Tumgik
#also I think only furniture can be on half tiles everything else is still full tile movement
angiestown · 4 years
Photo
Tumblr media
aside from every single building being in the wrong spot, I think I’ve finished the layout for the bottom two layers. now I just gotta figure out how I want to place the last three houses and the museum up top. since the ramps are two spaces wide and the museum is 7 spaces wide, I can’t have it centred above that middle path, so I’ll have to do something asymmetrical 
23 notes · View notes
jonnyvangelis · 3 years
Text
brass & peaches: chp. 2
in which jonny and brian actually talk. and everything’s dusty all the time. and the author commits accent crimes. also there's a horse. 1300 words, light swearing.
Jonny squints down the road and pulls back on the reins slowly, giving a pat to the horse’s withers and sliding off in front of the main gate- a rusting sign hangs over top, ironwork bent to read,
BRASSMITH & SON
The scruffy man stretches, a hand coming to press at his lower back, the second coming up to his mouth to call out an “Anyone home? It’s Jonny V- d’Ville, heard you needed work.” He squints again, cursing his lack of a hat (though he spent his hat money on food for the horse).
A copper puff pops up from the orchard just the other side of the fence- then the head attached, Jonny registers that it’s hair, and Brian scowls for a moment before he recognizes the man and horse (from his description in a letter a few days back) and a grin splits his face. He waves Jonny over and calls something that gets lost on the wind.
Jonny stands frozen for a moment, blinking.
Oh no.
He’s cuter than a fucking puppy.
And Jonny realizes a half-second later that the man with the golden retriever grin who greets him as his feet take him through the gate is metal, and his eyebrows shoot up as he takes a step back. He regrets it immediately as Brian’s smile falters, and Jonny steadies himself, swallowing hard. He offers a hand when he’s close enough- firm, jaw set tight, and nods. “You’re Brian, yeah?” He lowers his voice purposefully and levels Brian with a look that’s probably meant to be tough.
The taller man tips his hat low over his eyes and nods curtly (if Jonny didn’t know any better, he’d say the man was blushing. How the fuck the bastard can blush, Jonny’s not sure.) “That I am,” and Jonny’s hit with another shock— Brian’s accent is English with a twang matching his own, like Irish but a bit to the left. “I meant to send you a letter ‘bout it, but you showed up before I could send it. My father ain’t around this summer, something came up business-wise and he made a run for Cincinnati. You might have more work than I can pay you for, if you want to dip early, I—”
“It’s alright, man, I don’t got anywhere else to go. Bed and food on the table’s all I ask.” Jonny offers his sweetest smile (a cringing little thing, his face wasn’t made for subtlety) and fidgets with the reins still held in his hand, unsure how to properly placate the anxious man towering over him.
Brian takes a shaky breath and brings his hat down to his chest, running his free hand through his hair, and looks down at Jonny with a questioning look. “You’re sure? I wouldn’t want you feeling undervalued, your work’s worth proper pay.” 
“Promise I won’t sell myself short, being this far from home’s payment enough.” Jonny’s smile turns genuine. Brian seems to soothe, then, his shoulders losing some of their tension, though his easy smile doesn’t quite return.
“I’ll… show you to your room then, yeah?” Brian offers his hand and Jonny’s brow furrows before he links elbows with the taller man, letting him lead on with a nod.
(Jonny lets the horse into the paddock first, pulling all her tack off and making sure she’s alright with Brian’s mare before leaving her be.) 
The house is dusty, once-white siding now chipped with decades of wear from the valley’s wind. The porch is covered, curtains sit in the window, and a few pots of perennial flowers bloom and buzz by the railing; it all leans to one side if Jonny squints (and he’s always squinting without a damn hat), lists just barely to the right and brings the tin roof down with it. A squat barn sits a little ways down the path, wider and taller than the house by a good fifty feet, and Jonny can hear the huff and bustle of the cows before he can smell them. Chickens peck at the path and dry grass in front of the house— fluffy little bastards that only come halfway up his calf and orange as the hair of the man he clings to. Their run, he figures, is at the back of the house.
Brian shoulders the door open with a creak from its hinges and a soft grunt (hangs his hat on the rack), leading Jonny through a small front room and heading for a hallway just past the ice box. There’s a gas stove, counters that were probably at one time shiny, tile floor in the corner that could, politely, be called a kitchen. An overstuffed couch sits facing the kitchen table, a comfy-looking armchair opposite it, and a rug that looks older than the two men combined protecting the wood floor from the heavy furniture best it can. Atop the shoddy coffee table is… Jonny figures it’s a radio, with the speaker in the front like that, but it’s small and boxy and looks to have a handle and all manner of dials and whatnot. Between the couch and kitchen sits a tiny round breakfast table, two chairs, and a mason jar full of pressed flowers. His attention is dragged away from the living room when he realizes Brian is looking down at him with an amused concern, and he startles some, trying to drag his attention back to what Brian meant to show him.
The room is small, but the bed is big. He takes a tentative step forward, Brian releasing his arm at the barest tug, and he takes a seat, eyes widening then falling shut as he feels himself sink just enough to be comfortable. He lets himself fall back, his legs still hanging off the bed, and lets out a soft groan, wriggling his shoulders a bit in an effort to bury himself in the soft fabric. The quilt is Heaven on a sore back, and he hasn’t felt such soft a surface in weeks. He cracks an eye open when he notices a strange huff, and blushes hard upon realizing that Brian’s trying in earnest not to laugh. He sits upright like a sprung trap and hikes his shoulders up, swallows hard, and tries to stammer out something about second hand saddles when Brian just shakes his head and smiles that easy puppy-grin and placates, “You’ve been riding a while, from the sound of it. You deserve the rest.”
Jonny opens his mouth to protest, but can’t think of a proper one to give. “I… could do with a nap.”
“Then take one, I’ll make lunch and wake you when it’s done.” Brian takes a step back and rests his hand on the doorframe, walking out the room with a nod as Jonny sets about stripping some layers, kicking his boots off by the dresser and closing the door so he can get his shirt off and dust his jeans nearly clean.
He winces at his reflection in the standing mirror. His long hair’s a ratty mess from riding in the wind so long— Hell, it’s a problem that it’s long at all, he’d had it shaved back with Jack— his goatee’s nearly a proper beard, and his undershirt’s a sweaty mess. His arms are a good two shades pinker from the elbow down (same with his neck and face), not that it’s any surprise, but he reckons he looks pitiful. He scrubs his hands over his face, instantly regrets it as the rough skin on his palms grates on his tender cheeks, and tugs off his undershirt, falling on top of the blankets of the bed and curling up for as long a nap as he can manage.
He rests easy for the first time in a long time.
31 notes · View notes
toothlessturtle21 · 4 years
Text
Cold Blooded
So as some of y’all know, I’m a fanfic author, so I figured why not publish some of my oneshots on Tumblr? So, here’s the first one in a (maybe) series of oneshots being posted. Enjoy!
---
Jay's talking gets him into a lot of trouble, sure, but when he's faced with a mob boss who wants to work with him to resurrect his dead father, his chatter might be his only weapon. (Mafia AU) (tw: kidnapping, guns, mentioned death)
All of his life, Jay had been told that his excessive blabbering was annoying. His friends and his family were not safe from the chatter, everywhere and all the time. And god forbid  that he was nervous, because butterflies in his stomach seemed to equate to words spewing from his mouth like a fountain. So when he found himself tied up and blindfolded after a nasty run-in with some gang members, what else was he supposed to do?
"So, uh, what kind of wood is the chair I'm in made of? It feels pretty strong, but I also can't see the color to make any guesses," Jay quirked his mouth, and one of the men nearby grumbled, having put up with his incessant rambling for the better part of the hour. "Is it grainy? I can't really tell through my pants, but if it is you guys should really sand it. Splinters are no joke, even if you're wearing gloves. They always wait until you're least expecting it and then ouch, there's wood in your hand."
His company was silent, perhaps hoping that he would shut up if left unanswered. After a few beats of silence, Jay tapped his feet on the floor, an uneven rhythm that was in no way musical. He tried to think of some beat to mimic that would take his mind off of his situation. He hummed some jingles, some pop songs, and even snuck a little bit of some showtunes in there before a harsh slap to the cheek stopped him, causing Jay to cry out indignantly.
"Hey, I'm just messing around! What's the big deal anyway? You guys are the ones who nabbed me off the street, why should I listen to- mmph!"
A hand was slapped over his mouth very quickly, accompanied by a sharp shh. For once, Jay decided to listen, and heard another man in the room on the phone.
"Please sir, he's driving us insane, can't we just..."
Silence for a few minutes. Jay's heart raced at the thought of there being a man higher up waiting to get his hands on him, despite his current situation already being pretty undesirable.
"Wait, really?"
Muffled words from the other side of the line were audible now, and the man with him laughed a little, obviously relieved.
"Thank you, boss! We'll get him to you right away."
And just like that, Jay was in the air, the chair he was tied to lifted by some thug, and he squawked in surprise as he was gripped roughly by strong hands, the grunts talking amongst themselves as they brought him along. Finally, they stopped, and set him down onto a tile floor, judging by the sound of the legs hitting the ground. One ripped off his blindfold, and they immediately scurried away, leaving Jay to blink his eyes like a newborn kitten to adjust to the light.
"Ah, so you're the famed Ninja of Lightning. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Walker."
Jay finally found his sight, and discovered he was in an office, of sorts. The walls were a circle, bookshelves lining the room, except for the one area where a cabinet full of guns stood. The furniture was elegant, smooth curves and a sleek black sheen to everything made for a very intimidating look.
What was even more intimidating, however, was the figure perched on top of the desk at the far back. He looked to be young, black leather clothes contrasting with his stark white hair, combed back into a feathery undercut. Clear blue eyes stared the ninja down, and Jay felt his skin crawl under the scrutiny.
"Oh, don't tell me they harmed your vocal chords on the journey over, I've heard so much about your jabber," The man slid off the desk, striding over with quiet steps. Now that Jay was closer, he was quite tall, most definitely taller than himself.
"No, they didn't," He managed to squeak out, clearing his throat afterwards. "And how do you know my name?"
"I know a lot of things," The man shrugged. "For example, I know that you were born and raised in a trash heap, your favorite food is blackberry pie, and your name is James."
"If you know so much about me," Jay's cheeks burned from hearing his birth name and from the insult towards his parents' livelihood. "Then who are you?"
The man thought for a moment before answering, almost as if questioning himself. He seemed to finally decide on an answer after a few tense moments.
"Call me Snake."
"No offense, but you don't really don't look like a Snake," Jay blurted, and the man raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I mean, you have a pretty blue, black, white color scheme going on, and snakes are usually green. You seem more like an Spider or Shark to me than a Snake. You don't give me slimy vibes."
"Thank you for the feedback," Snake nodded, stepping back a little. "I suppose I will keep that in mind for the next time I have to choose a persona to give to strangers."
"Was that a joke I heard?" Jay asked, and Snake's expression never wavered. The blonde looked at his gun cabinet for a split second before returning his gaze to his hostage.
"So, Mr. Walker, it has come to my attention that you are especially skilled in robotics, correct?"
"I mean, yeah, but-"
"What do you normally create?"
"Small robots, mostly. Y'know, can sweep things, stack bricks, charge phones, and..." Jay trailed off, mentally slapping himself. "Actually, it's none of your business what I do. You're the one who organized my kidnapping, I'm not telling you anything!"
"Hm, just as we were doing so swimmingly. Very well then," Snake walked away, returning to his desk. He once again avoided the chair, choosing to stalk Jay from his desk like a bird of prey.
"Also, consider changing your name to Falcon. Still fits better than Snake."
"I thought we had moved on from my name, James," Snake smiled amusedly. "Although Falcon does have a nice ring to it, thank you. Perhaps I will keep that one in mind."
He pulled his legs up, crossing them on his desk. It was then that Jay noticed the portrait sitting next to his knee.
"Hey, who's in the picture?"
Snake's expression darkened, and Jay's heart picked up once more at the thought of his last words being so lame.
"Perhaps you don't understand your situation. You are in no position to be asking questions, especially ones about my personal life. As far as guests go, you have been treated rather graciously, Mr. Walker. Although I do consider myself rather forgiving in the face of insubordination, I too have a limit."
Jay went quiet, at least for a few moments, but a sudden bird cry followed by a black shape swooping past his face made him shriek, and Snake laughed at his expense. He held out his arm as a black bird rested on him, and Snake gently took the note from its mouth.
"You really are quite entertaining. I might keep you just for that."
"Usually my jokes are a little more thought out than- wait, what do you mean by keep-"
"Hush, I am trying to read, James. Do be polite."
You could hear a pin drop as the man read, cool blues scanning the page. He bristled as he hit the bulk of the letter, presumably receiving bad news.
Snake scoffed, and snatched a lighter from beside him on the desk. He lit the flame, and held it up to the paper.
"Burning letters is so much safer than texting, wouldn't you agree? Plus, fire can be oh so fun to play with if done properly."
"I'm not really a big fan of fire. I guess I just don't like heat."
"I would be inclined to agree. Ice is often much more effective, anyway. It is a silent killer, with much less destruction than fire."
"Um, killer?"
"I run an organized crime ring, do you think I reached where I am by playing nice and holding hands?"
"How did you weaponize ice?" Jay asked, and then quickly backpedaled. "Uh, sorry, no questions, I'll stop."
"There are many ways, but I will indulge you with my personal favorite," Snake released his bird, the avian flying out the small window it had come in from, and stalked towards Jay. He touched a gentle hand to his bound arm, and Jay felt his breath quicken at the contact.
"I am the master of ice. Blood is half water. If I were to concentrate right now, I could freeze your veins and arteries, leaving you stiff like a doll. My ice does not melt easily, and so it creates a wonderful display if presented properly. Of course, the victim would need to be positioned correctly, but that is beside the point."
"You're sick," Jay strained against his bonds, suddenly comprehending the danger he was in. "Is killing people a game to you?"
"Not necessarily. If I kill by necessity, then deaths are quick and painless. If they have wronged me greatly, however, I enjoy watching them writhe to the best of their ability as they feel their blood freeze under my grasp."
"Then why am I here? I haven't wronged you, as far as I know, and I'm not already dead. What do you want from me?"
"I want your expertise. I am interested in your abilities. You are skilled at creating artificial life, James. While I have trained myself in many areas, capturing the essence of a living being is something I've yet to grasp."
All of a sudden, the puzzle pieces clicked in Jay's head. The color scheme, the white hair, the obsession with birds and robotics, and the ice all suddenly brought back memories that Jay forgot that he had.
"...Zane?"
The blonde smiled sadly, and then let out a small, hollow laugh.
"Ah, so you do remember. It's been a while, I know."
"Yeah, since we were toddlers."
"Are your parents well?"
"As far as I know, yeah, they're pretty good. How about your dad?"
Zane scowled, resting his chin on his hand.
"Dead. Killed in one of your little endeavors fighting Garmadon. Tasteless, really. My father deserved a death more fitting of the great mind he was than rubble crushing his body."
"I'm so sorry," Jay bit his lip, dread filling his bones. "So, uh, you're a gang leader now?"
"In a way, yes. I was already rising to power when he died, and his passing only drove me further. And now we are here," Zane gestured to the Lightning Ninja, still tied up. Jay's fingers twitched from their bound position.
"So why didn't you tell me your name off the bat?"
"What would be the point in that? None of the men under me know my name, so why I would I tell a stranger?"
"Fair, I guess. So why am I here?"
"Considering that you killed my father, I feel it is only right that you bring him back too."
"I'm the master of lightning, not a necromancer!" Jay writhed in his bonds. "And I haven't killed anyone. You're insane!"
"I'm not insane, I'm insulted you would think that way," Zane frowned. "You recall how I told you that my ice was especially cold, correct?"
"Yeah? What's that got to do with anything?"
"I have his body frozen downstairs. My ice takes an incredibly long time to melt."
"You what?" Jay shrieked. "I'm going nowhere near a frozen corpse!"
"You won't need to," Zane reassured, although his tone was anything but lenient. "I have brought you here for your mechanical skill. Together, we can bring my father back to life."
"And if I say no?"
"I have a cabinet full of guns to my side as well as the power to freeze your blood, and you're tied up at my mercy. We may have met in our earlier years, but familiarity has never stopped me from killing before."
"Uh, okay, noted," Jay said hurriedly, annoyed at himself for forgetting his situation. "So you want me to help you bring your father back to life by building him a body? But what about his memory?"
"You leave the software to me. You're here for the hardware."
"Ok, ok," Jay nodded slowly, although his mind was going a mile a minute trying to figure out how to escape. "Can you untie me though? I can't exactly build if I'm stuck here."
"You just called me insane and have been nothing but resistant this whole time. Why would I let you roam?" Zane sneered, crossing his arms. "However, I can release you to some extent, since you will be working for me."
And with that Zane untied and retied him so that his hands were still bound, but had enough wiggle room to work. Zane kept a length of rope knotted around the middle, to prevent the Lightning Ninja from breaking away.
Jay's cheeks burned at the thought of being led around like some pet, although he supposed his captivity could have been more humiliating. At least Zane was holding him by the wrists and not by some borderline kinky rope collar.
"What, don't like it?" The blonde laughed genuinely, albeit a little cruelly. He glanced over Jay, almost as if reading his mind. "I could change the positioning, if you'd rather. I was trying to spare you some dignity."
"No, it's fine," Jay looked down and away, refusing to make eye contact with the man currently holding him on a leash.
"James, if we're going to be working together, you need to be able to look at me."
"Don't call me James."
"Why not? If you call me Zane, I feel as though me calling you James is just as personal. Although I do request that you call me Snake in front of the others. I have worked for a long time to reach my status, and I would hate to have my persona crumbled by one pesky ninja."
"Fine, I'll call you Snake, just don't call me James."
"You are in no position to bargain, but I suppose I could allow you this one reward."
"Don't call it a reward, I'm not your pet," Jay hissed, and Zane raised an eyebrow threateningly. Jay gulped. "Sorry."
"Now then, shall we get started?" The blonde purred, and Jay bit his lip to stifle a snarky comeback. His stomach decided to respond for him in the form of a growl.
"Uh, actually, do you have any food?"
"Pardon?"
"I haven't eaten in a while, and nerves makes me extra hungry once I stop feeling anxious. Do you have anything to eat?"
"I'll have someone grab some food for you."
"Thanks," Jay said quietly, and silence fell over the pair, Zane staring off into the distance as if calculating something. "I really am sorry about your dad. I remember him being pretty nice."
"The last memory I have with him is the day before he died. He was telling me about his newest plans for building a robot capable of passing the Turing Test. It was shaping up to be a wonderful project, I would have loved to have seen it."
"Yeah, that would've been really cool. I wish I was better at programming, y'know? People like hardware and stuff, but it's really the code that makes a machine cool. Like, I wish I had a fraction of the capability that your dad had. Wait, if you're planning on bringing him back, that must mean that you're pretty good at coding too, right?"
"I suppose so. But what does this have to do with resurrecting my father?"
"If you miss him more for his inventions than his company, maybe you shouldn't be bringing him back."
Zane didn't say anything, but his eyes bore holes into Jay's head, blue iris filled with cold fury. If looks could kill, Jay's blood would already be solid. Just as Jay was about to backtrack and retract the statement, sensing that it did way more harm than good, Zane yanked Jay towards the side of the room, holding fast to the rope while rifling through the cabinet holding his guns.
"Z- Zane, wait, what are you-"
"Shut up."
The room was silent except for Jay's panicked breathing and his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Zane pulled out a handgun, the sleek black barrel glinting in the low light of the room.
"Are you religious, Jay?"
"N- No."
"Then pick a god and pray."
Zane loaded it quickly, and pulled Jay closer before he could react, pressing the weapon against his forehead. Jay felt tears form in his eyes, the realization that he was about to die making his muscles spasm and he kicked out, landing a hit on Zane's knee but also handicapping himself, his shaky limbs betraying him as he fell to the floor.
"No-! Don't, please, I'm sorry, just please don't shoot!"
"Too late. We cannot work together, and now that you know who I am I cannot leave you alive."
"I won't tell anyone, I promise! I don't want to die!"
"Neither did my father, and yet you still killed him anyway."
"I- I think I understand why you want him back."
