#also yES its a self indulgent title shush

[wrestlezon]

liveblog containment post for aew dynamite 5/4/22

i wanted jeff hardy to win but was so sure bobby was going to win anyway. glad at the results and lmao @ cole's face

once again i love yuta's street fighter theme REGAL EXCUSE ME LMFAO??? ok hes definitely trying to get excalibur to crack on purpose. scrummy scrummy scrumptious regal was making that horny bcc video ive been trying to avoid because i wont be respectful about it not enough 4 u "regal: whats the point of being a professional wrestler if you cant get the shit kicked outta you" yea ok the worst part is that with that one bit with yuta on evil uno's vlog im reasonable sure theyre aware of what theyre doing with this behavior. ???: "[moxleys] making someone's heart sing [with this violence]" regal: "mine" lmao damn moxley going all out hes throwing him at every out-of-the-ring surface he possibly can i seriously love the triple beatdown at the end of BCC matches and so does the crowd. yes! yes! yes! yes! love these violence perverts

people are rooting for evil christian. i dunno anythin bout him but want to see it. i love it when people go evil jungle boy gettin spicy himself. good love to see it

keith lee: dubious

wardlow time!! i say hes wearing full black now because hes ready for mjf's funeral lemme see this tall guy lmfao mjf and the mid five. mjf is such a clown hes great wardlow moonsault... love 2 see it wow just one powerbomb? restraint YEAH WARDLOW!!! ooooo we're moving on with the plot??? LMFAO "wardlow's gonna kiiiiill you ♫" mjf you cant fool me twice youre not gonna fight wardlow straight up e_e contract signing... long island... hm

whoa hangman is here. i thought he had covid. is he done with that? that was fast omg dissin on punk? toughguy over here whoaaaaa hangman!!!

damn dont be puttin two bad bitches up against each other. every international wrestler can be a cool

santana time!!! i love hearing 2.0 matt talk for the JAS intro hes such a goof my friend's comment here covers my reaction LMAO

stealing the camera-- lol what a good bit oh man that was a cool backroll from santana these 2.99 counts are taking days off my lifespan nooooo!! not the distracted ref lowblow!!!!! people chanting for eddie while hes still recovering from that devastating fireball attack they keep on bringing up the NUMBERS. who is going to join pnp+eddie to even it out? who could possibly?????

oh my god billy LMFAO i love the gunn club and the acclaimed

OH IS IT EVIL JULIA HART TIME??? IS IT TIME????? FINALLY????? EVIL JULIA HART YES????? PLEASE??????????? -_- promo is long theyre killing me. give me the payoff DO IT. KILL HIM DO ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT RRRRRRRRRRRRGHGHHGHGHAAAAGHGHGHGHH!!!!!

oh shes still in the ring with death triangle... that was a weird break to put two promos then, even if jade's outfit placated some of our immediate rage while obviously i want to see evil julia hart i can also stand behind a "i dont want to be evil julia hart. not like this" thing too. its the kind of self indulgent story i can imagine myself writing as a teen, but it ultimately depends on what else they do with it. it can still end up going in a lame direction. i too am impatient, however. i do think its funny how im seeing a 50/50 mix of "damn wish that were me" and "i do Not like this treatment of julia" opinions tho

the heights in this dante martin vs rey fenix match. 20 foot vertical leaps "couldve gone for the cover. just saying 😒" shush jr. i want to see the flips

oh shit samoa joe is gonna fight the jonker

thunder rosa :)c :o serena deeb... this back and forth is a little bit corny but like. mid corny? it either needed to be more corny or less corny whoa... double or nothin showdown

OMG JOHN SILVER VS PUNK??? YES

im watching this match but boy is this crowd dead quiet. lmao @ jr's russian leg sweep comment getting shut down :o roh title...

#talkzon

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

I will not kiss you - pt 1

Part two | AO3

After a contract hunting a mage goes awry, Geralt finds himself cursed with sickness, bubbling beneath his skin like a plague. It’s easy enough not to touch anyone - not to pass it on - until he meets Jaskier on the Path.

