say he arrived. The man spent several hours trying to undo what Killian did, and then Emma called and asked him to pick up Thai takeout for a late lunch, and before he knew it, Henry was back from ice skating, and Emma was asleep on the couch with a bowl of Phad Thai balanced on her chest.

So, her assessment is correct. Right now they are friends and this is not a date date. Though he wishes it was, and he is certain all it would take is an uninterrupted moment for him and Emma to find that bit of magic again. He’s also convinced that Emma in her dress — black, and short, and lacy, with long sleeves and a neckline that is both wonderful and tempting — is a bit of magic in and of itself. 

David texts Emma that they’ve arrived, and Emma and Henry both get bundled up to meet them outside. Killian grabs Henry’s piles of belongings and they’re out the door. 

Emma has this whole theory that with surge pricing likely in effect all night, it would be wildly irresponsible to take an Uber to and from Ruby and Mulan’s house. Killian vetoes her theory with his medical opinion that as her PT, it would be wildly irresponsible to allow someone who sprained their ankle a week ago to walk a mile in high heeled boots. She scowls but he requests the Uber anyway. Fuck, he must be far gone because even her scowl is starting to feel like a kind of magic.

As the night goes on, Killian discovers that the problem isn’t if he should confess his feelings but rather what feeling he should confess to first. He watches Emma run in and hug Ruby and Mulan and thinks “I should confess how her smile makes everything better.” When he discovers one of his co-workers is also at the party, apparently a regular at the diner Ruby owns, Emma is kind, and warm, and eager to get to know the man, and Killian thinks “I should confess that my days don’t quite feel real until I am able to talk them over with her.” And then there’s the confession he’s been concealing for well over a month: that he wants to kiss Emma, and he wants to kiss her a lot.

Turns out Emma has a confession of her own to make. Well, not so much a confession as a bald-faced lie. 

Killian and Emma are in the middle of a rather heated debate with a couple they’ve just met about the best claymation Christmas movie when a supercilious voice interrupts their conversation, seemingly not caring about a lack of courtesy. 

“Isn’t this a festive coincidence? Us being at the same party?” Emma clenches her jaw at the voice and plasters on the brightest smile he thinks he’s ever seen. It screams false, false, false. She turns around to greet the man. 

“Walsh,” she says, and then extends her hand to the woman who must be Zelana. “I’m Emma.” 

“Oh, I’m aware,” she responds, ignoring the hand. Zelena looks at Walsh, the two of them laughing at some shared joke. 

“Seriously, Ems, what are the odds?” he asks. 

“Well, seeing as Ruby and Mulan are my friends, the chances of me being here were pretty high. I don’t even know how to calculate the odds of you showing up. Nor do I really care to,” she shrugs.  

Killian chuckles at that, bumping Emma with his hip in what he hopes is a dual gesture of both affection and camaraderie. I’m here for you, he wants the gesture to mean. It also has the effect of catching the attention of both Walsh and Zelena. 

“Emma,” Walsh says condescendingly. “You didn’t introduce us to your friend.” The emphasis on the word friend is mocking. Like, “look at me with my girlfriend, and here you are with just your regular old friend.” Killian hates this guy. 

But, because he likes to think himself a gentleman, he extends a hand in greeting. “Killian Jones,” he says. “Emma’s —” 

“Fiancé,” she cuts in almost immediately. Emma wraps her hands around his arm, snuggling into his side. “This is my fiancé.” 

“Oh,” says Walsh, glaring. Killian doubts he’s jealous as much as he’s mad Emma’s potentially happy.

“But where is your riiiing?” Zelena simpers. Killian didn’t know the word ‘ring’ had quite that many syllables. “Could you not afford one?” He's decided he hates her, too.

“Oh,” Emma says, voice quiet. “Well —” 

Fine. If they’re going to do this… “It’s at the jewelers. Being resized. It was my mum’s ring, and a little large for Emma I’m afraid.” 

“Right,” Walsh frowns. “How did the two of you meet?” 

“Neighbors,” Emma practically shouts. “We are neighbors. And that’s how we met.” 

“Rather ordinary,” Zelena says, sounding bored.

“Well, the sex is great, so…” Emma trails off and Killian almost chokes. Her expression makes him want to laugh — she apparently took herself by surprise with that one. It’s like she can hear herself saying the words and would like to be able to stop saying them, but can’t. 

He would never want Emma to think she caused him any distress. They’ll surely talk about the whole fiancé thing, but he’s been hoping all night for a magic opportunity to appear and maybe, he thinks, it’s time to make some magic of his own. 

“Truth is,” he says, “I knew Emma was the one for me months before we actually met.” He looks down at her. “I know you’re sick of this story, love, but mind if I tell it once more?” She shakes her head, eyes wide and questioning, and he turns back to Zelena and Walsh. Walsh, who it must be said, looks like he’s sucked on something sour. Killian wasn't sure he'd ever confess this to Emma, but here they are. 

“My first glimpse of Emma was in our apartment lobby. Henry must have been at a sleepover of some sort, because Emma was coming home at the early hours of the morning with her sister and friend, stumbling into the lobby clearly drunk and laughing. Then Emma shouted 'we should race!' and someone else said the loser had to make breakfast and no sooner did the words ‘ready’ come out of her sister’s mouth, than Emma took off her shoes and sprinted for the stairs.” He looks down at Emma and notices a rather stunned expression on her face. He hopes it's a good kind of stunned. Might as well keep going. “I think someone called her a cheater and Emma called them sore losers and she was up the staircase, and certainly to her apartment before the two of them even managed to stumble to the elevator. And I remember thinking to myself ‘this woman is amazing.’ We met officially in the laundry room a couple months later and she’s confirmed that thought every day hence.” 

He feels that sizzle in the air, of hope and possibility and one of Emma’s hands leaves his arm to slide around his back, squeezing his waist gently. She turns into him further, away from Walsh and Zelena. When he looks down, she leans up and kisses him, soft and delicate on the corner of his mouth. 

Walsh coughs, and Zelena says something he immediately opts to ignore. Magic. 

“Killian,” she whispers. 

“Yeah?” 

“Emma, you have to come take shots with us!” And man, Killian likes Ruby a lot but her timing is on par with Henry’s. Ruby is wearing heels that must be at least four inches high and as she approaches their little circle, wedging herself in close to Walsh, she stumbles. It feels like it starts to happen in slow motion but then all of sudden it's over: the bright red cocktail in Ruby's hand sloshes over the edge of the glass and douses Walsh in what Killian hopes is something both sticky and impossible to get out. 

“Fuck,” he shouts, pulling at the fabric of his shirt. “This is Tom Ford.”

Ruby holds her hands up and shrugs. “Oops.” She crouches down to be at eye level with the stain. “Sorry, Mr. Ford,” she says, slurring the words. 

Walsh storms off and Zelena follows. They furiously grab their coats from the hook and leave, silencing the crowd with their ire. As soon as the door slams the strained silence in the room breaks, and Ruby turns to him and Emma with a big smile. “Happy New Year, guys!” Miraculously sober once more. 

“Ruby,” Emma scolds, not sounding the least bit upset. “You are ridiculous!” 

“Excuse you, I tripped.” 

“Why didn't you 'trip' two hours ago when Walsh first showed up?” 

“I could have,” Ruby says, "but it was so satisfying to watch it happen, wasn’t it?” 

Emma looks like she wants to maintain her indignation, but then Killian bursts into laughter, and Ruby grins with unfiltered pride at her accomplishment. 

Just as Killian is plotting as to how he and Emma can escape next — (she only kissed him about two minutes ago but it feels like it’s been a lifetime; why is it the second he manages to make a little magic the universe appears dead set upon stealing the moment from him and Emma?) — Ruby tells them “Ems, I wasn’t joking about shots. I need you.” 

She looks over to Killian, her brow furrowed. “Actually, Ruby, I need to —” 

“Go on, Swan,” he reassures, “I’ll be here.” 

Ruby pulls Emma away, no further conversation, Mulan whooping loudly as they get closer. Was that a mistake? Or should he have followed them? What is he even doing? He has no strategy when it comes to Emma. He has no plan; only an intended end goal. Which is her in his life for as long as possible. Ideally with more kissing. Why has he been wasting all this time? He should have asked her out the second she and Henry brought him toffee almond bark. 

He pours himself a glass of whiskey from the liquor cart in the living room and then escapes to the back porch, sipping on the drink, cheersing the smokers out there as they all make small talk. Ruby slides the door open a few minutes later. “Come inside future emphysemiacs of the world, the countdown is starting in one minute.” 

At Ruby’s commanding tone, everyone tamps out their cigarettes or ceases vaping and moves inside. But Killian stays where he is. He’s too much of a romantic for a New Year’s Eve countdown. The strike of midnight without a kiss from Emma just might break his heart.  

The door to the patio opens again, noise swelling as he hears a few people start the countdown with a loud “60! 59! 58!” 

“Ruby, I’ll be right in.” 

The door closes. “Not Ruby.”

At the sound of Emma’s voice, every nerve ending in his body starts firing. Heart beating wildly. Palms sweating. And he’s either halfway to being in love with this woman or he’s about to throw up. 

He looks at her, and her smile is open and warm. He can’t help but smile back. “Emma.”

“Some party, huh?” she asks, standing beside him, forearms resting on the banister. Neither one of them are wearing jackets, and her sleeves might be long but they’re all lace. There’s no way they’ll last out here long. 

“Yeah.” 

She looks at him. “I feel like I should apologize for the whole fiancé thing. But —” she trails off. 

“But?” he asks. 

“I’m actually a little more interested in that story you told Walsh.”

His heart isn’t possibly beating loud enough for her to hear. Right? That noise is all in his head?

“What about it?”

“Was it true?” 

Somewhere distantly he hears the group inside continue their countdown, now hitting “34! 33! 32!” and getting louder with each number.

“Yeah. The first time I saw you was in the lobby of the building.” 

She immediately shakes her head, appearing almost angry at him. “No. Not that part. I remember that night with Mary-Margaret and Elsa. The other part. The part about me. About knowing —” A shiver runs through her. He can see the goosebumps on her skin, and yet she persists. “About me, and knowing that —” 

“Of course it’s true, Emma. I wouldn’t make that up.” 

Then Emma does the last thing he expects and punches him in the shoulder. Not hard enough to injure him but it’s surprising enough that it hurts. “Ouch!” he says, rubbing the spot she hit. “What was that?” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Are you saying I should have?” 

“Well, obviously.” She clenches her fists, and huffs out an aggravated breath. “I don’t make eyes, Killian. Okay?” She doesn’t punch him, but she does sort of push his shoulder. “I am not a make eyes person.” And she pushes him again. “Got it?”

“God, woman, would you stop shoving me?” 

“No, because you are an idiot.” 

“Are you drunk?”

“No. And are you listening to me? I DON’T MAKE EYES.”

“Okay, fine!” They’re almost shouting now, but he can still make out the “10! 9! 8!” from inside the apartment. “You don’t make eyes! I read you!” 

“I don’t make eyes,” she says, for the fourth time, a little quieter but no less emphatic. “Except I do make eyes at you. Pretty much from the first moment I met you.” 

What? Her words take a moment to register, and then all he manages to say is, “Oh.” 

Emma is having a harder time keeping in her shivers now. She crosses her arms tightly over her chest and there’s something about seeing that which springs him into action. He steps closer and runs his hands over her arms, hoping to bring some warmth to her skin. 

The group inside bursts into a jubilant shout of “Happy New Year!” and he has apparently been making eyes at him. This whole time. 

“Oh,” he says again.

“Yeah.”  

New Year’s Day Or, the holiday where Emma and Killian make magic

Emma is tempted to go inside for two reasons: one, to get out of the cold because sheesh, and two to text Mary-Margaret to inform her “I did the brave thing and all he did was say ‘oh.’ Twice!” 

But something about the way Killian said ‘oh’ the second time and the way he looks at her now has her rooted in place. He’s running his hands up and down her arms to help warm her up. It feels better than anything has the right to. 

“Happy new year, Emma,” he says. She hears the slight shake in his voice. Is he nervous, too? She kind of hopes so.

“Killian,” she says, and takes a small step closer. And, shit, she really hopes she’s not misreading his signals here. “Kiss me.” 

For a fraction of a second Killian’s hands still entirely and then his brain seems to take over. One hand snakes around to her waist and he grabs her, bringing their bodies flush, and the other goes up to the nape of her neck. Killian’s thumb and forefinger are doing this massage thing which is utterly divine, and — Oh, she thinks, we’re kissing now. 

It isn’t something she’s actively thought about — the logistics of kissing Killian — but that seems to be okay because her body is charged and humming in a way she’s never experienced before. She is suddenly struck by the sensation that she does not have enough hands. She tangles a hand in his hair, grabbing a fistful and earning her a grunt from Killian, which makes her want to do it again. But if her hand is in his hair then she can’t run it up and down the planes of his back and that’s a shame. So, she does that. But, she finds, if both hands are feeling the corded muscles of his back, then she can’t feel the firmness of his arms, which is a crime against the world. And if she’s gripping his biceps, then she can’t get a handful of what she has always suspected, and has now been able to confirm, is a phenomenal ass. It’s a problem scientists should dedicate the rest of their lifetimes to solving —  too much Killian and not enough hands. 

Killian runs his tongue along the seam of her lips and the sensation is so overwhelming she has to take a second, pulling away with a gasp. Only now they're too far away from on another so she wraps her arms around his neck, pressing her forehead to his. She keeps her eyes closed, wanting to savor the everything of the moment for another second. 

“Emma,” he says. 

She smiles, and opens her eyes only long enough to kiss him again, sweetly on the lips before nuzzling into his the space between his neck and shoulder. Either she's aggravated her ankle or something about Killian is affecting her because she's having trouble standing.

He laughs, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her once more, and yes! This is significantly warmer than the rubbing of arms things. They should have been doing this the whole time. The kissing is so much warmer. 

“Emma,” he repeats. 

“Hmm?” she doesn’t feel like she can actually say full words. Maybe it’s the not saying of full words that’s allowing her to feel this warm (also, made her something called a snowball shot and it was minty and wonderful and that might also be contributing to the warm feeling). 

“How committed are you to this hanging around for donuts and coffee thing?” 

“Why? You have a better offer?” 

“I could make you hot chocolate,” he says. 

“And?” 

“That’s not enough?” 

She smiles, opens her eyes and shakes her head at him. “Coffee and donuts. That is a beverage and a snack. You offered only a beverage.” 

“Counteroffer: I steal a box of donuts from Ruby and Mulan’s kitchen and we bring them back to your place.” 

“Now you’re talking.” Their plan is to get bundled up in their outerwear, say their goodbyes and then grab the donuts, but it all goes to hell when Ruby asks Emma why she’s being weird and in response she shouts “I kissed Killian and I’m stealing your donuts!” She grabs a box and runs. As they try to make their getaway Ruby’s shouts at them from the front door. “I’m sending you a request on Venmo! Donuts are for non-horny guests who stay for dancing!” 

Safely tucked into their Uber (she asked about the true horror of surge pricing and Killian refused to answer), Emma finds herself fixated on the red glint of Killian’s stubble under the passing glow of streetlights. He swallows a few times as she runs her finger along the line of his jaw. 

“Killian? Has your heater been working okay?” 

