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theythinkimabitch · 4 years

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Merry Christmas, @greetings-and-defiance from your (no longer secret) secret Santa! :D I’m so sorry your gift is here so late in the day, but I hope you enjoy regardless! For your gift I rewrote the OUC episode with a happier ending for Saram and tried to bring in Agnes and drop hints to the idea of a happy Keenler family! 😁 I really hope you like it and I wish you nothing but the best during the holidays and an utterly delightful new year! 💖

After years of waking up no later than seven, with vacations a concept rendered unfamiliar due to a job as mercurial as being an agent, Samar had been awake for quite a while.

“Rise and shine!”

She’d been awake long before Aram, whether he believed it or not.

“You’re up early,” Samar proclaimed, rubbing her eyes as she shifted so she could sit.

Samar might have been awake for a while, but that didn’t mean she particularly felt like moving. After all, it was the first day in a long time she could remember having free. The first weekday, mind you. She was going to make the most of every second, even if those seconds were spent reveling in the warmth of her soft bedding with blankets and pillows tastefully scattered across their bed to give her that extra support she so desperately needed.

“It has been a morning,” Aram huffed, carefully carrying what little he salvaged from his many breakfast-related mishaps. “Two small grease fires in the kitchen, one almost disastrous juicing accident. But, voilà! Breakfast in bed.”

Samar struggled to fight a grin as she looked around the wonderful display Aram made her. “What’s on the menu?”

“French toast, hashbrowns,” Aram began to list. “All your favorites.”

“So, none of my favorites,” Samar retorted, “But, I love you anyway.”

“Well, I got the orange juice right,” Aram sighed, taking a seat on the edge of their bed. “But, um, be careful...there might be part of my finger in there.”

With a nod, Samar took the hint and traded orange juice for a more practical cup of coffee, having faith Aram couldn’t possibly have messed that up. “What’s the occasion?”

“I thought you’d want a full stomach for our trip.”

“Our trip?” she questioned. “Where are we going?”

With a devious grin, out came a leaflet from behind Aram’s back that danced excitedly between his fingertips.

“The Lodge at Glenforest,” he began to announce. “Rural Pennsylvania. Three days, two nights, our own cabin in the woods. Dinner in the main lodge, crackling fires.” And as if that wasn’t enough to encourage Samar to go, he added, “I look really, really good in flannel. What do you think?”

“That sounds amazing,” she responded, running her thumb against the rim of her coffee cup. “But don’t they need you at work? I’m the only one that’s retiring.”

“I cleared it with Mr. Cooper!” came the happy announcement. “The team can manage. It’s not like the world’s gonna end.”

“Aram, we worked together, remember?” Samar’s retorted sassily. “We both know the world could literally end if you’re not there.”

With a sweet smile reserved just for her, he bent over to place a kiss on her head. “It’s just a few days. Eat and I’ll pack?”

“How about we share breakfast instead?” Samar asked softly. “They’re your favorites after all.”

Aram quickly jumped over her ready to tuck himself back under the covers, not needing much convincing at all. With Samar being a morning person and Aram quite assuredly the opposite, breakfast in bed wasn’t something they did often. But in this new life of theirs, with new beginnings just starting to unfold, perhaps breakfast in bed was something they could start doing more often.

Grease fires and juiced fingers not included.

But for that to happen, as they both later decided, the cooking might be better left to Samar.

They spent hours eating breakfast. Talking about everything and nothing all at once. They wouldn’t have moved had it not been for the plans that Aram made. Eventually, though, they had to get up.

After all, what good was a new beginning if it was spent wasting away in bed?

Once the dishes had been cleaned and the refrigerator scanned for any possible food they could bring on the road trip they broke apart, each focusing on packing their own bags.

With the advantage of having planned the trip himself, Aram walked back into the kitchen, his own bag already packed, simply waiting for Samar to be ready to go.

“I was thinking this would be more of a romantic getaway, but, you know, if you feel naked without a gun, we can always role play.”

“Sorry,” Samar apologized, placing her weapon back in the lock box she always had within reach. “Force of habit.”

“How about we start some new habits?” he suggested kindly.

“You’re absolutely right. New life, new habits.”

“Unless you want to role play.”

“I think a cabin in the woods is a perfect place to start. No phone reception, no internet.”

“Meeting a stranger,” Aram enthused giddly. “No! Maid/butler secret rendezvous.”

“Thank you for not letting me push you away,” Samar whispered, turning to her fiance with a smile, ignoring the need to pack for just a little while longer.

“Yeah, you tried pretty hard, but lucky for you, I can’t take a hint,” Aram said with a smile before the glint in his eye gave way to yet another idea. “Hitchhiker! No, interrogation!”

“I got an idea,” Samar teased, her hands snaking around his neck.

“Teacher/pupil?”

“Why don’t we make our own fantasy?”

With the smile she’d grown so accustomed to seeing on his face, Samar leaned in pressing her lips against his, living so happily in a moment so blissfully boring and domestic...at least it had been until the sharp ringing of a phone interrupted them.

“Has the world ended yet?” Samar quipped leaving Aram to pat every pocket looking for the offending device.

“Actually, I think that’s your phone.”

Samar frowned, turning around to place the device that indeed belonged to her against her ear.

“Ressler?”

“Yeah, hey Samar--”

“You know I’m retired now, right?”

“Look, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“What happened?” she sighed, focusing more so on shoving her arms through the sleeves of her favorite green jacket.

“It’s Agnes. Liz is sick and practically delirious. Cooper let me go so I could take care of her, but I can’t keep Agnes away and I don’t want her to get sick. I know you and Aram got plans, but with Christmas right around the corner, I can’t find a babysitter a--”

“And you want us to take care of her?” Samar finished for him, already mulling over the idea.

“Just for the weekend,” Ressler pleaded. “You do this and I’ll get you that room myself.”

With a smile Samar glanced back at Aram who had already moved onto new and better things. She was sure that he wouldn’t mind bringing an extra little guest. They had both decided that children was something no longer in the cards for them, leaving their goddaughter the closest thing they had to a daughter of their own.

“We’ll be there in an hour,” Samar decided before turning back to Aram.

“Where are we going?”

“To grab Agnes,” Samar answered with a smile. “She’s coming!”

She’d forgotten how calming it was to simply occupy the passenger’s seat and have nothing at all to worry about. Like many adults, Samar had simply gotten used to the task of driving. It was something she did near every day. She’d get out of bed, go on her morning run, return back to wherever it was she had slept the night before and take a shower before inevitably needing to take some sort of vehicle to complete whatever task she had for the day.

Even on the occasional lazy day, there was still the drive to work or maybe the drive to a grocery store. But on their way towards the Keen and Ressler residence, it was Aram that took control of driving, letting Samar rest her head on the cool window, watching patiently as the city that’d quickly become home began to blur by.

As relaxing as it was, her brain couldn’t help but continue to whir. Reminders of her promise to Aram that she’d do whatever she could to fight off the impending decline of her brain as well as the various tricks her doctor had suggested pinged inside her head. So on the way to grab Agnes, she mentally mapped the route she’d come to be so familiar with until the car eventually slowed to a stop with the brakes squealing as Aram pulled closer to the curb.

For as much as they knew Ressler loved Agnes, he certainly did seem impatient to let her go. They stood hand in hand on the corner of the street, the little one decked out in her impractical winter gear with a small backpack and silver puffer jacket she donned being the only sign that Ressler had indeed prepared her for their impromptu trip.

“I’ll be right back,” Aram promised as a rush of wind blew through the open door with Samar giving him a quiet nod and soft smile in response.

She couldn’t hear much of what was going on outside, what with the soft droan of the heater they’d flicked on long ago, but seeing Aram smile as he bent down to Agnes’ level, watching Ressler guard the excitable little girl that shrieked loud enough for Samar to hear, was enough to spark a laugh from Samar’s lips.

Perhaps Samar had been ready to leave in order to secure Aram’s chance at a happy future, but Samar knew she deserved the happiness as much as he did. She, like her fiance, deserved to have a happily ever after and without such an adorable goddaughter or such a dorky soon-to-be husband, she wasn’t sure how she could.

“Prozen, prozen!!” she screamed, jumping inside the car without so much as a greeting to Samar, without regard for the carseat first needing to be secured.

“What’s that?” Samar questioned, glancing at Aram for answers as he packed bags into the trunk, leaving Ressler to work securing the her car seat.

“Frozen,” Ressler sighed, trying to get his kid to pay attention.

“You told her we were going to see the snow,” Samar brightly deduced.

She knew the way kids' brains worked. She was about to marry one after all.

“She’s gotta get in the mood,” Aram argued with a smile. “We have to sing ‘Let It Go’ exactly two hundred thirty five and a half times to make sure that we have enough snow to last the weekend.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“That’s the truth!” Agnes chattered back, her legs kicking up and down excitedly, thumping loudly against the plastic seat.

“Alright, kiddo, you’re all set.”

“We have to listen to Elsa!”

“I’ll see you in a few days, okay? Have fun. Something happens--”

“Bye-bye, daddy!” Agnes quickly sang out, before chanting for the one thing she’d been waiting for for a whole five minutes! “Elsa! Elsa! Elsa! Elsa!”

Samar had known for quite a while that the ride there would be long.

“Elsa!” Aram cheered with her, searching on his phone for songs sung by everybody’s favorite winter princess.

What she hadn’t expected was that it would be this long.

“Ready?”

But this was all in regards to family and family vacations.

“Ready!” Agnes confirmed.

As far as Samar was concerned, the ride couldn’t be long enough.

As it turned out, Aram had been wrong. It wasn’t something that he was very often, but he was, and he’d so gratefully admit it.

It hadn’t taken two hundred thirty five and a half times before Agnes got bored of the song. Not that he’d been counting, but really, it’d been closer to only a hundred times.

For as much as he loved watching princess movies with the girls, even he tired of listening to the Frozen soundtrack on repeat. Thankfully, Agnes had fallen asleep after the first hour and a half, letting Aram tentatively unplug his phone from the car and switch to the droan of whatever radio station Samar settled on.

They drove a little while longer, making progress on their journey before they came to a quick pit stop for a warm cup of coffee. Once he’d finally made it past the border and into Pennsylvania, the radio eventually turned off. With conversation kept to a quiet minimum so as not to wake Agnes, Samar eventually dozed off, leaving Aram the only one awake.

After so recently having learned to drive, the bliss of driving with little to no traffic as darkness began to reign was something he still managed to find comfort in. Time ticked on and silence stretched thin, broken only by the occasional rhythmic click of the turn signal or motion for more coffee.

Finally, they made it. Eventually they reached the Lodge at Glenforest, the girls still sleeping safe and sound.

He checked in without a problem, getting help to carry in bags. Samar, the light sleeper that she was, woke up without a fuss and carried Agnes into bed until eventually there was nothing left to do.

There was no technology to ensure was charged--the only service was in the Big House, after all--no dishes to make sure were cleaned, no turtle to make sure was fed.

Aram turned in the bed in which he lay with Samar, one arm around her and the other reaching to turn off the light.

How great had this idea been? After so long, there they were sleeping blissfully in the sweet sound of silence.

She’d woken up alone again. There was no one in the bed beside her, the sheets were empty, space next to her cold.

Samar could smell the food. This time, it really did smell like her favorites.

Slowly but surely, Samar made it out of bed. She went through the motions of everyday life.

She brushed her teeth, tied up her hair, washed her face.

It didn’t take long for her to end up in their temporary living room, the food Aram had saved resting on the coffee table waiting and ready for her to grab.

Despite the steaming pile of food, what she went for instead was a mug filled with fresh coffee and the jacket she’d worn on the way over. She could hear Agnes and Aram playing around outside. It wasn’t anything particularly unusual.

What was unusual, however, was the burst of cold wet that smashed across her face the second she pulled the door open. Cold wet that dripped down, cold wet that suddenly crumbled and fell into her coffee with a splash, nothing but silence and a stifled giggle from a certain someone in response.

With all the dignity only Samar Navabi could manage to retain after being pelted in the face with a snowball, she turned stiffly on her heel, softly closing the door behind her, walking back into their cabin, searching for another source of coffee to help kick start her day.

It didn’t take long for Samar to find Aram’s stash of coffee left abandoned with an energetic kid to do the job for him. It did, however, take a little longer for the two deviants to make their way back inside.

“Are you mad?”

“Mad?” questioned Samar, unfamiliar with the concept.

Who had time to be angry when planning revenge?

“I just hit you with a snowball,” Aram said carefully.

He didn’t need to know Samar as well as he did to know she was in the process pf plotting revenge.

“That’s all part of the game, though, isn’t it?”

“What game?” Agnes innocently questioned, getting to work on the food she well knew was reserved especially for Samar.

“The snow day games,” Samar teased back, grabbing a strip of bacon from the plate before Agnes could finish it all. “It’s a three day compeition to see who will win a super secret, very special prize.”

“Prize!!” the girl cheered.

“When I win,” Samar said sternly, glaring at her soon-to-be husband. “I get two months off laundry duty.”

For what felt like years now, Samar had been the one doing all the laundry. Aram had managed to skillfully parcel the chore out to Samar under the pretense that she was the only one who knew how to care for her magical green jacket, but Samar had patiently taught Aram how to clean it many times before. She was confident he knew how to care for the jacket on his own.

“And when I win,” came Aram’s much anticipated reply.

“Big chocolate gummy bears!” Agnes screamed mystically.

“I get big chocolate gummy bears and I get to keep my bike in the living room.”

That god forsaken bike of his was an argument they’d had plenty of times.

Bikes simply did not go in the living room. There was a bike rack right outside their apartment for a reason. Bikes didn’t need any special care and if Aram truly did need for his precious bike to be wrapped in the warmth of their household as he so eloquently put it, then she by all means, would be more than willing to buy it a tarp to stave off the rain and snow.

But Samar had every intention of winning this battle and if winning this battle meant she could end their everlasting war…

“Deal,” Samar responded.

“Then may the odds be ever in your favor.”

It seemed almost counterproductive to let day one of their games begin after they had the massages Aram had ordered, but that’s the way it all worked out.

The victor of day one would be determined by the victor of a snowball fight.

Samar had been preparing for this particular competition the whole day. She’d bribed Agnes, been clandestinely making snowballs as they walked around the campgrounds, and had been more on guard than usual.

She’d been waiting for the perfect moment to launch her sneak attack.

The time came when Agnes served as a perfect distraction. After walking around for such a long time, her legs had grown tired. Normally Samar would’ve had no problem carrying her, but she did need a distraction and with the promise of extra Christmas presents, Agnes had agreed to be on her side.

She traded the many bags Aram carried for the small little girl and walked ahead of them with the excuse that they were carrying perishables. Of course that wasn’t true, but Agnes was a wonderful distraction.

Within minutes Samar made it into their temporary home and set down all the bags filled with possible gifts for all their friends. A minute after that, she’d managed to sneak out towards the back and stockpile some necessary ammunition.

With a pile of ready to fire snowballs and footsteps getting increasingly louder as they crunched in the snow a small smile spread across her lips. Agnes stayed with her head resting on Aram’s shoulder, a grin on her own face as she and Samar made eye contact.

She lifted a gloved finger to her lips, hoping Agnes got the message to be quiet. For a split second, Samar fear her plan had backfired for up came Agnes’ head as she pulled from Aram before she very vehemently decided that they needed hot chocolate.

While Aram wholeheartedly agreed with the plan all Samar could think was that Agnes would grow up to be a wonderfully mischievous young lady.

From outside as Samar creeped around the building, she could hear Aram calling for her.

“Samar!” she heard a loud hiss.

“Where’s Aram?” Samar asked back.

“Hot chocolate!” Agnes whispered back, crouched right beside her.

“Good idea,” Samar whispered back, handing her a ready made snowball. “Okay, you have to go out front and call Aram now, is that okay?”

“I wanna throw snow!” Agnes pouted in response.

“You will!”

“The first one?”

“If you get Aram,” Samar bartered.

Samar stayed strong under the withering gaze of a determined five year old and soon enough Agnes relented, a quick grin breaking free as she spun on her heels screaming for Aram.

Within a second she could hear the door creaking back open and a soft thud broke out soon after along with a cry of indignation before giggles that masked it and big footsteps that ran after her.

“Snowball, snowball!”

“Shh!” Samar whispered, handing her another.

The element of surprise wouldn’t be as strong as she’d hoped, but Samar was proud knowing Agnes had gotten him good.

Another set of footsteps stopped in front of them and the two girls smiled innocently at the man standing before them.

Brown eyes raked over the two girls standing ready to fight across from him when he noticed a certain pile of white snow looking oddly similar to snowballs.

The minute he opened his mouth, the attack began with Agnes letting out an excited scream and Samar pelting him along the way.

That was certainly one point for Samar placing her firmly in the lead.

On the second day of their vacation, Aram finally managed to sleep to a respectable hour.

Things seemed to drift back into vague semblance of normalcy. Samar woke up first, took care of breakfast, spent time with Agnes.

And while Aram may have been sleeping, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been scheming.

You see, as Aram lay in bed accepting woeful defeat, he’d come upon a very important fact.

Where Aram was born and raised in the snowy lands of Delaware, Samar had been born and raised in the sweltering heat of Tehran, Iran. He was fairly confident that through all her worldly travels, she’d become acclimated to the snow, but there were certain advantages that having grown up in snow gave him.

He knew better than to surprise her. He had to play to his own strengths, needed to propose a challenge he was fairly certain he could win.

(Even if he couldn’t manage to bribe the would be judge.)

“Day two of the snow games are upon us,” Aram announced, walking out into the open.

Fresh snow had fallen the night before. It was as if the universe was laying down the groundwork for him to succeed.

“That it is, my love,” Samar responded, curiously looking up at Aram as he walked down the few steps and sat right beside her.

“How would you like to build a snowman?”

“A snowman?” Samar questioned.

“Do you wanna build a snowman?” teased Aram.

Samar’s lips easily quirked into a smile and she nodded firmly, placing down her mug on the stairs and getting up to prepare.

Build a snowman they would.

With Agnes tired after a morning filled with playing, keeping her within view was a moderately simple task.

Aram knew better than to ever have underestimated Samar, but there were certain things that he just knew how to do better than her.

Samar played around with the classic materials. She started rolling the snow, trying to keep it nice and steady. She made balls each increasingly smaller that she stacked one over the other. Samar did excellent for what had to be one of her first snowmen.

But for Aram who had years upon years of practice, he went above and beyond. He quickly slipped into the focused determination he so often slipped into at work as he found just the right kind of snow to properly pack together. He went around looking diligently for good stones to use as eyes, for nice twigs to use as arms crossed akimbo.

He made sure that his was not only the most aesthetically pleasing, but technically proficient. He rounded each ball making sure they were smooth around the edges. He packed extra snow around the bottom of each circle making sure they each stayed steady.

Even if Samar managed to miraculously find the better of the decorations to use on her snowman, Aram was certain his snowman would at least fare better structurally.

He hadn’t been actively planning for this competition all week, but he figured that the tiara and scepter he bought Agnes the day before would work well with his magical creation. So he worked and he worked, went in and out of the cabin rifling through the many bags they all had brought until early morning melted into early afternoon and the creation he’d spent all night fussing about finally finished and he took a step back to admire his work.

To say he went above and beyond was an understatement. His snowman was decadent. She was dressed in full princess gear, her snowy cheeks painted red thanks to a sacrificed strawberry flavored drink, a tiara on her head and scepter sticking out from her body.

Samar had finished long ago, ending up with Agnes back on the stairs, watching and giggling as Aram placed his hands on his own hips ready for the judge to announce the winner.

Upon the sudden realization that what they’d been giggling at was him, Aram looked worriedly at Samar’s entry for a moment, fearing that she bested him in a way he never could have anticipated.

But rather than a masterpiece rivaling work of all the world-famous snowmen making artists, Aram was greeted with a haphazard attempt at a snowfigure that already begun to crumble long ago.

It must’ve been something else then…

Samar tapped her head and Aram reached for what should’ve been his beanie, his fingers landing only on cold spikes that spread out from every direction.

Oh, no.

Aram’s eyes widened as he turned around, trying to press down the many spikes, hoping that what he feared wouldn’t turn out to be true.

Please no. No, no, no--

A cold puff of air materialized before him as Samar held up her phone, selfie camera activated so he could see for himself the mess he’d somehow created.

In all the mayhem of making sure this day’s event had been won, somehow Aram had managed to freeze his hair into reddish spikes. The strawberry drink he’d used to color his snowman’s cheeks was mysteriously empty, the bottle having blown off toward the walkway as he pouted in reluctant acceptance.

“It’s definitely a new look,” Samar offered up, sliding her phone away as she reached to get a feel for his hair. “Not as bad as you might think.”

“Does my snowman win at least?” Aram questioned, hoping that at least it’d been worth it.

“Yes, Aram,” Samar admitted with a soft smile saved only for him. “Your snowman wins.”

A tie it was, then. Day three would be reserved for the ultimate tie-breaking game to see who would finally become the sole victor of their very own winter olympics.

The competition had been forgotten for most of their last day in Glenforest. Determination to accomplish all the activities they could in one day served as an excellent way to procrastinate determining the true victor.

It wasn’t until all the bags had been packed and the car had been readied for travels that they realized there was still one activity they hadn’t managed to try out: ice skating.

As Samar rolled out of the parking lot and Aram started to fiddle with the GPS, a few wrong turns were made until eventually they happened upon an ice rink, wonderfully bedazzled with fairy lights, filled with people of all ages laughing and falling, twirling and some more falling, scoring and...well, falling some more.

“You know, the day isn’t over quite yet.”

Aram looked up at her, excitement dancing in his eyes, knowing exactly what she was going to suggest.

“Whoever makes the most goals by the end of the night,” Aram began to declare while they all tied up their shoe laces in preparation for the rink.

“The hockey area seems full,” Samar pointed out, trying to get Agnes’ tiny feet into her own set of skates.

“We can make our own goals,” Aram offered back, tilting his head sideways, trying to see how they could make ice skating into a fair competition.

There were buckets scattered in the rink ready for the taking, but Aram figured that those would be better left for the kids who really needed it rather than their own grand competition.

Holding Agnes’ hand, Samar stood, contemplating along with him.

“How about whoever makes it from one end to the next first?” she offered.

As Agnes reached up for Aram’s hand, he looked down and smiled, content with the possibility.

That he could do.

It took them a little while to get acclimated. Samar and Aram, being used to the concept, made it around the ice rink a few times together with Agnes in between them who was more than happy to be pulled with them wherever they decided to go.

As time went on, however, Agnes started to get restless and they found her a stack of colorful buckets for her to move around with all on her own. They stood away from her for just a second, watching as she managed to go around and make friends with new children and independently explore, people making way for her to pass. Enough time elapsed to where they felt sure she knew what to do. They kept her well within eyesight, let her mill around on her own before deciding it was time to end this once and for all.

The more time they spent on the rink, the more people seemed to filter in. It had gotten to the point where they could hardly see the other side of the rink. The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel seemed almost nonexistent.

At their side stood Agnes looking as elegant as she always did, one small hand in the air, the other steady on her bucket.

“Weady?” she asked, preparing herself to announce the beginning of the end. “One..”

Samar and Aram both crouched into ready positions, the two of them separated by the crowd of people enjoying their own adventures, unfazed by the war that’d soon explode around them.

“Two!”

Each of them plotted their path. Sought out small breaks in the throng of people that never seemed to end. Planned strategies on how to avoid collisions with innocent passerbyers.

“Three!”