8.9k words. Contains: spells/curses, death & death mention, illness, angst and pining. Part one of two.

~

Geralt first realises something is wrong when he’s settling into his meagre camp for the night, piling dry sticks onto the fire to roast the rabbit he’s just caught. The creature is large, for the species, and if he’s careful it will make a good meal for tonight with some to spare for tomorrow morning. Food is sparse at the moment, especially now he’s travelling alone.

The rabbit’s fur had been soft beneath his hands as he’d snapped its fragile neck, killing it. He’d considered, for a moment, skinning it more carefully and drying out the pelt and keeping it. If he can catch another, he’ll have enough fur to line a pair of leather winter gloves.

Jaskier’s fingers are always pale and shaking when winter sets in, but he never seems to think to buy himself anything more sensible than a pair of threadbare woollen mittens. Geralt tells himself it’s the coin that he’s worried about: if Jaskier can’t play, they’ll both feel the loss, and the need to pinch coppers.

It’s a lie, he knows, but it makes him feel better about the whole thing.

He pushes all thoughts of gloves and fur aside - winter won’t set in for at least three or four months, and he has no idea when he’ll see Jaskier next anyway - and reaches for the rabbit carcass.

It’s… wrong. It looks days old, not freshly killed, and when he picks it up to examine it the fur falls away beneath his fingers in clumps. He gives it a quick, tentative sniff.

It stinks of rot, and death.

He throws the rabbit into the fire, wincing. That night, he eats the last of the hard bread at the bottom of his bag.

~

When he wakes the next morning, there are dry, yellow patches in the grass around his bedroll. They’re few and far between, but there’s enough of them to worry him. He presses his fingertips to the grass. It’s completely dead.

This, Geralt thinks, may be a problem.

He casts his mind back to the previous day’s fight. It had been the unfortunate climax of a contract that had taken him nearly a week to get to the bottom of - spending full days chasing false leads and cold trails and being waylaid by villagers and peasants who seemed intent on getting in his way before finally confronting the mage at the bottom of it all.

He’d been a powerful magic user, complete with an inbuilt ego complex and a ready distrust for witchers. Geralt had attempted to de-escalate as best he could but - as so often happened - he had quickly lost control of the already precarious situation.

Geralt hadn’t wanted to kill the mage. The man had destroyed lives in his wake, and Geralt would prefer him face justice at the hands of those he had wronged - whatever they deemed that to be - rather than on a witcher’s blade. But when the air had crackled with magic and he’d felt the mage reaching into his mind, creeping under his skin, in his blood - he hadn’t been left with much of a choice.

He’d assumed the curse that the mage had muttered at him - even while his mouth foamed with blood and Geralt’s sword stuck between his ribs - was just a final insult, the desperate last words of a dying man. He’d thought the weakness he felt when he’d finally deposited the cooling body at the feet of the Mayor was just tiredness from the fight: too much magic, too many potions, exhaustion weighing his limbs down.

Now, twelve hours later in the calm of the dewy morning, he can begin to entertain the idea that he might have been wrong.

His medallion is humming. He must not have noticed it last night, too exhausted to realise where it’s leaning against his armour instead of his bare chest.

He packs away the bedroll, kicks out the last glowing embers of the fire and heads towards Roach, his stomach rumbling.

He only just stops himself from reaching out for her.

Geralt thinks about the rabbit. About the grass. It must have been killed where his hands rested against it as he slept.

Keeping a few feet back, he carefully pulls on his gloves then unloops her reins from the tree where he’d tied her. He slings his pack and bedroll over his shoulder and leads her back towards the road.

He watches her, nervously. He’d led her from the mage’s cottage with the body slung over her back, not wanting to overburden her, and he’d walked her back to the clearing too - aware that she was prone to panic at the smell of blood. But did he pat her down, or stroke her mane? Did she nudge his face affectionately with her nose at some point between then and now? He can’t remember - and he can’t tell if he’s just imagining a slowness to her steps, a wobbling in her legs, or if it really exists.

