#we can see i had a virginia woolf thing going on and i stand by it!
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Angel of the First Degree - Chapter 9: Halloween
Eddie Munson x Chubby!Reader
6680 words
Series Masterlist
Previous Chapters: 1 - Valium; 2 - Carrie; 3: Honey; 4: Starcourt; 5: Buzzkill; 6: Monsterous; 7: Prizes; 8: Interlude
Warnings: Anxiety; fatphobia including internalised; drug use; bullying; body issues; discussion of body function and fluids; period shame/stigma; disclosure of sexual assault (chapter 2); disordered eating and thoughts of food; shitty/abusive/critical parents; porn magazines; smut; reference to suicide (specifically Virginia Woolf’s); no beta; grief/mourning; warnings updated each chapter
Synopsis: When Eddie Munson finds you in the midst of a panic attack, it is the beginning of something. A fic featuring body and sex positivity, Eddie in a dress, soft small moments, scary big truths, and all the usual special feelings you’d expect from one of my stories.
Chapter Summary: ♫ Boys and girls of every age. Wouldn’t you like to see something strange? ♫ Nah, but it is the spooky season and that means two things: softness and smut.
Author’s Note: So, turns out I've been writing the school year as they run in Australia (Semester 1 runs from January to June, Semester 2 from July to December). But in the US, the school year isn’t the same as the calendar year; the end of the academic year is around May/June… so… Yikes. I can’t change it now so we will have to just pretend the US is the same as Australia. Sorry and thank you.
The Jack-o-lanterns were sat on a line of broken bar stools, plastic outdoor chairs, and other trash nobody at Forest Hills had ever bothered to take to the dump. Eddie had come home with them the night prior, pupils blown and a manic grin on his face.
It had been almost midnight when Eddie had ducked out after someone called the trailer looking to score. It was worth the drive, financially speaking, so he’d kissed you in your sleep and disappeared into the night. When he got back, you were bundled up on the couch on the porch.
“Angel, what are you doing up?”
“Woke up and you were gone,” you’d said, voice sleepy as you got up and let him help you jump from the porch. He kissed you deeply.
“Sorry, bub. Just made a couple hundred bucks though. And look at this,” he’d said too eager to show you all the Jack-o-lanterns piled in the back of his van, wax dripping from some.
“Where… did you get those?”
“Stole them. From Jason Carver and his bougie neighbours.”
The next morning, he’d lined up them up and called Jeff, Gareth, and Gene. Only Jeff was free, asking if he could bring Esther.
You sat next to Esther in a couple of fold-out camping chairs, drinking Dr Pepper and watching the boys smash the pumpkins with an old baseball bat.
“Why are boys like this?” Esther had asked you.
“I thought maybe it was just Hawkins that did it to them? Like, nothing better to do than dumb shit?”
“Oh, no, babe. They’re like this everywhere.”
Esther was kind, funny, and fit into the group of lost sheep well. However, she wasn’t so lost herself, but actually very fucking cool. You were sure if she had wanted to try out for cheer, she would have made the team. But when she transferred mid-year, started dating Jeff and sitting at the Hellfire table, she showed no interest in being friends with the cool kids. You knew it pissed Hayley off. Esther was the most beautiful girl you’d ever seen.
“We can hear you, you know?” Eddie said, pointing the bat at you. “You tellin’ me you don’t want a go? That this is too dumb for you?”
You smiled at your boyfriend and shook your head.
“Here’s the thing about me,” Esther said, standing and taking the bat from Eddie. “I’m happy to admit when I’m a hypocrite. This is dumb boy shit. But… when in Rome.” She took a swing and the bat hit the pumpkin with such force that it exploded entirely. Eddie started to laugh hysterically and Jeff pulled her into a kiss.
“Come on. Have a go,” Eddie said as he came over, leaning down and holding a hand on each arm of the chair. He kissed the tip of your nose.
Giving in to the peer pressure, you took the bat from Esther, who had pushed Jeff into her chair and perched herself on his lap. “You got this, girl,” she encouraged.
Eddie put a fresh Jack-o-lantern on a stool and came to stand next to you. He lowered his voice and leaned in close. “This orange motherfucker is meant for you, angel. I swiped it from Andy’s.” Eddie kissed your cheek and stepped away from you, giving you space.
Deep breath in, and long breath out, you held the bat up and swung hard. Andy’s pumpkin caved in and went flying, breaking into chunks in the air. Jeff, Esther, and Eddie all cheered.
After leaving the pumpkin pieces for the trailer park animals, you all drove into town for lunch at the diner. It felt like a double date, which was something you used to dream about. It seemed like such a lovely and special and awesome thing. As you sat in a window booth, Eddie’s arm around you while you fed each other fries and listened to Esther tell you stories about Chicago, her weird scientist dad and the top-secret job that brought him to Hawkins, you discovered it was lovely, special, and awesome
…
Summer had ended, ushering in the Halloween hues and crunchy leaves of Fall. Senior year was moving at a snail’s pace, but the finish line was in sight with final exams only a month and a bit away.
When Eddie was at Hellfire or band practice, you were doubling down on studying, determined to do well. All the colleges you had applied for demanded a certain level of academic success, and nothing was going to stop you from getting the hell out of Hawkins.
You and Eddie hadn’t spoken about what would come after high school. Eddie was on track to graduate, so in theory, he could leave the haunted small town too. The fear that ran through you when you thought about asking him if he would, if he would come with you, was paralysing. What if he said no? What if he wouldn’t leave Wayne? What if it was the end of you and Eddie? So, you entirely ignored anything post 1986. You didn’t know if it was on purpose, but Eddie was doing the same.
To be entirely honest, you weren’t even sure if Eddie knew which colleges you had applied for. He would be stupid to think you hadn’t applied at all, but you couldn’t remember ever mentioning it. You felt like there would be an undoing at some point, but that point was not now, so it didn’t matter. Eddie’s philosophy of mindfulness, living in the moment, was certainly rubbing off on you.
For the first time in a long time, you had a little more pep in your step. Zest for life. All that anti-emo bullshit. It did mean, however, that you were genuinely excited for Halloween and all the spooky fun that went with it.
“What do you mean you’ve been to Jason’s parties before?” you asked, the image of Eddie anywhere near a basketballer’s house not able to even form in your mind.
“You wouldn’t believe how much people pay for shit at those things,” Eddie said. “Trick is to rock up at the right time. Just as the shitty beer is running out, but before anybody sobers up. I can overcharge and they’ll buy anything,”
“I have never seen you at one.” You didn’t make the cheer squad in your Freshmen year, which in hindsight could have been when you really committed to losing baby weight and to demonising food. When you made the squad in Sophomore year, it felt like the start of something good. Being a cheerleader granted you invites to Jason’s big Halloween parties. That year and Senior year though, you definitely didn’t see Eddie there.
“You didn’t go wandering down the garden path and into the shadows looking to score though, did you?”
You shook your head. “Did Jason know?”
“Probably. Where else would it be coming from? Can’t start a fight with the only supplier willing to risk holding in that part of town. Crawling with cops and neighbourhood watches,”
“A begrudging symbiotic relationship,” you joked.
“Yep. But, not this year. Fuck ‘em. They can find someone else. We’ve got better things to do, yeah?”
Gene’s parents were going to Nashville for a wedding, leaving an empty house over the Halloween weekend. His parents weren’t worried; Gene wasn’t really the type to throw a rager. They imagined the worse that could happen was someone would spill bong water on the carpet or drip wax on the good buffet. Those Hellfire sessions needed mood lighting, after all.
It was Gene’s last chance at a little infamy, Senior year and all that. He spent the week inviting pretty much anyone that wouldn’t be invited to Jason’s party to his own. Freaks. Geeks. Weirdos. And the formally invisible. By 10:30 pm on Halloween, the house was packed. You and Eddie, however, had not yet arrived.
Wayne had cooked an early dinner, saying something about needing to line your stomachs before hitting the bottles. He left soon after. “Where’s he going?” you’d asked Eddie as you washed the dishes and he dried.
“You know his mate John, the one that-”
“Just got divorced,” you finished. Wayne talked a lot about John, because John talked a lot about the divorce and how she moved back to Indy with the kids.
“Yeah. Wayne is going over to keep him company. You know, ‘cause the trick or treaters remind him of the kids and he’s gonna drink himself into oblivion if someone isn’t there to stop him,”
“Jeez. Wayne is like… an actual angel. Honestly.”
Eddie nodded. “Yep. Sayin’ that though, John’s buying the beers and steak, so it’s a win-win.”
You showered around 7:00 pm, sat in front of the mirror and did your makeup. It would take Eddie a lot longer to get ready, so you wanted time to help him. As you smudged brown eyeshadow along your face, giving the appearance of dirt, you started to feel it – that hot, uncomfortable sensation. Insecurity. Dissociation.
Leaving your hair for last, you tried on the costume like you had half a dozen times before. Now, too late to change your mind, you hated it. The pants pulled around your thighs, nothing like the character you were dressed as.
You hated it most when it was like that. Feeling ugly in the shitty lights of a change room was one thing. The chafing between your thighs and the self-consciousness of gym class was another expected, and gratefully over, thing. But when it surprised you like that. When you had already tried on the clothes. Seen your reflection. Thought of yourself one way. Then BAM. Hideous. Fat. Revolting. Out of fucking nowhere. Yeah, that was the worst one.
Before Eddie got out of the shower, you quickly changed back into sweatpants and a t-shirt, sitting down in front of the mirror.
Eddie came into the room, dripping water and barely holding the towel to cover himself. You’d been living with him for a couple of months by then, so you’d seen him naked, but it still made you blush.
“Alright,” he said, hitting play on the tape deck, then looking around the room for his costume. “Let’s do this thing. Where are my ears?” Eddie looked up at you and clocked it immediately. “What’s wrong?” he asked, coming over and kneeling next to you, taking your legs and hugging them.
There was no point in lying; he knew you too well. “I, um, I don’t know about the costume,” you admitted.
Eddie thought for a second. “Okay… Do you want to swap?”
You shook your head. “No. You look cute. I just…” Shrugging, you avoided eye contact with both your reflection and Eddie. “Esther says she’s not wearing a costume. She’s just bought a cute dress,”
“Yeah, but Jeff is pissy about it. Don’t tell her I told you, but he was suuuuper jealous when I said that we have matching costumes,” Eddie told you in that soft voice he used when you were sad.
“Did you tell him what we’re going as?”
“No. It’s a secret, right?”
“Yeah,” you replied, nodding. “It’s just… It’s the first time I haven’t fully hated myself in two years and maybe I should have gone as like, an angel or something?”
“Okay, first of all, you’re my angel, nobody else’s. Second of all, we’re way more original than that. But, I’ll do whatever you want, honest… but can I tell you something first?” Eddie asked.
You nodded; Eddie grinned, stood up, and started to pace. It was his awkward storytelling pace.
“The first time I saw you in that,” he started, pointing to your costume. “I almost jizzed myself,”
“Eddie!” you squealed, covering your face.
“Seriously. And with the props. Babe. You’re the dream girl. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. We’re gonna be the best dressed couple and everyone is gonna be soooooo jealous. And we’ll drink some of Gareth’s freakishly good pumpkin punch stuff and sneak into an empty room and you don’t even need to worry about what you look like in it, because I’m gonna have you out of it so quick.”
You laughed because he was ridiculous.
Eddie slipped his hands into his back pockets, looking at you with a toothy smile. “I promise. You’re an A-grade hottie… But I don’t want you to be… you know, uncomfortable. So, whatever you want.”
Chewing your lip, you looked back at the costume. Eddie watched you stand up and take off your sweat pants, step into your costume, pull it on, and zip it up.
“Those aliens don’t stand a fucking chance,” he said, crossing the room to grab you in a hug, kissing you. “I was like, 12 or 13 when it came out, you know? She might have been my first real crush. I’m not fucking with you when I say this is doing things for me,”
“Things?”
“Oh, you need me to be more explicit?” Eddie teased. “You were hiding at ‘jizzed,’ so I don’t know if you can handle more.”
You pouted dramatically. “I can,”
“Yeah? Can you handle… this?” He cradled the back of your head, moved you so your neck was exposed. Eddie nipped at your skin and made a dumb growling sound that made you laugh. “Whaaaaaat about this?” He unzipped the costume, pushing it front your shoulders and down.
It stopped being funny at that point and started being something else.
Eddie kissed down your chest, freeing you of your bra, then dropped to his knees in front of you. With your hand on his head to keep yourself steady, you let him slide your clothes and underwear off. Standing entirely naked in front of him made you feel infinitely hotter than the costume had.
“Baby,” he whispered, kissing the freckle under your belly button, then pushing his forehead against the softness of your belly. “I love you,”
“I love you too,” you whispered back.
Since the night in the secret place, Eddie had spent a great deal of his time angling to get between your legs. He’d tasted you, heard you, felt you, and nothing else he spent his time on was as good as that. There was always studying for exams, Hellfire, and Corroded Coffin. The real high though, was you.
His mouth was on you fast, your legs shaking almost as quick. When you stumbled to move to the bed, lay down for him, Eddie shook his head. “No, no, stay here. Can you stay standing?” he mumbled. “Here,” he said, offering his hands as aids. You threaded your fingers through his, let him hold you up.
“Uh-huh.”
Naturally, your legs wanted to part for him but there was only so much you could do without stacking it. You had to let Eddie press his face into you entirely, had to let him work for it.
It felt good, but it wasn’t enough. When you whined out Eddie’s name, he looked up at you and grinned. “Come ‘ere,” he instructed, pulling one of your legs over his shoulders, wrapping an arm around it, keeping his other hand in yours still.
Better.
Like that, with him being not so much in front of, but under you, it felt like you were melting onto Eddie, into him. It felt dirty; you would have blushed but your mind was pop rocks in Coke.
As soon as you unlocked your knee to help you grind, you felt your legs turn to jelly. “Eddie!” you squeaked, hopping backward and falling onto the bed, stopping your orgasm before it even had a chance to bloom. You were laughing, and when Eddie popped up and saw your happy face, he fell in love just a little harder.
“Okay, I’ll come to you,” he said, smiling and crawling up onto the bed. His towel was discarded on the floor. “I, ah, there’s something we could try. If you liked that, I mean,”
“I liked that,” you said, still a little breathless.
“So, okay, so I’d lay on my back, like this,” he explained, moving to be flat on the bed. “And you would sit here.” He pointed to his face, then winked.
You tried to picture it, but you couldn’t calculate the physics. “Um, same problem though? I can’t hold myself up, when it like, gets… good,”
“No, that’s the point. You don’t need to. You just sit,” he corrected. Eddie knew what you were thinking but he didn’t know if it would be better to let you say it and face it, or if he should quell the doubt before it gained traction. “I saw it… in a movie,”
“A movie?” The suspicion was audible.
“Okay, porn. It was porn. You got me,” he said grinning. You laughed, but he could still see the doubt in your face. “I, ah… I actually got that one because, um, the girl looks a lot like you.”
It was a half-truth. Eddie had gone to a buyer’s house to sell him some ket. The guy was already stoned out of his brain and Eddie almost felt bad for contributing to the problem. Then he saw the porn playing on the T.V. set. The girl did look like you. Too much. Eddie popped the VHS out of the machine and replaced it with another sitting close by. The dude on the couch hardly noticed.
“You mean…”
“Yeah,” Eddie confirmed. “Or I can just-” Like he always did, he started to offer an out, an alternative. Safety, always.
“No! No. I, ah…” A pause. A self-affirmation. “I wanna try.”
After a few rounds of the usual ‘are you sure’ cycle, you swung your leg over Eddie, resting on his stomach first.
“Can you close your eyes?” you asked.
Eddie nodded and tried to contain the grin, but as soon as his eyes shut and he felt you move, there was no chance. His mouth would be well and truly open in a second anyway.
It was instant, as soon as you were close enough, Eddie’s arms were around your thighs, pulling you down with enough force that you couldn’t have hovered even if you tried. With all your weight on him, Eddie was a happy man.
Oh.
Fucking oh.
It was a hard yes for both of you.
When you arched your back and leaned your arms behind you, Eddie opened his eyes to watch you. With your belly stretched and your hands pressed against the mattress on either side of Eddie’s hips, you looked like a goddess.
The heavy breathing, the moaning, and the way your body was grinding into him were driving Eddie insane. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he started to wriggle under you. Entirely lost in the feeling, you hardly noticed, but he was rock hard and on the verge of tears. He felt so goddamn good.
Syllables wouldn’t come out when you tried to say his name, so when you felt how close you were to cumming, you curved yourself forward and sunk your fingers into his hair. Eddie smiled; you could feel it.
Higher and higher and higher. You squeaked and shook, then felt yourself sensationally shatter. There’s no word for the sound you made, somewhere between a growl and a scream. Breathing heavy, you rolled off Eddie and looked over at him.
His face was glistening. A feral grin told you everything you needed to know.
“Babe,” he whispered, wiping his face on the back of his hand and moving to lay on his side. “Babe.”
You giggled. “I know,”
“Oh, I know you know.”
You wanted to be closer to him, so you scooted over and mirrored Eddie’s position. It was a picture you never would have predicted for yourself. Not only entirely naked with the light on but laying on your side, gravity pushing your belly to pool on the bed. You didn’t care though, Eddie was grabbing your face and kissing you deeply.
His mouth tasted different, like you, you figured. It was hot and made your kissing needy. Eddie felt the exact same, and the sensation of his painfully hard cock pressing against you, tip leaking, excited you both.
Eddie wrapped his arms around you to close the space between his body and yours. His hips bucked up, letting the friction work its magic. Carefully, he pushed you back onto the mattress, climbed on top, one leg between yours.
As he kissed your neck, rubbed himself against the coarseness of your pubic hair and warm softness of your lower belly, he asked, “Is this… okay?”
You nodded. “Yes. Please.”
Eddie chuckled at the manners, thrusted a little harder. “I’m… I’m so fuckin’ close,” he muttered, barely audible.
Wrapping one leg around his waist, leaving the other for him to straddle, you kissed at whatever you could – Eddie’s cheekbone, the side of his head, his hand when he brought it up to your lips. He whined and bit your neck when you sucked in his index and middle finger, not letting go.
A string of fuck and baby and I love you and you feel so good. Eddie repeated them over and over, words slurring more with each round.
Where the sound of your orgasm was half growl half scream, Eddie’s was half growl half moan. Deeper, then stunted by him holding his breath. You felt the warmth and the stickiness between your body and his. It was simultaneously gross and nice. When you started to giggle uncontrollably, Eddie pulled himself from his post-cum haze to look at you and commit the moment to his long-term memory.
When he sat up, he moves his eyes slowly over every inch of you. You watched his hands hold your sides, dragging downwards. He stopped at your belly button.
“Ah, sorry,” he said with a snort.
“What?”
Eddie pointed. The messy white that was spread across your stomach had pooled in your belly button, like a little cup. When you saw, you made the same snorting sound he had.
“I want… to…” But he stopped himself.
“You gonna say something weird?” you asked, entirely excited.
Eddie moved slowly, like he could hurt himself. He dipped his finger into your belly button, making you laugh again.
“Warm,” was all he said.
You scrunched your face up and shook your head at him. “I thought you were gonna do a body shot,” you told him.
“Do you want me to?” he asked dead serious.
“No, I just thought-”
“Because I will,”
“Eddie, I-”
“I mean, if you dare me, I guess I have to.”
You were laughing. “Eddie!”
“Here we go!”
“EDDIE!” you squealed, but he was leaning down and sucking the fluid from your belly button. Squirming at the feeling, you were unable to tell if you were genuinely a bit disgusted or kind of into it. You settled on feeling weirdly natural.
“How was it?” you asked as Eddie sat up.
“Salty? I’ll start eatin’ more fruit or whatever.” When you frowned, Eddie laughed and shrugged. He’d explain it another time. “Do you want to have a quick shower?”
“Yes,”
“With me,”
“I got it, Eddie,” you told him.
Running the soapy sponge over the curves of your body made Eddie hard again. He blushed, a little embarrassed at how he was playing the ‘horny teenage boy’ role too well.
“I like it,” you whispered, your back pressed to his chest, hot water hitting the front of you. “Makes me feel good,”
“Good. You make me feel good too… Somethin’ very satisfying about cleaning… me… off… you,”
“We should hurry up though. It’s gonna take a while to get ready and it’s like, eight now,”
“Gimme one more minute with you, then you can get out? Start getting ready and I’ll be out in a sec?”
You knew he was going to jerk off as soon as he was alone, but you were into that too.
Back in the bedroom, you were about to put your underwear back on when you had a better idea. Searching through your clothes, you found what you were looking for. Standing in front of the mirror, you liked your reflection.
It took a while to re-do your makeup. The shower had fucked it up a bit, so you started fresh. When yours was done, you sat Eddie down and did his for him, doing your best at making him cute.
“Ears,” you instructed when you were done. Eddie put them on his head. “Perfect.”
…
With an hour or so until midnight, you and Eddie arrived at Gene’s house. Making your way through the crowd, you were relieved to find that most of the focus was on how objectively weird Eddie looked. Eddie – the cult leader, town freak, edgy drug dealer – dressed in a fluffy orange outfit complete with tail pinned to the ass of his pants and ears on a headband. He made for a kind of deranged but beautiful ginger tabby cat.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Gareth screeched as Eddie walked into the kitchen.
Gareth looked like a witch as he stood over a giant pot, stirring the potion inside. It smelt good, Halloweeny, and there were people buzzing around waiting for it to be ready.
“I’m Jones!” Eddie yelled at him.
“Jones?” Gareth saw you then, “Holy shit,”
“Keep it in your pants,” Eddie warned.
“You look… um, good,” Gareth said to you. He looked back at Eddie. “Why Jones and not like, the xenomorph,”
“We’ve got one already,” Eddie replied. You turned around to show Gareth the toy xenomorph stuck to the back of your Ripley jumpsuit.
Gareth laughed. “Alright. Well, fuck. You guys look good. You want some of this? It’s the second batch of the night,” he offered. People around groaned, annoyed that they’d been waiting longer.
“Dungeon Masters get first drinks,” Eddie yelled at everyone and nobody in particular.
Bidding Gareth, who was actually dressed as a D&D character – not a witch, goodbye, you let Eddie take your hand and lead you through the house and out the back to where Gene and Jeff had built a semi-stable somewhat dangerous fire pit.
The circle of people around the blaze, most of which were Hellfire warriors, cheered Eddie’s arrival. Eddie stopped at two chairs occupied by people he didn’t recognise. “Scram,” he ordered.
“Eddie!” you reprimanded.
“Sorry. Scram, please,” he corrected. The people left, and you shot Eddie a look as you sat down. “Don’t give me that face. Mean and scary, remember?”
“Man, you’re not really giving mean and scary right now,” Jeff called across the fire. He was dressed as Freddy Krueger. Esther was sitting next to him, pretty in a dress.
“Yeah, dude, what are you?” Dustin asked, confused at the appearance of his hero.
“Jones from the USCSS Nostromo. This is Ripley,” Eddie explained, nodding to you. You smiled and waved happily, not radiating Ripley energy in the slightest.
“At least you look cool,” Jeff said.
“And we can all agree everyone looks better than Mike,” Gene added.
Mike was sitting next to Dustin, nursing a bottle of beer he was a bit nervous to be drinking at all. “I told you – I’m Billy from Gremlins,”
“I might buy that if you had Gizmo with you. But you’re just wearing your normal clothes,” Gene said.
“Why’s Esther get a free pass?!” Mike argued.
“I’m Freddy’s victim,” she said with a shrug. It was a good enough cover. “Come tomorrow I’ll be dead. There’s a costume change later.” There wasn’t.
“Whatever. Maybe I’m just growing up,”
“You saying I’m a baby, Wheeler?” Eddie challenged, holding his tail up and spinning it.
“No! I just mean-”
“Yeah, whatever man. Where’s Sinclair? What did he come as?” Eddie asked. A silence fell over the group. “He’s at Jason’s, I’m guessin’,”
“Yeah,” Dustin said. “He went as Magic Johnson.”
Eddie could see that Dustin was hurt; he imagined there was a fight about it all. Ultimately, Eddie didn’t really begrudge Lucas. He knew the kid loved basketball, and he was finding his own way. Mostly, he just didn’t want to see him get hurt like so many people that come into contact with the popular kids did.
“Are we supposed to know who that is?” Gene said.
“He’s a basketballer. Lucas’ hero,” you said. Lucas had told you about him once, shown you some pictures he’d cut out of magazines and newspapers. He was important, Lucas had said, not needing to explain why to you.
“Are we supposed to know who you are, Genie?” Eddie added, looking at his friend.
“I’m Jack!” he said, clearly outraged at not being recognised. “Torrance?”
“Where’s your axe?” you asked.
“Fuck. I knew I forgot something.”
Midnight came and went, ghost stories were told, and you and Eddie got suitably drunk on whatever funky shit Gareth had conjured.
“I’m serious, Gee. Anythin’ you want. Jus’ name it. Name it! I need ta know wha’s in it,” Eddie begged.
You were sitting between them on the couch, back against Eddie’s chest as he angled towards his friend, his arms around you, and your legs up on Gareth’s lap, where he held them steady.
“Anything? Pshhh. Such a fuckin’ liar, Munson. Your Warlock? You’d never give ‘er up,”
“Yeah, alright. I’m fulla shit. But you can… Borrow her? For a couple shows? Or… Or I’ll make you DM!”
“I’m already gonna be DM as soon as you graduate,” Gareth rebutted.
“Which he will,” you added.
“Okay, so then jus’ tell me for like, a graduation gift?” Eddie pleaded.
“Tell me! An’ not Eddie. An’ I won’t tell him,” you offered, knowing Gareth would jump at the opportunity to get one up on his friend.
“Hey!” Eddie said, instantly pulling a sulky face.