But all of their meticulous planning went out the window as soon as they surged forward, desperate to win their well-deserved gifts.

There was not a chance in the world Samar would let Aram keep his bike in the living room. She refused to have it looming in the corner, wheels tracking dirt on their floor, sticking out for them both to trip.

But even with that in mind as Aram swerved, nearly falling to avoid bulldozing down a sweet toddler, she couldn’t help but reach out to catch him.

She hated that damn bike, but she did love her soon to be husband.

While Aram was determined to win, he couldn’t help but want to stay alive. It was no secret that grace wasn’t his forte. He could skate; he was capable of doing it, but just like with most things, going too fast made him clumsy and he really didn’t want a repeat of the time he’d needed a cast to reset his wrist.

Determination was a powerful thing. It made focus unbreakable, it made everything else unimportant, made losing something akin to a sacrilegious crime.

In a race with one victor, there was always meant to be a loser, but what the pair hadn’t expected was for both of them to lose. For when they managed to get back around the rink, dashing forward, slipping around other people, they both slowed to a stop realizing Agnes was moving forward, her face scrunched with steely determination, pushing her basket right along as she slowly made her way back to the starting line.

“Hey, sweetie?” Aram carefully asked, slowly making his way along with Samar after her, wanting to see how on earth she’d managed to beat them both.

“I win!” she cheered excitedly. “I wiiin!”

She most certainly had. How exactly, they’d never be quite sure, but Agnes had made it around the rink faster than either of them had.

“What do you win, love?” asked Samar.

They really hadn’t planned for that specific outcome.

With a smirk matching one they so often saw her mother wear while interrogating the most devious of criminals, Agnes simply tutted forward with her stack of buckets, making her way out of the rink and back into the car.

To say she was excited would be an understatement. She was happy and restless and couldn’t go to sleep.

She was trapped in the car seat, uncomfortable yes, but she was going home enveloped with teddy bears and she’d had so much chocolate!

Chocolate was her favorite! Chocolate was the best. She had a great big lollipop that she got for mommy and she got a cuddly bear for daddy!

But her favorite was the big cuddly stuffed pig she got. It was just so cozy and so soft and so pretty.

It took her only a few moments into their hours long journey before she finally dozed off. Aram and Samar would say it was a sugar crash, but Agnes would always know that it was the power of Mr. Oinks that forced her to sleep. He was just too squishy and made for a nice pillow.

By the time they arrived back in DC it was late. Dusk had settled across the sky, the world bathed in a soft purple hue. All the colors the sun had proudly shone off before were replaced with the artificial coloring of street lamps and traffic lights. They were beautiful still, but in a different sort of way.

And unlike before, when Samar and Aram had shown up at the end of their trip, parking was easy to find. While Samar reached for all the bags Agnes had brought and later accumulated, Aram reached in to grab the little girl and rest her on his chest while the other bravely reached for the car seat hoping that it wouldn’t tumble out of his hand and break.

Luckily for them, there was a functioning elevator in Liz’s building letting them rest for a moment before having to begin to shuffle things back out again.

Samar had called Ressler earlier, wanting to make sure Liz recovered enough to make bringing Agnes home safe and with the confirmation that it was, Samar and Aram stood patiently, waiting for the door to open and Agnes to return home.

To their surprise it was Liz who answered with a smile on her face, reaching out for her daughter, inviting them both in along the way.

“We gotta get home,” Samar argued in response to the invitation to stay.

“Thank you for taking care of her,” Ressler answered back, his hand around Liz’s waist as they all contently watched Agnes sleep, a rare moment of peace for them all.

“It was our pleasure,” Aram answered, exhaustion weighing him down enough to want nothing more than to be back in his own bed with Samar beside him ready to drift into a restful sleep.

With final greetings being echoed out all one after another, Samar and Aram eventually made it out safely, managing the trip back to their own apartment well-enough, leaving their bags in the trunk, too tired to carry them back up stairs with them.

There was hardly anything left in them and it wasn’t a bad thing. All they wanted at the end of such a day was the same peace and tranquility they always found in each other. All three of them had had fun and it would be a trip they’d talk about for years to come, a tradition of sorts, at times with Agnes and at times without. Although their bet never officially had a winner, at the end of the day, they couldn’t be happier with the prize being the simple life they always managed to gift one another.

#the blacklist secret santa #mis cosas #ah katie i'm so sorry it's so late! 😫#hopefully you'll be able to read it tomorrow morning?#anyways i really do hope you like it! :D #fluff isn't what i usually write so i hope i did alright!#much love to you lovely! <3 #happy holidays

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tanstaaflaos · 4 years

Text

A rant from Trump supporters

The following is a cut and paste from someone I know on Facebook. In short, they don’t particularly like Trump but like liberals and progressive ideas even less. They justify their vote for Trump as giving a finger to liberals and the media, rather than supporting Trump. In short, a very selfish and short-sighted mentality that is unfortunately prevalent in today’s world. These folks will continue to vote against their own interests if it means they can “win” while sticking it to the liberals. Here’s the rant:

🛑 STOP! 🛑 EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS ⬇️ If you are a liberal who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why anyone would ever vote for him, let me fill you in. It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you. And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude, obnoxious, unpredictable, narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is YOU. How is that possible you might ask? Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country. From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders. From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being an unmitigated failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture. From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally, to telling us that our “tolerance” of lifestyles we don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough — no we must “celebrate” any lifestyle choice or gender option (forget science) you throw our direction or you think it’s fine to calls us homophobic or some other degrading slur you decide is okay to call us — ironically all while lecturing us on hate speech. While you gaslight us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or (horror of horrors) don a MAGA hat in public. So much for your “tolerance.” (See why we think you are just hypocrites??) We’re also not interested in the fact that you think you can unilaterally decide that 250 years of the right-to-bear-arms against a tyrannical or ineffective government should be abolished because you can’t get the violence in the cities you manage under control. That free-speech should be tossed out the window, and that those who disagree with your opinions are fair game for public harassment or doxing. That spoiled children with nose-rings and tats who still live off their parent’s dime should be allowed to destroy cities and peoples livelihoods without repercussions. That chaos, and lawlessness, and disrespect for authority should be the norm. This is your agenda. And you wonder why we find you more dangerous than Donald Trump? Your narrative is a constant drone of oppressor/oppressed race-baiting intended to divide the country in as many ways as you possibly can. You love to sell “victim-hood” to people of color every chance you get because it’s such an easy sell, compared to actually teaching people to stand on their own two feet and take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own communities and their own futures. But you won’t do that, you will never do that, because then you will lose control over people of color. They might actually start thinking for themselves, God forbid! This is why we will vote for Donald Trump. Not because he is the most charming character on the block. Not because he is the most polite politician to have ever graced the oval office. Not because he is the most palatable choice, or because we love his moral character or because the man never lies, but because we are sick to death of you and all of the destructive crap you are doing to this once beautiful and relatively safe country. Your ineffective and completely dysfunctional liberal “leadership”(?) has literally destroyed our most beautiful cities, our public education system, and done it’s damndest to rip faith out of people’s lives. However bad Donald Trump may be, and he is far from perfect, every day we look at you and feel that no matter what Donald Trump says or does there is no possible way he could be any worse for our country than you people are. We are sick to death of your stupid, destructive, ignorant, and intolerant behavior and beliefs — parading as “wokeness.” We are beyond sick of your hypocrisy and B.S. We are fed up with your disrespectful divisiveness and constant unrelenting harping and whining and complaining (while you live in the most privileged nation in the world), while making literally zero contributions of anything positive to our society. Your entire focus is on ripping things down, never ever building anything up. Think about that as there is something fundamentally very wrong in the psychology of people who choose destruction as their primary modus operandi. When Donald J Trump is reelected, don’t blame us, look in the mirror and blame yourselves. Because you are the ones that are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. You are the ones who have created this "monster" that you so despise, by your very actions. By your refusal to respect your fellow Americans, and the things that are important to us. You have made fun of the “fly-over states,” the people who “cling to their guns and religion,” the middle class factory workers and coal miners and underprivileged rural populations that you dismissively call “yahoos” and “deplorables.” You have mocked our faith and our religion. You have mocked our values and our patriotism. You have trampled our flag and insulted our veterans and treated our first responders with contempt and hatred. You have made environmentalism your religion, while trashing every city you have taken responsibility for. You scream from the rooftops about “global warming” and a “green new deal” while allowing tens of thousands of homeless people to cover your streets in literal sh!t and garbage and needles and plastic waste without doing a single thing to help them or solve the environmental crisis your failed social policies are creating. But we’re supposed to put YOU in charge of the environment while gutting our entire economy to institute this plan when you can’t even clean up a single city?? You complain — endlessly — yet have failed to solve a single social problem anywhere. In fact, all you have done is create more of them. We’ve had enough. We are tired of quietly sitting by and being the “silent” majority. So don’t be surprised when the day comes when we finally respond. And trust me it’s coming, sooner than you might think. And also trust me when I say it won’t be pretty. Get ready. When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because you and your “comrades” have chosen to trash the police, harass law-abiding citizens, and go on rampages destroying public property that we have all paid for and you have zero respect for. When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because we are sick of your complete and utter nonsense and destruction. How does it feel to know that half of this country finds you FAR more despicable than Donald J. Trump, the man you consider to be the anti-Christ? Let that sink in. We consider you to be more despicable, more dangerous, more stupid, and more narcissistic than Donald Trump. Maybe allow yourself a few seconds of self-reflection to let that sink in. This election isn’t about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden. This is about Donald Trump vs YOU. So if on the morning of November 4 (or more likely January 19, by the time the Supreme Court will weigh in on the mail-in ballot fiasco that we are headed towards), and Donald J. Trump is reelected? The only people you have to blame is the left-wing media drones and yourselves. You did this. Yep you. I copied and shared this and if you give a shit about your country then you should too.

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tcsauaskblog · 5 years

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13 Donald

#13 Who did this?

Gladstone decides wholeheartedly he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time the second Donald’s eyes lock on him and the only thought he has to show for it is a dispirited, ’Seriously, he needs to get a new hobby.’

Because Don crosses the school courtyard between them like it was nothing, Gladstone barely having time to blink before his cousin’s hands are holding his jawline in place, turning his head every which way and that to get a better look at the freshly purpled bruise now blossoming across his right eye and cheek.

“What happened?” Don growls, low and mean, but Gladstone barely even winces at his temper, because for all of Donald’s bark, there was true hurt and anger in his eyes. The kind that came entirely from a caring place, rooted every last inch in stupid protective love.

And Gladstone hated being the reason behind that pained expression etched across Donald’s face. It was making something hot and heavy swell in the back of Gladstone’s throat, a raw sort of compassion that Glad doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to receiving.

The kind of stubborn concern he had every intention of avoiding if Donald hadn’t been waiting for him by the flagpole long after the final school bell had rung like some kind of vigilant guard dog.

“Don’t get your flannel all worked up, it’s not as bad as it looks,” Gladstone lied because that was always easier when it came to Don’s mother-henning. He tried to swat his cousin’s hands away, but Don had an impossible iron barred grip on his chin, destroying any possible chance of escape Gladstone had, so he resorted to tapping his cousin’s arms absentmindedly while looking just about everywhere other than meeting the 14-year-old’s piercing gaze. “Where’s Dumb and Dumber? Thought y'all’d be halfway through a bag of bacon catching crawdads by now.”

“Apparently a group of squirrels got into Fethry’s lunch bag during recess and ate most of the crawdad bait, so Del and him went home to get some more and I stayed behind to let you know so you wouldn’t head down to the river by yourself and wonder where we were,” Don said all in one, short, tense breath.

Like he couldn’t be bothered to spend any more concentration on breathing as he glared down at Glad’s face, inspecting it like there was something hidden tattoed in the bruises. Gladstone ignores the flush feeling rising in his cheeks. Normally he’d be on cloud nine to have so much attention squarely focused on him.

But with Donald looking at him with all the whole world of worry that he didn’t know where to place, it was just making him sick.

“Awww, that’s really gross that you care so much,” Glad cooed in an annoyed tone, rocking back on his heels softy and doing his best not to let the action choke himself with Don’s current unwavering headlock.

“Well, thanks for letting me know. Better not keep them waiting, I bet Del the first one to catch three mudbugs gets shower privileges all week, and if you don’t think I’d sail you down the river in a New York heartbeat to win then you’re dead wrong. I always look good, but even I can admit that these curls take some time to maintain.”

And Gladstone would have used that as an excuse to wiggle himself free and stroll right around Donald, going on their merry way and ignoring the giant target bruising itself across Glad’s face. But of course, Donald’s grip on his jaw was ironclad, never wavering for a second, and there was a look on his eyes so fierce and fervid it was burning holes into Gladstone’s chest.

“Oh no, you don’t! Do even think about changing the subject,” Donald says sharply, concern and annoyance pouring into every word equally like a threaded braid and with a tone he was whole years too young to have. Taking on a persona like a frustrated guardian of at least ten years older than Gladstone, rather than an overly defensive cousin who was only a year older. “What happened?”

To be fair to Gladstone, the last thing he wanted was to fight Don. That’s why Gladstone had waited almost 30 minutes after the final bell had rung before leaving the bathroom.

Because he was hoping to miss his cousins altogether. Hoping that they would head to the river without him and he’d have some time to put some distance between the school and him so that, either way, even if Don did want to fight him about this, there was nothing he could have done.

And really, why should Don do anything?

Gladstone’s 13 and Donald’s 14 and honestly, even that shouldn’t be any reason for Donald to act like he’s suddenly Gladstone’s parent. They’re the same height for Pete’s sake! Gladstone can do anything Donald can do and there’s never a reason for Donald to treat him like some brat who can’t take care of himself, and yet here he is, acting like Gladstone’s bodyguard and it makes him want to scream in frustration.

“Relax, stupid, it was just P.E accident. I got hit in the face with a stray volleyball during one of the free games. I’m lucky I didn’t get a bloody beak.” He passive-aggressively shrugged, waving a dismissive hand away shamelessly. Hoping that was enough of an answer to skeet by. “Now will you let go already? Take a picture, it’ll last longer, but my face isn’t going to look any prettier no matter how hard you scowl.”

The pointless jab only made him scowl harder, but Donald eased his grip regardless. “You? The luckiest duck in the world. A P.E accident?” Donald says slowly, like the wheels are spinning in his head but there’s ice on the road so he can’t get enough traction to go anywhere. He let’s go of Gladstone reluctantly, but Don keeps his hands out in front of him, like he’s afraid Gladstone might bolt if he doesn’t keep his guard up and ready to grab him at any moment.

Gladstone has half a mind too, but instead, he just huffs impatiently and straitens out the collar of his shirt and readjusts his backpack on his shoulders.

“Hey, I’m not any happier about it than you, but I guess even I can get faulty luck sometimes. What can I say, it happens to the best of us.” And Gladstone’s carefully not meetings Donald’s eyes again, because he knows that even the slightest hesitance will give something away, and knowing Donald, the last thing he needs is to give his cousin some sort of stupid incentive to go charging off on his behalf to a battle he doesn’t want him to fight.

Honestly, after that day he’s had, all Gladstone wants is to head home. “That’s why I didn’t meet you guys by the lockers after school, I was in the nurses’ office getting checked out. Looks like it isn’t too bad though, no bleeding under the skin or anything, so we’re all good to hit the road.”

And he shoots Don an easy smile like it was his day job, and wishes with all his luck that it’s compelling enough to make Don drop the subject altogether when he passes around him easily, tapping him on the shoulder comfortably with all the confidence and smugness of someone who doesn’t have anything to hide.

It should have been easy. He’s hid all the bruises up until now without any suspicion. He isn’t about to let one little black eye blow his best-kept secret in one day.

Gladstone rests his hands behind his head and waits till he reaches the school gates before asking, “Hey, do you think if I do a convincing enough puppy dog pout, I can get Feth on my side to help me win the bet against Del? She really takes too long of showers in the morning and I think it’s time her reign of terror over the bathroom is over.”

He’s hoping for a laugh. Or at the very least a snide remark, but it’s only when he gets no response from Donald that he checks over his shoulder, to find that his cousin isn’t right behind him, but still at the other end of the courtyard, staring at him with a furrowed brow that made storm clouds look tame.

And then, before Gladstone could rightly ask him what he was waiting for, Donald dropped his backpack with a resounding thud that wholely echoed through Gladstone’s core, before marching back towards the entrance of the school with a conviction that would take a tank to tear down.

Gladstone feels like he swallowed ice as he watches Don’s back all for a mere 4 seconds before bolting after him, scooping Donald’s backpack up in the process, and just managing to reach the front door of the school right after it had slammed shut behind his hot heeled cousin.

“Do-ouufff-Don! Wait!” Gladstone calls, just barely managing to catch up with Donald as he rounded the first hallway. “What are you- where are you going?”

“Where are they?” Donald growls through clenched teeth, not meeting Gladstone’s eyes but slowing his tempo just a bit so that Gladstone could keep up easier.

It was a good thing he did, because at his cousin’s words, Gladstone almost tripped over himself, and Donald barely managed to catch him by his upper arm and help pull him back up to his feet. This stopped them fully, which gave Gladstone a chance to catch the breath Donald just stolen from him.

“They? They who?” Gladstone asked slowly, trying not to let the panic in his voice show as he anchored Donald’s backpack to his chest to steady his breathing. “What are you talking about?”

“Shut up Gladstone, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Donald snapped, pointing a finger at Gladstone’s swelling black eye. And Gladstone did his best not to back into the lockers behind him in surprise. “The people who did that to you.”

And Gladstone felt his whole body go frigid. Because shit. Shit! This is exactly what he didn’t want to happen.

“W-wait Don. You have it wrong, this was an accident, remem-?” Gladstone tried to reassure, but it must have been evident in the panic in his voice because Donald was already rounding him with those electric eyes sparking sharp and bright.

“Bullshit Glad, don’t lie to me! I’m not stupid! I know how your luck works.” He barked, and he was getting that kind of mad that turned his fists taut with how tight he was folding them.

Fethry once disclosed to Gladstone a forgotten amount of years ago, that he was always afraid when Donald made his hands go that tight, because it usually meant that he was about to hit something really, really hard. And that whenever Donald did that, his fists always came back bruised and bloodied red.

It was the reason why Fethry usually held Don’s hands whenever it looked like he was about to get mad at something petty or about to get into a fight. It was a defense mechanism, one only a 10-year-old Fethry, with all the love and admiration and whole bleeding affection for his only family, could come up with, and it worked.

Don couldn’t rightly hurt himself, if he was already holding onto and protecting something else.

“Accidents don’t just happen to you. You don’t just get hurt.”

Something about his words brought something mean and biting clawing to the front of Gladstone’s heart, and he frowned as he took a step forward towards his cousin. That spitfire fight that Donald always seemed to bring out in him coming back to life. “Oh please, Don. I’m lucky, not invincible. I get hurt all the time! Just last week I got hit in the head by that apple!”

Donald rolled his eyes hard enough to hurt something. “Yeah, exactly! Because I threw it at you! It wasn’t an accident!”

“Yeah? And? What’s your point? I still got hurt!” Gladstone argued, squeezing Donald’s backpack tighter, like it was the only lifeline he had at the moment. Because really, what was his cousin’s point? What was the point to any of this? “Honestly, I don’t get why you’re so mad right now. It’s not a big deal, I’m fine, ok? It’s just a black eye-”

“STOP TRYING TO PUSH ME AWAY, YOU PRICK!”

Gladstone will never know why the hallways were so empty and quiet that sunny afternoon, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s grateful that no one was around to see the expression his cousin was making.

Painful. That’s really the only way Gladstone could describe it. Like something was breaking and tearing Donald from the inside out, and he was staring at Gladstone with a burning fury because love looked like that sometimes.

And Gladstone’s hit with a sudden wave of nausea, because for all the sneaking around and hiding the bruises and scars was supposed to keep his family away and protect them, it just ended up hurting them in a way he never meant it to.

“You’re not fi- don’t pretend to be-,” Donald chokes, and he isn’t crying, but his eyes are shiny and he rubs at them aggressively with the back of his palm anyway and takes a shaky breath. “Your luck only protects you from things it has control over. Supernatural or otherwise, be it weather, or traffic or even sports, your luck has always pulled through, with you being on top.”

And then those tight fists are on Gladstone’s shoulders, rubbing a fond hand against the back of Glad’s neck, and Gladstone doesn’t care to wonder if it’s to steady himself or the shaking coursing through Gladstone’s body. “But I’ve been around you long enough to know that your luck doesn’t control people, Glad. And it can’t protect you against their emotions, good or bad. So when you get hurt, it’s only because people hurt you.”

“And don’t you dare,” Donald says, tracking a finger softly over the bruised skin under Gladstone’s eye and glaring at him with a raw passion that hurts, and Gladstone ignores the stinging cornering at the edges of his eyes. “Try to tell me that that isn’t a big fucking deal. That you aren’t worth getting mad about.”

Later on that night, he’ll definitely be glad that there wasn’t anyone in that hallway to see the tears pour out of his swollen eyes when Donald pulls him into a rough, awkward hug. But at that moment, he can’t think to do anything other than drop Donalds backpack and hug his cousin just as tightly and with every last inch of his trembling strength.

After a few moments, they pull away, and both are rubbing their eyes without mercy, so when they both look up at each other with red, puffy eyes, they do little more than try to stifle tired laughter that echoes through the hallways. And Gladstone thinks it’s the best sound he’s ever heard.

“God, what were you even thinking,” Donald sighs, rubbing a rueful hand through his hair in spent exasperation.

“I was thinking I don’t need my older cousins coming to bail me out every time I get into a stupid scrap just because he feels obligated to,” Gladstone quips back without shame as he bends down to retrieve Donald’s backpack so that he doesn’t have to look at his cousin. “I’m not your problem, ya know.”

“The hell you aren’t,” Donald shot back without cruelty, and staring at him with those deep blue eyes that Gladstone could just drown in. “And, Jesus Glad, you’re not an obligation either. You’re family. You’re all I got.”

And with pure ernesty in his voice, he takes the backpack from Gladstone’s hands when he says, “You and Della and Fethry, you’re all my problems. Della probably being the biggest pain in my ass, but for better or for worse, you’re stuck with me. And I know I can be overbearing and protective but it’s just cause… cause I care. And worry. And you guys are idiots so you stress me out constantly. But, until the day you die, you guys are my one and only problems. Period. And I wouldn’t have it any other way for even a second. Got it?”

And he said it with so much honest confidence and truth, not giving Gladstone even a square inch of wiggle space to argue with him, that Gladstone had no choice but to believe him. So he didn’t argue, and just gave a soft nod and a smile that erased whole years of worry off of Donald’s face when he said, “Got it.”

Donald smiled back as he threw his backpack over his shoulder, but there was still a tense sort of air about him that Gladstone couldn’t very well erase no matter how much he wanted too.

“You’re not still thinking of fighting them, are you?” Gladstone asked, and Donald looked up at the bruise on his face like the answer to the meaning of life was tattoed right there and Don was doing everything in his power to decipher it.

Just watching Donald’s hands start to clench up again made Gladstone’s stomach do Olympic worthy backflips in worry, so he didn’t hesitate to leap forward and put an easy hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Look, I promise you, it’s really not as bad as it looks ok? Doesn’t even hurt. Bit of ice and some aspirin and I’ll be right as rain by tomorrow. Plus, I don’t even think the dudes are here anymore, and Del and Feth are probably wondering where we are by now. So please, for now, can we just go home?”