Zane kept the gun pointed at his head, but allowed him to continue.
"You feel like you have no one left for you. Sure, you have your cronies and whatever, but you're just lonely. And you don't have to be," Jay offered, and squeezed his eyes shut just in case the next feeling he knew was a bullet going through his brain. Seconds passed, and nothing happened. The rope around his wrists was still pulled taught in Zane's grasp, but nothing changed.
After a few more moments, Jay slowly opened his eyes to see the gun still pointed at him, but the expression on Zane's face had changed into one of uncertainty.
"What do you mean I don't have to be? I have nothing left."
"You're the master of ice, right? I'm sure Sensei wouldn't mind another student, if you're willing."
"You- you want me to join you?"
"Okay, if I'm being honest, maybe not. You did just almost shoot me. But maybe you could make some friends. It wouldn't do any harm to lower your guard a little."
Zane looked away, and the hand holding the gun shook.
"Damn it," Zane muttered to himself, voice broken, and roughly untied the ropes holding Jay's wrists together. "Just go."
"You're letting me leave?"
"Just get out before I change my mind," Zane mumbled, throwing his gun down on his desk and sitting with his head in his hands. "You're right."
"Hey, woah," Jay couldn't believe his own actions even as he performed them, but he walked towards his captor and rested an easy hand on his shoulder. "I mean, thanks for letting me go, but take care of yourself, alright? We may on opposite sides here, but I'm sure you can be a nice guy if you set your mind to it."
Zane looked up, gaze weary.
"I'm not sure about the truth of your statement, but I appreciate the sentiment. Goodbye, Jay. Perhaps this will not be our last meeting."
"Maybe not," Jay pat him once on the shoulder before walking away, finding his way out pretty easily. Sure, he could run back to his friends and storm Zane's hiding spot if he wanted to, but something told him that would just end up with Zane putting a bullet through his own head instead of Jay's. As he was greeted by the cool night air, he decided on two things.
One, he needed to go back and talk to Zane again sometime, as he was still sure that there was a good guy down there somewhere. And two, never before in his life had been so thankful for his chatter.
22 notes · View notes
turtletotem · 4 years
Text
Morph
For the “transformation” prompt, an Animorphs AU! I gave up on getting it all finished today, so part two will follow soon.
Tumblr media
Charles and his friends had been through a lot of awful stuff, since the night they found a crashed spaceship and a dying alien. The night they learned their world was under attack, and received from the dying alien's hands their only weapon against the invaders—the power to morph. Morphing gave them the ability to take animal forms that were a thousand times more dangerous than their fragile human bodies, forms that hid their true identities from the Yeerks and let them absorb unbearable damage that would simply vanish when they de-morphed. Since that night, they had all endured amounts of pain, terror, guilt, and strain that probably should have killed them.
It hadn't killed them yet, but it had warped all of them—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Charles's sister Raven had once cared too much about having the best hair and the most fashionable clothes, about being pretty and popular; now she was a fierce, unstoppable fighter whose bloodthirst scared them all, even if they wouldn't say it. Erik, who had always been sharp and steely, was ruthless and pragmatic to a fault, now—except how could it be a fault if it kept them alive, kept the human race alive and free?
And Hank… poor Hank suffered more than any of them, trapped in morph as a gorilla. Barring a miracle, he would never be human again. If only he'd been in a smaller, less exotic morph, the day that he couldn't get to safety until long after the two-hour deadline, perhaps he could have still been among people in some way—someone's dog, a wild bird, something. Instead he had to remain entirely hidden, entirely dependent on the rest of them for everything. And any wounds he sustained in battle had to heal the hard way.
As for Charles himself, he had nightmares all the time now, flashbacks—not so much to the terrible things they'd endured, but the terrible things they'd done. All the bloodshed and suffering, the lies and secrets. Was it worth it, if they succeeded? What about if they failed?
All of which made it very easy to forget that morphing could also be fun.
Charles's claws clicked over the floor of the candy shop, a tiny noise to go with his tiny mouse body. Mice were nervous, hypervigilant little creatures, but Charles was an old hand at controlling the little rodent's instincts. Mouse morph had turned out to be almost as useful as his tiger battle-morph, if for very different situations.
It was also sort of neat. Charles couldn't say exactly why he enjoyed being so small, making his way through a world grown suddenly massive around him. Chairlegs like redwood trees, jellybean containers like granaries, expanses of black-and-white tile like the surface of an alien world. It made him think of a dollhouse, except that was exactly backwards. It was as if he was the doll.
Outside the shop, he knew Erik would be getting impatient. More accurately, he would be getting worried, and masking it with impatience. It had taken Charles longer than he expected to get into the building; he supposed he should have expected that a candy store would be fortified against mice. Mice with human intelligence, however, were not so easily stopped, and Charles had finally made it inside, tick-tick-ticking across the whimsical tiles toward the security system keypad on the wall.
Up, up the enormous furniture, claws scrabbling and nose twitching at the tantalizing scents of candied fruit, peanut butter and sugar, sugar, sugar—No, no time for a snack. Charles pulled his attention back to the keypad, which he could just barely reach by climbing the display of licorice behind the cash register. It had taken three weeks of surveillance to get the code, and Charles had repeated the numbers until he heard them in his dreams. Now he typed them in, throwing the weight of his entire body against the buttons.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. And—boop, the security system disengaged.
<You're clear,> he called to Erik.
Within a minute, the lock on the front door turned and the door opened. Erik was terrific at anything machinery-related, including lockpicking, and that had come in handy just as often as mouse morph.
"Took you long enough," Erik muttered as he crossed the shop. "Are you all right?"
<Of course I am.> Charles crawled into Erik's extended hand, snuffling instinctively at his fingers, which smelled like Cheet-os.
"Of course you are." Erik rolled his eyes. "Are you going to demorph?"
<No. I've still got an hour and a half, and I'll have to reset the alarm when we're done, and go out the same way I got in.>
Erik grunted and slipped Charles into the front pocket of his jacket, over his heart. Charles could feel it thudding gently behind him. It was silly for him to enjoy that so much, but he did.
They slipped into the shop's back office. Charles had wondered if they would need to look for false drawer-bottoms, hidden safes—but no, the candy shop owner kept the paperwork for his activities with The Sharing right in his normal file cabinet, in a folder marked The Sharing.
"My mother's gonna kill this guy if she ever realizes how careless he is," Erik said lightly, pulling out the folder and turning on the nearby lamp so they could see what it contained.
<Not your mother,> Charles corrected.
Erik didn't reply, and Charles didn't push it. The woman everyone thought of as Edie Lehnsherr was a high-ranking member of The Sharing, the "community engagement" organization the Yeerks used as a front to gather hosts. Erik's mother was a Controller, a prisoner somewhere inside her own brain while a Yeerk lived her life. Cooked in her kitchen. Volunteered at her synogogue. Kissed her son on the forehead. If joking about "Edie's" ruthlessness against her subordinates kept Erik from losing his mind, Charles wasn't going to stop him.
"Here," Erik said after a minute. "That's what we need, right there." He took out his phone and took pictures of the pages. The pictures would be deleted later, once the information on them was memorized; they'd all adjusted their phone settings to prevent anything entering 'the cloud.' They couldn't be too careful.
<Anything else interesting?>
Erik flipped through the rest of the folder, taking one or two more pictures, but there really wasn't much they didn't already know. The candy shop owner was pretty new to The Sharing, and his Yeerk wasn't especially high-ranking.
<He might have more later,> Charles said.
"I was just thinking that," Erik said, a hint of excitement in his voice. "The guy shouldn't be able to tell we were ever here. As long as he doesn't change the alarm code, we can come back…"
But on their way out of the office, that all went wrong. In the dark shop, glancing over his shoulder, Erik ran right into a display.
A dozen different kinds of candy cascaded to the floor with a sound like an avalanche. Jars shattered, shelves flipped, boxes tumbled, and Erik's foot slipped on a bag of gummy bears. He fell hard, managing to turn so as not to crush Charles in his pocket.
<Are you all right?>
"Are you all right?" Erik asked at the same time. He sat up, surveyed the damage, and started swearing. "Do you remember what all this looked like? Can we put it back together?"
Charles crawled from Erik's pocket onto his shoulder, and surveyed the damage with a mouse's superior night vision. <Too many things are broken. We could work all night and he'd still know someone was here.>
More swearing. "Fine. Fine. Okay, then. This is what we're doing."
Erik crouched down and began scooping candy into his jacket.
<Erik… are you stealing candy?>
"Yep. Gosh, this poor guy. Some idiot kids broke in and robbed his candy store. Stuff like that happens. No reason to think they went anywhere near his file cabinet, though, right? Idiot kids stealing candy don't care about The Sharing's secrets."
Charles couldn't help laughing. <I'll help. You need to take enough of a haul that no one will question the story.>
He hopped off Erik's shoulder onto the floor and demorphed. Only when he was standing barefoot on black-and-white tile did he remember that neither of them had brought any clothes for him. He had planned to stay a mouse.
"Well, you're not gonna be able to carry much," Erik said dryly, looking him up and down.
Charles knew he had to be blushing. This wasn't exactly the circumstances under which he'd imagined Erik would first see him naked. Not that it was appropriate to think about that anyway. Erik could never feel that way toward him.
"Chilly in here, isn't it," Erik said with a smirk, and Charles gasped in outrage and turned away, covering his chest.
Erik snickered, and returned to filling his pockets with taffy and gumballs. "Get that bucket over there, start filling it up."
Charles dashed over to the bucket of lollipops, pulled out the styrofoam filler that kept them upright, and started sweeping chocolates, gummies and packages of Pop Rocks into it. The display cases under the cash register were full of chocolate truffles—was it locked?
Another horrible avalanche crash, and Charles jumped out of his skin, whirling around.
Erik grinned at him from the wreckage of a second display. "Verisimilitude."
Charles rolled his eyes. "Come help me get the truffle case open. They're my favorite; if we're going to steal candy I want truffles."
Erik, cramming packs of jellybeans from the second display down his shirt, joined him at the truffle case. He poked thoughtfully at the lock, then reached for a huge novelty lollipop. "Stand back—"
"Don't you dare!" Charles swatted the lollipop out of his hand. "You'll get glass in the truffles!"
"Oh my gosh, say that again. Come on, say it again, you sound so adorable when you say 'truffles' with that accent—"
"Shut up! Just open the lock!"
Erik squeezed past him to the cash register and pulled a key off a nail. "There. All the truffles your heart could desire."
Charles opened the case, grabbed one of the cardboard boxes used by the cashiers, and filled it to the brim with every flavor of truffle, stopping to sample his favorites. "Mmm!"
"Hedonist. You have chocolate on your nose," Erik said, grinning, and stepped forward to wipe it with his thumb.
For a silent, inexplicable moment, they stood there together, Charles's pulse pounding and his mouth full of chocolate, Erik's sleeve brushing his bare shoulder.
"We should go," Erik said, turning away abruptly. "We'll have to set off the alarm, for ver—versim—what I said before. Idiot kids would only have time to grab so much before they ran for it."
"I've got to morph again," Charles said. "Can't run out there like this."
"Back in my pocket you go, then."
They re-armed the security system, put mouse-Charles in the hood of Erik's jacket—all his pockets were full—and Erik went out the door, carrying the bucket and truffle box. The alarm went off behind them as soon as the door opened.
Mission accomplished.
32 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
The Sims 4 Moschino Stuff - Early Access Build/Buy Review
Huge thank you to the EA Game Changer Program for providing me with the opportunity to play Moschino Stuff early!
Ever since I saw the trailer for Moschino Stuff, I knew the Build/Buy content was going to be the part of this pack that I was the most excited for and interested in and for the most part I absolutely love a lot of it. But, like CAS, Build/Buy is not without it’s issues.
As always, if you have any questions about the pack, feel free to send me an ask!
See a preview of all the new Build/Buy items here
👗The Buy
I pretty much love all of the Buy Mode objects. The couches come in some very cool patterns as well as solids, the funky pop art mirror is fun, and I love that the end table is much lower than most end tables we have so it sits nice and flush at the same height as the couches and coffee table.
But my favourite things are probably, as always, the decorative stuff. More specifically the LiBEARian (the books with the bear book ends, get it!), the Simsational Style Stack (the magazine pile) and the Amp Stack (they’re all in the pics above). Even though the Amp Stack is purely decorative, it looks very cool sitting next to a guitar and adds a lot of character to any musician’s house!
I also really like the Repurposed Gear Chest (the trunk with stickers on it) that’s essentially a coffee table and looks very cool and retro, and the Tastefully Empty Bookcase which... is not empty at all? lol I do wish the bookcase came in different heights and widths as well, but at least this time it’s a short one, unlike the bookcases that came with Seasons and StrangerVille that I love but never get to use because they’re too tall for short walls.
Something that’s bothered me pretty much since base game released is that there’s no consistent colour palette for all build/buy objects. I get that each pack has specific themes and there might be colours that fit that theme better than others but I would love to see a consistent palette used throughout every pack — say like black and white obviously, 5 different wood tones, 5 solid neutrals and 5 solid “standard” colours (blue, red, yellow etc) — and have every single item that gets added to the game made in those colours, then if a new pack has specific colours for it’s theme they can be added on top of the standard palette. I like the colour palette that was chosen for the items in this pack but I found it really hard to find anything from other packs that matched it. It bothers me so much that nothing ever matches from pack to pack, half the time objects in the same pack don’t even match! And even now that the 350 new swatches were added to base game doors... they still don’t match anything else!
Sorry, I know I’m ranting and this has very little to do with Moschino Stuff but it just really bothers me that nothing ever matches because whenever I build I spend hours trying to find a floor to match the trim around the bottom of the wall I’ve chosen, then none of the doors match the floor and trim so I have to change it all, then none of the windows match the doors, floor and trim, and on and on until I’ve completely forgotten what I originally wanted the build to look like!
I really like the new frames we got for photos too, and the fact that they can now be placed on tables BUT I’ve had a couple of issues with them. First of all, it’s not possible to turn the frames placed on tables using the alt key, so you can only turn them in 45 degree increments and I hate that. I like to have all my photo frames slightly askew at different angles and it bothers me that these ones can only be places either facing straight forwards or angled by 45 degrees.
The second issue I have with the frames is actually more of a technical one but I’m not entirely sure if it’s the frames themselves, the photos, or the photography skill; I haven’t been able to work that out yet. When I have a sim take photos using the new tripod and camera everything is fine, but the second I exit out of the photography UI my FPS drops drastically.
I thought it was just my computer being stupid at first, until other Game Changers started reporting the same issue. I suspect it might be the photos and frames — specifically the new collage frame — because as soon as I remove the frames from the lot, the FPS goes back to normal. My game normally runs at a steady 60 FPS at all times but as you can see here, it drops down to 8-12 whenever there are framed photos on the lot and shoots back up when I delete them.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
NOTE: This was with my game 100% CC and Mod free.
All of the new photography gear is so cool too! The fact that most of the items (like the tripod, camera, and tape markers) can be picked up in your sims inventory is so handy; your sim can just grab their equipment and head out into the world to take photos of other sims, landscapes, pets, and themselves literally anywhere they can plop the tripod down! And the backdrops have some really cool backgrounds for you to take photos in front of... or maybe... some other... uses 😈
Tumblr media
👗The Build
I think the thing most people were looking forward to in this pack were the beautiful windows and doors; I’m definitely one of those people lol They are definitely gorgeous but as seems to happen every single time we get new windows and doors, the selection is limit in many different ways.
Every single colourway for both the windows and the doors is either white, black, red, or some combination of those colours. There are no colourways that match any of the other colours used on the furniture for the set (like blue, pink and yellow) and absolutely zero wood or neutral tones.
There are also no other heights for both the door and window other than for the shortest wall height, which absolutely baffles me because they’re clearly a set made to be used in lofts and converted warehouse type builds... builds that are generally made with either the medium or tallest wall height. They also didn’t bother to make single tile versions of any of the windows and doors, or even a closed version for the smaller window!
But what’s even more baffling (at least to me) is the way the door was made. I literally spent a full 30 minutes just sitting here in front of my computer, staring at this door, trying to figure out what could possibly have been going through the head of whoever made it when they decided that not only would it be shorter on one side, therefore also shorter than the windows, but also that it wouldn’t take up the full two tiles it was allocated and therefore wouldn’t sit flush up against the windows it was made to go with!
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I saw a tweet by one of the Gurus that basically said “It’s the right height on the outside, just flip it around” but... that still leaves you with one side shorter than the windows, it’s just now on the other side, and there’s still gaps at the side! Why you would go to all the trouble to make the windows fit beautifully together like that and then not make the door exactly the same height and width! It bothers me way more than it probably should but I just don’t understand!
On the plus side, there are some base game doors that fit in with the windows (kind of) that I will probably use instead of the Moschino door... at least until someone makes a build add-on for them anyway lol
Tumblr media Tumblr media
👗The Verdict
Overall, while I have issues with some of the build/buy stuff, this is where this pack makes up for the lack of CAS stuff in my opinion and what would make me want to fork over the $10 for the pack. To be completely honest, I’d pay $10 just for the LiBEARian though 🤣
All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. I am not paid by EA to “hype” their games; I am given the opportunity to review their games early in exchange for an honest review.
Click here for my Create-A-Sim Review
Gameplay Review coming soon
185 notes · View notes
atinytokki · 5 years
Text
𝐙𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐎𝐧𝐞
Chapter 9: The Escape
Tumblr media
(Warnings: slavery, violence, blood and gore, character death, suicide)
“There she is!”
In a remote corner of the marina, one special ship was moored to the dock piling, bouncing good-naturedly and waiting to be boarded. San again ignored his still healing leg and sprinted the last few steps up the gangway and threw his arms around the main mast.
“Oh, I’ve missed you!” Yeosang dragged their hostage over before securing him under the main grating and taking a step back to admire his home. “They didn’t damage her, at least.” He ran his hands along the side railing and sunk happily to a seat on his favourite barrel. 
“Oh, what do you think they did with my box beds?” San gasped before disappearing below decks and then returning with a massive grin. “They’re still here! Everything’s still here! Captain’s going to be so happy...”
Yeosang tuned him out as a strange feeling washed over him. The sun had dipped out of sight, moonlight rising to take its place. But something was wrong. Yeosang bolted upright.
“Where’s Junyoung?”
...
When the smoke cleared, the building was collapsing.
The floor had opened up into the dungeon which had also opened up into some secret cavern beneath it that waited for them, an endless black hole to plunge into. Luckily, all the members had managed not to fall three stories and had grabbed onto something.
The Master’s wife clung to the balcony as it was tilted up from the sinking centre of the fortress. Hongjoong was the closest to her, having been able to grasp a chunk of the tile that was still partially attached to the rest of the room. He took a quick inventory and concluded that other than his hands being a bit singed he was fine. Below him, he could hear the others struggling. He risked a look.
“Seonghwa!” Seonghwa was slipping a few feet away, none of his grabs for freedom making any purchase.
“Here,” Hongjoong extended his right hand to him, making sure his hold on the floor was still secure. Seonghwa stretched his own hand out toward him, reaching as far as he could without losing his balance before shaking his head. “You’re too far away.”
Hongjoong lowered himself another foot into the chasm and strained even harder, fingers brushing Seonghwa’s. 
A chorus of yells broke out below them and they both looked down. “Don’t move any more, Captain!” It was Mingi, blinking sticky blood out of his eyes and grabbing his forehead with one hand. He and Jongho were directly underneath him, clinging to each other and a ledge of tile that bent down into the darkness. “You’ll bring the rest of the floor down!”
Hongjoong looked back at Seonghwa, heart sinking. “You’ll have to jump.” Seonghwa groaned and prepared himself to take the leap. Hongjoong’s knuckles were white around the chunk of floor he gripped in anticipation. 
With a yell, Seonghwa’s feet pushed off and he flew through the air before Hongjoong’s hand closed around his wrist, halting his fall.
Hongjoong’s sudden cry surprised him as he swung, and he almost let go instinctively, but the clenching hand stayed firm. Seonghwa looked up. Blood was trailing from Hongjoong’s shoulder. The trail reached his hand and made it slippery for Seonghwa to hold on to.