He nods. “Right as rain.” 

“Oh,” she says, disappointed. “Well, if it ever stopped working, you could stay at my place again.” 

The corners of his mouth twitch as he holds in a smile, and she really wants to bite his neck but she also doesn’t want to negatively impact Killian’s Uber rating. “Is that so?” 

“Just being neighborly.” 

“Obviously.” 

The rest of the ride to their apartment complex is wonderful, with the touching, and the smiling, and the knowing that she has a box of contraband donuts, but she wants more. 

As soon as they get out of the car, Killian takes Emma’s hand but she stays where she is and pulls him back to her. 

“I changed my mind,” she says. He looks uncertain, and she rushes to explain. “You should stay at my apartment even if your heat is working.” 

“Well that sounds grand,” Killian says, his voice low. 

“Well good,” she says, and that’s when inspiration strikes. Once in the lobby, she unzips her ankle boots and holds them out for Killian to take. “Trade you boots for donuts?”

“Deal,” he says. 

“So.”

“So.” 

“Who would have thought, huh?” 

“What?” he asks. 

“I mean, who would have though that me calling you a sick fuck on Thanksgiving would lead to us fucking on New Year’s Day? Crazy, right?” She asks the rather audacious question in as casual a tone as possible. Killian looks a little dazed and Emma leans up to kiss him again, smiling as their lips meet. 

“I —” he sputters. 

“Killian?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Loser makes breakfast in the morning,” she says, and then she’s running through the lobby, clutching the donuts to her chest.

Killian’s laughter chasing her up the stairs is magic. 

#cssecretsanta2k19 #captain swan #cs fanfic #captain swan ff #emma x killian #p: emma x killian #c: emma swan #c: killian jones #hollyethecurious #never stories

[stupendoustrashmagazine]

Prelude

Tonight the act of naming fell through the floor.

We speak permeable solids inflected by light

Move indistinctly: palate of windshield 

Crosshatch hop-cross’d with Ovidian shift,

faux forest, treat’d with colors from closet

Plait plat in a plot to track flotillas down,

Hot air balloons up, celebrating distant

Prairie fair. Farmer’s burnoff coils tall

Ash columns, formations above turbines white.

Learn to kill that hunger for thunderhead drift. 

Can follow on foot synapse, taste confit,

Sketch figure, set type, code python on limb,

Design legend for—scratch the map, lost.

I want the aura to aural irrespective of sense

the quartet of styrofoam boats & balloons

of plastic bags forgiven along with conductor,

for it to catapult group out open window,

An aria, moved, moving, with others. The spleen 

Racket, melange dischord allowing 

harmony’s plural means of resolution.

Pipe seams bead’d with silver solder &

Dreams warp’d with passion’s endurance.

The trespass into yard with inflatable pool

where algal sideburns pastoralize 

a celebratory drowning ritual. 

Come back. Help me frame Matisse (guilty 

Strokes), rust the iron, damper temperment

Unclothed. Spill the hamper & sing it,

that magnolia 

We’ll stay long enough for faith in 

each other’s visions. For something beyond

earthly suffering. Sucked dry wax & cone. 

It is unfortunate, the dragonflies are

Purple & beautiful, abdomen metallic

terrae, nodes aggregate, curvature &

husk. Nearby: a field of lightning. The stroll

through it risked no electrocution. 

Cull’d from material body leads to matter again.

Association of associations.

Together, we’ll erase strip malls frosting away

In our chests, but we won’t be able to stop the ivy

From terraforming, maturing towards strangulation,

A form of survival. Walk a while into notional 

Forest, ash grey hit with newborn beetles,

No radar, cobalt blue tinted dark green.

Skykomish in Summer

In Goldbar Washington boys crossed 

river with driftwood staves feet

slick-step between slime & rock, 

underbelly of serpentine but liquefied,

algaal nets stretched between toes, 

Like scales without edge—stiffened

Cold after crossing were caverns 

shadows hold, shield from radiation,

& though they couldn’t admit this

touch was what they most wanted,

schizoid clouds temporary shelter

against frenetic sun, there in those

caverns the kids dove into pools

Spun in schools of spit & current 

Slippery grips grit on bank’s cove

tangle of nets, sunken conflagrations

Their bodies pressing against the wake   

a force there, a quiet endlessness

sound beckoning shape, the inky jar.

Repossession (1.)

Spring seeds fibrillate, sap drools.

Muddy lawns: aftermath of an approach.

Easter-green paint cracks, reveals cedar siding,

Disintegrates, falls to foundation’s edge close.

One could ask who lived here. Do most times

even though it’s’no secret. They lost it, left

We cut & to the porch fasten 2x4 handrails

(Suing a bank’s a better investment), step

Inside.Maple floorboards, worn-out testimony.

Each creak releases things outside in-

terpretation or language. Bathtub’s got

Concrete top pour’d but unfinish’d

punctured lining by PVC tubes like reeds

for lungs underwater, covered in mud.

The second story framing’s exposed, drywall 

crumbs caked, spackle pocks & joint compound

in gnarled clutches grab remains, fading.

Electrical wires in knots, pigtails,

Copper diminished in conduit. Empty

centers of things usually covered, then valued.

There is then the business of the yard

children’s toys—truck beds blue on body

red, bouquets of acrylic flowers, the 

eyeball amanita thrombosis, marbles 

½-cover’din mud.Dolls, ropes, figurines.

We clean out a carport barn, trash, 

automotive parts, motor oil, glass, aluminum.

Kinetic images sequence, make time elastic,

Revelations flaw; in sensorial beatitudes, a kind of wreckage,

Sight is a museum of things seen, they’re hostages:

Beneath the house, thousands of aluminum

Cans, vinegar, rat nests in an old tent,

Dust so fine it’s crystalline. We rake & bag for hours.

Outside, a doll hung from rhododendron

Its face torched, head cocked to the side, clothes

Missing, darling buds of May hooked at the armpit.

My boss talks about rural zoning laws

As we back out of the emptied house;

The wet half-acre prairie grass fenced-in & barbed

Waits for another debtor; we head again toward emptiness.

Repossession (2.)

In the truck. Behind us, trail-rattle

& typical thrash. My boss tells me

About the gem we’re about settle in.

It’s like wading through bodies, I think.

The metaphor breaks immediately. 

The driveway could be a fractured jaw—

I cut the grass with our Kubota mower.

The shed is fifteen feet away from the tracks

& an old sawmill spits nothing under sky.

Deadly nightshade drifts vascular across cedar

Siding, grey lead-based flakes fall in wet, cut weeds.

The red berries barrage, their Plathian pitch.

The mother-in-law’s a converted shed,

Its floor’s center sags, linoleum squares

Sepia-toned & checkerboard in easy encryption. 

I bleach & scrub the toilet, pour antifreeze in.

The makeshift porch’s missing walls on all sides:

Top hat Styrofoam insulation & DuPont

Foam curdled, cumulous, mustard & rust. I push open

The house’s door. Carpet bubbles carcinoma grey,

Whole sections swell a foot from level ground.

I taste urine & ammonium. Dust gets on our skin.

I grab my razor knife, “Rip in.” He laughs.

The carpet weighs twice what it should, I stack

Pieces on the lawn. The carpet pad has fused

In a foam matrix to subterranean linoleum.

I stab & lever it with a toothed roofing shovel.

D the cleaner & I stop. We just look at it.

Snowflakes, quite idiosyncratic, urea crystals, dust.

Maybe a year or so buildup from cats or dogs.

The bedroom the same. I laugh this time.

Tobacco stains headway, riverine drawings on walls.

Sappy window trim. Popcorn ceiling meteorologist:

Sheet of cottage cheese about to hail.

I go outside to sneak a cigarette near the tracks. 

We shovel the crystal uric acid into buckets.

Makes me think about molecular records.

An atomic record forever void its narrative. 

I pull up tack strip with a roofing shovel.

They’re like reeds, I think. We leave it

Mowed, gutted, clean. It’s quiet here near the tracks.

Sparrows. He starts the truck. Dust all over us.

We pass past things along with clouds.

We head to the dump. I unload. He reminds us

He hates dealing with the public.

Stamp

Over there in rotting field

Grows some storm with an eye

Toward an oak

One could say is trembling

But accounting for wind

Really it moves from force

& force alone while metastatic clouds 

Mid-west median June appraise

Landscape of prairie

& steel beams two-by-foured

In rows holding up a smattering,

Maybe just a platter of

Figurative three-tab shingles—

An economy of pigs, feed, birds, too:

It’s pulmonary, the bristles

Horizontally dance, thistles

In multiplication, an armory

Rucksacking its strength

Gripping seams & susceptible glue

Undone un-doing year

After year—from behind

One window of nondescription

A home chatters, clapboards flap,

Scratching like molars,

A singular flash gives rise

During descent—cast-iron

Frying each cornea clean—

Leaving in singular manner 

Carbonized stump, something

That doesn’t even look

For an original impulse

A root that once gripped

Mineral & dirt, an uneven pitch

Of earth left without

A stamp or reason for being.

[slothgiirl]

forever isn’t for everyone (is forever for you?) part 5

London is gray and dull after Australia and the festivals we'd been at. And like it's welcoming us all back, it's raining. 

Foggy, a complete 180. It doesn't help that it's night, and I haven't seen day since two days ago, having spent another day traveling. Cramped up in my seat, squished between other passengers. 

This time I had slept fine on board, exhausted from touring. We're all dead on our feet and unlike the last few days, we don't puke into a cab, we just sort of wave and leave and it's sad. I think after all we've done, all the time spent together, we leave like it's nothing. I know even I need some alone time. 

But it's still sad to me. 

The second leg of the tour isn't for months and I have a week off before having to go into work. A week I spend sleeping and doing laundry and becoming a couch potato. 

Another week of catching up with friends and getting lunch before I have to go back to work. It's the day before I go back to work that Alex texts me, my heart lurching, an unconscious desire that had sunk into my mind. 

In Australia, it had seemed easy to believe that a man like Alex might like an ordinary girl like me. Perhaps I was selling myself short, but my confidence was a fickle thing that still needed propping up after my acne ridden teenage years. 

More eloquent than in person, his preference for written word is obvious.

I was hoping we might have a listen to the record I told you about. A drink or two, a small offering in comparison to the pleasure of your company once more, in the city we both inhabit, where everything will seem solid and less ephemeral than abroad. -Alexander

It was long and flowery for a text and made me dizzy with anticipation, I threw out everything I'd been told to do when a boy texts you and replied instantly, walking home from tescos trying to make food instead of getting takeout for a change, eagerly asking for a time and address. 

It was nice to be able to come home and do nothing. A privilege I couldn't imagine coming back from while my roommates came home from their jobs dead on their feet. 

Grueling weeks on the road seemed a small price to pay.

I take the tube over to his, a beautiful georgian house among many in Chelsea, save for some dying plants outside, a clear victim of his recent travels, thick dark curtains obscuring all the windows.The street is littered with nice cars, millionaires the only people who can afford the nice neighborhood. London's market on the uptick. 

At least I feel at ease in the dying light, the sun spilling in the sky like egg yolk as it sets, turning the clouds blood red, casting long dark shadows. I guess Alex is not a struggling musician, or maybe he's just from a well off family. 

It's then I know that I start to feel anxious, no longer buoyed by our shared work, just me and him and would that be enough? It was stupid when I already knew how easy it was to be with him. 

But this felt more concrete then wondering around a foreign city had. The thought of kissing him no longer a far off wish but a possibility so close it had my fingertips tingling. 

Alex opens the door with a boyish smile on his lips, clad in loose blue jeans, frayed at the hem, and a grey t shirt emblazoned with give a damn, hair hopelessly disheveled as if he'd just woken up. "El, love" he says fondly, after a second, "I'm delighted you're here." 

Waving me inside. I'm expecting the inside to look like a Tatler photo shoot, more burberry than marks and spenser sales rack, with the uninviting feeling carefully decorated homes had. 

Instead, the rugs are rich, intricate designs, the edges frayed with time and use. There's a thin layer of dust in the paintings hanging on the wall, one signed manet, another of a slender woman with doe like eyes and hair the colour of milk tea, in vivid realism, only the clothes betraying the age, paint cracked with time by the frame.  

Following along, I spy the stacks of books piled high on every table, some new others yellowed with age. 

There's a silver tray on the coffee table littered with pens and paper and a beautiful piano in the room he leads me too, room lit by stained glass lamps in the shape of flowers, the shades tightly drawn with a beautiful japanese inspired screen for good measure. 

A guitar rests in one settee. It's closer to an antique shop than any catalogue. "Please," Alex says, "sit, make yourself comfortable," as he goes to place the needle on a record, a small library of records covering a bookshelf nearby. 

As an after though he adds, "don't mind the mess."

"It's fine," I smile, watching him, at ease in his home, wanting to run my fingers through his hair and find out if his hair was as soft as it looked, "it's kind of the vintage shop of my dreams. I don't know where to look because everything is catching my eye." 

As I'd hoped, he laughs. "That's certainly a way of looking at it innit?"

The first notes of the record filling the room. Alex takes a seat next to me on the plush sofa. I kick off my shoes, surprised at how quickly I take a liking to the jazz music, curling up on the couch, dim lighting adding to the cozy atmosphere, before I catch him looking at me with the same fondness from earlier. With an easy smile on his lips.

For a moment, we just gaze at each other with a certain schoolyard shyness that settles when neither of us looks away. 

His expressive eyes on mine. 

A gaze so intense I can't hold it for long before I have too look away. "It's funny," I note, "the music has me picturing the concert clearly. Like I'd been there. Fuck that must have been a night."

"It was." Alex nods, his gaze still heavy on me. "They all lived for their music, bodies a vessel for playing the notes swirling around their souls."It was a beautiful thought, and I wasn't sure how to reply to the sheer earnestness. 

"You said there was wine," I ask all faux innocence, wanting something to take the edge off. 

Hyper aware of every movement I make. I want to sink back into the ease we'd had in Auckland and not this. The thought of him wanting me as much as I wanted him was driving me crazy. 

"Oh so that's why you came," he grins so alight with amusement, eyes twinkling. 

"The musics good too." 

"And the company?"I shrug, teasing, "I've had worse."

"Oi!"

I snort.

He doesn't move to go for wine. "I'm starting to feel superfluous El," Alex say in his thick yorkshire accent, a drawl to his words, each one carefully considered as he takes his time to form a reply, uncaring about the time he takes. "It's not a very nice feeling."

I roll my eyes. "Don't tell me you need as much ego stroking as Miles?"

"Miles does all the ego stroking for himself."

"That doesn't surprise me," I laugh, "I think you need a lot of ego to get up on stage every night. I don't have stage fright but it's all very weird to have that many people looking up at you."

He nods in agreement, "it's a good thing that's not part of my job. All I wanted to do was 'ave people listen to my little songs."

"Well I'd say job well done." 

The album had debuted top of the UK charts. And he'd written the lions share with Miles. Alex ducks his head, red rising to his cheekbones, a stark contrast against his pale skin. 

Even a few weeks down under had done nothing to rid him of the lack of colour that came with living in such a gloomy city. 

"You've got the whole country singing along."

"Well. . .Miles and the boys do. I just helped Miles a little or well we just jammed together. Can't help myself around that man. . .rarely has anyone understood me so well."