“You won’t tell him?” Gareth asked. You shook your head. “Alright. Come ‘ere.” You leaned forward and listened as Gareth whispered all the secret ingredients to his pumpkin punch.
Later, when Gareth left to go ask a girl named Gracie to dance (she was dressed as Princess Leia) Eddie pulled you back so you were entirely in his lap on the couch.
“You gonna tell me?” he asked.
“Ah-huh. Later,” you replied, leaning in to kiss him. “He didn’t make me promise sooooo, like, that’s on him?”
“Totally. Rookie mistake,” Eddie agreed.
“Roooooooookieeeeee mistake,” you repeated.
Eddie held your face in his hands and kissed you, he tasted like secret ingredients and Dustin’s mum’s Halloween sugar cookies.
“Are you drunk enough to dance yet?”
“Fuck it. Come on, angel. Show me whatcha got.”
Eddie kept you upright as you danced and twirled around him. He held your hand and spun you under his arms as you sang the words to songs Eddie wouldn’t be caught dead listening to under any other circumstances. Papa Don’t Preach. Manic Monday.
You were breathless when a slow song came on.
There is freedom within, there is freedom without. \
Eddie held you close as you wrapped your arms around his neck and rested against him, letting him sway you around the living room, barely avoiding all the other couples.
Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup.
Eddie winked at Gareth, who still had Gracie with him. His friend blushed and buried his head in Gracie’s neck. Eddie’s attention came back to you. He started to sing quietly.
There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost. But you’ll never see the end of the road while you’re traveling with me.
A little louder, and you could hear others in the room join in.
Hey now, hey now.
The others heard it too, and suddenly everyone was singing along.
Don’t dream it’s over. Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in. they come, they come to build a wall between us. We know they won’t win.
It’s a moment that never would have happened at Jason Carver’s party.
As the second verse began, Eddie whispered, “Wanna go somewhere, just us?”
You nodded, floated along behind Eddie, hardly watching where you were going as your boyfriend navigated the house. It was late, or early, depending on perspective; people were looking worse for wear, passing out or trying to find an exit. Eddie knew where he was going though, he’d been there before. Gene’s parents were cool and had let Eddie crash in the guest room a couple of times. He knew, therefore, that the door locked and the bed was a queen double.
The light was on in the room, but whoever had been there was long gone. They had been there though. A forgotten bag of candy spilled out across the bed and floor. Someone’s Dracula cape was hung on the back of the desk chair. A pair of devil horns were on the ground. Although the quilt has been disturbed, the bed was still made.
Eddie locked the door and switched off the light. You screamed a drunk little sound, then immediately started to giggle. “Hold on, don’t move. I’ll get the lamp. Don’t, don’t fuckin’ fall over.” He found the lamp, turned around to see you standing very still with your eyes closed. Eddie snorted. “What’re ya doin’?”
“Huh?”
You felt Eddie’s hands around your waist, shaking you a little. When you opened your eyes, he was smiling at you, a Cheshire cat if you’d ever seen one.
“Why’d you close your eyes?”
“What?”
He was too drunk to be bothered with the line of questioning and you were too drunk to meet him halfway.
“You wanna lay down with me?” he asked instead. Eddie was starfishing on the bed before you really answered. You laughed as he took off his furry pants and jacket, leaving him in an old Iron Maiden t-shirt and his boxers.
Following suit, you stripped of your Ripley boiler suit, almost going for a second round of costume in a white singlet and a pair of white underwear. Eddie noticed. “Fuck. Did you do that on purpose?”
“Mayyyyyyyyyyybeeeeeeee,” you said, standing at the edge of the bed, any shadow of self-consciousness drowned in punch and song.
“Angel,” Eddie purred, sitting on the bed, wrapping his arms around your hips and kissing your belly. “Such a good girl.” That’s all it took to make you come undone.
Everything was easier when drunk. Muscles relaxed. Insecurities forgotten. Everything was more difficult too. Bad coordination. Losing focus when a sound was deemed funny.
“Are we gonna forget this?” you asked Eddie.
He stopped what he was doing, popped his head up out of the blanket. “I’m not gonna forget goin’ down on you while ya dressed as Ripley.”
He looked deranged. His painted-on whiskers were smudged and his eyeliner was more raccoon than tabby cat. You couldn’t help but laugh, your belly shaking with the movement.
“You look funny,”
“Funny? I don’t look sexy like this?” Eddie repositioned himself, rested his cheek against your tummy and watched you.
You shook your head. “But you can still touch me,” you offered.
It was Eddie’s turn to laugh. “By the grace of god almighty Ozzy himself, I can still touch her,” he joked, raising a hand up in prayer.
“Actually, maybe, if you want…”
“Yes. I want,” Eddie answered, nodding frantically.
You cackled. “You don’t even know what I was gonna say,”
“I would do anything with you. To you. From you. Fuckin’ whatever.”
Still laughing, you moved out from under him and sat on your knees, your weight resting on your folded legs. Eddie watched you in awe; he loved how your thighs spread and your eyes sparkled and the white singlet pulled across your chest, making the fabric almost see-through.
“It’s your turn,” you told him, moving again. Eddie’s lips parted as you got off the bed, kneeling on the floor beside it. “You come here,” you instructed, patting the edge of the mattress.
“You don’t have to,” Eddie told you, already moving to where you wanted him. His legs slid down either side of you, and you immediately liked the feeling of having your head on his thigh.
He was already hard, as he always was whenever he went down on you, but the sensation of your warm breath so close to him made it painful.
“Want to,” you whispered back to him.
As soon as your hand made contact, Eddie’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. It was enough to drive him insane, but then you made a tentative kitten lick and he moaned, falling back on the bed and clawing at the quilt.
In the rare times you were alone in the Munson trailer, you’d sneakily watched some of the old porn VHSs that were stashed deep under Eddie’s bed. Partly, you wanted to know what he was into. Mostly, you just wanted to see what it was like. Whilst you weren’t into porn, it did give some idea of what to do with Eddie.
“Is this okay?” you asked him, popping him out of your mouth. He whined at the loss of contact. “Is this good?”
“So good, baby,” he managed to get out, waving his hand in the air. “S’perfect. Love you.”
You had been thinking about it long before Halloween. Obviously, Eddie was going to be all yesses and nods and smiles, but if you were honest, you were a tiny bit afraid. Not of him. Never of him. It was more that everything else you’d done, it had mostly been done to you.
Being a recipient was easy, especially with Eddie. What if you weren’t as good as him though? What if you couldn’t make him hard? Make him cum?
When you felt the buzz first hit, the thought had appeared in your head and it looked like an illuminated lightbulb. If that’s how the night was going to end, you’d use the inhibition blocker of alcohol to take that step forward.
The thing about it though, was that he tasted good. It felt good. Powerful. Beautiful. A little bit slutty, but in a very, very good way. And all for Eddie. Just Eddie.
Eddie, who was reacting perfectly – squirming, panting, and mumbling incoherent sentences. He loved you and you were such a good girl and fuck, baby and oh my god. When his hand started to pull at your hair gently, you looked up at him, confused.
“Bab-baby, I’m gonna, gonna, you shhhhould, fuck,” he tried to warn you.
“S’okay,” you told him, keeping your firm grip on the base of his cock and letting him slip back over your tongue. Resolute to swallow, you closed your eyes as his orgasm hit. There was too much though; it spilled from your lips.
Eddie watched as you let him go, watched you cover your mouth with your hand and at least swallow what was left. He sunk to the floor, caging you between his legs.
“You okay?” he asked, his big brown eyes so beautiful you wanted to cry.
“I liked it,” you reported. “Did I do good?”
“Did you-? Fuck, baby…” Eddie grinned, head tilted. “I’m gonna just say it, an’ you can just deal with the embarrasin’ words and shit, okay?”
“‘Kay,”
“And I say all this with so much love. And respect. I respect the fuck out of you, ‘kay?”
“Yep,”
“Come ‘ere.” Eddie pulled you into his arms, earning a surprised squeal from you. Entwined on the bedroom floor, sobering up but drunk on love, you were in your own world. “You were born to suck dick.”
It was a risky review to give, Eddie thought, but when you did the little shoulder shimmy thing you did whenever you were proud, he was a happy man.
“Just yours,” you told him, looking up and fluttering your eyelashes.
“Jesus Christ. I love you.”
Smiling him an I love you too smile, you sat for a while longer. Eddie went in search of water for you both, returning to find you passed out in the bed. He climbed in next to you, snuggled in, and quickly followed you into the dreaming.
Next Chapter: 10 - Royalty
End Note: I had to publish this chapter earlier than intended because I've seen references to Eddie and Alien in two different fanart pieces, and I freaked out because I had that part of the chapter written over a month ago. Honestly, that fandom hive mind is real.
Fic Taglist: @jeff855 @b-barnes04 @eddie-munson-is-a-sweetheart @nerd-squad-headquarters @word-wytch @harrys-tittie @munsonsmel0dy @sidthedollface2 @eddiethesexy @bardicfrustration @orpheusredux @munsonsgirl71 @a-time-for-wolvess @eddieswifu @rosaline-black @thegirlwhohides @emotionaldreamer @e0509 @briasnow-blog @kiyastrf94 @erinsingalong
All Eddie Taglist: @solomons-finest-rum @ruinedbythehobbit @munsonlives @sweetpeapod @depressooo-expressooo-blog (has your url changed or am I tagging the wrong person?) @thorfemmes @hawkins-high @corrodedhawkins @grungegrrrl @lilzabob @mymoonisalways-in-scorpio @averagemisfit03 @ches-86 @ilovecupcakesandtea @onehotgreasymechanic
#Mine#Eddie Munson#Eddie Munson x Reader#Eddie Munson x You#Eddie Munson/Reader#Eddie Munson/You#Eddie Munson x Chubby!Reader#Eddie Munson/Chubby!Reader
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To the Wonder (2024) Ep1
(A quick intro)
So i have to say i went into this drama with high expectations based on the cast, the cannes and peoples opinion i had seen. And i was a bit meh in the beginning. The first 2 eps are the lowest point of the drama (which is not bad by any means) but i really enjoy it as a whole. I´d say i enjoy it more than the actual quality of it, like it is good but its better for me because i like it, know what i mean?
I will be writing this as i rewatch . Also like im not going to spell/grammar check this so there may be mistakes
(lets get into it, its going to be loooong and SPOILERS)
"So in the coldest and longest days in winter, no set of footprints can lead to my home"
I really like the intro, gurl set that tone
Damn 3mins and im already glad that i am rewatching, the birch!
(just coping this here for later)
But i do find it curious that an young artist does not know what they want, how does one experience the feeling of wanting to create without a vision of ones creation? i guess insecurity plays a part on it but its something you dont see often
the way the camera panned here made me think this lady was going to be someone later on, is she the writer-housewife? ill see
Girl we will be able to tell... An yet (i am not knowledged in how altay is) one would think that the county seat is still quite "rural" for how city-like they have written Wenxiu to be, and eh i dont know if its the same in the novel but its definately something that made me go ??? at some moments later
the icon, the legend, speak your truth
and now this rat
we will get back to virginia woolf later on, nice
also another note, for someone who loves writting we never see her read, but there is a respect conveyed with straightening the frame that i liked
ok now we are on the village
Like why are we saying hello in mandarin to the neighbours. Here we have thing nº1 that bothered me: you live here, maybe before in a less rural area but still, and you dont know shit in kazak. And i get that she is han, that at home and at the school she went they spoke in mandarin, that they are closed off in their communities, that everyone has to adapt to them and not the other way around. But with all this considered i would still expect her to know some, like a greeting, like thank you. If this is what is normal irl yikes.
Because i understand its use to define a line and she is written to make the viewer feel like an outsider, but too much. Write her a greating please cmon. An ick of mine. Lets move on
We go from watching wuxia on tv to nature documentary to 200m dash, who told you to change the channel!
Exactly: baby. (but i feel this is a minstraslation)
Good point to talk about thing nº2 that bothered me. (it looks like im only talking shit but trust i love this). Ok this happened mainly before starting to watch it. I read the sinopsis and it says Yushi is playing Batay a kazakh and im like wait a minute, he is not. I liked him a lot on fengshen and i knew he can ride a horse pretty well an that is a positive here. So when i started watching and i hear him talk im surprised by the quality of the dubbing, he has the same voice! Then i found out its actually him, nice, another positive. Overall, would i wish that the main actor was kazakh? yes; where the chances high for that? no; am i satisfied with the end result? pretty much.
Also i find him really atractive so...
XD. But its a real thing.
Cute
Ok they have mentioned the county they live in: fuyun, total population of the county 99k, 54% kazakh. Point nº1 stands.
yes
"We are practically living like vagrants" watch what you say, in a couple eps you will be all in for that seminomadic life bby
#to the wonder#我的阿勒泰#cdrama#yu shi#zhou yiran#ma jili#alimujiang#this commentary was messy and i seem so negative
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Old Queer Love Letters
So, I just reread Red, White, and Royal Blue this week and was reminded of my slight obsession with historical gay love letters. I think there is something so heart-wrenchingly beautiful and devastating about these letters written between these people who so deeply love each other, even in times when they would be persecuted for that love. This is a collection of excerpts from some of my favorites, with sources included. Many of the letters written by men are from Rictor Norton’s “Dear Boy” essays, a collection of essays on love letters between men throughout history, which I highly recommend perusing if you also like to read old gay love letters (links below). All emphasis is my own.
1779- Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens
“Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by actions rather than words, to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ‘till I bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me.”
816- Yuan Zhen to Bo Juyi
“Other people too have friends that they love;
But ours was a love such as few friends have known.
You were all my sustenance; it mattered more
To see you daily than to get my morning food.”
1927- Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
“I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this- But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.”
1958- Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky
“‘When I think on thee dear friend/ all loses are restored & sorrows end,’ came over & over in my mind- it’s the end of a Shakespeare Sonnet- he must have been happy in love too. I had never realized that before…
Write me soon baby, I’ll write you a big long poem I feel as if you were a god that I pray to-
Love, Allen”
1933- Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickok
“I cannot go to bed tonight without a word to you. I felt a little as though a part of me was leaving tonight. You have grown so much a part of my life that it is empty without you.”
And from a different letter that same year,
“I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think. I couldn’t bear to think of you crying yourself to sleep. Oh! how I wanted to put my arms around you in reality instead of in spirit. I went & kissed your photograph instead & the tears were in my eyes. Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I’m here for most of mine is with you!”
1941- Gordon Bowsher to Gilbert Bradley
“For years I had it drummed into me that no love could last for life…
I want you darling seriously to delve into your own mind, and to look for once in to the future.
Imagine the time when the war is over and we are living together… would it not be better to live on from now on the memory of our life together when it was at its most golden pitch.”
1917- Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon
“And you have fixed my Life- however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze.”
Sources below the cut:
Hamilton to Laurens, from the National Archives and Rictor Norton’s My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries
Yuan Zhen to Bo Juyi, from Rictor Norton’s My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries
Sackville-West to Woolf, from The Marginalian
Ginsberg to Orlovsky, from Rictor Norton’s My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries and The Pink News
Roosevelt to Hickok, from Autostraddle.com
Bowsher to Bradley, from the BBC
Owen to Sassoon, from Rictor Norton’s My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries
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Quotes (pt. 1)
Bravery
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. - Jon Kabat-Zinn
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas Edison
Grow as you please. If I have to get to know you again, I'll do that. - Shams Tabriz
We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it. - Shirley Jackson
Waiting, the thing that felt so pointless and annoying when I was young, is now this kind of delicious activity. - Lorde
There is not a single path forward that's painless. - Mikko Harvey
You can't plan life. - Gal Gadot
The next moment is not more important than this one. - Anonymous
The intentions going into the messes we make are, on the whole, exemplary. - Anonymous
There is no outcome, only eternal unfolding. - Socrates
Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet. - L.M. Montgomery
The past doesn't need you anymore. Your future does. - Anonymous
You can reach the shore even if you can't see it. - Anonymous
Mistakes are proof that you are trying. - Jennifer Lim
To live would be an awfully big adventure. - J.M. Barrie
Rare words! Brave world! - Falstaff, Henry IV
My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice. - J.K. Rowling
Fundamental cowardice, studied bravery. - aideomai
Ain't nothing come easy. No, nothing comes quick. It's gonna hurt like hell to become well. - The Oh Hellos
Man, you only ever have one life. - Moose Finbar
Open your thighs to fate. - e.e. cummings
I was experimenting to be the woman I wanted to be. I was in training to be a woman without shame. - Sandra Cisneros
There are no ideal scenarios. There is only the present now that is unfolding right before you with every inhale, every exhale, every inhale, every exhale. - Yumi Sakugawa
Just because you're out of control doesn't mean you won't be okay. - Anonymous
Show yourself, step into your power. Grow yourself into something new. You are the one you've been waiting for all of your life. - Idina Menzel
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. - Anonymous
You can't have connection and joy and happiness without vulnerability. - Brene Brown
I am trying to learn that embarrassments are lessons in humility. It is important to accept my imperfections as a part of who I am. By letting go of my pride, I thereby let go of my shame. - Anonymous
No day but today. - Adam Pascal
I can do this. I can do this. - Rey
What's life without a few dragons? - J.K. Rowling
Take the unknown road now. - Sara Girl
A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for. - William G.T. Shedd
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch. - Jean Luc Godard
Do I dare disturb the universe? - T.S. Eliot
We shall not cease form exploration and the end of all our exploration will be to arrive where we started and known the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot
With the New Year so young, it still yawned and stretched fresh with life... but Arthur would not eat until all were served. He brimmed with ebullience, being almost boyish in his love of life, and what he liked least was to sit still watching the seasons slip by. - Pearl Poet
Look upward, from this world to the heavens. Tomorrow, onto the stars. - Anonymous
Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
You cannot find peace by avoiding life. - Virginia Woolf
Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. - Kylo Ren
As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did. - J.K. Rowling
Fear is stupid. So is regret. - Marilyn Monroe
We leave for the sake of leaving and without knowing why. We always say "we must go." - Charles Baudelaire
There is nothing on my horizon except everything. - Rainn Wilson
Wherever you go, there you are. - Jon Kabat-Zinn
You can't go home again. - Thomas Wolfe
In for a knut, in for a galleon. - J.K. Rowling
Wake up. Look up. Get up. - Anonymous
What will happen if you do? What will surely happen if you don't? - Anonymous
No! You're still holding on! Let go! - Adam Driver
People aren't supposed to look back. I'm certainly not going to do it anymore. - Kurt Vonnegut
For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with different points of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
With the stillness of the night, there comes a time to understand, to reach out and touch tomorrow, take the future in our hand. We can see a new horizon, built on all that we have done, and our drams begin another thousand circles 'round the sun. We go on, to the joy and through the teats. We go on, to discover new frontiers. Moving on, with the current of the year. We go on, moving forward now as one. Moving on, with a spirit born to run. Ever on, with each rising sun, to a new day. We go on! - Don Dorsey
You could be the captain of your soul, but you have to realize that life is coming from you and not at you, and that takes time. - Timothee Chalamet
Your life is not on pause or delayed. Your life is still happening, so then the question is: are you fully awake to it, paying attention even if it is completely different from your idea of how it should be like in an ideal scenario? - Yumi Sakugawa
Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away. - Bob Schieffer
Those who stay will be champions. - Bo Schembechler
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. - 1 Corinthians 13:11
You don't fail if you try: you learn. - Anonymous
Like Theseus' ship, we'll fix the busted bits. 'Til it's both nothing like and everything it's always been. It's a wonder we expect a thing to stay the same at all. - Oh Hellos
You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. - Margery Williams Bianco
Live well and reap what you sow. - Palace
I will get hurt and hurt others, but my heart will forever be open. - Anonymous
I am the sea and nobody owns me. - Astrid Lindgren
It's not about having a good month, a good year, or even a good life. It's about having a good day. Over and over and over again. - Anonymous
Positive attitude changes everything. - Barbara Roberts
And you're always free to begin again, and you're always free to believe. When you find the place that your heart belongs, you'll never leave. Though you may not know where your gifts may lead, and it may not show at the start, when you live your dream, you'll find destiny is written in your heart. - Barbara Roberts
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Excerpt | Working Title 'Render Me Speechless'
Context - Sam has a dissociative/suicidal ideation episode.
I wanted to rip my hand out of Will’s and run out into oncoming traffic. I wanted to run over to the lawn care service three units down and douse myself in their gasoline before setting myself on fire. I wanted to find the nearest standing body of water and lay face-first until it took me over completely. I wanted to be anywhere but alive. Living meant I had to remain aware of all the ways in which I had caused pain in another’s life, intentional or not. I had to keep the memories of Cassie and Chance and my mother and the people who had come and gone without leaving much of an impact at all but who still weighed me down like the stones in Virginia Woolfe’s coat pockets. I longed for a way to kill the synapses that connected me to those who I cared for but that would leave my physical body intact. Maybe I didn’t want to kill myself. Maybe I just wanted to kill the parts of me that made living unbearable.
I wasn’t living in that kind of world, though. I wasn’t living in an episode of Futurama in the year 3000 where doctors could simply go in and laser the connections between the conscious and unconscious with no repercussions or consequences. I was living in the present and it was excruciating. Every movement, whether I was aware of it or not, was working to pull an aching anchor through Mariana’s Trench depths and sunless silt. With each new notch in my belt of life’s experiences came another anchor, and with each anchor came the increase in required effort not to merely remain in motion but simply to keep my head from going under. I was in a constant fight to not let the dark sides of me win.
A bolt cutter snipped one of the heavy chains, allowing for buoyancy as I managed to lift my head out of the unrelenting waves. I was in a living room – whose I didn’t know – and overwhelming anger rose quickly. Why couldn’t I just get it together? Why did I remain so out of control when I could identify y demons? What was I missing? I couldn’t start healing until I found that tray piece of the puzzle. I was starting to think I’d never see it again.
“You’re safe.” I retched at the words. Safe. What did that even mean? Safe was gone – dead in the water. “I promise. You don’t believe me but you are.”
A firm pressure wrapped around my upper body and I prayed it was Death at last giving me the greatest gift of my ‘life’. After all, there were no recollections of what it felt like to die out in the living world. For all we knew it felt like the truest, deepest love from a person who cared for us unconditionally. So appealing it was; so inviting was the idea of death – and better yet seeing Cass and Mom again – that I found myself relaxing into the warm arms of the End of Times.
“There you go.” The Grim Reaper was speaking to me, drawing me in, the grip tightening and crawling up my spine to the nape of my neck. “You’re safe.” Coming from the mouth of the Afterworld, Will’s sentiment was a source of otherworldly understanding. “Sam?”
By name I was being beckoned.
“Can you look at me?”
I didn’t dare open my eyes and behold that which welcomed me without extraneous commentary.
“No.”
“That’s okay. Follow me, then.”
I did so willingly, enthusiastically even, blindly led into a space no more or less dark as I didn’t dare to open my eyes but with a refreshing chill that reined in my heartbeat. I would be calm and relaxed for my introduction to whatever was awaiting me on the other side…. The first thing to go right in a long time. So far out of myself was I that it never occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t fully aware of my sense of being.
“Sit.” I obeyed. “Take this.” Instinctively I lifted my hands and grasped at something unknown. “Drink.” The tip of a straw flitted across my tongue and with the stream of cold liquid came a sledgehammer to my throat as I was clotheslined by realty and realized that I wasn’t dead but instead sitting on a foreign couch in a foreign place with a barely-discernible face staring down at me. The featureless pale oval could have belonged to anyone; Cass, Chance, Mom… hell, even Dad or the cryptid Slenderman. Was Death faceless?
The figure moved and with it the surroundings shifted into focus. I wasn’t dead. I was gripping a glass of water so tightly my knuckles were pale, my chest heaving, and my eyes staring straight into those of Will as he crouched in front of me with his hands on my knees.
It was the first time I’d come out the other side of hell to find the person from Before still around.
#writing#novel#author#novelist#writer#fiction#book#ka mandzak#kamandzak#render me speechless#tw#trigger warning#suicidal ideation#ptsd#dissociation
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In The City That We Love 1/25
Summary: Set in year leading up to the time jump in Dreams Come True. Kurt and Blaine have been married for five years, still living in New York City, still trying to navigate life. As their friends become settled around them, Kurt and Blaine figure out who they are, and who they are as a couple, as they settle into being a full adult. A story of marriage as it grows up and settles down for good.
A/N: Hey guys - this was started back in 2019, and based on the Final Season sketch I wrote detailing what the "final season" of Glee would be like - taking the characters up to the points we see them at the end of Dreams Come True. Each chapter is meant to be stand alone/episodic - like an episode of a tv season - but there is an overarching story to the narrative as a whole.
Thanks @snarkyhag for beta'ing - though I'm sure it's been so long she doesn't even remember, lol <3
No - I did not forget about my other WIPs, but since I wrote nothing over my vacation, I thought I'd send this finally out into the world - the last of my big WIP ideas.
******
Episode 1: The Camping Trip
It’s Thursday night and they’re making out on the couch. Kurt’s on his back, head propped on a pillow. Blaine hovers slightly over him as they trade slow and deep kisses. There’s no rush, no frantic rubbing of bodies, no hustle to shimmy clothes off. In fact, they’re barely touching except where their mouths are connected. They have the time, finally, to enjoy each other. To really let it play out.
He thinks he remembers the last time they had sex - probably a few weeks ago? Maybe a month? When they started their run on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Kurt made it a point to schedule in time for a quickie or two during the week. Their work schedule didn’t really allow for anything more. Besides, fast and efficient fucking is the best stress relief. By the end of the run, however, they had been both so exhausted that neither really wanted to have sex. They barely had the energy to have a full conversation, let alone do anything that required more than falling into their bed every night.
But even so, sex had maintained a staple of their marriage. Making out, however? Kurt can’t remember the last time he and Blaine just made out.