“What— you got shot!” He remembered Junseok’s report. Hongjoong didn’t answer but gritted his teeth and scanned the debris for Yunho. “He’s over there, unconscious,” Mingi supplied, following his eyes. All four of them gasped as they realised Yunho’s soot-covered form lay directly in the path of debris that had just been loosened by Seonghwa’s jump. 
Sweat broke out on Hongjoong’s forehead as he fought to keep his hold on the swinging Seonghwa, whose momentum was beginning to slow down.
“Stop trying to pull me up,” Seonghwa cautioned. “Down is the only way to go.”
“I can’t see the bottom,” Jongho reported, crawling to the edge of their platform and timidly peering through the decimated dungeon floor. A scraping sound from above startled him and Mingi had to pull him back. “What was that?”
The taller boy stood to his full height and craned his neck to see. “That’s the piano.” 
“Oh no,” Hongjoong whispered as the gentle humming of the sliding piano above grew in volume.
“Let go!” Seonghwa yelled up to him. “It’s going to crush us!”
Hongjoong winced at him, still unsure, before taking a deep breath and releasing his grip. It was a rough landing, but Mingi and Jongho softened it, pulling him and Seonghwa onto their shrinking ledge.
Not a moment later the piano tipped over the side of the floor above them and slid stutteringly down the debris, headed straight for— “Yunho!” 
Yunho was jolted awake by the presence of something very large inches from his face. Panting, he opened his eyes to discover himself in between the legs of a grand piano. He stifled a scream and turned his head to the side where the voices of the others were.
“I’m alive! I’m alive!” He reassured them. “But I have no idea how I’m getting out of here. My leg is pinned.” 
Jongho steadied himself and made his way over with painstaking care, grasping the bottom of the instrument and trying to lift it high enough for Yunho to wiggle out. “Come on,” he grunted. “I’m not letting you lose your other leg.”
Yunho flopped over so that he was on his stomach and grabbed the piece of wall closest to him, trying to pull himself out. He had cleared his upper half when the entire surface suddenly began to move. The debris was all hurtling down now, in rockslide fashion, toward the chasm in the middle of the space. Yunho screeched and retracted under the piano as half of a sofa barely missed his head. 
“Nobody move!” Mingi yelled from the other side of the growing hole. He was right, any movement would tip the precarious balance and send furniture and worse down on them.
“The only way is down,” Seonghwa repeated. “But there’s nothing there,” Jongho yelled back from where he squatted, trying not to move the piano he was lifting any more than he had. “I can hear water,” Yunho piped up, squinting into the abyss.
“If there’s water down there it has to exit somewhere,” Hongjoong thought out loud. “I say we jump. But let’s just try to stick together.” 
Jongho nodded and, with a cautionary glance up for raining furnishings, gave the piano one final tug to release Yunho’s leg.
The second he was free, all five boys took a deep breath and plunged into the void.
...
“No it’s your fault, not mine! You let the hostage get away!”
“But you didn’t have to chase after him, too! You should’ve stayed with Junyoung!”
“Hey, I’m the one who caught the hostage. Admit it, I’m faster even if I am injured! You should’ve just let Junyoung go with Wooyoung!” The moment the words left San’s mouth, he faltered as if struck. “Go with Wooyoung... maybe he went with Wooyoung!” He made a beeline straight for the village but was stopped by Yeosang. 
“Don’t!” 
San turned and stared daggers at him, waiting for an explanation.
“We just got here,” Yeosang gritted out. “You’re still injured. Trust that Wooyoung will take care of him, and if you must go, then fine. But I’m not about to go back out there and risk losing our last chance to get off this awful island.”
His words struck a cord in San. Yeosang had a new edge to him and he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. It was true, they’d been stuck here for far too long. San was a man of action, he didn’t like sitting around waiting for someone else to solve their problem when he could be helping. But as much as he hated to be sidelined, he had to admit Yeosang had a point. He settled back down grudgingly. 
“Fine. I’ll keep a lookout.”
...
The explosion at the Fortress had plunged the seaside town into further panic. Rioting villagers flooded from house to house with flaming torches raised, gathering more angry citizens to march with them to the wealthy slaveholders’ residences.
Wooyoung threaded his way through the masses as he followed the last traces of sunlight to the shoreline. His instinct to evade the problem and get himself to safety was conflicting with his worry over whether his crew was out of the collapsing building.
The others should all be at the ship already, right? They must have broken out with the crowd of prisoners that tore down the Fortress gates in their escape before the explosion.
Perhaps they were somewhere in this crowd with him. He began scanning the faces that blurred around him, but no one he recognised was anywhere in the vicinity. As he descended the hill of the main street one familiar pair of petrified eyes met his own. 
“Junyoung!”
The boy didn’t hear him over the clamour of the citizens. Wooyoung pushed nameless figures out of his way, fighting to reach Junyoung. He was crouching at a street corner with no idea where to go. “Junyoung, what are you doing here?”
The boy startled but relief washed over his face when he realised it was Wooyoung’s arms pulling him up. “M-My father, I came to look for him.”
Wooyoung turned to search the crowd again. “Do you think he could be in this mob somewhere?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Junyoung’s voice was faint and scratchy with unshed tears. 
“You should have stayed with San and Yeosang,” Wooyoung knew he sounded harsh but concern was gripping him.
“They took off to catch the hostage. But they won’t set sail until your Captain and the others come, will they? I think my father is still in the Fortress.” Junyoung reasoned, clearly terrified that his father could be under the sinking pile of rubble that was now the Fortress.
Wooyoung’s eyes swept the marina, just down the slope of the hill and easily within reach. The ATEEZ was docked and ready. He could return Junyoung there, to safety, in a few minutes. But if Junyoung was right, the rest of the crew wasn’t out of danger yet. Wooyoung chewed his lip a bit too roughly and tasted bitter blood on it. “Alright, let’s go back and find them. But stay close to me.”
...
Mingi came up spluttering in the darkness, hand closed around someone’s arm. “You can let go,” Hongjoong nudged him between coughs.
But the Captain was smaller and still shook with pain from his shoulder so Mingi wasn’t inclined to. “You’re not leaving us again.”
“Yunho?”  Seonghwa threw his hair back as he surfaced. “Did Yunho get unpinned?”
Both Jongho and Yunho came up together and began treading water, as if in answer to the question. 
“What is this place?” Jongho queried between gasps.
“Some type of underground pool,” Mingi suggested.
“The better question is why they built a fortress on top of it.” Seonghwa felt around in the water until he came to Yunho’s side.
“It’s impossible to see anything down here,” Yunho was complaining, struggling to hang on to Jongho and kicking the water with his good leg.
“Hold on to each other,” Hongjoong suddenly stilled and the others followed his lead. The gentle tug of a current emerged and they swam after it. 
“Wait!” Hongjoong threw up his hand for them to halt. The scraping sound from earlier had returned. “Piano!”
The pianoforte, it seemed, had followed them in their journey down the wreckage, and with a thrum came crashing into the water where they were just about to swim. Hongjoong watched it sink, heart in his throat, and carefully moved forward. Ivory keys popped to the surface behind him.
“Well that was a close call!” Yunho whined from the back of the group. Mingi chuckled darkly. “We specialise in close calls.”
Thankfully, it wasn’t far to go before the underground pool gave way to land. It was the cold, harsh land of a cave, but the five boys lay on it panting in reprieve just the same.
Seonghwa checked Mingi’s forehead wound the best he could with only touch to rely on while the others collected themselves and inspected their surroundings.
“Something’s wrong,” Hongjoong breathed, mostly to himself. Water that hadn’t been around his feet a moment ago was now where his ankles were. “The water is still rising!” He informed the others.
Jongho joined him and listened intently to the sounds of the cave. “It’s pouring in from somewhere faster than it’s pouring out.” 
Yunho had hobbled over as well. “We’ll be out of air if it continues for much longer at this rate.”
Seonghwa studied the section of cave they were in with his hands. “This was a secret passage,” he announced. “I was brought to the party through one like it. But it’s been blocked by rubble from the explosion. If we clear this, we may find a way out.”
It was enough of a chance for the crew, and they lined up to pass the chunks of stone from person to person and blaze their own escape trail. Mingi kept an eye on Hongjoong when the water rose to neck level, and helped keep his shorter frame afloat while juggling the debris that Seonghwa handed to him. 
Fatigued muscles groaned, aching wounds protested, and stamina slowly depleted as rock after rock they dug their way to freedom. Soon enough the water was lapping at Jongho’s chin and he needed a leg up from Yunho to keep digging away at the blockage.
“I think we’re close,” he grunted through clenched teeth, feeling around in the dark for an opening between bricks. His hand fell on a loose rock, and he gave it a strong tug. That did the trick. “Watch out!”
All the members stepped back as stones rushed past them on their own, finally clearing the way for the stream of water to drag them out through the newly made hole with it. When they picked themselves up where the current dropped them, their hands were gripping grass. Mingi blinked at it.
“We’re out.”
Out.
They hadn’t seen the sky in days, nor felt the wind embrace them, nor smelled the sea.  Violet and orange painted the horizon in a magnificent display. It brought tears to Mingi’s eyes to see liquid gold-tipped waves reflecting the village’s torchlight and stretching away as far as the eye could see.
The boys helped each other to their feet and took a nice long look at it, paying no mind to the chaos engaging the town that separated them and their ocean.
Hongjoong swallowed and pointed to the dock. The ship he had just finished building was up in flames, set ablaze by some mindless rioter with a torch. Anxiously he searched for his own vessel, and found it to be unharmed and fastened to a far corner of the marina. A real smile broke out on their faces as they began to walk towards it. 
“Stop right there!”
It was the woman again. From the still intact balcony she had gripped while the Fortress collapsed, she pointed a gun at them. Jongho could tell she was at close enough range to make a lethal shot.
“Let’s strike a deal. Hongjoong stays to rebuild and the rest of you may go.” Seonghwa didn’t give him a chance to open his mouth, directly addressing the Master’s wife. “We’ve had enough of you and your cordial intent.”
She turned slightly and trained her sights on him. “No talking unless you’d like to get shot in the face. As I was saying, those are my conditions or you all die.” 
“But they just got out!” It was Junseok, back from his errand staking the head in the centre of town. “They go free, that’s not a suggestion.” His gun was now pointed at the wife, and hers wavered between him and Seonghwa in despair.
They were at a standoff.
“Look, I don’t really know who you are or why you’re here,” Hongjoong began, locking eyes with the woman’s wild ones. “But you don’t belong here any more than we do. You don’t have to carry on the Master’s wishes. He’s dead now, that means you’re free too. Just like us.”
Her weapon began to lower as regret appeared on her face. “Put the gun down,” Hongjoong crooned. “You aren’t a slave anymore.” 
“Father!”
It was Junyoung running up the path to meet them, and his temporary guardian Wooyoung trailing behind.
Everything happened lightning fast.
Junseok turned at his son’s voice, which startled the woman into discharging the gun. Two shots rang out, one bullet lodging in the back of Junseok’s head. And the other in the abdomen of his son.
No.
No.
Wooyoung’s legs couldn’t carry him fast enough. He caught the dazed boy just before he hit the ground and checked the wound. It was bad.
Heart pumping furiously, he gripped Junyoung’s shoulders and begged him to stay with him. Junyoung furrowed his brow in confusion. The pain hadn’t kicked in yet. As he turned his head to see the motionless body of his father it dawned on him. 
While the woman was distracted, Jongho scooped up Junseok’s weapon and fired a round at her hand. Her own gun clattered off the balcony, three stories down to the pointed rocks below. She watched it fall and looked with new eyes at the burning town in front of her.
Everything was on fire. Everything her husband had worked to create. It was the end. 
She scooped up her skirts with one hand and used the other to climb onto the railing of the balcony.
“No, no, no, wait!” Hongjoong ran towards her. One look at her face told him what she intended to do. She shook her head and flashed her manufactured smile at him one last time. “You played beautifully, Hongjoong.”
The song had ended, and there was nothing left for her. “It’s over.”
She stepped off the balcony, and plummeted to the ground. Hongjoong squeezed his eyes shut from the view of the horror before him and stumbled back numbly.
The others had gathered around Junyoung to stop his bleeding, after trying to help Junseok and discovering he was already dead. If not for Jongho’s steadying hand on his shoulder, Wooyoung thought he would vomit there and then.
“Take me to the ship.”
Mingi delicately lifted the boy into his arms and began the procession to the ATEEZ, a long overdue march they had hoped would be under better circumstances.
Hongjoong avoided Seonghwa’s attempt to throw a comforting arm around him and moved to the front of the group, desperate for some space to process in.
The crowded streets parted down the middle and quieted into stillness for them as they made their way down to their frigate, heads bowing left and right at the sight of a young dying boy.
An ecstatic San emerged from the smoke to meet Hongjoong when they reached the dock.
“You need a haircut.” San smirked at him.
“Don’t start with me,” Hongjoong scowled but the facade was quickly shed as he grasped him in a hug.
“What’s going—” Yeosang looked past him at the sad procession following. “—on. Junyoung?”
Hongjoong nodded grimly. Yeosang forced down a shaky swallow, grief washing over his face. Mingi had the limp, but still breathing, body in his arms as he strode up the plank and onto the deck of the ATEEZ. “He’s been shot,” he informed Yeosang, in case he had missed it, grave voice like grinding stone.
“I can still hear you,” Junyoung whined. San gasped and dropped to his knees next to the boy as he was lowered onto the deck. 
All eyes were on him as he executed a quick medical assessment. Making sure Junyoung wasn’t looking, he raised his head and shook it slowly.
“I’m going to die now, aren’t I.” Junyoung heard his answer in San’s silence and sighed almost wistfully. “I’m happy to be here regardless.” There were strained smiles all around the deck.
“Junyoung, do you—” Yeosang paused to clear his throat. “—do you know everyone?”
Junyoung furrowed his brow in thought. “You’re Yeosang, Wooyoung, San,” he nodded to each member. “And are you...Jongho?” Jongho nodded in surprise. Junyoung smiled, proud of himself. “I remember you’re the youngest, that was a guess. And...you’re Mingi? You have a deep voice!” The tips of Mingi’s ears turned red. “The rest, I don’t know,” Junyoung admitted before they all indicated themselves.
“Welcome aboard, Junyoung,” Hongjoong finished the introductions. 
It was surprisingly calm. The riot had quieted to extinguished flame and settled citizens. Seagulls were cawing as they swooped low over short choppy crests which sparkled in the moonlight. An amiable breeze rocked the ship gently, its wooden skeleton creaking a familiar tune to all but one.
“So this is what it’s like?” Junyoung’s eyes were starry as ever, even as they filled with tears. He directed his question to Wooyoung, but the latter couldn’t risk opening his mouth and letting a sob escape.
“Yes, it’s...this is our ship,” he whispered, squeezing the boy’s hand. It was already growing cold.
“Let’s bring you to be near your father, Junyoung,” Mingi made a move to scoop him up but Junyoung shook his head slightly. “No, I want to be here. I’m getting off this island and sailing away like I always wanted.” 
Hongjoong opened his mouth to order for the anchor to be lifted but Junyoung was looking at him imploringly. “May I?”
Hongjoong flashed a phony grin and nodded.
“Loose the handsails...” Junyoung’s voice was just above a whisper. “Heave the capstan.”
All but Wooyoung and the Captain left to obey the orders and set sail. Junyoung’s gaze shifted from the unfurling sails to Wooyoung’s tear streaked face.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t want—” mangled words caught in his throat. “—I don’t want you to go, I mean you just got here, and...”
Junyoung’s smile faltered. “I’m afraid, too. But it’s alright, it’s just part of the adventure, isn’t it?” Wooyoung nodded swiftly. “Junyoung, you’re the bravest person I know. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.”
Junyoung’s bitter smile returned and he squeezed Wooyoung’s hand. “Commit me to the sea.”
“With highest honours,” Hongjoong agreed, before looking up at the receding shoreline. “We’re moving along nicely now. How do you like the wind in your hair, Junyoung?” 
“I love it,” the boy answered, closing his eyes for the last time. Wooyoung sat there and looked at his face for a long while.
Long after the body had grown cold and the coast had shrunk behind them, Seonghwa helped him up and over to the railing so he could feel the wind on his face again. He wanted badly to be able to cry but part of him was still in disbelief that Junyoung was in fact dead and it was his body that Hongjoong and Mingi were wrapping in leftover cloth and preparing to send over the side.
He stood there, a mixed up bag of emotions sitting in his stomach, as the cannons fired a full salute and the body was committed to the sea. It was such a slight, lanky body.
And then he returned to Yeosang’s side because he knew he couldn’t sleep in their room without him. Yeosang was just sitting on deck and looking at the sky.
Stars burned in the heavens. They were distant pinpricks lighting the way, a map engraved in the sky to navigate by. They were the gateway to the possibilities in the east. Wooyoung saw Yeosang’s fond regard for the beacons and looked up himself, examining the heavens for answers. Finally, he spoke. 
“I’m so full of thoughts and I just... I just don’t know how to say any of them.”
Yeosang nodded in his peripherals, quietly encouraging him. Wooyoung worked through what he wanted to say as it tumbled out. “Is it always like this? I mean, I know the world is a dangerous place, but... why does it seem like it’s always out to get us?” 
It wasn’t at all what Yeosang expected to hear, so it took him awhile to gather his own thoughts. “Partially, I think it’s our own doing. For pushing the boundaries of the known world a little further everyday and daring to stand up to anything that opposes us. But, yes, the world is a dangerous place. And it doesn’t like being beaten by savage lowlife children like ourselves, so it makes itself even more dangerous.”
“We’re the only ones who know,” Wooyoung finally tore his eyes away from the sparkling show above them, tears slipping out of the corners. “How brave Junyoung was. We have to carry his legacy with us.”
Yeosang felt the prick behind his own eyes and grasped Wooyoung’s shoulder. “We will.”
He pulled him into a tight hug, and it lasted until the moon set and they mutually decided to go to sleep. Wooyoung couldn’t help but look over the side of the ship on the way to his near forgotten quarters.
Junyoung’s body was buried there in the graveyard of the sea.
...
Once the deck was empty and everyone was elsewhere, Jongho emerged and went to the crimson stain on the boards of the deck. He brushed his hand over it. Just like his dream.
The seeping blood, the fiery revolution, the thunderous chorus.
He sunk to his knees as the feeling of slipping through the endless bloody whirlpool returned out of his nightmare.
“It was Junyoung.” Yunho had snuck up on him somehow, despite owning a peg leg. Jongho didn’t look at him but nodded. “I didn’t know it was him. I just knew it would happen. Why do I have to be right?”
Hongjoong was putting his desk back in order in the Captain’s quarters. He hadn’t slept in his own bed since he had died in it and come back. Then he had been dragged off and kept away— away from his ship and his crew. He knew for sure that it wasn’t good for them to be apart. If there was one thing he took away from that horrible, horrible place it was that he would never let them be separated again, as long as they wanted to be together.
There was a knock at the door. It was Mingi’s knock, Hongjoong recognised it without an announcement. “Come in.”
Mingi entered and plopped down in a chair, simply sitting there and looking around for awhile. His head wound was all cleaned up and other than looking a bit spooked he seemed alright. But Hongjoong knew he wasn’t as fine as he let on.
“They both worked so hard to liberate their island. And they don’t even get to see it. Would it have been better if I kept my mouth shut? Would they be alive?”
Hongjoong finished making the bed and sat down across from Mingi. “Alive, perhaps, but enslaved for generations to come. I don’t know about you but I’d rather be dead and free than behind bars for the rest of my life.” 
Mingi scratched at the surface of the desk with his fingernail. “The townspeople... will they hate us for leaving at a time like this? We started their revolution and now we’re just sailing away from it.”
Hongjoong sat back with a sigh. It did feel like running away, but the problem was never theirs to begin with. “We don’t belong here. There’s nothing more we can do and I’m done putting lives on the line.” There was a companionable silence after that. It seemed the carnage was over for now, and that meant moving on to new things.
“Our heading, Captain?” Mingi could barely contain his glee at being able to say those words again as he hopped out of his seat.
“I don’t care,” Hongjoong kicked his feet up on his desk and let his eyes fall shut. “Away from here. Let’s all just breathe uninterrupted for awhile.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
...