"Have you always written songs?" None of my childhood hobbies had stayed with me, consumed with studying. 

"Can't help myself," he admits. "A tune or some words. . .coming to me mind. There till I write them down."

"That's loads more creative than me. I always think it would be fun to draw but I'm imagining some renaissance masterpiece and it always comes out a derpy stick figure or worse. So I just give up and read or go for a walk." Even in the winter, Greenwich park was beautiful, and bundled up it was bareable. 

"What do you like to read," Alex asks, tilting his head towards me, curiousity brimming in his soft eyes. The space between us closing in as we lean towards each other, disarmed by our conversation.  

His hand resting on his knee, pulled out on the sofa, making me feel shameless about having my legs pulled up as well. 

"Articles. Very depressing boring world news. Free essays on the paris review. It's a shame prints dead or else I'd try to justify buying copies. But I think I'd rather have a cuppa tea. With those fruit bits or boba."

"Is print dead?" 

Alex says it with a layer of incredulity, baffled. 

"Yeah. This thing called the internet came along."

"Bloody hell," he jokes, "I'm still waiting for the windows explorer to. . .do it's thing."

"You mean load? Not surprised. The selfies you tried to take in Sydney were awful. Thankfully those people were there to take our picture."

"Be easy with me El," Alex laughs, shaking his head at me, eyes crinkling in amusement. 

"I'll have to think about it," I tease, leaning against the softness of the sofa, resting my head as I take the sight of him in, warmth spreading in my chest, thrilled to know that I can make him laugh, that he'd meant it when he said he wanted me over. 

It's a funny little skip of my heart as hope takes root, the idea that he might like me as much as I like him, making me smile, happy for the first time since I got back. Really happy, not just content to be home, to lazy around and get time to myself.  

He pours us both a cuppa wine in ceramic cups, "no wine snobs here," he grins and the music plays and his knee taps to the beat against my leg. 

Every touch too much and yet not enough, desire welling up in the pit of my stomach. It's easy to drink, pour another glass out."

I don't think anyone has the time or concentration to listen to a fourty minute song anymore," I note, sipping lazyily at the wine, my palette too unrefined to know if it's cheap or expensive. 

"It's a jam session!"

I drink, trying to hide my smile at his expression, affronted on behalf of music everywhere, the seriousness to his mouth, frowning, a directness to his gaze. 

Failing, I giggle, slumping against the sofa, looking up at Alex through my lashes. "I thought it was just a very long song."

"El." His voice, that thick accent, his unique drawl, my face burning, as he leans over, empty bottle of wine forgotten on the coffee table. His hand cups my cheek, the tips of his fingers calloused in a delightful way, toes curling on the sofa cushion, thumb running over my bottom lip. 

Heart beat lodged in my throat, I can't speak, the desire bubbling over, wanting to spill over and kiss him already. Alex pressing lightly over my body, trapping me against the sofa. 

I swallow thickly, my fingers going to neck, threading my hands through his caramel hair, soft and silken, and pull him down to kiss me hard. 

I can feel his satisfied smile against my skin as he kisses me back passionately, without any hesitation, all of his fumbling for words gone. All confidence and want. 

Alex's other hand going down to my hip, rubbing cicrcles over my cotton shirt. My head spins with want and desire and Alex all tangled together, finally, kissing him eagerly as he shifts, shoving a cushion thoughtlessly off the sofa. I lay down, skin burning hot. Too many layers between us. 

His lips against mine. Tasting of wine and bitter chocolate, a tanginess I can't get enough of. 

My mouth opening up to his, tongue exploring my mouth, my hands running through his hair. Alex pressed against me as I lay with my back on the couch, solid and too many layers between us. 

He pulls back, pulling up at the hem of my shirt with a naughty schoolboy grin, endearing all the same. 

"I hate winter," I whisper against his cool skin, colder than the room, barely emanating any heat at all in the frigid english winter, "it makes getting undressed such a pain." 

Alex laughs, pulling his own shirt over his head. "I'll be sure to make it worth your time."

"Cocky bastard," I utter as he hooks his fingers through the loops of my jeans, pulling me closer to him, the feeling of his own cock, already half hard, sends me reeling. 

In leiu of a response, Alex trails kisses down my neck, sucking at the skin, sure to leave marks tomorrow. 

My fingers dig into his hair, breathily moaning his name. Shamelessly, he undoes the button on my jeans. 

It's never sexy to take off jeans, kicking them off rapidly, as I reach for him, kissing him again fiercely. The feel of his cool skin sending sending shivers down my spine. Lithe but toned. 

Alex cups one of my breasts, nipple hardening through the delicate lace. "Fuck El," he groans, hips grinding down against mine.I want him. I want him so much, feeling feverish with desire.  

All my thoughts of him. 

Of Alex. 

He slides his jeans off easily enough, cock hard through the fabric of his boxers. I look up at him, as I unclip my bralete, adding it to the pile of things on the coffee table. 

There's always an initial nervousness, when sleeping with someone new. And yet, I know Alex wouldn't hurt me. I trust him. 

"El-,"

"Come here," I reach for him, a whine to my voice, "come here and fuck me Alex."

He does. 

#Alex Turner #alex turner fanfic #forever isn't for everyone #alex turner imagine #alex turner x reader #mine

[webcricket]

Looking Glass

Chapter 24 - Heaven is a Place on Earth

Pairing: CastielXAU!Reader

Word Count: 1611

Summary: The seraph and his love settle into the relative normalcy of life in the bunker - how long will the honeymoon last? Warning for a suggestively erotic non-explicit adult situation. One more chapter remains before we bid adieu. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Miss a chapter? Have a Masterlist Link!

Staring into the two by two crate repurposed as luggage overflowing with stuff set on the end of the bed, the surge of a smile crests your cheeks. The gladness arises not from the realization the relatively small container holds more superfluous crap than you’ve owned in years – most of the items totally unnecessary for basic survival and impractical for travelling light – it’s the notion of putting down roots, calling somewhere home, and having the comfort of someone with which to share the physical and emotional space such a home represents that draws out the manifestation of pure delight.

Grasp sliding along the sides of the wooden box to lock into the notched handles, ginger on the roughened surface to avoid splinters, you drift a final glimpse around the stripped bunker room where you first woke up in this strange and wonderful world – the very same day you met a seraph who challenged your beliefs about celestial beings and whose kindness and persistent, although not always patient, concern changed everything.

It was Cas’ idea, moving in – air quotes implicit – with him. Practically speaking, since you spend whatever free time you have together, well, together, the proposal made sense; especially considering other refugees live crammed into storage cells sleeping on stacks of dusty file folders in lieu of mattresses and stowing their sundries on shelves lined with lore books in languages too ancient to comprehend.

“Oh, uh, sorry-” a voice pitched to tinny heights by nerves meekly announces itself from the shadow of the hall door standing ajar.

Your glance shifts to a girl burdened beneath a backpack and shrouded in stained jeans and a tattered olive-colored jacket ringed by a dingy faux-fur collar. You recognize the youthful porcelain features and furtively darting eyes of the young woman and smile warmly. “Hi, Maggie. Come on in.”

In an undertaking of momentous effort given the weight strapped to her shoulders, she strains a step inward and bends, nearly buckling to the floor with it as the backpack lands inside the threshold with a dense thud. Evidently she never caught on to the adage of packing light. Nevertheless, she survived. “Sam said this room would be open in the afternoon-” She peers at a non-existent watch on her wrist, rubs the bare flesh in self-conscious habit, and hides the whole hand in her pocket. “I-I guess I’m a little early.”

“Right on time,” you reassure. Without the fallout filtered shine of the sun, you’re not yet used to reckoning time here in the artificially-lit depths of the bunker either. “I was just clearing out.” Focus flitting to the hole in her pocket where her buried fingers fidget, you remember a magenta jacket worn once mixed in amidst your surplus bounty of belongings. “Hey, I have something you might like.” Rifling through the box, you yank out the article and toss it in her direction.

She dives to catch the fabric projectile, strokes the satiny finish, admires the color, and stares up at you; an unuttered – Are you sure? – glimmers in her wide-eyed gaze.

“I don’t really need two coats, you know?”  You resettle the rumpled contents of the crate. “And the color compliments you.”

“Thank you!” She beams; the gift, along with the compliment, opens the proverbial floodgates of sociability. “You’re with the angel, right?”

Right. The skin on your nape crawls – the bunker’s a tiny place these days with so many people occupying it and every single one of them damn well knows you’re with the angel. Sam made it a point to involve you in aiding the other survivors as they adapt to this world in order to break down the barriers of your angelic intimacy inhibiting them from trusting you. You get it – once upon a time you thought all angels were dicks, too. Defensive instinct kicks in at her comment. “His name is Castiel.” You direct the grit of the answer into the tenseness of the fists grabbing the edges of the box. A sliver punctures your pinky.

She looks at her feet, blushing, apologetic. “I didn’t mean-” she mumbles, meets your eyes to express sincerity– “I meant, what’s it like? Being with-”

“An angel?” you finish the query, biting the inside of your lower lip in self-recrimination for getting riled over the friendly conversation of a curious and grateful girl. “Sorry, I just … I’ve heard some of what the others say about us. He’s a good guy and what we have, it feels really … normal.”

“Normal-” She smiles, irises wistfully glazing and rolling upward in reflection– “that sounds nice.”

Heaving the box up to balance on the slope of your hip, you clasp her arm commiseratively as you shimmy past, ignoring the shard of wood stinging your skin. “I’ve learned anything is possible in this world. You can have that now, too – normal, nice. It’s safe here. I promise.”

“Safe.” She mouths the word, swallows the syllable in wonderment as you disappear into the hallway. Spinning to study the barren beige walls of the room, seeing possibilities in the blank canvas, bending to pick up her pack and drag it toward the dresser, she says the word again, imbuing the sound with confidence of truth. Of belief. “Safe.”

Perception perked, smile snagged at the corner of his mouth, Cas follows the sweetly noted treasure of a song to the yawning entryway of his quarters; his, he reminds himself, and as of today, yours, too. He stops to watch your figure swaying in front of the dresser, humming an unidentifiable and melodic tune as you fold pieces of clothing and tuck them into the drawers.

With you inhabiting the space, the light of the room glows significantly warmer; the cold décor seems somehow cozier. The room was never one he sought out before, never a place he felt a particular connection to aside from the fact Dean deemed number 15 as officially in angelic possession when it became clear the heavenly dispossessed being had unofficially blessed the bunker as his official home base; Dean happened to be half in the bag drunk that night and the bestowment of the bedroom may have been purely so the hammered hunter could slur some smirked joke about an Inception-style movie meta of an occupied vessel occupying a room.

The muffled shutting of the top drawer and scrape asunder of the one below tugs Cas into the present. He worried asking you to stay with him so early in your relationship might be perceived as presumptuous on his part. This world may be novel to you, but as an angel the navigational nuances of a loving liaison exist in a land foreign to him – one discovered, explored, and mapped out piece by piece with every moment you share. There’s no doubt in his heart and mind he loves you; and yet, he is also learning how to love you day by day.

Heeding to the guidance of the naturally arising – albeit frequently hedonistic in origin – impulses afflicting his vessel when in your presence has proven useful. He succumbs to one such an urge now, treading noiselessly across the threshold to slot his body against yours; skimming his hands over your stomach, he sinks his stubbly chin to your neck to stamp a kiss upon the delicate skin. “How was your day, my love?”

Laughter of surprise lilting your tongue, folded tee held aloft in your fingers tumbling to the floor, you relax into his rigid physique and stretch your neck to give his ticklish affections ample and unrestricted access. “Good – great, now that you’re here. How’d it go with the ghoul?”

He groans, a vibration of breath ghosting your ear.

“That good, huh?” you tease. In the mirror mounted above the dresser, you observe him nuzzle the sensitive spot below your ear until, lashes lowering in delight, you shudder and squirm, weak-kneed with a knot of anticipation forming in your belly.

They – he, Sam, and Dean in a tag-team trio – have tried to set a routine of hunting to keep Jack distracted, to train those of the refugees who are willing to fight a different foe. No one is talking about the impossibility of returning to the apocalypse world to take Michael to task. Deep down, for all the speeches and good intentions, no one really wants to go back; and without an archangel, that door is mercifully closed.

When he lets up in his worshipful ministrations, your eyelids flutter open to meet the eclipsed blue of his reflected gaze. “I missed you, angel.”

“I missed you, too.” His fingertips test the heated waters of flesh beneath the hem of your shirt, sparking grace where they caress and a blissful aching in your nethers. “I heard you praying – perceived your longing.” The digits wander below your navel, lifting the elastic band of your shorts to stray further still. “Those prayers – they’re inappropriate as far as holy entreaties go, don’t you think?” Arching a brow, the smile brimming to scrunch his eyes and nose tells you he enjoyed every licentious word.

“Yes, Cas,” you purr, less acknowledgment of impiousness, more yearning. Fingers wrap the seraph’s wrist and push his pursuit of your pleasure permissively toward its goal.

“Dean found another case,” he murmurs and nips at the shell of your earlobe, “we leave in a few hours.”

“So soon?” You gasp the last word, thighs trembling as his fingers and their tingling grace glide home to sheath your senses from all but the seraph’s touch.

He groans again into your neck, softly speaks in a gravelly choked cadence you’ve come to comprehend is Enochian. You don’t know the precise meaning; you can guess.

Next: Ch. 25 - Corollaries

#castiel x reader #castiel x you #castiel fluff #castiel reader insert #spn x reader #castielxreader #castielxyou #cas x reader #cas x you #castiel fanfiction #castiel fanfic #spn fanfiction #reader x castiel #you x castiel #spn fanfic #spn reader insert #castiel x au!reader #cricket writes cas

[das-boog]

I had an idea for a battle-monster setting where instead of being divided up by an elemental type (fire, water, dragon, etc) monsters were categorized by genre. B-movies have an advantage over Modern Scifi due to their solid rubber bodies being hardier than CGI, whereas Fantasy creatures get a fascination effect against Art Flick Metaphor Puppets. Wrote a drabble for it below.

———

When I was told I’d be conducting an interview with the local MonsTactics champion, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Certainly not the woman I’d been handed a photo of; tiny Anzu Goda, in a prim pantsuit, all professional smiles as she held up a tournament trophy alongside two other well known monster breeders clapping politely. Besides the artificial-plastic-orange hair she looked like she could be any other professional athlete, a far cry from the bombastic personae she had in the arena.

That was to be expected though; most breeders prestigious enough to have their own dojo were expected to be larger-than-life personalities. A career MonsTactician had a lot of expenses, and winning battles could often come a far second to selling merchandise. Ms. Goda was known to be more committed to the keyfabe of her profession than most, and I hoped for the chance to crack through that gaudy, vaudeville exterior to show people the REAL Anzu.

Driving up to her dojo, however, I felt the hubris of that expectation settle on me like a lead blanket. Ms. Goda’s flagship dojo, Milktooth Hall, is an imposing edifice miles into the mountains outside of town. Formerly an asylum, Milktooth’s imposing bulk of gothic architecture, wrought iron and apparently unfinished renovations did not exactly give off a welcoming, homey vibe. While the main building looked largely livable, from the road I could see shattered windows and missing shingles on the upper floor, and another house on the grounds that looked like it had suffered a recent fire. Even already knowing her reputation, the structure was intimidating, and I felt it was nearly instinct that made me check my phone’s reception and my pocket for mace before stepping out of the car.