Donald has a soft spot for Fethry roughly the size of Jupiter, that kid could convince Don to commit arson with him and all he had to do was give him a flash of those honey colored puppy dogs and Don was a hook-line-and-sinker in seconds.

Gladstone knew that was just par for the course when you’re the baby brat of the family. But never in all his 13 years did he wish he could hone in his younger cousins powers more than he could at that moment as he stared at his cousin with wide, pleading eyes and just please, please Donnie. Let’s just go home.

And for a second, Gladstone didn’t think it would work, but after waffling in his own thoughts for what felt like a handful of minutes, Donald sighed reluctantly. He ran a hair through his fluffy hair, making it look messy and haphazard, and gave Gladstone and equally haphazard, incredulous look. “Fine, on two conditions.”

Gladstone hated conditions, but if it meant avoiding another fist fight, then he could work with the circumstances. “Shoot, coyboy,” he answered.

“First, you tell me about how you got this black eye. I wanna know everything that happened,” Donald listed, which in retrospect, seemed fair and easy to do. So when Gladstone nodded his understanding, Donald continued with, “And two, you stop keeping things kinda things from me. I don’t care if you get into fights, but I at least want to know about them when you do. I’m tired of you trying to sneak around me like I don’t notice you coming home with bruises and limps.”

And that, that kind of sent Gladstone’s whole world on a dizzying spin, and he was thankful that Donald ignored the way his hand instinctually tightened its grip on his arm. Because he didn’t know that Don knew. He thought he had kept it hidden so well. And if Don knew, did Della or Gus or Gran. Did Fethry know?

In his mind, there never seemed like a good time to bring up the fact that older kids just loved making him their number one punching dummy. It didn’t help that he was lucky, so he was a natural target for envy and hatred and snide comment and looks thrown his way.

It also didn’t help that he was a bit (or a lot) of a smart mouth and that usually ended up getting him in more trouble than he was worth. And sure, Donald and Della were popular, and it wasn’t a secret that they were cousins, so Gladstone was sure if he made a little noise about his situation, the bullies wouldn’t even stand a chance against them, and Gladstone would probably never be bothered again.

But Gladstone didn’t want to be saved by his cousins. The same way he would be saved by his luck. This was his problem. He was his own problem, and dammit if he couldn’t even handle this by himself.

So when the bruises started piling up, Gladstone just made every excuse in the book he could come up with to avoid attention from his cousins. Because the last thing he needed was for them to come save him. The last thing he need was for him to just be a nuisance, and bother, and worry, and not be able to do anything by himself.

But boy, even he couldn’t do that right, because Don had seen right through him like he always did and something close to white-tipped fear clenched around his heart when he yelped, “Ok, fine, but we can’t tell Gran of Della, Ok? Please. I’ll talk to you, but I don’t want to worry them about this. Not yet, not until I… Until I figure this out. Please, Don?”

Something soft and feather-light eased at the corners of Don’s eyes, and he rubbed a callous but endearing hand roughly through Gladstone’s hair before slinging an arm around him and leading him towards the school exit.

“You’re a selfish brat, you know that?” He says, and he isn’t meeting Gladstone’s eyes, but he’s smiling with a fond, crooked grin that’s full of all the warmth of the sun when he adds, “as long as we figure it out together, that’s fine with me.”

And Gladstone can’t help but laugh when he snakes an arm comfortably around Don’s side like it’s second nature as he soaks in this rare, tender moment he finds himself in.

That he’s actually in agreement with his older cousin.

Course, he’d never tell Donald that. And he hopes his cousin won’t mind that that’s one of the only things he’ll keep to himself from now on.

#tcs #tcs prompt #tcs fic #donald duck #Gladstone Gander #ouuuuuuuhhhhhh look at me i finally fishish a prompt WHOO HOO #HECK YEAH #RIGHT IN TIME TOO CAUSE LOOK I HAVE WORK FOR THE NEXT MILLION YEARS NOW AND WON'T BE ONLINE FOR AWHILE #SO sorry for the next 3 days this blog will be dead cause I'm gonnabe dead from work #but then I'll have a break and then!!! ABNER FIC!!!#Fuck yeah #love me some good angst #like a week later #donald catches these assholes being assholes to gladstone in the cafeteria #except fethry is with gladstone and gladstone is trying to hurry fethry along so they can leave cause he knows whats coming #but feth doesn't understand why these guys are being so mean to glad when glads like the best person in the world?????#so he's just like hey guys can you maybe no be mean to my dude here and maybe say sorry???#but all these jerks see is some 5 grader talking to them and so they kinda push him aside #kinda bop him on the shoulder and fethry hits the floor #and then dons on his feet and he sees red and it's all over for those bitches

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highqueenjude · 5 years

Text

THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS + PROLOGUE OF TQON

Buckle up buttercups. Everything is under the cut, but you can read it here.

PROLOGUE

The Royal Astrologer, Baphen, squinted at the star chart and tried not to flinch when it seemed sure the youngest prince of Elfhame was about to be dropped on his royal head.

A week after Prince Cardan’s birth and he was finally being presented to the High King. The previous five heirs had been seen immediately, still squalling in ruddy newness, but Lady Asha had barred the High King from visiting before she felt herself suitably restored from childbed.

The baby was thin and wizened, silent, staring at Eldred with black eyes. He lashed his little whiplike tail with such force that his swaddle threatened to come apart. Lady Asha seemed unsure how to cradle him. Indeed, she held him as though she hoped someone might take the burden from her very soon.

“Tell us of his future,” the High King prompted. Only a few Folk were gathered to witness the presentation of the new prince—the mortal Val Moren, who was both Court Poet and Seneschal, and two members of the Living Council: Randalin, the Minister of Keys, and Baphen. In the empty hall, the High King’s words echoed.

Baphen hesitated, but he could do nothing save answer. Eldred had been favored with five children before Prince Cardan, shocking fecundity among the Folk, with their thin blood and few births. The stars had spoken of each little prince’s and princess’s fated accomplishments in poetry and song, in politics, in virtue, and even in vice. But this time what he’d seen in the stars had been entirely different. “Prince Cardan will be your last born child,” the Royal Astrologer said. “He will be the destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.”

Lady Asha sucked in a sharp breath. For the first time, she drew the child protectively closer. He squirmed in her arms. “I wonder who has influenced your interpretation of the signs. Perhaps Princess Elowyn had a hand in it. Or Prince Dain.”

Maybe it would be better if she dropped him, Baphen thought unkindly.

High King Eldred ran a hand over his chin. “Can nothing be done to stop this?”

It was a mixed blessing to have the stars supply Baphen with so many riddles and so few answers. He often wished he saw things more clearly, but not this time. He bowed his head, so he had an excuse not to meet the High King’s gaze. “Only out of his spilled blood can a great ruler rise, but not before what I have told you comes to pass.”

Eldred turned to Lady Asha and her child, the harbinger of ill luck. The baby was as silent as a stone, not crying or cooing, tail still lashing.

“Take the boy away,” the High King said. “Rear him as you see fit.”

Lady Asha did not flinch. “I will rear him as befits his station. He is a prince, after all, and your son.”

There was a brittleness in her tone, and Baphen was uncomfortably reminded that some prophecies are fulfilled by the very actions meant to prevent them.

For a moment, everyone stood silent. Then Eldred nodded to Val Moren, who left the dais and returned holding a slim wooden box with a pattern of roots traced over the lid.

“A gift,” said the High King, “in recognition of your contribution to the Greenbriar line.”

Val Moren opened the box, revealing an exquisite necklace of heavy emeralds. Eldred lifted them and placed them over Lady Asha’s head. He touched her cheek with the back of one hand.

“Your generosity is great, my lord,” she said, somewhat mollified. The baby clutched a stone in his little fist, staring up at his father with fathomless eyes.

“Go now and rest,” said Eldred, his voice softer. This time, she yielded.

Lady Asha departed with her head high, her grip on the child tighter. Baphen felt a shiver of some premonition that had nothing to do with stars.

High King Eldred did not visit Lady Asha again, nor did he call her to him. Perhaps he ought to have put his dissatisfaction aside and cultivated his son. But looking upon Prince Cardan was like looking into an uncertain future, and so he avoided it.

Lady Asha, as the mother of a prince, found herself much in demand with the Court, if not the High King. Given to whimsy and frivolity, she wished to return to the merry life of a courtier. She couldn’t attend balls with an infant in tow, so she found a cat whose kittens were stillborn to act as his wet nurse.

That arrangement lasted until Prince Cardan was able to crawl. By then, the cat was heavy with a new litter and he’d begun to pull at her tail. She fled to the stables, abandoning him, too.

And so he grew up in the palace, cherished by no one and checked by no one. Who would dare stop a prince from stealing food from the grand tables and eating beneath them, devouring what he’d taken in savage bites? His sisters and brothers only laughed, playing with him as they would with a puppy.

He wore clothes only occasionally, donning garlands of flowers instead and throwing stones when the guard tried to come near him. None but his mother exerted any hold over him, and she seldom tried to curb his excesses. Just the opposite.

“You’re a prince,” she told him firmly when he would shy away from a conflict or fail to make a demand. “Everything is yours. You have only to take it.” And sometimes: “I want that. Get it for me.”

It is said that faerie children are not like mortal children. They need little in the way of love. They need not be tucked in at night, but may sleep just as happily in a cold corner of a ballroom, curled up in a tablecloth. They need not be fed; they are just as happy lapping up dew and skimming bread and cream from the kitchens. They need not be comforted, since they seldom weep.

But if faerie children need little love, faerie princes require some counsel.

Without it, when Cardan’s elder brother suggested shooting a walnut off the head of a mortal, Cardan had not the wisdom to demur. His habits were impulsive; his manner, imperious.

“Keen marksmanship so impresses our father,” Prince Dain said with a small, teasing smile. “But perhaps it is too difficult. Better not to make the attempt than to fail.”

For Cardan, who could not attract his father’s good notice and desperately wanted it, the prospect was tempting. He didn’t ask himself who the mortal was or how he had come to be at the Court. Cardan certainly never suspected that the man was beloved of Val Moren and that the seneschal would go mad with grief if the man died.

Leaving Dain free to assume a more prominent position at the High King’s right hand.

“Too difficult? Better not to make the attempt? Those are the words of a coward,” Cardan said, full of childish bravado. In truth, his brother intimidated him, but that only made him more scornful.

Prince Dain smiled. “Let us exchange arrows at least. Then if you miss, you can say that it was my arrow that went awry.”

Prince Cardan ought to have been suspicious of this kindness, but he’d had little enough of the real thing to tell true from false.

Instead, he notched Dain’s arrow and pulled back the bowstring, aiming for the walnut. A sinking feeling came over him. He might not shoot true. He might hurt the man. But on the heels of that, angry glee sparked at the idea of doing something so horrifying that his father could no longer ignore him. If he could not get the High King’s attention for something good, then perhaps he could get it for something really, really bad.

Cardan’s hand wobbled.

The mortal’s liquid eyes watched him in frozen fear. Enchanted, of course. No one would stand like that willingly. That was what decided him.

Cardan forced a laugh as he relaxed the bowstring, letting the arrow fall out of the notch. “I simply will not shoot under these conditions,” he said, feeling ridiculous at having backed down. “The wind is coming from the north and mussing my hair. It’s getting all in my eyes.”

But Prince Dain raised his bow and loosed the arrow Cardan had exchanged with him. It struck the mortal through the throat. He dropped with almost no sound, eyes still open, now staring at nothing.

It happened so fast that Cardan didn’t cry out, didn’t react. He just stared at his brother, slow, terrible understanding crashing over him.

“Ah,” said Prince Dain with a satisfied smile. “A shame. It seems your arrow went awry. Perhaps you can complain to our father about that hair in your eyes.”

After, though he protested, no one would hear Prince Cardan’s side. Dain saw to that. He told the story of the youngest prince’s recklessness, his arrogance, his arrow. The High King would not even allow Cardan an audience.

Despite Val Moren’s pleas for execution, Cardan was punished for the mortal’s death in the way that princes are punished. The High King had Lady Asha locked away in the Tower of Forgetting in Cardan’s stead—something Eldred was relieved to have a reason to do, since he found her both tiresome and troublesome. Care of Prince Cardan was given over to Balekin, the eldest of the siblings, the cruelest, and the only one willing to take him.

And so was Prince Cardan’s reputation made. He had little to do but further it.

CHAPTER ONE

I, Jude Duarte, High Queen of Elfhame in exile, spend most mornings dozing in front of daytime television, watching cooking competitions and cartoons and reruns of a show where people have to complete a gauntlet by stabbing boxes and bottles and cutting through a whole fish. In the afternoons, if he lets me, I train my brother, Oak. Nights, I run errands for the local faeries.

I keep my head down, as I probably should have done in the first place. And if I curse Cardan, then I have to curse myself, too, for being the fool who walked right into the trap he set for me.

As a child, I imagined returning to the mortal world. Taryn and Vivi and I would rehash what it was like there, recalling the scents of fresh-cut grass and gasoline, reminiscing over playing tag through neighborhood backyards and bobbing in the bleachy chlorine of summer pools. I dreamed of iced tea, reconstituted from powder, and orange juice Popsicles. I longed for mundane things: the smell of hot asphalt, the swag of wires between streetlights, the jingles of commercials.

Now, stuck in the mortal world for good, I miss Faerieland with a raw intensity. It’s magic I long for, magic I miss. Maybe I even miss being afraid. I feel as though I am dreaming away my days, restless, never fully awake.

I drum my fingers on the painted wood of a picnic table. It’s early autumn, already cool in Maine. Late-afternoon sun dapples the grass outside the apartment complex as I watch Oak play with other children in the strip of woods between here and the highway. They are kids from the building, some younger and some older than his eight years, all dropped off by the same yellow school bus. They play a totally disorganized game of war, chasing one another with sticks. They hit as children do, aiming for the weapon instead of the opponent, screaming with laughter when a stick breaks. I can’t help noticing they are learning all the wrong lessons about swordsmanship.

Still, I watch. And so I notice when Oak uses glamour.

He does it unconsciously, I think. He’s sneaking toward the other kids, but then there’s a stretch with no easy cover. He keeps on toward them, and even though he’s in plain sight, they don’t seem to notice.

Closer and closer, with the kids still not looking his way. And when he jumps at them, stick swinging, they shriek with wholly authentic surprise.

He was invisible. He was using glamour. And I, geased against being deceived by it, didn’t notice until it was done. The other children just think he was clever or lucky. Only I know how careless it was.

I wait until the children head to their apartments. They peel off, one by one, until only my brother remains. I don’t need magic, even with leaves underfoot, to steal up on him. With a swift motion, I wrap my arm around Oak’s neck, pressing it against his throat hard enough to give him a good scare. He bucks back, nearly hitting me in the chin with his horns. Not bad. He attempts to break my hold, but it’s half-hearted. He can tell it’s me, and I don’t frighten him.

I tighten my hold. If I press my arm against his throat long enough, he’ll black out.

He tries to speak, and then he must start to feel the effects of not getting enough air. He forgets all his training and goes wild, lashing out, scratching my arms and kicking against my legs. Making me feel awful. I wanted him to be a little afraid, scared enough to fight back, not terrified.

I let go, and he stumbles away, panting, eyes wet with tears. “What was that for?” he wants to know. He’s glaring at me accusingly.

“To remind you that fighting isn’t a game,” I say, feeling as though I am speaking with Madoc’s voice instead of my own. I don’t want Oak to grow up as I did, angry and afraid. But I want him to survive, and Madoc did teach me how to do that.

How am I supposed to figure out how to give him the right stuff when all I know is my own messed-up childhood? Maybe the parts of it I value are the wrong parts. “What are you going to do against an opponent who wants to actually hurt you?”

“I don’t care,” Oak says. “I don’t care about that stuff. I don’t want to be king. I never want to be king.”

For a moment, I just stare at him. I want to believe he’s lying, but, of course, he can’t lie.

“We don’t always have a choice in our fate,” I say.

“You rule if you care so much!” he says. “I won’t do it. Never.”

I have to grind my teeth together to keep from screaming. “I can’t, as you know, because I’m in exile,” I remind him.

He stamps a hoofed foot. “So am I! And the only reason I’m in the human world is because Dad wants the stupid crown and you want it and everyone wants it. Well, I don’t. It’s cursed.”

“All power is cursed,” I say. “The most terrible among us will do anything to get it, and those who’d wield power best don’t want it thrust upon them. But that doesn’t mean they can avoid their responsibilities forever.”

“You can’t make me be High King,” he says, and wheeling away from me, breaks into a run in the direction of the apartment building.

I sit down on the cold ground, knowing that I screwed up the conversation completely. Knowing that Madoc trained Taryn and me better than I am training Oak. Knowing that I was arrogant and foolish to think I could control Cardan.

Knowing that in the great game of princes and queens, I have been swept off the board.

Inside the apartment, Oak’s door is shut firmly against me. Vivienne, my faerie sister, stands at the kitchen counter, grinning into her phone.

When she notices me, she grabs my hands and spins me around and around until I’m dizzy.

“Heather loves me again,” she says, wild laughter in her voice.

Heather was Vivi’s human girlfriend. She’d put up with Vivi’s evasions about her past. She even put up with Oak’s coming to live with them in this apartment. But when she found out that Vivi wasn’t human and that Vivi had used magic on her, she dumped her and moved out. I hate to say this, because I want my sister to be happy—and Heather did make her happy—but it was a richly deserved dumping.

I pull away to blink at her in confusion. “What?”

Vivi waves her phone at me. “She texted me. She wants to come back. Everything is going to be like it was before.”

Leaves don’t grow back onto a vine, cracked walnuts don’t fit back into their shells, and girlfriends who’ve been enchanted don’t just wake up and decide to let things slide with their terrifying exes.

“Let me see that,” I say, reaching for Vivi’s phone. She allows me to take it.

I scroll back through the texts, most of them coming from Vivi and full of apologies, ill-considered promises, and increasingly desperate pleas. On Heather’s end, there was a lot of silence and a few messages that read “I need more time to think.”

Then this:

I want to forget Faerie. I want to forget that you and Oak aren’t human. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. If I asked you to make me forget, would you?

I stare at the words for a long moment, drawing in a breath.

I can see why Vivi has read the message the way she has, but I think she’s read it wrong. If I’d written that, the last thing I would want was for Vivi to agree. I’d want her to help me see that even if Vivi and Oak weren’t human, they still loved me. I would want Vivi to insist that pretending away Faerie wouldn’t help. I would want Vivi to tell me that she’d made a mistake and that she’d never ever make that mistake again, no matter what.

If I’d sent that text, it would be a test.

I hand the phone back to Vivi. “What are you going to tell her?”

“That I’ll do whatever she wants,” my sister says, an extravagant vow for a mortal and a downright terrifying vow from someone who would be bound to that promise.

“Maybe she doesn’t know what she wants,” I say. I am disloyal no matter what I do. Vivi is my sister, but Heather is human. I owe them both something.

And right now, Vivi isn’t interested in supposing anything but that all will be well. She gives me a big, relaxed smile and picks up an apple from the fruit bowl, tossing it in the air. “What’s wrong with Oak? He stomped in here and slammed his door. Is he going to be this dramatic when he’s a teenager?”

“He doesn’t want to be High King,” I tell her.

“Oh. That.” Vivi glances toward his bedroom. “I thought it was something important.”

CHAPTER TWO

Tonight, it’s a relief to head to work.

Faeries in the mortal world have a different set of needs than those in Elfhame. The solitary fey, surviving at the edges of Faerie, do not concern themselves with revels and courtly machinations.

And it turns out they have plenty of odd jobs for someone like me, a mortal who knows their ways and isn’t worried about getting into the occasional fight. I met Bryern a week after I left Elfhame. He turned up outside the apartment complex, a black-furred, goat-headed, and goat-hooved faerie with bowler hat in hand, saying he was an old friend of the Roach.

“I understand you’re in a unique position,” he said, looking at me with those strange golden goat eyes, their black pupils a horizontal rectangle. “Presumed dead, is that correct? No Social Security number. No mortal schooling.”

“And looking for work,” I told him, figuring out where this was going. “Off the books.”

“You cannot get any further off the books than with me,” he assured me, placing one clawed hand over his heart. “Allow me to introduce myself. Bryern. A phooka, if you hadn’t already guessed.”

He didn’t ask for oaths of loyalty or any promises whatsoever. I could work as much as I wanted, and the pay was commensurate with my daring.

Tonight, I meet him by the water. I glide up on the secondhand bike I acquired. The back tire deflates quickly, but I got it cheap. It works pretty well to get me around. Bryern is dressed with typical fussiness: His hat has a band decorated with a few brightly colored duck feathers, and he’s paired that with a tweed jacket. As I come closer, he withdraws a watch from one pocket and peers at it with an exaggerated frown.

“Oh, am I late?” I ask. “Sorry. I’m used to telling time by the slant of moonlight.”

He gives me an annoyed look. “Just because you’ve lived in the High Court, you need not put on airs. You’re no one special now.”

I am the High Queen of Elfhame. The thought comes to me unbidden, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying those ridiculous words. He’s right: I am no one special now.

“What’s the job?” I ask instead, as blandly as I can.

“One of the Folk in Old Port has been eating locals. I have a contract for someone willing to extract a promise from her to cease.”

I find it hard to believe that he cares what happens to humans—or cares enough to pay for me to do something about it. “Local mortals?”

He shakes his head. “No. No. Us Folk.” Then he seems to remember to whom he’s speaking and looks a little flustered. I try not to take his slip as a compliment.

Killing and eating the Folk? Nothing about that signals an easy job. “Who’s hiring?”

He gives a nervous laugh. “No one who wants their name associated with the deed. But they’re willing to remunerate you for making it happen.”

One of the reasons Bryern likes hiring me is that I can get close to the Folk. They don’t expect a mortal to be the one to pickpocket them or to stick a knife in their side. They don’t expect a mortal to be unaffected by glamour or to know their customs or to see through their terrible bargains.

Another reason is, I need the money enough that I’m willing to take jobs like this—ones that I know right from the start are going to suck.

“Address?” I ask, and he slips me a folded paper.

I open it and glance down. “This better pay well.”

“Five hundred American dollars,” he says, as though this is an extravagant sum.

Our rent is twelve hundred a month, not to mention groceries and utilities. With Heather gone, my half is about eight hundred. And I’d like to get a new tire for my bike. Five hundred isn’t nearly enough, not for something like this.

“Fifteen hundred,” I counter, raising my eyebrows. “In cash, verifiable by iron. Half up front, and if I don’t come back, you pay Vivienne the other half as a gift to my bereaved family.”

Bryern presses his lips together, but I know he’s got the money. He just doesn’t want to pay me enough that I can get choosy about jobs.

“A thousand,” he compromises, reaching into a pocket inside his tweed jacket and withdrawing a stack of bills banded by a silver clip. “And look, I have half on me right now. You can take it.”

“Fine,” I agree. It’s a decent paycheck for what could be a single night’s work if I’m lucky.

He hands over the cash with a sniff. “Let me know when you’ve completed the task.”

There’s an iron fob on my key chain. I run it ostentatiously over the edges of the money to make sure it’s real. It never hurts to remind Bryern that I’m careful.

“Plus fifty bucks for expenses,” I say on impulse.

He frowns. After a moment, he reaches into a different part of his jacket and hands over the extra cash. “Just take care of this,” he says. The lack of quibbling is a bad sign. Maybe I should have asked more questions before I agreed to this job. I definitely should have negotiated harder.