It’s funny, their friend circle would claim the making out is a common occurrence; everyone always bringing up the one time they were too busy making out in a car to attend a wedding. Well, that had been a good five, no six, years ago now -- way past the days when stealing kisses had been the most thrilling thing they could do. Still, their unhurried make out reminds Kurt of being back in high school when it had been more about the journey and less about the destination. He wants to just sink into the couch and enjoy Blaine, enjoy all of the Blaine. Dammit, it’s been long enough. He's going to.
He can tell Blaine’s getting a little tired of holding himself up. They break for a moment, Kurt spreading his legs so Blaine can settle between them, gently putting his weight on top of Kurt. The lazy kisses resume, now with a slow rocking of the hips. He can feel Blaine growing hard in his jeans, Kurt’s own arousal slowly building. He’s not chasing it, however. He lets it linger, enjoys the warmth and familiarity of Blaine on top of him.
Kurt is intent on enjoying himself tonight because, god knows, they’re going to have to start job hunting tomorrow. Usually they’re better than this, having another job lined up when a run ends. But the play had taken everything out of them, even testing their marriage. And now they have to face the reality of unemployment. Kurt should really check his email before they actually get to bed to see if…
As if sensing his mind wandering, Blaine begins sucking kisses along his jaw and neck, pulling Kurt back into the present. Kurt lets out a little groan and rolls his head back giving Blaine better access. And yes, yes… he really needs to concentrate more on his Blaine, his love, his husband, who knows all the places that make him melt. Kurt takes a moment and breathes him in.
Blaine smells differently, and Kurt can’t figure out why... Did he get a new body wash? Pick up a different scented laundry detergent? Have they really been so out of sync lately that maybe he can’t remember what Blaine smells like? Blaine starts kissing back up to Kurt’s lips. The kisses are more heated now as Blaine dips his tongue into Kurt’s mouth. The sense of smell is no longer on Kurt’s mind.
“What do you want tonight?” Blaine asks. One of Blaine’s hands travels between them, finds Kurt’s aching dick, and cups it. A grin slides along Blaine’s face as he begins to stroke through the denim.
Kurt’s eyes flutter shut, barely able to reply. It feels so good. “Fuck me.”
“Maybe,” Blaine starts, as he goes to unzip Kurt’s pants. “You should fuck my mouth first.”
Yes, that. Let’s do that. But Kurt’s reply comes out an ungraceful squeak.
Blaine’s hand is around him, steady and slow, teasingly slow. Kurt’s brain short circuits just a little, and maybe tonight will be a little bit like high school - where he comes in his pants before they ever really get started.
Doesn’t matter. Kurt feels horny enough now that he probably has a few rounds in him. He pulls Blaine in for a searing kiss as he rocks his hips in time with Blaine’s hand and then…
There is a sudden and obtrusive knock at the door. They both freeze, as a burst of anger tears through Kurt.
“Maybe it’s a solicitor,” Blaine offers weakly as he sits up.
“At ten at night? Doubtful,” Kurt’s eyebrow is raised. The rapping on the door continues. He knows that knock. He resents that knock and stares at the door, hard, hoping that the person on the other side can receive his telegraphic message to leave. Now.
Of course, Kurt knows better.
“Kurt! Blaine! I know you’re in there,” the shrill voice comes through the door. Blaine starts to speak, but then Kurt pushes into his hand, grabbing his attention back. His night will not be ruined. “I saw the light on when I came in. Let me in!”
“Rachel, my dick is out, go away,” Kurt snaps. He doesn’t care that the apartment walls are thin and his neighbors can hear the argument. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Don’t act like I’ve never seen that before,” she cries back. “This is an emergency. I’ll use my key if I have to.”
Blaine shifts to move off the couch. Kurt shoots him a glare - if they let her in, the night is over. Blaine looks helplessly at him as the knocking intensifies. Fine. Fine, fine, fine. He begrudgingly puts himself back in his pants as Blaine goes for the door. Fine.
Rachel pounds again, as Blaine opens the door, cutting her off mid-knock. She nearly tumbles through the doorway, almost surprised that they actually let her in.
“Did someone die?” Kurt asks, a bit of acid on his tongue. Blaine shoots him a look, asking to at least try to be more sympathetic. Rachel is, after all, distraught as she flounces into the recliner next to the couch.
“No,” she bites back. “Just my career. My career is dead.”
Kurt lets out an audible groan. Of all the things to be upset about…
Blaine sits on the arm of the chair, rubbing her shoulders sympathetically. “I’m sure it’s not actually dead…”
“I haven’t heard back from this audition,” she cries. “Which is, you know, fine. It’s not like anyone else is calling me back either. I acted my heart out for this one, I researched everything on Jane Austen, and I know her as if I was her. I felt her with every fiber of my being.”
Kurt puts his head on his hand and glances over at the clock, then back to Blaine as if to silently say - she’s going to do this all night, you know.
Blaine shrugs helplessly. “It’s one audition,” he says, stroking her hair. “There will be others.”
“Oh yes, there are hundreds of auditions out there,” Rachel jumps to her feet and begins to pace the room. “I have been to all of them. Literally, I have been to one-hundred and twelve auditions in the past six months and none of them - NONE of them have cast me. I am unhirable. My career is over. It’s dead. And now I’ll just become a housewife - wasting away as my husband takes all the glory. And that statue, that mistress of his that just stares at me from the mantle. It knows what a failure I am. It knows…”
“Okay, Rachel,” Blaine says, even he can admit when Rachel’s being too much. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”
Kurt wants to throw her out. His night had been going splendidly until it had a head-on collision with Rachel Berry’s emotions. He could. Easily. Just send her home, back to her nice, little brownstone in Manhattan, with her cushy back-up plan of her husband and her dads, and her off-Broadway potential, and let her wallow in her own self-pity. She’ll call Mercedes, and can be Mercedes’s problem for a while.
But he doesn’t.
Because he, of all people, knows that rejection isn’t easy. Especially for someone like Rachel who feels the world owes her something. It’s not like he has people lining up at the door, waiting to sign him for a role. It’s not like he’d have had that role in Virginia Woolf if they hadn’t wanted Blaine to do it in the first place. It’s not like being cast in a show has ever been easy for him.
God dammit, why does a Rachel Berry pity party have to spread so easily?
Rachel falls back into Blaine’s arms. He holds her tightly and rubs her back.
“You need to relax,” Blaine says. “If they haven’t called you back, then they haven’t made a decision. You just… need a distraction, something to make you not think about it for a while.”
Rachel’s eyes bulge a little. “Yes! I need a relaxing distraction.” She grabs onto Blaine’s arms suddenly. “Camping. We should go camping.”
Blaine throws Kurt a look over Rachel’s shoulder. Kurt only rolls his eyes. “Have you ever even been camping, Rach?”
“My dads took me camping when I was twelve,” she says. “Besides, Jesse has this cute little cabin upstate that we’ve never used. His mom gave it to him a few years ago because she got it in the divorce, and she doesn’t really use it - but his dad would go up there and drink all day and this one time he nearly started a fire and..”
“Anyway…” Kurt cuts her off.
“But just think of it,” she continues. “This weekend, all of us - the whole gang. This past year has been so crazy, and the summer’s almost over, and think of us all sitting around the campfire out on the lake, cuddling with each other, eating those marshmallow cracker things. You know with the chocolate.”
“S’mores,” Kurt and Blaine say in unison. Only Rachel Berry wouldn’t know what s’mores are called.
She claps her hands together. “Yes, this is great - this is going to be great. I should call everyone!”
“Um, Rach…” Kurt slides off the couch, hoping maybe he can throw her out the door. “Maybe we can figure out this for another time? Blaine and I were hoping to use this weekend to, you know, reconnect.” Blaine nods his head frantically in agreement.
“What, no,” Rachel pouts. “I don’t have time - I have so many auditions to go to, and I know they’ll call me Monday morning - I need a distraction. Besides you guys can reconnect upstate in nature. Oh! We can all reconnect with nature!”
“No.”
“Please?” She bats her eyes at him. It’s not like it usually works, but she tries anyway. “C’mon, please! It’ll be fun. When’s the last time we did anything fun. Please, please, please!”
“Rachel…” Kurt shoots a look over to Blaine, hoping he’ll help him out.
Blaine, however, is super fascinated with a string on the couch. “Um, I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”
Rachel squeals with delight.
Kurt throws Blaine a sharp look. Traitor.
“This is wonderful, I’m going to call Mercedes right now,” Rachel fishes her phone out of her pocket. “Oh, do you guys mind if I stay here tonight? Jesse’s at a cast party, and probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning, and you know I think that place is haunted.”
“For the last time, Jesse’s Tony is not alive!” Kurt snaps, throwing his hands in the air.
Rachel points her phone at him intently. “You don’t know that - it doesn’t watch you.”
Kurt rolls his eyes at her.
“So, I’ll just use your bed, and you guys can continue to use the couch however you were using it. That’s fine.” Rachel says, scrolling through her phone as she heads to the bedroom. “If you guys want to make me some tea in the morning that’d be great,” she adds as she slams the door behind her.
Kurt clenches his jaw, wondering why he ever let that woman into his life.
Blaine’s still playing with the string. “So, uh, do you still wanna…”
“No.”
“Okay.”
***
Apparently, everyone in their friend group thought camping would be a great idea. Everyone except Kurt, because god knows he’d rather be back in his comfortable apartment, sleeping in an actual bed, and not on the ground, actually trying to do something about the fact that his life currently doesn’t have a direction, but no - they have to follow Rachel’s whim instead.
They’ve been stuck in the car for about five hours now. Jesse is driving with Rachel on the passenger side. They’re going over some vocal techniques, and the past twenty minutes have been Rachel doing strange squawking sounds. Kurt is sitting on the left side of the backseat, Tina next to him, and Mercedes on the other end. They’re chatting a little bit, but he can’t hear them very well over Rachel’s noises and the incredibly loud Best of Barbra Streisand playing through the speakers. He wouldn’t mind the CD so much if they hadn’t played it on a loop a half dozen times already.
He is squished, and uncomfortable, and the small pillow he brought to lean against made his head too warm. He tries shifting around, but Jesse’s seat is nearly pushed all the way back, and there is just no way he’s going to get in a good position. There hadn’t been enough room in the car to bring any kind of bags, so he’s stuck with only his phone to keep him company. He tries to check his email again, but they’re steadily going farther out of range from any place with decent wifi. He contemplates trying another game of solitaire when a text bubble pops up.
Blaine: Artie’s writing a screenplay!!!
Blaine, thank god. It makes Kurt smile. He and Blaine, by default, ended up separated. Since Jesse rented the cars, he and Rachel had first choice. And of course, Santana claimed driving the second car or she wasn’t going. Artie and Sam insisted they ride together to play some kind of video game, while Tina begged Mercedes to ride with her so they could gossip, leaving him and Blaine to settle for being apart.
Kurt: When isn’t he?
Blaine: This one’s hilarious - it’s greek myth.
Blaine: he’s basically writing greek myth fanfic
Blaine: Artie says he’s going to use this weekend to write. Sam thinks he’s going to end up like jack nicholson in the shining.
Kurt: Should we be concerned? Artie would do that.
Blaine: here’s artie ::knife:: ::knife:: ::knife::
Kurt lets out a little laugh.
“Oh my god, are you sexting with Blaine?” Tina whips her head around to notice him.
His mood immediately sours. “Yes, Tina - I’m sexting Blaine. I’m bored enough that I thought I’d just jerk off and see if anyone would notice.”
“Oh, don’t give me that attitude, Kurt Hummel,” she snaps. “I was in the backseat next to you on the way to Mr. Schue’s wedding and you and Blaine made out the whole time and it was super gross.”
She makes a grab for his phone, but he swings it away from her.
“Tina, we were in college, god,” he says. “No, I’m not sexting Blaine.”
“Ug, gross, you totally are,” she rolls her eyes at him, then turns so that her back is to him and begins to whisper over to Mercedes.
He’d really like to bite at her that maybe she should worry less about his sex life and more about her lack of one, but decides not to. Can they just get to the campsite already?
Kurt: Tina thinks we’re sexting.
Blaine: yeah she wishes
Blaine: ::devil:: ::eggplant:: ::eggplant:: ::eggplant:: ::donut:: ::wink:: ::wink::
Kurt: omg, I love you
The three little gray bubbles dance on Kurt’s screen for a few moments… Hey, maybe they are going to do this, but Kurt can’t help but have a twinge of disappointment when he sees Blaine’s reply.
Blaine: Sam wants to take me on in Smash. We’ll talk in a few hours. Tell Tina to get her nose out of our sex life.
Blaine: ::eggplant:: ::heart:: ::kissyface::
And then Blaine is gone. Is it weird to miss your husband? Your husband whom you do see extensively every day. It’s not like he’s not there. Kurt starts to scroll up through their previous conversations - which is a collection of short inquiries and yes or no replies, the daily upkeep of ‘can you pick up milk?’ and ‘remember to call the dentist to set up an appointment.’ When did they get so boring?
Kurt pushes his pillow up against the window and rests his head on it, closing his eyes. He ignores the crick in his back, and thinks of Blaine, and if Blaine were beside him. They could cuddle up, and Kurt could get snug in his arms and fall asleep easily. He concentrates hard on that thought as the car rumbles on down the endless highway.
***
It’s late when they arrive, and though the sun is still up, everyone is too exhausted to do much. The cabin is much tinier than expected, set up like a studio; only one queen-sized bed, a sofa, and a hard wooden floor for possible sleeping places. Sam and Jesse both brought tents, but only Sam sets his up, and only Mercedes can fit in there with him.
The ground is still damp from a morning rain, so the campfire is out of the question. A few of them travel into town to bring back pizza for dinner, which ends up being the highlight of the evening. Afterward, Santana takes a phone call and spends half the evening yelling at her client. Sam and Jesse attempt to set up the second tent, but it proves to be too difficult, and they decide to try again tomorrow. And Artie settles into a corner to write his script. The girls, at least, are having fun playing video games with Blaine while Brittany recounts every ghost story she’s ever heard. Kurt finds himself in a moldy, stiff recliner and tries to read, finding it hard to concentrate with all the commotion going on.
Eventually, Sam and Mercedes head out to their tent, everyone having piqued interest as they flirt with each other on their way out. Are they even back together? Kurt has no idea, but the gossip is curbed as they all get ready for bed.
Rachel and Jesse have claimed the bed, since it is Jesse’s cabin, while Brittany and Santana claimed the rug by the fireplace. Artie lets Tina have the sofa while he sleeps on the floor next to her. Leaving the small space near the bathroom for Kurt and Blaine.
“The internet sucks here,” Kurt says, scrolling through his phone, as he tries to find a comfortable position in his sleeping bag.. The floor is hard and unforgiving, and somewhere someone is already snoring. He can already tell it’s going to be a long night.
“The point is not to have internet here,” Blaine says, just having gotten back from the bathroom. He settles in and rolls on his side to face Kurt, plucking the phone away, and tossing it gently on their bags. Blaine’s sleepy, but cuddles up to Kurt, even with the lining of the sleeping bags between them. “Relax, Kurt, we’re taking a vacation.”
“Unemployment isn’t a vacation,” Kurt says. If he stretches, he could get his phone back, but the effort doesn’t seem worth it.
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that,” Blaine says into his shoulder.
“You said that.”
“Kurt…” Blaine’s tone is playful, and he gives a few gentle kisses to the back of Kurt’s neck. “Tomorrow, let’s not think of the future, just enjoy our time together. Maybe we can stay back and get that other tent up, then we can cozy up, enjoy the stars…”
Kurt cranes his neck back so he can give Blaine a kiss. Blaine immediately deepens it, sliding his tongue against Kurt’s.
“You’re really good at that,” Kurt says breathlessly.
“I try.”
Kurt goes to kiss Blaine again when someone clears their throat. It’s Artie on the way to the bathroom. “You guys keep it up, I’ll film you and sell it as porn,” he says waving his phone in the air. He lets out a laugh as he rolls into the bathroom.
Kurt lets out an annoyed grunt as he turns in Blaine’s arms to face him. “This place is too cramped.”
“This place reminds me of the loft,” Blaine says, looking around.
Kurt scrunches his nose. “The loft was far cleaner.”
Blaine gives a shrug. “It’s kind of nice,” he gives Kurt a quick peck. “And romantic.” Another peck. “And has some charm.” And another long kiss, engaging enough that Kurt seriously contemplates just doing it right there with all their friends watching. Let Artie film it for porn - it’d be worth something. Blaine is right there with him. “Remember that time we did it when Rachel’s dads visited?” he wiggles his eyebrows.
“What, gross!” Rachel says from the bed. She’s only a foot away, but apparently can hear everything they're saying, and throws her hair tie at them. “I can’t believe you did it in front of my dads.”
“Wanky!” Santana calls out from the other side of the cabin.
“No, no, no, no,” Tina calls out. “No one is having sex tonight. Because ew. Go to bed, all of you, I need my sleep.”
“See -- just like the loft,” Blaine says with a laugh.
“And may I remind you, we also broke up in that loft,” Kurt says. “Remember that?”
“Fine.”
He doesn’t mean for the memory to be a mood killer, he’s not even sure what had prompted him to bring it up, but Blaine just sighs heavily and rolls over to face the wall instead of Kurt. He should say he’s sorry, but he doesn’t, and instead just wraps an arm around Blaine, cuddles close, and after a lot of time thinking about how far away Blaine still feels, long after Blaine’s breathing slows, Kurt manages to fall asleep.
***
Kurt is having a nice dream - something calm and bright and possibly related to an exciting new trend in men’s fashion but there are noises around him, pulling him away from dreamland. Reality seems to crash fast, and suddenly he’s aware that every part of his body aches. The wooden floor hadn’t been kind during the night, and now just rolling from his side to his back makes everything cramp up. God, he’s not even thirty yet. The floor creaks beside him, so he opens one eye to find Blaine, fully dressed, leaning over him with a grin.
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Blaine gently kisses his temple.
Kurt groans, half-heartedly swatting him away. Unlike yesterday, the sun is bright and blinding through the window, causing Kurt to cover his eyes with his arm. “I don’t know how you can get up so early and be chipper all the time.”
“Kurt, it's a quarter to twelve.”
“What?” Kurt bolts upright. “And you didn’t wake me?”
Blaine shrugs. “You seemed like you needed the sleep. But - I did make you lunch. And I used the morning to pitch the second tent. Well, Sam helped me after I got myself thoroughly tangled in it. I thought maybe we could use that tent tonight.” Blaine gives him a wink.
Kurt grimaces. Like sleeping on the ground will be any better than the wooden floor. Still, Kurt rises with the help of Blaine.
By the time Kurt gets around and has lunch, the rest of the group is in an argument about the activity for the day. Canoeing? Rafting? Staying in-doors and playing board games? Blaine is enthusiastic about all of the ideas. Kurt doesn’t care - he’d rather not be there at all. Eventually, as some sort of compromise, they settle on hiking the nearby trail. Kurt grumbles at the decision, but it’s either go with them, or stay back and do nothing while Artie works on his screenplay. At least he’ll have Blaine around.
The trail ends up not being so bad. It’s an easy path, relatively flat for beginners. The air is warm, but not overly stifling. Everyone is mostly paired up, except for Tina, who complains that she’s the only one there without a partner, so Sam and Mercedes keep her in between them. Rachel and Santana set a fast pace, each of them leading the pack, as if they were all in some sort of strange race. Meanwhile Brittany zig zags around, talking to the trees and leaves and birds as if she were a Disney Princess and they were her friends.
Kurt drags behind, hands digging into the pockets of his jeans as they walk. He mildly listens to Jesse and Blaine, who are a step ahead of him, having a conversation about some reality TV show hiring drag queens for an episode. Blaine is animated as he talks, bouncing around the trail, as he does impersonations. Jesse howls with laughter, and it's endearing enough that even Kurt can’t help but smile.
They make it a mile down the trail, enough so that Kurt’s hardened edge from the previous day has worn down a little, when the sky begins to cloud over. Rachel insists that rain is afoot, and promptly turns them around to head back. Kurt doesn’t think it’s all that threatening out, but Rachel can’t go a couple of hours without checking her phone, which she left at the cabin, so of course time outside will be cut short.
As they start their return, Blaine falls back, silently going for Kurt’s hand to clasp. Kurt smiles, feeling lighter at his husband’s touch. He squeezes Blaine’s hand, bringing him a little closer as they walk.
Everyone has shuffled around, though Kurt and Blaine remain bringing up the rear. Sam and Mercedes are ahead of them, heads close. Sam whispers something into her ear, which causes Mercedes to full on stop and throw her head back with a bark.
“I’m pretty sure they’re dating again,” Blaine says quietly.
It’s unmistakable really, the way they’re flirting, and gazing into each other’s eyes. “She and Tina, I think, were talking about it in the car on the way over. I couldn’t tell.”
They walk another beat in silence, Sam has Mercedes now crying in a fit of hysterics.
“Do you ever miss that stage?” Kurt asks. “That I’m-crazy-about-you stage?”
“Are you saying you’re no longer crazy about me?”
It’s clearly a joke but Kurt frowns. “You know what I mean.”
Blaine gives an easy shrug. “Not really. I mean, are we settled? Sure. But I like the security in that. Do you miss it?”
There is a tiny bit of concern in Blaine’s eyes, but he really has nothing to worry about. The short answer is no, Kurt Hummel has made his final decision and that’s all there is to that. The long answer is that with all the passion that came from their early time together came the rocky uncertainty as to whether or not they’d actually make it. There were times when Kurt thought that first loves were hard and fast and that’s it. And for most people they are he supposes. But not for he and Blaine.
“I like what we have now,” Kurt says, looking down at their linked hands. “I guess I… just miss it.”
“Mmmm, yeah,” Blaine licks his lips, then suddenly sweeps Kurt into his arms, giving him a passionate kiss.
Kurt’s startled for only a moment before he begins to kiss back. “Blaine!” he gasps. “What are we doing?”
“I think we should take full advantage of the situation,” Blaine replies, as he kisses down to suck on Kurt’s neck. “Why not take advantage of the situation and be a little spontaneous.”
“We’re outside, Blaine,” Kurt argues, though not very strongly.. “You can’t possibly suggest that…”
Blaine pulls away, staring at him with wide, dark eyes. No one else is there - the rest of the group is nearly out of earshot. And Blaine’s grip tightens on him, pulling their bodies together. Kurt wants this so badly, he doesn’t even care anymore. He surges into a kiss with Blaine, wrapping his arms around Blaine’s neck. Blaine pushes Kurt backwards, off the trail and against a tree. There’s a tiny stub digging into Kurt’s back, but he doesn’t care. Blaine’s tongue is in his mouth, doing wonderous things, and Kurt just melts into him.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this here,” Kurt says, with a little giggle. He’s more turned on than he cares to admit, and rocks his hips against Blaine as they kiss, generating heat with a growing need.
“You’re not the only one who’s missed this, you know,” Blaine utters between kisses. He wraps one arm around Kurt to steady them, while his free hand dips to squeeze Kurt’s ass, causing Kurt to let out a tiny moan. “Remember when we tried to do this at that club?”
Kurt lets out a little laugh as he grinds into Blaine. “I’m pretty sure it’s cleaner here than that club.”
Blaine’s fully encouraged now, peppering kisses along Kurt’s jaw, taking a moment to give a little bit at Kurt’s ear. “There’s something I didn’t get to do at that club.”
“What’s that?”
“Suck you off,” he says in a growly whisper.
“Oh god.”
That does it. Just the mere thought of Blaine’s mouth on him has him fully hard now. Any misgivings about being outside, being caught by anyone walking by, are completely gone. It’s just he and Blaine - the world is nothing but them, and the promise of an orgasm he desperately needs.
Blaine drops to his knees with a thud and an unexpected crack. Before Blaine can get his hands (or mouth) anywhere near Kurt’s dick, he’s crying out in pain.
It takes a moment for Kurt to register what happened. He’s still in a slight daze, his dick’s still throbbing, but Blaine’s on the ground, rolling around holding his knee. “Honey, are you okay?”
“I hit a rock,” Blaine grunts out. He goes to stand, but his leg gives out. Kurt hurries to him to help him up, but Blaine pushes at him. “I’m fine, really, we can still do this. I can.”
Their spontaneous moment, however, had been fleeting. There’s a large centipede crawling near Blaine’s leg, and a fly lands on his shoulder. A squirrel watches them from across the trail. And Kurt begins to notice the leaves on the vine near them might be poison ivy. This is not a good idea, his rational mind catching up to him, now that his dick has calmed down. This is so not a good idea.
“I don’t think we should,” Kurt says, managing to help Blaine to his feet.
A second later, Sam finds them, a branch in hand as if to attack. “Oh god, are you guys okay? We heard a scream -- and I thought maybe it was that serial killer from Brittany’s story last night.” The rest of the crew is close on Sam’s heels.
Kurt rolls his eyes as they approach. “We’re okay, Sam.”
“I just… tripped,” Blaine says, walking onto the trail with a slight limp.
“Tripped my ass,” Santana cackles, looking them over. “They were trying to get in a quick fuck while we weren’t looking.”
“Crude!” Tina shouts in disgust.
Santana howls in laughter. “Judging by the dour look on Queen Hummel’s face, the only thing that got shoved up his ass was probably a stick.”
“Hey,” Blaine scolds.
But it’s too late. Kurt breaks. All of the anger that had been pent up for the past few days spews forward, Kurt hardly able to contain his shout. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Santana.”
“Fine, can I borrow your stick?” Santana bites back.
Brittany lets out a gasp. Rachel squeals excitedly.
“Hey, stop,” Mercedes cuts in before it can escalate further. “Blaine, are you okay?”
Blaine nods. “I’ll be fine, just maybe need a little ice on my knee.” He shoots a look at Kurt then to the ground.