Either way, he won’t take the chance.

He makes his way back to the town that had hired him, the worried faces of the villagers staring at him - waiting for whatever new, awful news he brings. But he ignores them all, heading for the stables. He hadn’t had the chance to examine them, before, but the horses in the field beyond seem healthy and well-cared for and - more so - it isn’t like he has a choice.

Turning Roach over to the enthusiastic stablehand is harder than he anticipates. The hand is keen - as he should be, Roach is a fine horse - but Geralt is loath to leave her, especially when he has no idea how long he’ll be away and no way of telling if this has affected her, too. He spins a tale to the stablehand about a contract too dangerous for a horse, the fact that he needs somewhere safe for her to stay for the foreseeable future, and the lad nods along, taking it all very seriously.

He chooses his words carefully as he explains that there's a chance - a small chance, he stresses - that she may be sick. The thought alone is enough to make his stomach twist with guilt, but the stable hand doesn't seem to notice his distress. There's a healer who specialises in animals not too far away, he says, as there always is in these busy livestock towns. Geralt hopes that if she is sick, it can be treated using traditional means.

He wants to stay with her - to watch her himself - but the risk is too great, and he has to find out if the mage managed to actually curse him. If Roach stays by his side, it's inevitable that he'll accidentally touch her, making this worse.

He’s not lost a horse in a long while - this Roach is nearing ten years, now - and it never gets easier. He hopes this won’t be the last time he sees her.

Before Geralt leaves, he turns.

“Is there a magic user around here?” He asks. “A mage?”

The stable hand's face falls. “Apart from the one you… the one that…”

“Apart from him.”

He nervously shakes his head. “No, master witcher. None that I know of.”

Shit. Geralt nods, just once. He had assumed there wouldn’t be - magic users are like cats, in that sense: overly territorial. It's rare to find two so close together. It means he’s going to need to deal with this himself, until he runs into a sympathetic mage. Perhaps he can find Yennefer before whatever this is takes hold too much - wherever she’s gotten to.

He knows he’s likely being over-cautious, but he calls at the market and stocks up on as much food as he can. The bread he ate last night didn’t appear to be affected by whatever this is, and he purchases things he can trust to last - dried fruits and nuts, jerky, starchy potatoes and hard bread. It's surprisingly easy to buy what he needs without even coming close to touching anyone: a perk, he supposes, of being a witcher.

There’s an inn in the town - a tavern, too - but he can’t risk it. He marches back towards the forest, back to the clearing and the shadow of dead grass where he’d slept.

~

Vesemir had always taught his students to be methodical. Geralt begins to test. It still may all be a coincidence.

He’s exhausted by the time he’s finished setting up camp, but he doesn’t take time to rest. He starts simple - pulling off his glove and placing his hand to the grass for a minute then pulling it away, seeing if he’s left a mark.

Nothing. Perhaps he was being paranoid.

He holds a piece of the fruit, and then the bread. Both remain whole and fresh and unmarred so he eats them, quickly, hunger biting at him. He isn’t full, but it's better than he was, and he warms himself by the fire for a moment as he considers what to do next, leaning with one hand on the grass.

He’s decided that he was almost certainly being paranoid - perhaps the medallion is still humming because of the lingering magical fallout of the fight - when he shifts his position, twisting his legs around, and spots the grass beneath his hand. It’s not dead - not yet - but wilted and yellowing.

Interesting.

It’s easy enough to snare a wild deer. Geralt feels unconscionably guilty about this: he doesn’t like to kill for the sake of killing, and usually only hunts what he needs. He supposes he does need this, in a way, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s doing something awful as he calms the creature with Axii and wraps a bare hand around its trembling leg.

The deer watches him with wide, startled eyes. Geralt lets go after a few minutes, wondering if it was long enough, then steps back to observe, lifting the hold of the sign.

The deer struggles to its feet, looks at him for a moment, then bounds off into the trees. Geralt follows, tracking its scent, close enough to watch but not so close that it tries to escape.