Too late now.

I get back on my bike and, with a farewell wave to Bryern, kick off toward downtown. Once upon a time, I imagined myself as a knight astride a steed, glorying in contests of skill and honor. Too bad my talents turned out to lie in another direction entirely.

I suppose I am a skilled enough murderer of Folk, but what I really excel at is getting under their skin. Hopefully that will serve me well in persuading a cannibal faerie to do what I want.

Before I go to confront her, I decide to ask around.

First, I see a hob named Magpie, who lives in a tree in Deering Oaks Park. He says he’s heard she’s a redcap, which isn’t great news, but at least since I grew up with one, I am well informed about their nature. Redcaps crave violence and blood and murder—in fact, they get a little twitchy when there’s none to be had for stretches of time. And if they’re traditionalists, they have a cap they dip in the blood of their vanquished enemies, supposedly to grant them some stolen vitality of the slain.

I ask for a name, but Magpie doesn’t know. He sends me to Ladhar, a clurichaun who slinks around the back of bars, sucking froth from the tops of beers when no one is looking and swindling mortals in games of chance.

“You didn’t know?” Ladhar says, lowering his voice. “Grima Mog.”

I almost accuse him of lying, despite knowing better. Then I have a brief, intense fantasy of tracking down Bryern and making him choke on every dollar he gave me. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Grima Mog is the fearsome general of the Court of Teeth in the North. The same Court that the Roach and the Bomb escaped from. When I was little, Madoc read to me at bedtime from the memoirs of her battle strategies. Just thinking about facing her, I break out in a cold sweat.

I can’t fight her. And I don’t think I have a good chance of tricking her, either.

“Given the boot, I hear,” Ladhar says. “Maybe she ate someone Lady Nore liked.”

I don’t have to do this job, I remind myself. I am no longer part of Dain’s Court of Shadows. I am no longer trying to rule from behind High King Cardan’s throne. I don’t need to take big risks.

But I am curious.

Combine that with an abundance of wounded pride and you find yourself on the front steps of Grima Mog’s warehouse around dawn. I know better than to go empty-handed. I’ve got raw meat from a butcher shop chilling in a Styrofoam cooler, a few sloppily made honey sandwiches wrapped in foil, and a bottle of decent sour beer.

I knock three times and hope that if nothing else, maybe the smell of the food will cover up the smell of my fear.

The door opens, and a woman in a housecoat peers out. She’s bent over, leaning on a polished cane of black wood. “What do you want, deary?”

Seeing through her glamour as I do, I note the green tint to her skin and her overlarge teeth. Like my foster father: Madoc. The guy who killed my parents. The guy who read me her battle strategies. Madoc, once the Grand General of the High Court. Now enemy of the throne and not real happy with me, either.

Hopefully he and High King Cardan will ruin each other’s lives.

“I brought you some gifts,” I say, holding up the cooler. “Can I come in? I want to make a bargain.”

She frowns a little.

“You can’t keep eating random Folk without someone being sent to try to persuade you to stop,” I say.

“Perhaps I will eat you, pretty child,” she counters, brightening. But she steps back to allow me into her lair. I guess she can’t make a meal of me in the hall.

The apartment is loft-style, with high ceilings and brick walls. Nice. Floors polished and glossed up. Big windows letting in light and a decent view of the town. It’s furnished with old things. The tufting on a few of the pieces is torn, and there are marks that could have come from a stray cut of a knife.

The whole place smells like blood. A coppery, metal smell, overlaid with a slightly cloying sweetness. I put my gifts on a heavy wooden table.

“For you,” I say. “In the hopes you’ll overlook my rudeness in calling on you uninvited.”

She sniffs at the meat, turns a honey sandwich over in her hand, and pops off the cap on the beer with her fist. Taking a long draught, she looks me over.

“Someone instructed you in the niceties. I wonder why they bothered, little goat. You’re obviously the sacrifice sent in the hopes my appetite can be sated with mortal flesh.” She smiles, showing her teeth. It’s possible she dropped her glamour in that moment, although, since I saw through it already, I can’t tell.

I blink at her. She blinks back, clearly waiting for a reaction.

By not screaming and running for the door, I have annoyed her. I can tell. I think she was looking forward to chasing me when I ran.

“You’re Grima Mog,” I say. “Leader of armies. Destroyer of your enemies. Is this really how you want to spend your retirement?”

“Retirement?” She echoes the word as though I have dealt her the deadliest insult. “Though I have been cast down, I will find another army to lead. An army bigger than the first.”

Sometimes I tell myself something a lot like that. Hearing it aloud, from someone else’s mouth, is jarring. But it gives me an idea. “Well, the local Folk would prefer not to get eaten while you’re planning your next move. Obviously, being human, I’d rather you didn’t eat mortals—I doubt they’d give you what you’re looking for anyway.”

She waits for me to go on.

“A challenge,” I say, thinking of everything I know about redcaps. “That’s what you crave, right? A good fight. I bet the Folk you killed weren’t all that special. A waste of your talents.”

“Who sent you?” she asks finally. Reevaluating. Trying to figure out my angle.

“What did you do to piss her off?” I ask. “Your queen? It must have been something big to get kicked out of the Court of Teeth.”

“Who sent you?” she roars. I guess I hit a nerve. My best skill.

I try not to smile, but I’ve missed the rush of power that comes with playing a game like this, of strategy and cunning. I hate to admit it, but I’ve missed risking my neck. There’s no room for regrets when you’re busy trying to win. Or at least not to die. “I told you. The local Folk who don’t want to get eaten.”

“Why you?” she asks. “Why would they send a slip of a girl to try to convince me of anything?”

Scanning the room, I take note of a round box on top of the refrigerator. An old-fashioned hatbox. My gaze snags on it. “Probably because it would be no loss to them if I failed.”

At that, Grima Mog laughs, taking another sip of the sour beer. “A fatalist. So how will you persuade me?”

I walk to the table and pick up the food, looking for an excuse to get close to that hatbox. “First, by putting away your groceries.”

Grima Mog looks amused. “I suppose an old lady like myself could use a young thing doing a few errands around the house. But be careful. You might find more than you bargained for in my larder, little goat.”

I open the door of the fridge. The remains of the Folk she’s killed greet me. She’s collected arms and heads, preserved somehow, baked and broiled and put away just like leftovers after a big holiday dinner. My stomach turns.

A wicked smile crawls across her face. “I assume you hoped to challenge me to a duel? Intended to brag about how you’d put up a good fight? Now you see what it means to lose to Grima Mog.”

I take a deep breath. Then with a hop, I knock the hatbox off the top of the fridge and into my arms.

“Don’t touch that!” she shouts, pushing to her feet as I rip off the lid.

And there it is: the cap. Lacquered with blood, layers and layers of it.

She’s halfway across the floor to me, teeth bared. I pull out a lighter from my pocket and flick the flame to life with my thumb. She halts abruptly at the sight of the fire.

“I know you’ve spent long, long years building the patina of this cap,” I say, willing my hand not to shake, willing the flame not to go out. “Probably there’s blood on here from your first kill, and your last. Without it, there will be no reminder of your past conquests, no trophies, nothing. Now I need you to make a deal with me. Vow that there will be no more murders. Not the Folk, not humans, for so long as you reside in the mortal world.”

“And if I don’t, you’ll burn my treasure?” Grima Mog finishes for me. “There’s no honor in that.”

“I guess I could offer to fight you,” I say. “But I’d probably lose. This way, I win.”

Grima Mog points the tip of her black cane toward me. “You’re Madoc’s human child, aren’t you? And our new High King’s seneschal in exile. Tossed out like me.”

I nod, discomfited at being recognized.

“What did you do?” she asks, a satisfied little smile on her face. “It must have been something big.”

“I was a fool,” I say, because I might as well admit it. “I gave up the bird in my hand for two in the bush.”

She gives a big, booming laugh. “Well, aren’t we a pair, redcap’s daughter? But murder is in my bones and blood. I don’t plan on giving up killing. If I am to be stuck in the mortal world, then I intend to have some fun.”

I bring the flame closer to the hat. The bottom of it begins to blacken, and a terrible stench fills the air.

“Stop!” she shouts, giving me a look of raw hatred. “Enough. Let me make you an offer, little goat. We spar. If you lose, my cap is returned to me, unburnt. I continue to hunt as I have. And you give me your littlest finger.”

“To eat?” I ask, taking the flame away from the hat.

“If I like,” she returns. “Or to wear like a brooch. What do you care what I do with it? The point is that it will be mine.”

“And why would I agree to that?”

“Because if you win, you will have your promise from me. And I will tell you something of significance regarding your High King.”

“I don’t want to know anything about him,” I snap, too fast and too angrily. I hadn’t been expecting her to invoke Cardan.

Her laugh this time is low and rumbling. “Little liar.”

We stare at each other for a long moment. Grima Mog’s gaze is amiable enough. She knows she has me. I am going to agree to her terms. I know it, too, although it’s ridiculous. She’s a legend. I don’t see how I can win.

But Cardan’s name pounds in my ears.

Does he have a new seneschal? Does he have a new lover? Is he going to Council meetings himself? Does he talk about me? Do he and Locke mock me together? Does Taryn laugh?

“We spar until first blood,” I say, shoving everything else out of my head. It’s a pleasure to have someone to focus my anger on. “I’m not giving you my finger,” I say. “You win, you get your cap. Period. And I walk out of here. The concession I am making is fighting you at all.”

“First blood is dull.” Grima Mog leans forward, her body alert. “Let’s agree to fight until one of us cries off. Let it end somewhere between bloodshed and crawling away to die on the way home.” She sighs, as if thinking a happy thought. “Give me a chance to break every bone in your scrawny body.”

“You’re betting on my pride.” I tuck her cap into one pocket and the lighter into the other.

She doesn’t deny it. “Did I bet right?”

First blood is dull. It’s all dancing around each other, looking for an opening. It’s not real fighting. When I answer her, the word feels as though it rushes out of me. “Yes.”

“Good.” She lifts the tip of the cane toward the ceiling. “Let’s go to the roof.”

“Well, this is very civilized,” I say.

“You better have brought a weapon, because I’ll loan you nothing.” She heads toward the door with a heavy sigh, as though she really is the old woman she’s glamoured to be.

I follow her out of her apartment, down the dimly lit hall, and into the even darker stairway, my nerves firing. I hope I know what I’m doing. She goes up the steps two at a time, eager now, slamming open a metal door at the top. I hear the clatter of steel as she draws a thin sword out of her cane. A greedy smile pulls her lips too wide, showing off her sharp teeth.

I draw the long knife I have hidden in my boot. It doesn’t have the best reach, but I don’t have the ability to glamour things; I can’t very well ride my bike around with Nightfell on my back.

Still, right now, I really wish I’d figured out a way to do just that.

I step onto the asphalt roof of the building. The sun is starting to rise, tinting the sky pink and gold. A chill breeze blows through the air, bringing with it the scents of concrete and garbage, along with goldenrod from the nearby park.

My heart speeds with some combination of terror and eagerness. When Grima Mog comes at me, I am ready. I parry and move out of the way. I do it again and again, which annoys her.

“You promised me a threat,” she growls, but at least I have a sense of how she moves. I know she’s hungry for blood, hungry for violence. I know she’s used to hunting prey. I just hope she’s overconfident. It’s possible she will make mistakes facing someone who can fight back.

Unlikely, but possible.

When she comes at me again, I spin and kick the back of her knee hard enough to send her crashing to the ground. She roars, scrambling up and coming at me full speed. For a moment, the fury in her face and those fearsome teeth send a horrible, paralyzing jolt through me.

Monster! my mind screams.

I clench my jaw against the urge to keep dodging. Our blades shine, fish-scale bright in the new light of the day. The metal slams together, ringing like a bell. We battle across the roof, my feet clever as we scuff back and forth. Sweat starts on my brow and under my arms. My breath comes hot, clouding in the chill air.

It feels good to be fighting someone other than myself.

Grima Mog’s eyes narrow, watching me, looking for weaknesses. I am conscious of every correction Madoc ever gave me, every bad habit the Ghost tried to train out of me. She begins a series of brutal blows, trying to drive me to the edge of the building. I give ground, attempting to defend myself against the flurry, against the longer reach of her blade. She was holding back before, but she’s not holding back now.

Again and again she pushes me toward a drop through the open air. I fight with grim determination. Perspiration slicks my skin, beads between my shoulder blades.

Then my foot smacks into a metal pipe sticking up through the asphalt. I stumble, and she strikes. It’s all I can do to avoid getting speared, and it costs me my knife, which goes hurtling off the roof. I hear it hit the street below with a dull thud.

I should never have taken this assignment. I should never have agreed to this fight. I should never have taken up Cardan’s offer of marriage and never been exiled to the mortal world.

Anger gives me a burst of energy, and I use it to get out of Grima Mog’s way, letting the momentum of her strike carry her blade down past me. Then I elbow her hard in the arm and grab for the hilt of her sword.

It’s not a very honorable move, but I haven’t been honorable for a long time. Grima Mog is very strong, but she’s also surprised. For a moment, she hesitates, but then she slams her forehead into mine. I go reeling, but I almost had her weapon.

I almost had it.

My head is pounding, and I feel a little dizzy.

“That’s cheating, girl,” she tells me. We’re both breathing hard. I feel like my lungs are made of lead.

“I’m no knight.” As though to emphasize the point, I pick up the only weapon I can see: a metal pole. It’s heavy and has no edge whatsoever, but it’s all there is. At least it’s longer than the knife.

She laughs. “You ought to concede, but I’m delighted you haven’t.”

“I’m an optimist,” I say. Now when she runs at me, she has all the speed, although I have more reach. We spin around each other, her striking and my parrying with something that swings like a baseball bat. I wish for a lot of things, but mostly to make it off this roof.

My energy is flagging. I am not used to the weight of the pipe, and it’s hard to maneuver.

Give up, my whirling brain supplies. Cry off while you’re still standing. Give her the cap, forget the money, and go home. Vivi can magic leaves into extra cash. Just this time, it wouldn’t be so bad. You’re not fighting for a kingdom. That, you already lost.

Grima Mog comes toward me as though she can scent my despair. She puts me through my paces, a few fast, aggressive strikes in the hopes of getting under my guard.

Sweat drips down my forehead, stinging my eyes.

Madoc described fighting as a lot of things, as a game of strategy played at speed, as a dance, but right now it feels like an argument. Like an argument where she’s keeping me too busy defending myself to score any points.

Despite the strain on my muscles, I switch to holding the pipe in one hand and pull her cap from my pocket with the other.

“What are you doing? You promised—” she begins.

I throw the cloth at her face. She grabs for it, distracted. In that moment, I swing the pipe at her side with all the strength in my body.

I catch her in the shoulder, and she falls with a howl of pain. I hit her again, bringing the metal rod down in an arc and catching her outstretched arm, sending her sword spinning across the roof.

I raise the pipe to swing again.

“Enough.” Grima Mog looks up at me from the asphalt, blood on her pointed teeth, astonishment in her face. “I yield.”

“You do?” The pipe sags in my hand.

“Yes, little cheat,” she grits out, pushing herself into a sitting position. “You bested me. Now help me up.”

I drop the pipe and walk closer, half-expecting her to pull out a knife and sink it into my side. But she only lifts a hand and allows me to haul her to her feet. She puts her cap on her head and cradles the arm I struck in the other.

“The Court of Teeth have thrown in their lot with the old Grand General—your father—and a whole host of other traitors. I have it on good authority that your High King is to be dethroned before the next full moon. How do you like those apples?”

“Is that why you left?” I ask her. “Because you’re not a traitor?”

“I left because of another little goat. Now be off with you. This was more fun than I expected, but I think our game is at a close.”

Her words ring in my ears. Your High King. Dethroned. “You still owe me a promise,” I say, my voice coming out like a croak.

And to my surprise, Grima Mog gives me one. She vows to hunt no more in the mortal lands.

“Come fight me again,” she calls after me as I head for the stairs. “I have secrets aplenty. There are so many things you don’t know, daughter of Madoc. And I think you crave a little violence yourself.”

17 notes · View notes

laceymorganwrites · 6 years

Text

Beyond saving

Word Count: 5,132 Pairing: Ban x Reader

Warnings: swear words A/N: pls don´t hate, I´m not happy with this either(Banlaine is my otp, still I´ll continue writing Ban x Reader, cuz readerchan deserves love too, kay?)

700 years ago:

Y/N´s POV:

“You were in the human realm again, weren´t you?” mother scolded me again, I had disappointed her again. “I didn´t mean too...” I tried to excuse myself, but mother´s hard expression wasn´t changing in the least bit. Her eyebrow twitched as her hand stroke my cheek harshly, soon I could feel warm blood dripping like tears. But tears didn´t come these days, I never cried, I knew how much my mother hated it when I cried, or spoke, or called her my mother. “Don´t lie to me, you worm! Always crawling in the dirt, you should be ashamed of yourself. This isn´t how a goddess behaves!” Maybe I don´t wanna be a goddess, I thought, but didn´t dare say a word. “Get out of my sight! You should be lucky I even tolerate you here, if you ever go down to those lowlifes again, it will be the last time I promise you this.” she threatened, I always thought she was weak for not killing me, but in the end, she chose a destiny worse than death for me. I never wanted to be a goddess in the first place, I never believed in race, I just wanted everyone to live together happily. Maybe my fascination for the humans came from my mother all along, she always spoke so lowly of them, I was just curious if they were really that bad.

I looked up at the sky, laying in the grass, letting my thoughts slip. Why did I always think about my mother? Or Zeldris? About all of the things that held me back? I was free now, I could do everything and no one could stop me. I could finally live with the humans, fairies and giants. I should be happy, but then I remembered that my sister and her lover died because of me. All the bad things always happened because of me. If I never caught the two of them, none of this would´ve happened.

“Little sister! Your mother searches for you!” I called for Elizabeth. Mother told me she ran away from me, because I scared her. I never understood why she wanted to drive us apart so badly, my sister and I loved each other dearly. The nighttime wasn´t far and I knew that mother wanted to prevent Elizabeth staying out so late. I found her in a cave with a demon, kissing. To say I was shocked would be far fetched, I just didn´t know what was going on. “Elizabeth?” I asked, standing in the entrance of the cave. Elizabeth and her lover rapidly got away from each other and looked at me. “I´m sorry, I didn´t mean to interrupt you” I wanted to turn on my heel and risk getting beaten by mother for not getting my sister.”Wait, big sis, this is Meliodas, the demon prince. He´s just like us, he also wants us to live together peacefully” she smiled from one ear to another and I swear, I never saw her happier. I smiled back at her, I just had to, her happiness made me happy too, even though I didn´t deserve it, but I was selfish and ignorant, so I took it anyway. I remembered this night so clearly, we three talked since then and I felt like I belonged. But like everything, I had to destroy it.

These past 2,000 years I came around pretty well, I lived with the humans and the giants, I helped build villages and cured illnesses. I watched empires fall and times change, my life didn´t feel like a curse, rather like I finally had the chance to contribute to something bigger than me. I had enough time to atone for my sins, the sin of being born. I lived every day trying to be a better person than I was yesterday. Soon I came upon the fairy king´s forest and stopped for a moment to think about what I had done: I had started the holy war. All the deaths were my fault. And even though it was over and the demons locked away, I felt their energy, they would return, I was sure of it. But when would it happen? And how could I prevent it? My feet subconsciously dragged me into the forest and I was met with the true nature of humans. Or should I say hunters, predators? They chased the fairies and ripped out their wings, the sight was gruesome to put at least. I heard a little girl scream for her brother and ran to her, embracing her. “You need to get away from here, it´s dangerous. The humans have come to haunt you” I explained the situation. “I know! It´s all because Harlequin and Helbram left. They trusted the humans too much, I always told them it was too dangerous, but they wouldn´t listen!” she shouted, tears streaming down her face. I hugged her tighter, before I let go and unsheathed my sword. “I`ll take care of this, you stay hidden until I´m back, okay?” I ran into the forest and slaughtered the humans who came to hurt the fairies. Then I got back to the girl who got threatened by another human I oversaw. “Let go of her!” I yelled, wielding my sword and the next thing I heard was: “We got ourselves a nice pair of wings!”. It was followed by dirty laughter and a warm fluid flowing down my back. I stumbled over and fell to my knees, the pain was like something I never experienced before, it felt like my body was turn inside out and torn apart. I don´t know what was worse: hearing the bones crack or the weight loss. I didn´t notice my scream or anything else, I passed out from the pain. I woke up to the girl crying and laying in her lap. She had bandaged my back and treated the wounds. “Are you hurt…?” I whispered and tried to sit up, but I just fell over on my face. The girl heavily shook her head and I was ready to aid her, but then she helped me up and hugged me again. “How can you think of me in this situation? You almost died!” her voice cracked and she started crying. I chuckled, before patting her head and putting an arm around her shoulder. “I can´t die, my mum made sure of that, so don´t worry about me. Besides, I don´t deserve it...again: are you hurt, little girl?” I cradled her back and she nuzzled against my bandaged chest. She shook her head. I smiled. “Good, what a crazy day, eh? What´s your name?” I asked. “I´m Elaine” she smiled, she was a sweet girl. “Nice to meet you, Elaine, my name´s (Y/N)” I introduced myself. In the next years she nursed me back to health and I got to know her better, one day we talked about her brother. We were stargazing as she suddenly hugged me and said: “I´m so glad you´re here, now I´m not lonely anymore” she smiled and I wondered what she meant by that. “But...there are all the other fairies...” I noticed and she looked glum. “I´m the protector of this fountain, my brother used to be king of this forest. He was by my side all the time, but as the humans came, he vanished. He just left me all alone. But now you´re here, so that´s okay” she told me. “I think I saw a fairy with a giant girl on the way here, after all I lived with the giants for a while...maybe it was him?” I thought out loud. “Why would he be with a giant girl? That´s even more dangerous than the humans!” Elaine exclaimed worriedly. I shook my head. “Not all giants or humans are bad...same goes for all races” I thought about all the good things that have happened to me after mother and the other goddesses vanished. “i can´t picture demons being good people, they´re hardly people after all” I laughed out loud. “The princes of purgatory are actually pretty neat, I´ve only been there for a day, but it was a nice day” I reminisced and then an idea rushed through my head. “How about I search your brother?” I suggested and Elaine looked at me with big eyes. “You would do that?” I nodded and added: “Only for you”. Then I jumped down the tree and walked through the night. It was sunrise when I reached Britannia, the realm dominated by the humans. In the very outskirts I stumbled upon a bar, the boar hat. “You open?” I dashed in and was met with emptiness. “Yup! Might not look like it, but we´re always open!” a merry voice said, something about it sounded familiar. “What can I get you?” Meliodas stepped out of the kitchen and we both stared at each other for an awkwardly long while. “Where are your wings?” he broke the everlasting silence. “That´s the first thing you´re asking? I thought you were dead all this time! What happened to you?” I almost yelled. “You might want to sit down” he said and we sat down at the counter. Meliodas sighed deeply and frowned, a second ago I could swear he flashed the biggest smile on earth. “All I remember is waking up to Elizabeth´s dead body, it wasn´t until a few years later that I realized we had been cursed. I saw Elizabeth, alive and well, only that she couldn´t remember me or anything else, and when she did, she died three days later in front of my eyes. This has happened 82 times now.” he explained and it took me a while to take all of the information in. I stood up and hugged him tightly. “I´m sorry...” this was all my fault, if I´d never been born, then I wouldn´t have been married off to and didn´t need to be saved by them. “I´m so so sorry, Meliodas, this is all my fault...” I wished I could comfort him better, just do anything. He shook his head. “No, it´s not. If things were different back then, it still would´ve turned out this way. The holy war was inevitable.” he stated and I abruptly pulled away. “I´m gonna make this right!” I vowed and searched for a way to break the curse, consulting the most powerful magic users, but it all seemed useless.