“Sam, make sure he gets back alright,” Kurt mutters as he pushes past them. He starts the walk back home by himself. He doesn’t wait for anyone. And no one catches up to him.
***
Hours later, Kurt lay in the second tent that Blaine and Sam had erected that morning, looking up at the sky through the clear, plastic roof of the tent. Evening had melted away into night, the quarter-moon shining, with the stars sparkling around it. Living in the city for so long now, he doesn’t get to see the stars anymore, and as he lay there, one arm tucked behind his head, he wondered why he never paid them much attention when he lived in Ohio.
It’s quiet outside, peaceful almost with the calm sounds of nature surrounding him. The temperature is nice. He’s rather comfortable, really. Everything is perfect. This trip should have been, if nothing else, a perfect escape. Then why doesn’t anything feel right?
He had kept his distance when everyone came back to the cabin - not wanting to disrupt their seemingly good time. The afternoon had brought a light rain, which meant board games and hot cocoa, and a lot of laughter that Kurt should have partook in. Even Artie had paused his writing to join in. Kurt watched from a distance, sometimes attempting to read a magazine, other times just watching as his friends enjoyed themselves, frustrated that he didn’t feel like coming to the table. Mostly, everyone ignored him, except Santana who would throw an occasional eye-roll his way, or Blaine who would check in on him with his standard look of concern.
After dinner, Kurt had gone for a walk around the area on his own. His mind had wandered, from planning out possible job ideas, to going over the events of the past few months again, to replaying the embarrassing moments from earlier in the day. The walking had been a nice attempt to clear his head but he had remained unsettled, and even frustrated. Couldn’t the tension in his chest just relax? Couldn’t he just enjoy himself for once?
“I’m going to sleep out in the tent,” he had told Blaine before he turned in for the night. No one else had seemed like arguing over it, so Kurt had figured he should grab it while it was still open. Would the ground be more comfortable than a wooden floor? He had no idea but at least he’d have his own space to fall asleep in. Blaine had given him an off center kiss, and had watched him carefully as he changed and headed outside.
And here he’s been, for a few hours he’s suspected, looking up at the sky, watching the sun set and the stars come out, feeling the contradictoriness of being glad he’s alone while feeling the heaviness of loneliness. He’s in a mood - he knows himself well enough, but the root of what’s bothering him still feels far away, like a thought he can’t quite grasp.
He’s not sure how much time has passed when the tent’s entryway is unzipped, and Blaine climbs in. He doesn’t watch Blaine on arrival, but he knows Blaine’s movements well enough, to know that it’s him.
He feels reassured almost immediately. Blaine always comes back - a true constant in his unpredictable life.
“Everyone’s getting a bit punchy in there,” Blaine says as a loose excuse. “And I thought it’d be a good time to duck out.”
“How’s your knee?” Kurt asks, not taking his eyes off the sky.
“Fine,” Blaine says quietly, coming down to lay next to Kurt. He snuggles close, as he usually does at the beginning of the night, wrapping an arm around Kurt and shimming in. “I don’t always like it when you’re like this,” he says carefully, not quite a frown on his face. “And I know you need your space sometimes. But that doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
The tension seems to break, and Kurt lets out a heavy sigh as he turns towards Blaine. He isn’t sure what to say - not sure he has an explanation. “I don’t know why…”
“You don’t have to figure everything out tonight, Kurt,” Blaine assures him. “We can just sleep and figure it out tomorrow.”
Kurt gives a half-smile, and kisses Blaine’s forehead. Thank you, he thinks. And Blaine knows. Blaine knows him well now, better than most anyone. Kurt is grateful for that.
They stare at each other quietly for a little while, until sleep creeps up on Blaine, and his eyes begin to droop. Blaine always did have an easier time falling asleep.
Kurt’s gaze remains fixated on Blaine for a while longer. There’s enough light coming from above that Kurt can still make out Blaine’s features - his gorgeous, long eyelashes, his adorable nose, the ridiculous eyebrows. Blaine’s lips part slightly, a sign that he’s actually fallen asleep, and Kurt smiles to himself. He takes a moment to trace a light finger over Blaine’s cheekbones, chin, and brow, and marvels at how beautiful his husband is.
It’s not like he’s forgotten that fact. But maybe sometimes he takes it for granted. Doesn’t appreciate it enough.
Sometimes Kurt wonders if he appreciates life enough.
Still, for the first time that evening, he’s regained some of that inner peace he’d been missing earlier. Blaine is right - he won’t figure it all out overnight. And then, as if a switch had been flipped, he finally feels tired. Incredibly tired. He snuggles into Blaine and falls asleep thinking about how he doesn’t mind so much sleeping on the ground when Blaine is beside him.
***
The next morning he wakes up alone. Blaine’s sleeping bag has been rolled up nicely, and placed in the corner of the tent, his pillows resting on top, as if he had never used them. Blaine’s always been an early riser, but with the gray clouds looming overhead, it’s difficult to determine what time it is. Kurt leaves the tent, still groggy but it’s better than sleeping the entire day away. Besides, he has to use the bathroom.
The cabin’s empty - and after the bathroom, he realizes that not even Artie’s there. For a moment, Kurt wonders if they’ve left him there and peeks out the window. Two cars are still there, so they couldn’t have gone very far. Instead of investigating more, he decides to enjoy the quietness, inspecting the cupboards for something to make breakfast with. There’s nothing there, except for stale Oat Bran, probably left over by Jesse’s mother. He settles on making coffee, then into the couch with one of his magazines.
For some people the quietness is probably unsettling but for the first time all weekend, Kurt almost feels relaxed by it. The cabin and the outdoors may not have been so bad if he hadn’t been surrounded by nine other people.
The cabin door slams shut and in comes Rachel, startled that he’s there. She’s holding her phone, looking almost bewildered. She didn’t get it. Kurt’s stomach turns as he knows he’s in for whatever emotion is going to be hurled at him. He closes the magazine with a heavy sigh sips his coffee, waiting for her to speak.
She stumbles a few steps in and flops down on the couch beside him.
“Look, there will be other plays,” he starts, knowing this particular monologue by heart. “It’s not the end of your career.”
“I got it,” she says, unexpectedly. “I’m going to be Jane Austen.”
“What?”
“They want me to start tomorrow - oh my god, we probably have to get back tonight! Do you know how much research I have to cram in the next twelve hours?”
He stares at her in awe as she begins rambling on about how Jane Austen is her favorite author (as if she’s ever picked up a novel not written in the last ten years, and didn’t belong on a paperback rack in an airport). His heart sinks. He’s been prepared to lift Rachel up - it’s been his second job since sixteen. How does he somehow feel worse?
“Why are you not happy for me?” she scolds. “You are my first line of adoration, after Jesse of course.”
“Because it was inevitable, Rachel,” he snaps, startling her. “You’re a talented person, and don’t pretend you don’t know that. Someone was bound to hire you for something.”
Her face sours. “You know, you have been in a very bad mood this entire trip. I have noticed, and other people have, too. I don’t understand what your problem is.”
“My problem is that you getting a part was always going to happen. Always,” he doesn’t care that he’s nearly shouting at her. He’s been holding back for days now, and it feels good to let it out. “I, however, am not sure. And instead of thinking about that, I really wanted to have a nice weekend having hot sex with my hot husband, which I now do not get to do.”
Rachel gives an odd look. “What are you talking about - you and Blaine are always doing it. Santana says it’s a sex addiction, but I think it’s healthy in a relationship. Jesse and I make sure once a week to--”
“Maybe we aren’t!” The loudness of his voice echoes on the otherwise empty cabin. “Despite what the rest of you feel, I barely get to touch my husband. And instead of spending a weekend rediscovering that, and ignoring the impending reality that I have no idea what my next job is going to be, you dragged us up here for your pity party. Yes, my attitude has been horrible. I know that. But maybe, sometimes Rachel, not all of us rejuvenate in a crowd of admirers.”
She stares at him blankly for a moment. “Is that true?”
“That you love crowds? Do you not know yourself?”
“No, about you and Blaine.”
He takes a deeper breath, calming down. “Yes, Rachel.” His mind slips, unintentionally, to Blaine’s hands - Blaine’s hands on him, and he feels a deep ache. “I don’t remember the last time we were together.”
“Oh,” she’s much quieter than usual. “You guys have given up a lot for me over the years.”
“Rachel…”
“No, it’s true,” she says, standing - deep in thought. “And I’ve barely paid you back. I mean, I recognize that you’re an integral part of my emotional well being, and if you’re not getting what you need, then the whole system begins to fall apart.”
He almost feels like laughing. Rachel’s emotions always change on an unexpected dime. “Rachel, it’s fine…”
“It’s not,” she says. “I’ve got this part because you didn’t give up on me, even though you clearly have some issues to work out. So, I think it’s time I start giving back. And I have an idea, which may not be much right now, but let’s say it’s a start.”
He raises an eyebrow at her. “What?”
She grins.
***
Rachel’s brilliant idea happens to be a hotel, well a smaller hotel which might be properly called a bed & breakfast with its rustic charm. They’re still in the woods, but at least they have a warm roof over their head and a wide window in their room that looks out on a peaceful lake - the picturesque view of nature without having to be entrenched in it. While the rest of their friends shuffled off back to Manhattan, Kurt and Blaine had a two night stay. There’s a hot tub in the bathroom, an all-you-can-eat buffet in the dining room, and a king-sized bed that he didn’t plan to sleep much on. No interruptions, no phone calls, and no impromptu adventures -- Rachel had promised when she had dropped them off. Just a little bit of time for the two of them to relax. This is what Kurt had needed. His hectic life in the city being put on hold for just a little while.
Kurt is in a fluffy, white bathrobe, curled up on the lounge chair with some tea from room service and a few magazines from the gift shop, waiting for Blaine to be done in the bathroom. He reads another article in the magazine, loosely paying attention to the sounds coming from the shower. He can hear Blaine singing, humming from a pop song that melts into an old Broadway standard, probably unaware that Kurt’s in the other room imagining the water trickling down his naked body. Kurt’s tempted to join him, despite having a lengthy shower earlier to get all the grime from the weekend off his skin. Fortunately, he hears the faucet turn off, and another moment later, Blaine’s out of the bathroom, a towel barely clinging to his hips.
Blaine stops at the full length mirror next to the dresser, then unwraps the towel from around his waist and uses it in an attempt to dry his hair. Kurt can’t help but stare at Blaine’s bare ass, grinning as he sips his tea. He resists the urge to pounce, as Blaine combs his fingers through his hair, trying to control the curls which have started to spring.
“So…” Blaine, grumbling defeat with his hair, comes to the edge of the bed and sits, the towel now half in his lap.
“So?” Kurt raises an eyebrow.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Blaine’s face is serious.
Kurt sighs.. “Is talking what you really want to be doing?”
“Kurt,” Blaine elongates his name, endearingly, and tilts his head. “I’m not going to let you bottle things up. This weekend was--”
“Why don’t we move on from this weekend?” Kurt sets the tea and the magazine on the nightstand, and moves out of the chair. He undoes the robe, letting it fall open, revealing that he’s wearing nothing underneath. He then begins to touch himself, leisurely stroking his dick as he comes towards the bed, showing Blaine there’s really only one thing on his mind.
Blaine smirks, but is, unfortunately, not easily persuaded. “What’s going on? You haven’t talked to me all weekend, c’mon...”
“Well…” Kurt comes to the bed, pulls Blaine’s towel off and to the ground, then straddles Blaine’s lap, curling his arms around Blaine’s shoulders. “We just finished an emotionally and mentally draining show. I spent the last two days sleeping on the ground. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to find a moment of peace so that I can have mind-blowing sex with my really hot husband.” Kurt reaches between them, and begins to slowly stroke Blaine.
“Ku-urt…” It’s a half-hearted protest as Blaine becomes quickly interested in Kurt’s hand.
Kurt draws in close to Blaine’s ear and whispers, “let’s fuck now, talk after.”
Blaine’s resolve breaks. Their mouths crash together in a heated kiss, Blaine’s mouth remaining hot on Kurt’s skin as Kurt shifts. Blaine manages to get his lips around one of Kurt’s nipples and sucks. Kurt lets out a groan as Blaine swirls his tongue around it. Kurt arches as Blaine begins to suck and god-fucking-finally they’re going to do this.
Blaine breaks away from his nipple, allowing Kurt to bend down and kiss Blaine hard. He isn’t in the mood he was in on Thursday night, where he had wanted to be casual and slow and enjoy Blaine as much as possible. No time to be delicate - his entire body is aching for it. He needs it now, and he heats up the kiss, sliding his tongue into Blaine’s mouth. Blaine groans, and despite the earlier reservations, Blaine’s now as hungry as Kurt, wrapping his arms around him so they can be closer together.
Kurt reaches between them, taking both of them in his hand this time, and unevenly jerks their erections as they kiss. There’s not as much friction as Kurt would like, but Blaine’s dick is throbbing next to his, and that’s fine for now. It’s not like this is going to end with a simple hand job.
They kiss a little longer, until Blaine breaks it off, steadying himself with one hand on the bed as he pumps his hips in time with Kurt’s hand. They’re both hard and more than ready to step it up.
“What do you want?” Blaine pants.
I want you to fuck me so hard I feel it for the next week , Kurt thinks, desparate at the thought of Blaine inside him, pounding him the way he needs it. But coherent words aren’t coming and all that stumbles out is a grunt of ‘fuck me’.
It’s a hurried mess of hands and limbs as they shuffle around again. Kurt manages to get off the bed entirely, discarding the robe without a thought, pulling Blaine’s towel to the floor as well. Blaine’s off the bed in another second, taking no time to wrap himself up in Kurt. They turn mid-kiss, Blaine pushing Kurt back to the bed. Blaine manages to give Kurt’s ass a pert squeeze before Kurt settles on the edge of the bed.
Blaine goes to his knees.
“Are you sure this is okay - your knee,” Kurt manages to remember as he spreads his legs for Blaine.
Blaine looks up at him, eyes dark and ready. “Could be completely shattered and it wouldn’t stop me from doing this right now.”
Kurt melts just a little more. “Blaine…”
“Too much talking, Kurt,” he says, before sinking his mouth over Kurt’s dick.
Kurt falls back on the bed, letting out a long groan as Blaine completely takes over. He had almost forgotten how good Blaine is with his mouth, knowing exactly how Kurt likes to be sucked off. Kurt just relaxes into Blaine’s touch - the tension, the anxiousness from the weekend, from the past few months, melting away with every bob of Blaine’s head. Kurt rocks his hips gently, but mostly lets Blaine take control. He sucks deeply a few times before pulling back, and swirling his tongue around the head of Kurt’s dick. Blaine then pulls off entirely, and shifts so that he could begin pulling at himself while he mouths Kurt’s balls, taking time to suck at one, then the other. Kurt’s on edge, nerves on fire as Blaine then devours Kurt’s dick once again.
Kurt reaches out a hand to Blaine’s shoulder. “Blaine, wait,” he says, a bit hazy. He’s close, but not ready to be done yet.
Blaine gets it, and stands to retrieve some lube from the suitcase, while Kurt turns to be on all fours, allowing Blaine as much access as he needs to his ass. Blaine’s back on his knees in a moment, guiding Kurt’s hips closer to his mouth. Blaine’s hot mouth is on him once again, kissing him, snaking his tongue inside his hole to open him up. Kurt closes his eyes, giving into the pleasure of it, as Blaine eventually replaces his tongue with a lubed finger, and then two. Blaine speeds his fingers, pumping in and out as he leans forward to suck kisses on Kurt’s balls. Kurt rocks with the pace of Blaine’s fingers, the heat building quickly. Blaine knows his body well, and pulls away before Kurt’s pushed over the edge.
As Blaine goes to stand, Kurt turns around, managing to sit up so he can grab onto Blaine. He pulls on Blaine’s dick a few times before sinking his mouth on it. Blaine’s hardly had any attention shown to him yet, and Kurt needs to rectify that before he gives completely over to Blaine. God, he loves Blaine’s dick. He loves the way it feels in his mouth, the heaviness on his tongue, the way it’s so male - so Blaine. Really, it’s Blaine that he loves so much - even if he isn’t the best at articulating it. The least he could do is show proper appreciation.
“Kuuurt,” Blaine grunts, his knees nearly buckling. “I thought you want to…”
“Fuck…” Kurt pulls off and licks along Blaine’s length. “Yeah.”
Kurt lies back on the bed, elbows supporting him, and spreads his legs wide.
Blaine’s going to fuck him now. He’s open and ready and his body is aching now with want and need. And thank god, Blaine is finally going to be fucking him.
Blaine climbs on the bed, stroking himself as he hovers over Kurt. Kurt draws him in for a hungry kiss, tasting himself on Blaine’s lips. They make out for another moment or two, Kurt drawing his legs up, and wrapping them around Blaine. Blaine’s dick rests eagerly between Kurt’s cheeks, and Kurt begins to frantically rub against it.
Blaine breaks the kiss so as to reposition himself, putting the head of his dick at Kurt’s hole, and gently pushes in. Kurt moans Blaine’s name as he begins to slowly rock his hips, shallowly pumping a few times before completely bottoming out. They begin to kiss again, deeply, as Blaine begins to give a slow, deep thrust, grinding their hips together with their kiss.
Everything is electric now, and Kurt can’t remember the last time he felt this connected with his husband. He feels Blaine everywhere and, fuck yes, this is what he had been missing. Here is his husband. Here is his Blaine. Why, why, why had then gone so long without this?
The kiss grows sloppier as Kurt, desperate for more movement, begins to pick up the pace. Blaine steadies himself, allowing Kurt a moment to fuck himself on Blaine’s dick. The angle isn’t the best, but he needs it so badly he doesn’t care. He claws at Blaine’s back as he rocks faster and faster.
“Let me,” Blaine whispers. Kurt slows, looks into Blaine’s eyes, and sees all the love they share between them. Blaine gently cups Kurt’s face, gives him a sweet kiss on the lips and whispers again, “let me…”
Understanding, Kurt pauses and holds on to Blaine tightly. “I love you,” he says - barely a whisper.
“Love you, too.”
Blaine pulls out, almost entirely, then slams back into Kurt. Kurt lets out a scream as he feels Blaine deep inside him. Blaine quickens the pace, slamming into him again and again. His hips driving with an unstoppable purpose now. Kurt goes limp on the bed, giving over Blaine complete control, letting him fuck and fuck and fuck and god… Kurt wishes they could just stay in this endless ecstacy of fucking and connection and love and pleasure.
He’s so close now, so close… Blaine knows that, too, and sneaks a hand between them, giving Kurt a few strokes, which finally, finally pushes him over. The orgasm tears through him, causing him to scream out Blaine’s name as he feels it all the way to his toes. Blaine is not far behind him, a few more pumps and he’s shuttering his orgasm into Kurt.
Kurt’s pliant and blissed out as Blaine comes down, giving a few final pumps before pulling out completely. Kurt pulls at him and kisses him, loving and tender. God, he’s going to sleep so well tonight.
“Feel better now?” Blaine says, almost with a giggle.
“Yeah,” Kurt says, breathlessly.
Blaine gives him a kiss on the forehead. “Good.”
***
Later, after they’ve cleaned up and taken another shower, they’re both sitting on the chair; Kurt on Blaine’s lap, both in the complementary white robes. Kurt is snuggled in Blaine’s arms - the most content he’s been in, well, he isn’t sure how long. They’re conversation isn’t much beyond casual -- the old lady who had checked them in who had been unexpectedly delighted to know that they were married, Artie’s work-in-progress play, Sam and Mercedes possibly being back together… Until Blaine brings it back around to the discussion he attempted earlier.
“Kurt, I know there’s something more going on than just lack of sex,” Blaine says. He’s concerned again, his brow wrinkled with worry.
Kurt wants to argue that it had been about sex, at least in a way. Kurt had missed his connection with Blaine - and hadn’t been aware of how deeply he needed to feel close to Blaine again until he had realized just how long it had been missing. However, Blaine is right, and there are deeper things going on. He wouldn’t normally call Blaine the sneaky one - he definitely held that title - but he knows Kurt enough that sometimes sex could be a throughway to Kurt’s emotions. Kurt being relaxed and gentle, and feeling safe enough after sex, that it allows him the opportunity to say what he needs to.
“Well, for one, we’re now unemployed,” Kurt says, not quite meeting Blaine’s eye. Outside, a few birds fly over the idyllic lake, the sun setting peacefully on the horizon. The pit of anxiousness began to stir at the thought of leaving this place and heading home.
“Okay…” Blaine says slowly.
“And almost thirty.”
“True.”
“And I think, maybe, as much as I love performing, I think I want more stability in my life.”
Blaine gives him a kind smile. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah - I get it,” Blaine says with an ease that Kurt can never quite get when planning his life. “We’ve been doing alright, and have a little bit saved up, and I have a few solid auditions coming up. So if you want to take some time to figure out what you want to do long term, that’s fine with me.”
Kurt let out a heavy sigh. He loves Blaine, he really, really does. “I don’t know what I want, Blaine.”
Blaine gave a shrug. “And that’s okay. You’ll find something. We’ll both find something.”
Kurt runs his fingers through Blaine’s hair, then a finger slowly down Blaine’s cheek. “I’m sorry I ruined the weekend. I know you thought it’d be relaxing.”
Blaine laughs. “I’m sorry I let Rachel ruin our evening. I need to say no to her more, I know. But at least she made up for it.”
“Well, she could have sprung for the Hilton, but I suppose this will do,” Kurt jokes.
“At least it’s not outside - and it has a bed.”
Kurt lets out a laugh before giving Blaine a kiss. There’s a little more heat behind it than he intended but that’s fine. What else are they here for?
“We should start scheduling this again,” Kurt says, as they trade slow kisses. Round two is a go, but neither are in any hurry to get there. “It definitely worked for us in high school.”
Blaine pulls away, “Mmmm, Sundays are a bad time to start then. It’s a school night and my parents want me home by nine. Maybe we should schedule for next Thursday when your dad works late.”
“Don’t kill the mood, Blaine,” Kurt says, laughing as he goes back for a kiss.
#s.o. writes things#in the city that we love#klaine#klaine fic#hey putting a new thing out there - i promise other things aren't being ignored <3
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Any quotes about having to fall out of love with someone to protect yourself? (If it’s not obvious I’m Going Through It rn thank you!)
I feel for you, anon. This is an incredibly difficult thing to go through, but you’ll level up massively once you’re on the other side. Take care 🖤
'Unloving' & 'New Vows' by Carol Ann Duffy
"I am the love killer. / I am murdering the music we thought so special, / that blazed between us, over and over. / I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss. / I am pushing knives through the hands / that created two into one."
— Anne Sexton, Mercy Street; from 'Killing the Love'
"…to love unconditionally is fraudulent, a lie. There is a time for love, and there is a time for the repudiation of love."
— Joyce Carol Oates, Give Me Your Heart; from 'Strip Poker'
"You who knew always where your love was going, / today you stay on your rock / as petrified as it is / and I in my skiff / frozen with love / up to my neck / wanting nothing more to do with love, / I close my eyes on you / entirely you / standing / motionless among the gulls, / you whom I loved so much / that my heart at every joint / cracked open."
— Rachida Madani, Tales of a Severed Head; from 'Second Tale', tr. Marilyn Hacker
"...she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish..."
— Virginia Woolf, from 'Mrs Dalloway'
"The dawn comes. Leaves feel it’s time / To say something, and I feel myself drawn / To You. I know this is wrong. // To be drawn to You can cause trouble; / I do so against all advice, from that one / In me who saved me by keeping me alone."
— Robert Bly, Morning Poems; from 'It's As If Someone Else Is with Me'
"there is a hunger / often associated with pain / that you feel / when you look at someone / you used to love and enjoyed / loving and want / to love again / though you know you can’t / that gnaws at you"
— Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni; from [Untitled]
…it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death."
— Charlotte Brontë, from 'Jane Eyre'
"She calls him and rejects him (she loves him)."
— Hélène Cixous, Stigmata: Escaping Texts; from 'Hiss of the Axe', tr. Keith Cohen
"For I must get back my soul from you; I am killing my flesh without it."
— Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath; 22nd November 1955 - 18th April 1956
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Hey @vancityfire13 have the bestest of days. Thanks for always being so kind; I feel very lucky to know you. Anyway. May the year ahead be magic.
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“As long as she thinks like a man, no one objects to a women’s way of thinking.” Virginia Woolf. (Warnings for misogyny)
Five times Natasha looked across the room at Maria and had a silent understanding about things the others wouldn't understand (and the one time she didn’t) (kind of)
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1/ text me when you’re home
Clint opens the door and puts his wallet and keys in the bowl. He know if they don’t go in there, they’ll be lost forever. He undoes his bow tie and his pants before looking across to Natasha who is standing at the door, typing something on her phone.
“What are you doing?” He asks, thinking she’s like nothing more to unzip her dress, step out of her heels and get into the comfy clothing.
“Just..” she stops, finishing typing and then putting her bag next to the bowl and throwing her phone onto the table. As it lands, it vibrates twice consecutively.
“Who are you messaging?” He asks curiously.
“Maria.”
Clint is confused.
“Do you message her often?”
Natasha sits on the couch, undoing her shoes that have clearly been cutting into her feet all night. Not that he ever would have realised.
“She said to message when I got home.” She pauses.
“I don’t think she knew you’d be with me on the mission.”
Clint blinks slowly.
“Why would she need to know when you’re home? Was it part of the mission parameters that you had to be home at a certain time?”
Natasha cocks her head.
“No?”
He grabs a water from the fridge.
“I don’t get it.” He tells her bluntly, passing it over.
“She wanted to make sure I was home safe.”
Clint thinks he understands.
“So like an early warning thing.” He questions.
Frowning, she takes a swig of water and passes it back to him.
“More like.. safety. If you don’t message by a certain time, she’ll know something’s gone wrong.”
Clint nods.
“She’s never done that with me before.”