He tracks it for four hours before it collapses. He waits to make sure it isn’t about to run off again before approaching, quietly and carefully, kneeling in the leaf litter beside it. Its eyes are wide and frightened, its chest rising and falling in short, quick breaths. He places his hand on its neck - it’s hot, ferociously hot, and its heartbeat is far too fast.

It takes another hour for it to die. Geralt wants to put his blade through its heart and put it out of its misery, but he knows he can’t: he needs to see exactly what’s going to happen.

He’s reminded of a plague that he once saw sweep through a tiny mining village on the edge of nowhere. It had started with just one man - recently returned from travel - but it had spread as quick as wildfire till nearly three quarters of the village had perished.

The deer wheezes, its breath catching and choking in its throat, its eyes bloodshot. It’s burning up, heart pounding, limbs twitching, when it finally, finally dies.

It is not a quick or easy death. Geralt can’t help but wonder how this thing - this magic plague clinging to him - might affect a human.

At least he knows, now. He knows he’s cursed. He knows what it does to living things - both animals and plants. It’s like he’s diseased.

The deer, much like the rabbit, begins to decay quickly. He can’t even eat it. What a waste: what a terrible and thorough waste of life.

He stands, and there’s a clinging wheeze in his chest, which he does his best to ignore.

~

Upon returning to camp, Geralt rifles through his potions to rule out the unlikely possibility that this thing can be cured with something that balances between magic and medicine. Swallow does nothing more than ease the ache in his chest. Golden Oriole is equally ineffective, proving that the thing trapped beneath his skin isn’t a poison, at least.

It feels right, somehow, to sleep over the patches of grass that he killed the previous night. No sense destroying the rest of the ground, after all. He lays awake on his bedroll and considers what he knows. He’s cursed - that much is clear. With the mage who bespelled him dead, he’ll have to find another to lift it.

Geralt has experience with curses - werewolves and blood pacts and those dark, oily little spells brought about through anger and hurt - but this is something he hasn’t experienced before. He tries to think back to all the books he’s read and the myriad of jinxes Vesemir taught him about during training, but none immediately spring to mind.

There’s dozens of different ways to lift something like this - if it can be lifted. Sometimes it’s merely another spell, sometimes an incantation or a set of so-called magic words. It could be a hot little mix of noxious ingredients. It could be an act that’s needed: Geralt’s seen more curses than he can count that have been lifted in the fairytale fashion, all drops of blood and true love's kisses and personal sacrifices.

He doubts this is one of those, though: it feels bodily, constricting him, burrowing into his chest. He’s hoping that it’ll take a magic draught or a tincture - coupled as these things often are with a week or so of pain and suffering - and that will be that, curse lifted, free once more.

But he doesn’t know. And he has no way of finding out on his own.

Frankly, he’s fucked, until he can find another magic user to assist him. He’s not seen Yennefer in a year - probably longer - and has no idea where she is. He hopes that perhaps this will be one of the times where her uncanny ability to just appear may come into play, but he doubts it. He could seek out Triss, but last he heard of her she’d moved on from Foltest’s court. She, too, could be anywhere.

He doesn’t much like to rely on sorceresses and mages he hasn’t already met, ones he knows he can trust, but these are desperate times, after all.

Vizima is the closest city to where he is - a week and a half by horse, probably two by foot - but it’s far more likely that he’ll find a mage somewhere built up than in one of the nearby villages. He’ll head south, keep away from people, and—

And hope he can find a way to stop whatever this is.

Or hope it takes him before he can pass it on to someone else.

Sleep comes surprisingly easy. He’s tired and hungry, his limbs heavy. Witchers don’t get sick, and the feeling is unnatural and unpleasant, but all his body wants to do is rest and recoup energy.

He slips into turbulent, squeezing dreams - changing and quick and impossible to grasp, making his head throb. Then—

Jaskier.

This is not the first time he’s dreamt of Jaskier. Of his skin beneath his hands, his lips pink and pliant, his lidded eyes. They’re just dreams, he tells himself, when he wakes - just dreams. They don’t have to mean anything.