16 years ago

Elaine´s POV:

My brother had left me and now my best friend too. She said she was going to search for my brother, but hasn´t returned in a few hundred years. I was tired of being lonely, left alone and forgotten. I had enough of protecting the forest, nobody would ever find it anyway, let alone steal the fountain of youth. Nobody could be this stupid, except for this boy who tried it since six hours. At one point I grew tired of defending the fountain and let it go, let him get it, what did I care? But what I didn´t expect was that instead of stealing the fountain he was talking to me. I didn´t mind it and added to the conversation. I caught myself talking about (Y/N) and letting my feelings for her run free, I told him how she was the first one I thought of as a friend and how she was always so kind and nice to me. I told him how she lost her wings trying to protect me, I told him how pretty and funny she was, but I didn´t know the story behind her sad eyes. She had only told me about the goddess clan, her sister and her lover, and her marriage, but never about anything that happened after that. She told me everything that happened up to 3,000 years ago, there seemed to be a gap which she didn´t tell me about, but I never dared ask. It felt good to talk to a stranger, I could just talk about all the things I could never tell (Y/N) or Harlequin. I felt relieved and even laughed with Ban. I thought it was funny how despite of his personality as a thief, he didn´t lie. He had the same sadness behind the eyes as (Y/N) did, he reminded me of her in many ways. For example., how he always looked into the distance, trying to search for something long gone. He was funny too, just like her. Maybe this was why I trusted him. He sat down at the edge of the tree and stared off in the distance again and I went to the other side where to my surprise a girl in a dress climbed up. “Shit, this ain´t easy in a dress...I totally underestimated the weight of this...” she mumbled to herself, pulling the hood of her cloak back, which was when I ran to her and storm hugged her. “(Y/N)!” I cried out. “You´re back! Are you okay? What happened? Where have you been?” I rambled. I would´ve never thought she would come back, yet here she was, but something was off. She seemed different, she didn´t hide her sadness behind a smile anymore and she had dark under eye circles, over all she seemed lost and hopeless. I was worried sick, hoped nothing bad had happened. “One second, Elaine. I´ll explain everything, but before that, could you help me out of the corset, I can´t breathe” she told me in a straightforward manner. Now that I looked at her closer, I could see that she sweated heavily. I nodded and went behind her, carefully undoing her cloak and revealing the upper half of her body in pulling the upper half of her dress off. Then I undid the laces of the corset until she sighed relieved and put her dress back on. “You´re the best” she stated and smirked. I suddenly remembered that I told Ban that he had to meet (Y/N) and dragged her by the hands behind me. “You need to meet Ban, (Y/N)! He came here today and talked to me, he´s really nice! I bet you´ll love him!” I chirped and (Y/N) suddenly stopped and looked at me sincerely. “Don´t throw around that word like it´s nothing” she coldly stated and I gulped. “Sorry...I forgot...”. She told me how she never knew love and swore herself to never love. “Love is stupid. If you´re loved, you´re cursed, you´re the reason for everything one does, the reason for their hurt and pain. And if you love you´re stupid too, because you´re selfish, you just get hurt all over again. The worst thing that can happen to someone mortal is dying when someone loves them” (Y/N) told me again, we always talked about love and her negative view on it, which apparently has only strengthened in the past decades.

Ban´s POV:

So this was (Y/N), she talked like she´s been through a lot, like her heart had been broken. Whoever did it, I wouldn´t let that bastard live. Elaine didn´t lie, she was a radiant beauty, the way she swayed her hips when she walked, the way she raised an eyebrow when she saw me, completely ignoring me after that. “You let a human get up here? Are you stupid! He could´ve killed you!” she yelled at Elaine, who looked at me apologetically. “He´s nice! I swear!” she defended me, to which I chuckled. It wasn´t so bad up here, until now I´ve lived in the dirty streets of villages which would be forgotten. Elaine and (Y/N) sat down next to me and (Y/N) still mustered me suspiciously, pouting a bit, which looked insanely cute. “Do you wanna tell me where you´ve been?” Elaine asked (Y/N), smiling in high expectations, but (Y/N) declined. “Not now...” she sighed and looked up to the sunset. I suppressed the urge to pull (Y/N) in front of me and rest my chin in her neck, whispering how lucky I was to have her. But I didn´t, then why did I feel like I knew her? Right, because Elaine told me about her, about her story. I wanted her. When the sun set and it got dark, Elaine got sleepy and went to lay down in the soft grass. (Y/N) put her cloak around her, serving as a blanket, I smirked at that action. To my surprise (Y/N) sat down next to me again and pulled her legs against her chest, so she could rest her head on them. “So you´re the goddess without wings, eh?” I asked and she ´tch-ed´. “I can´t believe she told you...” she muttered. “I´m Ban” I tried to start a conversation, but she blocked me off. “Don´t care” she simply said and frowned, staring at the stars. “Ya know, this forest´s pretty cool” I tried again and finally I got a reaction from her. She turned to me and looked as if I just said the earth was flat. “This forest´s build on blood, do you think that´s cool?” she spat. I grinned. “Wanna tell me about it?” I proposed and she sighed. “I´m not here for your fucking education” she said and I chuckled, she´d make a hot teacher. “Then why are you here?” I asked, still smirking. (Y/N) tilted her head. “Could ask you the same thing” she dragged the words in a threatening way. “I like it here, besides I don´t have anywhere to return to...” I casually told her and her expression softened a bit. “Me neither, sorry, you probably don´t care, it´s just...it´s not that bad not belonging anywhere, you know, you´re free, you can do and be whatever you want, you can travel the whole world...and I think that´s awesome...” her eyes glistened, I bet she thought about all the adventures she had. “I don´t believe you don´t belong anywhere, after all you got Elaine...” I told her, trying to cheer her up. She sighed and shook her head. “I´m just holding her back, whatever, I didn´t come to you to talk about Elaine...why did you come here, who told you about this place?” she asked me and I clenched my jaw. “Maybe I´ll tell you someday, but not today...” I brushed her off and she nodded, smiling. Why was she smiling? She fell asleep on my shoulder that night and in this moment I didn´t want her anymore, I needed her.

(Y/N)´s POV:

I woke up in Ban´s arms the next morning, he was still asleep and Elaine was giggling. “It´s not what it looks like!” I shushed her and carefully crawled out of our cuddling position to get to Elaine. “Told ya, you´d like him!” she playfully punched my arm. I rolled my eyes, grinning. “I don´t, more importantly, I can´t...because if I do, it´ll be the worst thing that could happen...” I thought about what kind of feelings Ban had awoken in me yesterday and quickly pushed that thought away. You couldn´t fall in love that quickly, besides it wasn´t even love, was it? I was overthinking again, but it didn´t matter, Elaine had dibs. With that realization my mind could relax, nothing of romantic sort would ever happen between us and it was good this way. “Elaine, I´m going to tell you something I´ve never told anyone before. I´m going to tell you about the holy war and where I was these past decades...”

Elaine´s POV: (Y/N) took a deep breath and then started to tell her story I yearned to know. “I wish it would´ve been different, I wish I never was born, I wish many things and blamed myself for everything bad happening, but in the end, I can do nothing to change what already happened. You already know my little tales of friendship and my travels, but I never told you about the holy war. I´m sure your folk has already told you about the events of the holy war, every child knows it, in every race it´s depicted as something they have won, when in reality it was an unnecessary bloodbath with many innocent deaths, the truth is, nobody won, nobody gained anything from it. It all started with the wicked schemes of my mother” she chuckled and choked back a tear. “She married me off to Zeldris, but told our folk that he had kidnapped me, they attacked purgatory at night, slaughtering even innocent citizens. My sister, her lover and me never wanted the war to happen, while my mother searched for a way for it to happen. My sister and her lover came to get me that night and we came here, to this forest...where we were met with such a chaos, it seemed like every race was fighting each other, and when it was over, all races were separated and lived alone. I remember it clearly, walking through the chaos, trying to find my sister, and when I did, it was already too late. Her lover died too and so my mother bestowed me with a curse. But my sister and her lover were cursed too, so I searched for a solution these past decades, but I couldn´t find anything...they can never rest assured...” (Y/N) broke out in tears and cried loudly against my chest, I could do nothing but hold her, nothing I could say would make her hurt go away. Now I finally understood why she had the view of love she had, why she seemed to hate herself.

Ban´s POV:

“I started a goddamn war, Elaine, and I wasn´t even able to save my sister...and I have to live with that. That is my sin. This ignorance, this violent wish for peace, we should´ve known it was insolent and would bring only pain and death...it´s all my fault….and there´s not a single thing I can do to atone for my sins...” (Y/N) was on her knees, trembling, crying and Elaine frowned, she had a determined look on her face, like she was out to kill everyone who would make (Y/N) cry. (Y/N) shook her head. “It´s nice that you want to cheer me up, it´s just...I can´t do anything to change what happened...there´s nothing I can do anymore, so it´s actually fucking pointless to talk about it, it´s too late anyways...” she sighed and smiled immediately afterwards. “But thanks for caring, I just hate talking about it, you know?” then she wiped her tears away and laughed out loud. “Gross! I haven´t cried in 700 years” Elaine chimed in with the laughter and then pinched (Y/N)´s cheeks. “You´re cute when you cry” she stated. (Y/N) gasped. “You´re the cute one, you cutie!” she tickled Elaine, who then giggled. “Kya! Stop it! I´m regretting telling you my tickle spots!” she laughed and tickled (Y/N) back. “Oh it´s on! Elaine, not there!” (Y/N) burst into laughter as Elaine tickled her hips, she let herself fall onto the grass and couldn´t control her laughter. It sounded like the sweetest song I´ve ever heard. “So, I´m cute, you´re cute, what about Ban?” she cheekily asked, now things were getting interesting. “Nah, Ban´s hot” (Y/N) said casually, I was so gonna get her. Elaine stopped her tickling and chanted: “Ha! I knew it, I knew it!”. (Y/N) clasped her hand on her mouth and then stood up. “Please don´t tell him, Elaine...” she pleaded. “Why not? There´s no shame in being attracted to someone” the girl said. “But, I can´t be with him...he´s mortal...I can´t afford to fall for him” (Y/N) looked into the distance, somehow hearing her say that made me sad. “As if you aren´t already are” Elaine smiled at (Y/N) who blushed and muttered “Shut up...”. I faked a yawn and walked over to the two. “Mornin´ lovelies...” I chirped, winking at (Y/N) who just frowned and looked away. “Good morning, Ban!” Elaine greeted me with her smile. I smiled back at her. “I´m going to town...want anything?” (Y/N) said, leaving us alone. “You heard everything, didn´t you?” Elaine asked and I nodded. “Yup” I popped the p, Elaine squinted her eyes at me. “Don´t play with her, or break her heart...she might not seem like it, but she´s a very loving person. You´ll never know what love means until you were with her” she looked up to the sky and smiled. “What´s that supposed to mean? Besides, I´m not really interested in her that way...” I raised an eyebrow, dragging my words a bit. “She doesn´t love often, suppressing every emotion of that sort, especially towards mortals like you, it´s in her nature, a safety habit formed from her mother´s abuse...but when she does, she gives it her all, I couldn´t stand her having her heart broken...she´s so devoted, she´s not used to receiving, so she gives and gives and gives, she´ll eventually break on it...” Elaine looked sad. “You´re really worried about me breaking her heart, huh?” I put my hand on her shoulder. “She´s my best friend, she´s always been there for me, I couldn´t stand it if her heart were broken, I wouldn´t know what to do...I´d be utterly useless, but maybe I´d understand her better this way...” she thought out loud. “You´re a great friend, Elaine” I smiled at her. In the next few days I kept my distance, I could understand how painful it must´ve been not being able to love, because everyone you´d love would die in the end. But one day, as she went to town again, I couldn´t stand it any longer and went with her. There we sat down and I did something I never did before, I opened up about my past, I let her see a part of me which nobody ever saw before. “I heard about your sister, I had a sister too, ya know? But she died too, guess I just wanna say I´m sorry, kay?” I wasn´t good at comforting people. (Y/N) sighed and looked me in the eyes with an unreadable look. “Why are you telling me this?” she pleaded. “I wanna get to know you better, I never told anyone bout my sister before, but I feel like I could tell you. I dunno what it is about you, but whatever it is, it draws me in, and I can´t escape it...fuck...I know this sounds weird, cause we don´t know each other, but that´s the thing, I hate talking bout myself, but I wanna tell you everything which made me who I am today, I wanna laugh with you and just...enjoy your company I guess...I wanna get to know you like nobody ever knew you before...sorry that was weird...I´m an idiot” I rambled, why the fuck did I do this? (Y/N) stared at me for a while, before taking my hand into her own. “Yes you are...this will never work...you know why” she smiled, a sad smile, but a smile. “I´ll just take the fountain of youth” I said, I don´t know what´s gotten into me, but I didn´t want to have a quick thing with her anymore, I enjoyed the idea of us being together, forever, the last people on earth...”No! No, you won´t. I won´t let you, there´s nothing worse than to live forever, believe me. Don´t burden yourself with eternal life because of a girl who intrigues you” she grabbed my shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. “But I don´t wanna die, besides, no one´s destined to be alone forever” I spilled my secret like it was nothing. (Y/N) rested her head on my shoulder. “Yes, I am destined to be alone together, that´s the sole purpose of the curse, that´s why it´s called a curse. I have to wander alone with my thoughts, knowing just how badly I fucked up...because it´s what I deserve. And I chose to live with that. About the dying thing, there´s no need to worry, death is better than this” she chuckled. We headed back in silence, all words had been spoken.

(Y/N)´s POV: All my life I had done my best to ignore and avoid all feelings of love, and there he comes and just doesn´t care. It´s like a challenge from my mother, fall in love with him, I dare you. And I did, like I never did before, but that was a good thing, because I never felt this feeling before, I could easily tell myself that it wasn´t love. From afar I could see smoke rise up to the sky and the nearer we got to the forest, we could see the gruesome scene of the forest burning. “Demons...” I muttered and got a hold of my sword as we ran towards the forest. “Shit!” I cursed, the smoke made my eyes burn and it was hard to see. We reached the top of the tree and I saw Elaine laying on the ground, blood leaving her small body. “Noooo! Elaine!” I sprinted towards her and held her fragile figure in my hands, uncontrollably crying over her dead body, I couldn´t believe how this could happen. It was fine in the morning, but now everything was in chaos. I got flashbacks from the holy war and looked around anxiously, but I couldn´t make out any demons. That was until Ban started spitting out blood and a hand was coming out of his chest, leaving a hole. I grabbed my sword, tried to keep my cool and not fall down on my trembling legs and then dashed onto the demon yelling and cut out all his hearts. As I was done, I looked around, I saw a dead Elaine and a dead Ban, and the fountain of youth...without thinking I ran to the fountain, grabbed it and let myself fall onto my knees next to Ban, pulling his body onto my knees, forcing the liquid down his throat. All I did after that was cry, until Ban´s eyes opened and he sat up, wiping away the tears with his fingers. “Thank you...” he whispered and then leaned in to kiss me, my stupid self dove right into the kiss and kissed him back like there was no tomorrow, even though there´d be nothing but tomorrows from now on. I took dominance over the kiss and abruptly pulled away, leaving Ban out of breath. “I´m sorry, I was selfish….I shouldn´t have done this...I took away your choice and dragged you down into my curse...I´m sorry, Elaine, I´m so sorry….what have I done?” I muttered, slowly but surely resolving in a panic attack. “The right thing” Elaine opened her eyes, hugged me and smiled. “You´ve saved me again, but who saves you?” she said. “I´m beyond saving” I told her. There we were, my one arm around Elaine, my other hand in Ban´s, his arm around my shoulder and watching the stars.

#nnt #nnt spoilers #nnt manga #nnt anime #sds #sds spoilers #anime #imagine #one shot #the seven deadly sins #nanatsu no taizai #ban x reader #nnt ban #sds ban #undead ban #fox sin ban

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msgenevieve447 · 6 years

Text

Muddle Through Somehow - 1/1

Pairing: Captain Swan - Season 7 adjacent Canon CS Holiday Fic!

Rating: M

Summary: She always knew Henry would leave home one day. She just didn’t think he’d leave home for another realm, okay? (Starring Emma Swan and Killian Jones, featuring cameos by Henry, Snow and Charming, mention of Regina and others.)

Notes: This is probably the schmoopiest Christmas fic I’ve ever written. Completely and utterly self-indulgent, TBH. It starts off during 702 but then continues with the Storybrooke timeline and our Captain Swan, completely ignoring the hodge-podge of a timeline created in Season 7, because that makes no sense whatsoever as far as I’m concerned. Your mileage may vary, of course. LOL.

P.S. THERE BE MENTIONS OF CANON BABIES IN THIS FIC.

PPS. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, my lovely shipmates.

~*~

Someday soon we all will be together If the fates allow Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

~*~

Henry leaves Storybrooke on a sunny October morning, the week after Emma’s birthday, two weeks before Halloween.

Emma bites back the urge to ask him to wait until after Halloween, until after Thanksgiving, until after Christmas. Maybe even wait until she doesn’t look at him and see that little ten year-old standing on her ratty welcome mat outside her Boston apartment, looking up at her with hope brimming in his eyes.

God, she’s going to miss him.

He politely shuns his grandmother’s best efforts to throw him a going-away party, telling them he doesn’t want to make a fuss, or worse, tempt the fates by having a happy celebration at Granny’s.

Emma has to admit, the kid has a point.

He’s not a kid anymore, though. He’s now officially an adult, and that’s kind of the problem.

Problem? No, not a problem, she tells herself, as though if she says it enough times, she might actually believe it. She understands why he wants to leave, she does. That doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it, though.

But he’s gotten enough grief about his travel plans from Regina, so Emma just keeps smiling until her lips feel like they’re starting to fray around the edges, matching the tiny threads that are peeling loose around her heart.

Henry makes the rounds of the town in the week before his departure, and Emma can’t help feeling proud at the effort he’s putting into making his farewells. By the end of the week, she’s pretty sure he’s consumed his body weight in pizza and soda in the pursuit of spending some quality time with Archie, Granny and the rest of the usual suspects, to steal a line from one of his favourite movies.

In between the pizza fests, he manages to squeeze in a few last motorcycle safety lessons with August, honing his skill to the point where Regina had finally managed to stop watching him through white-knuckled hands.

(This last development? Not exactly Killian’s favourite thing, much to Emma’s eternal amusement.)

Last night, he’d had dinner with his grandparents and his toddler uncle (and Wilby, she assumes, lying in wait for any dropped crumbs as usual). This morning it was their turn, a late breakfast involving way too much food. The three of them will be eating leftovers for days.

No, wait. Not three. Her breath snags in her throat. The two of them.

Damn it. This is going to be harder than she thought.

Henry’s been packed for a month, she knows, but she can’t help herself. “You’ve got Killian’s magic message-in-a-bottle-thingy?”

Her son and husband exchange a knowing look over the kitchen table that makes her want to laugh and weep in the same heartbeat. “Sure do.” Henry grins at her, and there’s the ten year-old kid again. “It was the first thing I packed.”

They linger over breakfast, but Emma knows she’s just delaying the inevitable, and as much as she might like, she can’t wish for the clock to stop ticking. Finally, it’s time for him to head to Regina’s for one last lunch together and feeling like a child dragging its heels, she follows Henry and Killian to the front door, watching in silence as her husband helps her son don his backpack.

“Enjoy your adventures, mate. Take care of yourself.” Killian gathers her son in his arms, a bracing hug with more than a little back-slapping.

“I will.” Henry’s reply is muffled against Killian’s shoulder, making him sound much younger than his years, and Emma’s fingernails curl into the swell of her palms. “You’ll look after everyone while I’m gone, right?”

“Aye, you can count on it.” Killian’s eyes are suspiciously bright as he takes a half step back, almost fumbling as he retrieves a small box from the sideboard and presses it into Henry’s hand. “A little something for the journey, my lad.”

Emma never thought the sight of a box of Pop Tarts could make her cry, but that was her old life. In the here and now, she manages to see that they’re S’mores flavour – Henry’s favourite – before her eyes blur hotly with tears. “Really?”

Killian’s arm tightens around her shoulders, and Henry quickly takes her hand in his. “I’ll be home again before you know it.”

Blinking back her tears, she squeezes his hand. “I’m fine, really.” She’s not fine, but that’s not Henry’s burden to bear. He might be almost as tall as her these days, but it’s still her job to keep his heart safe. “Do you need a ride to Regina’s?”

Her son’s grin is unabashedly proud as he lets go of her hand to smooth his fingertips down the front of his new leather jacket. “My bike’s outside.”

“Right, of course.”

Then Killian is opening the front door, letting in the cool Autumn air, and she has to gulp down the sudden knot in her throat. “I love you, kid.”

I’m Henry. I’m your son.

The hug Henry gives her is tight enough to make her ribs creak, and she never wants it to end. “Love you too, Mom.”

He extracts himself from her arms with typical teenaged awkwardness, making her heart lurch, but Killian’s hand is warm at the small of her back, holding her steady. “Your grandmother may never forgive you for depriving her of organising a farewell party for you, you know.”

“I know.” Henry looks faintly embarrassed. “I just wanted to say my goodbyes without everyone watching.”

A dark memory flashes through her thoughts at her son’s choice of words. Beside her, she feels Killian stiffen, but his reply is cheery enough. “Perfectly understandable.”

The next few minutes are a blur, another hug, another kiss on her cheek (God, her little boy has stubble on his chin, when the Hell did that happen?), another handshake for Killian. And then he’s roaring up the street on his second-hand bike, his new black helmet gleaming in the sunlight, and Emma knows he’s taken a piece of her heart with him.

(Not literally, thank God. Sometimes she forgets how often that actually happens around here.)

They linger in the doorway until he disappears from view, and Emma’s sigh feels like it’s been dredged up from the soles of her feet.

“Interesting turn of phrase.” Behind her, Killian lets out a soft breath, his hand coming up to rest on her hip. “Did you tell him of our farewell in the Underworld?”

His tone is light, almost playful, but the weight of memory behind it has her turning to face him. “No, never.” She buries her face in the curve on his neck, inhaling the clean tang of him as she wraps her arms around his waist. “Maybe it’s in his book?”

“That bloody book.” She feels the curve of his smile against her temple. “Is nothing sacred?”

She tries to laugh, but it comes out as a stuttering sob. “Come on, love.” His lips are warm against her skin, his hand trailing down her arm to entwine his fingers through hers. “Let’s sail away.”

Leaving the breakfast dishes in their wake, he leads her back to their bedroom, and in the sunlight strewn tangle of sheets, she lets him chase away the sadness from her thoughts with the heat of his kiss and the silken brush of his skin against hers.

(They leave the condoms in the top drawer, just as they have every time they’ve - well, you know - for the last year.)

When they fall, breathless and giddy with pleasure, they fall together, his fingers still tightly wound through hers, the pounding of his heart fluttering against her own chest. Closing her eyes, she presses her forehead against his, her free hand slipping unbidden to rest on her belly. Maybe this time, maybe not. If it doesn’t happen, Henry will always be enough. She and Killian will be enough.