The note is met with a laugh.
“You’re not a woman.”
Clint’s lost again.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
She smiles, he doesn’t get why she’s giving him her sad smile.
“It’s ok. It’s just one less thing you have to worry about. Now; unzip me.”
Clint complies, thinking on why women need to text each other when they get home.
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It’s not until the next next mission where Natasha doesn’t get home on time, that he realises that the world isn’t always kind or accommodating to women as it is to men. He makes a note to himself to get Natasha to message him as well, liking that it’s an extra layer of protection for her.
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2/ getting ready
“Why do you do that?” Steve asks tentatively, walking into the bathroom, to see where the two women are.
“What?” They say, simultaneously.
“Go to the bathroom together, get ready together?” He looks genuinely confused.
Making eye contact in the mirror, Natasha and Maria laugh.
“Steve.” Maria turns and looks at him. “As you got ready for Stark’s party this afternoon, what did you do? Shower? Get changed? Ready to go?”
Steve looks down at his clothing, and runs a hand through his hair.
“Yeah, why?”
Natasha turns back the mirror and continues to apply her mascara.
“To get ready, we need to shower, wash and style our hair, make sure our clothing matches, find shoes..”
“Make up.” Maria add in.
“Make up,” Natasha confirms. “It’s a process.”
Steve rolls his eyes.
“It’s too much,” he mumbles, “why is there all these expectations on women?”
Maria and Natasha shrug in unison.
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3/ expectation of knowing how to handle children
Maria is happy for Cho, the newborn is so small in her arms, his tiny hands reaching up and curling back.
“Do you want to hold him?” Cho’s partner picks the baby up and prompts Maria, holding the baby towards her.
“Oh. No, thank you.” Maria smiles and tries not to look at the disappointment in their face as she takes a step back.
Natasha however, is cornered, sitting on the couch as she’s handed the baby.
Maria laughs at her as they make eye contact, and Natasha holds the baby under his armpits. Natasha shakes her head, and looks uncomfortable as Clint comes to her rescue, taking the baby and cooing as he makes baby noises.
Cho comes over and greets Maria, asking how she is.
Maria smiles. “How are you?” She asks, as Cho watches Clint move around with the baby. Maria can’t decipher the look on his face as he looks towards Natasha.
“Going well, all things considered. Sleep deprived, but we expected that.”
Maria laughs, “anything you didn’t expect?” She probes.
Cho thinks for a minute, “after birth pains. Croup. Cradle cap. Do you know babies can get blocked tear ducts? Cause I didn’t.”
Maria laughs again and shakes her head.
“You seem to be doing well though?” She asks tentatively as Clint hands over the grizzling baby.
“Why do people always assume that women just know what to do with a baby? Like that we just naturally know and like them?”
Maria pauses and Natasha approaches, handing her a blue cupcake.
“Uhhhh.” Maria isn’t sure what to say to Cho’s rant, whether she should be worried.
Cho acknowledges Natasha and continues. “They say it’s rewarding, and it is, but what they don’t tell you is, how much of a change it is, how you second guess everything and how much is just assumed because you are a woman.” She looks sadly at her son.
“I love him, but I miss my work too, I know how to do that.”
Maria looks over to Natasha, who she knows can’t have children, and then thinks of herself who isn’t sure she wants them, then across to Cho who has them and wonders on the expectations and judgments they’ve all had when talking of children; especially being in the work they are. Anger stirs as she knows it’s not a decision that’s not everyone gets asked of them.
.
4/ showing emotions
“Romanoff. Calm down.”
Natasha bristles.
“Excuse me?”
Fury looks at her and then looks over to Maria, who is also staring him down.
The women look at each other and Fury adjusts his position.
“You know how much we can do here. There’s no point in getting angry about it. We will have to wait and see.”
“With all due respect… sir, there is something we can do about it, and I’m proposing a way to get them out; if you’d just..”
Fury cuts her off by standing,
“Not at the expense of this agency, and yourself. This conversation is over, go home, calm down, and wait to hear from me. We will do something when the time is right.”
Natasha stands with him, face blank as she stalks out of the room.
“Sir. Wait.” Maria calls him back.
Fury stops and turns towards Maria.
“Not you too, Hill.”
“You didn’t even listen to her proposal. Did you even realise that she showed emotion in the debrief, stood up to you? Do you even know how much of a big deal that is for her?” Maria pauses, throws Natasha’s mission parameters on the table toward him. “Read it. I know you’re not one to back track on your word, but you know she’s going to do it anyway. Perhaps release the jet and weapons.”
Maria makes her way to the door.
“If it was Rumlow, or Bryce, or Barton, you wouldn’t have told them to calm down, you would have been as indignant as they are.”
She leaves hoping he mulls on her parting shot.
.
Natasha isn’t emotional in debriefs again for a very long time. Maria is though, playing devils advocate for missions she believes in. She hopes Natasha knows it’s ok, that emotions are powerful, and not just permitted for men.
5/ compliments
Natasha isn’t a stranger to compliments being thrown at her. Cat calls, whistles, back handed compliments, she’s probably heard them all. Clint even teases her, whistling when she’s dressed up, calling her beautiful and sexy. From him, it feels comfortable, fun and playful- there’s no expectation attached; when it’s others it feels heavy.
.
She’s returning from a honey pot mission, still dressed in high leather boots, short dress and hair piled up on her head.
She needs to find Clint or place to decompress, feeling on edge and knowing in herself that her window of tolerance is low.
Rounding the corner, there’s a wolf whistle. She sucks in a breath as she sees who it is and rolls her eyes.
“Fuck off, Bennett.” She says, irritation in her words.
“There’s no one better than you at those missions, huh? You look just right.” He raises his eyebrows and bites on his lip as Natasha feels her stomach drop at the uncomfortableness of his statement.
She’s heads into Maria’s office, hoping she’s not there, but it seems her bad luck is carrying through as she’s met with Maria staring at her.
“Romanoff?” The question is implicit.
“Bennett.” She pulls out.
Maria looks Natasha up and down, and motions for her to sit. Standing and moving away from her chair, she opens the cupboard on the left, and pulls out a hoodie and sweat pants.
“They’re clean, I swear,” she clarifies.
Natasha is already undressing as Maria moves to the door, locking it. She then pulls out cookies and sets them on her desk, an offering of sorts.
“Sorry he’s a dick.”
Natasha sits. “You don’t need to apologise for him.”
Maria nods.
Fatigue washes over Natasha. “Sometimes I feel like they just don’t get it. The difference in being a male spy vs a female one.” She sighs and grabs a cookie. It’s the first thing she’s eaten all night.
“I think they get it, I don’t think they care.” Maria scoffs.
“Maybe so.” Natasha concedes, and then thinks of Clint. “Some do, perhaps.”
Maria is silent.
“Does it ever feel like we are just typecast into roles? Like the expectations for us are so different to them?” Natasha asks, copying Maria and putting her feet up on the desk, now her shoes are off and feet are bare.
“Honestly? Yes.” Maria looks lost in thought, and Natasha has never considered the amount of hazing and sexism she’s had to endure to get to the positions she’s in.
They’re silent for while, neither wanting to break the quiet thoughts both are clearly having.
“I don’t think I want to do these types of missions anymore,” Natasha says softly, almost to herself.
Maria knows what courage is behind that statement.
“I’ll let Fury know.” She says, almost as softly.
Natasha nods and smiles, ”He won’t care. He thinks I’m ok with everything.” She’s almost despondent in her response.
Maria is adamant to make sure the request doesn’t go unheard. No matter what.
“That was then. This is now. It’s ok to have preferences. The fact that you know that; I think, is important.” She doesn’t add that she thinks Natasha is the brave for even saying so.
Maria hands Natasha her phone.
“Here.”
Natasha takes it lightly.
“I know you probably want to get home and shower. Clint should have his on him, I think he got released from medical about an hour ago, so should be around somewhere.”
Natasha nods, sending a message and then handing the phone back to its owner.
“I’ll get on the paperwork.” Maria promises.
.
+1
Maria is looking at Natasha, wanting to know exactly what she is thinking, but she doesn’t make eye contact. Natasha’s eyes don’t move from a spot near the screen where the last ten minutes of her last mission is played out, recorded by Redwing.
Maria cringes as Natasha’s hair is grabbed and she’s thrown against the garage door, keeps her face stoic as the man laughs at her and calls her a bitch.
She hates that her friend is so often subjected to this brutality and name calling, and tries to catch her eye in solidarity.
Maria looks over to Clint, asking him silently if she’s ok.
Clint’s almost imperceptible shrug makes her worry more, what happened before Maria and Sam found her, fighting in the hanger.
The debrief is over within the hour and Natasha is out of there before Maria is even standing.
“Clint.” She calls, grabbing his arm for him to wait.
“I know.”
“Tell her if she needs to talk.” She knows Clint will be her first port of call, but she wants Natasha to know the option is there.
“Thanks.”
.
Maria gets home after finishing the paperwork for the last scoping mission, and feels her phone vibrate in her pocket.
“Clint told me.” It reads. “I’m home safe.”
Maria smiles, thankful she’s making contact.
“Sometimes, the others don’t understand. Message me if you want.” She adds in two pictures she’s changed into gifs, the first one of the street in Suzhou where they had the best dumplings and reminisced on all the food they’d like to try but didn’t have the courage.
The second of the snow covered town in Switzerland, where Natasha had bought a cake to celebrate, when Maria asked her what for, Natasha had just laughed and said to pick something.
Maria, unsure of Natasha’s stances on birthdays, had gone out and bought candles and then they’d watched as they’d burnt down in the low light.
The phone vibrates again.
“Cake tomorrow?”
Maria smiles.
“Sounds like a plan.”
.
#hbd friend#natasha romanoff#Maria hill#nat & maria#maria hill & natasha romanoff#natasha romanoff fic#Maria Hill fic#my fic#clintasha#clint barton#black widow#hawkeye#Steve Rogers#tw misogyny#5+1 fic
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random profound quotes as writing prompts from Sohaila Abdulali’s book “What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape”:
The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. --Raymond Carver, “Beginners”
The first person I spoke to was my sister. She refused to believe me... She said I was a liar. --Angie
I told my story. Others don’t, for so many reasons.
There is another world inside this one, no words can describe it. --Rumi
Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them. --attributed to Margaret Atwood
What is it about me, that other people want to treat me this way? --Audrey, Central Park
I felt like a dirty outcast. --Dulcie
How to track Monarch butterflies from Manitoba to Michoacan.
How to map galaxies we can’t even see.
“This happened to me. I stand here before you, alive.”
For a naked man to drag a shrieking, clawing man-eater forth from a window by the tail to save a strange girl, was indeed the last word in heroism. --Tarzan of the Apes
“What do you want? We’ll do whatever you want.”
If we leave pleasure out of sex ed, we normalize sexual assault. --Jaclyn Friedman
A brief pause for horror.
The blood and the gore, the horror, the horror.
“I had bad bruises from the choking.” --Hillary Goodridge
“Once again they find themselves with a leader who doesn’t protect them.” --Sean Grover
The Big Bad Wolf is in charge and there is nowhere to turn.
A brief pause for fury.
“I don’t want to hear about love and joy and bluebirds singing in the lilacs.”
In his mind, men could expose their chests and remain dressed, but women had to be fully covered. He had no idea that it was possible to have the same standards for both.
A brief pause for confusion.
Leave your pain here, and go out and do your magnificent things. --Judge Rosemarie Aquilina
If I reject the notion of rape taking away a person’s “honor”--and I do--then what does it take from you?
I’m so pleased with my giant scarf collection now, and my neck stays nicely wrapped in the New York winters.
Lead weights for drowning.
Am I unlovable? Am I ridiculous? Do people look at me and not respect me? --Audrey
Nobody is immune from rape.
Stones in your pocket make it easier to drown.
A brief pause for ennui.
Vengeance is such a delicious thought.
All pain is the same. Only the details are different. --Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
Is one rape worse than the other? This is a ridiculous question.
The judge etc. said they were normal men, how could they be criminals? But if normal men mugged someone, they would be criminals. --Audrey
A brief pause for terror.
I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual. --Virginia Woolf, diary entry
#reference#writing prompts#sentence starters#sohaila abdulali#what we talk about when we talk about rape#tw: assualt
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An Unusual Date (Part 1)
Part 2
Modern Highschool AU!
Remus lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his book lay forgotten on his chest as his mind wandered in a thousand directions at once. It had gotten extremely hard to read, to focus on anything lately. He told himself that it wasn’t because of the accident he had gotten into a couple of days ago, but the images kept coming back to him, the terrible screeching of the tires against the snow, and the force with which the car hit the tree, he thought he was going to die, but he hadn’t, he barely sustained any injuries, just minor scratches on his arm, and a wound on his temple, but he couldn’t shake the horror off of himself, he didn’t want to worry his parents or anyone.
His phone chimed from beside him suddenly, it was from Sirius, despite everything, Remus found himself smiling when he saw his message.
I want to write a novel about silence, he said; The things people don’t say The message read, it was a quote from Virginia Woolf.
Remus typed back:
It's a thousand pities never to say what one feels
He imagined Sirius, holding the phone in his arm, laying in bed its light reflected in his eyes, smirking at his message. Remus’s phone suddenly rang, it was Sirius.
“Hey,” He said, as Remus put the phone to his ear.
“Hey”
“I didn’t think you’d be up,” Sirius said, “You good?”
“I guess? I can’t sleep”
“Lucky us, the night sky looks beautiful”
“Where are you?” Remus asked, worried, what was Sirius doing outside at this hour?
“On my way”
“To?”
But he had already hung up, he hated when Sirius was like this, both open and distant, he put the phone on his nightstand and picked up his book, but the words floated in and out of his consciousness.
He wondered what would have happened if that night things had gone differently, what if the car had never stopped? He closed his eyes, and in the space between sleep and consciousness, Sirius’s face materialized before his face, his eyes almost as dark as his hair, the gentle curve of his smile. He heard his voice, “Moony” no one quite said it like him, like the word was sacred on his tongue, “Moony, open the window”
“The window?” Remus mumbled to himself, which window?
“Re” he heard his windowpane rattle and his eyes flew open.
What was happening? He asked himself as he got to his window, but there he was, standing, or to put it more accurately hanging off off Remus’s window,
“Pads what are you doing here? It’s 1 AM!”
“And yet, you’re still up,” He said, as Remus removed the glass barrier that stood between them, his cheeks were flushed red from the cold, and his hair was tied back in a pony. Remus couldn’t help but lean in and give him a peck on his lips, when he pulled away Sirius looked disappointed “What?” Remus asked, unable to stop the smile from creeping up his face.
“Is that all I get?”
“For scaring the absolute crap out of me at 1 in the morning, yes”
“Just one more,” Sirius said, leaning in, and Remus laughed, but he kissed him full on the lips, because how could he not.
“God, you’re so cold,” Remus said, holding his face in his hands.
“Don’t you mean ‘God, you’re so hot?” He said
“No I absolutely do not, you’re an absolute git,” Remus said. “Are you gonna come in?”
“Nope, I am actually here to take you out,” he said.
“Sirius, it's 1 AM”
“Yeah, what about it?” He said, biting his lower lip slightly, trying to hold back a smirk.
“I can’t, I have a curfew”
“Your parents don’t have to know,”
The thing was, Remus had never done anything to disappoint his parents, or at least he tried not to, he often thought they deserved a better son, someone who was normal and didn’t have to go through periods of absolute isolation and gloom. His parents worried about him, more than the acceptable amount that is to say, and the worst part was, he couldn't help it.
“I can’t, Sirius, my parents will worry”
“Love, I’ll get you home before they even know that you were gone, and tomorrow morning we’ll tell them that we sneaked out and apologize, so it won’t even be lying”
“Sirius,” Remus said and sighed.
“Remus, baby, listen, the world is out there waiting for you, there are moments waiting to happen, and I know that you want to go, but you worry too much about everything, you’re in your head, and I sometimes wish I can reach out and touch the pieces of you that you’ve made inaccessible, if you don’t want to come, that’s perfectly okay, but if you want to, and you’re not letting yourself have this, I am not okay with it, listen to yourself, love, listen to yourself”
The truth was, that he did want this, he wanted to go out, holding Sirius’ s hand and pretend like they were the only two people in the world, to feel the night air in his hair.
“What if—”
“Remus, I am asking you to not think about anyone but yourself at this moment, choose what you want, if anything goes wrong I promise you I’ll take the fall, nothing will go wrong but if it does, I’ll take care of it, okay?”
“Okay,” Remus said.
“Okay, as in let’s go okay?”
Remus nodded, and couldn’t help but reciprocate the smile that suddenly took over Sirius’s features, he didn’t usually smile this fully, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.
“Wear something warm,” Sirius said when all he was wearing was his leather jacket.
“Sirius are you cold?”
“...yes?” He said, a sheepish smile spreading on his face, Remus couldn’t help but lean in and kiss him again.
“Come in for a second,” He said and pulled Sirius into his room, by the hand. “Sirius, you are freezing cold,” he told him, holding his freezing cold hands in his own in an attempt to warm them, an endeavour that caused Sirius to relentlessly blush.
“Not my fault you kept me hanging outside of your window for that long,” He said finally.
Remus laughed as he fished out one of his hoodies and jackets for Sirius to wear. “These will be too big on you, I guess”
“I am not that short, Remus John Lupin, and you know it”
“Okay, then put it on”
Sirius huffed and begrudgingly took the clothes from Remus, “Thank you” he said, Remus only laughed.
“See these are not big on me at all, just a normal oversized hoodie from my boyfriend,” Said a Sirius covered by the clothes on him.
“Yeah, exactly, you look very cool,” Remus said, in a way that suggested the exact opposite, but he couldn't help but plant another kiss on his temple.
Tagging some of my favourite people on earth!
@ithefriendlyneighborhoodasexual @momo-all-the-way @naviation-xx @lloomy @regalllove @neo-neo-neo @gaymieee @anxiousbimess @crescentmoonsparkles
#wolfstar fluff#wolfstar fanfic#wolfstar#modern AU#sirius x remus#sirius black#remus lupin#the marauders
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Not too spoilery, but very long!
fieidofpoppies said: I was hoping to get some clarification about the LGBT situation in TLH’s background.
What exactly is the Clave's position on homosexuality? Alec struggles with people's opinion in 2008, so I guess in 1900ish things are definitely not rosey, but to what extent? We know that being gay is considered a crime in mundane London at the time and I'm guessing that is not the case for the Shadowhunter world, so how seriously is it a problem? What does it/ would it mean for our characters to be out?
Okay, so I’ve gotten a few of this question, leading me to believe it is A Conversation that needs some addressing. It’s a complicated issue so I’m going to try to break it down in parts.
There is no “The Clave’s position on homosexuality” that is unchanging: it has changed, advanced and regressed through history just like you, know, regular human history. :) If you’re asking about the Clave’s position on LGBT Shadowhunters in 1903, we will get to that.
Just because Alec is struggling in 2007 doesn’t mean things were worse for Anna in 1903. The idea that culture moves inevitably forward towards tolerance and progressivism is an oversimplification. We see it assumed all around, so it’s easy to believe it, but actually it’s more of a two steps forward, one step back scenario. There are always periods of cultural progress, marked by periods of cultural regress. If someone had told me when I was a teenager that a woman’s right to choose would be more trammeled and in danger in 2020 America then in 1989 I wouldn’t have believed it; it is, however, the truth. We are in a more regressive period culturally now than we were ten years ago; LGBT rights are more under threat. This isn’t the first time in history this has happened and it won’t be the last: “During the golden years of the Weimar Republic [Germany's government from 1919 to 1933] Berlin was considered an LGBT+ haven, where gays and lesbians achieved an almost dizzying degree of visibility in popular culture” — but by 1934 LGBT+ Germans were being persecuted and eventually would be sent to death camps with Jews, communists, and other “undesirables.”
Alec is living in a time in which a regressive, conservative group that his own parents belonged to nearly toppled the more progressive aspects of the Clave. He already comes from a family in exile, during a time in which progressive and regressive aspects of the Clave are battling each other and the situation with Downworlders is explosive. Four years after Alec comes out, the fascist Cohort rises to power and splits the Clave in half. Nothing like that is happening in 1903: there is a progressive Consul in power, demon attacks are low, there is generally peace with Downworld.
It is reasonable that Alec would have concerns about how the Clave at large might treat him, and also have concerns about family and friends, given his parents’ past. And while Anna and Matthew etc. might have similar concerns about coming out to the whole Clave, which they haven’t, they are not concerned about their particular group of friends, and have mixed concerns about family. (Also, we have plenty of characters who have been just as worried about coming out as Alec was: Charles, Alastair, Ariadne. We don’t yet know Thomas’ attitude. Everyone who doesn’t consider themselves a “Bohemian” isn’t taking this very lightly, and even Matthew isn’t “out” to anyone except his friends. It’s not like the Wentworths know he’s bisexual.)
None of this is to say it was “easy” to be LGBT+ during the early 1900’s. It isn’t easy now. It’s to say that “Well, it sucked across the board then and now it’s great across the board!” isn’t true, and ignores the significance of context in the lives of characters — and people. There’s a great moment in the movie Colette (set in the 1890′s and early 1900′s) that focuses on Mathilde de Morny, Colette’s lover. Mathilde was assigned female at birth (academic scholars are widely divided on whether Mathile was transgender so I’m going to be gender-neutral here.) Mathilde dresses in men’s clothes, and openly romances women, but in this particular moment, Mathilde speaks about the fact that if Mathilde were not rich and titled, it might be a problem. But given Mathilde’s social status and power, and the Bohemian set of people Mathilde spends time with, it’s not. Colette herself also dresses in men’s clothes and is open about her same-sex romances, even kissing Mathilde onstage at the Moulin Rouge.
(Colette and Mathilde, 1907.)
The artist Romaine Brooks wore men’s clothes, even painting herself in them: according to the Smithsonian “By 1905, she had made a name for herself in Paris as a painter of women, some of whom were her lovers. Her most visible and lasting relationship was with the American poet Natalie Barney, who also lived in Paris.” (There’s a reason the characters are often talking about Paris or visiting Paris: being LGBT+ wasn’t illegal in France, and Paris was a gay and lesbian mecca, complete with LGBT+ cafes, high society, celebrities, and so on.)
People like Anna existed in the mundane world in 1903. It’s important to realize; this isn’t something I wrote because I’d have liked it to be true and historically accurate, it is true and historically accurate. It’s also true that even though male homosexuality was illegal in England in 1903, there were plenty of gay men who were out to their friends and community. Lytton Strachey (part of the Bloomsbury Group which included Virginia Woolf) “spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends, and had relationships with a variety of men.” Which isn’t to say he spoke openly about it to everyone — just that there have always been spaces within “mainstream” society where it was safe to be queer: Anna and Matthew, by going to the Hell Ruelle, by standing somewhat apart from their contemporaries save those they already trust, are inhabiting those spaces.
Now, if the question becomes: what happens if everyone in the Clave finds out the sexualities of the LGB+ characters in TLH? Well, first, they won’t be arrested; it’s not illegal. But that hardly covers the whole issue. We look at what happened to Oscar Wilde and think, horrors, as well we should — had he not sued the Marquess of Queensberry, though, he probably would have lived out his life with society turning a blind eye to his affairs with men. What happened to him is fucking terrible. Yet even today, there are celebrities who remain in the closet — though their queerness may well be an open secret to their friends, family and colleagues — not because they’re worried about being arrested, but because of the fear of what the damage to their career might be were it publicly known. And how is that so different from the situation Charles finds himself in? He’s pretty clear that if people knew he were gay, he couldn’t be Consul. He wouldn’t get the votes. In the same way, it’s likely that the other LGB+ characters would face societal disapproval and issues with their families. That’s not really about the “Clave’s official position” though, any more than a politician today not wanting to come out is worried about being arrested rather than losing their career. The official position is important, but it’s not the only indicator or generator of societal, systemic bigotry. (” It turns out that one of the worst times to be a homosexual - that is, in terms of being at risk from the law - was in the run-up to and aftermath of the liberalisation of the 1960s [when homosexuality was decriminalized].” )
So if you made it this far: what I’m basically saying is three things: one, that any comparison to Alec has to take into account Alec’s specific family situation, the Uprising, and who the Clave and Inquisitor are in 2007. And that I can’t say what it means for the characters of TLH to be out because it’s going to mean different things, and have different repercussions, for all of them. I can say “They won’t be in trouble with the Law”, which is true, but in terms of their family situations, their personal goals and dreams, and where they are socially, it would be different for each one of them.
And third, that we can’t assume that progress is one inevitable forward march. That things will always be more tolerant, less oppressive, in “the future” simply because it’s the future. While we can believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” it’s important to remember that rights can be abridged, freedoms taken away, times of tolerance and harmony can end, bigotry and nationalism can rise. To assume progress is inevitable is, I worry, to forget to fight for it. And we can never forget to fight.
[Recommended reading: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, by Graham Robb.]
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sorry if this has been asked before, but what are your favorite quotes about (romantic) love?
• “I love you. I want us both to eat well.”
— Christopher Citro, from “Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shriek”
• “You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry. Only the sun has come this close, only the sun.”
— Shauna Barbosa, from “GPS”
• “August. We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade.”
“I used to be a hopeless romantic. I am still a hopeless romantic. I used to believe that love was the highest value. I still believe that love is the highest value. I don’t expect to be happy. I don’t imagine that I will find love, whatever that means, or that if I do find it, it will make me happy. I don’t think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature - as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is life-giving. And when it burns out, the planet dies.”
“If love is going to be done differently I will have to do it. I don’t mean as a messiah-thing, I mean as a me-thing. I want to look into your eyes and not get blown up. I want you to see me as I am and not destroy me. I don’t want to retreat into plant life, or have the same bad dream every night. I don’t want to watch a city burn because I was there.”