They leave him feeling guilty for a few days regardless.

This is much like the others. The details are hazy, flickering in and out as he fails to hold onto them, but Jaskier feels solidly real against him. It’s unsettling, how real these dreams feel, considering the gaping space between them and his lived experiences. They’re warm and soft and engulf him like sinking into a hot bath and they’re so, so far from the reality of the thing between Jaskier and himself.

Geralt kisses him, in the dream, soft and slow. Jaskier kisses him back, harder. Geralt can feel his hands on his body, drifting over his scars, tangling in his hair. It’s not fast and frantic and quick - like so many of Geralt’s trysts are - but slow and languid, drawing him out in waves.

They float together in the unreality of it all.

Then - a shift. Small, nearly imperceptible - but there. The dream twists and lurches, and Jaskier’s eyes snap open and his eyes are huge and pained and bloodshot. Geralt tries to talk, but his tongue can’t move, his lips are heavy, and all he can do is watch in horror as Jaskier changes beneath him.

Black, dirty marks appear on Jakier’s skin where Geralt’s hands had been just moments before. On his chest, his ribcage, his arms. His fingertips are black and cold and shiny. The stain mottles his neck, his jaw, his lips. He coughs - the noise too loud, too close - and there’s blood oozing from the corner of his lip.

There’s nothing Geralt can do. Jaskier trembles, the darkness spreading, and in the dream he can smell the decay that had clung to the rabbit. Jaskier’s skin is hot - not the pleasant warmth of before, but dangerously hot, making him sweat. His heartbeat is loud and uneven and fast - faster than any human’s heart should beat - and Geralt can’t do anything - he can’t even touch him.

He coughs again, another of those shuddering, juddering noises that makes it sound like his ribs are going to collapse. He wheezes, eyes wide, hands shaking. Geralt can’t stand it - he reaches out, wraps his arms around him—

Jaskier is cold. He’s so cold against Geralt’s skin, and suddenly silent.

He can’t bear to look down. He can’t bear to let him go, to unfold his arms and look at what he’s done. Geralt holds him, his fingers digging into Jaskier’s cold, yielding flesh.

~

Geralt wakes coughing in a cold sweat. It takes him a moment to control himself - to catch his breath, to shake off the visions of the dream. It’s dark and quiet in the clearing around him, the sun not even risen, but the urge to sleep has left him.

He doesn’t want to see that again.

He heaves himself to his feet and quickly inspects the ground beneath the bedroll, half expecting to find it scorched. There are more patches of dead grass, that much is immediately clear, but it isn’t ruined, just dead - dead where his skin has touched it. Perhaps after winter, and the spring rains, the grass will grow again.

Geralt packs up and moves on quickly, the dream prickling at him as he does. He pulls some dried meat from his pack and eats it as he walks, trying to push those images from his mind. There’s the typical sting of guilt, of course - you’re not allowed to think about him like that, he’s not for you, he isn’t yours - and now that comes twined with fear, with the heart-stuttering horror of clinging to Jaskier’s cold body.

He tests more - partly as a way to keep himself distracted, partly to regain a semblance of control over his situation.

It’s only living things. He grasps a sunflower springing alone in a field, and after half an hour the stalk begins to wither and the head droops. But a snapped branch fallen from a fir tree, still covered in sturdy green needles, remains fresh and sweet-smelling even after he’s carried it with him for an hour.

And, of course - he has the gloves. He doesn’t care much for wearing them all the time: the leather is thick and makes him clumsy, but if it’ll allow him to hunt and pick components for his potions then it’s a price he’s happy to pay.

It’s a small but potent relief, knowing that there are still things he can do, still ways he can survive. He can hunt what he can, still pick ingredients for potions. True, there’s many more things he can’t do alone - he’ll still need to pick up supplies, he’ll still need to enter towns - but it’s never been difficult to keep out of people’s way. Even the few folks he passes on the road are keen to stay away from a witcher, keeping their heads down or eyes averted.

He reaches the first village on the way to Vizima two days later. There’s no sign of a mage, and he trudges onwards.