Taglist: @nightynightnyx @theinvisablessed @bustdownyunho @celestial-yunho
A/N: This was.... very hard to write. And I’m sorry if it was too heavy handed for you this time around. I wrote what I thought would be an appropriate end to this storyline given the characters’ arcs. Rest assured, there’s some time to breathe next chapter. Please send your thoughts and reblog as always <3
← Previous | Masterlist | Next →
45 notes · View notes
Text
Thursday, 19th September 2019 – Voegtlinshoffen, Colmar
Voegtlinshoffen is a tiny village which is not one of the half-timbered confections that so many Alsace villages are, because most of those were destroyed in the course of the Thirty Years’ War and rebuilt afterwards in a more simple style. What is does have is a site that provides stunning views across the Rhine and beyond to the Black Forest and, on clear days, the Alps. What is does have are some excellent wines, including the Hatchbourg grand cru, and it was that which brought us to the village on another gloriously sunny day.
Tumblr media
We’d begun with a delicious breakfast (including a glass of crémant) at the Hostellerie le Marechal, and then checked the car to see if anything had fallen off after our encounter with the ironwork the day before (nothing seemed to have done, but there was a rattle that suggested the exhaust system might have been compromised) so we undertook the 15 minute drive to Voegtlinshoffen and the cellar visit organised by the hotel for us.
Tumblr media
We were going to see a specialist in the crémant on offer at breakfast, Joseph Cattin, where the family have been making wine since 1720. It all started with François Cattin, who was Swiss, and who settled in the village where he was also a builder. They are 11 generations in now and still going strong as one of the largest family owned vineyards in Alsace.
Tumblr media
In 1850 they shifted to wine making exclusively, with Joseph taking over the family-owned Estate just as phylloxera hit at the end of the 19th century. Joseph dedicated his time to finding was to fight this plague, becoming a pioneer of Alsacien viticulture. Meanwhile his brother headed off to Paris and set up a restaurant called La Cigogne (the Stork) which served Alsacien gastronomy to well heeled Parisians and foreign guests, acting as a shop front for the wines his brother was making.
Tumblr media
Almost a century later the 10th generation modernised the estate and started worldwide exports of their products. It’s now being run by Jacques Cattin Junior, who has been in charge of winemaking since 2007, and his wife Anaïs, who runs the international sales department. What they now have is a fantastic range of wines, and a modern winery that includes a rooftop bar where you can try the wines alongside plates of charcuterie and cheeses. We were taken round by the charming Marianne, who showed us around the original winery, where we could see both the old wooden barrels and the hyper-modern temperature controlled stainless steel tanks.
Tumblr media
They even have pipes running under the road to enables the grapes to be crushed on one side of the road in what looks like the original building, and then run straight into the stainless steel tanks in the building on the other side of the road! It’s a most impressive set-up and the wines they produce reflect that.
Tumblr media
After our visit, and an explanation of many of the processes, we sat down with Marianne to try a number of wines. Even using the spittoon, after we got through it seemed like a good idea to get something to eat, and where better than the rooftop bar, the Belvedere, with its phenomenal views over the surrounding landscape. It would also give us the opportunity to discuss which of the wines we’d tried we actually wanted to buy.
Tumblr media
A plate of charcuterie and cheese later (and a free glass of wine with lunch) and we were ready to shop. 6 boxes of wine later we were helped to load the car (after a swift unload to make sure everything went in in the right order) and presented with a bottle of wine that Marianne said was her favourite crémant to add to the haul we’d paid for. We were liking this free wine thing! We were ready to pick our way carefully back to Colmar for the rest of the day.
Tumblr media
Having dropped the car back in the car park, we headed into town to hunt down the Tourist Information office to see what information we could pick up. We kept on getting sidetracked though because Colmar is jaw-droppingly lovely and there were oddities round every corner, like the giant soft toy gingerbread man! At least we understood that gingerbread is very much an Alsace thing. There are those who claim that the crusaders brought it back to Europe, but how true that is I have no idea. Also that the Chinese started it, with Mi-Kong (“honey bread), a delicacy made from wheat flour and honey, fragranced with aromatic plants and baked in the oven. Whatever the case, Alsaciens like it, and it’s everywhere, even made into liquers and spirits that can be added to crémant to make a kir!
Tumblr media
There was an artisans’ market going on in the former Customs House (the Koifhus) which detained us for a while, both looking at what was on offer and getting a look inside the building. It was planned in 1433, and the current building dates to 1480 and two more buildings were added in the 16th century. The condition of the building in the 19th century was so poor that it came close to being demoloshed, but instead it was restored in the late 1890s, when a turret and glazed tiles were added. It was renovated again in 2002 to replace the Renaissance style sandstone balustrade which was removed in 1976. It was used as a warehouse and as a place of taxation for imported and exported goods as well as for meetings of the representatives of the Décapole, the federation of the 10 imperial cities of Alsace. Today it was being used to display a range of attractive good including some glassware that really caught my eye.
Tumblr media
We stopped off to look at the collegiate church of Saint Martin. It dominates the square on which it sits and is as impressive inside as outside. The building itself was constructed between 1235 and 1365 and is a brilliant example of Gothic architecture in Alsace. Needless to say with a city as closely packed as Colmar is, there have been frequent fires, and in 1572 the framework of the south tower and all the roofs were destroyed, so what you can see now is much more modern. It has also undergone several restorations, the most recent in 1982 which gave the archaeologists a chance to have root around. They found foundations of a 1000 year old church as well as traces of extensions from the 11th and 12th centuries.
Tumblr media
It’s an interesting church and there are a number of features that are quite surprising to the modern visitor, including the anti-semitic and downright offensive so-called “Judensäue, a testament to the troubled history of the Jews in Alsace, that came to a ghastly climax in 1349, when they were accused of causing plague by poisoning the wells. On February 14 several hundred Jews were massacred during the Strasbourg pogrom and any remaining Jews were forbidden to settle in the town, being reminded every evening at 10 o’clock by a bell and a municipal herald blowing the “Grüselhorn” that they had to leave. I’m guessing the only reason they stayed in the surrounding towns was the lack of anywhere else they could go, if the prevailing attitude was so vile.
Tumblr media
The interior is quite plain, having lost a lot of its furniture during the French Revolution, but it does still have one of the many Baroque organs built by Johann Andreas Silbermann that are everywhere in the region. There are also a nubmer of medieval altars and statues, and a rare Gothic stained glass window of a beardless Christ. The Isenmann altarpiece, of which more in another post, was originally here as well. In 1462 the municipal painter Caspar Isenmann was commissioned to paint a set of panels dedicated to the life of Christ and he completed the word in three years. In 1720 the altar was removed and the paintings were dispersed. The seven surviving panels have been in the Unterlinden Museum since 1853.
Tumblr media
We eventually made it to the Tourist Information Office were we realised that for what we wanted to do, the Colmar City Card was actually a good deal. It was €32 each for seven days and gave you access to all the museums (six of them, and you could visit as often as you wanted) as well a trip on one of the tourist trains and a boat trip. We went for it, and then decided we’d have a gentle ride round town on the tourist train straight away. I know some people think they’re a waste of effort but I find them a useful way of getting my bearings, as well as a good excuse to have a sit down…
Tumblr media
Afterwards we decided that we had time for one of the museums. We opted for the Musée Bartholdi.
Tumblr media
It’s a museum dedicated to the French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, the man who designed the Statue of Liberty, among other colossal works. The house was his birthplace and is full of works by him. These include a lot of preparatory models for monuments that are actually in Colmar, many of which we would find during our stay. I hadn’t realised he also put forward a design for the fountain on the Quinconces in Bordeaux, and the museum had a model for one of the horses to prove it. What’s there is insane enough. Lord knows what he would have built given half a chance.
Tumblr media
Bartholdi served in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 as a squadron leader of the National Guard, and possibly as a liaison officer to Italian General Giuseppe Garibaldi. As an officer, he took part in the defense of Colmar from Germany, and after the Alsace’s defeat he constructed a number of monuments celebrating French heroism in the defence against Germany. One of those projects was the Lion of Belfort, which is huge. He didn’t do anything by halves, it seems.
Tumblr media
Then in 1871 he he went to the United States where he suggested the idea of a massive statue to be given by the French to the Americans in honor of the centennial of American independence. The result was “Liberty, Illuminating the World” as she’s more correctly known. There were lots of items telling the story of the design and construction, though sadly most of it is in French with no translation into any other languages. This seemed a bit of a shame, really, as it was fine for people like me, but I’m pretty sure a lot of visitors won’t be able to read French and could probably do with some help to understand exactly what was going on.
Tumblr media
We stepped back out later having learned something new, which is never a bad thing. It was time though to quit for the day and go back to the hotel for dinner. The area round the hotel was looking especially lovely so we decided we’d step out from the hotel to look for an aperitif later on.
Travel 2019 – Alsace and Baden, Day 7, Voegtlinshoffen, Colmar Thursday, 19th September 2019 - Voegtlinshoffen, Colmar Voegtlinshoffen is a tiny village which is not one of the half-timbered confections that so many Alsace villages are, because most of those were destroyed in the course of the Thirty Years’ War and rebuilt afterwards in a more simple style.
6 notes · View notes
ancient-artificer · 5 years
Text
My Roommate is an Asshole.
Gajevy Week 2019 - Fairy Tail
You can find these collections and more Gajevy prompts on FF and Ao3 under CapAleran2.
Storyline: “Excuse me, I think I heard you wrong. What?” Her voice trembled with the last word.
The only available apartment in the complex had been accidentally rented to two different people.
GW: Roommates Suck #1 - My Roommate is an Asshole.
Well. This was certainly unexpected.
The situation was far less ideal than what was promised to Levy. She had signed the official papers the day before fully expecting a nice, comfortable little space for cheap rent, paid utilities, and on-site laundry. It was absolutely perfect. Or had been up until a few minutes ago.
“Excuse me, I think I heard you wrong. What?” Her voice trembled with the last word.
The only available apartment in the complex had been accidentally rented to two different people.
“What the fuck is this shit?” The sudden, loud rumble caused her to jump in place. His baritone voice was rough. It sounded as though he was a smoker.
With watery-rimmed eyes, Levy turned around to see him shove his copy of the legal document in the manager’s face and hold it there to force him to look at it through his square glasses. The menacing scowl deepened as his voice lowered with enunciated words.
“Fix it. Now.”
Levy found herself silently agreeing with the man, although his demand was downright frightening. Despite their obvious differences in word usage, they did have one extremely large issue in common.
“Ah, w-well, you s-see,” the scrawny man stuttered. He fidgeted under the intense, angry gaze blazing down on him. He touched the frames in front of his eyes. “I can't- there's nothing I can d-do about it. Legally, I mean.”
The taller, well-built man's arms twitched and Levy was immediately concerned that there would be an assault if the situation wasn't remedied. And quickly.
She stepped forward, careful to avoid any contact with the other apparently irate tenant and asked,  “What do you mean, legally? There's really nothing that can be done for us?”
The complex manager broke free of the hold on his shirt and righted it on his shoulders. He threw a tentative glance at the other male in the office before answering.
“There are two official documents stating that each of you is now the tenant of apartment 2B, submitted the same day by two different employees. Apparently, there was a miscommunication in the availability.”
He pulled out a file from the grey filing cabinet against the back wall. Within were the separate contracts both had previously signed. Levy McGarden and Gajeel Redfox were written on the signature lines.
“A miscommunication? Is that what you're calling it? I'd say it's more of a royal fuck up on your end than anything,” Gajeel spat, crossing his arms over his chest.
His choice words and their intensity grated against Levy's psyche. Her hazel eyes briefly shifted to him in mild annoyance.
“Given that there are no other vacant apartments and the deposits have already been made, the only thing I can suggest is maybe... try to live there together. Peaceably, preferably.”
The manager winced after he spoke. He looked at Gajeel and hoped the desk that stood between them was large enough.
Both Levy and Gajeel reacted simultaneously.
“No!”
***
“Yes.”
Levy held her phone to her ear and assured her friend that she was okay. She absentmindedly tapped her finger on the top of her water bottle in the cupholder. “I'm sure it'll be fine,” she said confidently.
“But he's a guy. And one you don't know,” Lucy countered. Her voice sounded unsure.
“Yea, well he's, he's…” Levy paused.
She turned to look out of her driver's side window to see Gajeel sitting in his jeep a few spaces over. He punched the steering wheel a few times. It looked like he was talking to himself.
“...he's different.”
“Mmhmm.”
“We will just have to make the best of a bad situation. I doubt he'll be that bad. The office runs background checks before they consider who can apply.”
“If you say so.”
When she said goodbye to her friend, Levy grabbed her new apartment key and headed for the stairwell.
It was enclosed inside the brick building, which would be ideal in colder weather. A vending machine for both snacks and beverages stood at the far end and marked the entrance to the laundry area. It was all just more checks on the list of good things the complex offered.
She smiled when she saw her appointed number and letter on the brown door. The apartment was neither too far from nor too close to the stairwell. She probably wouldn't hear the other tenants coming and going, especially at night. It also meant she would have a quiet place to read and write with the windows open on the nice warm days. Inserting the key and giving it a turn, Levy happily entered her home.
The distinct new carpet smell welcomed her. A tiled floor by the door gave way to the beige carpet. Through a foyer-like space was the large front room. A half wall separated it from the kitchen. All the appliances were there on the countertops, ready to be used. Beyond that were a hallway, the bathroom and the two bedrooms.
She gazed around, mentally picturing where she would arrange the furniture, where she would place her bookshelves and her pictures. What did this Gajeel have to bring to the table to add to their shared home? Until she knew, she couldn't plan everything out quite yet.
Her hands clasped at her chest around the key, a contented sigh escaped through her nose in the quiet.
A rough bang on the half closed entry announced the presence of another. The abused door flew open to hit against the rubber stopper on the wall. Gajeel trudged in carrying a full cardboard box the size of a small microwave. A stuffed black backpack clung to one of his shoulders.
He briefly halted a few paces ahead of his unexpected roommate, his head swung around like on a swivel to survey the empty place. He didn't even give Levy a second glance as he asked, “Why've ya just been standin’ there?”
Levy's dry lips parted. No words formed. Her wide eyes slid down his tall, broad form, from his uninterested expression to the box cradled between two massive arms. He was terribly intimidating; if he had wanted to he could have snapped her petite body in half with minimal effort.
She blinked.
Gajeel left her still standing in the middle of the living area to check out the bedrooms. The toe of his black boot pushed open one and then he disappeared inside.
Out of curiosity, Levy deliberately peered in from around the wall. It was a spacious area. There were three windows that illuminated the entire room without the need for the overhead light.
The box and backpack had been set on the carpet. He was standing in the middle under the light fixture, his head turning as he seemingly looked around at nothing but the walls.
Levy kept silent as she spied. Hazel eyes moved from his shaggy mess of thick black hair to the triangular shape of his neck and shoulders.
He hummed to himself and turned his body towards the far wall, his back faced her. Large hands found the waistband of his jeans and rested there. “I think it'll fit,” he murmured.
“What will fit?” Levy asked with sudden interest.
She felt like she was intruding, but they were set up to share a small apartment. There was bound to be some future privacy issues. She shuddered and hoped they wouldn't be too crowded.
He responded as if he had known she was there watching all along, saying, “My drum set.”
Levy's heart sped up the moment she heard. Her vision of quiet, relaxing evenings was shattered with his nonchalant words about a musical instrument. “A drum set?! Like an actual big, loud drum set?”
“Relax Shorty,” he drawled. He was still standing there with his hands perched on his hips. “It's electric. The sound's through a headset.” He tapped the side of his head.
Her eyes fell, half-lidded with displeasure. Why did he call her that? She crossed her arms. “I'm not short.”
“Sure,” he dismissed with a scoff. His attention was elsewhere. Somewhere in that big -but sort of handsome- head of his. Whatever was in there.
Her apprehension subsided a bit with that knowledge that he would have a headset. She glanced towards the other bedroom and wondered what it looked like beyond the closed door. Her peripheral detected a shift in the light, and she felt more than saw Gajeel brush past her. His arm knocked hard into her shoulder as he turned the corner in the narrow hall.
“Hey,” she announced. Her hand came up instinctively to lay on her collarbone. Her mouth set into a firm line. Her eyes bore a hole in the back of his head. And he just walked away? He hadn't even said sorry.
When he didn't stop, she frowned and put effort into it. “Gajeel!” she yelled.
“What?” He asked in annoyance with an enunciated ‘T’. His boots planted there on the living room carpet and he slowly turned to look at her, his palm held up in the air.
Words that Levy had been ready to let loose on him swiftly left her at the sight of his chilling frown. Instead, she dumbly stood exactly where she had been. Was it fear? Was she apprehensive because of his dark looks or his fearsome and reckless attitude?
“Um, I- uh-”
His pierced eyebrow rose.
Levy stuttered. “W-what are you doing?”
She inwardly cringed. Why couldn't she think of something else, something better to say? That was it? She could confront assholes on the street more easily than this particular one. Her mind was completely blank.
“I'm going to bring my shit up here,” he replied steadily. His tone was notably close to condescending. “What else is there to do?”
And then he simply left the apartment, not bothering to touch the open door on his way out.
With a long, silent huff, Levy quickly shook her fist in the air after him, her anger turned to frustration. She pulled the door closed and headed down to the parking lot after him. Like Gajeel, she too had things to bring up from her car. The rest of the furniture was in the back of a small trailer.
On her way out of the building entrance, Gajeel passed her carrying another full cardboard box, almost running into her once again. It was as if he didnt see her at all. His focus was on the stairs before him as he ascended.
Levy's frown deepened and her mouth fell slightly open while she stared. A tiny sound escaped her throat. What was with this guy?
A sense of dread began to fill her stomach. Maybe she would have to find another place. But then if she did her current deposit was forfeited. She couldn't afford to shell out another moving fee and deposit.
Groaning, she did the only thing she could think of at that moment and start officially moving in. All of the items she had fit in her car she comfortably toted up to the apartment. Unlike her new roommate's, her things went directly to her bedroom, set along the back wall to make room for the bigger items later.
It was small. Smaller than the room Gajeel had claimed. It had built in bookshelves on either side of the doorway, which was a pleasant surprise. But what it lacked in initial space it made up for in a large walk-in closet.
When she strolled out from the hall, the carpet was littered with his junk. Her lip wanted to curl. Was he a slob? Random crates and rickety boxes overflowing with Gajeel's personal items. Mostly clothing, though there was a laptop, music devices, and a distasteful calendar that Levy covered over with a rogue jacket that was draped over the side of a box, among other things.
Her gaze landed on a blue milk crate full of books. It was set apart from the rest, on a haphazardly placed brown end table by the hall's light switch.
Gajeel was a reader? From what she’d encountered so far, Levy would have never pegged him. There really was more to someone than outward appearance.
Gently picking through the books, she found that most of them were classics. Their hard covers were worn from use, the pages creased on the top corners. None of them had bookmarks. She had to tell him not to dog-ear his books like that.
“What’re you doing?” his rough voice announced in question.
The three books tumbled from her hands to fall in a heap by the table. His unexpected voice had scared her. “Um, I was just looking. Sorry,” she began as she bent to pick up the downturned books. “I love to read so I just…” Trying to find an excuse, her lips fell silent.
He considered her for a moment, the drawers to a dresser occupying his arms. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. His mouth shut. He didn't seem angry, but Levy was cautious.
“Don't ya have yer own things to get?” he calmly asked instead. His red eyes gave her a once over before settling back to her face.
Relief rushed through Levy at his civility. “Yes, but I was waiting for you. I need help. I've gotten everything that I could manage myself.”
He humphed and continued about his business, taking the drawers to his room. When he re emerged some seconds later, he gestured to her without slowing down. “Alright. Come on.”
Without needing to be told a second time, Levy followed her roommate.
“It's the trailer there,” she said once they were in the parking lot. A silver trailer was parked in the back. After they emptied it, she would have to notify for its pickup.
“I kinda figured,” Gajeel commented. There was only one moving trailer on the lot.
“Right.” Levy bit her cheek. Her eyes flickered up to him.
His lips were twisted, as if he was trying not to smile. He turned his head away, seemingly interested in a few birds flying overhead before she could be sure.
Standing by the ramp, Levy let him walk in and start picking things to haul out. She watched with her arms crossed over her chest as he picked up a large, clear tote of notebooks, pencil pouches, and various books with a grunt.