So braced was I for some sort of danger that it was almost a relief when, at my touch, the door creaked open on its own to pitch blackness. It was too blatant for me to keep taking seriously, she had to be messing with me. Repeating that to myself until it was convincing, I walked into the house.

The foyer opened into a largely unaltered reception area for the asylum. Wooden benches had been replaced with plastic seats bolted to the ground and the floors replaced with linoleum the color of curdled milk. Lights seemed broken or flickering at random. I was the only person there. This was all, again, expected decor for the famed MonsTactician Goda, but I was surprised that I was the only person in the room. Had she been told I was coming? Image was one thing, but certainly Milktooth Hall had to have other staff? Battlers being trained, monster wranglers, classes, accountants, clerks, something? Even Black Jacobs, who raised monsters found at the unexplored sections of maps, kept local offices in his port of call to handle business. But besides the buzz of the neon lights and the odd distant creak or snap of the building settling there was nothing. After a few minutes alone and confused I made up my mind to search the building and opened the first door to my right.

This is how I met her, standing stock-still just behind the door, not showing so much as a flicker of shock when I shrieked in surprise an inch from her face. The beloved, bellicose, Bloodsplatter Tactician, Anzu Goda.

She was wearing the costume she had on in all the major tournament photo-ops, faux-leather strips and resin-faked metal scraps covered in fake bloodstains and artistically draped rags. The outfit was ramshackle mess faked perfectly around superhero sleekness. I was briefly disappointed. If she was meeting me the same way she met her battle opponents, then this might be just another promotion opportunity.

“You are… From the magazine.” She giggled, true to her stage presence as ever. Unblinking, mad grin, movements just a little bit too fluid. A performance cultivated by a slew of dance instructors, acting trainers and psychologists whose careers Anzu had made very, very prestigious. I tried not to let my judgment show.

“Yes. Ms. Goda, MonTactics Monthly. I’m Ezra, Ezra Goodfellow? I believe I spoke to your agent on the phone?”

“Yes I… Recall.” She froze and then whirled away from me, fake metal pieces clattering in my face as she made a 540 degree turn away from me. “This way, to down the hall! Everything will be clear there!” She giggled again, “We’re going to have so much FUN!”

I followed and tried not to audibly groan. Ms. Goda skipped ahead, pixielike, in my own opinion probably a bit too much so for a woman just entering her thirties. Lights began to click off at random. “This way, this way!” Another flash of the mad grin and a ballet twirl around a bend, out of my sight. “We’re almost to my favorite place! My favorite place in the whole building!”

Her voice was still echoing, like from the bottom of a well, when I rounded the corner and found her gone.

I was understandably frustrated; I’d naively hoped my status as a professional would’ve spared me this funhouse nonsense and, to be honest, the whole thing was getting to me. Not the building itself, although it certainly didn’t help; As we’d gone deeper in rusted pipes began to drip unidentifiable brown-red substances down the walls, tiling was missing, and the lights just seemed to get worse and worse as I went. It was how clearly manufactured it all was. The hokiness of the whole thing, right down to the dye in her hair. Something glass, a small bottle or vial, cracked under my foot and I cursed. I’d be lucky to leave this place without tetanus.

I have no idea how long I wandered, but it was more than long enough for my irritation to take root and ferment into a constant low-grade tension. The whole first floor of the building seemed like an endless maze of crisscrossing halls, and more than once I turned back toward what I was CERTAIN should be the lobby just to find more carefully-ruined medical offices and creatively stained wards. Eventually at intersections I would just turn the first way I heard a sound down, a distant giggle or a scratch. I briefly considered calling my editor for help but, true to form, my phone had already died.

It was in this high-strung, exhausted mood that I met Anzu Goda again, standing backlit in front of the door to what appeared to be an administrative office. “Ms. Goda!” Decorum long forgotten, I broke into a half-jog. “Ms. Goda please, I-I get it, we just-“

“Do you know what you are here for, Ezra… Goodfellow.” Sillouetted in the doorframe I couldn’t see her expression, but even so it felt like her gaze bore right through me. An air duct banged and dented overhead, something crawling inside!

“Yes the- the INTERVIEW dammit just let me do my fucking job-!” Professionalism abandoned, I broke into a sprint. My shirt had come untucked. Sweat stained my collar. I was grabbing her arms, shouting, shaking,  “Just let me know where we can actually sit DOWN and-!” The vent banged again. Something in it. I looked up at the vent. Wrong! Too late! Something screaming from BELOW me, bursting out of the tiles (loose, shitty linoleum, easily peeled up.) I feel back, flailing, screaming, crying-!

And… So did Ms. Goda. Some pale, bruised, almost translucent-fleshed THING had burst from the ground and was standing over her, shrieking, and tears were running down her face. Just two, around a wide mouth that stretched and contorted her cheeks so the tears ran zigzags. Her scream lasted longer than mine. It lasted longer than the monsters… And slowly faded to peals of laughter as she threw her arms around our assailant.

“Oh that was WONDERFUL Humphrey! Oh who’s my jumpy boy, who’s my loud jumpy BOY!” The creature- soft, eyeless, its fishbelly flesh mottled with random oozing bruises- made another small shriek followed by heavy wheezing and panting as it’s tongue lolled over its almost-human teeth, flopping randomly like a slug exploring. It had hooks for hands, and clammy skin pulled tight over bestial musculature and bones. At its full height it came up to Ms. Goda’s chest, and walked with a pronounced hunch. It headbutted her shoulder twice in catlike affection. Ms. Goda turned to me with another of her signature grins. “All the vents, pipes, secret passages and crawlspaces in the building intersect here, so this is the spot I picked for my office. Any of my rowdy little guys can come surprise me at any time. It’s my favorite place in the whole building!”

The office was comparatively more brightly lit, although I noticed there was still a slight flickering problem. I was soon sipping tea in a large comfortable chair while Ms. Goda ushered a few more Monsters into the room, casually pointing out where I could charge my phone (Humphrey had, out of a desire to “play” with me, apparently drained the battery. “He was probably stalking you about a half an hour,” She added conversationally). Her creatures (or, as she referred to them, “rowdy boys”) mostly kept on a large, thick shag carpet where they would stalk the perimeter, groom themselves with their tongues or rusted-looking blades, or get into brief and terrifying scuffles while we were at the other end of the room. The sole exception was a gaunt creature with what appeared to be a metal cylinder for a head, which set down a large butcher knife to crawl across the room and lay its not-head in my hosts lap. She patted it absentmindedly as we spoke.

“Sorry about all that… you seem pretty wiped out!” Her voice remained just as chirpy and sing-song as it had been when I first encountered her but I was starting to believe that might just naturally be who she was, ellipses and all. “That might’ve got a little out of hand. I was hoping to show off the unique… charm, I guess? Charm and beauty of my lil’ guys here.”

“I mean they made an impression. Humphrey was… Very intimidating. I’m sure he’s a terror in the arena.” I mentally went over the recent tournaments Anzu Goda had been in. I might’ve seen Humphrey deployed in the Hugo Arena in Heorot, exactly once, but I wasn’t sure.

“Hm? Oh sure that too, he’s an Aughts Greenscreen, little bit MacFarlene Slasher and Western Jumper mix. TECHNICALLY a vampire. See the hooks?”

“Yes, I remember now, he used those to bring down a Kelpie being fielded by the Heorot champion, Liana Monteblanc. Would you say then that that was your reason for using a mutt rather than a purebred-“

“Would you like to pet him?”

I froze. For most of these interviews a Tactician would parade out a few of their most prized or crowd-pleasing creatures for some photo ops, I’d never been encouraged to actually interact with one beyond throwing a target for it to chase or cajoling it into roaring for the camera. Besides a tank of Slithy Toves I’d kept when I was little and my mother’s loud, squawking Phoenix I’d always been more of a dog person.

“Would that be alright?”

“Humphrey! Come here!” The creature shambled up obediently at Ms. Goda’s beckoning, the one in her lap already shuffling away in some territorial submission display to Humphrey (Ms. Goda seemed displeased by this, but I didn’t really notice until later).

I slowly, tentatively reached out my hand, and Humphrey jerked to bite down on my wrist. I gasped and looked away, but the pain never came, and when I looked back the monster was holding my hand gently, but firmly, between its teeth. Its fat tongue squirmed between my fingers.

“Humphrey no!” Laughing, Ms. Goda placed one hand on the beasts flat face and shoved it away, making it release my hand with a wet scrape. “You’re going to want to reach out more forcefully,” she explained, demonstrating. She patted its head like a three year old would pat the head of a dog, a clumsy pantomime of affection, “Anxiety, fear, tentativeness, they zero in on that really closely. They’re incredibly empathetic creatures, even compared to most other monsters. If you seem doubtful about what you’re doing for even a moment they can tell, and the only way they know how to react to fear is to exaggerate it. Here, try again.” I did, this time imitating her rough handling, and was rewarded this time by Humphrey nuzzling my hand. Pretty soon the creature was hunched next to my chair, my arm reaching down to pat it occasionally. It felt cool and smooth, like leather with a thin layer of silly putty over it.

“Isn’t that nicer?”

“It is,” I had to admit it. I’d never seen a MonsTactician’s creatures behave so… intimately. Like something kept as someone’s pet rather than some grand incarnation of raw power. I’d stood beneath the bellies of dragons while their handlers pointed out the patterns of their scales, I’d seen pixies twinkle toxic or wish-granting glitters inches from my eyes, but casually patting the flank of this bleating, oozing horror I was cowed. My prepared questions fled me. “Do you… Do anything to get them like this? Some socialization training?”

“Oh most tacticians I’ve met are like this with their monsters in private. Some not,” Ms. Goda shrugged, “But for the most part you really cant work with any animal without some degree of empathic connection or affection, monsters are no different. I’m not surprised you cant really get at that side of them though, I didn’t really agree to this for the same reasons.” Her laugh twinkled, “I’m already rich, I don’t need to do favors for publicity.”

That rankled me a little. “That’s a little strange to hear, Ma’am. With all due respect, it seems odd that someone who doesn’t need publicity would go to the trouble of this whole performance.”

“Hm?”

“You know… Your whole battlefield schtick.” I was beginning to get frustrated again. “The abandoned haunted house, the costume, your whole mistress of horror act.”

“What?” She threw another mad giggle into the conversation, the way a card shark throws down a winning hand, “Ezra, what about this do you think is behavior that I wouldn’t exhibit anyway?”

“Ms. Goda,” I was getting a little sick of being condescended to, not that I wasn’t earning it. “It’s well known that every inch of this building, down to the rusted clasps on your costume and the passages in the walls, are the product of teams of set designers, acting coaches, fashion designers-“

“Oh pfft yeah everyone knows THAT Ezra, god,” she waved me to silence, still laughing, “Because I want to do the thing I would do anyway WELL.” She must’ve noticed my confused expression, because she continued, “I LIKE doing this Mx. Goodfellow. There’s no ‘’trouble’ involved. I LIKE playing the mistress of horror, and I don’t hide that I’m acting.” Her hand gently massaged the base of the metal-headed monster’s neck, eliciting a thrumming tinny purr. “I mean holy smokes man, my door opened by itself like something from an October B-movie. You KNOW who I am.”

I was heartbroken. I wanted to get to the real Anzu, and she was essentially telling me that there wasn’t one. That the woman WAS a fabrication, and lived as one, and liked it that way. She grinned at me leaning back in her chair across from me, fang-caps on her teeth sharp and obvious, streaks in her thick black mascara from when she’d been crying just ten minutes ago tracing drips and zigzags down to her jaw like they’d been painted on. Maybe they had been. I sighed and got into the boilerplate questions; if she wanted this to be rote, I could do it rote and leave.

“Most famous MonsTacticians pick a genre of monster to raise, sort of as their bit. Is that why you chose Horrors, to play into this fantasy?”

“Sort of a chicken or the egg thing really. The truth is that when I first got into raising these guys I hated the idea of ever making them fight.”

“Ah, but most monsters need some degree of violence, conflict or intrigue. Even something as docile as a sphinx needs chances to ask riddles and gamble on the outcome,” I pointed out, “We’re not talking about a pet bird or a normal animal, we’re talking about something with flesh wounds for eyes and rusted fishhooks for hands. A lot of monsters are innately aggressive and need an outlet.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. No monster is innately aggressive.” Briefly, Ms. Goda’s smile took on a frozen edge. A simian display of teeth. “Monsters are reflections of us, of humans. WE’RE innately aggressive and need an outlet. We’re innately dangerous, loving, curious, most HUMANS need some degree of violence, conflict or intrigue. And monsters follow us to them. Do you want me to finish answering your question?”

“I’m sorry, do continue.”

“To fall back on stereotypes, I never really got along with other kids when I was small. My parents had a big house with a property that extended into the woods behind it, and I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time by myself.” She sat back and gripped her mug of tea in both hands, delicately, that soft thrumming anger I’d only barely glimpsed fading to reminiscence. “I was homeschooled for a long while, so I only started spending much time around other children in middle school.” She grimaced, “Bad place to start with humans, really. I honestly think we should raise the age where you’re allowed to take care of monsters a little higher than thirteen, after they stop being monsters themselves. It’s like a feedback loop. But that’s not what you’re here for.” She sipped the tea once, one hand at her jaw to preserve her makeup. “I didn’t really understand them, and they didn’t want to understand me… It felt like the results of every interaction I had with people was completely divorced from my actions. I’d tell a joke, I’d get stared at. The next time I did they laughed. The time after that someone called me an idiot. Eventually I was just… doing random things to see how they’d react. Throwing behavior at a wall to see what would stick.”

 “My parents noticed this and would try to get me to break out of my shell. They’d ask me about my classmates, invite the ones they thought I might like to our house for playdates and birthday parties and we’d go romping around the woods, but it still didn’t really click. They liked my toys, they liked my big house and big yard, but I was still an incomprehendable foreign being. The best I could do was mimic them.” She laughed again, twinkling, “Honestly by then it was probably a self fulfilling prophecy. I already assumed nothing I did to make real friends would work.”

“These days, a child with a monster or two can be afforded a lot of freedom. We’d go rollicking deep into the woods, with a couple kids and their monsters keeping watch for anything wild. I remember one of them had a dragon, a big fat goofy eighties-barbera lump of scales and tiny, agile wings, while the other one had some big floppy puppet of a brute that has parents had gotten to teach him his numbers and ABCs when he was little. Supposedly, they would be able to smell any other monsters coming and hustle us home if something were to go wrong.”

“So, when the other kids didn’t see what was following us, I assumed I wasn’t supposed to either and ignored it.” I remember when she got to this part I double checked that the recorder was working. There is a page in my pocket notebook where I distinctly recall writing the words ‘dark backstory???’ and circling it.

“Every glance I got of it was moving slowly, deliberately through the trees above us, gentle enough to be mistaken for just branches moving in the breeze, but it seemed to have no trouble keeping pace with four rambunctious children and their caretakers. Maybe one of the kids had brought a third monster? I heard some fae were supposed to be shy. Or maybe it was something mundane, like some… big monkey. I was twelve.” Ms. Goda chuckled, “It made sense to me.”