— Jeanette Winterson
• “I’ll take care of you. / It’s rotten work. / Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
— from Anne Carson’s translation of Orestes
• “I think of you all the time and therefore have little to say that would not embarrass you, for instance my first feeling about the rain was that it was like you.”
— John Cage, from a letter to Merce Cunningham
• “I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”
— Maggie Nelson, Bluets
• “I want to be a village full of sweethearts, / as you are, every second of the day, / cooking me soups & drawing me pictures / & holding me, my inexplicable & elephant sadness, / with your infinite arms. / But isn’t it true, you are not / always why I am happy. & I promise / it is true, you are almost never why, / why I am sad.”
— Chen Chen, from “Elegy for My Sadness”
• “Look here Vita—throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”
“I always have such need to merely talk to you. Even when I have nothing to talk about – with you I just seem to go right ahead and sort of invent it. I invent it for you. Because I never seem to run out of tenderness for you and because I need to feel you near.”
“I could only think of you as being very distant and beautiful and calm. A lighthouse in clean waters.”
“What can one say — except that I love you and I’ve got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting alone. Dearest — let me have a line… You have given me such happiness…”
— Virginia Woolf, from letters to Vita Sackville-West
• “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.”
“Please, in all this muddle of life, continue to be a bright and constant star. Just a few things remain as beacons: poetry, and you, and solitude.”
— Vita Sackville-West, from letters to Virginia Woolf
• “Love is awful. It’s awful. It’s painful. It’s frightening. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish. It makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you would do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own. I was taught if we’re born with love then life is about choosing the right place to put it. People talk about that a lot, feeling right, when it feels right it’s easy. But I’m not sure that’s true. It takes strength to know what’s right. And love isn’t something that weak people do. Being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope. I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope.“
— Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in Fleabag
• “i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)”
— e.e. cummings, from “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”
• “There was once a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her-immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love. When I met Ana I knew: I loved her to the point of invention.”
— Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House
• “oh god it’s wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much”
— Frank O’Hara, from “Steps”
• “This morning there’s snow everywhere. We remark on it. You tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.” We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind. As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t, of course. We never do. No matter. It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift this morning that moves and holds me. Same as every morning.”
— Raymond Carver, from “The Gift”
• “Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”
— Leonard Cohen, in a letter to Marianna Ihlen
• “I think about love on a scale from 1 to 10. Most of us find a 6 or a 7, and that’s why we have divorce. It’s the truth. We settle for that 6 or 7. But I like to think Kevin is Chiron’s 10. He’s found that and he realizes that there’s no reason to settle for a 6 or a 7 because, “I know this person is my 10. Whether or not this person believes I’m his 10, I’m going to devote my life to this person entirely.” That’s why the line where he says, “You’re the only man that’s ever touched me,” for me, was the most amazing, most beautiful thing I’ve seen in cinema, period. Because that’s what we strive for as people, to find that one person because they’re there. If Kevin doesn’t feel that they should be together, Chiron is just going to die a miserable person because that’s his person and he won’t settle for anything else.“
— Trevante Rhodes about Moonlight
• “I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world”
— Frank O’Hara, from “Having a Coke with You” but the whole poem is !
• “The door slammed and someone came home and low voices could be heard, the single lilt of a question as it rose, “How was it?” or “Are you hungry?” Something plain and necessary, yet extra, with care, a voice like those tiny roofs over the phone booths along the train tracks, the ones made from the same shingles used for houses, except only four rows wide—just enough to keep the phone dry. And maybe that’s all I wanted—to be asked a question and have it cover me, like a roof the width of myself.”
— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
• “I keep wishing for you, keep shutting up my eyes and looking toward the sky, asking with all my might for you, and yet you do not come. I thought of you, until the world grew rounder than it sometimes is, and I broke several dishes.”
— Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Minnie Holland
• “I don’t want you to be nervous. Maybe thinking of a walrus would help. Have you seen the video of the penguin accidentally stepping on a sleeping walrus? It thought it was a rock. The walrus wakes up like what the fuck and the penguin scurries off like oh shit. Sometimes it’s funny watching a surprise happen, and not just funny but kind of amazing — like, you never really know what’s what when it comes to this planet.
Then again, when it’s you getting surprised, that’s different. Especially for tender ones like us. What are we supposed to do? It’s bad for our hearts, you know. I hope you won’t need pills like I do. I think I get so scared because I’m greedy — I want to hold onto everything, the world wants to take it away. What the fuck. The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”
— Mikko Harvey, “For M”
• “Willem sleeps on the left side of the bed, and he on the right, and the first night they slept in the same bed, he turned to his right on his side, the way he always did, and Willem pressed up against him, tucking his right arm under his neck and then across his shoulders, and his left arm around his stomach, moving his legs between his legs. He was surprised by this, but once he overcame his initial discomfort, he found he liked it, that it was like being swaddled. One night in June, however, Willem didn’t do it, and he worried he had done something wrong. The next morning–early mornings were the other time they talked about the things that seemed too tender, too difficult, to be said in the daylight–he asked Willem if he was upset with him, and Willem, looking surprised, said no, of course not. “I just wondered,” he began, stammering, “because last night you didn’t–” But he couldn’t finish the sentence; he was too embarrassed. But then he could see Willem’s expression clear, and he rolled into him and wrapped his arms around him. “This?” he asked, and he nodded. “It was just because it was so hot last night, Willem said, and he waited for Willem to laugh at him, but he didn’t. “That’s the only reason, Judy.” Since then, Willem has held him in the same way every night, even through July, when not even the air-conditioning could erase the heaviness from the air, and when they both woke damp with sweat. This, he realizes, is what he wanted from a relationship all along. This is what he meant when he hoped he might someday be touched.”
— Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
• “No, I didn’t imagine my being alone with you the way you do. If I want the impossible, I want it in its entirety. Entirely alone, dearest, I wanted us to be entirely alone on this earth, entirely alone under the sky, and to lead my life, my life that is yours, without distraction and with complete concentration, in you.”
— Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer
• “If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth, to this present time, I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours, I would.”
— David Wojnarowicz, The Half-Life
• “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
— Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
• “If Moses had seen the way my friend’s face blushes when he’s drunk, and his beautiful curls and wonderful hands, he would not have written in his Torah: do not lie with a man”
— Rabbi Yehuda Al-Harizi/Judah Ben Solomon Harizi
• “I’ll rob the bank that gave you the impression that money is more fruitful than words, and I’ll cut holes in the ozone if it means you have one less day of rain. I’ll walk you to the hospital, I’ll wait in a white room that reeks of hand sanitizer and latex for the results from the MRI scan that tries to locate the malady that keeps your mind guessing, and I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks and assure you that you’ll find your place, it’s just the world has a funny way of hiding spots fertile enough for bodies like yours to grow roots. I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive. If i’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that the universe is twice as big as we think it is and you’re the only one that made that idea less devastating.”
— Lucas Regazzi, from “Small”
• “I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, “Will you bring me a glass of water?” I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, “Do you remember when you were a little girl and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?” Yeah. “You know how half the time you weren’t even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep.” She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this.”
— Dito Montiel, One Night
#this is the best ask i've ever received actually thank you so much#w#compilation#the earth was made for lovers#shauna barbosa#jeanette winterson#madeline miller#franz kafka#hanya yanagihara#emily dickinson#ocean vuong#maggie nelson#chen chen#virginia woolf#vita sackville west#david wojnarowicz#frank o’hara
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Flight Risk IX
Summary: An answer to the age old CM question, “who’s flying the plane?” And the story of a pilot and a profiler.
Part IX: In which a profiler and a pilot try their best not to care, featuring an incredibly tacky hotel.
(Series Masterlist)
( Previous | Next )
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The case closes. When it’s time to go home, Reid sees her leaning against the wall of the hangar with a book. Their eyes meet. He stops walking, frozen to the ground. And in response, she walks away and disappears into the jet. Neither of them knows what to say. She gives herself over to the sky, he loses himself in paperwork. The jet has never felt so big. Like there are miles between them instead of just mere feet.
Y/N thinks of Peter Pan. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly you cease for ever to be able to do it.” She doesn’t know what they are to each other anymore. Are they still friends? Were they ever at all? Was Arthur right all along? Maybe she simply is made for staying, not with her airplane heart. Hopelessly circling, never quite finding a place to land.
Reid has never had to do this before, to hurt someone in this way. He’s not sure how to reach out to her after putting this distance in place. And so he doesn’t. It doesn’t ease the loneliness. Only Garcia notices the change, when he stops talking about her.
“She told you how she felt, didn’t she?” Penelope asks, her cheerful smile deflating. Reid averts his gaze. The pained look on Garcia’s face mirrors the ache in his chest. “Oh, Reid,” she says. “Do you really still believe that you’re not allowed to be happy?”
“But you looked so happy together,” Yeeqin laments when Y/N tells her what happened. “I just don’t get it.” She and her girlfriend Saoirse offer to key his car, an offer Y/N promptly refuses. They’re both hurting enough as is. And besides, knowing Yeeqin she’d vandalize the wrong car and need someone to bail her out. After the “graffiti incident of 2014,” Y/N has no interest in doing so again.
And so they stay away. Things return to the way they always were – pilots and profilers. Two separate worlds on the same G550 jet. The only exchanges are simply pleasantries or requests from the team to the pilots, but they never come from Reid. Or announcements about takeoff and landing that almost always come from Captain Dobson. On the rare occasions when Y/N’s voice floods into the cabin, he closes his eyes and lets himself imagine that she’s speaking only to him. Sometimes when the agents disembark from the plane, she watches him go from the cockpit window and tries to remember what it was like when they sat so close.
He stops arriving early. She stops reading in the hangar if she’s not on the jet. They both pretend it’s normal. They both pretend it’s possible for them not to care. That it’s easy, that it doesn’t bother them one bit to be apart like this. That it wasn’t better before.
Y/N goes to dinner at Arthur and Malik’s house. Martin and Theresa are there and she runs around the yard with their older children, Carolyn and Benedict, and coos over baby Douglas. They share cocktails and swap stories and it feels so good to be surrounded by her own team, this makeshift family of aviators. She has movie nights in with Yeeqin and goes out with her and Saoirse anytime they invite her along and it’s so nice to be among friends. But then Martin looks at Theresa with all the love in the world and Saoirse falls asleep on Yeeqin’s shoulder in the cab on the way home and it’s acutely apparent to her that something is missing in her life.
Reid distracts himself with work and with books and tells himself that he’s always been just fine this way, with words and obligations instead of laughter over takeout or meetings at coffee shops. But then he discovers Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in his bottom desk drawer at work, the copy she’d loaned to him and he’d sworn he would remember to give back to her and suddenly he’s trying not to cry in the bullpen and he doesn’t quite know why.
She learns from Arthur, who knew him, that Spencer’s mentor has been killed. And she can see on their next case that he’s hurting. The sadness in his eyes, the exhaustion evident in his slumped posture makes her want to run to him and wrap him in a hug, hold him close like he held her that night on the couch. But she’s not supposed to care about him anymore.
He sees the way she looks back at him as she boards the jet that day, her eyes lingering on him for just a fraction too long, and he thinks that just maybe she’s going to say something to him. But she doesn’t and he’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed. Either way, Gideon’s death seems only to prove his theory – the people he loves get hurt.
When they come home from the bombing case in Indianapolis, he’s drained from a week of mourning and a grueling chess match with Rossi. As Reid stands in the hangar searching for his keys in his bag, he hears, “Doctor Reid,” and turns to see Captain Dobson standing a few feet away.
“Yes?” he asks.
The captain opens his mouth, falters, and then says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” The sentiment is confusing, as he already told Reid this as he boarded the plane three days earlier. But perhaps Dobson has forgotten the conversation. So he thanks the captain and continues on his way.
Y/N and Reid seek solace in their friends, in their books, in the places that make them feel safe. And they try so hard to convince their hearts that they don’t feel anything that they wonder if it was ever even real to begin with. And for a little while, they almost believe it.
But then comes Nashville.
---
“Did you see the picture Martin sent of baby Douglas in his pilot’s cap?” Y/N asks.
“I did,” Arthur says. “It was cute.”
“The cutest thing I’ve ever seen!” she insists. “I wish he could bring the kids by for a visit sometime, I’m sure they’d love to check out the jet. Do you remember being a kid and how they’d let you go visit the flight deck and see how a plane worked? And they’d give you those little plastic pilots wings?”
“Relics of a bygone era,” Arthur sighs. “I’m sure I still have a pair of PanAm Junior Pilot wings stashed in a box somewhere.” The millennium ushered in a new vision of aviation security and sharp pins and strangers in the cockpit simply aren’t considered protocol anymore. “How are we looking?”
Y/N glances at the altimeter and airspeed indicators. “Flying at 46,000 feet. Currently at Mach point nine. Should be about one hour and ten minutes to destination.”
“Let the cabin now we’ve reached out cruising altitude, will you?” Arthur asks. Typically it’s her job to shift the jet into cruise while Arthur makes the announcement, but she nods and takes the speaker.
“Good afternoon passengers, this is your co-pilot speaking. We’ve reached our cruising altitude of 46,000 feet. At this time please feel free to resume using electronic devices and move about the cabin. We expect to be landing in Nashville in about an hour. Skies are clear, should be smooth sailing ahead. In-flight refreshments will not be served, but you’re welcome to help yourselves to anything stocked in the galley.”
A part of her wonders if he thinks of her when he hears her voice. Not that it should matter anymore. Before she can lose herself in her own thoughts, Arthur asks, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
“Lincoln,” she decides after a moment to think. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Arthur says, “The Terminator,” without missing a beat. The captain is well-versed in cinema, which makes Double Feature one of his favorite in-flight games. The first movie must always be a question, and whoever can come up with the best films in response is declared the winner. Arthur almost always wins, and it’s a challenge to think up films they haven’t already used.
“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”
“Hannibal.”
“That’s terrible,” Arthur laughs.
“Dude, Where’s My Car?”
“Brokeback Mountain.”
“Oof, that’s gonna be a long and sad trek to retrieve it,” she sighs. “I’m not prepared for that kind of emotional devastation.” But the game does help to take her mind off of what she’s really feeling. She can lose herself in words and not in wishes. They land GEFF gently on the tarmac in Nashville and when they pull around to the hangar, she doesn’t look out the side window. Y/N stares straight ahead at the horizon. The sky fades from deep royal blue to soft pale periwinkle where the distant skyline rises up to meet it and she loves every single shade in between.
Once the team has departed, she and Arthur walk through the cabin tidying up and making note of anything that needs to be cleaned or restocked prior to takeoff. Arthur won Double Feature (“O Brother Where Art Thou?” “Soylent Green.” “Oh, that is incredibly twisted!”) so it’s her turn to clean the bathroom. Fortunately a short flight like this means it’s fairly clean to begin with. She wipes sanitizes the sink and toilet, empties the paper towel bag, makes sure there’s enough soap and toilet paper. Garbage is deposited in the trash can at the back of the hangar and they return to Geff to grab their own go-bags.
“Listen, Y/L/N,” Arthur says as they lock the cockpit door. “About the IRT job.”
“Arthur,” she cuts him off. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now.” When he looks as though he’s about to protest she adds, “Please. I just want to go to hotel and take a nap and watch whatever silly romcom is on pay per view.”
He nods and says nothing more. They catch a rideshare from the airport together and she stares out the window at the buildings and billboards that line the roads. She already knows what she’s going to do about the offer. She made her decision after her conversation with Spencer. The choice was clear. But she doesn’t want to discuss it yet. She’s not ready.
They step into the lobby of the Graduate Hotel and her mouth falls open. It’s hideous. There’s a fuzzy tapestry – a fuzzy tapestry of a woman with a hat against a pink background that appears to be made out of the same material as a shag rug. The lamps at the concierge desk have hot pink floral patterns on them. A neon installation that looks similar to a vintage gas station sign announces vacancies in bright green and red light. The armchairs are blue velvet and the hanging lights look like tulle skirts. There’s too much happening at once.
“This is the ugliest hotel I’ve ever seen,” she says.
“Well the more affordable ones were nearly full – evidently this is a big weekend for admitted students at Vanderbilt – they had to double up all of the rooms for the team. But the Bureau managed to get us a discount here,” Arthur replies as they stand at the desk waiting for someone to check them in.
“I suppose a bunch of special agents wouldn’t blend in well at a place like this,” she admits. Hopefully they solve the case quickly and she’s not stuck here too long. True to her word she spends the first night relaxing in her room. The bathroom is beautiful – black walls with gold accents and a glass shower. The room itself is another story. The carpet is a rainbow of jewel-toned diamonds in a quilt-like pattern. The walls are pink and white striped, a candelabra sits next to a pink television. White curtains with a vibrant floral pattern line the window and form a hanging behind the bed. The bed, mercifully, has the standard white blankets and white pillows, though there is hot pink chevron quilt draped over the end and an eerie portrait of Dolly Parton stares at her from above the headboard. Y/N shudders.
Penelope Garcia calls her that evening. She’s waiting to hear back from the team and could use some virtual company. “I don’t even know if you’d like this place,” Y/N tells her. “It’s so garishly tacky. Like a sorority girl and her antique-collecting grandmother chose items from their storage closet at random.”
“Oh it can’t be that bad,” Garcia says.
“Penelope, I am ever the optimist. I love quirky, whimsical adventures. But this is something else. The Dolly Parton painting keeps staring at me, I swear!”
“Let me look it up.” There is the sound of fingers frantically typing on a keyboard. “Oh come on now, the lobby is way cute! And the patio? I just – oh. Oh my. Oh those rooms. You’re right. That’s bad. That’s very bad.”
“I told you!”
“That went from cute to crikey very quickly,” she agrees. After takeout for dinner and watching Serendipity, Y/N falls asleep under the unnervingly watchful eye of Dolly. The next day is completely free, and she heads out to explore the city. Wherever she ends up, she tries to take advantage of the adventures available to her. Just blocks from the hotel she discovers Nashville’s Parthenon – a full-scale replica of the Greek temple which hides an art museum inside. She wanders the galleries and stands at the entrance staring up at the pillars holding the roof up. What would it be like to visit the real thing? She wonders how many times the IRT has gone to Greece before. Maybe they’ll end up in Athens sometime this year.
Café Coco is the cutest coffee shop she’s seen in any city, and she grabs tea and a scone before returning to Centennial Park. Beneath the barely blossoming trees she sits and reads Dandelion Wine. It’s beautifully written and full of longing. That longing seeps through the pages and she can feel it in her bones. Nostalgia for times past and places far behind and things that cannot be. Everything that Spencer said it would be. As she reads she tries to imagine which lines would have made him smile or elicited a wistful sigh. Are the parts she loves most the same as the parts he loves most?
Her phone buzzes with a text form Arthur to ask if she wants to get lunch together at the hotel bar, and she shoves the book and her longing back in her bag and walks over to meet him.They step from the tacky lobby into a bar that seems remarkably normal. String lights and chandeliers cast an inviting ambient glow over the wooden tables and chairs. Country music is playing over the speakers. But as they she and Arthur move closer towards an open table, she sees it. The stage.
“What is that?” she asks. There’s a bear, a pig, and a fox in a wig atop a stage that says Cross-Eyed Critters. Each holds an instrument. And it’s then that she realizes the music is coming from them. It’s an animatronic band. Their eyes and mouths move as they sing and their fabricated bodies turn and jerk with the beat. “What?” she asks again, completely dumbfounded. “What?”
Arthur too is speechless. Then he shakes his head and says, “It’s nothing a drink or two won’t make more palatable.” She snaps a photo on her phone and texts it to Garcia, who will surely get a kick out of it.
As they sit down, a voice announces a new song over the speakers. A slightly tipsy looking man in a pair of red cowboy boots comes to stand in front of the stage. He has a microphone. The animatronics begin to play the opening notes of a song, and then the man begins to sing. This is not just a bar with an animatronic band, it’s an animatronic karaoke bar. The man in the red boots belts out an uncomfortably off-key version of a Kenny Rogers song –“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run!”– with just a little too much bravado.
“I think I’ll need that drink sooner rather than later,” Arthur admits begrudgingly. She has to laugh. This hotel, it seems is full of surprises. But the captain is right. When she receives a spiked cream soda and Arthur has a glass of bourbon and there’s a plate of tacos between them, it’s easier to tune out the karaoke band. She can just enjoy her drink and the light and the stories of Arthur’s first flights with the BAU that have her nearly in tears from laughing so hard. For someone who maintains such a serious demeanor most of the time, he knows how to tell a joke incredibly well. She’s always appreciated that about him.
“Y/N, there is something I wanted to talk with you about,” Arthur says. His tone changes and she knows the time for joking is over. “We need to discuss the IRT offer.” Before he can continue, her phone rings. She glances at the screen. It’s Penelope. Y/N sends it to voicemail. There will be time to discuss the disconcerting robot band later when she’s back in her room. Right now, she needs to focus on Arthur. She knows where this is going and he’s right. She can’t keep putting this off forever. She has to talk about this, and everything that it means.
“I’ve already made my decision,” she begins to say. But her phone begins to ring again, and her heart drops into her stomach. This isn’t about the picture. This is urgent. Arthur must realize it too. His eyes trail down to her phone and she hesitantly picks it up.
“It’s Garcia,” she tells him, before answering. “Hello?”
“Y/N, oh thank goodness you picked up.” The analyst’s voice is a little higher than usual, a little more strained. “It’s Reid. He’s in the hospital.”
#flight risk#fanfiction#criminal minds fanfiction#spencer reid#spencer reid fanfiction#imagine#reid x reader#spencer reid x reader
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Hi ! I was wondering if you had quotes / thoughts about feeling lost in life, when nothing feels right and choices have to be made even though they all feel like lukewarm water when you wanted a hot bath. That feeling of losing a sense of grounding and not seeing the direction in which to move. thank you xx
(I’ve been wanting to compile this from the moment I received your ask in my inbox. I know the feeling intimately, and I love the way you articulated it. Hope any of these quotes resonate w what you were looking for xx)
“What shall we do my darling, when trial grows more, and more, when the dim, lone light expires, and it’s dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the forest…”
—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
“She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.”
—Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (tr. Benjamin Moser)
“But as it is / I lack myself.”
—Anne Carson, Grief Lessons; “Herakles”
“Even now I can’t explain. Something happened, a kind of earthquake that shook everything and I lost faith and touch with everybody.”
—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield
“She felt suddenly as if she were a ghost in her own life—”
—Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden
“I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half of my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—”
—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
“It makes me tremble. (…) To think back. I remember exactly how I thought life would be.”
—Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband
Emily Dickinson, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”
“and I didn’t care / and I was alone / and there had been war / and that thing (my soul) / was a lost star / or a lost boat / adrift,”
—H.D., Child Poems: “Dedication”
“She had a perpetual sense (…), of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
“You know the feeling? One lies in a kind of daze, feeling so sensitive—so unbearably sensitive to the exterior world and longing for something ‘lovely’ to happen.”
—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield
“I don’t care a bit—about anything—I just seem to be asleep and can’t wake up—”
—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe
“Life is what happens to someone else; / I stand on the sidelines and wring my hands.”
—Lisel Mueller, Waving from Shore
“…it is a little thing to say how lone it is — anyone can do it, but to wear loneliness next to your heart for weeks, when you sleep, and when you wake, ever missing something, this, all cannot say, and it baffles me.”
—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
“My life now is a dream too, semi-detached, and seems to happen to somebody else.”
—Martha Gellhorn, from Selected Letters
“I don’t know—I don’t know anything. There is no one here I can talk to—it’s all like a bad dream.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe
“…she does not know whom she wishes to catch, only that she wishes to catch someone, anyone, to be anchored, to be connected, to not be abandoned.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
“I had lost my true rhythm. But what was my true rhythm?”
—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Vol 1, 1931-1934
“People kept saying It’s only a matter of time so I persevered in the hope they weren’t lying. At the same time beginning to think I might’ve been lying to myself. Wasting everyone’s time with fantasies of this career I couldn’t have. The person I could never be. There was just so much rejection and not enough of me. I got so afraid. And I lost my nerve—”
—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians
—Denise Levertov, Life in the Forest; “A Daughter (I)”
“I’m not lost. Or not lost much. Lonely. It is that and … I don’t know what to do. So I move. And cars move. And it’s almost life.”
—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians
“What prevents you? The future. The future tense, / immense as outer space. / You could get lost there. / No. Nothing so simple. The past, its density / and drowned events pressing you down, / like sea water—”
—Margaret Atwood, “Up”
“What is there to say? I became physically ill. It was as if I had fallen into space and hung there while life passed me by.”
—Boris Pasternak, Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke
“And nothing else happens. The days go by, lost, wasted, and I have no drive to write, no words come… And I grow more and more solitary.”
—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters
“I cannot write anymore, dears. Though it is many nights, my mind never comes home.”
—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
“As time goes by, especially in the last few years, I’ve lost the knack of being a person. I no longer know how one is supposed to be. And an entirely new kind of ‘solitude of not belonging’ has started invading me like ivy on a wall.”
—Clarice Lispector, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
“There’s a loss of personality. / Or rather, you’ve lost touch with the person / You thought you were. / You no longer feel quite human.”
—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
“My wings are cut and I can-not fly I can-not fly I can-not fly.”
—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield
“Me, as ever, gone.”
—Anne Carson, Decreation; “Despite her Pain, Another Day”
“…and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
—Emily Dickinson, Letters
“…why this doubt that I have about everything I do, this void that frightens me, all these lost illusions?”
—Gustave Flaubert, Intimate Notebook 1840-1841
“What I fear I avoid. What I fear I pretend does not exist. What I fear is quietly killing me. Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.”
—Jeanette Winterson, “The Green Man”
“Around. Around. There / should have been / a lesson somewhere.”
—Louise Glück, “The Game”
“Only occasionally do I find I have to break my peace: shout or be lost in the shuffle. But mostly I am lost in the shuffle.”