That doesn’t mean she can’t hope for more.

“Good thing I didn’t bother making the bed,” she eventually quips as she rolls onto her side, and he laughs, pressing a smacking kiss to her bare shoulder.

“Well, we now officially have the house to ourselves, Swan.” She turns her head just in time to see him wriggle those ridiculous eyebrows of his, his gaze sweeping hotly over her from head to toe. “We may never make the bed again.”

They do, of course, because he’s a stickler for keeping their cabin shipshape.

Besides, there’s always the couch.

~*~

Halloween comes and goes without much fanfare, at least in their home. While his Swan is a lifelong devotee of candy, it seems she can’t muster the energy to enjoy the festivities with her young man gone.

When they’re not dodging national holidays, they go about the business of settling into normality, enjoying the novelty of married life and all the highs and lows that come with it. He would be exquisitely happy if it weren’t for the fact that he can literally see the sadness chipping away at the woman he loves.

He does his best to make up for Henry’s absence. Some days, he thinks he almost succeeds. Other days, when he finds her wiping away surreptitious tears she doesn’t want him to see, he knows he’s failed her.

The very real fear that he is not enough sends a chill through his heart far too often, but he is a patient man, and he knows his Swan. She is strong. She will get through this.

When Thanksgiving arrives (yet another gluttonous occasion) a month later, he doesn’t have much more luck raising her spirits. Thankfully, her parents are all too happy to fill the gaps in conversation at the late luncheon they host at their farmhouse.

(They’d all already indulged in a sumptuous brunch with Regina, Zelena and young Robyn at the Mayor’s mansion, and Killian is quite sure he never needs to eat another candied anything in his lifetime.)

After the meal is done, Emma and her father take the young prince for a stroll around the vast garden behind the house. Killian, knowing the best way to his mother-in-law’s heart, insists on helping with the dishes.

“David’s normally the one who does the dishes,” she informs him with the lofty air of a warrior princess, trying and failing to hide her smile. “I suppose you’ll do, though.”

They work well together, and they spend a pleasant ten minutes discussing harmless town gossip while the pile of dishes grows smaller and smaller. Eventually, though, her hands grow still, and he follows the line of her gaze through the kitchen window to where her family is engaged in an energetic game of fetch with the dog. “Emma looked a little sad at lunch.”

“Aye.” He tightens his grip on one of the ornate whiskey glasses that look as though they date from the Enchanted Forest. “She misses the lad, and nothing I do seems to help.”

“I’m sure you help a lot. It’s just a worried parent thing.” Snow flicks him a knowing smile as she plunges her gloved hands back into the soapy water. “You’ll be one yourself one day.” She bites her lip, then hastens on, “Not that you haven’t been an amazing stepfather to Henry-”

“It’s fine, love. No offense taken.”

Snow hands him one of young Neal’s dinner plates, and he can’t help smiling at the coloured bunnies that adorn it. “You miss him too, I’m sure, just as Charming and I do.”

“That I do.” There is definitely a Henry-shaped hole in his life, but he’s hardly one to complain about a young lad wishing to seek his own story in the world.

“As for being a parent myself one day, I’m not too sure of that.” He finds himself thinking of the monthly ritual that always begins with hope and always ends with disappointment. Twelve months in a row, and nary a sign that they might be blessed with an addition to their family. “It’s been a year now and we haven’t-”

He breaks off, but it’s too late. Snow’s green eyes are already wide with sparkling delight. “You and Emma are trying to have a baby?”

His mother-in-law has the sense to whisper, but he’s still kicking himself for speaking so freely. He tries one of his best leers on for size, hoping to distract her. “Frequently.”

The toe of her small booted foot finds his ankle with a pointed jab. “You can cut out the sleazy pirate act, you know we don’t buy it anymore.”

Damn it.

She’s still watching him with those bright green eyes, eyes that always see far too much, just like her daughter. “Yes, we’re trying.”

He can actually feel the excitement humming through her, and he bumps her shoulder gently with his. “Please wait until Emma tells you herself?”

Snow draws herself up to her full height, her pink-rubber hands laden with suds, and fixes him with a haughty stare. “Are you implying I can’t keep a secret?”

He’s not sure who starts laughing first, but they’re still laughing when Emma and David make their way back to the house, young Neal perched high on his father’s shoulders, the canine at their heels. Pausing in her massaging of the dog’s ridiculously fuzzy ears, Emma looks from Killian to her mother, then back again. “What’s so funny?”

“Granny’s giblet patties.”

“Food babies.” The room seems to grow still at the word babies, and Snow presses her lips together for the second time in as many minutes. “Damn it.”

The look Emma tosses at him is one of pure exasperation as David’s head swivels, to look first at his daughter, then at Killian. He carefully manoeuvres young Neal down from his shoulders to balance him on one hip, hopeful anticipation etched on his face. “You’re not-”

Killian’s gaze locks with Emma’s, his heart lifting when her expression softens. “No, I’m not pregnant.” Reaching out, she takes her little brother from their father’s arms, burying her nose in the tangle of curls Killian knows smells of sunshine and soap. “But we’re trying.”

“And that’s where the too much information begins.” David is suddenly at Killian’s side, grinning as he relieves him of the dishcloth draped over his shoulder. “Why don’t you practice your fatherly charms on my son for an hour or so while the ladies relax?”

“With pleasure.” Killian clicks his heels together. “Dad.”

David winces, and Killian’s not entirely sure it’s 100% teasing. “Still getting used to that.”

Much later that night, Emma stretches out beside him, one leg hooked over his, her hand coming up to give his stomach a gentle poke. “Food baby?”

“I’m afraid so, love.” He didn’t think it was possible for a human being to ingest so much food, but every holiday season in this realm seems to prove him wrong. “Perhaps you should regale me with more tales of my Wish self to ensure I keep myself in good health.”

Emma laughs softly, tangling her fingers through the silver charms on his chest. “I’ll help you work off those extra calories, I promise.” She pokes him in the stomach again, grinning as he groans. “Not tonight, though.”

“Definitely not.” Rolling onto his side, he gathers her into his arms, relishing the feel of her bare skin against his from chest to knee. There’s a lot of be said for having total privacy in one’s own home, not to mention being married to a woman who can cast a heating charm with the flick of her slender fingers. “One of the joys of married life surely must be knowing the other person will be there beside you when the sun rises.”

“Unless there’s another curse, of course,” she mumbles sleepily against his shoulder, and he slides his hand down the supple length of her back to bestow a light pinch on the curve of her arse.

“Hush, Swan.” She snorts daintily, but burrows closer all the same. “Today is the day for being thankful, not tempting fate.”

Lifting her head, she puts a soft hand on his cheek, her gaze burning into his in the darkened room. “No matter how much I miss Henry, never think that I’m not thankful for you. Not just today. Every day.”

“And I you.” Her mouth tastes of toothpaste and the faintest trace of strawberry lip gloss, and the throaty moan that rumbles from her chest to his as he flicks his tongue against hers is almost his undoing. Thankfully, given he’s quite sure his performance would be decidedly subpar, her next kiss is soft and sweet and speaks to him of slumber.

“See you when the sun rises, sailor.”

“Aye aye, captain.” He rolls onto his back, closes his eyes as she settles into her favourite sleeping position stretched out beside, her hand over his heart. “It’s a date.”

~*~

Less than four scant weeks later, it’s Christmas Eve, which means dinner alone at home, just the two of them, before the next day topples them into a maelstrom of family and townsfolk at the Mayor’s annual Christmas celebration. Tomorrow they will dine on traditional roast beasts (he does so enjoy that particular joke) and every vegetable under the sun, but tonight?

Tonight they’re eating Chinese food and drinking soda, their choice of beverage all the better with which to toast young Master Mills. There will be enough grog flowing at Regina’s mansion tomorrow, thanks to the dwarves, and he’s more than happy to abstain tonight to ensure he’s in peak condition after dinner, as it were.

When they’ve organised themselves on the couch, cardboard boxes lined up on the coffee table and one of Emma’s favourite festive movies flickering on the television, he holds up his glass of soda, clinking it softly against Emma’s tumbler. “To Henry.”

“To Henry.” Her eyes are shining brightly with the threat of tears, but her smile is steady. “He brought me to Storybrooke and gave me a family.” She taps her glass against his a second time. “Even though it was an accident, he also led me to you.”

“Indeed he did.” He grins at her, doing his best to ignore the lump in his throat. “Good lad, that one.”

“I guess I always knew he’d have to leave one day.”

“It doesn’t stop us from missing him, though.”

Her sigh makes his heart ache. “No.”

“We’ll see him again, I’m sure of it.”

She lifts her chin, as if accepting an unspoken challenge. “I know.”

There’s my brave lass.

He puts his glass on the coffee table, then relieves her of her own untouched drink. “Until then, my darling, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but laughter dances in her voice. “You’re quoting Christmas songs at me now?”

“I’m a shameless man. If I can borrow from a lovely song that always makes your eyes come over all dreamy, I certainly will.”

She’s blushing as he bends his head to hers, teasing the curve of her ear with his lips as he sings the words in a whisper. “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow.” He touches his mouth against hers, tasting the warmth of her sigh. “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

Her eyes close, her mouth curving in a small, oddly secret smile. “You should sing more often, you know.”

“Outside the shower, you mean?” Her cheeks turn pink, and he knows she’s remembering their shared shower of the previous week. By candlelight, no less, which had made all those slippery curves and hollows beneath his questing hand and mouth so much more intriguing. “Perhaps I’ll finally be tempted to join in with Granny and her kraken machine tomorrow.”

Her laughter is music to his ears and eyes, her smile lighting up her whole face. “That’s karaoke and you know it.”

(They both know it will be a cold day in the Underworld before he sings modern ditties in public.)

“Speaking of tomorrow.” Her gaze meets his with such tender force that he can’t help blinking. “I have an early Christmas present for you.” She shifts closer, but makes no move to retrieve a gift from beneath the glowing tree, which in hindsight, should have been his first clue. “Which is ironic, really,” she mutters almost to herself, “the early part, I mean, because it’s all about being late when you think about it.”

As he struggles to catch up with these enigmatic words, she takes his hand and slips it beneath the hem of her shirt, encouraging him to touch her belly, stroke his fingertips from her navel to the swell of her pubic bone.

“Guess what?”

It all comes together with a click, in his head, in his heart, beneath his suddenly trembling hand. His chest grows tight, his tongue suddenly refusing to work properly. He looks at his wife imploringly. “Swan?”

Pressing his hand to her belly, she leans forward, her nose almost touching his. “That’s not a food baby.”

Joy courses through him, and he finds himself sliding off the couch, sinking to his knees in front of her, his hip banging painfully on the side of the coffee table. He doesn’t care. How he doesn’t tumble the boxes of Chinese takeout to the floor, he has no idea.

“Are you sure?”

“Two positive tests and a doctor’s visit this morning say yes.”

“Bloody hell.” He kisses her once, then twice, then she’s showering his face with kisses of her own, her cheek wet with tears against his. In between kisses, she cups his face in her hands, finding his eyes with hers.

“Do you mind that I went to the doctor without you?”

He opens his mouth to deny the gentle charge, then searches his heart. There are no lies or half-truths between them. Not anymore. “A little, perhaps.”

“You were so busy helping Regina set up for the party this morning and I just couldn’t wait.” She brushes her thumbs at the dampness on his face. “It’s also nice to be able to tell you when we’re alone.” Her smile is as radiant as their festive tree, and he suddenly knows exactly what she’s going to say. “You know, without everyone watching.”

His heart is so full, he’s not sure he can find the right words. In the end, it’s a simple thing. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

Dashing his eyes with the back of his hand, he clears his throat. “My gift can’t possibly compare,” he gestures towards the tree, feeling positively giddy. “But if I may?”

She beams at him. “Definitely.”

A moment later, she stares at the small jewellery box, her eyes widening with surprise. “Where on earth did you get this?”

It’s exactly the reaction for which he’d been hoping, and makes two months of fretting utterly worth it. “Marco knows a little pixie silversmith.”

“Of course he does,” Emma laughs. “God, it’s beautiful.” Pulling the rose gold chain from the box, she holds it up so the small compass charm catches the light from the fireplace, her gaze intent. “Wait. It looks exactly the same as the one we had to steal from Anton.”

“The pixie silversmith takes direction very well.”

She looks at him. “You designed this?”

“Well, I’m not one to brag-”

She doesn’t deign to rebuke such an obvious untruth. “From memory?”

“Of course.” Taken the chain from her hand, he drapes it carefully around her neck. “I remember every single detail of our first adventure together.”

Her smile is a beautiful, trembling thing. “You are something else, you know that?” The tenderness in her gaze makes his knees turn to water, making him thankful he’s resumed his seat on the couch beside her. She pulls the thick curtain of her hair aside so he can settle the chain against the nape of her neck, smiling when he feels the goosepimpled skin beneath his fingertips.

The new chain and compass charm gleam against her skin, and he has a sudden (and lurid) image of her wearing nothing else, her naked body dappled with the colourful reflection from the Christmas lights.

(They haven’t christened that particular rug yet, he realises.)

He touches one fingertip to the compass, the memory of weighing its full-size counterpart in his hand seared into his soul. He didn’t know it then, of course, but that moment had been the beginning of a long and winding journey to his own happy ending.

“Swan, I don’t care if we have to muddle through, or if we know exactly where we’re going in this life.” He smooths her hair back, letting his fingers linger in its golden strands. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be than at your side.”

“Me too.” Her answering kiss is filled with the same promise she made on their wedding day, making his heart race. “Merry Christmas.” Her dimples flash in her cheeks, and he braces himself for the teasing he knows is coming. “Dad.”

He grins. “Unlike your father, I am going to greatly relish getting used to that.”

In the end, they don’t make it far enough to christen the rug, but that’s okay. As luck would have it, the reflection of the Christmas lights do reach as far as the couch, bathing them both in a myriad of colours as they slowly move together, the lights flickering wildly as Emma finds her peak, seeming to keep time with her pleasured gasps.

Afterwards, he gathers his breathless, languid wife into his arms, half-wondering if he should make the effort to heat up their cold takeout so she doesn’t miss out on eating a proper meal. She kisses the skin above his hammering heart, then brings his hand down to touch the tiny swell of her belly, derailing that thought. “I never thought I’d get to have any of this.”

Just when he thinks there are no surprises left in this evening, she finds a new way to make him fall in love with her even more. “I know that feeling all too well, love.”

They kiss, long and slow and sweet, and when it’s over, she breathes out a long sigh of contentment. “Should we tell my parents the good news tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” He grins. “There is a chance Regina might be annoyed at us stealing her thunder at her own party.”

Emma’s eyes light up with mischief. “Wouldn’t that be a terrible shame?”

Pirate, he thinks proudly but doesn’t say. By the impudent smile she flashes in his direction, however, he knows she’s read his thoughts. Definitely a pirate.

They eat their reheated Chinese takeout much later than can be considered sensible for a pair of responsible adults, but Emma assures him they don’t have to set anyone a good example for at least another six months.

As the clock ticks past midnight, taking them into Christmas Day morn, he dreams of golden hair and compasses, of ogres and beasties, the flash of swords at mock battle and the gurgle of the young Charming prince’s laughter. Henry – no longer a boy but a man – embracing his mother, both their faces alight with identical joy. Emma’s face glowing with effort and pride, the weight of a squirming babe placed in his arms.

Killian wakes at dawn, faintly bewildered by the array of dream realms his mind had seen fit to visit as he’d slept, but he feels an odd sense of peace, his heart fuller than he could have ever imagined. His family’s course is now set true and, no matter what lies ahead, no matter which realm in which they find themselves, they will never lose their bearings again.

~*~

#captain swan #cs ff #cs holiday fic #cs smut #emma swan #killian jones #captain swan baby #slightly anti-canon-S7 if you squint #cs sexy times #msgenevieve447 cs fic #swan believer #captain cobra #captain cobra swan

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goodfortune-au · 3 years

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Good Fortune (Soulmate AU) Chapter 9: Winter Blues

The blustery chill of December has swept over Derry in a dense blanket of fresh fallen snow, a sentimental au revoir to the last lingering notes of autumn and a greeting to the shivering delight of winter. The season has quickly come into full swing, and the white on the ground has gotten so cumbersome that snowplows have already taken to diligently freeing the thoroughfares of its icy burden on a day to day basis. Bellringers are posted outside the local grocery, coaxing spare change out of the occasional passerby and boisterously wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. The citizens have started donning full winter regalia every time they leave the house, including Angel whose winter wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of black turtlenecks, scarves, and cozy fleece leggings with snow boots. Decorations are peppered heavily throughout town, singing the festive cheer of the upcoming holidays with jubilant glee and fervor. The scent of cinnamon seems almost elegantly ubiquitous, even outside amongst the great, big, snowcapped pines. It is unquestionably a winter wonderland, a scene inescapable in the heart of majestic Maine. But the town is not without grim reminders of its history, with impersonal missing posters still plastered visibly all over store windows, billboards and alleyways and a brand new curfew in effect. This had been put into place recently after one disappearance too many, and was announced via a stern warning posted on the letterboard outside the Derry Elementary School. “Remember the curfew,” it says. Similarly worded signs are all over the inner walls of the library too. Angel got an uneasy feeling every time she passed them.

School had recently let out for winter break, and the Losers were all appropriately excited for the long-awaited reprieve, as it gave them all much-needed respite from the trials and tribulations of being young outcasts. Angel sympathized with this struggle quite well; she remembered always counting the days before school ended even as a young child, putting her everything into school projects to distract herself from how miserable she was everyday and just waiting for the clock to strike three on each fateful quarter’s end. She remembered it vividly as much as she wished she didn’t, painful memories of adversity she wished she could simply forget. She could at the very least grant that it was over now, and none of it could hurt her anymore. The kids had come over the first day of break, and had brought with them tales of what was clearly an eventful season at school.

“Bowers almost caught my ass last day before break, do you guys remember?”

“Yeah, dude, I’ve never seen you so white. How’d you get away?”

“Lost him in the crowd.” Richie says, reclining back on the couch. “On the way out I ran back around to homeroom and hid under teach’s desk. I swear, that idiot has a baby’s concept of object permanence. Wouldn’t be able to find his own ass with two hands and a flashlight.”

“You’re lucky she wasn’t there.” Angel says, laughing behind a mug of schnapps-spiked hot chocolate. “That raggedy old bitch would have ratted you out. She still the worst?”

Richie snorts. “You know it. She almost sent Eds to the principal last week for blowing his nose too loud. Claimed he was ‘passing notes through morse code.’”

“God, what a load of bullshit.”

But ever since then, it’d been pretty quiet. There were times like these, to tell the truth, when the Losers were all simply busy with their own lives and she was busy with hers. Communication would fall to the wayside for a time on occasion but things would always go back to normal eventually. She simply expected they were off having adventures, contending with their own challenges and childhood adversities that she had at one point grappled with herself; getting into scrapes, maybe even making a couple new friends along the way. She smiles at the thought. Never too many in a group like theirs. And she would simply continue in her own occupations, continue the routine she had fallen into. Work was autopilot for her at this point, and easy, if a bit tedious and mind-numbing. She tried to remind herself of that as she worked day to day; in these times of difficulty it was good practice to count your blessings and try not to take them for granted. This was a good job, and one that was certainly a far cry better than the last one she had. She knew it was not something to be squandered.

But even still, she cannot deny the growing feeling of crushing ennui festering in her head, that familiar sinking dread as her alarm went off every morning, jarring her out of peaceful, oblivious slumber and bringing her back to all her obligations, her duties and responsibilities that she could evade for a time just by setting her head back on the pillow. Present in all the incidents of the last couple months were telling warnings of a brewing storm, a funk she would likely not come out of for months if she wasn’t careful. She was fighting it with everything she had, but everything she had didn’t necessarily amount to a lot when she felt as low as she did. With the increasing lack of company, she had no reason to keep up appearances so long as she wasn’t working, so Angel would get caught in feedback loops of the same unhealthy behaviors.

She would shower once a week at most, keeping the oil in her hair at bay with the aid of dry shampoo and body odors hidden with a thick veneer of deodorant and perfume. She was indulging too much in things that lacked any sort of nutritious substance and when she did cook, it was large doses of unnecessarily decadent frippery; cookies, cakes, pies, anything to fill the void. She would spend most of her free hours watching TV, would flit through the channels in sometimes futile errand to find the Derry Children’s Hour, a fickle discovery that could never seem to be found at the same time every day. It varied from week to week; sometimes it was on everyday in the morning before she left for work. Sometimes it was on during the evenings, and sometimes it seemed to start just as she was flipping through the channels. Sometimes it wasn’t on at all. When it wasn’t on at all, Angel would do one of two things; she would spend some time making new art of her muse, or she would go to bed in the hopes of seeing him in her dreams. When she slept, it was far too much, trying in vain to ignore how things were worsening; the unforgiving monotony of work, her loss of interest in her hobbies, the way her clothes were getting just a little bit tighter, just enough for her to be able to know. Maybe living by herself was harder than she made it out to be. She was far too proud to admit it though.

So she ignored it all, trying to raise her spirits enough in time for Christmas to make its much-anticipated arrival, before she would leave town and head out to Haven to see her family again. She only had so much time to get her shit together, so she tries to make a conscious effort to be present in all the holiday cheer. She had gone out to the thrift store just outside of town a couple weeks before in a hunt for decorations and had come back with a veritable melange of Christmas decor; bags upon bags of tacky, old ornaments, golden tinsel, ribbons, lights and fragrant candles, and even a wreath she’d hung outside her front door, but not before mounting an old picture of Khan Noonien Singh in the middle of it. She didn’t care if no one else found it funny. She’d pulled an album off her shelf (The Smiths, The Queen is Dead ) and set it to play on her Sony turntable, and then quickly got lost in an afternoon of covering the house from top to bottom in festive finery. By the time she was done she could hardly recognize the place and neither could Mayor Jello, who was so disrupted by the changes in scenery that he broke two ornaments almost immediately. She was so gratified by a single productive afternoon that she treated herself to a big dinner and then promptly fell asleep, taking her from the early evening of one day into the late afternoon of the next.

She’d not felt particularly festive after that, unfortunately, as it turns out, a cornucopia of Christmas decorations was not enough to erase all of her problems. Her increasing fixation on Pennywise, as thrilling and refreshing as it was, seemed to clearly illustrate another trouble she was facing as of late; loneliness. It was a difficulty she’d had all her life, so she could hardly call it new. It had existed with her for almost as long as she could process memories, and had been one of her strongest and most consistent demons all throughout her childhood. She’d grown up a child to parents working graveyard shifts so they’d spent a great majority of her adolescence asleep during the day; she was decidedly unpopular in school, and was always the last picked from games of dodgeball in gym to group projects in reading class; even her adult life, although enriched by the presence of the Losers, was spent relatively in solitude. But one specific, categorical subset of loneliness was the worst of them all, and the one that plagued her the most consistently. It was rather a dumb thing to be insecure over, but just as Angel was the last to be picked for dodgeball and group projects, she was also the last one picked when it came to being anyone’s romantic prospect. As unpopular as she was socially, she seemed to get on even worse when it came to matters such as these, and the rumors perpetually circulating about her didn’t help things at all. She tried to ignore it, knowing that there was really nothing that could be done about it, but it still crushed her all the same when she would see happy couples all around her on the ever-dreaded Valentine’s Day, when she would be the only one without a date to all the stupid little school dances, when she couldn’t even get a decent friend to stick around let alone someone to hold her hand. She knew there were better things to get bent out of shape over, but she couldn’t shake the feelings of inadequacy all the same. It was just too hard.