“We hadn’t really DECIDED we were going to the creek, Shifat just said he saw a deer there and we just sort of wandered in that direction.  Susan hated the woods though; the dragon was hers, and riding on its back had gotten her hair caught in hanging branches here and there.                “As she ran up to the waterfront to check her curls in her reflection, I saw the thing in the trees above us speed up, to keep pace with her. I almost raised my voice to shout a warning, but back then I didn’t really have the nerve.”

“I waited with this kind of dread you only experience with social anxiety as like, the look on her face went from preening to frozen fear and confusion, when she saw whatever was waiting above her reflected in the running water. And it was new to me because for once I felt like I could predict how she was reacting. Like, I knew she was about to freak out, because I understood what was prompting this.”

I tried not to salivate and wrote over ‘dark backstory???’, capitalizing it.

“It dropped from above, slower than gravity should allow. Its flesh was mottled hues of dirty pink and green, solid and warty like an armadillos shell. Its face was a cluster of human molars. Its twelve legs ended in delicate, ladylike hands that reached out to brace against the surface of the water, like it might float away without the surface tension to latch on to, with steepled fingers as it lurched its bulk, mouth first, toward Susan.”

I circled ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’ a few more times, excitedly. Ms. Goda did not appear to notice.

“We all screamed. That’s… Kind of the main point I remember. If I focus I could tell you about how her dragon pulled her back with a wheezing burble before horking a wad of flame at the thing, or about Shifat’s Puppet sweeping all of us into its hairy arms and booking it for my house. Or about Aaron’s snotty panicked face a few inches from mine or the clacking howling of the creature behind us but what really stuck with me was that… Scream. It was the first time in forever I’d done anything around anyone else that I hadn’t overthought or tried to control. I just let loose and let what I was feeling come out and everyone else did too, at the same time.”

I underlined ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’ frantically.

“I’d never really felt like I was doing something WITH others before.”

… I thought for a moment, and then crossed out ‘DARK BACKSTORY???’

“I was… Really, really used to not really being in-sync with other children. I didn’t react the same way as them… to bad news, to surprises, to new experiences or enjoyment. Everything I did around my school friends was really carefully analyzed or rehearsed in my head first because I was worried about humiliating myself, or driving people off. But I just reacted instinctively, on the same level as the other kids, without a moment of thought. And afterwards I felt great! Feeling so pent up all the time wasn’t exactly good for a preteen, one good long scream did more for my mood than all the therapy my parents could pay for.”

“I’ve heard some say fear is more of an instinct than an emotion, a defense mechanism.” I offered, “You had trouble connecting empathically, but something so basic-“

“I mean sure maybe,” Goda shook her head and took another sip of her tea, “The point was that I finally had a starting point. Fear. Surprise. Shock. There was a… a Control group that I could start from for understanding other people.”

“So what was the next step?”

“Immediately after? For a couple weeks I was in the habit of hiding in closets and cupboards and jumping out to scare my parents. So when they got fed up with that I got sent along to a new therapist, who figured that I was trying to work through my traumatic incident with the creature in the woods.”

“Something of a swing and a miss.”

“I mean hell, he wasn’t completely wrong. Just whiffed the follow-through. His first idea was exposure therapy, had me play with small therapy monsters they kept that were similar. He had a tooth fairy and a boggart that he thought would be similar. Real couple of cuties, but … Kind of missing the point. The next step was him showing me the articles about how they, y’know like, captured and relocated the thing from the woods that attacked Susan, and that DID catch my eye. Apparently it was a Bandersnatch that had been feeding off ectoplasm runoff from a local prison. When it got big enough to divide, it split into this and a few other ghoulies. It’s really fascinating, like when a Bandersnatch or a Jabberwocky or anything else of the Wunderlander family take in enough external thematic elements they just kind of swell up and SPLIT into new monsters, it’s why there’s so many-“ The topic seemed to be working Ms. Goda up and I was worried we’d lose the plot, so I tried to bring the subject of our chat back to her.

“The creature that attacked you, where was it relocated to?”

“… Uhh, a shelter.” Goda got quiet. “According to the article it was, um, slated to be destroyed.”

“Oh.”

“I guess I understood? It had attacked a child. But I feel like a lot of problems could have been avoided if they’d just moved it to the right habitat. A sunken ship or an abandoned laboratory, someone puts up a sign, maybe get a behavioral specialist in there…”

“A specialist… Like you are now?”

“A bit, yeah.” Anzu grinned, “You know, horrors are the only breed of monster whose primary means of defense or offense requires forming an empathic connection?”

“You mean like Humphrey here did earlier?” I raised an eyebrow and patted the creature with a damp ‘slap,’ “Oh yes, we bonded.” The creature wheezed and, in spite of myself, I rubbed the top of its head and cooed to it. “I’d hardly call screaming and leaping an empathic connection, Ms. Goda.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” There was that stiff, toothy smile again. The woman had some sort of direct access to the lizard-brain prey instincts of whoever she was speaking too. Her pupils pinned me to my chair like a moth to a board. I felt like I’d made myself look extraordinarily stupid to her again. “An abrupt scream can, without language, communicate intent and elicit a reaction that requires an understanding of the recipient and what they’re concerned about, but let’s disregard that. You used Humphrey as an example. Maybe you didn’t feel so close to him, but over the course of the entire time he was hunting you he had to figure out how attentive you were, how much noise he could get away with making in the vents to put you on edge without making you run for it, when to drain your phone’s battery so that you’d feel isolated, and when to bring it all home so that you’d be at your most panicked when he jumped out.”

I looked down at the monster incredulously. It was resting its head on its ankle in an awkward, folded up heap, tongue darting out to lick a scab every so often.

“He played you like a fiddle, Ezra. The instincts that make dogs play fetch are the same ones that they’d use to hunt squirrels. In the wild, the part where you were screaming, flailing and confused would have been where he’d brought the hooks out.”

Humphrey chewed on one toe. I could not find it in myself to describe the action as thoughtfully.

“The more I studied up on horrors, the better I understood what people found offputting. Did you know that there are celtic horrors, a breed of fae called The Gentry, that can completely fake a conversation with a human? They’re no more sapient than any other monster, but can give an impression of complete power with only vague, instinctive answers and precise body language? 50 people a year make bargains with them to grant wishes, and the backfire from the wishes are the Gentry’s feeding apparatus. There’s also the Eastern Haunt which, in addition to constantly emitting anxiety-inducing infrasounds, floods its prey’s den with a gas that suppresses the fight or flight response, but not the desire to act on one of them?”

“So you argue that, what, horrors understand human behavior better than other monsters?”

“I mean, I don’t want to disparage the work of my colleagues.” Ms. Goda grinned and chuckled again, hands fidgeting with each other as she spoke. I got the impression that she would, in fact, LOVE to disparage the work of her colleagues but that isn’t really my role as a journalist. Her fingers interlaced and broke away from each other quickly, like fighting crabs. “Black Jacobs once told me he sees man’s wonder for exploration reflected in the eyes of his favorite sea serpent, I’ve got no reason to disbelieve him. Rational Rick Redcliffe, the Paradox Tactician, says that his Rokos Basilisks and Laplace’s Demon make better company than most people he knows, but I kinda think that’s just because he’s really, really bad with people. I certainly do think Horrors are trying harder.”

“To understand us?”

“To empathize with us. Horror relies on emotion. Connection with an audience where you know exactly how uncomfortable to make them, and what kind of discomfort they need or want.” Anzu shrugged. “That’s what I learned from studying them, anyway. The more I learned about how Horror monsters defended themselves, the better I got at defending myself from humanity. What buttons are okay to push or lean on a bit, which ones to avoid because they’d provoke too much blowback.”

“So that’s all this then?” I gestured to the artfully delapitated building around us, “You do this to push people’s buttons.”

“Swing and a miss, Goodfellow.” Her grin was back, lightly infuriating. “I don’t do this FOR anyone. I just accepted that I’m going to push people’s buttons anyway. So I might as well pick the ones that we both get something out of.”

“Can you elaborate?”

 “I didn’t need to pull back from people, Ezra, I needed to throw myself at them with fuller force! Monsters just need presence, the chance to exist as a force upon events. PEOPLE need drama, Ezra. They need the things that they think monsters need. Violence, intrigue, they need to feel like sometimes things have high stakes! Instead of holding myself back, I let myself go off the rails. I got in people’s faces, laughed at my own jokes if nobody else was going to… I let myself be as loud and abrupt and as frantic as I needed to be, with just enough awareness and control of where I was sending things to avoid the stuff that would really hurt people. It didn’t matter if I staggered too far into discomfort as long as I veered out again right after. A good scare is followed by closure. A mess can be therapeutic, as long as it’s cleaned up. After people scream it all out, endorphins flood into the space left behind and they laugh!”

“And this got other children to like you?”

“Oh no they HATED it,” Ms. Goda gave another cackle, “For the most part. But there’s more place in a social group for an oddity than there is for someone trying and failing to fit in. I found people that appreciated who I was naturally rather than having a role in their life that needed filling. Or, maybe they just needed the role I filled naturally? Either way, things picked up.”

“It sounds like this is where you really started to come into yourself. Where the Bloodsplatter Tactician began. What did your parents think of the change?”

“They were glad I was happier, but were worried that my new habits would make life harder for me. Got me tested for aspergers syndrome, fussed over whether I’d be able to hold a job or find a husband.”

“Those sound like the sort of concerns most would buckle against.”

“I never really thought about it enough to have an opinion? My ex-wife thought it was funny as hell though.” I perked up here; Anzu’s personal life was the subject of much gossip and speculation, and there had been a rumor that her five year cohabitation with the troll-rearer Liana Monteblanc had been something more.

“I suppose you may have had some trouble getting close to others, what with your larger than life personality-“ I was rewarded by another peal of frantic, chirping laughter.

“Sure thing Ezra, that’s why so many leads in romance stories play such passive, subdued characters,” That grin was back, toothy and playful, “People need intrigue, remember? They need to be regularly overwhelmed and awed and released. That’s part of what attracts people to monsters in the first place, and it gives monsters a chance to be provided what they need.”

“I thought you said monsters don’t need violence?”

“I’m not talking about violence Ezra, I’m talking about presence. Look at Grendel, or Medusa, or Polyphemous. What they need is to be massive, to have an impact that bends circumstance around it. It reflects on humans that the best ways we can ever think about expressing that is violence. Not that it can’t work in context, but it’s part of what I want to address in my own career. Hence today’s interview.”

“It sounds like your opposition is to the very concept of Monster Battling, Ms. Goda.”

“I’m opposed to ONLY monster battling, Mx. Goodfellow, because it results in drastic misunderstanding of beautiful creatures that have been our companions at least as long as the dog, if not longer. Like look, take in Jiji here.” At this Anzu chucked the cylinder-headed monster under its, lets say chin, and ran her knuckles down its back roughly. I leaned in to peer at the creature, noting the flutelike oozing perforations on its arms and legs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you employ this one in the arena, Ms. Goda.”

            “And you won’t, he’s a rescue.”

            “Where from?”

            “My last batch of classes.”

            “Pardon?”

            “Milktooth hall is a battler dojo Ezra, I DO train people here.” Anzu giggled, a high-pitched rattling of pleasure, “A few people wanting to get into the Montactics industry sign up for classes on raising and battling monsters every year. You have to be committed, of course, we’re something of a remote locale, but for people that want it badly enough…”

            “I see.”

            “Jiji was being kept in a steel locker the trainer had bought at an auction for a dilapidated school, chosen simply for rusted aesthetic without even the slightest attention to who the prior owner had been or whether or not it had been used for any sort of sinister disappearance. The ectoplasm he was being fed was scraped entirely off of vengeance fantasies and suppressed fetishes. Jiji here was weak, malnourished, aggressive, and showed signs of wanton abuse.”

            “I mean, it is a horror Ms. Goda, I would expect that-“

            “Hence WANTON, Ezra!” Anzu launched forward out of her chair at me, Humphrey and Jiji scattering away with a spray of scabs and soft, flailing limbs. The Bloodsplatter Tactician’s arms reached out to either side of my chair and, instinctively, I tried to recoil and hide deeper in the cushions.

            The light was behind her head, casting all of her into a silhouette. Stick-thin limbs interrupted by the jagged offshoots of her costume. All I could make out were here eyes and teeth, gleaming above me.

            “Horrors aren’t just a collection of Bad Things you can funnel human grossness into and get a result, Mx. Goodfellow!” Spittle flecked my face with every other word, blowback from the unknowable world of her open and enraged maw, “Each one of these creatures is, in and of themselves, an ECOSYSTEM of emotion, experience, texture, and instinct that has to be kept BALANCED! A monster needs to be able to bend the world around it, to have presence solid enough to keep itself impacting its environment! Jiji was forced to sleep in a box, Ezra! An ugly, unhaunted box, without a scrap of history for it to soak! Forced to choke down and guzzle scraps of teenage agony without the rich nutritional value needed to develop a thematic target! How could it empathize with its prey enough to victimize it without any personal qualities of its own? What archetype is it supposed to break when it’s only disruption is good taste?! I do not train people that don’t aspire higher than running some slasher-mill to keep the new owners of the Native Animosity stocked up on disposeable ghouls!”

            She was breathing heavily. Her breath was fogging my glasses, but I almost saw a new trail making its way down the mascara on her cheek.

            I clicked my pen, awkwardly, “So you… Took Jiji?” Anzu blinked and stepped back.

            “Ezra that would be illegal as hell.”

            “I mean, you just sounded very passionate about-“

            “Could you imagine if it got out that a major MonsTactician was just stealing monsters from people that came to her for training? My career would be over.”

            “Well that’s very-“

            “I took her aside, expressed my concerns and explained to her that I was worried that she couldn’t provide what this creature needs. I told her what needed to change, and if that was too difficult I offered to take the creature off her hands and compensate her for it.”

            “Okay well that makes more-“

            “Then she got institutionalized and I cut a deal with her family instead.”

            “What?”

            “Uuuugh it was so stupid,” Ms. Goda flopped back in her chair, head rolling back like a frustrated teenager. “The girl heard what I said about history and tried to hook Jiji up directly to a psychoactive pump funneled directly off of a set of violent crime news blogs. If it had worked, her failure to dilute it with adequate metaphor could have taken years off Jiji’s lifespan, but instead the pump sprung a leak and doused her with the raw ectoplasm.”

            “Oh my god.” Anzu nodded.

            “Stage 3 Cthonic Genre Awareness. They had her taken away to St. Pratchetts, screaming about being a background character in a piece of short genre metafiction.”

            “That’s horrible!”

            “It is… But I suppose it works out for Jiji here.”

            “Cold comfort, I suppose.”

            “Is it?”

            “You don’t think so? The girl wanted to make a change, she came to you hoping to gain understanding. The fact that your advice was so misunderstood, or went so catastrophically wrong in its execution, doesn’t strike you as a little tragic?”

            “I mean, yes, of course.” Anzu’s hand fluttered and grasped, spiderlike, to the back of Jiji’s neck to resume petting. “Honestly, that might be part of what she might’ve misunderstood in the first place.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “There’s a temptation, in horror, to contextualize it as something that only happens to bad people. That we can feed them vengeance fantasies and gifts from exes and personal, unbreakable judgement,” Anzu pulled Jiji further into her lap, where it began to emit that metallic ringing purr. As she stroked its back, spines dripping some sort of green ichor rose and fell along its vertebre, careful to point away from its masters fingertips.