The sound of something rolling around inside abruptly stopped as he presented it, most likely a loose pen or pencil. His eyebrow rose and he looked at her.
“I like to write, okay?”
Her lips slid into a grin when she watched him shake his head and his confused expression give way to his own version of a smile.
Soon only her mattress and the bed frame, her bookshelves, dresser, and a long desk were the only things left. She had no idea how she would have gotten them out and up the stairs without his help. The only reason they were in the trailer to begin with is she had had help in moving out of her old place.
He took most of the weight, letting her steer them once they hit the stairwell. His patience with the desk had nearly expired when they hit the wall as they maneuvered the corner, causing the desk's edge to punch into his stomach.
“Lift it, Levy,” he commanded, looking up at her from the bottom. The legs were scraping the steps.
“I am.”
She threw her weight upwards only for nothing to happen. The wooden box drawers were on both ends, making it nearly impossible for her. They should have taken them out before they started the trek, but they couldn't now in the narrow space.
“Yer doin’ it wrong,” he roughly accused.
“How am I wrong?” She answered back just the same. One of her hands came up on reflex, her palm upwards in irritation.
He lowered his head as she spoke and blew out a quick breath in his own annoyance. He lifted his end once more, but when he did, the corner caught the brick wall, effectively halting his progress before it could really begin.
His body continued right into the stationary edge.
Bouncing backwards from it, Gajeel doubled over. A pained growl rumbled from his chest. His mouth formed around a word, but refrained from spitting it out.
“Oh my gosh, are you ok?” Levy blurted. She let go of her end of the desk.
“Get out of the way,” he ordered. Anger -probably more embarrassment- simmered in his eyes.
She did so and watched with astonishment as he gathered himself and hauled, lifting the long piece of furniture with a deep grunt. He was fast enough to use the momentum and all but throw it and himself up around the corner.
The desk was now set for a straight path up the rest of the way and to their apartment.
Levy was immediately grateful that she had Gajeel for any heavy lifting.
Giving a breath, he turned to her. His eyes were now impassive. “Can you get around it?” He asked.
Levy hummed. There was a few inches of space between the desk and the brick wall, but she knew she wouldn't be able to fit. “Only a kid could squeeze through there. But, I think I could climb over it.”
Gajeel simply stood to catch his breath and let her do what she had suggested. In amusement, he placed his hands on his hips and watched as her tiny form scrambled up and over the smooth tabletop. Her jean shorts accentuated her curves and her plump ass stared squarely up at him for the briefest of moments.
A grin spread on his face. He let himself look, but kept his hands on his waistband.
Once they were at their apartment with the desk safely in her bedroom without further incident, they shut the front door with a sigh.
The place was an absolute wreck. Nothing was organized and nothing was in a convenient setup. The couch was shoved halfway in the kitchen with her clothing totes upon it. There was one visible walkway through the living room to the hall, the rest of the floor and furniture was littered.
Levy was thirsty, but the box containing kitchen utensils was somewhere buried under the mess. It would take them a few days to sort everything out. “What do you wanna do for dinner?” she asked aloud.
“I dunno.” His voice was muffled. It sounded a little distant as he worked on neatly plugging in the tv and game consoles at the outlet behind the big flat screen. “I don't care, do what ya want.”
“You don't have a favorite place to eat?”  she asked.
“I'll eat anything, just pick something.”
Levy hummed. “Chinese? There's a place a few blocks from here.”
“That's fine,” he replied, and then popped up triumphantly. He turned on the tv. On the screen was the console main logo. Without turning to Levy, he said, “After we eat, ya wanna try out yer new tv?”
Looking up from the restaurant's menu on her phone, she saw the screen as he punched in his passcode. The more she looked at the set up, the more she felt out of her element. “I don't know, I've never really played on one…”
“Really, well yer gonna learn tonight.” Gajeel cleared an area of the floor a few feet from the tv stand and abruptly sat down. He kicked off his boots and quickly took off his grey shirt, leaving him in a white tank. He picked up the controller.
“What about the mess in here?” She lifted a hand and waved it at all of the things brought up and thrown in no particular order as if showcasing a nice car on display.
Gajeel made a sound with his mouth. “We're gonna be here for at least a year. We can sort it tomorrow. Give yer'self a break.” He added with an afterthought, “Does that Chinese place deliver?”
“Uhh.” She scrolled down on her phone. “Yes.”
“Order it for delivery and then get over here.” He let a genuine smile slip up on his face. He set a black controller beside him as if to save her a seat.
Her own smile appeared as she ordered their food. Then she picked her way through their junk and slowly sat down beside him. He was at ease and relaxed as he started to explain a game he thought she would enjoy. When he presented an eye creasing smile, his red eyes warm, she found herself begin to mirror him. Maybe having a new roommate wouldn't be so bad...
170 notes · View notes
sockablock · 6 years
Link
• (start) (prev) (next) •
Chapter 8: The Long, Looping Scrawl
TUSK LOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO Today 9:08AM
Lavender Thunder: soooooooo good news and bad news Lavender Thunder: the GOOD news is that gustav isn’t arrested and the cops have cooled off and nobody else is dead Seaman: that is pretty good news Lavender Thunder: yeah well Lavender Thunder: the bad news is that kylre isn’t going to be around anymore Lavender Thunder: and that I think we might need to find some new jobs Lavender Thunder: the Moondrop is gonna be out of commission for like Lavender Thunder: kind of a while
Jester, from where she stood next to the couch with her hands over Fjord’s ribs, watched Molly make his way through the front door and into the living room. “What does ‘a while’ mean?” she asked as he approached. “Like…how long is that, exactly?”
Molly collapsed onto the sofa opposite them and shrugged. “My best guess? Probably over half a year,” he said glumly. “It’s mostly to raise funding. Gustav says that he’s got to pay off a heavy fine to the city for all the endangerment his ‘employee’ caused before he’s even allowed to start rebuilding, and then there’s the cost of repairs and the cost of new furniture and the cost of new equipment. Not to mention how long it’ll take to actually fix everything. You should keep an eye out too, Fjord,” he added with a nod to the half-orc, “word on the street is that Fletch will also be closed in the meantime. Gustav or Desmond will probably send out some kind of notice later on today.”
Fjord sighed. “Yeah, I figured something like that might happen.”
“What are you going to do in the meantime, then?” Jester asked. “And what’s everybody else doing?”
“I’m not sure about myself yet,” Molly shrugged. “I know Gustav and Desmond are going to stick around and oversee reconstruction. Everyone else is taking time off to travel and visit family. The Sisters are going back to Felderwin for a bit, and Bosun says he’s going to go backpacking through the countryside. Yasha also took off to do…whatever it is she always does. And Ornna’s taking care of Toya now, though I’m not entirely sure what that entails.”
“I take it that Kylre’s out of the picture, then?” Fjord asked.
“Yeah, what exactly happened to him, anyways?” Jester asked. “You need should be less vague over text.”
Molly’s expression immediately went dark. “It’s…not great, dear. Kylre…well, after the authorities determined that he was a fiend, they elected to…to…”
Fjord sat up as best as he could. “What, Molly? What did they do?”
Molly’s shoulders sagged. “They took him to the Zauber Spire,” he said. “They’re banishing him to the Nine Hells.”
“What?!” Jester shouted. “What do you mean, banishing?”
“I mean that they’re going to send him there for good,” Molly mumbled. “According to what Gustav told us, the police decided that because he’s a fiend, he should be sent back to where ‘his kind’ reside. Whatever the fuck that means.”
Fjord reached out a hand as if to comfort him, and then thought better of it.
“Fuck, Mol,” he said instead. “I’m…I’m sorry."
Mollymauk shrugged listlessly. “It’s no fault of yours,” he said. “It was just…shitty. Complete horseshite.”
They sat there in silence for a few more moments. The distant sound of cars honking drifted up from the streets and through the window.
“Well…” Jester tried eventually, “…at least everybody else is okay?”
Molly snorted. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, at least there’s that. I guess…I don’t know, I guess in a weird way, life will go on. Just without one of the troupe now, and with a lot of dumb financial problems.”
“Fuck…yeah,” Fjord sighed. “This means I gotta find a new place to work. For the time being, anyhow.”
Jester’s eyes went wide. “Oh, shit!” she said. “Does that…does that still mean we can move in? Or are we going to have to wait a bit, now? I mean,” she added hastily, “it’s okay if we do, totally cool—”
Fjord reached for her hand, and she relaxed.
“It’ll be fine,” he said gently. “As soon as my damn ribs get better, I’ll ask around and see what’s available. Maybe there’ll be something I can pick up at the Leaky Tap, or somethin’, and we can go from there. But…Molly, will you be alright?”
Molly hesitated. He thought for a moment about his bank account, and then considered how tired he was.
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Maybe?”
Jester, despite the mood, giggled. “That doesn’t sound very responsible of you,” she said.
He gave her a half-smile. “We managed to negotiate the rent down for this year, and I’ve got plenty saved up. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually spend that much money.”
“It’s true,” Fjord agreed. “He eats at the Moondrop all the time and gets people to buy him stuff that he sells.”
Molly grinned. “I’m a financial wizard,” he nodded. Then he paused, and added, “but maybe I should look into finding a roommate. If you two decide to go ahead with the apartment plan, that is.”
“We’ll see,” they both said at the same time.
“Alright, you two, alright,” Molly laughed. “Keep me posted. I’m gonna need time if I’m gonna scout someone out that snores less than Fjord. Honestly, I don’t envy you, Jester.”
She started giggling again. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll make Caleb find me a silence spell that I can cast on him every night.”
“Hey!” Fjord protested, and then winced. He settled for sinking back down onto the cushions and pouting. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“It’s really bad,” said Molly. “It’s literally the loudest sound in the entire world.”
“That can’t be enough,” Nott commented as she peered over Caleb’s shoulder. “Look at how much water there is! That little cup is nothing.”
“It’s the right amount,” Caleb sighed and turned around to face her. “Believe me, I have done this hundreds of times before.”
“How come?” she asked. “Did you go camping a lot as a kid?”
They were both kneeling in the bathroom, positioned on the tiled floor next to the edge of a very full bathtub. Caleb had begrudgingly dipped into the month’s budgeted water usage, telling himself that he’d take less showers, and after heating the bath with a few magic spells, they were both currently blanketed by a thick layer of steam.
That smelled, rather strongly, of vinegar.
“Not exactly campfires,” Caleb said lightly, “but I suppose that works. Anyways, this is the best way to remove ashy smells from our clothing. I feel terrible, ruining them like this in battle. Especially since your dress was brand new, Nott.”
The little goblin shrugged. “It’s fine,” she said, “I don’t really think they’re ruined.”
“I am sure that you do not, though others may have differing opinions.”
“They always do,” she said solemnly. “I always ignore them.”
They finished hanging up their fancy attire on the neck of the showerhead, then left the bathroom and shut the door tightly behind them. Caleb moved towards his bed, flopped down and buried his face into the pillow. He felt a light weight sink into the mattress near the space by his foot, and he shifted slightly to give Nott more room.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Bitte. Gods, I am exhausted.”
“Me too,” she said. “I don’t even feel like doing anything today.”
“What a night that was, eh?” he asked, muffled but with a mild chuckle. “Certainly more than what I was expecting.”
“I don’t think anyone could have predicted a giant toad monster would turn a guy into a zombie and then fight us in an abandoned warehouse,” said Nott.
There was a beat of silence.
“Ja okay,” he said. “Point taken.”
There was a longer silence after that, in which Nott sprawled upside-down off the edge of the bed and closed her eyes. Caleb shoved his face further into the pillow, and tried to think of a happy place. Or at least, a sleep-inducing one.
Then:
“Those were some pretty good pancakes, though.”
Caleb turned his head. “What?” he asked.
“Those pancakes,” Nott repeated. “That Molly made us. Those were really good.”
He blinked. “Er…yes,” he agreed hesitantly. “They were rather nice, yes.”
“And it was really nice of him to let us use his bathroom,” she said. “And it was nice that he gave us clothes, and blankets, and made us tea. Even if it was creepy tea.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “Yes?” he said. “That is…true. Er…is there something you have to say about all that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “There is. Last night was just…really nice. I liked it.”
“Despite the death and monster and fighting?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
She nodded. “Yeah. To be honest, I don’t think that stuff really matter too much.”
“Was? Why is that?”
Nott smiled. “Because we have friends now,” she said. “A lot of them.”
Caleb rolled over onto his back and stared up at the chipped ceiling. He considered this.
“Ja…I suppose we do.”
Nott’s smile widened. “I like them,” she said. “It was fun before, with just the girls, but after everything we all went through together, it sort of feels like…I guess it sort of feels like this whole group is a family.”
Caleb felt something flicker in his chest. He tamped it down immediately.
“I see,” he said eventually.
Nott giggled. “It’s okay if you don’t want to agree with me. I know the truth, anyhow.”
“Do you? What is that?” he asked, almost dreading the answer.
Nott closed her eyes again. “You like them too,” she said.
For a long, long while, Caleb thought of something to say.
And then, when nothing came, he closed his eyes as well and eventually fell back asleep.
“Beauregard!” Jester shouted, bursting into their apartment, “are you awake?! I am home! And ready to…”
She trailed off and looked around the empty kitchen. The lights were off, and the windows drawn shut, leaving only thin trails of light creeping in around the curtains. She dropped her purse, and the plastic bag that held her dress onto the floor, and took a few steps forward.
“Beau?” she called, quieter this time. “…Beau…? Are you there?”
Almost immediately, something began to stir at the back of her mind. Something heavy, and unbidden, and unnerving, and old. She felt her hand unconsciously reach into her pocket, and clutch a small metal object on a thick leather cord. She traced her fingers along its smooth surface, and relaxed slightly as a familiar warmth washed over her.
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax further, and had just recovered her signature cheery smile when her eyes caught a single piece of paper lying on the kitchen table.
She ran towards it quicker than she probably would have liked. She immediately began to read the long, looping scrawl across its surface.
Jes—
I went to take care of some shit. I’ll be back tonight, but I’m not sure if I’ll be ready to talk to you about it ‘til later. I trust you more than any of these other assholes we call friends, so please don’t be upset if I don’t say shit when I return, alright? And please, please don’t ask any questions. I promise that the second I’m ready, I’ll tell you everything.
See you later,
Drunkmonk
She stared at the frustratingly short letter for a few more seconds. She flipped it around, saw nothing, then flipped it back over.
“Beau will be back tonight,” she whispered. She took another deep breath, and nodded. She carefully folded the page and slid it into her pocket.
“Did you hear that, Traveler?” she asked the air in front of her. “Beau is fine! She’s just running errands. And, and she said that she trusts me! Isn’t that cool?”
Jester was still, and silent for a moment. Her ears twitched as if listening to a far-off song.
“I agree,” she said eventually. “Also, thanks for helping out earlier with Fjord! I’m really glad he’s okay. And I’m really glad you were there for us.”
Another pause. Another strange, silent hum.
And then she laughed and nodded brightly. “That’s a great idea! Come on, I think I remember where I put it. We were on chapter nine, right?”
And then she skipped into her bedroom, leaving the door wide open behind her.
TUSK LOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO Today 6:19PM
Seaman: good news yall! Seaman: Wessick says that the Tap’s looking for an evening bartender, and he says ive got the job! Seaman: which ALSO means yall get a friends and family discount for karaoke Seaman: probably Lavender Thunder: HECK YEAH Lavender Thunder: THAT’S AWESOME FJORD Lavender Thunder: why didnt you tell me that to my face though we live in the same house Seaman: i wanted to spread the happy news all at once Molly Seaman: also I still cant move and you went into your bedroom Seaman: sue me (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: that’s AWESOME (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: FJORD IM SO HAPPY FOR YOU Seaman: thank you Jester NottSoBrave: fjord you need to respond more energetically than that NottSoBrave: you shouldnt leave a lady wanting NottSoBrave: otherwise someone could snatch her up Lavender Thunder: oh and what do you know about women? NottSoBrave: i happen to BE a WOMEN NottSoBrave: woman NottSoBrave: whatever NottSoBrave: oh also Caleb says congratulations Seaman: thank you Caleb Seaman: and thanks for the relationship advice, i think? Seaman: don’t mention it Seaman: hey beau and yasha, what’re you going to do? (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: beaus busy right now (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: but im sure she’ll answer later! Lavender Thunder: ditto for yasha Lavender Thunder: that’s just how she do NottSoBrave: how mysterious NottSoBrave: why are they gone? NottSoBrave: is yasha a spy? is Beau a spy Lavender Thunder: yes Lavender Thunder: theyre spies
Nott looked up from her phone screen, stared at Frumpkin dead in his clear blue eyes.
“Hear that?” she said. “I knew it.”
“Spatz!” Caleb called from the kitchen. “Come on, your noodles are getting cold!”
“Coming!” she yelled back. She gave Frumpkin one last solemn nod, then tossed her cell onto the covers and scuttled out of the bedroom.
Beau arrived home that night well after sunset. She shut the front door behind her as quietly as she could, but frowned and looked around suspiciously when she noticed that all the lights were still on. Then she saw the living room couch, and her gaze softened.
Jester was laid out on the cushions, fully dressed and fast asleep. There was a tray on the coffee table in front of her, piled high with pastries and sporting a now-chilly cup of hot chocolate. A note next to the tray read:
For Beau!
She sighed. “You little weirdo,” she said, “you didn’t have to wait for me.”
She slid her backpack onto the carpet and carefully lifted Jester into her arms, bridal-style. She made it all the way to Jester’s extravagant canopy bed, and was almost done tucking her in, when she stirred awake.
Jester’s eyes slowly peeked open. Her irises glowed in the darkness.
“Beau?” she mumbled. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, Jes,” she said. “I’m back.”
Jester’s brow furrowed slightly. “You…your face is messed up.”
Beau reached up, felt the tender skin around her bruised eye and split lip. She shrugged and gave Jester a faint smile. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I fell.”
“That’s a lie,” Jester murmured, and closed her eyes. “But it’s okay. You said you trust me, and I trust you too. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
Beau was silent for a moment. Then she sighed. “…thanks, Jes,” she said eventually.
“I’m glad you’re home,” came the sleepy response. “I’m glad you came back to me.”
Beau scoffed. “Of course I did,” she said. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I?”
There was no answer. After a moment, Beau pulled the blankets up to Jester’s shoulder, turned around, and went back to her room.
And then, after that, life more-or-less returned to whatever semblance of normalcy it had once held, for most of them.
For most of them.
TUSK LOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO Today 10:22AM
Lavender Thunder: guysssss Lavender Thunder: whos around??!!?? Lavender Thunder: im bored out of my goddamn mind Lavender Thunder: and yashas still gone (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: ughhhh sorry mollyyyy I have class now (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: and Fjord too right now Lavender Thunder: ah its arlight dear Lavender Thunder: anybody else? Drunkmonk: i hate you, so no Drunkmonk: but actually im also doing stuff right now Lavender Thunder: fuck off Lavender Thunder: nott and Caleb? NottSoBrave: calebs working at the library toady NottSoBrave: and I don’t want to hang out with you Lavender Thunder: wow alright then (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*: Nott!! Apologize to Molly!! NottSoBrave: sorry Lavender Thunder: gee thanks Lavender Thunder: anyways have fun doing your stuff yall Lavender Thunder: i guess ill ,, read a book or something
Molly lowered his phone.
He was seated on his bed, wrapped up in his silk pajamas, staring out the window at the bright and bustling city landscape beyond.
This was a strange feeling. Here he was warm, and comfortable, and the sunlight gently caressed his skin with its soothing morning rays.
But today he should have been at the Moondrop. Today he should have been in the dark backstage performer’s lounge, helping the sisters with their makeup, or watching Desmond tune his instruments, or failing to stack crates as high as Yasha could, or riffing with Bo or giving Toya piggy-back-rides or pestering Ornna or chatting lazily with Kylre or learning about sound equipment from Gustav or even bemoaning the lack of proper lighting above his dresser mirror as he tried to apply his favorite glittering eyeshadow before the afternoon shows began.
Instead, he was here.
For the first time in his entire, extraordinarily short life, Mollymauk Tealeaf felt alone.