—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
“Things went wrong. She lost confidence. She became apprehensive in crowds. I recognize how that she was feeling then as I feel now. Invisible on the street.”
—Joan Didion, Blue Nights
“She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown;”
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
“You might not remember me, dears. I cannot recall myself. I thought I was strongly built, but this stronger has undermined me.”
—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters
“I have no world to go back into, or to go forward into. Because these years have cut me away from many things – from everything: not only materially, but also mentally, spiritually.”
—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters
—Rita Dove, “The Venus of Willendorf”
“…for we are in such fragile skin, so close to getting lost in the in-between.”
—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians
“I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation. / I only want to ask someone / how I was lost, / how I was lost,”
—Margaret Atwood, “Owl Song”
“I felt as if the sky was torn off my life. I had no home in goodness anymore.”
—Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay”
“Let it be over, she pleaded within herself. Let it never have happened—any of it. Let me be young again, and the story just starting.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
“The ultimate fantasy: the recovery of an irrecoverable past. But if I could daydream about an invented happy future…”
—Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh
“Tell me what’s the difference / between hope and waiting / because my heart doesn’t know / It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting / It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope”
—Anna Kamienska, Astonishments
—Denise Levertov, To Stay Alive
“I long to—ah, so much!! If that were possible I’d get back to my spirit.”
—Katherine Mansfield, Selected Letters
“I told my Soul to sing— / She said her Strings were snapt—”
—Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems; “The first Day’s Night had come,”
“Surely it is a privilege to approach the end / still believing in something.”
—Louise Glück, Averno; “October”
“There is a wild raging river flowing inside of me. I can’t dam it. I’m hurt so badly. Believe me—oh shit! Believe, believe—what’s there to believe anymore?”
— Henry Miller, A Literate Passion
“And life tasteless. And so eager, so eager that I should accomplish a miracle. People always expect miracles.”
—Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion
“I want to be filled with longing again / till dark burn marks show on my skin. I want to be written again / in the Book of Life, to be written every single day / till the writing hand hurts.”
—Yehuda Amichai,“I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once,”
“I want / my heart back / I want to feel everything again—”
—Louise Glück, Averno; “Blue Rotunda”
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Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Woolf
No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner. As the foxhunter hunts in order to preserve the breed of foxes, and the golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: "Really I must buy a pencil," as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter--rambling the streets of London.
The hour should be the evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful. We are not then taunted as in the summer by the longing for shade and solitude and sweet airs from the hayfields. The evening hour, too, gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories of our own experience. That bowl on the mantelpiece, for instance, was bought at Mantua on a windy day. We were leaving the shop when the sinister old woman plucked at our skirts and said she would find herself starving one of these days, but, "Take it!" she cried, and thrust the blue and white china bowl into our hands as if she never wanted to be reminded of her quixotic generosity. So, guiltily, but suspecting nevertheless how badly we had been fleeced, we carried it back to the little hotel where, in the middle of the night, the innkeeper quarrelled so violently with his wife that we all leant out into the courtyard to look, and saw the vines laced about among the pillars and the stars white in the sky. The moment was stabilized, stamped like a coin indelibly among a million that slipped by imperceptibly. There, too, was the melancholy Englishman, who rose among the coffee cups and the little iron tables and revealed the secrets of his soul--as travellers do. All this--Italy, the windy morning, the vines laced about the pillars, the Englishman and the secrets of his soul--rise up in a cloud from the china bowl on the mantelpiece. And there, as our eyes fall to the floor, is that brown stain on the carpet. Mr. Lloyd George made that. "The man's a devil!" said Mr. Cummings, putting the kettle down with which he was about to fill the teapot so that it burnt a brown ring on the carpet.
But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter! It is at once revealed and obscured. Here vaguely one can trace symmetrical straight avenues of doors and windows; here under the lamps are floating islands of pale light through which pass quickly bright men and women, who, for all their poverty and shabbiness, wear a certain look of unreality, an air of triumph, as if they had given life the slip, so that life, deceived of her prey, blunders on without them. But, after all, we are only gliding smoothly on the surface. The eye is not a miner, not a diver, not a seeker after buried treasure. It floats us smoothly down a stream; resting, pausing, the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks.
How beautiful a London street is then, with its islands of light, and its long groves of darkness, and on one side of it perhaps some tree-sprinkled, grass-grown space where night is folding herself to sleep naturally and, as one passes the iron railing, one hears those little cracklings and stirrings of leaf and twig which seem to suppose the silence of fields all round them, an owl hooting, and far away the rattle of a train in the valley. But this is London, we are reminded; high among the bare trees are hung oblong frames of reddish yellow light--windows; there are points of brilliance burning steadily like low stars--lamps; this empty ground, which holds the country in it and its peace, is only a London square, set about by offices and houses where at this hour fierce lights burn over maps, over documents, over desks where clerks sit turning with wetted forefinger the files of endless correspondences; or more suffusedly the firelight wavers and the lamplight falls upon the privacy of some drawing-room, its easy chairs, its papers, its china, its inlaid table, and the figure of a woman, accurately measuring out the precise number of spoons of tea which----She looks at the door as if she heard a ring downstairs and somebody asking, is she in?
But here we must stop peremptorily. We are in danger of digging deeper than the eye approves; we are impeding our passage down the smooth stream by catching at some branch or root. At any moment, the sleeping army may stir itself and wake in us a thousand violins and trumpets in response; the army of human beings may rouse itself and assert all its oddities and sufferings and sordidities. Let us dally a little longer, be content still with surfaces only--the glossy brilliance of the motor omnibuses; the carnal splendour of the butchers' shops with their yellow flanks and purple steaks; the blue and red bunches of flowers burning so bravely through the plate glass of the florists' windows.
For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth. On a winter's night like this, when nature has been at pains to polish and preen herself, it brings back the prettiest trophies, breaks off little lumps of emerald and coral as if the whole earth were made of precious stone. The thing it cannot do (one is speaking of the average unprofessional eye) is to compose these trophies in such a way as to bring out the more obscure angles and relationships. Hence after a prolonged diet of this simple, sugary fare, of beauty pure and uncomposed, we become conscious of satiety. We halt at the door of the boot shop and make some little excuse, which has nothing to do with the real reason, for folding up the bright paraphernalia of the streets and withdrawing to some duskier chamber of the being where we may ask, as we raise our left foot obediently upon the stand: "What, then, is it like to be a dwarf?"
She came in escorted by two women who, being of normal size, looked like benevolent giants beside her. Smiling at the shop girls, they seemed to be disclaiming any lot in her deformity and assuring her of their protection. She wore the peevish yet apologetic expression usual on the faces of the deformed. She needed their kindness, yet she resented it. But when the shop girl had been summoned and the giantesses, smiling indulgently, had asked for shoes for "this lady" and the girl had pushed the little stand in front of her, the dwarf stuck her foot out with an impetuosity which seemed to claim all our attention. Look at that! Look at that! she seemed to demand of us all, as she thrust her foot out, for behold it was the shapely, perfectly proportioned foot of a well-grown woman. It was arched; it was aristocratic. Her whole manner changed as she looked at it resting on the stand. She looked soothed and satisfied. Her manner became full of self-confidence. She sent for shoe after shoe; she tried on pair after pair. She got up and pirouetted before a glass which reflected the foot only in yellow shoes, in fawn shoes, in shoes of lizard skin. She raised her little skirts and displayed her little legs. She was thinking that, after all, feet are the most important part of the whole person; women, she said to herself, have been loved for their feet alone. Seeing nothing but her feet, she imagined perhaps that the rest of her body was of a piece with those beautiful feet. She was shabbily dressed, but she was ready to lavish any money upon her shoes. And as this was the only occasion upon which she was hot afraid of being looked at but positively craved attention, she was ready to use any device to prolong the choosing and fitting. Look at my feet, she seemed to be saying, as she took a step this way and then a step that way. The shop girl good-humouredly must have said something flattering, for suddenly her face lit up in ecstasy. But, after all, the giantesses, benevolent though they were, had their own affairs to see to; she must make up her mind; she must decide which to choose. At length, the pair was chosen and, as she walked out between her guardians, with the parcel swinging from her finger, the ecstasy faded, knowledge returned, the old peevishness, the old apology came back, and by the time she had reached the street again she had become a dwarf only.
But she had changed the mood; she had called into being an atmosphere which, as we followed her out into the street, seemed actually to create the humped, the twisted, the deformed. Two bearded men, brothers, apparently, stone-blind, supporting themselves by resting a hand on the head of a small boy between them, marched down the street. On they came with the unyielding yet tremulous tread of the blind, which seems to lend to their approach something of the terror and inevitability of the fate that has overtaken them. As they passed, holding straight on, the little convoy seemed to cleave asunder the passers-by with the momentum of its silence, its directness, its disaster. Indeed, the dwarf had started a hobbling grotesque dance to which everybody in the street now conformed: the stout lady tightly swathed in shiny sealskin; the feeble-minded boy sucking the silver knob of his stick; the old man squatted on a doorstep as if, suddenly overcome by the absurdity of the human spectacle, he had sat down to look at it--all joined in the hobble and tap of the dwarf's dance.
In what crevices and crannies, one might ask, did they lodge, this maimed company of the halt and the blind? Here, perhaps, in the top rooms of these narrow old houses between Holborn and Soho, where people have such queer names, and pursue so many curious trades, are gold beaters, accordion pleaters, cover buttons, or support life, with even greater fantasticality, upon a traffic in cups without saucers, china umbrella handles, and highly-coloured pictures of martyred saints. There they lodge, and it seems as if the lady in the sealskin jacket must find life tolerable, passing the time of day with the accordion pleater, or the man who covers buttons; life which is so fantastic cannot be altogether tragic. They do not grudge us, we are musing, our prosperity; when, suddenly, turning the corner, we come upon a bearded Jew, wild, hunger-bitten, glaring out of his misery; or pass the humped body of an old woman flung abandoned on the step of a public building with a cloak over her like the hasty covering thrown over a dead horse or donkey. At such sights the nerves of the spine seem to stand erect; a sudden flare is brandished in our eyes; a question is asked which is never answered. Often enough these derelicts choose to lie not a stone's throw from theatres, within hearing of barrel organs, almost, as night draws on, within touch of the sequined cloaks and bright legs of diners and dancers. They lie close to those shop windows where commerce offers to a world of old women laid on doorsteps, of blind men, of hobbling dwarfs, sofas which are supported by the gilt necks of proud swans; tables inlaid with baskets of many coloured fruit; sideboards paved with green marble the better to support the weight of boars' heads; and carpets so softened with age that their carnations have almost vanished in a pale green sea.
Passing, glimpsing, everything seems accidentally but miraculously sprinkled with beauty, as if the tide of trade which deposits its burden so punctually and prosaically upon the shores of Oxford Street had this night cast up nothing but treasure. With no thought of buying, the eye is sportive and generous; it creates; it adorns; it enhances. Standing out in the street, one may build up all the chambers of an imaginary house and furnish them at one's will with sofa, table, carpet. That rug will do for the hall. That alabaster bowl shall stand on a carved table in the window. Our merrymaking shall be reflected in that thick round mirror. But, having built and furnished the house, one is happily under no obligation to possess it; one can dismantle it in the twinkling of an eye, and build and furnish another house with other chairs and other glasses. Or let us indulge ourselves at the antique jewellers, among the trays of rings and the hanging necklaces. Let us choose those pearls, for example, and then imagine how, if we put them on, life would be changed. It becomes instantly between two and three in the morning; the lamps are burning very white in the deserted streets of Mayfair. Only motor-cars are abroad at this hour, and one has a sense of emptiness, of airiness, of secluded gaiety. Wearing pearls, wearing silk, one steps out onto a balcony which overlooks the gardens of sleeping Mayfair. There are a few lights in the bedrooms of great peers returned from Court, of silk-stockinged footmen, of dowagers who have pressed the hands of statesmen. A cat creeps along the garden wall. Love-making is going on sibilantly, seductively in the darker places of the room behind thick green curtains. Strolling sedately as if he were promenading a terrace beneath which the shires and counties of England lie sun-bathed, the aged Prime Minister recounts to Lady So-and-So with the curls and the emeralds the true history of some great crisis in the affairs of the land. We seem to be riding on the top of the highest mast of the tallest ship; and yet at the same time we know that nothing of this sort matters; love is not proved thus, nor great achievements completed thus; so that we sport with the moment and preen our feathers in it lightly, as we stand on the balcony watching the moonlit cat creep along Princess Mary's garden wall.
But what could be more absurd? It is, in fact, on the stroke of six; it is a winter's evening; we are walking to the Strand to buy a pencil. How, then, are we also on a balcony, wearing pearls in June? What could be more absurd? Yet it is nature's folly, not ours. When she set about her chief masterpiece, the making of man, she should have thought of one thing only. Instead, turning her head, looking over her shoulder, into each one of us she let creep instincts and desires which are utterly at variance with his main being, so that we are streaked, variegated, all of a mixture; the colours have run. Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? Circumstances compel unity; for convenience sake a man must be a whole. The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco, a soldier heading a revolution, a pariah howling with scepticism and solitude. When he opens his door, he must run his fingers through his hair and put his umbrella in the stand like the rest.
But here, none too soon, are the second-hand bookshops. Here we find anchorage in these thwarting currents of being; here we balance ourselves after the splendours and miseries of the streets. The very sight of the bookseller's wife with her foot on the fender, sitting beside a good coal fire, screened from the door, is sobering and cheerful. She is never reading, or only the newspaper; her talk, when it leaves bookselling, which it does so gladly, is about hats; she likes a hat to be practical, she says, as well as pretty. 0 no, they don't live at the shop; they live in Brixton; she must have a bit of green to look at. In summer a jar of flowers grown in her own garden is stood on the top of some dusty pile to enliven the shop. Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. There is always a hope, as we reach down some grayish-white book from an upper shelf, directed by its air of shabbiness and desertion, of meeting here with a man who set out on horseback over a hundred years ago to explore the woollen market in the Midlands and Wales; an unknown traveller, who stayed at inns, drank his pint, noted pretty girls and serious customs, wrote it all down stiffly, laboriously for sheer love of it (the book was published at his own expense); was infinitely prosy, busy, and matter-of-fact, and so let flow in without his knowing it the very scent of hollyhocks and the hay together with such a portrait of himself as gives him forever a seat in the warm corner of the mind's inglenook. One may buy him for eighteen pence now. He is marked three and sixpence, but the bookseller's wife, seeing how shabby the covers are and how long the book has stood there since it was bought at some sale of a gentleman's library in Suffolk, will let it go at that.
Thus, glancing round the bookshop, we make other such sudden capricious friendships with the unknown and the vanished whose only record is, for example, this little book of poems, so fairly printed, so finely engraved, too, with a portrait of the author. For he was a poet and drowned untimely, and his verse, mild as it is and formal and sententious, sends forth still a frail fluty sound like that of a piano organ played in some back street resignedly by an old Italian organ-grinder in a corduroy jacket. There are travellers, too, row upon row of them, still testifying, indomitable spinsters that they were, to the discomforts that they endured and the sunsets they admired in Greece when Queen Victoria was a girl. A tour in Cornwall with a visit to the tin mines was thought worthy of voluminous record. People went slowly up the Rhine and did portraits of each other in Indian ink, sitting reading on deck beside a coil of rope; they measured the pyramids; were lost to civilization for years; converted negroes in pestilential swamps. This packing up and going off, exploring deserts and catching fevers, settling in India for a lifetime, penetrating even to China and then returning to lead a parochial life at Edmonton, tumbles and tosses upon the dusty floor like an uneasy sea, so restless the English are, with the waves at their very door. The waters of travel and adventure seem to break upon little islands of serious effort and lifelong industry stood in jagged column upon the floor. In these piles of puce-bound volumes with gilt monograms on the back, thoughtful clergymen expound the gospels; scholars are to be heard with their hammers and their chisels chipping clear the ancient texts of Euripides and Aeschylus. Thinking, annotating, expounding goes on at a prodigious rate all around us and over everything, like a punctual, everlasting tide, washes the ancient sea of fiction. Innumerable volumes tell how Arthur loved Laura and they were separated and they were unhappy and then they met and they were happy ever after, as was the way when Victoria ruled these islands.
The number of books in the world is infinite, and one is forced to glimpse and nod and move on after a moment of talk, a flash of understanding, as, in the street outside, one catches a word in passing and from a chance phrase fabricates a lifetime. It is about a woman called Kate that they are talking, how "I said to her quite straight last night . . . if you don't think I'm worth a penny stamp, I said . . ." But who Kate is, and to what crisis in their friendship that penny stamp refers, we shall never know; for Kate sinks under the warmth of their volubility; and here, at the street corner, another page of the volume of life is laid open by the sight of two men consulting under the lamp-post. They are spelling out the latest wire from Newmarket in the stop press news. Do they think, then, that fortune will ever convert their rags into fur and broadcloth, sling them with watch-chains, and plant diamond pins where there is now a ragged open shirt? But the main stream of walkers at this hour sweeps too fast to let us ask such questions. They are wrapt, in this short passage from work to home, in some narcotic dream, now that they are free from the desk, and have the fresh air on their cheeks. They put on those bright clothes which they must hang up and lock the key upon all the rest of the day, and are great cricketers, famous actresses, soldiers who have saved their country at the hour of need. Dreaming, gesticulating, often muttering a few words aloud, they sweep over the Strand and across Waterloo Bridge whence they will be slung in long rattling trains, to some prim little villa in Barnes or Surbiton where the sight of the clock in the hall and the smell of the supper in the basement puncture the dream.
But we have come to the Strand now, and as we hesitate on the curb, a little rod about the length of one's finger begins to lay its bar across the velocity and abundance of life. "Really I must--really I must"--that is it. Without investigating the demand, the mind cringes to the accustomed tyrant. One must, one always must, do something or other; it is not allowed one simply to enjoy oneself. Was it not for this reason that, some time ago, we fabricated the excuse, and invented the necessity of buying something? But what was it? Ah, we remember, it was a pencil. Let us go then and buy this pencil. But just as we are turning to obey the command, another self disputes the right of the tyrant to insist. The usual conflict comes about. Spread out behind the rod of duty we see the whole breadth of the river Thames--wide, mournful, peaceful. And we see it through the eyes of somebody who is leaning over the Embankment on a summer evening, without a care in the world. Let us put off buying the pencil; let us go in search of this person--and soon it becomes apparent that this person is ourselves. For if we could stand there where we stood six months ago, should we not be again as we were then--calm, aloof, content? Let us try then. But the river is rougher and greyer than we remembered. The tide is running out to sea. It brings down with it a tug and two barges, whose load of straw is tightly bound down beneath tarpaulin covers. There is, too, close by us, a couple leaning over the balustrade with the curious lack of self-consciousness lovers have, as if the importance of the affair they are engaged on claims without question the indulgence of the human race. The sights we see and the sounds we hear now have none of the quality of the past; nor have we any share in the serenity of the person who, six months ago, stood precisely where we stand now. His is the happiness of death; ours the insecurity of life. He has no future; the future is even now invading our peace. It is only when we look at the past and take from it the element of uncertainty that we can enjoy perfect peace. As it is, we must turn, we must cross the Strand again, we must find a shop where, even at this hour, they will be ready to sell us a pencil.
It is always an adventure to enter a new room for the lives and characters of its owners have distilled their atmosphere into it, and directly we enter it we breast some new wave of emotion. Here, without a doubt, in the stationer's shop people had been quarrelling. Their anger shot through the air. They both stopped; the old woman--they were husband and wife evidently--retired to a back room; the old man whose rounded forehead and globular eyes would have looked well on the frontispiece of some Elizabethan folio, stayed to serve us. "A pencil, a pencil," he repeated, "certainly, certainly." He spoke with the distraction yet effusiveness of one whose emotions have been roused and checked in full flood. He began opening box after box and shutting them again. He said that it was very difficult to find things when they kept so many different articles. He launched into a story about some legal gentleman who had got into deep waters owing to the conduct of his wife. He had known him for years; he had been connected with the Temple for half a century, he said, as if he wished his wife in the back room to overhear him. He upset a box of rubber bands. At last, exasperated by his incompetence, he pushed the swing door open and called out roughly: "Where d'you keep the pencils?" as if his wife had hidden them. The old lady came in. Looking at nobody, she put her hand with a fine air of righteous severity upon the right box. There were pencils. How then could he do without her? Was she not indispensable to him? In order to keep them there, standing side by side in forced neutrality, one had to be particular in one's choice of pencils; this was too soft, that too hard. They stood silently looking on. The longer they stood there, the calmer they grew; their heat was going down, their anger disappearing. Now, without a word said on either side, the quarrel was made up. The old man, who would not have disgraced Ben Jonson's title-page, reached the box back to its proper place, bowed profoundly his good-night to us, and they disappeared. She would get out her sewing; he would read his newspaper; the canary would scatter them impartially with seed. The quarrel was over.
In these minutes in which a ghost has been sought for, a quarrel composed, and a pencil bought, the streets had become completely empty. Life had withdrawn to the top floor, and lamps were lit. The pavement was dry and hard; the road was of hammered silver. Walking home through the desolation one could tell oneself the story of the dwarf, of the blind men, of the party in the Mayfair mansion, of the quarrel in the stationer's shop. Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way, far enough to give oneself the illusion that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others. One could become a washerwoman, a publican, a street singer. And what greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality and deviate into those footpaths that lead beneath brambles and thick tree trunks into the heart of the forest where live those wild beasts, our fellow men?
That is true: to escape is the greatest of pleasures; street haunting in winter the greatest of adventures. Still as we approach our own doorstep again, it is comforting to feel the old possessions, the old prejudices, fold us round; and the self, which has been blown about at so many street corners, which has battered like a moth at the flame of so many inaccessible lanterns, sheltered and enclosed. Here again is the usual door; here the chair turned as we left it and the china bowl and the brown ring on the carpet. And here--let us examine it tenderly, let us touch it with reverence--is the only spoil we have retrieved from all the treasures of the city, a lead pencil.
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every perfect summer
Finn is steady on her own two feet but Niall is a hurricane, determined to bring to the surface what she’s long buried. If only he weren’t so beautiful at sunset, she might be able to resist.
written for @majorharry ‘s 20k fic celebration
prompt #29: “stop looking at me like that.”
niall/ofc, 6.2k
Summer in California is hot and sticky, the kind of sticky that makes you feel silly showering, because as soon as you walk outside, you’ll be sweaty all over again. Even with the fan on full blast, Finn’s thighs are sticking to the leather of the couch she took from her mom’s house when she moved out. She’s read the same page a hundred times, over and over again. The heat makes it hard to think.
The heat makes it hard to breathe.
And mostly, the heat makes it hard to write.
Finn’s about to put the book down when she hears footsteps on the stairs outside. Her apartment complex is a series of buildings each containing a dozen apartments. Finn shares the landing of her staircase with the apartment next door, but it’s the wrong time of day for Cindy and Ralph to be returning home, which means—
“Your new downstairs neighbor is hot,” Jocelyn announces as the apartment door slams shut behind her, the gust of warm air ruffling the pages of Finn’s book. She looks up to roll her eyes.
“You think every guy is hot.”
Jocelyn dumps her shopping on the kitchen table and scoffs. “I do not. Just the hot ones.”
“Aren’t you engaged?” Finn glances down at the big shiny ring on Jocelyn’s finger to emphasize her point. Even though Jocelyn moved out six months ago, when her boyfriend popped the question, sometimes it feels like she never left. Right now is one of those times. “What’s Marcus think about all this looking you do?”
“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him.” Jocelyn punctuates her statement with a saucy flip of her hair and begins unloading her bags onto the small kitchen counter. She holds up a carton of ice cream. “Should I bother putting this away, or do you want to dive in right now?”
Finn holds her hand out for the rocky road. “You know me so well.”
“You’re welcome.” As Finn digs into the tub of ice cream, Jocelyn begins putting things away in the fridge. “You know,” she says into the veggie drawer, “I’m not kidding about your new neighbor. He’s got this angelic frat boy look to him. Have you met him yet?”
“Yeah,” Finn says. “Last week. He offered to carry a package upstairs for me. Very polite, and totally not my type.”
“Exactly.” Jocelyn sits on the couch with another spoon and slides the ice cream out of Finn’s grasp. “As your older sister, it’s my job to advise you on everything. Starting with your interest in men, which is, to be frank, utter shit.”
Finn opens her mouth to object, but she can’t find fault with Jocelyn’s statement. Her last boyfriend wouldn’t come to any work events with her but insisted she attend all of his art shows. He had an ego the size of the Milky Way to make up for his abysmal lack of talent.
“You need to stop dating those neurotic, artsy types,” Jocelyn continues, “and date a man who can, like, actually kill a spider.”
“I’m perfectly capable of killing my own spiders.” As long as they’re small and not moving, but Finn doesn’t feel the need to share that caveat.
“So am I,” Jocelyn says. “Do you want wine?” She doesn’t wait for Finn to answer before she gets up and goes straight for the cupboard that holds the long-stem glasses. “Anyway, that’s not my point. You need to stop dating boys who look good on paper and start dating men who are good. In real life.”
Finn closes her book so that it doesn’t have to listen to this conversation. She accepts the wine glass from Jocelyn’s outstretched hand and swirls around the liquid within. It doesn’t go with the ice cream, but she’s 25 years old, so that doesn’t matter.
Jocelyn scowls at the closed book. “Virginia Woolf again, Finn? Are you ever going to read anything written in this century?”
Finn rolls her eyes. If there’s one thing her sister excels at, it’s being unsatisfied with all aspects of Finn’s life. “Are you here just to criticize me? Or are we watching ‘The Bachelor’?”
Jocelyn grins, spoon still in her mouth. “Oh, we’re watching ‘The Bachelor.’”