That was why she leaned so hard into her coping mechanisms, her little crushes and all the things that made her happy. Distractions. She needed them desperately, or her mind was dead set on killing her, and she didn’t want to land herself in an early grave if she could help it. The crush on Pennywise was just such a distraction that kept her going from day to day, as were the continuing gifts from her guardian angel. The gifts were something all their own. In a sense, the gifts were a soothing balm to all the raw, aching emptiness she felt; she could delude herself with the fantasy that something actually liked her enough to court her, seek her interest. She knows she should be much more wary of such innocent offerings in a place like Derry; hell, if she were anyone else she probably would be. But this was Angel. Long ignored, long suffering, long neglected, long forgotten Angel. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t spurn such benevolence, because she had spent her whole life wishing for just such a kindness.

Ever since Thanksgiving she’d become increasingly more in tune to a growing pattern; that is, she had started to notice that the gifts would often correspond with her emotions or the way she was feeling. If she was feeling sad or dejected or otherwise deflated or downtrodden, she would start to get that ever-familiar feeling, that strange surge in energy she could only categorize as unexplainable; otherworldly; alien. And then, in a convenient place nearby, she would always find it, and when she did, she would somehow know that it was meant just for her. A gift. As time went on and she collected more and more things she started to feel closer to whatever it was, this being or force that was watching over her, this manifestation of good fortune that had seen fit to choose her, to have a fondness for her and for no one else. It was exciting, it was thrilling, it… Made her feel special.

So, in an effort to display her gratitude, Angel had started leaving gifts of her own. Since that Thanksgiving eve when she had set her hair scrunchie adrift in the dark dusk of Derry’s night sky, she could swear she’d felt that feeling surge and swell within it as it disappeared from sight, almost as though she could feel the beat of her guardian’s heart pulsing with hers like one. It was a feeling so genuinely different from what she felt before that she laid in bed that night electrified, and though she had no dream of Pennywise, she’d woke the next morning in a glow all the same. From then it had become a game of simple exchange. Angel would keep some kind of an item or trinket on her person; a necklace, earrings, maybe a tube of chapstick or a pack of chewing gum, and when she stumbled across their unmistakable calling card, she would leave something behind in the place of what she had taken. The feeling every time she would do so was unforgettable, and plainly addicting in a way she couldn’t put words to. So much so that she couldn’t stop herself from fretting over what she was going to leave for them next, from stressing herself out in that oh-so-delightful way that one does when deciding what to buy for their significant other on a date night.

Pennywise was finding himself in similar dire straits; he was not normally a creature of such indecisive quality, but this was his soulmate, and she deserved only the best. He also hadn’t expected such eager reciprocation of his attentions, eventual as they were, and to be frank it had quite taken him by surprise. It was a pleasant surprise, but a surprise all the same. And now that she was starting to reciprocate, he’d suddenly grown something of a self-consciousness regarding his gifts. He didn’t want to leave her too many of the same thing; he didn’t want her to think his gifts were repetitive or worse yet, boring. He wanted to keep her attention, keep it in a vice, and only tighten the grip with time. So, during the long hours of the day when he spends time ruminating and choosing his meals, when he has all the time in the world to mull and think and brood, he’s thinking of her, and thinking what he might take next, what he might leave next that will make her happy. He knows that Christmas is an important time for humans, and he has an idea what he might give her, something special that can only come from him. He’ll set to making it immediately.

With Christmas speedily approaching, Angel is making her final preparations before she sets out for Haven. She’s packed up some clothes, cleaned the house (or, as much as she could be bothered to), and crammed a feeder full of food for Mayor Jello to keep him satisfied during her absence. She would only be gone a few days at most, so she knew he would be fine on his own. Before she sets out, she leaves a gift behind, along with a note (“Be back in a few days ♡”), set on the dining room table. It’s a Christmas tree ornament, one she’d found thrifting of a colorful mardi gras clown. She loved it, but decided it was something best left for her guardian angel. She figured the gift would mean more if there was sentimental value attached to it, and Christmas was a time of giving after all. So she leaves it behind and departs for Haven. The cab ride over is surprisingly quick and painless, and in no time at all she finds herself stepping outside to the welcoming committee of her family, who’s gathered outside her home to greet her.

The holiday in Haven is a pleasant one, if exhausting. She and her family make easy, casual conversation, catching up after months of not being in one another’s company. The day before Christmas is a hectic one, as they had all set up to do a little window shopping in an effort to get immersed in the Christmas spirit. They’d journeyed a little ways north to the Bangor shopping mall, and Angel found herself charmed by the nostalgic value of the outing, which she remembered from years past as her family always celebrated Christmas. She’d gotten a couple things while she was out, little trinkets from the likes of stores like Claire’s and Spencer’s Gifts. From Claire’s she got a small assortment of jewelry and makeup (things she could likely leave for her guardian angel, she finds herself thinking). From Spencer’s her purchases are a little more daring and scandalous, things she surely couldn’t ever divulge owning to her family. A few toys, things only an adult could enjoy. Angel had a fondness for things like this if she were frank, and it was the only outlet she had to explore her own sexuality, so she tried not to garner any shame when it came to owning them. She kept it hidden in her purse when she’d bought it, so as not to arouse any unwanted attention, and looked forward to trying them out when she got home.

Then came Christmas Eve dinner, which was much more draining, believe it or not. Angel hadn’t been looking forward to it all day, because she knew what was to come. More conversation, more needling questions about her life back in Derry. She knew they only meant well, and they were only parents concerned about their child, but she couldn’t help but dread it all as someone who hated invasive personal inquiries. Worse still was the fact that she was still as drained and tired here as she was back home. She thought leaving for a spell would do her some good but she’s just as groggy and irritated, and all she could do surrounded by family was try her damnedest to hide it.

“So, ██████, how are things back in Derry? Anything exciting happening lately?”

Ah, yes, and this is how it always started. A fairly innocuous question that would surely give way to more in depth lines of inquiry.

“Oh, not much.” She says through a mouthful of potatoes. She did always love the food her parents made. Nothing beat hot champ with a nice, big dollop of butter in the middle. Mix in peas and it was the ultimate comfort food. “I guess you could say work is getting easier.”

“That’s good to hear.” Her stepfather says. “Paying bills on time, keeping all your ducks in a row?”

“Yeah, pops, think things are running pretty smooth so far. I’m starting to really like living on my own.” She lies. No need to let her parents know how much she was struggling lately. She knew they would swoop into protective mode, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want help. Didn’t need it, no sir.

“Good. We were pretty worried at first, having you stay there on your own. If you ever need help, you know, you can always come to us. We’re your safety net, remember?”

“Yeah I know.” She says, blushing. “I’m fine, though. Ever since I started working the library, I haven’t been super worried about money. I’m even keeping a little at the end of each paycheck.”

“Putting it in savings? That’s important, you know.”

“Yeah yeah, I know.”

Her mom leans forward on her elbows. “Have you been making any new friends? You’re still hanging out with those kids, right?”

“Bill, Rich, Stan and Eds? Yeah. Besides them I kind of keep to myself, though. You know I was always that kind of kid.”

“True.” Her brother says. “Not much for crowds.”

And then, the burning question. She knew it was coming, and she resented it every time it came up. Didn’t know who would ask it though.

“Found a boyfriend yet?”

Cool, there it was, courtesy of her mother.

“Mom!” she says, her face flaring up with heat again.

“Sorry, I just worry about you sometimes. I think you should have someone to take care of you, you know, something like dad and I have. All we’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”

Angel chuckles nervously. “Yeah, uh, I know.” She pushes her plate away. “Sorry to cut this short, but can I go? I hate to ditch early, but I’m feeling pretty exhausted and I think I should sleep.”

“Sure, honey, whatever you need.”

Angel had been vastly displeased with this line of questioning. She knew it was coming, but she hated it all the same. Just what was she supposed to say to something like that? It was such an awkward question to pose, and one she’d heard throughout her teen years much to her utter dismay. She wasn’t popular in that regard, she wasn’t popular at all to begin with, and she fwished her parents would understand that rather than egg her on in something that was ultimately hopeless. As she lays in bed in the guest room she stares up at the ceiling, stewing in unpleasant thought. All that loneliness, the self-hatred, the feelings of inadequacy come bubbling up to the surface again and she tries so hard to forget it. She finds herself thinking of Pennywise now and she clings to the change in topic desperately. Her mind starts to swim with little fantasies of him, letting herself entertain the thought of… Dating him. She wonders what he might look like underneath all the makeup. He seemed attractive enough in costume, but what was underneath might be even better. Even so, she starts to blush at the thought of holding his gloved hand, him parading her on his arm, making her laugh… Kissing her with those full red lips... She turns onto her side and starts to hug her pillow, burying her face in the cool, plush security of the cotton-covered stuffing. She wished she could have one of those dreams again, she missed them so terribly. She truly had no idea why they had stopped when she’d been having them so regularly, it was an anomaly just as puzzling as the existence of her guardian angel. Just as puzzling as the night she’d heard that voice behind her on the couch, the night that Patrick disappeared; puzzling as the pattern of disappearances in general, and puzzling as the monster that lurked in the shadows. She had no idea what to make of it, of any of it. All she knew was that she had no business questioning it.

That night she had no dream, and she’d woken up patently dissatisfied but not surprised in the least. Christmas passed without incident; she and her family played games, had another dinner, opened a few presents, and then Angel made her departure towards home once more. She plays with the pearl heart around her neck as she vacantly stares out the window of the cab, and though she’s relieved to be done with all the social pressures of the holiday she also feels a pang of sadness, knowing that once she gets back home it’ll just be more of the same. As she pulls up to her house she pays her fare and thanks the cab driver, and then she collects her bags, unlocks her front door, and heads back inside. It’s late, the room is dark, and when she turns on the light she finds Mayor Jello asleep on the arm of the couch. She smiles. She’s about to go to her room to start unpacking but once she lets her eyes fall to the floor she notices something sitting underneath her Christmas tree. Another gift? She drops her bags and wastes no time; she crouches near the tree and picks it up, turning it over, inspecting the beautiful gold and red wrapping paper with joy. The tag says, “To Angel, from your angel.” Her heart thunders in her chest.

She tears open the wrapping paper. There, hidden within, is a long sleeved blouse, almost like a sweater, black in color and so soft to the touch that she can’t help herself from rubbing her face against it. It feels like some sort of silk and, excited, she strips right there in the living room to try it on. She feels that familiar feeling as she slips it on over her chest, and the cool silk is heaven on her skin. She notes with wonder at the perfect fit; it’s almost as though it was tailor-made, just for her, and when she takes it back off she hugs it to her heart tight. This was such a welcome gesture after an utterly taxing weekend, she can’t stop herself from being absolutely delighted with it. After such an embarrassing Christmas Eve dinner, being poked and prodded with questions, with… That question, with all the feelings of loneliness that had come welling up, she felt special all over again. For just a moment, there in the living room, her problems didn’t exist. It was nice.

The disappointing pattern of having no dreams continued into New Years, another holiday which Angel would spend alone. To be fair, she hadn’t stopped having dreams in general, she just hadn’t been having dreams of him. They were dreams she would forget almost immediately after she woke up, though she didn’t necessarily care given that they weren’t what she was holding out for. New Years Eve was quiet, and Angel had already slept through about half of it. Radio silence from the Losers, but she expected that- she assumed they were all beholden to their families for this holiday. Once she’d gotten up, she made herself something to eat and sank into the couch, turning on the TV. Truthfully, she’d all but forgotten that today was New Years Eve, and had only remembered once the programs on the screen reminded her, all debuting special broadcasts for the occasion. Everything she could find that would normally be entertaining was all re-runs she’d seen just about a thousand times before, and she finds herself dissatisfied with the lack of quality entertainment, so she finds herself dozing off on the couch once more. Sleep is simply a blank canvas for the duration of her nap, and she doesn’t wake up until she’s jolted awake by Mayor Jello, who has chosen to put all his weight onto a single paw when he steps onto her chest.

“Ow ow owwww. Get off me you asshole.” She gently pushes him down, and he meows indignantly before slinking around the back of the couch to find somewhere else to lay down. She looks up at the TV again. Nothing good, as per usual. Glancing at the clock, she notices it’s already almost midnight. To tell the truth, Angel never cared much for this holiday; it was always something of a disappointment (just like most things, she thinks pessimistically). She gets up off the couch and meanders lazily into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she plucks out a bottle of champagne and studies it for a moment. Popping it open, she takes a big, hearty swig, and wipes her lips with the crook of her arm before making her way back over to the couch. Didn’t matter if she waited until midnight; it’s not like there was anybody here anyway. She flips through the TV channels again, pausing momentarily on one program or another to pass the time but never lingering too long on any one show. She gets more than pleasantly tipsy as time goes on, and in the span of half an hour she’s polished off the entire bottle. Getting up to throw it out, she’s clumsy on her feet, her mind is swimming and she can feel the warmth settling over her. When she drops onto the couch again it’s close to 11:30 and she starts to flit through the channels again. Nothing, nothing, nothing… Another re-run, another re-run, nothing… News broadcast, an odd recording of a baseball game… Pausing, she makes her way back to Channel 27. She hadn’t found anything earlier in the day but, who knows, maybe it was worth a shot to take another look. She flips back through another assortment of bland choices, and when she finally lands on it her heart stops. There it is.

Another installment of the Derry Children’s Hour, but the backdrop is slightly altered. There’s balloons everywhere accompanied by lit paper lanterns, and hanging over the top of the screen is a banner that reads “Happy New Year!” It looked to be a special New Years episode, and based on the way they were talking it seemed as though it were a re-run of some kind, although she wasn’t sure how she had missed it earlier. Maybe it had played while she was sleeping. She watches eagerly, having missed this strange ritual of hers, and finds herself soothed as always by the voice of the hostess and the friendly way she engages with the children. She’s drunk now and finding it all the more difficult to concentrate, but her mind is dead set on one missing detail. She wanted to see Pennywise.

He wasn’t present, not yet at least, and she finds herself disappointed but tries to be optimistic in her inebriated haze. He might show up- after all, what was a New Years celebration without a clown to liven things up, right? The hostess carries on about your standard New Years topics; about the New Year being a fresh start, about setting goals for the New Year… She asks the children what goals they might have and they give an assortment of answers. One says he’s going to do his chores more, another admits she wants to do better in school, one even said he wanted to try to be nicer to his sister. This continues until she naturally segues into a new topic, one that creates a pit in Angel’s stomach.

“And that brings us to our last topic, kids, the New Years kiss!”

Oh, she hated that. Growing up unpopular in… That regard, Angel had never had the pleasure of experiencing that magical New Years kiss. She’d heard people at school brag about getting ones from their significant others, but she had never been so lucky, not that anyone would care to hear about it anyway if she was. Even in her intoxicated state she cannot help the dismay settling over her now, growing increasingly more upset as she watches the hostess prattle on, going on about how the New Years kiss is supposed to bring good fortune in love for the following year and how you should only do it with someone special. She turns off the TV. She shouldn’t be feeling this way, it was so stupid. It didn’t matter. Still, she’s grown dolorous and sad, and all she can think to do now is go to sleep; leave this day, this awful year behind her. She didn’t even get to see Pennywise, who she knew would’ve made her feel better about the whole thing, at least for a little while. She sits up and drunkenly ambles down the hall to her bedroom, where she strips and crawls into bed. She thinks of him until she falls asleep.

The dreamscape begins in the black as always, and then she dreams for a time about nothing that interesting. She dreams that she and the Losers are working in a call center together, then dreams that Mayor Jello suddenly gained the ability to speak and was now criticizing her fashion choices; she has a brief intermission of a dream in which everything about her was the same except for the fact that she inexplicably had no tongue, and then its the black again. It's nothing but black and emptiness, her mind nothing but a void, and then suddenly it's something else, something new. She wakes up in bed, same as always, but she feels… Empty. She slips out of bed, she dresses for work, she feels empty. She walks to work, she doesn’t find any gifts, she feels empty. She works her shift, she helps patrons out with their book selections, she feels empty. It's nothing but an empty, sinking feeling, plaguing her consciousness, and nothing will alleviate it. She finishes her shift, she clocks out, and it’s more of the same. Until.

She steps out the door, and a gust of that familiar wind sweeps through her. It’s a warmth, it’s something wonderful, and it’s calling to her. All she can do is follow that feeling, follow its pushing guidance behind her, and she finally comes upon a place she hadn’t seen before, a place on the outskirts of town. The street sign reads Neibolt Street. She finds herself drawn to the only sight to see, an old, battered house on the brink of ruin, standing there in a lawn of ugly, yellow weeds, guarded by a rusty, broken fence. It’s just after sunset now, though she hadn’t any idea how the time had passed so quickly between now and the end of her shift. The smell of the peeling wallpaper is old when she steps past the front door, there’s creaking in the floorboards beneath her boot heels. She ducks under cobwebs until she reaches the end of the room, and there’s a staircase there, just beckoning her upwards into the upper half of the house. The stairs moan underneath her feet as she trudges up the steps, and now she can hear delicate, paper-thin whispers guiding her towards the center room. They seem to know that she’s sad, they console her; they comfort her as she continues on, encouraging her with each step she takes. There’s windows peeking out into the field of sunflowers across the way, and she’s mesmerized by them as she looks out the glass in wonder. Then, behind her, the door closes. She turns, and her heart leaps into her throat. It’s him.

He steps toward her with a charming bow. He towers over her, but she doesn’t feel small. She feels safe.

“...You waited for me, my pet.”

Her stomach flutters, and she’s shy, but she speaks.

“Yeah, I… I waited so long. I was...Worried I might not see you again. I was worried you were gone.”

His eyes are blue but they glint with something warm. He laughs and she blushes.

“Oh darling, don’t worry. So long as you keep me in your pretty little head, I won’t ever go away. Ever.” He beams at her, and holds out his hand. “ Promise promise. ” His voice is in her mind, a welcome intruder that makes her shiver.

Come to me, darling. Come to Pennywise.

She’s numb but her body is buzzing all the same. She has to resist the urge to run to him, has to force herself to keep cool but her mind is screaming with desire. She walks toward him, extending her own hand, experiencing that all-too-crucial moment of lucidity where she’s afraid the dream might end this way as it had so many times before. He’s there, he doesn’t move, and as the distance between them increasingly closes she can see his eyes fade from blue into gold. And when their hands finally touch, it’s… Indescribable. She can feel her body, her stomach bloom with something beautiful and her heart is racing when he pulls her close. She looks up into his eyes. His stare is intense but it doesn’t scare her. Rather, it simply makes her want more.

“You won’t be alone forever, my darling.” He whispers. “This won’t last forever, I’ll make sure of it.”

He sweeps her into a dip and she squeaks at the sudden movement, at the adrenaline rushing through her veins. There in each other's arms there’s a moment of unspeakable tension between them, a beat of eternal silence, and then when she’s certain this will all turn into a nightmare of some kind, he leans in close. She can practically taste his warm breath as he draws near, the cloying scent of cotton candy mixed with popcorn washing over her drunken senses when he comes in for the kiss. The moment their lips touch is divine and she's all but stopped breathing; she wants it to last forever, but then-

She jolts awake. She remembers everything, and she looks at her alarm clock. It’s a new year.

#pennywise #daddywise #chapter nine #winter blues #it 2017 #it chapter one #pennywise x oc #pennywise x angel #tenpence #good fortune

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assorted-delights · 4 years

Text

WOW. I DIDN'T WRITE THIS, BUT ITS WORD FOR WORD WHAT I FEEL.

“If you are a liberal who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why anyone would ever vote for him, let me fill you in.

It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you! And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude, obnoxious, unpredictable, narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is YOU. How is that possible you might ask?

Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country. From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders. From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being an unmitigated failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture. From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally to gas lighting us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or (horror of horrors) don a MAGA hat in public.

So much for your “tolerance.”

(See why we think you are just hypocrites??)

We’re also not interested in the fact that you think you can unilaterally decide that 250 years of the right-to-bear-arms against a tyrannical or ineffective government should be abolished because you can’t get the violence in the cities you manage under control. That free-speech should be tossed out the window, and that those who disagree with your opinions are fair game for public harassment or doxing. That spoiled children, who still live off their parent’s dime or Fed/State programs, should be allowed to destroy cities and peoples livelihoods without repercussions. That chaos, and lawlessness, and disrespect for authority should be the norm. This is your agenda. And you wonder why we find you more dangerous than Donald Trump?

Your narrative is a constant drone of oppressor/oppressed race-baiting intended to divide the country in as many ways as you possibly can. You love to sell “victim-hood” to people of color every chance you get because it’s such an easy sell, compared to actually teaching people to stand on their own two feet and take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own communities and their own futures. But you won’t do that, you will never do that, because then you will lose control over people of color. They might actually start thinking for themselves, God forbid!

This is why we will vote for Donald Trump.

Not because he is the most charming character on the block.

Not because he is the most polite politician to have ever graced the oval office. Not because he is the most palatable choice, or because we love his moral character or because the man never lies, but because we are sick to death of you and all of the destructive crap you are doing to this once beautiful and relatively safe country.

Your ineffective and completely dysfunctional liberal “leadership”(?) has literally destroyed our most beautiful cities, our public education system, and done it’s damnedest to rip faith out of people’s lives. However bad Donald Trump may be, and he is far from perfect, every day we look at you and feel that no matter what Donald Trump says or does there is no possible way he could be any worse for our country than you people are.

We are sick to death of your stupid, destructive, ignorant, and intolerant behavior and beliefs — parading as “wokeness.” We are beyond sick of your hypocrisy and B.S.

We are fed up with your disrespectful divisiveness and constant unrelenting harping and whining and complaining (while you live in the most privileged nation in the world), while making literally zero contributions of anything positive to our society. Your entire focus is on ripping things down, never ever building anything up. Think about that as there is something fundamentally very wrong in the psychology of people who choose destruction as their primary modus operandi. When Donald J Trump is reelected, don’t blame us, look in the mirror and blame yourselves.

Because you are the ones that are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. You are the ones who have created this "monster" that you so despise, by your very actions.

By your refusal to respect your fellow Americans, and the things that are important to us. You have made fun of the “fly-over states,” the people who “cling to their guns and religion,” the middle class factory workers and coal miners and underprivileged rural populations that you dismissively call “yahoos” and “deplorables.” You have mocked our faith and our religion. You have mocked our values and our patriotism. You have trampled our flag and insulted our veterans and treated our first responders with contempt and hatred.

You have made environmentalism your religion, while trashing every city you have taken responsibility for. You scream from the rooftops about “global warming” and a “green new deal” while allowing tens of thousands of homeless people to cover your streets in literal sh!t and garbage and needles and plastic waste without doing a single thing to help them or solve the environmental crisis your failed social policies are creating. But we’re supposed to put YOU in charge of the environment while gutting our entire economy to institute this plan when you can’t even clean up a single city??

You complain — endlessly — yet have failed to solve a single social problem anywhere. In fact, all you have done is create more of them. We’ve had enough. We are tired of quietly sitting by and being the “silent” majority. So don’t be surprised when the day comes when we finally respond. And trust me it’s coming, sooner than you might think. And also trust me when I say it won’t be pretty. Get ready.

When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because you and your “comrades” have chosen to trash the police, harass law-abiding citizens, and go on rampages destroying public property that we have all paid for and you have zero respect for. When Donald Trump is reelected it will be because we are sick of your complete and utter nonsense and destruction. How does it feel to know that half of this country finds you FAR more despicable than Donald J. Trump, the man you consider to be the anti-Christ?