And he realized now, with rising dread, that he had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
• • •
hey guys! Just letting you know, I’m going on a short hiatus now that Arc 1 is complete! Updates will definitely be coming, as I take time to sort out my other WIPs and adjust to college and the UK. Thank you so much for reading!!!
💚 ☕ ☕ 💚
23 notes · View notes
alchemine · 5 years
Text
Mind the Cat - Party Animals fanfic redux 1/2
If you’re wondering whether I’m dumping some of my reams of Party Animals fanfic here...that’s exactly what I’m doing. This one really is only two parts, though. I swear. 
“One more thing. I’ll need you to look after Coco for me.”
“The cat?” Danny glanced up at Jo over his notepad, which was already crammed with action items. It was Wednesday morning, and she was only scheduled to be away until Friday evening, but the act of leaving seemed to have triggered the part of her brain where she stored everything she’d been meaning to ask him to get around to someday.
“Do you know another Coco?” Jo zipped up her bag and hoisted it onto her shoulder, pulling a face at the weight. “She has half a pouch of wet food in the evenings, and then a bowl of dry cat biscuits for nibbling later. She’ll go out on her own during the day, just make certain she’s in at night because of the foxes.”
“Half a pouch...biscuits...foxes,” Danny mumbled to himself, scribbling notes. He knew Coco, who was a scrawny, scrappy, vaguely Siamese-looking cat that Jo had acquired from a sanctuary, but hadn’t expected her to be part of his workload in Jo’s absence. Still, it shouldn’t be too bad. Like her owner, Coco was stubborn and exacting and expressed her displeasure loudly when things weren’t done to her liking, but she could be quite sweet when she wanted to be--also like her owner, though he didn’t dare say so to Jo’s face--and he could drop in easily enough on his way to and from work.
He finished writing and looked back at Jo, pen poised. “Anything else?”
“Not unless you’d like to go in my place,” Jo said morosely. “I’m not looking forward to this.”
“You’re the one who lobbied to be elected to the committee.”
“Don’t remind me. Have you got the key?”
“It’s in my pocket. Hurry or you’ll be late.”
Jo left, and Danny settled in to sort through his massive to-do list, eliminating out of hand all the items that he knew she’d have forgotten by the time she returned. This still left him more than enough to be getting on with, and between that and answering the phone, he was kept busy all the way up to early evening, when he finally closed up the office and headed to Jo’s to discharge his cat-sitting duties. 
He let himself in at the front door, and before he could even call for Coco, she came running to greet him, all noisy complaints and question-mark tail, and wound herself between his ankles so he nearly tripped over her.
“Relax, I’m going to feed you--argh! For Christ’s sake, Coco, she’s only been gone for a few hours. Get out from under my feet.”
Clearly unconvinced of his trustworthiness, Coco trailed him into Jo’s kitchen, sprang up onto the white tile worktop and paced there, mewing insistently, as he dispensed half a pouch of tuna and whitefish onto a saucer that he found in the cupboard. By the time he’d filled her dry food and water bowls, she’d gobbled it all down and was obsessively licking her whiskers, with a watchful eye on him to see whether more might be forthcoming.
“Sorry, I’ve got my instructions. Half a pouch per night.” Danny scratched her under the chin, and she leaned into it, a rumbling purr starting in her throat. “Do you like that? What if I rub your ears? Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it? Yes it is--” 
Here he realised he was starting to devolve into nonsense and stopped, turning away to lock the cat flap and set the bowls down on the floor, where there was a plastic mat with a pattern of fish skeletons round its border. 
“There you are,” he said to Coco, who looked disgruntled at having her orgy of stroking interrupted. “I’ll be back in the morning to let you out. Don’t do anything Jo wouldn’t want you to do.”
Coco let out a trilling chirp, and as he headed for the door, Danny heard the thud of her paws hitting the kitchen floor as she jumped down to investigate what was in her everyday dish. Shaking his head, he locked the door behind him, tried it, tucked the key back into his pocket and went on his way, mentally ticking feed cat off his list and already thinking about what he was going to feed self when he got home. It had been a long day. 
Getting up early the following morning to make the return trip to Jo’s wasn’t as easy as stopping on his way home had been, but he managed it and pushed the door open on a bright, quiet space. Jo had tall windows dressed with thin white curtains, and even Danny, who wasn’t a decorating expert, had to admire the way the early sunlight filtered artfully through them like something in a magazine spread. He tossed the key onto a table and his bag onto the sofa, and just then realised that Coco hadn’t come running the way she’d done the previous night.
“Coco?”
Silence. Danny pushed the door shut behind him and ventured farther into the living room, waiting to hear the sound of galloping paws. Poets might write about the fog coming on little cat feet, but Coco sounded like a herd of elephants when she got up to speed on a bare floor.
“Coco? Where are you?”
Still nothing, and now he began to worry. He knew he’d locked the cat flap, but he went and checked anyway, finding it stuck firmly shut. Had Jo left a window open? A quick inspection revealed she hadn’t. That meant Coco must be somewhere inside, lying stretched out on top of the wardrobe or lurking behind the boiler, soaking up the warmth. His mum had had a cat when he and Scott were kids that had liked to curl up on the windowsill directly above the radiator; perhaps Coco had the same habit. 
Danny looked at his watch, looked at the food and water bowls, which were still nearly full, and decided that she’d be fine until he returned that evening. He unlocked the cat flap and left again, and by the time he’d reached the corner, all his thoughts were on the day ahead. 
It wasn’t until he was on his way back again, hungry and stiff-limbed after a long day in front of a computer monitor, that he began to feel uneasy about whether Coco would have emerged from her hiding place or not--an uneasiness that turned into near panic when he opened the door and there was still no sign of her. She couldn’t possibly have got out during his visit last night, and even if she’d left through the cat flap during the day, she’d be back for the other half of her tuna and whitefish by now, wouldn’t she?
“Coco,” he called again, and his voice echoed forlornly through the empty space, in a way that clearly indicated Don’t get your hopes up, Daniel.
All right, he would have to search. He could do that. It wasn’t a very big place, and anyway he’d helped Jo move in and visited countless times since then; he knew the layout as well as he knew his own bedroom at Scott’s. He dug into cupboards, looked behind furniture, opened doors and checked the tops of things, calling out and making the most tempting cat-summoning noises he could think of as he went, but Coco seemed to have vanished into the Twilight Zone.
At that point he got either more creative or more desperate, and started looking in unlikely places just to say he’d checked them. He opened the fridge and made a mental note to place an online shopping order for Jo as soon as she got home. He pulled off the sofa cushions in case Coco had somehow managed to wedge herself down the back. He had just opened a drawer full of Jo’s bras and immediately slammed it shut again when his phone went off in his pocket, and he fished it out with one hand and answered without checking to see who it was.
“Yeah?”
“What sort of way is that to answer the phone, Danny?” Jo’s voice filled his ear and he nearly swallowed his tongue.
“Sorry. I was...distracted.”
“Distracted by what?”
“I just got in to feed Coco.” It was true enough, he thought. He would be feeding Coco if Coco were here. The fact that Jo didn’t know she wasn’t was completely beside the point.
“Oh, that’s good.” Jo’s tone softened at the mention of her pet. “How is she?”
“She’s great,” Danny said, hoping he sounded casual. “But she’s probably hungry, so I’d better go. I’ll phone you tomorrow morning and we can go over those changes to your speech. Bye.”
He hung up, glanced around to make certain he hadn’t left her bedroom looking as if it had been ransacked, and then went back to the kitchen, where he washed the saucer from the night before and dumped the rest of the food pouch onto it. Whether to lock the cat flap or not was another question: if he locked it and Coco had gone out, she would come back to a barred door, and if he didn’t lock it and she hadn’t gone out, she might slip out now and spend the night fighting with dodgy urban foxes. Then Jo would kill him, which would be a lose-lose situation for everyone.
Finally he decided to compromise: he would lock the flap, but spend the night here, on the sofa, where he’d be able to hear a commotion at the door or, if he was lucky, catch Coco in the act of sneaking out of her hiding place to refuel at the food bowl. He found an overripe banana and half a packet of stale ready-salted crisps in the kitchen and ate them for dinner, fetched a spare pillow and blanket from the cupboard where Jo kept them, and then stretched himself out on the sofa with his laptop to read about how to lure a cat.
7 notes · View notes
mars-the-red · 5 years
Text
Circles, chapter 2
fandom: Time Tunnel
Synopsis: Tony arrives back at Project Tic-Toc 10 years too soon, emotions ensue.
I’m tagging @effulgentpoet because she was kind enough to read the first part and just in case she wants to read the next bit; no pressure tho darling
Tony was bundled into the jeep by a still-wary Jiggs, and deposited in Medical, where he found himself unceremoniously stripped of every last stitch of clothing and sat in a gown on a paper sheet while a parade of personnel took readings of everything from the amount of potassium in his blood to how many fillings he had in his mouth. They all wore face masks and gloves. Tony recognized a few of them, but none of them recognized him.
“Where’s Doug?” he demanded, of every single nurse and doctor who took their particular toll. He got a few looks of sympathy, but one of Jiggs’s men, hand-picked to guard Tony while he was poked and prodded, warned them off of talking with a very pointed shake of his head.
“Containment protocol,” Jiggs reminded Doug, who was waiting with ever-thinning patience to speak with their guest. “You wrote half of these measures yourself. No contamination or cross-pollination of the Project. Tic-Toc Base is hallowed ground.”
“Sacrosanct, I think I said,” Doug replied. He looked up at the monitor showing the security feed of the Medical area. “It made sense at the time.”
“It makes sense now,” Jiggs said. “Anyway, I still think it’s a fairy story. Even if there is a Newman at MIT, he’s probably a shell. They would have done their homework.”
Doug grunted in reply. Maybe so, but the only way to uncover the truth would be by talking to this man. He paced a few steps, drifting along the corridor wall without really seeing it.
“Security should handle the interview,” Jiggs said.
Doug turned on his heel. “I’ll handle the interview.”
“Dr. Phillips, you’re too important to this project to put you in a room with an unverified, uncleared unknown.”
Doug pulled one hand from his pocket, held his palm to Jiggs. “He’s not going to convince any of you. I’m going to let him try to convince me. If he is who he says he is, don’t we owe him that?”
Jiggs was fingering the gun on his belt. “You numbers types are going to be the death of me.”
“We’ll try not to be.” Doug resumed his pacing.
* * *
Two hours later, the protocol shifted from discovery to maintenance. The head physician on duty called the canteen for a meal to be delivered to Medical, and Doug, who apparently ranked lower than a plate of chicken and rice, was admitted soon after.
They had put Tony in the suite for containing troublesome patients, with the minimum security of locks, not the plastic-draped and hermetically sealed suite for containing rampaging pathogens. It was a small, minimally furnished room, white tile floor and walls, bright lights, with a cot, chair, and table, where the aforementioned meal had been deposited and ignored.
Tony, wearing a pair of white scrubs, was seated at the table, head in his hands.
Security unlocked the door and held it open. Doug stepped through and it swung closed behind him, with more of a medical swoosh than a jailhouse clang. The lock turned heavily.
“I’m not your guinea pig,” Tony snapped, as soon as Doug came into the room. He picked up his head and glared. The prisoner treatment had keyed him up again. At least, after the decon shower they had forced on him, he felt cleaner than he had in weeks.
“Medical needed to check you’re not a threat to anyone on base.”
“They took a whole unit of blood. What are they checking for, vampirism?” It had made him a little light-headed, so he was perched at the table, rigidly aware of how alone he was. He wasn’t sure he could stand up to go toe to toe with Doug.
“I’m sorry. Why don’t you finish your food?”
Tony shoved the plate away from him. “I’m not hungry.”
“Come on. You’ve gotta be.”
Tony knew that tone. That sensible, friendly, I’m-just-looking-out-for-you reasonableness that Doug could suffocate you with. Tony looked down at his plate of dry chicken, salad, and rice and made a face.
Doug followed his look. “The canteen aren’t miracle workers, but it’s not that bad.”  
“Then you eat it,” Tony said.
Doug set a blue folder on the table, then swung into the chair across from him and swiped a cherry tomato off Tony’s plate. “I’m hungry, too. You know I was just heading to dinner when you showed up?”
“Sorry to spoil you plans.”
“This is a lot more interesting.” Doug bit into the tomato. It was mushy. He tried to hide the grimace. He removed a notebook and pencil from his breast pocket, flipped to a new page, and set it in front of him. “Take me through it again. Name, rank, serial number. Anything, everything we can use to corroborate this story.”
Tony did. Haltingly at first, then picking up speed. It had happened fast for him. The chair of the department calling him into his office, the interviews with bland polite men in suits. Becky had fallen away during the next few months of intense work on that fateful paper and then, out of nowhere, an invitation to defend it as his dissertation.
Doug had been there. A “special invite” to sit on the dissertation board. Tony hadn’t known who he was. He kept that to himself.
It was a rainy day in early April. They started at eight a.m. Tony drew figures and charts and chains of equations until an entire pack of chalk had turned to dust in his fingertips. The questions kept coming. By the end of the gauntlet the street lights had come on outside and he barely knew his own name, until his adviser shook his hand and said “Congratulations, Doctor Newman.”
Doug sent him home to pack. The next day they touched down in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona, under a blue sky full of brilliant sun. Tony hadn’t thought or breathed anything else since.
He knew staffing levels, layouts, equipment, even the make and model of the coffee machines in the control center. Some of the things he described were still on Doug’s wish list, to be wrangled over in endless committee meetings in DC. Some were already in play. Tony answered every question Doug lobbed at him for an hour and a half, trying to place him both in the present and the future, and at the end of it, Doug had heard enough. He was a believer.
Then it was Doug’s turn for show and tell. The test results had all come back; Doug opened the blue folder. The subject was in overall good health, with nutritional deficiencies consistent with some months of deprivation. Slight dehydration, several superficial injuries, and no marks of biological contamination.
“Do you know where the radiological contamination came from?” Doug asked, leafing through the reports. That was the only caveat on Tony’s charts, with a low impact rating.
Tony looked up at him and calculated. The radiation bath hadn’t been conceived yet.
“No,” Tony said. “Must be a by-product.”
Doug caught his hesitation. He held Tony’s eyes for a half-second too long before he finally smiled. “Well, it’s not a threat to you or anyone on station. Good news, Medical can’t see any reason to confine you here.”
Tony was regretting not eating when he had the chance. He was light-headed again. “So now what? You’ll turn me over to Security for their go?”
“No. Come with me.”
* * *
Security stood aside as Dr. Phillips escorted his guest out. Tony took the lead, subtly, guiding them out of Medical and toward the central tower space, the Atrium. He knew these corridors like the back of his hand. He sensed Doug watching his every step, and he saw the guards raise their hand to their ear pieces as he entered their range. He kept his chin held high.
Tony had no codes, no access badges, no biometrics on file, so Doug stepped up to the armored door to the Atrium. He swiped his badge, then turned his eyes to the iris scanner mounted unobtrusively in the terminal.
The doors slid open. Tony stepped out onto the footbridge, veered to the rail, and stopped dead.
The Atrium smelled of fresh paint and hot metal, sawn-off lumber and floor wax. Half of it was still under construction, hung with plastic and scaffolding.
Impossible to ignore, the pulsing, breathing power core was alive with electricity, writhing with nuclear reaction and shunted neutrons. It drew Tony’s whole attention, it drew him to lean over the railing and bathe in its mad refracting light.
Seven years ago, first laying eyes on it, it was the most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen. And in that moment, suspended above its unimaginable power, all the doubts Tony had ever had about his own sanity, his abilities, humankind’s striving against the seemingly unassailable wall of the universe and its laws, had vanished. He knew they could do anything. It was the engine of all their dreams.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Doug asked.
Tony could only nod.
The staffing complexes were still under construction, falling down into the gloom below. Tiny lights, like illuminated ants, were busy some five hundred floors below them, as construction crews dug deeper into the Arizona plate and carved out space for more offices, more laboratories, more libraries, more minds to strive toward this one inconceivable goal.
Tony finally pried himself away. A wave of dizziness crested, then subsided, as he pushed off the railing. “Where are we going?”
“My office.”
Doug’s office was a suite just above the control room. Doug waved him in and followed.
Tony took a breath. The paint smelled sharp and fresh here, too.
The outer room, where Doug had his desk, bookshelves, and seating area, also had a bank of windows overlooking the control floor. His desk was arranged to face them, and the Tunnel was dead center.
Eyes on the prize, Doug used to say.
Goodbye, work-life balance, Tony had thought then.
He thought it now, too. Doug’s office was functional. It was efficient. The furniture was new, with clean lines. Bleeding-edge design in bright woods and angles. Doug’s desk was a nod to his position; lots of drawers, and a desk top with a larger square footage than Tony’s dorm room. Files, always neatly stacked and sorted when Doug could help it . Cabinets full of identical manila folders.
Then as now, Tony was struck by how spartan it was. No pictures, no photographs, no cool rocks Doug had picked up on a whim while out hiking. A rack of plants were oxygenating the room from under a grow light, but they had no personality; Doug had let one of his assistants choose them.
Several diplomas in identical frames were hung behind his desk, but they only gave the who, what, where, when of Doug’s education. No context.
The bookshelves held a hint of life; Don Quixote in several editions, HG Wells, and Conan Doyle, plus a fair spread of the Western canon. Theory featured heavily, and Tony, who had never been much for reading when he could be doing, had once gotten the grand tour. Mathematicians, of course, and philosophers, and historians. And mathematicians playing philosopher, and philosophers playing historian. A busy little section on astronomy that served as a lending library of sorts; Tic Toc Base was situated under some of the darkest skies left in North America, and there were plenty of amateur and professional astronomers in their ranks. Doug had an antique telescope in a leather case propped in the corner. His father’s name was embossed on the strap.
Apart from the bookshelves, the only truly personal touch was the ring on Doug’s small finger, a souvenir from his very brief stint in the Army. He said the brass in Washington liked to see it; but he wore it all the time, so Tony figured that time in the forces was still important to Doug, even when he went back to civilian life.
Tony was familiar with all this. He had stood in this office - and sat, and eaten, and slept - a hundred times. But today he looked around with fresh eyes. Doug had been this obsessed, this driven, this… singular… from the very first days.
Tony looked at the Doug standing beside him. Doug was about his age, Tony realized with a burst of shock. No lines, no gray in his hair, a touch more trim, with basic training not so many years behind. More youthful, physically, but the same eternal, slightly estranged soul.
Tony tilted his head when he realized Doug was staring back at him. “What?”
“I keep thinking I might recognize you,” Doug admitted. “If I just look hard enough.”
“You won’t. We haven’t met yet.” Tony’s brain had finally absorbed that. It had a rather chilling effect: for all he thought knew about this place and these people, they were strangers. He was in a strange land.
And if he wasn’t careful, the Doug Phillips he would come to know, the project he had given his life to see complete, might become something else. The complexity of his situation, and the care he needed to take here, were beginning to sink in.
Tony knew he had gone unfriendly and cold. But perhaps that was for the best. He needed the space in his own head to think things through.
Doug, if he noticed the shift in tone, decided not to comment on it. He directed Tony’s attention to the windows.
“How long until we complete it?” Doug asked.
Tony followed his gaze. The mouth of the Tunnel was still rough, natural rock, shrouded in ghostly plastic sheeting and thick, snaking bundles of cords criss-crossed the control floor. They hadn’t gotten the final design and circuitry completed until 1964. That was six years from now.
“Soon,” Tony said.
Doug looked sidelong. “Soon?”
“That’s all I can say.”
Doug gazed out across the control room. “These last few months... we’ve hit a wall.” 
Tony crossed his arms and remained silent.
“Newman,” Doug said, and Tony barely recognized it as his own name, coming from Doug’s lips like that, “Will you help us?”
1 note · View note
brooklynislandgirl · 6 years
Note
Danny and beth
Married Life Meme || Accepting
leaves their dirty clothes on the floor
The water is cold, harsh and stinging as it sluices down Danny’s body like a fire-hose. Soaks him head to toe and he’s scrubbing at his face, muttering something unintelligible under his breath. The soap practically peels his skin, smells more like isopropyl alcohol than herbal essences which seems counterproductive all things considered. There’s no tile, no smell of coffee and sausage cooking and underpinning it all is a slick, sick taste of fear coating the back of his throat. The decontamination shower is built to withstand any condition it is placed in, and so should be the cops using it. A shudder of revulsion sweeps through him right as there’s a change in pressure and temperature.