            “I think that’s something people do in real life a lot, too. Contextualize horrors as things that only happen to people who made some kind of moral or tactical mistake,” I hadn’t noticed it at first, but the sound of the monsters playing on the carpet had stopped. A creature like a ball of tar with nails sticking out had paused mid-wrestling with something not unlike a fanged barnacle. Both had turned their heads to stare at me.

            Humphrey had too, for that matter. When I reached out to pat his bald eyeless head again he pulled back, with a warning hiss.

            “They figure they’ll never be poor, or assaulted, or lonely, not because of any external factor but because they consider themselves ‘good’ in some abstract, unaddressed definition of the term. Pious or rational or charitable or successful or kind.” Jiji’s lower body still knelt on the floor. Anzu Goda, the Bloodsplatter Tactician, wrapped one leg around it possessively and clutched it in her arms like a child with an oversized toy. She glared at me over the top of its head, her voice trancelike.

            My phone was still charging on the desk, five feet away. It felt like a mile. I remembered what Anzu had said about monsters not needing to be violent. I also remembered that the one she’d encountered in the woods in her youth, that she had so much sympathy for, had attempted to seize a child.

            “The fact of the matter is that horror, that real meat-hook sensation you feel behind the ribs to drag out a scream, works best when you acknowledge that a perfectly good person can do everything right and still be the next…” I heard a low, rumbling wheeze from Humphrey, “… Victim.”

            Why would a reclusive celebrity agree to her first interview in years, gush about how much more closely she connected with the most aggressive breed of monster than she does with humans, and then cop to giving advice that might have gotten one of her trainees sent to an insane asylum?

            I looked down to organize my notes. My hands felt clammy and I remember hoping, briefly, that they didn’t smudge my ink. Breaking eye contact was a mistake. “W-well Ms. Goda, you’re clearly passionate about your work, I s-suppose I should ask if you have any further thoughts for our readers before-“

            Anzu Goda let out an earpiercing HOWL, and Jiji launched itself from her lap. Before it reached me my world turned sideways; some part of me that wasn’t screaming registered that Humphrey had slammed into my chair from the side. I pressed back into the cushions to keep from banging my head on the linoleum and tumbled across the floor, coming to a rest by the desk.

My phone. It should be charged by now. I scrambled to my feet, still lurching and dizzy, and grasped for my canister of mace. It took another three seconds of panicked fumbling, staring down the approaching monsters and the back of Ms. Goda’s seat, before another all-important detail bubbled to the surface of my thoughts.

            “… Did you just yell ‘Boo!’?”

            Laughter erupted from the other side of the seat. Anzu clambered up to sprawl over the back of her chair. In spite of myself, I began to laugh too. “Oh my god I’m so sorry, I didn’t expect Humphrey to get in on it, that was way out of hand, but that was AMAZING. Are you alright?”

            “Possibly a little bruised,” I admitted, still chuckling (I wouldn’t notice until later, in my car, two perforations in my neck just below the jaw. They were healed by the time I’d gotten home, and at the time of writing this I’m pleased to observe no noticeable signs of tetanus). I hated to admit it, but Anzu had a point about how you felt after a fright. My muscles felt loose, my heart was pumping, I was incredibly relaxed. If she could bottle a good rush of fear endorphins I suspected Anzu Goda would never have to work again. Not that she’d ever willingly retire.

            “If anything aches I have ibuprofen in the top drawer of that desk and tequila in the bottom one. I hope that wasn’t too much Ezra, I’m supposed to keep them under better control than that.” Jiji and Humphrey had marched back to either side of her chair, and at this remark she reached down and pressed their heads into a lower bow with a ‘tsk’. “You two say you’re sorry, I have to go give Mx. Goodfellow the rest of their tour.”

            “You asked me for a closing statement, Ezra,” Ms. Goda went on, escorting me out of the office and locking the door behind her (I heard the sound of some of the creatures clambering back into the buildings air ducts, others scratching and whining on the other side of the wall). “Do you mind if we handle the photos the Monthly wanted while I think of a good one?”

            “You mean that whole display wasn’t it?” Anzu gave another cackle and reached up to throw an arm around my shoulders. It felt like being hugged by a rubber Halloween skeleton.

            “Mx. Goodfellow, I have to invite you over again sometime. You’re exactly my kind of stick in the mud.”

            “A perfect victim, you mean.”

            “That too. But really, I don’t think you appreciate how much you’re helping me today.” Her tone softened in a way I hadn’t heard previously. “Horrors are the most frequently misunderstood genre of monsters. I agreed to this interview to sort of… Un-demonize them in the eyes of the public, I guess? Help them get more popular, and into good homes.”

            “You un-demonized them by having them chase me around an abandoned asylum?”             “I mean I’m not magic. They demonize themselves a little.” She winked, and I noticed some of her remaining makeup clotting at the corner of her eye. “But some folks need a few demons, right?”

            The interview portion of my visit was a difficult act to follow, so Ms. Goda elected not to try. Or maybe she took showing me around the actual functionality of Milktooth Hall too seriously to ham up. Regardless, I finally got to meet some of the battlers Anzu had trained, working in the nurseries and pens for her creatures. They were a varied bunch. A man of forty with a long goatee and tattoos on his palms delicately removed a Xenophormous creature from the chest cavity of a pig and gently placed the writhing, mewling monster pup aside as he moved to the next hanging incubator. His name was Marv. He’d gotten into raising horrors as something to do after his daughter left the house. Anzu was giving him the pick of this litter for volunteering, after they’d been weaned and eaten the obligatory runt.             I also got to witness the feeding of her latest addition, an attempt at Genty/Greater Vampire crossbreeding, with the assistance of a gaggle of teenagers from one of her classes. They were taking turns swinging a ballistic gel dummy wrapped in a Kevlar vest winched to a cable at the ceiling (which Ms. Goda assured me was a standard enrichment toy most battlers gave to their monsters) into range of the things claws where it would rake the gel body to pieces, babbling gothic nonsense in iambic pentameter. Every successful strike resulted in peals of laughter from the youngsters, followed by dares to swing the next pass closer. It was actually while I was lining up the photo of the group I eventually chose to accompany this article that Anzu settled on a closing statement.

            “So far, Mx. Goodfellow, I’ve been threatened with closure seventeen times.”

            She simply dropped the sentence into the silence of me setting up my tripod so neatly, like a seltzer tablet into a glass of water, that you could mistake it for your own thought. Words bubbled forward without disturbing the surface as I lined up my shot. She spoke evenly and quietly, not looking in my direction.

            “Three times were concerned citizen groups. Two were former students. One was due to a city ordinance that, abruptly, qualified my dojo as an unlicensed slaughterhouse. Once was Rational Rick Redcliffe, although I think it was just because he wanted to prove one of his tedious ‘points.’ I don’t totally remember the others. And most don’t surprise me. I’m in the business of making people uncomfortable. 

“People have every good reason to be repelled by horror, Ezra. I don’t deny that. That same immune response that lets people recognize other people as untrustworthy is the one that leads them to the conclusion that me, my creatures, and my work doesn’t belong in the public eye or should be subject to strict, codified limits.”

            The teenagers smiles had begun to freeze. I didn’t dare take the picture. If the click of my camera interrupted Anzu I’d never forgive myself.

            “Monsters are reflections of US though, Ezra. Denying or limiting the myriad forms they can take is to deny our own nature. Being disgusted by one is like a dog looking in a mirror and getting angry at this other, similar dog. Locking these sorts of things away or shoving them into the dark parts of the world we don’t look at… That doesn’t HELP a lot of people. Some need to understand that discomfort. Some need to experience that horror in order to get their release. Some need to find their way to empathy just by this… groundwork, followed by process of elimination. Raising or handling horrors can often provide those things safely, so long as the owner can be trusted to recognize what they are.             “My hope is that these breeds will become more popular with the general populance. Not just battlers, but ordinary people that need this kind of companionship. I want to see more slasher mills shut down, I want to see more Haunts and Psychopomps go to good homes instead of ending up as scared and sickly as Jiji was when I found him. I sincerely implore your readership to look into their hearts and ask themselves… ‘do I need a good scare?’”

            Anzu Goda finally glanced in my direction and winked, grin returning like a crack in a cartoon earthquake. “How’s that for a closing statement, Mx. Goodfellow?”

            “Sounds like good press, Ms. Goda.” I replied, and took the photo.

            -Last Professional publication of Ezra Goodfellow before leaving Montactics Monthly. Present whereabouts unknown.

#horror #anime #manga #artists on tumblr #writers on tumblr #fiction #pokemon #digimon #monster rancher #cute #oc #punk #gross #gore #creepypasta #resident evil #silent hill #amnesia #condemned #monstergirl #gym leader #beast #brute #bruises #violence

[clarketomylexa]

The Bucket List

Clexa Week 2018, Day 7, Free Day | read on ao3

Clarke grew up thinking she was fragile. She was too young to comprehend the look on her mother’s face when she had found the number, skewed and grey on Clarke’s ribs while scooping sudsy water over her in the bath. But she knew it wasn’t good because that night when she needed the potty her mommy had been crying in her daddy’s arms. She knew it was the same thing that had her teachers looking at her with that sweet, sad look when they read over her forms at school, the thing that had everyone careful around her.

Everyone but except Finn in the eighth grade whose number was seventeen and who she would have thought had a death wish if she didn’t know he was just living his to the fullest. It made her sad when he did these things, pulled these stunts like shimmying up the side of the gym or swimming out the deepest in the ocean on summer vacation. But it also made her like him. She was thirteen-years-old and love seemed like something for the adult Finn wouldn’t be, so she kissed him under the bleachers and held his hand when they went to the diner after school because he was nice and sweet, and he had something like a sad song in his eyes. He told Clarke he loved her in the summer between freshman and sophomore year, the day before he left to go to California and she cried.

They were a good couple, people told her in the months after. Good because their numbers were both young, Clarke knew. It was widely accepted that people with ill-fated destinies bonded the fastest, loved the hardest. Clarke hated the fact people pushed them together for the simple fact that it wouldn’t hurt for too long when one of them died. When Jake passed two years later, it was peaceful for everyone but Clarke. She told the school guidance counsellor to shove her condolences up her ass and didn't go for her remaining sessions.

She met Lexa in her second year of undergrad – majoring in art at the University of Maryland because Abby begged her not to go too far from home. The brunette with glasses on, standing in the corner of the pumping house party, engaged in a pragmatic discussion with her drunk foster sister. ‘No, Anya, you’re drunk, you’re not driving me home.’ ‘Take the stick outta your ass Lex, my numbers not up yet,’ she patted Lexa on the cheek lazily, ‘live a little.’ She slinked off into the crowd and Clarke saw her crowded against the upstairs bathroom door with Raven later when she went to attend to a throwing up Octavia but Lexa stayed rooted in her corner. She pulled out a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's ‘Othello’ and sat on a keg in a way that made Clarke laugh out loud.

“Can I help you?”

Clarke snapped her mouth shut, teeth vibrating with the base of the music. “No ma’am,” she teased, tongue through her teeth. She sidled up to the girl and leant against the wall. “You have good taste in literature. Bad taste in glasses, though.”

Lexa took her glasses of an examined them, affronted. “They help me see, they’re not a fashion statement…” she left the statement open ended, clearly angling for introductions and Clarke shook herself to attention. “Clarke,” she hummed, “I’m Clarke.”

“Lexa,” Lexa replied. “You’re an English major?” She assumed.

“Art actually.”

“Ah,” Lexa nodded, “I see.”

“What do you see?”

Lexa smiled, “you have the look of a starving artist.”

“I’ll have you know I go back home every weekend. My mother feeds me up on home cooked meals, I’m far from starving.” But her smile, Clarke decided, despite the faux-degrading comment, was precious. It started slow, non-existent like a star during daylight when you knew it was there but lying unseen. Then, the left side of her lips quirked up and Clarke’s chest sung.

“But you are an artist?”

“Yes,” Clarke confirmed. She drew with whatever paper she could find and her notebooks – and Octavia’s notebooks – were covered in doodles. Kids payed her in middle school to draw ‘tattoos’ on their arms with permanent markers.

“Will you let me see your work?”

“Only if you let me see your…what do you major in?”

Lexa laughed, airy, like she didn't use it that much. “Poli-Sci,” she informed Clarke, closing ‘Othello’ into her lap with her thumb marking her page and waggling her eyebrows suggestively, “I can show you my notes on the American legal system?”

When Clarke made an unimpressed face, Lexa nodded in faux-sympathy. “I don’t blame you, it’s severely flawed.”

In a flash of boldness Clarke plucked a blunt pencil from the spilt mug of pens on the nearby surface and printed her number in neat writing on the back cover of Lexa’s book, thinking humorously that the dusty story could use some action. Lexa complained that the book was not hers, but a class copy from her English course and Clarke assured her that she could rub it off when it was in her phone.

Raven came by shortly after, pulling at Clarke because apparently Octavia had been roped into doing shots with Luna and needed to be given water and put into bed lest she down anymore alcohol and when Clarke looked back Lexa was giving her a small one-handed wave, holding the back cover of ‘Othello’ up in acknowledgement of the number, like a promise she would text. Which she did, three hours later when Clarke was in bed and sober, listening to Octavia stumble around the dorm room in search of water. She flipped the light on in the bathroom with little regard to Clarke and filled up a plastic water bottle at the bathroom faucet before returning to bed, uttering a sloppy, hushed ‘fuck’ as she stubbed her toe which Clarke laughed at.

[Text from: Unknown 02/07/18 2:24 AM] Do I still get to see your artwork?

Grinning into the fluorescent light of her phone turned low, Clarke saved the number under ‘Lexa’ and replied.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:26 AM] If you want to

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:26 AM] You’d have to come over to my place of course

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] Your place?

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] My dorm

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] University housing? You are a starving artist.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] Like you’re better Miss Residence-Hall-Across-From-Mine

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] You’re not above stalking I see.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] I looked you up, I like to be thorough

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:29 AM] And have I met your expectations?

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:30 AM] To the letter

Lexa came over a week later when Octavia had left for class waggling her eyebrows and telling her to use protection and Clarke stood behind the brunette as she surveyed the quick sketches and hyper-realistic images pinned to her side of the room.

“Well?”

She watched Lexa, the way she sifted through the layers of drawings held fast with the same drawing pin, rough outlines of hands around coffee cups, a road leading to nowhere, a running watercolour on crinkling paper of the aurora borealis. “You’re a wonderful artist Clarke.” She tugged the watercolour gently so it slipped from its drawing pin and the paper next to it fell to the bed. Lexa studied the sketch – herself, with soft hair and round glasses, dog-eared ‘Othello’ in her lap. She grinned, smugly Clarke would say, laughter in her eyes. “What a likeness.”

Clarke snatched the sketch, hands covering her cheeks bashfully. “Shut up,” she scolded. “I like drawing you, okay,” she admitted, “you’re easy.”

“I’m easy?”

“You know what I mean.”