Let that sink in.

We consider you to be more despicable, more dangerous, more stupid, and more narcissistic than Donald Trump. Maybe allow yourself a few seconds of self-reflection to let that sink in. This election isn’t about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden.

This is about Donald Trump vs YOU!

So if on the morning of November 4 (or more likely January 19, by the time the Supreme Court will weigh in on the mail-in ballot fiasco that we are headed towards), and Donald J. Trump is reelected, the only people you have to blame is the left-wing media drones and yourselves.

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kae-karo · 6 years

Text

Merry Christmas, you spoon (A Life and Death Christmas fic)

Mornin friends! Have a little Christmassy-themed fic about Dan as Death and Phil as Life - you don’t have to read Life and Death but it does provide some context for the events of this fic!

Merry Christmas, you spoon

4.9k word count

Summary: Dan is Death, Phil is Life, and Christmas is coming up - their first Christmas together - though Dan's worried: something feels a little...off. (Dan POV)

“Dan, Dan, wake up, wake up! Did you see, it's snowing outside!” I squint against the sudden brightness, groaning as I throw my arm across my face in an attempt to block out the pale blue light now streaming through the window.

“Jesus, close the curtain, it's not like you've never seen snow before. You lived through a literal Ice Age, you spork,” I peek out from under my arm at the figure framed by the icy sky - for all my complaining, I can't help the fondness that sneaks into my tone.

“Well, yeah,” he turns back to me, blue eyes and bright grin perfectly complementing the aesthetic outside. I only have a moment to prepare before he flops onto the bed beside me, propping his chin up on his elbows less than a foot from my face. “Just because I've seen something a thousand times doesn't make it any less beautiful,” his gaze softens, along with his smile, and he stares at me far longer than necessary. I duck into the pillow to hide the grin tugging at the corner of my cheek - I've never been good at taking compliments, even the subtle kind.

“Shut up,” I mumble into the pillow, and it comes out muffled. When Phil laughs in response, I throw said pillow; unfortunately, I have horrible aim, and it misses completely - we both wince as various objects from my desk are knocked to the floor. Phil rolls off the bed, still full of energy and excitement, to survey the damage.

“No, I’ll get it, it was my fault,” I shove the blanket aside and join him - despite my protests, he’s already picking up the spilled pencil holder, and I bend down to grab the pens that have skittered halfway across the room.

When I’ve finally collected all the wayward writing utensils, I straighten and turn back toward the desk. In the span of a second, three things happen: I’m hit with an unexpected wave of warmth, Phil’s cheeks flush bright red, and he spins to focus very intently on the other things he’s collected from the floor.

“Phil, were you staring at my ass?” I feign shock, my free hand covering my heart as I return the pens and pencils to their holder. He doesn’t look up, but the temperature warms the closer I get, and I can barely contain my laughter. As he pretends to rearrange the various objects, ruffled black hair falls across his face; I wish he’d turn toward me so I can run my fingers through it.

“Come on,” I smirk at him, grabbing his free hand instead and tugging him from his pointless organizing. “You know I’m teasing.” It’s odd to see him flustered, he’s usually so fearlessly himself. I drag him toward the kitchen, simultaneously pleased and a little disappointed to see his blush has faded by the time I let go to focus on making a pot of coffee.

“Wait, no, we can’t have coffee!” He practically shouts it, and I startle and step back. At my confused glance, he clarifies. “Well, it’s snowing! The first snow of the year, we have to have hot chocolate!” His eyes have gone bright again, and I can see the slightest glow coming from his skin - he’s immensely excited, and I set my hands on his shoulders to stop him actually jumping up and down.

“Alright, alright, calm down, we’ll have some hot chocolate,” I smile to myself as I pull open the cupboard. “Okay,” I amend, talking to the half-empty cabinet, “it looks like we’re out,” when I turn back, he’s already at the door and tugging on some boots that look brand new.

“That’s fine, the shop’s only fifteen minutes away, and we can walk there in the snow!” I almost wonder if it’s worth grabbing a jacket, the way the heat is rolling off him in waves, but I join him at the door and settle on my usual winter coat to keep up appearances.

“Alright, but you need a coat as well. And where’d those boots come from?” I pull on my own shoes, though they’re not quite the best for the snow; I don’t usually walk around outside for fun. I’m glancing up from my feet to find Phil donning a metallic puffy jacket, which - much like his boots - seems to have appeared from thin air.

“How has this never come up?” I lean back on a heel, crossing my arms and pursing my lips. Apparating, warmth and life, and now he can just conjure whatever he wants? I fight the envy that swirls in my stomach.

“Well it’s never been snowing before now,” he looks entirely unfazed by my annoyance, and I really can’t keep it up for long because he’s practically bouncing on his toes. Logic must take control for half a second as he eyes me up and down and decides I’m ready to go. “Come on!” I don’t fight his hand in mine, fingers twined, pulling me out the door.

Once on the street, the icy wind barely makes it through the bubble of warmth Phil’s projecting - each step melts the dusting of snow under his feet, and the lazy flakes that drift from the sky disappear before they reach our heads. In spite of this, Phil’s grinning like a kid in a candy shop, wide-eyed and enraptured by the white-lined features of the city.

His excitement is contagious - just seeing the look on his face is enough to make me smile. We continue in silence for a while, but it’s a content kind, not at all awkward. Every now and then, he stops to trail a hand through a particularly fluffy pile of snow, catching some on his fingers before it melts away - it soon becomes a game, whenever we drift close enough to a bench or fence where the snow has managed to cling.

“So,” it’s barely above a whisper, I’m afraid to break the comfortable trance, or pull Phil from his little world. But curiosity and the desire to hear his voice win out. “Christmas is at the end of the week. What do you, uh, usually do to celebrate? I mean, do you do anything special, or spend time with...” I trail off, unsure what exactly I’m asking - we don’t have any family, per se, but he’s such a kind person, surely he’s made some friends over the years? People he enjoys spending time with? A sliver of jealousy worms its way into my belly, though I try to ignore it.

“Hm? I suppose it depends,” his eyes don’t focus on anything, don’t land for more than a moment, as if the whole scene around us will disappear and he’ll never see it again. I suppose the snow will, eventually. But it’ll come back. I’m still waiting for him to continue, but he doesn’t, and I take a deep, steadying breath. I blow it out quickly, and it just barely reaches outside our warm bubble to cloud in the frosty air.

“Depends on what?” I know it’s not his fault, he’s just so vague sometimes. I squeeze his hand for emphasis, and he turns to meet my gaze. I don’t think the smile has left his face, but it’s softer now, more appreciative than eager.

“Whether I have things to do,” his eyes drift away again, but his hand squeezes mine back, “who I’m with.” I can’t blame the warmth around us for the blush that climbs to my cheeks. “Sometimes,” I turn back to him, having dropped my gaze to the dusting of snow ahead of us on the pavement - I’m surprised he’s actually volunteering information. “I’ll stay in a forest, or a jungle, or somewhere tropical during the winter. It’s not really as nice as the snow, but…” he trails off, gesturing with his free hand at the air around us.

“You can’t turn it off,” I nod solemnly, glad that the streets are relatively empty - nobody seems to notice the rapidly melting snow, the way the flakes never reach the ground. We’re just about at the store, and Phil rushes ahead. I trail behind him and through the door with a chuckle, following his silvery jacket down the drink aisle.

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

“Phil, do you really think giant marshmallows are the best idea? My mugs aren’t that big,” I frown at the enormous bag he’s set on the counter and the equally enormous marshmallows it contains, but he pouts and I can’t bring myself to rain on his parade. So we’re back outside in minutes, bag with the giant marshmallows and box of hot chocolate now swinging from Phil’s free hand. And I mean swinging.

“If you keep doing that, it’s going to go flying down the street and some pigeon is going to get all your marshmallows,” I comment, glancing at him from the corner of my eye with a smirk. He giggles, then stills his arm at his side. The walk to the flat isn’t as leisurely; I can tell Phil’s anxious to get back, and he’s not nearly as captivated by the snow - what little there is left on this side of the street, after our journey here melted most of it.

I’ve been focused on our feet, watching the way the snowflakes disappear before they can settle on our shoes, when I realize we’ve almost arrived. I pull my hand from Phil’s, fishing in my pocket for the key, then unlock the door and hold it open for him.

“What a gentleman!” Phil laughs, stepping inside, but I frown the moment he passes. Is something wrong? Just before he walked through, he’d looked...confused, or concerned. Or perhaps some combination of both. But then he looked just as cheery as ever? Maybe I’m overthinking it, or saw wrong…

It’s about ten minutes later - hot chocolate in hand with a single giant marshmallow melting on top - that I ask, because it’s actually eating me alive inside, despite the way I tried to forget it.

“Are you...or, I mean, is something wrong?” He’s been perfectly normal - well, as normal as Phil gets - since we got inside, but the picture of him looking so concerned has burrowed into my head. He looks up from his cross-legged position on the couch, lowering the mug from his mouth. Though I don’t want to distract from my question, I can’t help but lean toward him, wiping the remnants of hot chocolate from his lip.

“You tell me, is there?” he smirks, and his tongue picks up where my thumb had left off - it’s an entirely non-sexual act, but I have to drop my gaze anyway. Focus. I shrug, taking a sip from my own mug to give myself time to collect my thoughts.

“It’s...probably nothing. You just looked a little concerned earlier, when we got back, but...I mean it was probably just something with shadows,” I look up to see him watching me intently, and - despite my words - my worry spikes alongside my heart rate. “Is something wrong?” I set my hot chocolate aside, trying to convey that he’s got my full attention.

“No, Dan, I don’t think anything’s wrong,” he shakes his head with a smile, and I lean back against the armrest of the sofa. Okay, he thinks I’m overreacting. I try to mirror his grin, his relaxed reaction, but something still doesn’t sit right - had I really imagined that look? But he’s still smiling, taking another long sip of his hot chocolate, so I reach for my mug to do the same; the sweetness is almost enough to mask the bitter feeling in my throat.

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

Things have been quiet the past few days, and Phil’s not mentioned anything from our odd conversation; in fact, he’s given me zero reason to be suspicious, to be concerned. Which is why it’s so frustrating that I still am. I’m walking back to the flat in silence, just appreciating the way the snow crunches under my shoes - at the end of the day, I am still Death, and I still have duties to perform. Even on Christmas Eve.

It was an older woman, surrounded by family, which made me feel a little better. I still can’t tap into that icy heartlessness I used to feel whenever I took a life before, but I’ve not frozen up again either. After a while, Phil stopped coming with me. I didn’t have to ask, but I appreciate it - it still sends a wave of guilt through me every time I have to take some of the magnificent people he’s created, but it was always twice as painful with him standing beside me.

The walk back is long enough that I’d normally take a cab, but I’m always warm lately - not a complaint, and I love being around Phil, but the cold is my element, my comfort zone. Sometimes I miss the biting chill, though it doesn’t exactly bite me. So I’m walking home, letting the dormant wintry evening wrap me up with familiar contentment.

On my journey, I pass a small shop with Christmas trees stood in the display window - I haven’t ever been big on decorating (shocker), but this year I’m especially opposed: I don’t want to get a tree with Phil around, one that’s been chopped down, that’ll inevitably wither and die. I kill enough without having to add a perfectly good tree into the mix - Phil always insists it’s not a bad thing, what I do, but I avoid actively providing him reminders. So the flat is thoroughly undecorated, though I’m a little surprised Phil’s not asked to put up some fairy lights or something.

I exhale into the air, the cloud forming in front of my face dragging me back to the present. I realize I’ve sort of stopped, lingering by the wide store window. The place is closed, as it’s Christmas Eve and - I check my phone - just past eleven. I shove my hands into my pockets, then spin as casually as possible in a circle, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as the edges of an idea form.

When I’ve made a full 180, I start my trek again - in the exact opposite direction. Every shop will be closed by now, and I’m not exactly in the habit of breaking and entering - I may be the ‘bad guy’, but that’s no reason to steal from people. I retrace the imprints of my shoes in the snow until I reach the large iron archway of the park: it’s small, being sat in the middle of the city and all, but it should do.

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

By the time I make it back to the flat, I’m exhausted - dragging the stupid thing up four flights of stairs is enough to make me wish for Phil’s apparating abilities, not to mention the fifteen minutes I spent carrying the damned thing from the park to my building. I unlock the door to the flat and peek inside, letting out a heavy breath when I can’t see anything - it’s dark, not even a hint of a glow from where Phil must be sleeping in bed.

I prop the door open, then drag the potted tree into the lounge as quietly as I can manage. I mean, it’s not technically stealing if I took it from a public park, right? It’ll be worth it, to see his reaction. I grin, wondering how it took me til now to come up with the idea - a tree that won’t die, especially not with him around.

I close and lock the door, then check the bed - still asleep. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness and I can just make out the lump of a person. Sleeping on my side, again? I grin because I honestly can’t even be mad about it - not with the way my heart flutters in my chest just thinking about laying down beside him, even if it’s on the wrong side and facing the window. Fuck, how did I get this lucky? How did this even happen? I spend a few more moments lost in the daydream before I remember my task.

Well. Part of my task. I’d already gotten Phil a gift, so this is more of icing on the cake. Oh, should I have made cookies or something? That’s a traditionally Christmassy thing to do...I’m suddenly checking my phone, wondering if I have the time and could manage to actually bake cookies without waking him up. I frown - no, he practically has a sugar radar, and I’m shit in the kitchen, I can’t bake to save my life. I chuckle quietly at the ironic thought before biting my lip to stop the sound - fortunately, Phil doesn’t seem to have woken, and I try once again to get focused.

The pine, with its little pot, only stands about up to my waist, but it was the least conspicuous one to haul across town and certainly the easiest to drag up stairs. Besides, the point is to keep it alive, so it doesn’t have to be all that tall yet - it’ll grow. I hope he likes it.

I lift the tree off the ground in an attempt to make less noise than sliding it across the floor, but I end up plunking it down in the corner of the lounge with a thump that has me staring intently at the bed - as I feared, Phil’s shifting, and I quickly position myself in front of the tree as he sits up.

“Dan? What’s going on?” His voice is low and gravelly, and he rubs at his eyes in an attempt to clear the sleep from them.

“I, uh, just got back,” I don’t dare check behind me, worried he’ll notice the movement, “I’ll be there in just a minute, go back to sleep, okay?” I take a few tentative steps forward, hoping I’m still blocking his line of sight, and he grumbles before snuggling back into his pillow. I wait a moment, just to be sure he won’t sit up again, then rush off to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

In minutes, I’m joining him under the covers, and he turns and wraps his arms loosely around me. The warmth is unusual after spending so long outside alone, but I let him draw me in closer and I rest against his chest. We both know we’ll drift apart once we fall asleep - it happens every night - but there’s something serene about falling asleep in each others’ arms.

“Good night,” I whisper against him, though he’s still and I think he’s already drifted off. I close my eyes and breathe in, amazed at how he smells like spring in the middle of winter.

“Mm, g‘night,” a stupidly ear-splitting grin hits my face, and I try to bury the bubbly feeling in my chest before it overwhelms me - I would very much like to sleep, so I can be fully awake for Phil’s reaction when he sees the tree tomorrow. And the snowglobe I got him, after I saw how much he loved the snow - though I’m starting to feel it might be a little silly, I mean it’s really kind of a touristy gift, or something you give little kids, or…

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

I wake up with a start, not entirely remembering having fallen asleep. But there’s a soft light coming from around the curtains, white and clear, and I hope we have a white Christmas because god, Phil would absolutely adore that. Phil.

He’s still asleep, if his breathing is anything to go by; as we always do, we’ve drifted to opposite sides of the bed, but he’s got an arm extended toward me and it’s resting against my own. I smile, trying not to let my excitement get the best of me. In a clumsy move, I manage to slot myself between his arm and his chest; the activity must wake him, because I feel a soft kiss on the top of my head.

“Morning,” I can hear the smile in his voice, still sleep-affected, but warm and more awake than it had been last night. Last night. I lift my chin, grinning up at him.

“Morning, yourself,” he giggles at my response, but I shut him up with a lazy kiss. His arms wrap tighter around me, hands traveling across the bits of exposed skin. Despite the warmth rolling off him, I shiver when his fingertips slip under the hem of my shirt, drawing gentle lines on my side. I mirror his touch, finding the edge of his shirt’s already ridden up from sleep, and I slide my hand across his lower back to pull him closer.

He hums against my lips, and I can feel the way they thin from his smile - I let my excitement take the reins, grinning back as we pull apart.

“Merry Christmas,” I say it softly, staring into his eyes; when they go wide, and he looks more panicked than excited, my heart drops in my chest. I pull farther back, so our noses are no longer touching, and mirror his concern. “Phil, is something wrong?” My apprehension from the past few days floods in without warning, and I find myself reassessing every recent event for signs of a problem.

He’s absolutely silent - though that’s nothing new, the way he turns away and stands, refusing to meet my gaze, certainly is.

“Phil, talk to me, what’s going on?” I prop myself up on an elbow, eyes trained on his back. “Is everything okay?” What a stupid question, when he won’t even look at me...I can feel my breathing speed up - I’ve never had to deal with something like this, helping someone, supporting them. That’s not exactly how Death works.

“I...I’m so sorry,” Phil’s voice is almost inaudible, but his words echo in my ears as if he’d shouted them. Sorry about what? What did he do? Why...every worst-case scenario flows into my head: lying, cheating, he hates me, he’s leaving. I can’t stop them, but I’m trying - fucking hell, I’m trying - to listen, to be patient with him.

“Phil,” I can hear the fear in my voice, it sounds off and flat, “what happened? What’s going on? Please, you have to tell me,” I’m preparing for the worst, letting a deep chill settle under my skin, down into my bones. Into my heart. Oh, that’s where that icy heartlessness went. I reach out for it with open arms as I wait for Phil’s response.

“I…” he trails off, still refusing to face me. “Dan, I’m so sorry, I think...I forgot it’s Christmas.” He finally manages to turn, to lift his eyes, and they’re watery blue with unshed tears.

And I don’t mean to, I know this is meant to be serious, that he thinks it’s serious, but I bark out a laugh before covering my mouth. His face has barely changed, though his eyes go wide at the obnoxious sound I made, and I lower my hand to speak.

“Phil, I’m sorry, I didn’t...I shouldn’t have laughed, but...jesus you had me thinking you were about to break it off or something,” I flop back onto the bed, head landing nowhere near my pillow. Then I sit up abruptly. “I mean, you weren’t, right?” Worry squirms in my gut for a moment before he offers a slight shake of his head; I drop back down, staring at the ceiling and blowing out a sigh of relief. Okay, I’m okay, I’m fine. But Phil isn’t.

“Dan, I’m...I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I forgot, and-” Phil’s rambling, like he does when he’s nervous, so I roll - rather unceremoniously - across the bed and grab his arm to tug him back down.

“Shut up, you spork,” he still looks immensely upset, so I pull his head into my chest. “I’m not mad, it’s just a day like any other day. And an excellent one, at that, do you know why?” A grin hits my face before I can answer him, before he even asks, because I know what I’m about to say: it’s silly and cheesy and I mean every word of it.

“Why?” He’s still so quiet, especially now that he’s talking into my shirt and we’re tangled together on the bed.

“Because I get to be with you, of course.” He huffs out a laugh, lifting his head so we’re eye to eye, and my heart swells at the small smile on his face. “But…” I extend the word, which earns me a confused look. “It is Christmas, and I did get you some gifts…”

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

“Phil, can you please munch that stuff a little more quietly?” I’ve been trying to sleep since I got back at some ungodly hour of the morning - people do not die on a convenient schedule - but Phil’s been going about his day as usual and I know he’s mostly trying to be quiet, but he’s just gotten louder and louder. Or maybe I’m just getting more and more annoyed.

“You’ve been asleep for ages, you can get up now. It’s practically nighttime again!” I’m about to call him out for hyperbolic exaggeration, but I roll over to face the window; an orangey-golden glow is, in fact, signaling sunset. I groan, shutting my eyes and burying my face in the pillow. Phil’s pillow, which smells so distinctly Phil that I find myself smiling despite my frustration.

Phil’s been getting up unusually early lately - I blame the weather, now that it’s April: spring is as much his season as winter is mine. I often wake briefly when Phil gets up for the day, and today I was even blessed with several hours of uninterrupted sleep when he left the flat for a bit. When he returned, however, he started doing all kinds of noisy things that left me drifting in and out of unconsciousness but never really getting any rest; his latest activity seems to be eating an early dinner of the loudest fucking cereal on the planet.

“Come on,” Phil whines, and I wonder if he picked up that bad habit from me. “I’ve been waiting for you to be awake all day, I have a surprise!” He tries to make the word sound enticing, I assume, but it comes out a little mumbled, and I’m fairly certain he’s talking around another mouthful of cereal.

“But Phil,” I whine back, only to feel his warm hand dragging me by the arm toward the edge of the bed. He loves this tactic, when I’m trying to sleep in and he wants my attention: either I get up, or he literally just drags me right onto the floor.

With an ungrateful grunt, I shake his hand away and sit up: fortunately, the late afternoon lighting is soft, and my eyes adjust quickly.

“Alright, go on then, what’s the big surprise?” I try not to sound too irritated - whatever it is, it’s probably something he put a lot of thought into. He grins from where he’s standing over me, then grabs my hand and pulls me from the bed and down into the lounge; we stop, and he waves his arms around in an adorably unnecessary flourish.

“Merry Christmas!” Garland and tinsel are strewn absolutely everywhere, colored fairy lights line most of the furniture, and there are even two tacky stockings hung from the walls. At the center of the lounge is the tree - the same tree I’d given him back in December - now grown so it nearly touches the ceiling (yesterday, it had reached about up to my chest). From the tree hang even more fairy lights and tinsel, and…

“Phil, did you bake cookies?” Now that my nose isn’t buried in the bed, in the scent of Phil, I can smell the vanilla scent of sugar cookies drifting from the kitchen. Phil’s not moved from his pose, arms still flung wide at the array of decorations, and I blink a few times before I can manage to think of anything else to say. “It...Phil, it isn’t Christmas…” I try not to sound too concerned - it’s hard for him to tell when he forgets things - but it’s literally the middle of April…

“Of course it isn’t, but I forgot about the last one. So it’s my turn to surprise you with Christmas!” He’s so immensely excited by this idea that I find myself grinning, shaking my head. “Come on, I have hot chocolate and cookies and I even got you a gift,” he’s dragging me by the hand again, this time toward the kitchen, but I stop and tug him toward me. As I hoped, he stumbles back, and I pull him into a hug.

“Thank you, you didn’t have to do all this,” the gesture is so absurdly sweet and so Phil that I’m afraid I’m actually getting a little choked up.

“Of course I did! It’s Christmas.” His words at my ear make me chuckle, but I don’t pull away from him until I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Hm?” He’s biting his lip, which either means he’s about to say something he thinks will annoy me or he’s trying very hard not to smile. His hand pops up beside us, and he points toward the ceiling.

Where a sprig of mistletoe is growing of its own accord. I roll my eyes at Phil, who only shrugs in response; I can’t help smiling when he pulls me in for a kiss, though it ends with us both laughing at the silliness of the whole thing.

“Merry Christmas, you spoon.”

#life and death #phanfic #phan #phanfiction #dnp #dan and phil #phandom #death!dan #life!phil #fluff #christmas fluff #christmas fic

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