“Nice glutes,” she says behind more cheerfully than she has any right to be. He can almost feel the way her eyes slide over him before they’re back to back and she turns on the next spray. He glances over his shoulder and sees she’s thrown her uniform on the ground atop his and there’s someone in a full hazmat suit collecting them, tossing them into a bag. They’ll be replaced free of charge, but not really the point. He notices out of her boots she’s quite a bit shorter than him, out of the whole kit, slender as a willow branch. Bare feet. Tiny ankles. Shapely calves if you discounted the scar, and he stares at that just a little longer than he should because Danny’s married not dead, and she’s a cute girl, his partner. Trails higher, avoiding the curve of her backside without permission, that’s pushing things a bit higher, but one brow shoots up as he catches a glimpse of the tattoo at her side.If anyone says anything, he’ll swear she started it. “Danny?”“Yeah?” He clears his throat, voice a touch rougher than it should be.“This…this is jus’….a precaution, right?” She sounds younger than she is, and more afraid than he is.“Yeah, yeah it is. I promise you’ll be fine.”
forgets to run the dish washer
Everything kind of falls apart.Rachel is out of town, the place looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane, Grace is running a fever and he’s taken a couple days off but hasn’t slept in a week. He’s ready to pull out his own hair if it will let his daughter sleep for three seconds. And it’s a small mercy when Beth lets herself into his house. Carrying bags of take-out from Mario’s. She kisses his cheek as she takes Gracie from his arms. Presses her wrist to his daughter’s brow and nods to herself. “No, no, no! You don’t wanna do that-”
“Danny, relax. I was going to be a doctor before…” A dark flash across her face. “Before. And you’re no good to her if you don’t grab a bite and get some sleep. “But-”“But nothing. I’m your partner, and you can trust me to always have your back.”
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he wakes up on the couch but the house is quiet. It’s also clean, and he can hear the dishwasher running. He sweeps the throw blanket back and pads barefoot down the hall. Grace’s room is empty and a stab of panic courses through him. And only subsides a few minutes later, when he hovers on the threshold of his bedroom. Grace is asleep, tucked under the covers in the middle of the bed. Beth’s curled up on her side, sleeping in the space he would normally find himself, a small palm resting on Grace’s chest. Both of them look at peace in the glow of the hall light behind him. And for the first time he can recall, that anxiety turns to a sense of calm.“Fever broke ‘bout a’ hour ago,” she murmurs, husky voice thick. “Is jus’ one lil cold, ya can stand down. An’ turn off da ligh’ when ya get some coffee f’ ya self. Now tell me how amazin’ I am an’ go back t’ bed.”
pumps gas for the car
“Is ridiculous, is wha’ is. Like dey no trust us.” She slips into pidgin without thinking about it and Danny can barely follow along when she does.“And when you become a senator for the great state of New Jersey, rookie, then you can attempt to repeal the law. Which dates back to 1949, mind you. And while yes, it might save a few bucks at the pump, think of the impact of tens of thousands of people losing their jobs, and the emotional trauma it would cause amongst adult motorists who would have to then learn how to handle the pump on their own– what? Why are you laughing? This is a very real thing.”
drives when they’re going somewhere
They leave the pump issue behind them and Danny pulls back into traffic. But it doesn’t keep her from closing her eyes and smiling a kind of Mona-Lisa grin. She tried to drive once and he’d snatched the keys out of her hand. Since then she conceded to let him, and it gives her a chance to watch his face from the veil of her lashes. She wonders if he knows how striking his eyes are when he wears that tie. “So, where we goin’, anyway?”“It’s a surprise. You know what a surprise is? It means I’m not going to tell you, that you have to find out when we get there, that’s what it is. And don’t think you can put your toes on the dashboard or stick them out the window. We could be in an accident and then you’d be toeless and of course that would be on me.”
“Whatevah ya say, Danny.”“That’s right. And I say keep your limbs inside the car and don’t distract me. Distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents on the turnpikes. And don’t think I won’t tie you down in the car-seat if I have to.”
“Your wife know ya talk t’me li’dat?”
Danny bites back the first and tenth and seventeenth thing that comes to mind at the tone of her voice and the way her fingers brush his as she reaches for the radio. “Don’t change it, it’s a law too… the Boss never gets changed.”“Who’s changing, turning it up!”
Rachel always hated Springsteen and suddenly he feels like a teenager again, as they both sing along. “Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah, baby you can bet their love they didn’t deny! Your words say split but your words they lie….’cause when we kiss…fire!”
rearranges the furniture
The house looks empty. Sure, the heavier furniture is still there, but more than half the things he’s looked at every day for years are gone. The ghost of Grace’s laughter still echos in the empty corners and the rest of the boxes he’s been packing up are killing him with each shriek of packing tape. Deep down, Danny feels broken, feels himself bleeding out. Sure they had problems, every couple does. And maybe he had chosen to dive deeper into work than might have been necessary to cope with it. But they could have worked things out.
Instead, Rachel decided they needed to separate. And by separate, she meant she was seeing someone else, someone who was more emotionally supportive, someone who also approved of her career. A someone Danny wants to punch dead in the face, over and over again until the bitterness and the rage is gone, until he can see straight. But that won’t bring her back. That won’t get him anything but supervised visits. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes when the door opens again, and Beth picks her way through the minefield of cardboard to come up behind him. He almost flinches when she sets her hand on his shoulder.A minute later, and she hasn’t said anything, and she lets go. Picks up another marker, and writes down the room it’s supposed to go into.“I…I think we’re done here.” He says. “For today, anyway. Thanks for…just thanks.”
“Always.”He’s sure she’s going to say something else. That she’s going to touch him again and if she does, he knows he won’t be able to keep it all in. And then she moves past him and grabs her bag. “Call me.”“I will.” He won’t.When she’s gone, he makes his way to the couch. Lifts one end of it. Sets it down. Grabs the book laying on it, chucks it across the room.
falls asleep with the TV on
A couple months later and Danny knows it’s over. And worse, Rachel’s moved on. They’re fighting over custody, they’re fighting over bills, it’s just like being married without any of the perks. And more and more the bottom of the bottle is the only real comfort he can find. She’s not the one he calls at three in the morning when his words slur and the shakes have subsided. And maybe that should tell him something as his eyes slide past Pesci’s hit while Liotta and De Niro are waiting expectantly for the good news.“Danny? You okay?”“Yeah. I’m fine. I just wanted to hear your voice. Did I wake you? I could let you go if I did.”“Naw. Was just making coffee. Was gonna go surfing.”There’s a long pause, and he can’t tell if she’s joking. Beth does a lot of things that don’t make sense to him. From ruining a perfectly good slice with some pineapple to knitting doilies for the break-room. To answering his calls when he’s got so much to say that he can’t get a single word out.
“Danny?”“Yeah?”“Hold on. I’m coming over.”She hangs up before he can say no.
He doesn’t protest when she eventually shows up, cuddles up on the couch, runs her fingers through his hair. He doesn’t really know what she says to him when she does bother to talk, but there’s something comforting about the scent of her skin, and the warmth of her lap when he lays his head in it.
gets to use the bathroom first
There’s sun streaming through the window and Beth doesn’t know how long they’ve been asleep, only that there’s pins and needles in her feet and between her shoulders. There’s some talk show on the television as she stirs, but carefully because Danny’s still asleep. She gingerly replaces her thigh with a pillow and inches her way off his couch before she’s realised she’s made a dire mistake, a hiss of pain snaking out between her teeth. And she almost wishes Danny were awake to see the little hop-twitch as she zombies her way to the bathroom, if nothing else it’d be good for a laugh. After she’s done she’s turning on the shower and steals a shirt of his to wear so she can wash the day and night off her skin.Danny’s awake by the time she comes out, towel wrapped around her hair, shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and he’s making coffee, looking only a little worse for the wear. “Didn’t mean t’ wake ya.”“You didn’t.”Pours her a bit of cream and sugar in her cup and slides the cup across the counter.“About last night, Beth. I wanted to-”“Feed me bacon because you’re madly in love with my yahtzee skills? Done deal.”It’s the first smile she’s seen in a while. “Something like that.”
decides the temperature for the ac/heater
“How are you even alive? You can’t be. You’re dead and I never noticed because even from beyond the pearly gates you’re talking. Once your flesh starts liquefying and they assign me someone new I can’t held accountable for anything but modest funeral arrangements. No viking bows with the flaming arrows, for example. But you won’t know because you’re dead now.”Beth is laughing, and it’s a great sound. Threatens to pull a similar one out of him even though the hands she’s tucked into his jacket pockets are icicles. He’s half tempted to shake her off and make her find gloves or a nuclear reactor to get some heat into her skin.Instead, he leaves her hands where they are, and dips down to grab her around her knees, giving her a little boost up. It doesn’t succeed as expected because a moment later, her arms are wrapping around his shoulders.“What are ya doing?!”“Clearly I am carrying you piggy back. Didn’t they have that where you come from? It would do us no good if you turn into an iceberg before I can get you inside and warm you up. I’ll turn up the heater to the same internal temperature as the sun and build you a fire. But then you’re making me cocoa and we’re going to watch the game.”
sets up holiday decorations
It all looks very, very wrong.  No bright multi-coloured bulbs hang from the eaves, none shine in the windows. As far as Beth could tell, there weren’t any lights at all. Except for the occasional blue flicker. And while she could live without the excitement of pumpkins and paper ghosts and cotton spiderwebs at Halloween ~they were often in the patrol car, working over~ Christmas was second only to Thanksgiving when it came to Danny Williams. She lets herself in and finds him on the couch, head in his hands, and he hasn’t shaved or slept in days, based on the shadows along his jaw and under his eyes in the faint glow of the television and her heart sinks somewhere into her stomach. Instead of the boxes of decorations he’s got that are bigger than she is, there’s suitcases. She blinks back the sudden wetness in her eyes.“Hey.”“Hey.”
“When’s ya flight?”“Beth.” He stands up, takes a step, hesitates.“Naw, naw. Ya goddah go, right? No can live when ya heart’s across the world.” She knows this because hers is breaking right in front of him and she locks it up tight. The other thing she knows about Danny Williams is that Gracie is everything to him. Before she knows it, he treks his way over, wraps his arms around her waist, pulls her close. Her hands rest on his shoulders and she buries her face in his neck.
leaves the lights on
In the months that go by, the world becomes increasingly harder. She hates her new partner simply because he’s not Danny. Doesn’t have the detective’s instincts, doesn’t have the charm or the wit and she realises just how much she might actually hate Jersey without him. The snow that was once enchanting robs her very will to live and the dark that she could survive with him close by becomes insurmountable, no matter how many lights she leaves on. The daily phone-calls dwindle to a text now and again, and she can tell something is wrong by what he’s not telling her.She doesn’t think he reconciled with Rachel. She doesn’t think he likes Hawai’i. Maybe he hates his partner too. She makes the arrangements. Puts in for a transfer. Turns in notice. Locks her Brooklyn apartment up securely, and remembers the grief he’s given her in the past about not moving to Jersey and instead commuting.This was never how Beth expected to go home. But it feels like it’s the only thing she can do.
uses the bathroom with the door open
“You’re a troglodyte. A barbarian. Didn’t anyone teach you how to knock, Steven?”
Black slacks, that dark blue shirt that turned his eyes into something breath-taking that she never had words for. Blonde hair a little brighter from the sun exposure, slicked back into perfection. From the back he’s everything she remembers, and she smiles, tracing the edge of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.“Been a year an’ already ya forgot about me, Danny? I’m...I’m crushed.”Every muscle in his body stiffens and if she were that kind of person, she’d imagine exactly how much colour drains from his face, and hands tighten on his... What she doesn’t have to imagine is the little shake before everything’s going back and she can hear the zipper before he even manages to turn around. The look on his face as he debates washing his hands or coming at her. He chooses to wash.“Beth? You took vacation just to come all the way here?” He quickly dries off and then it’s all hands on her waist, hoisting her up in the air until it’s all she can do to put her arms around his neck and hug him tight. There’s a chaste kiss or two and some laughing and more hugging.
“Not exactly. I came...home.”“To stay?”“Yeah. To stay.”
fixes the plumbing (or calls the plumber)
“You’re doing it wrong. You need a different kind of thing-”“Is that the professional term? Thing?”“Yeah, you know the thing. The wrench thing.”“Oh, that is so helpful. I don’t know how I could have lived this long without knowing that.”“You don’t have to be so sensitive, but it will stop making the squeaking noise if you-”“Do you want to come down here and do this? Mr Navy Seal who is secretly a god of leaking sinks. Please by all means-”Beth is hiding in her bathroom, but even that doesn’t drown out the sound of Danny and Steve ~a piece of her past come back into her life~ from bickering with each other. She never realised how much alike they are though their differences could be used in a text book case. And if Beth had to lose Danny to someone else, him having Stevie as his partner on their Task Force is the only way it’s okay. She’s still at HPD and they still spend time together as family does.“Yeah, mahalo. No no. Bo da dem still at it, try for fix. Yes, I need someone come out, fix sink before dey destroy my kitchen, try an’ mahalo. A’ole pilikia. Mahalo.”
Hopefully the plumber would arrive before Beth has to strangle them both, and figure out how to hide the bodies.
3 notes · View notes
mayor-crumblepot · 6 years
Text
moving in
hey, friends! if y’all could take time to read this, i’d really appreciate it!
as some of you may know, back in august of 2017, my house flooded in hurricane harvey. (i’m giving the short version of this story— beneath the cut, i’ll give more details if you’re interested.) we got roughly a foot of water in our house in less than an hour, and we had to make a lot of executive decisions about what was and wasn’t worth saving. 
since then, we’ve been living in a trailer in our driveway while the landlord has the house fixed. now, we’re finally able to move air mattresses into the house, and we’re coming to realize just how much we’ve lost. 
basically; we’re in a really shit place, and we’re missing some of the things that make a house feel like a home. 
so i’ve put together a move-in list on amazon. it’s not complete, and i’ll be updating it as we look through our boxes, and find out what we managed to save and what we didn’t. some of it is housewares, some of it is stuff we used to have, but have found out is ruined upon looking through our boxes. 
by no means are you required to buy anything. but if you enjoy my content that i produce, and wanna show your appreciation in a more concrete way; this would be a neat way to do so! or, just reblog this so somebody else might see it and consider buying something we need/could use/want!
or, if you’re feeling more generous/wanting to treat me specifically, instead of my family in general, this is my personal wishlist.
thanks for your consideration and time, and as soon as my family has everything back to normal, i’ll be out here writing tons again! i have plenty of ideas i wanna share with you guys, so i can’t wait! nothing makes me happier than writing fan content, and that’s honestly what i’d rather be doing right now, and all the time. 
longer story/more details under the cut!
okay, so.
on august 27, 2017, it started to rain. and by that i mean rain a fuck ton. it started around midnight and didn’t stop for nearly 24 hours. i watched my street fill up with water, which has happened before— my family wasn’t too worried. i watched my yard fill up with water too, which was a surprise, but still, didn’t worry us too much. 
then, around eleven in the morning, water started bubbling up in my parents’ room, from beneath the floorboards. we thought that it was maybe just because the backyard was full of water, but then it just started happening all through the house. from their bedroom, to the hallway, to my bedroom, water just started coming up and didn’t stop. it kept rising, and soon we could hear it bubbling up from cracks in the grout of the kitchen tile— the power went out before the water could get to the electrical outlets.
i helped my parents crack apart bricks in the backyard, with water up to my shins, and bring them into the house to put our furniture up on. my father, my mother, and i lifted our piano up over and over, putting more and more bricks beneath it, in hopes that we wouldn’t lose it. we lifted up antique furniture, the last of the things from my late grandfather’s house, but most of it didn’t survive.
we had to put all of our pets into travel crates, lifting them up off of the ground so that they wouldn’t lay in the water— our cats, our dogs, our bird, everyone was miserable. there was no way for us to let the dogs out to use the bathroom, one of them is afraid of water and the other isn’t strong enough to walk through it. the cats were trapped in their crates, there was nothing we could do; litter boxes were floating through the house. the bird was chill, though, little dude didn’t even know anything was wrong. fucker was signing for us. it was sweet. 
our house had never flooded before. we’ve lived at this same address for nearly ten years, now; since i was in middle school! before that, we only lived two streets away. my neighborhood has never flooded like this, ever in my life. i’m turning twenty-one this summer. 
ultimately, the water came up roughly a foot inside of my house, and stayed there for almost twelve hours. 
Tumblr media
this was my front porch, once the rain had stopped. my parents and i had foregone our rain boots, because there was no point. water would get into your boots, into your shoes; we all got a few bug bites, but thankfully nothing strange was in the water. 
my neighborhood wasn’t hit the worst, nowhere near. hurricane harvey caused extreme damage to the homes of my friends, of my family members. there’s a neighborhood near mine, only about ten minutes away by car, where our nearest shopping complex is, and everything was underwater. 
Tumblr media
this is that shopping complex. i’ve driven this intersection hundreds of times, maybe thousands. never ever in my life had it ever looked this bad. the gas station pumps were entirely submerged, and people were surveying the damage by going through on their kayaks and boats. 
my point is: there is no way we could have prepared for this. 
our entire street suffered, and once the water had gone down and the sun had come back out, we were faced with cleaning out our homes. before this, i had never known my neighbors very well. in that first week, i saw more of my neighbors than i did of my own family in a year. every single day, from sunrise to sunset, we were outside and working. 
everything in our home had to be thrown away. unfortunately, our landlord didn’t show up for several days, and there was nothing we could do. we weren’t allowed to cut into the walls and tear them out until she was present, which caused mold to grow in nearly every soggy or humid surface in my home. my mattress, which had never seen water, started to grow mold simply because of the humidity. the pages of my books started to warp, and my entire family started to take on a very strange cough because of what was likely in the air. 
for the next week and a half, my family hauled out water-logged rugs, furniture, and electronics. we dragged boxes full of records, full of books, full of clothes, full of photographs to the curb. there were people who came to help us, and in cleaning out our garage indiscriminately, we lost plenty of my childhood memories, of which there were few to begin with (simply because i wasn’t very fond of being photographed— not for some more sinister or unfortunate reason). 
Tumblr media
this is the only shot of the pile in my yard that i have, and it doesn’t show the full extent of the pile itself. this pile went all the way to our door, nearly, and went all the way to the driveway on the other side of the yard. 
as soon as we put these things in our yard, there were people coming through and picking through our pile, taking things. i’m sure that they were well-intentioned, i’m sure they meant no harm, but there was a very upsetting aspect to seeing someone take from a pile of things that i have no means to keep. 
my prom dress was put on this pile. 
my first writing drafts were put on this pile.
my parents’ wedding photos were put on this pile. 
every single notebook i had saved, from the first one i kept in middle school, to the last one i turned in during high school, were put on this pile. 
there was nothing cathartic about this. but we did it, and we made it, and we survived. 
unfortunately, our storage unit also flooded. when we first moved into this house, we put our furniture and belongings in a storage unit to look through when we got the chance. everything i had as a child, things that i wanted to keep and put into my own home once i had one, things i wanted to give to my friends’ children when they had them— all of that was ruined. water came nearly five feet up in our storage unit. 
we have nearly no furniture remaining, but we’re lucky enough that plenty of people want to give us some! we’ve gotten some pretty cool things from some very charitable people. 
we’re still in the process of going through boxes. some things that we thought were safe from the water have turned out to be ruined. some books have grown mold, some blankets have as well. it’s just a matter of looking— things need to come out of boxes as soon as possible, and we’re trying to do that.
the type of things that are more difficult to handle not having, are the things that you think you’ll never have to buy again, or at least not for a very long time. we lost all of our towels, all of our bath mats, our shower curtains, our window treatments, our interior rugs, our wall art, and most of our lighting fixtures; our electronics have suffered as well, my computer especially. 
the red cross and fema only helped us so much; we filed everything the way we were supposed to, we were model caseholders— we only received four hundred dollars from the red cross (and a very cool bucket of clean up materials), and we only got around four thousand from fema. 
i don’t want to come off as though i expect anything from anyone, and we aren’t going to die if you don’t buy us something. we have enough money to manage, but just not enough money to buy back the things that we lost. i figured this was the best avenue to take, because you guys have been able to see that i’m a real person, and that less of you are likely to have been affected, versus the people i’m friends with on facebook. 
if you guys like my content, though, and want to see more, this would be a very helpful way to facilitate that! and, if you guys want to buy me or my family something, and you want a fic or something in return, i’d be happy to do that! 
we’re just interested in living the life that we used to before the flood. and of course, i’ll be keeping you guys updated along the way about that. i’m super excited about my house, about the new tile in the bathroom and about the new color i’m going to be painting my room; there’s so much to be excited about, right now, but until we have everything organized in a way that makes it effectively livable, there’s not very much i can do about sharing it. soon, hopefully, i’ll be able to!
thank you for reading this. i really, really appreciate it. i love y’all a ton, and i can’t wait to start sharing work with you guys again.