-----
The thing about “The Bachelor,” Finn decides that night as she’s brushing her teeth, is that, for the women involved, the ones competing for the bachelor’s heart, there are no consequences.
Oh, small consequences, sure. Your decision might make somebody else cry, or your heart might be slightly bruised, but at the end of it all, you’ve got thousands of new Instagram followers and you’re famous in your small town and everybody wants to date you, even though you chose, of your own free will, to engage in the skeptical that is a dating game show.
But there are no big consequences, no bad consequences. A few months later and the next season’s airing, and everything you did, every dumb thing you said, every kiss you exchanged—it’s all forgotten.
Maybe that’s the way to go, Finn thinks.
Maybe next year, she ought to audition. She develops the pitch in her head: 25 year old ghostwriter of bestselling romance novels; lives alone in Los Angeles; has been considering, for an entire year, the adoption of a cat; has never been in love.
It’s that last part that would sway them, she thinks. The producers would imagine her doe-eyed and innocent, maybe a bit naive. She’d be pitted against the season’s villain, the girl with dark hair (a visual contrast to Finn’s blond bob) who would stop at nothing to win her man.
“How can she write romance novels when she has never known love?” audiences across America would wonder.
Perhaps the bachelor himself would even inquire. Finn would smile shyly, bat her impossibly long eyelashes up at him, and say something coy like, “You could tutor me.”
Jocelyn would love that. She lives for the drama, for what the editors create in post-production. She doesn’t care that it’s fake.
And every week Finn watches and wonders how she can keep selling love in her books when this show proves, without a doubt, that it doesn’t exist.
-----
The new downstairs neighbor works out in the mornings on his patio. Finn hears his music the next morning, drifting in through her open sliding door, around 8:30 AM. It’s not early enough for her to be justifiably annoyed at him, but she’s annoyed nonetheless, because she’s just sat down at her laptop with the intention of writing something today.
Something. Anything. Words on the page, that’s all she needs.
Instead, she sighs, closing her laptop and crossing the room to the balcony. She slides the door open further, pushes the screen out of the way, and goes outside. When she and Jocelyn first moved in, the balcony was a huge appeal. “Outdoor space!” they’d squealed when they first saw the apartment listed online. But now Finn’s been here for two and a half years, and the balcony is just another space for dust to collect.
It’s directly over Downstairs Neighbor’s patio. Finn looks down through the wooden slats and tries to catch a glimpse at him. She can hear Jocelyn’s voice in her head: He’s hot, right? I told you he was hot!
In truth, though, Finn can’t see much through the small gaps between the planks. She can’t tell if he’s lifting weights or doing jumping jacks or playing a very enthusiastic game of cat’s cradle. He’s definitely grunting, though.
Finn shakes her head, trying not to focus on the noises he’s making, and crosses the balcony. She leans her arms on the railing and looks out over the beauty of Los Angeles. Beauty referring, of course, to the parking lot. Finn can see her car, about thirty feet away, parked beneath an evil tree that drops red berries. It really needs to be washed.
Maybe she should take it today. Maybe today will be the first day in a month that she’s gotten dressed in pants that have a zipper and a button, and she’ll go to the carwash and—
Feeling something crawling on her arm, Finn looks down, and oh, shit, it’s a spider. Not a little spider, not a daddy long legs, but one of those ones that’s big enough where you can see its body. It looks like one of those spiders a little kid draws around Halloween.
Oh, shit. Finn lifts her arm, waving it wildly, trying to shake the spider loose before it bites her and turns her into Spider Woman, and that’s when she throws her mug of coffee into the air.
“Oh, shit,” she says out loud. Time seems to slow as she watches her mug descend, coffee flying everywhere as the cup turns a full 360 degrees before landing with a crack on the concrete below.
“What the fuck?” It’s Downstairs Neighbor.
“Oh, shit,” Finn says again. Which, no doubt, Downstairs Neighbor heard. Oh, shit. That one’s in her head, at least.
She hears a grunt as he, she imagines, lowers his weight to the ground, then the snick of his sliding glass door, then the sound of his front door opening, and then, oh, shit, there he is, standing on the ground, looking at her broken coffee cup.
Oh, shit, Finn thinks again as she drops to her knees, hiding herself from view.
Apparently unsuccessfully, as not thirty seconds later, she hears, “I can see you, ya know.”
Finn rises slowly to her feet and looks down. It’s hard not to admit that Jocelyn was right as she looks down at him, messy hair and blue eyes and muscles visible through his sweaty t-shirt.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” His eyes twinkle, and she knows he’s trying not to laugh at her. “This yours?”
“Yeah. Sorry I interrupted you.”
He laughs then, a light, musical sound that she can feel in her toes. Oh, shit. That’s not good. Finn’s characters feel laughter in their toes, but she certainly doesn’t. Feeling someone’s laughter in her toes is not a real thing, she’s always thought, except, apparently, it is.
“What happened?” he asks.
“There was a spider.”
“A spider.”
Finn nods, cheeks burning. “It was a big spider.”
“You gonna come clean it up?”
Finn nods again. “In a minute.”
“Okay.” He grins up at her and she blushes back.
Finn turns around and goes inside, sliding the door shut behind her, and waits, listening for the sounds of Downstairs neighbor reentering his own apartment, shutting the door, locking it. When a minute has passed without any of that, Finn realizes that he must be waiting for her.
Oh, shit. Finn doesn’t have to be Jocelyn to know that this is not the ideal situation in which one wants to interact with Hot Downstairs Neighbor. But it seems like she doesn’t have a choice, so she slips on the flip flops she keeps by the door and goes downstairs.
He’s still there, standing in the sunshine, squinting when he smiles. “There you are,” he says.
“Here I am.” Finn looks down, surveying the damage. The mug has split into several large chunks, and maybe if Finn were better at diy-ing she’d be able to fix it, but as things stand now, it’s destined for the garbage. “Damn, I really liked that mug.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Downstairs Neighbor says, which is such a strange thing to say that Finn startles, turning to stare at him.
“Thanks?” she says.
“You’re welcome.” He smiles, holding out his hand. “I’m Niall.”
Finn accepts the handshake. “I’m Finn.”
His hand is warm and a bit clammy, a bit like California in the summer, and her stomach goes topsy-turvy. She yanks her hand back.
“Nice to meet you,” Niall says. “I guess you’re the neighbor who watches ‘The Bachelor’?”
Jesus Christ, Finn thinks, dropping to a squat. She gathers up the pieces of her destroyed mug and doesn’t answer him. How nosy of him, asking her that. But then, she was the one listening to him work out this morning.
“My sister likes it,” she says. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“Hey, there’s no shame in liking ‘The Bachelor,’” Niall says, dropping down beside her. They reach for the last piece at the same time, hands brushing. Finn draws hers back, trying to ignore the tingling in her fingertips. “Here.”
Finn accepts the final shard. “Thanks,” she says. “And I don’t like ‘The Bachelor.’ I think it’s silly.”
Niall smiles at her again, all teeth and sunshine. “What’s silly about love?”
Finn blinks at him, trying to decide if he’s an idiot or just bad at small talk. Maybe both. “That show is not about love,” she says. “Have you ever seen it?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “But I’ve heard it through the ceiling.”
Jesus Christ, Finn thinks again. What a neighbor. She can’t wait to tell Jocelyn about this, to prove to her that Downstairs Neighbor may be hot, but his positive qualities end there. He’s intrusive and nosy and way, way too good looking.
“You can get back to your workout,” she says, standing up straight. He follows, forcing her to look up to meet his eyes. “Sorry for bothering you.”
“Not a bother,” he says. “It was nice to meet you, Finn.”
“Yep,” she says, offering him a half smile before she turns tail and dashes up the stairs, back to her safe, quiet, Downstairs Neighbor-free apartment. Back to her laptop, and the manuscript due in three months that she hasn’t managed to crack yet. Back to being hot and sweaty inside her apartment, instead of outside.
“Have a good day!” he calls after her. She doesn’t return the greeting.
-----
The next morning, a knock on the door wakes Finn up from a dream, the kind of dream that you know as soon as you wake was a good one, but it’s too late, you’ve forgotten it, and you won’t be able to get it back.
“No,” she mutters, turning over in bed, burrowing into the pillow. “I’m sleeping.” But then the knock sounds again. “Damnit.”
Finn climbs out of bed and reaches for her phone on the nightstand. 8:27 AM on a Wednesday. An acceptable hour for someone to be knocking on the door, she supposes. Except she was up till 1 o’clock trying to make her messy notes into something resembling an outline that could someday (someday soon, she hopes) be a book.
The morning person disturbing her sleep knocks again, eliminating the possibility that it’s just UPS dropping off a package. Finn drops her phone on the bed and makes her way down the hall to the living room, where sunlight blares in so sharply it makes her squint.
“Gah,” she says to herself as she pulls open the door. And then, “Oh, it’s you.”
“It’s me,” Hot Downstairs Neighbor—Niall, Finn corrects herself—says. “UPS dropped off this package at my door, but I think it’s yours.”
Finn looks down at the envelope he’s holding out, but the label is blurry. Oh, shit, her glasses. “If you say so,” she says. “I’d have to grab my glasses to know for sure.”
Niall smiles at her, she thinks, but the details of his face are a bit blurry. “I can wait,” he says. “We should make sure it’s yours.”
Finn frowns at him for a second—He can read, can’t he? Shouldn’t he know if it’s her name on the label?—before deciding that it’s too early for an argument. “Fine, whatever,” she says, turning around and leaving him in the doorway.
That’s where she expects him to stay, but when she returns to the door a minute later with her glasses perched on her nose, he’s inside her apartment, poking around the bookshelves on either side of her television. The package he brought over has been discarded on the coffee table.
Finn ignores him for a second as she picks it up. Yep, it’s definitely hers. It’s a proof of her latest Isobel novel, if she had to guess. But she’s not going to open it now, not with Niall here.
Niall, who is currently nosing around her living room, looking much too closely at things she’d rather he not see.
“What are these?” Niall steps closer to the bookshelf, his eyes scanning the spines. “You read romance novels?”
“Not exactly,” Finn says. Which lie should she tell this time? She has a few prepared: “they’re my sister’s” or “my roommate forgot them when she moved out.” Said roommate is said sister, but for the sake of the lie, that wouldn’t matter. But then the truth slips out. “I write them.”
“You write them?” Niall repeats. He pulls one of the books out, Summer’s Dalliance, about two yoga instructors who find love during a training retreat in the Maldives. “You’re Isobel Soleil?”
Finn can tell from the way Niall says Isobel Soleil that he’s heard of her. Who hasn’t heard of her, these days? Her books are in grocery stores and airport shops and on bestseller lists and there’s a series in development with HBO.
As a ghostwriter, Finn isn’t involved, but she knows the show will help move sales, which means bigger checks, which means maybe, eventually, she can write something she actually cares about.
“Not exactly.” Finn takes the book out of his hand and returns it to its place on the shelf. It’s not as if she’s proud of it. That’s not why she has it out. It’s just a placeholder until she publishes a book she’s actually proud of. “Isobel Soleil isn’t a person. She’s a brand. Her books are written by half a dozen different people. How do you think she can pump them out so quickly?”
“How quickly?”
“Three or four a year.”
“And you wrote all of these?” Niall’s finger runs along the spines. “How many are there? Ten?”
“Eight,” Finn corrects. Eight cheesy, embarrassing, don’t-let-your-mother-see-you-reading-that novels. “But they’re formulaic and simplistic. They’re not… they’re not good.”
Niall shrugs. “They’re not high literature, you mean. Someone reads them, though, right? And the people who read them enjoy them. So who cares if they’re not high literature, Finn?”
Finn swallows the sudden lump in her throat. How has Niall managed to get to the quick of things so, well, quick? “I care, I guess. This isn’t what I imagined I’d be doing when I was little, telling people I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.”
“So write something else,” Niall says.
Finn sighs. She wishes it were that easy. If only she could break out of the mold she’s put herself in and write something else, something that’s not about two people falling in love. If only she could write something she actually believed in.
But she has a contract and a deadline and an agent and an editor on her back, and no choice but to finish this Isobel Soleil novel.
“Maybe next summer,” she says.
Niall considers her, nods. “Speaking of this summer,” he says slowly, like he’s thinking about what he’s going to say as he’s saying it, “I have free tickets to LACMA, and I just moved to town so I don’t know a ton of people. Want to go with me?”
Say yes or no more ice cream, Jocelyn’s voice says in the back of Finn’s mind.
“Sure,” she says. “But you know my secret”—she gestures to the bookshelves—“so now you have to tell me one of yours. So I know you’re not a serial killer or something.”
He smiles at her and, damn, he’s good looking. “I’m a lawyer,” he says. “My new job doesn’t start till August, so I’m working remotely with my old firm until then.”
“That’s not a secret.” Not a secret at all, but a great career for a hero in a romance novel. Finn makes a mental note.
“Okay,” Niall says. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back, lifting one hand to his chin, a classic thinking pose. “How about this? I’m not from here.”
Finn shakes her head. She’d already guessed that from his accent, a soft, lilting Irish one that makes everything he says sound like a poem. “Not a secret either. You get one more try.”
“One more try!” he says with mock shock. “I’ll make this good, then.”
He thinks and Finn waits, and in the thirty seconds it takes him to come up with a good secret, she wonders what the hell she’s doing, flirting with Hot Downstairs Neighbor in her living room while dressed in her pajamas. Oh, shit, she’s not wearing a bra, is she?
Finn crosses her arms over her chest and considers backing out of this conversation entirely by making something up that will put Niall off and convince him that she’s the worst possible LACMA companion.
But then he says, “I can’t swim,” and that is distracting enough to make her forget everything else.
“You can’t swim?” she asks. “What the hell are you doing in southern California?”
Niall shrugs. His smile makes her insides go wonky. “Maybe you can teach me.” Then he holds out his phone. “Here, give me your number. I’ll text you and we can make plans.”
She obliges, all the while wondering what exactly she’s gotten herself into.
-----
LACMA day comes much quicker than Finn anticipates. When she and Niall first made the plans a week ago, Saturday seemed like ages away. There was so much she was going to do between now and then: repot all of her plants, make bread from scratch, work on her manuscript. But instead, she putters around her apartment, typing words here and there, ignoring how bad they are, and not baking bread.
It’s a waste of a week, and not just because Niall is there, in the back of her mind, the whole time.
Jocelyn’s excited, of course, for LACMA day, and insists on coming over the night before to help Finn select her outfit. Finn keeps reminding her that it’s summer in Los Angeles, so it’s a thousand degrees out and she will melt no matter what she wears, but Jocelyn doesn’t care.
Which is how Finn ends up knocking on Niall’s door on LACMA day dressed in a romper that’s giving her a wedgie, a purse she never carries slung over her shoulder. Jocelyn even forced her to wear lip gloss.
“Lip gloss makes you a different person,” Jocelyn said last night on her way out. “I left you three options. Please wear one.”
“I don’t take advice from the Sweet Valley Twins anymore,” Finn had retorted as she shut the door in Jocelyn’s face.
But she’s wearing the lip gloss anyway. Her hair has already gotten stuck in it three times, and all she’s done is climb down the stairs.
She knocks again, half hoping Niall hasn’t changed his mind and half hoping that he has. If he has, she can go back upstairs, put her pajamas on again, and continue to stare at her blank Word document. But then he opens the door.
“Good morning!” His smile is so bright it makes her squint. “Coffee?”
He holds out a travel mug to her, waiting for her to take it.
“Good morning,” she says after she takes a sip. The coffee is exactly the right temperature and perfectly sweet, which is almost enough to make her smile. “This is good coffee.”
“It’s from Ecuador,” Niall says. He steps out onto the welcome mat and closes the apartment door behind him. “Hold this for me?”
Finn holds his travel mug as he locks the door and turns the knob a couple of times to make sure it’s secure. Then he turns around, his smile lighting up his face.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready,” she says, though she’s pretty sure she isn’t.
She learns, over the next few hours, that Niall’s energy is nonstop. He talks constantly during their drive to the museum, talks as they park the car, talks as they ride the elevator to the top floor and begin making their way through the galleries. He tells her where he’s from and where he went to school and what his favorite sports teams are.
And she finds herself talking too. She tells him about her sister and where she went to school and how she got started writing Isobel Soleil novels, and the entire time, she’s taking mental notes about him, about the way he holds doors for her and grins down at her and laughs even when her jokes are barely funny.
This is how the heroes in her novels behave. They are handsome and well-meaning and have substantial life goals. They are polite and conscientious and make the heroines feel brave and important and valued. And that’s how Finn finds herself feeling: like if she had something to say, Niall would listen to it.
After the museum, they stop for lunch at a restaurant Finn found on Yelp as they were leaving the parking structure. It’s small and bright inside, but as Niall pulls out Finn’s chair for her, it occurs to her, for the first time, that this might actually be a date.
Jocelyn had said as much last night, but Finn had ignored her, as she does with most things Jocelyn says. But now, seated across from Niall, with nowhere to look but at him, reality dawns, and it’s blinding.
But, she decides, she won’t address it, and she carries on with the meal as if they are recent acquaintances and neighbors, which is, she reminds herself, exactly what they are.
-----
After LACMA day, Niall texts Finn about the movie he’s watching, and she imagines she can hear it through the floor. Later that evening, he texts her good night, and then, the next day, he texts her good morning. The next weekend, they go to Venice Beach together, and they see a movie in a classic theater downtown the following Tuesday. That night, he comes over for dinner, and they cook together, finding their way around each other in Finn’s small kitchen.
And all of a sudden, this summer is different, hot and sticky like all the others, but different because this summer has Niall.
Niall on the couch, bare feet up on the coffee table, listing all the reasons that golf is superior to all other sports.
Niall in the passenger’s seat of her car, singing along to the radio even when he doesn’t know the words, the sun setting behind him, lighting him up as if it’s saying, “Look, he’s beautiful.”
And he is beautiful. Niall in her thoughts, Niall on the back of her eyelids when she blinks, Niall in her dreams. Niall, beautiful.
And Niall in her manuscript, try as she might to keep him out. In sticking with the proposal she made to her editor back in the spring, she’s writing about a doctor and an artist who meet when they’re sharing a wall in a duplex summer rental on the coast of Oregon. By midsummer, she’s written thirty thousand words, enough to reassure her editor that she’s still writing, that things are fine, and, upon rereading, she realizes that the doctor has become Niall.
The doctor, so sure of himself, driven and determined and sexier than any other hero she’s ever written. He is confident and has beautiful eyes and magic fingers, and the heroine, the artist, is head over heels in love with him before she’s even thought to like him.
And the artist. Finn is the artist, the confused, prideful creative soul who doesn’t want love, is afraid of it, just wants to be left alone. But now she has the lawyer, the beautiful, handsome, intelligent, lovely lawyer who makes her want to stop hiding. He makes her want to feel things. He makes her want to reach out for him, to push her fears aside and let her have what she wants.
July brings that realization and an unseasonal thunderstorm that forces Finn to bring out a bucket and email her landlord about that leak in the roof from December that still hasn’t been fixed. That’s a momentary distraction, at least, from thoughts of Niall, thoughts of Niall that are plaguing her every moment. Awake, asleep, Niall. Always Niall.
It’s thundering overhead when there’s a knock at her door. She opens it, and there he is, like she’s conjured him.
“I brought wine,” he says, holding out the bottle.
“Come in,” she says. She thinks of how much has changed since she sat on her couch a month ago, drinking wine with Jocelyn. She wishes, for a moment, that she could go back. But then she looks at Niall again.
And she doesn’t want to look away, like the artist doesn’t want to look away from the doctor. When you find something this perfect, why would you ever look away? Why would you let it go?
Finn knows from experience, though, that sometimes you don’t get to choose when people leave. Sometimes they leave you, aching and cold and alone. Sometimes it’s not up to you.
“Come in,” she says again. She grabs two wine glasses from the kitchen and joins Niall in the living room, where they sit on the couch, thighs pressed together, and he picks a movie for them to watch.
She isn’t paying attention, though, as she downs two glasses of wine and wonders if Niall will kiss her tonight. She’d like him to, she decides, just as much as she doesn’t want him to. It’s like the Schroedinger’s cat of kisses—if they never kiss, she will never know the kiss, but she will also never know what happens after it. She will never know if they go further, if they stop abruptly, if he breaks her heart and leaves her in pieces, smashed on the concrete like her broken coffee mug.
But she will also never know if it will be beautiful, like the loves of the characters in her novels, characters who risk their hearts when they don’t know what the outcome will be. The difference between Finn and Niall and the artist and the doctor, though, is that Finn can control the artist and the doctor. She can decide their ending, she can choose the words for the last page.
And maybe, with Niall, she doesn’t want a last page.
Two hours later, Finn is wine-drunk and sitting on the floor, her back pressed against the couch. Niall is next to her, the table pushed away from them to accommodate his long legs. She leans her head on his shoulder, thinking, in the way only a wine-addled mind will allow, that she’d like to keep this night forever, seal it into a locket and wear it around her neck.
“Tell me again why you don’t like your books,” Niall says. He has her newest proof in front of him on the table. It’s littered with post-it notes, changes Finn would’ve made to it had she had more time. But it’s too late now, and it will print as is.
“They’re not good,” Finn says, her go-to explanation. “I can do better.”
Niall shakes his head. “But they are good. I read Sunshine in Your Mouth, and it’s good. You’re a good writer, Finn.”
“Oh, no.” Finn ducks, covering her face with her arms. “You read it? I can’t believe you read it.”
“Yeah, I did.” Niall tugs her arm away from her face. “Stop hiding from me.”
Oh, if only he knew how apt that statement was, then maybe he wouldn’t say it. Finn puts her arms down and refills her wine glass. She knows she shouldn’t drink any more, but maybe if she does, she’ll stop thinking about how blue Niall’s eyes are and how soft his fingers feel against her arm.
“Tell me the truth,” Niall says, thumbing the post-its in her proof copy. “Why don’t you like being Isobel Soleil?”
“Because I’m not her. I’m not like her. I just don’t believe in love,” Finn tries to explain. “It’s like—”
Niall laughs. “Love’s not like the tooth fairy, Finn. You don’t have to have felt it to know it’s real.”
Finn looks at him, at his soft cheeks and his pink lips and his messy hair. In another life, in another version of this world, maybe she and Niall have known each other forever, since they were kids. And maybe Finn loves Niall. Maybe she always has. Maybe they fit. Maybe it’s the easiest thing this other Finn’s ever felt.
But the Finn that lives in this world, the one sitting on the floor of her apartment with her knees pulled to her chest and a half-empty wine glass in her hand—this Finn doesn’t feel things easily. Feelings are heavy and feelings hold you back and feelings stick around long after the people who brought them on are gone.
“My parents,” Finn says, “they got divorced when I was five.”
“Finn, you don’t have to—”
“It’s fine,” Finn says. The wine is talking now. The wine and the smell of Niall’s shampoo and the plunk plunk plunk of rain hitting the bucket on the kitchen floor. “My dad was sleeping with his secretary. Such a cliche, right? And it took my mom years to leave him. Years. He was sleeping with his secretary while my mom was pregnant with me. She kept thinking he’d stop, that he’d finally realize that he loved her, that he loved his family. She kept waiting, until she couldn’t anymore.”
Finn feels Niall’s fingers brush against hers where they rest on the rug. “That’s why you don’t believe in love?”
“No.” Finn closes her eyes, her head tilting back against the sofa cushion. “That’s why I don’t let myself feel it.”
“Finn.”
She doesn’t answer as Niall moves closer. Eyes closed, she can feel him entering her personal space, can feel the heat of his hand as he takes her wine glass, hears the clink of glass on wood as he puts it on the table. Feels his fingers on her cheek as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Finn. Look at me.”
So she does, opens her eyes and meets his, and it’s too much, it’s all too much, the way he’s looking at her like he can see her feelings, can read them as if they were written across her forehead.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
He smiles. “Like what?”
“Like you like me.” The words are out before she can stop them, slipping from her lips like a sigh.
“Finn.” He’s closer now, impossibly close, his hand on her cheek. “Finn, I more than like you.”
“I—” Finn starts, but she doesn’t know what to say.
She doesn’t know what this feeling is, the one taking over her chest and spreading to her stomach and traveling up her throat all the way to her eyeballs. It’s a headache and nausea at the same time, plus a sense of doom in her stomach, maybe the unconscious realization that this can’t last forever.
Because feelings never do. Niall likes her now, likes her a lot, likes her enough to maybe kiss her against her dirty car in the parking lot fifty feet from their building. But that won’t last. He’ll like her for a bit and then he’ll like her less and less until nothing remains but the memory of the fire that used to burn, a bit of leftover smoke drifting skyward.
And that’s when it will hurt.
This will hurt, Finn thinks, but she jumps anyway.
“Then kiss me,” she says.
So he does, and in his kiss, for as long as it lasts, she lets herself feel everything: lets herself feel the sticky heat of summer and the sticky heat of a love so big it sucks you under, leaves you breathless, makes you hold on tight.
She slides her hand into his hair and thinks, I will hold on tight.
When it’s over, Niall pulls back, leans his forehead on hers. He’s breathing heavy when he says, “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.”
“I want to do it again,” Finn says. She slides her fingers under the collar of his shirt.
Niall’s hand tightens on her waist. “Is that the wine talking?”
Finn shakes her head. “No,” she says. “It’s me. And I more than like you, too.”
Niall grins, bright and beautiful. “Good,” he says. “You’re my perfect summer.”
He leans in to kiss her again, and Finn decides, in that split second before their lips meet, that even if all she gets with Niall is a summer, it will be beautiful and it will be perfect, the stuff of novels. The stuff of her novels.
But, something in her gut tells her, Niall will be around for more than a summer.
He does live right downstairs, after all.
#1dff#niall horan fanfiction#majorharry20k#look I wrote something!#this is my dream summer if there was no pandemic lol sad
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