Lexa, Clarke found in the coming weeks, always knew. She saw things Clarke didn’t – even if she insisted the Clarke saw the world entirely in her own way, ‘artist eyes’ she said tracing fingers over collar bone on the sofa – and she quietly commented on them. The way the woman sitting behind them in the cafe off campus looked like she had a bad day, or suggesting they scratch their plans of a night out in favour of watching ‘Stranger Things’ because Clarke pulled an all-nighter the night before. She was everything that Clarke was and everything she wanted to be – soft where Clarke was soft and pragmatic where the blonde was violently emotional and together they would do things.

She was so sure of it – of them and their perfect cliché – when she was shucking the brunette’s university printed tee up her ribs a month later, breaths hot against kiss-chapped lips, that when her fingers raked over the skewed grey ‘23’ above the sharpest point of Lexa’s hip she wanted to cry. It was such a violent, sluggish feeling, like she was plummeting on a fairground ride but wading through glue. Revenant hands traced the mark, feeling it under the pads of her fingers like a sickening reassurance. “Lexa,” she whispered.

Lexa softened and curved, shoulders folding in semblance of defeat. She took the hem from Clarke and smoothed her tee down her body. “Clarke.”

They held each other's gaze, infinite conversations wrinkled into the atoms of their irises and Lexa reached out to bridge the space between them, stroking the pads of her fingers over Clarke’s collar bone like she did. “I wasn't sure,” she hummed and Clarke nodded. It was a tricky thing, your number; something so fragile yet the surest thing of your life and the blonde hated the way it was noted down on her documents like it was as unimportant as her city of birth. She swallowed Lexa’s words with a chaste kiss and took the brunette’s hand in hers, lacing paint stained fingers through Lexa’s to slip them under her shirt, dragging the hem up over her ribs. She pressed Lexa’s hand there, imploring her to understand and Lexa thumbed over the inch of skin with all of the sorrow in the world. “Twenty-two,” she recited. Twenty-two, Clarke remembered, two years left and half a life lived. Octavia was out, Clarke’s laptop was propped on her art history textbook and tilted to forty-five degrees where they could see it from her bed, their mindless evening watch forgotten when Clarke had professed her interest in other things and the blonde tucked herself into her girlfriend feeling fragile and resolute. The AC thrummed, she played with the frayed collar of Lexa’s tee. “It’s not fair.” Lexa hummed and Clarke felt it reverberate in her chest and Clarke’s fingers itched with the need to press themselves there and feel it. “I wish I didn’t know.”

“Isn’t it better to know, though?”

She looked up at Lexa, tracing the strong line of her jaw and her cheeks, her nose, her lips with her eyes.

“So that we can make our peace.”

“I don’t want to make my peace,” Clarke argued, she sat up, irritated and fussy, hot anger blooming like something toxic inside her. Lexa was the best kind of person, dutiful and kind, she religiously held the door for peers exiting their lectures and spotted the woman at the supermarket last week, who was short four dollars and calming her screaming two-year-old. She was realistic, pragmatic, she didn't take more than she needed and Clarke – what had Clarke done in her life that death had to be the equalizer? She thought of Finn, she thought of her father. In kindergarten, they taught her the meaning of fair. Sharing toys was fair, giving her peers turns on the swings was fair. Their numbers? They weren’t fair. “Fuck peace,” she decreed darkly, “fuck everything. I don’t want it.”

“Clarke –”

“Let’s leave.”  

“We can’t –”

“We can.”

They would. Abby had told her not to run from her problems when Finn left and she got angry, Jake died and she went hiding from the world, but god it was tempting. Aloof and untethered, it was the only thing she was sure of.  

“Two years, Lexa, do you want to spend it here? I can’t do it. I can’t get a degree I’ll never use. I can’t stare at the same ceiling every night and know,” she made an inarticulate noise, gesticulating wildly and refusing Lexa and her attempts to beckon her back into her arms. “I can’t, Lexa, please.”

Lexa relented it and they called it ‘The Bucket List’ – a sheet of paper pinned up on Clarke’s side of her dorm, permanent marker staining the wall beneath it from heavy handed additions. It took Clarke four days to get Lexa to reveal her personal must-do items but when she did she smiled, gingerly writing them down beneath Clarke’s ‘travel first class, ski in the alps, see the northern lights, bungee jump, visit Machu Picchu, go skinny dipping,’ in her neat, law-student print.

Their fall semester came and went in half-conscious actions and pressing close in their dorm room twin beds, scrolling through travel blogs and Lonely Planet suggestions, draining their savings, informing the university they wouldn’t be returning after winter break and telling Abby about their plans, their two-year bucket-list trip, destination unknown that they arguably couldn’t afford. Whoever suggested telling her over Thanksgiving dinner thought it was a good idea was stupid but Clarke was too hopped up on the anxiety of explaining why she had to do this to remember whether it was her or Lexa, especially since they were staying the night in Clarke’s twin bed before driving back to campus in the morning. She wouldn’t do it again, she vowed. But Abby smiled, hugging her daughter and she slipped a signed check into Lexa’s palm when they gathered on the porch the next morning, suitcases in the car, saying goodbye. It was enough to make Clarke burst into tears on the drive back to campus.

They went west in Lexa’s Jeep as per ‘take a road trip without a destination’ after the brunette took Clarke’s ‘enter work in an exhibit’ far too liberally, jimmying the front lock of an art gallery under the cover of darkness to hang the sketches that used to be pinned to the wall of Clarke’s dorm while the blonde sat in the car standing watch. It was the most rebellious thing she had done aside from punch Octavia’s big brother in the fourth grade because he was four years older and going through the stage where he thought he was god's gift to man and she was still laughing about it four days later in a crappy hotel off the highway in Albuquerque, tracing figure-eights into the taut skin of Lexa’s bare abdomen with the nail of her index finger.

“I can’t believe you did that.”  

“What?”

“Committed a felony.”

Lexa shrugged against the starch-white bed sheets, the curtains were stained and the mattress had curved in the middle like a sofa-bed but they had established the sheets were clean when they walked in even though the sink was clogged with strangers’ hair.

“It was on the list.”

“Is that going to be our thing from now on?” Clarke asked, hiding her smile in Lexa’s neck where things were soft and dull and smelt like something implacable, perfume and detergent. She feigned innocence and threw her hands up in a semblance of surrender, “‘the list made me do it!’”

“If you want it to be,” Lexa pressed lips to the crown of Clarke’s forehead and the blonde preened.

“I do.”

They made Joshua Tree National Park a day of straight driving later through limiting bathroom breaks and timing their stops at gas stations – Lexa filling the car while Clarke bought snacks with forty-five seconds to spare like something out of the John Green novel she read in high school. It wasn’t hot, but it was California and she helped Lexa strip down to her vintage tee, flinging her jacket into the backseat with her plaid shirt and their ill-packed suitcases, fed her girlfriend a sip of watery gas station milkshake and giggled through roadside landmarks. She felt light, like the wind. Lexa reprimanded her for spilling Cheeto dust in the foot well of the car and she stuck out her orange tinted tongue like the child she hadn’t felt like since Finn.

That in mind, they did Disneyland the next week. Clarke’s overt shock when Lexa wrote it on the list – which was thrice folded and stashed carefully in the glove box – was laughable but she was the perfect guide and when she slipped a pair of sequined encrusted black Minnie Mouse ears onto her head Lexa crowded her against the faux-brick facade of Disneyland City Hall and kissed her filthily.

“Have we found a new kink?” Clarke teased, fingering the collar of the vintage Mickey Mouse tee Clarke and swindled her into. It was tucked into the waist of her cut off jean shorts and if the five-year-old girl in a Cinderella dress wasn’t looking at them perplexed, she would have untucked it and raked her hands over Lexa’s stomach. Instead, she pressed her lips to the corner of Lexa’s quirked lips and pulled her in the direction of Space Mountain, paying a vendor for cotton candy and insisting throwing up was mandatory which Lexa frowned at.

Three days alternating parks and Clarke was suntanned – burnt – and giggly. She revelled in the way Lexa’s eyes lit when Minnie Mouse kissed her on the cheek, rode the Teacups until she was dizzy, did the Tower of Terror nine times and laughed at the ride picture when they passed the exit. They watched the fireworks from main street on their last night, the only place they could find a spot after waiting through the evening for the Indiana Jones ride Clarke insisted was worth it. It was, she maintained, but so were the fireworks. So was the way she stood clinched into Lexa’s chest, hands in the back pockets of her shorts, wearing her girlfriend’s plaid shirt so that the sleeves hung over her palms. So was the way Lexa was looking at her, like she was the happiest she had ever been and the happiest she ever would be.

Together they were a whirlwind. California taking them to Mexico on a first-class flight that they sipped sparkling wine through and made out in the larger than economy bathroom as per ‘travel first class’. They drunk cheap tequila and salt-rimmed margarita’s, and ate tacos from street carts. Lexa dip dyed her hair an outrageous pink, temporarily thank god, because it was a shoddy dye job that had her wearing a hat for a week before the dye brushed out but it earned another tick on the list which was becoming more and more travel battered with pen scribbles and stains. Clarke liked to look at it at night, morbid as it seemed. The paper, their plans, it gave her stability, grounded her to a place where is stray kind of existence her and Lexa were living felt purposeful – they were doing things. She ziplined yesterday and it was exhilarating.

A week later, central Mexico took them down to Tulum, where the water was the clearest thing Clarke had seen yet and Lexa showed so much skin in her bikini of choice Clarke nearly jumped her on site. She didn’t, but she did pull it off later that night when they skinny dipped in the resort’s white sand beach and left that morning before housekeeping could charge them for their pilfered towel robes.

South America found them at Machu Picchu, legs dangling over centuries worn stone and watching the fingers of cloud recede from the peaks of the Andes, Clarke’s playing with the belt loops on Lexa’s pants. She saw Lexa as something formidable, wind back centuries and the girl would be a warrior, swathed in battle garb and wielding spears, streaked with war paint. She could see it as plain as she ruins but here, and when the brunette went to pull lunch out of their bags, crossed legged on the verdant grass, Clarke drew it in scratchy lines of lead. Lexa blushed bashfully when she saw it but Clarke held the paper up next to her face, checking the likeness. She leant forward to press a kiss to her chin, her lips, her nose, her forehead.

“Am I a warrior now?” Lexa teased when she pulled back.

“The commander,” Clarke corrected. “You wouldn’t take orders.”

“I take them from you.”

“That’s different,” Clarke leaned into her. They were speaking in a low hum, something about the atmosphere up here that begged not to be touched, like if they remained here they would be immortalized in the mountains and strong stone. “I’m your girlfriend,” she ran a finger over Lexa’s hip over the material of her pants, “you’re contractually obliged.”

She told Lexa she loved her – wholly and irreversibly – in Kenya, where the greying clouds of a summer storm brew like a pressure headache above the savanna and the rain was hot. It drenched the gauzy white material of the linen dresses they had donned for the dinner of their luxury safari and while couples – finances and anniversary goers escaping children and life in the suburbs – fled to their tents around them with their swathes of mosquito nets and carved chess boards. Clarke inhaled the smell of dust and rain and wound her hands in the frizzing locks of Lexa’s hair as the brunette kissed her until she couldn’t breathe, until ‘be kissed in the rain’ in Africa turned to something else and Lexa kissed the skewed number on her bare ribs like it was a birthmark of little importance.

Europe, Clarke decided, was a realm unto its own. They acclimatised slowly, not straying from tiny towns inland in Germany, where Clarke took candid photos of Lexa smiling over bunches of wildflowers in cobblestoned provincial markets or village squares and they laid together in rented rooms in authentic Inn’s, eating local cuisine – strudel, Palatschinken and pretzels – as per Lexa’s ‘eat a dish from every culture’. They set their sights bigger eighteen days later, ‘go to the Musée d'Orsay’, ‘climb the Eiffel Tower’. The lock they fastened to the chain-link of the Pont de Arts was cheap, bought from around the corner, but Clarke traced their initials on with a steady artists hand and they scoured Rome and Prague and Milan in summer dresses and floppy hats in the days, sending thick stacks of postcards to Abby with tales of their adventures – of how Lexa left her passport in the safe in Italy and how Clarke couldn’t speak French to save herself despite four years of it through high school. And at night, Clarke would wait up on the hotel balconies, watching the outline of Lexa’s bare form in bed while Abby called, asking after Lexa – now her pseudo daughter – and reminding Clarke of how much she loved her.

They summered on the coast. On white sand beaches and illustrious lifestyles. No one knew them here. No one knew them in Mexico, or California, of Peru or Africa either, but this continent was the place they could life infinite lives through infinite lives and the anonymity made Clarke breathless. In Monaco, they were heiresses with hired couture and self-done makeup, escaping the suffocating grasp of their parents and high expectations for a summer of illicit fun. Lexa discovered an affinity for Blackjack in the casino tables and Clare rediscovered an affinity for Lexa.

In Santorini, they whispered to each other conspiratorially over the rims of expensive cocktails and lifting designer sunglasses onto their heads they watched the reactions of the other holiday goers, guessing whether the couple in the cabana thought they were wealthy divorcees, or celebrities escaping the paparazzi. Everywhere thought, they were in love with each other and it was beautiful.

August was in Tuscany, in a sprawling villa with property and vineyards, statues flanking the gravel drive – Lexa found a woman on the internet wanting house sitters for her month’s business trip to England and they crossed ‘rent house for the summer’ off the list – and they spent the month with the windows flung open in gauzy dresses or nothing at all, exploring each other in the most desperate and careless sense of the word. They didn’t linger on the numbers when they were naked at night and Clarke wasn’t anxious anymore. She didn’t want to rage, she wanted to live, like this, with Lexa, nowhere and everywhere because when they were like this, Lexa looked at her like she was the world.

Six days in, Lexa learnt to cook from the groundskeeper with crinkled paper skin and Clarke would sit on the kitchen counter and take pictures at inappropriate times to sketch later. She had a diary now, a leather bound, embossed one she bought in Rome that housed six months’ worth of sketches that she would tentatively show to Lexa when the girl was pink-cheeked and deep-breathing at night, when she would blush further at the drawings and tell Clarke she loved her.

Watching Lexa standing on the train tracks under the austere brick arch of Auschwitz-Birkenau in early November when the snow was light, was the most harrowing thing Clarke had experienced. She stood five paces back, tucking her hands into the thick coat she bought and swallowed, catching up to her girlfriend with brisk steps, distress winding itself into her spine. What had those people thought?

Lexa’s voice echoed in her head from that night back in Maryland, ‘isn’t it better to know, though?’ she had asked. Clarke shook her head. It couldn’t be. Peace couldn’t be made under duress.

She cried that night. She sobbed over the toilet in their hotel room until she made herself sick and when Lexa went to wipe the saliva from her chin she shoved her into the vanity and told her to go away and Lexa – sweet, stoic Lexa – did. It made her cry more. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and kicked the bathtub and wanted to know why the brunette was so okay with things but couldn’t find the answer. She would never understand the peace Lexa made with death.

A half-hour later she emerged into the room, pyjama clad and remorseful and burrowing so deep into Lexa’s arms – somehow religiously open even after what Clarke had done – she no longer felt like they were two people. They were one now, four legs, two bodies, one heart, and for the first time, she began to wonder how it would happen.