12 notes · View notes
geminicblue · 6 years
Text
20 Galaxies: Legend in the Sky Chapter 4
Tumblr media
(fire brushes by Amaranth Dreams - their website doesn’t seem to be working anymore)
Ru knew her brother could hear the shrill sound when he dropped the empty ravioli can and ran to the living room with her. The two of them scrambled over the top of the small sofa and crouched behind the backrest, raising their heads just enough to see what was in the kitchen. There was nothing yet, but the scratchy squealing was louder than ever.
Gravity changed course. Every tile in the room clattered, the air in the house pulled, drained towards the kitchen light. Then, a flash -- but not a flash of light. Ru's eyes struggled to focus. It was glowing, but everything it touched changed color instead of lit up. It was as if she was looking at a film negative of the room. Her own skin flushed sickly blue, the shadows of the furniture turned white.
There was something solid in the kitchen when it faded. Two shapes, hovering just below the ceiling. One was gray and long, shaped like a thin tornado, the other looked like a burnt marshmallow. Cat eyes surveyed the kitchen, narrow slit pupils with glowing violet and green irises. The creatures had catlike mouths as well, crinkled skin like the surfaces of a dried lake, and something tilted above the tops of their bodies. A ring, a cold halo.
"A windsock and a marshmallow," Jayson murmured. "Too bad we're dreaming. I could have sold this as one of the legends."
Was there a legend already like it? No, it had to be a dream, Ru agreed silently, but the thought didn't make her feel any better. Most of her concentration went into keeping her breathing quiet and slow. She was trembling, and she wasn't sure if it was fear or because the room felt so cold. She wanted to wake up and get a thicker blanket.
The gray creature opened its mouth.
The sound tore into Ru's ears like the scream of a jetliner. She and Jayson both hunched and clapped their hands over their ears, but it did nothing to ease the pain. Each syllable the creature pronounced sent a rush of searing needles stabbing through her veins. Her heart struggled to find its own rhythm again, struggled to work at all, as if it were pumping wet cement. Jayson writhed beside her, his face contorted and wet with tears. She barely noticed the creature had spoken at a normal volume.
The negative light flashed again, and the voice stopped. She sat in a limp ball, stifling sobs. If this was a dream, it was the worst nightmare she'd ever had. She only dared to move again when she heard a human voice. A woman.
"That should take care of it."
Ru and Jayson exchanged glances. Jayson's dark eyes were full of surprise and hurt, but otherwise his face was calm. He peered over the top of the couch again. With all effort to contain her terror, her mind screaming that it was just a dream, Ru eased herself back into a kneel.
Humans stood in place of the floating creatures. One was a pale, shapely woman with silver hair, so shiny it was almost metallic. Split white bangs framed her young face. The other was a tall, square man with hair that looked like oil pouring from the back of his head. He had beady eyes, a vivid enough shade of green Ru to see a good thirty or forty feet away, and a hard face she couldn't imagine with a smile. Both were dressed in tight black clothing and armor that reminded Ru of SWAT uniforms. The woman wore a belt of square silver plates on her hips.
The woman took in the kitchen with narrow eyes, eyes too similar to the form she'd taken a few moments earlier. The way the man followed her every tiny footstep made Ru think she was in charge. He winced slightly when he spoke to her. "Are you sure they're here? It looks empty."
"Maybe they're aliens," Jayson said.
Ru jumped at the sound of his plain-spoken voice. The intruders had to have heard him. Clearly he'd forgotten what pain a simple dream could put him through. "Get down!" she hissed. "They'll see you!"
Before the last word fell from her lips, a shadow fell over them. Ru shrieked and nearly slipped off the couch. The woman, in less than half a second, had crossed that thirty feet of space without a footstep. Jayson's eyes widened, but he stayed upright, even showing a hint of defiance. The woman's expression, however, softened into an excited smile. "Crowe, look! Children. How cute!"
Jayson became more than defiant now, indignant. Ru almost relaxed, but when Crowe joined his partner, she understood letting her guard down was a very bad idea. His face took on all the fierce twisting it had when he was the marshmallow creature. He was also much bigger than she first thought, almost twice her height. His scorn was directed at the woman, though. "Sylph. Sylph!" He reached for her shoulder, then thought better of touching her and waved his hand in front of her face. "This could be a trap."
"Why are they afraid of us?" Sylph wondered absently.
"It is the unawakened planet."
Jayson barked a laugh. "Please. I'm not afraid of you."
Ru watched her brother out of the corner of her eye and tried to resist curling into a ball again. It didn't seem like he was being very smart, but it was a dream. Wasn't it? Ru wasn't so sure anymore. She tried everything to wake herself up. She purposely scrambled her thoughts. She pinched her own arm. She tried falling asleep, as impossible as that seemed.
"No?" Sylph said.
Jayson tipped the bill of his cap up. "I've had scarier dreams than this."
The strange woman looked on the verge of a laughing fit. "Dreams?"
"Yeah." Jayson crossed his arms. "You can't be real. Giant living windsocks and marshmallows -- I won't even tell you what's wrong with that -- can't turn into people."
"Jayson, let the windsock people turn into whatever they want!" Ru squeaked.
A threatening look flashed across Crowe's face. Jayson made a mistake, Ru realized, mentioning he'd seen the alien forms of the intruders. She felt queasy with terror. Crowe forced Sylph aside and held his hand in an upturned claw, straining as if he was trying to lift a heavy door. "I don't care what they are," he growled. "They've seen too much."
Green fire burst from his palm. The sickly flames forced into a ball. There was no smoke, but a distinct stench filled the room and froze Ru in place. She felt cold and hollow, like the entire universe had been emptied except for her. Sylph stood calmly aside. She would not step in.
It's a dream, Ru thought again. The words were as empty as Crowe's flames. The fire did nothing to his gloves, but as the fireball grew it stung Ru's skin like a bad sunburn. She couldn't back away, she'd forgotten how. The green light of the fire filled the room, turning the quaint garden wallpaper into a toxic wasteland. Then the light went cyan, then blue. The flames lashed out, eager to be released, to consume.
The blue light. It wasn't coming from the flames. It was shining behind Sylph.
"Look out!" Sylph shrieked. Crowe had just enough time to turn his head.
A brilliant torrent of blue-white light blasted out of the kitchen. Wind roared through the house. The floor rumbled as if a train was passing through. Papers fluttered into the air. That horrible rasping voice tore from Crowe's throat in an agonized scream, but its effects were nullified by the sound of the light. The alien man became a silhouette as the torrent ripped into him. He was shredded, faded as he lost form. For a moment, Ru thought she saw a bird, a crow flapping its wings before it winked out of sight.
The light passed over everything else without harming it. It packed into a solid point, a ball that shined like the sun, only blue. Four delicate beams formed a cross from its center. Soft tendrils of cerulean flame flowed around its edges.
When Ru finally realized what she was looking at, her fears tripled. If the aliens didn't fry her, she and Jayson would be lost to the Blue Star.
Sylph's arms were raised defensively, her teeth bared. "What are you doing here?"
"Leave immediately, or you will share the same fate as your guard."
Ru felt fear momentarily give way to surprise. The Star's voice was sweet and clear. It had crystalline ends to its words, the sound of wind chimes in a tender breeze. Most legends did not have the Star speak, but those that did told of its ferocious, howling voice, all the thunder of a storm contained in a few words. Maybe this wasn't the Blue Star, but Ru couldn't think of anything else it would be.
Sylph gaped at the Star, then at Ru and Jayson, and her expression changed several times in a few seconds. Confusion, realization, and a deadly glare aimed squarely at the two children. Ru wanted to wither up at that. Then the negative light flashed again, and Sylph was gone.
They sat absolutely still. Ru heard Jayson's breathing, soft and even, but he was shaking.
Here they were, facing a legend. The very symbol of their town and the unknown, the Blue Star. It was looking at them. Ru didn't know how she could tell, it didn't have a face, but she knew.
"Please do not fear me," it chimed. "Though many have vanished before me, I will bring you no harm."
There was something in its voice that made the crystalline tones sound like a mobile, the way the fire flickered gently around its edges brought heaviness to Ru's mind. She set her head on the backrest of the couch, and found the dreamless sleep she was looking for.
First Chapter || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter
1 note · View note
carolandrew · 3 years
Text
How to organize your dining room space?
A separate dining room in home interior design seems to us an innovation. In fact, this is a well-forgotten old thing.
During the Soviet period, apartments with small kitchens appeared, in which there was no place for a full-fledged dining room. Until the 19th century, having a separate dining area was considered a sign of good form.
Dining room layout options
Dining room – a room in the house intended for eating. Traditionally for today’s society, it is just a table with chairs somewhere in the corner, in the kitchen. This part of the house is being unfairly deprived of attention in design. After all, it also carries a certain functionality.
The dining room interior reflects the owner’s lifestyle and habits. Therefore, by location in the house, it can be divided into:
separate dining room.
kitchen and dining room.
kitchen-living room with dining area.
Separate dining room
In the Middle Ages, an entire floor in the house was given for the dining room to show the status of the owner. Now they do it for their own convenience and allocate one room.
Such an idea is suitable for the interior design of a dining room in a private house or provided that the apartment has extra square meters.
The advantage is that you can receive a large number of guests and effectively set the table. Negative: Most likely, the dining room will only be used for special events or Sunday lunches.
A separate room is a great option if you often receive guests and a festive atmosphere for reception is important to you. And also if your family has a habit to gather at a common table for each meal.
Kitchen-dining room
The most common type of location. Traditionally, the kitchen is simply allocated an area for the dining group. This is a way out for owners of small-sized housing. Two rooms combine and zone the space.
Suitable for those who love to cook and gather the whole family at the table for everyday meals or who do not have the opportunity to separate the dining room. The kitchen-dining room is made in interiors for small families who need a small dining area.
Kitchen-living room with dining area
The design involves combining the functions of cooking, eating and resting. In a private house or apartment, it is possible by demolishing a wall or uniting in one space.
In such a room, you can hold lavish feasts, fun parties. You do not need to sit at the table for the whole celebration, you can sit on a soft sofa and at the same time remain in the company.
For large families, this is a great way to combine everyday life and communication with children. Of the minuses: you won’t be able to retire in the living room and clutter in one place means clutter everywhere.
Organization of the dining room
At first, it may seem that you can’t think of anything interesting in the design of the dining room. I put a table with chairs and everything is ready.
A common mistake is not to pay attention to this area; it has the same function as everyone else. Let it not play a major role in the interior, but it is the final note in a harmonious design.
The wrong style of furniture or its arrangement can ruin the whole picture. Therefore, we will analyze the components of a successful project in an apartment and a private house.
Planning solution
The concept of the dining room and its appearance depends on this. Determine its location according to your needs. If this is a separate room, then you can choose any style. If combined with a kitchen or living room, do the same design.
Any combination of functions in one place implies zoning. For this technique, you can use both partitions and furniture.
It is not necessary to completely demolish the wall during redevelopment. An open opening can be made to add air and space, but still, leave separation.
In the kitchen-living room, place the dining group between the cooking and relaxation area. It’s more practical.
If the private house has a panoramic wall with access to the terrace, place the table opposite it. It will turn out to be very atmospheric and unusual.
It’s a good idea to make a dining room in the hall. Especially true for apartments with a small kitchen.
With limited square meters, the dining area can be placed in an angular and linear version. Instead of a window sill, make a tabletop with bar stools.
Place a bench or an original bench on one side of the table. This will increase the number of seats for guests.
In larger rooms or a private home, you can place a table in the centre of the room. Add a bar counter, island or U-shaped kitchen set, which is convenient for breakfast and snacks.
Finish and color
The dining room is considered a living area, so there are no restrictions on the choice of materials for the design. Except when it’s a small kitchen and a wet area is very close. Then ceramic tiles and dense vinyl wallpaper on a non-woven base are suitable.
The finishing depends on the chosen style and color scheme. In a separate room, one-tone walls look spectacular, and accents can be done with decor and furniture. Most often, the table is in the middle, which already stands out.
Use different textures and colors for zoning combined rooms. The dining area can be highlighted with wallpaper, decorative bricks, plaster or clapboard. The table against the background of such a wall looks original.
Lighting
Light is one of the zoning methods. He is also able to increase space, change colors, highlight interesting textures. The dining room needs proper lighting.
The light should be soft and slightly dim. Enough 50W lamps.
The ideal placement of the lamps is above the dining table. Designers advise to hang at a distance of 170 cm from the floor or 70 cm from the countertop.
This arrangement will not interfere and shine directly into the eyes. If you are building a private home for yourself, be sure to design natural lighting.
Dining room furniture
Of course, the main objects of the dining room are the dining table and chairs. The most popular table options are round and long rectangular.
They are often found in private homes. For small spaces, choose oval and angular. There are also semicircular models with one straight edge, which is attached to the wall.
An island or a peninsula, a bar counter, in continuation of a tabletop or instead of a window sill are suitable for a kitchen-dining room.
Made of materials, wood is a classic. Glass and plastic are used in modern styles. For luxurious designs, stone countertops are available.
The transforming table is convenient for large companies. If space permits, it is better to place the dining group in the center. This will provide free access to the table from all sides. For a small kitchen, a window seat is a good option.
Dining room chairs are not only functional furniture, but decor. If square meters allow, you can choose massive chairs, with armrests or half-chairs. Banquettes and ottomans make the design unique.
In a modest environment, chairs should be lightweight and compact. For a small kitchen, you can put a corner dining set.
The built-in sofa looks original on one side of the table. It is not necessary to make a niche, you can simply put tall shelves or cabinets on the sides.
Many have forgotten about attributes such as a sideboard, a console and a sideboard. This furniture is designed for storing party dishes, textiles and cutlery. Most often used for separate dining rooms in private homes.
, http://www.thechairandsofa.co.uk/?p=7731
0 notes
imotibg2015 · 3 years
Text
How to organize your dining room space?
A separate dining room in home interior design seems to us an innovation. In fact, this is a well-forgotten old thing.
During the Soviet period, apartments with small kitchens appeared, in which there was no place for a full-fledged dining room. Until the 19th century, having a separate dining area was considered a sign of good form.
Dining room layout options
Dining room – a room in the house intended for eating. Traditionally for today’s society, it is just a table with chairs somewhere in the corner, in the kitchen. This part of the house is being unfairly deprived of attention in design. After all, it also carries a certain functionality.
The dining room interior reflects the owner’s lifestyle and habits. Therefore, by location in the house, it can be divided into:
separate dining room.
kitchen and dining room.
kitchen-living room with dining area.
Separate dining room
In the Middle Ages, an entire floor in the house was given for the dining room to show the status of the owner. Now they do it for their own convenience and allocate one room.
Such an idea is suitable for the interior design of a dining room in a private house or provided that the apartment has extra square meters.
The advantage is that you can receive a large number of guests and effectively set the table. Negative: Most likely, the dining room will only be used for special events or Sunday lunches.
A separate room is a great option if you often receive guests and a festive atmosphere for reception is important to you. And also if your family has a habit to gather at a common table for each meal.
Kitchen-dining room
The most common type of location. Traditionally, the kitchen is simply allocated an area for the dining group. This is a way out for owners of small-sized housing. Two rooms combine and zone the space.
Suitable for those who love to cook and gather the whole family at the table for everyday meals or who do not have the opportunity to separate the dining room. The kitchen-dining room is made in interiors for small families who need a small dining area.
Kitchen-living room with dining area
The design involves combining the functions of cooking, eating and resting. In a private house or apartment, it is possible by demolishing a wall or uniting in one space.
In such a room, you can hold lavish feasts, fun parties. You do not need to sit at the table for the whole celebration, you can sit on a soft sofa and at the same time remain in the company.
For large families, this is a great way to combine everyday life and communication with children. Of the minuses: you won’t be able to retire in the living room and clutter in one place means clutter everywhere.
Organization of the dining room
At first, it may seem that you can’t think of anything interesting in the design of the dining room. I put a table with chairs and everything is ready.
A common mistake is not to pay attention to this area; it has the same function as everyone else. Let it not play a major role in the interior, but it is the final note in a harmonious design.
The wrong style of furniture or its arrangement can ruin the whole picture. Therefore, we will analyze the components of a successful project in an apartment and a private house.
Planning solution
The concept of the dining room and its appearance depends on this. Determine its location according to your needs. If this is a separate room, then you can choose any style. If combined with a kitchen or living room, do the same design.
Any combination of functions in one place implies zoning. For this technique, you can use both partitions and furniture.
It is not necessary to completely demolish the wall during redevelopment. An open opening can be made to add air and space, but still, leave separation.
In the kitchen-living room, place the dining group between the cooking and relaxation area. It’s more practical.
If the private house has a panoramic wall with access to the terrace, place the table opposite it. It will turn out to be very atmospheric and unusual.
It’s a good idea to make a dining room in the hall. Especially true for apartments with a small kitchen.
With limited square meters, the dining area can be placed in an angular and linear version. Instead of a window sill, make a tabletop with bar stools.
Place a bench or an original bench on one side of the table. This will increase the number of seats for guests.
In larger rooms or a private home, you can place a table in the centre of the room. Add a bar counter, island or U-shaped kitchen set, which is convenient for breakfast and snacks.
Finish and color
The dining room is considered a living area, so there are no restrictions on the choice of materials for the design. Except when it’s a small kitchen and a wet area is very close. Then ceramic tiles and dense vinyl wallpaper on a non-woven base are suitable.
The finishing depends on the chosen style and color scheme. In a separate room, one-tone walls look spectacular, and accents can be done with decor and furniture. Most often, the table is in the middle, which already stands out.
Use different textures and colors for zoning combined rooms. The dining area can be highlighted with wallpaper, decorative bricks, plaster or clapboard. The table against the background of such a wall looks original.
Lighting
Light is one of the zoning methods. He is also able to increase space, change colors, highlight interesting textures. The dining room needs proper lighting.
The light should be soft and slightly dim. Enough 50W lamps.
The ideal placement of the lamps is above the dining table. Designers advise to hang at a distance of 170 cm from the floor or 70 cm from the countertop.
This arrangement will not interfere and shine directly into the eyes. If you are building a private home for yourself, be sure to design natural lighting.
Dining room furniture
Of course, the main objects of the dining room are the dining table and chairs. The most popular table options are round and long rectangular.
They are often found in private homes. For small spaces, choose oval and angular. There are also semicircular models with one straight edge, which is attached to the wall.
An island or a peninsula, a bar counter, in continuation of a tabletop or instead of a window sill are suitable for a kitchen-dining room.
Made of materials, wood is a classic. Glass and plastic are used in modern styles. For luxurious designs, stone countertops are available.
The transforming table is convenient for large companies. If space permits, it is better to place the dining group in the center. This will provide free access to the table from all sides. For a small kitchen, a window seat is a good option.
Dining room chairs are not only functional furniture, but decor. If square meters allow, you can choose massive chairs, with armrests or half-chairs. Banquettes and ottomans make the design unique.
In a modest environment, chairs should be lightweight and compact. For a small kitchen, you can put a corner dining set.
The built-in sofa looks original on one side of the table. It is not necessary to make a niche, you can simply put tall shelves or cabinets on the sides.
Many have forgotten about attributes such as a sideboard, a console and a sideboard. This furniture is designed for storing party dishes, textiles and cutlery. Most often used for separate dining rooms in private homes.
, http://www.thechairandsofa.co.uk/?p=7731
0 notes