Clarke told Lexa she was scared in a glass igloo in Finland. Warmth seemed a luxury in a country seemingly made of snow, but there were feather down comforters curled around their bare bodies and light danced in Lexa’s eyes – great swathes of magic, verdant green morphing into pale pink and regal purple. It danced like candlelight, as fragile as too, like she could pull it into her hands but it would dissipate like Lexa’s breath on the arch of her cheek.

“Lexa.”

“Yes?”

She lay so they were reflections of each other and wanted to kiss the freckle on Lexa’s top lip. But the anxiety was back, the distress from Poland that didn’t belong there to taint something so beautiful. She was crying now, salty tears ruining the sanctity of their night with her head in Lexa’s chest and the covers drawn up tight so they might strangle her. Humming, Lexa hushed her with pretty words and soft hands until her chest wasn’t heavy so violently and her frame didn’t tremble. “It’s okay, Clarke,” she whispered, she repeated the words, breath hot in her ear, until finally it started to ring true.

She didn’t know when it happened. Somewhere between the white sands of Railay Beach, Thailand, and watching Lexa cradle a three-year-old orphan to her chest while the girl giggled and tugged on stray locks of her hair that frizzed under the heat of their week in Cambodia, she guessed. But early March brought with it skiing weather and Lexa coaxed her back to the alps, where snow held the Swiss mountains hostage and the altitude pinkened Clarke’s cheeks quicker than Lexa in a tailored snow-jacket did, and she woke up one morning dizzy and aching.

It was bound to happen. The country hopping, the climate changing meant getting sick was inevitable but the sun was softening the white glare of the snow and Lexa looked so gorgeous with bed hair and hands curling around the coffee mug the chalet provided that Clarke was petulant about it. She pouted and huffed, blocking Lexa out completely when the brunette put her on bed rest. ‘You’re not a doctor, what do you know?’ ‘You’re not a doctor either, Clarke, now drink some water, you’ll get dehydrated.’ Tongue out like a pre-schooler the blonde rolled over and took the comforter with her until Lexa let out a long-suffering groan and set her coffee on the side table, untucking Clarke from her cocoon to sift fingers up her torso dragging up her – Lexa’s – university tee to press kisses to the line at the waistband of her panties, up her stomach, her ribs, her chest, eyes placating. “Don’t start something you won’t finish, Woods,” Clarke warned darkly, she coughed and it rattled in her chest. Lexa grimaced. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she cooed, fingers soothing her skin and Clarke melted into the sensation, eyes fluttering. Something about the domesticity of their easy routine warmed her, the knowledge that whatever bed she found herself in, she could stretch her hand out and find her girlfriends lithe form next to her. It was the only grounding she needed now, their list lay dormant, fold-creased in the front pocket of her suitcase, more checklist than lifeline.

Lexa’s fingers stopped and Clarke whined. “Lex…”

“Clarke,” her voice was tilted with a hard edge the blonde didn’t like. She pulled at her. “Clarke sit up.”

“Ow,” Clarke huffed, but she did so at Lexa’s behest. “Pushy.” The headboard was hard and her head spun like a top. “What?”

Lexa smudged a hand over her ribs, harder than Clarke would have liked, like she was smudging off pen doodles or permanent marker. “Eighty-six.” She whispered.

“What?”

“Your number.”

“Huh?”

“It’s changed.”

Clarke scoffed. “Numbers don’t change Lexa.” People changed. Seasons changed. Feelings changed. Numbers didn’t change.

Lexa pressed her lips into a thin line, grim in ways Clarke didn’t want to comprehend, like the grey of a gravestone or a processional march. “It’s changed,” she insisted, holding up the hem of Clarke’s shirt for the blonde to see and the sight knocked the air out of her chest like a semi to the wall of her chest. “It,” she blinked – hard – twisted her fingers in the hem of her shirt so tightly they turned white, “it can’t.” She looked to Lexa, eyes wide. “Is – you?” her fingers went to the waistband of Lexa’s pants but the blonde caught them and pushed them back before deft fingers could slip below, eyes sombre. “No,” she whispered. If the human body had the capacity to implode that would be how Clarke described the searing, pulling agony on her chest.

The pink sands of Bahama beaches clinging to sun-kissed skin and Clarke wouldn’t release Lexa from her hands. Their sheets were cool, a starched white against the brown of Lexa’s skin, marred with white at the cut of her bikini line and dipping low over her backside. On better days Clarke would shimmy down her body and press kisses these, teasing and tripping, delving deliciously lower but today her hands were in the soft baby curls at the nape of the brunette’s neck and their lips were locked, an embrace that traversed lazy hours against cotton sheets while the sun stained the earth at its hottest time and children shrieked in their bare feet on the sand.

Clarke cradled the point of Lexa’s hip with reverent fingers, a thumb there always, brushing the skin like she could remove the mark but she couldn’t and her chest hurt with the knowledge – the knowledge she had lived with for the past eleven months, that their marks no longer matched and goodbye was real.

She felt utterly, disgustingly betrayed but she swallowed the curdled film on her tongue.

“It’s okay, Clarke,” Lexa hummed. The blonde had lost count how many times she had heard this from her girlfriend’s lips. The words felt acrid now, meaningless as cigarette smoke.

“You’re going to live,” Clarke stated, pulling back from tanned arms.

Lexa shook her head. “You don’t have to fight things Clarke, you need to let go.”

“Like hell I do,” Clarke sat up, mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you die. You’re young,” she prodded at a bicep, “you’re fit,” at the taut stomach of Lexa’s abdomen, “you’re healthy. You have no reason to.”

“Reason means nothing.”

“Reason means everything. Fate is bullshit,” Clarke decided, “I make my own destiny, you have to make yours.”

Later, on white sand beaches and over Maryland Thanksgivings, Lexa would tease that it was the nagging. Clarke, kissing the aching smugness that perpetuated the brunette’s lips, would insist it was superior motivational speaking skills, but both would agree it didn't matter. Not when they had blood in their veins and air in their lungs and the astounding capacity to live.

#Clexaweek2018 #Day 7 #Free Day #clexa fic #aesthetic #bucketlist

[bspoetryandart]

Madame Psychosis

Chapter 1: Bound, Homeward

      “I had the strangest dream,” Cade said; though I should say ‘I’ being both narrator and subject of this escapade.  But ‘I’ is not objective and neither am I, nor was I when I awoke to the gentle rocking of the room as it passed by clouds outside, the light fixture on the ceiling swaying and tinkling in crystal gaudiness above the sheets around me.  Or he.     Cade awoke on the bed before he met the old lady he made the comment to and sat up on the sheets.  He wouldn’t know for a little while longer about the old lady, seeing as she is in another room that sways like this one.  But now you know of her while he does not, so you are no longer objective either.  Please save your judgement of him until you know more of his story.     He pushed up under the sheets and they slid from his torso, his naked skin, nearly naked body save for the leather strap around his arm. His clothes puddled around a scuffed guitar case on the floor beside the bed.     He stretched his sinews toward the ceiling, arching his back, mouth yawning open as his fingers ran through short wavy locks the color of a fine temple floor, that cigar color with the thousand year shine.  He scratched his hair and then his cheeks, scruffed as they were with that same brown that gently lined his arms and dusted his chest and crept in well groomed fashion up toward his navel.     The fan overhead creaked louder as the room swayed wider but he didn’t try to look out the slat window over the bed at the moving clouds. He scanned the walls and their water stains like ivy growing up past the mouse caverns of the baseboards.  This wasn’t the first time he’d woken up naked in a place he didn’t recognize.     He dropped his legs over the edge of the bed, shucking his sheets so his moist oyster flesh felt cool in the breeze from the window. He let the belt on his arm loose and flexed his bicep, clenched his hand, allowed reality to once again flood his veins.     In the clarity of waking he remembered dreams or realities or intertwined snippets of either and both that he would rather have forgot. Situations and people too odd to be real.     Cade stood and stretched again, rosy color coming back to his skin as strength returned to his limbs and youth flowed throbbing through his body.  He took the loose sheet from the bed and wiped the sweat from his body stained as it already was where a little of his sea-saltiness wouldn’t harm it any.     The guitar case though scuffed and rusted at the hinges opened without so much as a squeak and he riffled through his cleaner clothing to pick out what today he would wear.  In his idiosyncratic way he picked out a shirt and socks and drawers all of the same color.  Today would be blue.  Aqua blue. It would match well with the tattoos he didn’t yet have.     He dressed the same as you or I, though you do not dress as he so you don’t dress as me although we both go one leg at a time. But the way he dressed was not like you, not as simplistic as that.  The clothing of his body was like a dance, the tensing and flexing of his muscles in rapid succession such a sensual thing as the cloth rose up his skin to hide things in a way that made many want them to again immediately be revealed.     He stepped into his jeans and tugged on his shirt; pulled on his socks and slipped on his boots.  Put away yesterday’s sheddings in the case and clasped the latch.     And then opened the door to the rest of the house. 

    The hallway swayed as well, the portraits banging like hungry dinner guests upon the walls.  It was a long hall, identical doors lining the sides down it toward the dark moldering bathroom as well as up toward the light.     He set the guitar case on the floor and closed the door, draping darkness through this part of the house.  His eyes adjusted to the gloom though his taste did not adjust to the faux wood paneling or balding floor shag; make no mistake, this house was hideous.  But one borrowing accommodations cannot complain: beauty is in the eye of the bed-holder.     The hallway opened onto the living room, wide as the rooms on both sides of the hall and long up to the kitchen, where the old lady stood percolating coffee.  Windows on both sides of the room showed the landscape trotting away.     The old lady smiled at him, waved him over with a cup in her hand.  He set the guitar case by the front door and walked toward her, the cadence of his heels the singsong one-two beat of a heart on the hard floors.  She sipped and closed her eyes with delight as he took his place beside her.     “You can always tell quality boots by the sound they make.”     He poured his cup, let the steam wet his face more than the balmy heat already had.     “Did you sleep well?”     He nodded.  Shook his head.  Nodded.     “I had the strangest dream,” he said.     “This is no place to talk of dreams.”  Cade looked at her.  What were wizened wrinkles from the distance were just distortions of the light. “Come, let’s go sit on the porch. Dreams need fresh air, and so do we.”     She led him to the door and he picked up his case, stepped outside behind her.  The swing on the porch swayed lightly to and fro and hither and back.  Beyond it the line of double wide homes moved on down the highway each pulled by its team of horses.  Her horses were magnificent and grey like her hair.  She led him to the swing and calmed it by sitting, patting the wooden slats beside her.     He sat and set the case beside the swing, looked out on the land as it went by, all the crumbling granaries and barns dotting the landscape in muddied green fields, left to lie, the detritus of tornadoes that spun along the ground twirling like a spoiled child’s top.     The roadside was littered with badly kept yards and their poor houses surrounded by dirty chain link fences.  Decaying once pastel lawn furniture waited beside rusting mowers and Styrofoam beer cocoons. Barbecues and kettle grills and smokers circled in an oil-stained driveway like war drums.     “What did you dream of?”  She sipped her coffee.  He looked but she made no eye contact, just watched the houses go by.     “It was strange.  I kept waking up over and over again in the same bed to put on the same clothes and leave for the same place where the same people said the same things in the same room as if the sameness of it all was the reason they existed.”     “Some folks call that normal.”  Cade gave her a look.  In his eyes reflected the horses pulling the houses up the road.  “I said some folks.”     “It’s surreal.  Like painting a new canvas yellow everyday and calling it art.  At least spit on the canvas, sweat on it, bleed on it- change that color.  Do something to avoid that monochrome monotony.”     She holds her coffee cup up in a toast.  They clink and the brown liquid swirls around in their cups in opposite directions.  Her eyes blink open, her feet touch the floor and stop the swing.     “Oh silly me.”  She stands.  “I forgot something.”     He watches her enter the house, turns back to the never changing view.  Cars grow cinderblock roots into concrete driveways cracked with age.  Grass invades garbage bins turned on the roadside, drifts of leaves slowly damply becoming soil beside them and their cat-tail guardians.     The door bangs open and back as she comes back out.  A bottle swings beside her, dark and green although it isn’t clear until she holds it up to the light if it is the glass itself or its contents that are emerald.     “I fancy some absinthe with my jo.  How about you?”     He sips, then looks slyly toward her with a half lip smile. Sips a little more to make room.     “My thoughts exactly.”  She raises the cup to her lips when the house hits a pothole, splashing coffee all over.  His jaw drops but then he joins the rumble of her chuckle as she hands him the bottle to wipe her face.  She sits again beside Cade, sets her cup on the swing and takes the bottle from him.     “The best part of waking up,” she states, splashing the anise liquid, the licorice liquor that reminds him at once of both Italian sausage and Thai noodles, into her mug, “is corruption in your cup.”     He holds out his mug and she doses it generously.     “How long til-” Her hand works its old lady magic, shushes him with a sweep.     “We’ll hit Benoit soon enough.  It’s a ways down once we turn off the interstate.  No need to hurry.”  Her eye twinkles.  “Or you got the same thing waiting for you to do it?”     He sips, shakes his head.  “Just some writing.  That’s why I’m there.”     “What kind of writing you do?”  He gives her a look like she might be prying, she volleys back a glance at the passing ruins.     “I deal in nightmares.”     “They follow you if you let them.”     “Not the good kind.  I write saccharine stories for Reader’s Indigestion.  Turns your stomach to read ‘em.”     “Ain’t nothing sweet in Benoit.  Or Bolivar in general.”     He downs the contents of his mug, holds it out for more. “There’s the Burrus House and its columns and comeback and history.  People like comebacks and history.”     “Ain’t nothing sweet in Benoit.”     He shrugs.  “And I like paying the bills.”     Together they watch what’s left of the suburbs go by. Wispy clouds roll past mountainous thunderheads like tumbleweeds over the desert-like bayou-land with its water instead of sand.  Even though it hasn’t rained the roads are wet.     “I’m not staying there, no nothing fancy like that.  I’m down the road from it by the tall overpass bridge.”     “Ain’t no overpass in Benoit either.”     “You’re right there ain’t but there is that bridge that leads me home at night, like a graffiti laden Arc de Triomphe beside that little stream.”     “Brown’s Bayou.  But that ain’t there either anymore.”     Cade smiles.  “You sure you’re a wise woman?”  She looks at him, scandalized.     “I never said I was wise, just a woman.  But tell you what, I never met a wise man neither. There’s just women, and there’s men. Anyone claims to you to be wise is obviously lying.”     They sip and watch people drive past them up the frontage road on an air mattress with an out-board motor.  Mud streaks their hands and faces.  Catfish flap about in milk crates.     “Guess that shit creek could be back.”     She pours them both more.  The air smells green like mold and dead trees.     “Thing about wisdom is it’s just a dream.  If we are just the dreams of ourselves and wisdom is the dream of those dreams how can anyone know it?  Can you find it, hold it, wrap yourself in it?     “Like the butterfly that dreamed it was a man. When it woke up it remembered what it was like to be a man, how it felt and tasted and touched and smelled.  It thought it could still become a man so it built a cocoon and folded up its wings and crawled back inside.”     She smacks his knees to lift his feet from the porch, starts to swing.  And swings some more.     He scratches his nose.  “Then what happened?”     “Well of course it died.”

#story #poets on tumblr #dream #chapter 1 #workinprogress #more to come #writers on tumblr #Madame Psychosis