~

On the fourth day of walking, Geralt rips off his medallion and shoves it in the pouch on his hip. The fucking thing simply won’t stop vibrating at him, an alarm call that only he can hear - you’re dying, you’re dying, you’re going to die. His medallion should act like a compass, leading him towards monsters and magic, but so overwhelmed it is with the curse beneath his skin it’s now utterly useless, a compass point spinning wildly with no direction.

He decides to stow it away until he can find the cure when it nearly causes him to walk straight into a fiend’s nest. Typically, he would have been alerted to the presence of the magical beast a quarter of a mile away. But now, with the medallion whirring and humming and tugging at him constantly, he has no idea until he puts his boot into an enormous, clawed footprint.

He backs away, slowly. The forest is miles away from civilisation, and he doesn’t have the desire - nor, he thinks, the strength - to fight a fiend right now.

The medallion stays in the little pouch, and sometimes in the dead of night he can hear it clinking against the empty vials in there.

~

He’s just outside Vizima, sitting beneath an enormous apple tree, shielding himself from the rain. There’d been a strong wind in the night, and dozens of perfectly ripe apples had been scattered beneath the boughs, cushioned in the long grass. Geralt hasn’t eaten food this fresh in two weeks, overly cautious of spending too much time lingering in stores or markets, and the juicy flesh is sweet on his tongue.

It’s been raining on and off for three days. It doesn’t bother him too much - unlike a human, being caught in the rain isn’t going to make him sick - but even a witcher doesn’t enjoy trudging around in soaked armour. Geralt quite likes the rain, really: it clears the air and leaves the ground smelling fresh and new. For someone who’s often overwhelmed by his own senses, it’s quite pleasant.

When it finally seems like the downpour is letting up, he stands, intending to gather a few of the apples to take with him, when there’s suddenly a distant shout.

“Geralt!”

Gods, that voice. Geralt knows that all the bullshit about witchers and their emotions really is just bullshit every time he hears that voice. His emotions batter him, like the rain - like hailstones. Relief. Anger. Fear. On the heels of fear - joy. And then guilt, again, always: guilt for the dream, guilt for the curse, guilt for what he’s inevitably going to have to do next.

Jaskier arrives at his side, his lute bouncing on his back, face flushed, out of breath. He is completely soaked, his hair plastered to his face, his clothes sticking to him. As ever, he’s dressed inappropriately for the weather: another brightly coloured doublet over a thin chemise and boots that, to Geralt’s well trained eye, appear to be falling apart as if they’re made of nothing more substantial than wood pulp.

Jaskier’s shivering, his teeth chattering noisily together, but that doesn’t seem to deter him.

“Geralt!” He says with an enormous grin, reaching out, “it’s been—”

Geralt swiftly steps back. “Don’t touch me.”

Jaskier blinks at him, but seems unperturbed.

“Oh,” he says, jovially, “having one of those, are we? Well,” he shifts the weight of his bag from one shoulder to the other, “no matter! How are you? Aside from…” he flutters his fingers towards Geralt, “...the classic crotchetiness?”

Geralt is about to bite back with something gruff and truthful, but stops himself. Jaskier’s smiling at him in that easy, affable way he always does - he’s genuinely happy to see him, and before he can even stop himself, Geralt’s lying - quickly and easily.

“Fine,” he says, “I’m fine.”

Jaskier doesn’t seem to buy it. “Just fine?”

Geralt huffs at him, grabs his pack, and begins to walk towards the city. Jaskier, he knows, will follow him. At least in the city he can get dry.

The apples remain scattered across the grass.

~

“Where’s Roach?”

Geralt isn’t expecting this question. He doesn’t immediately respond, and Jaskier whitters on, talking over the sound of the rain.

“It’s unlike you to be travelling without her, is all, and I—” his words taper into a shocked little gasp. “Oh, Geralt, is she…? I just, I didn’t mean to pry, if she’s…” he mumbles over his words, and Geralt can hear his heartbeat picking up. “Oh, Geralt,” he breathes, “I’m sorry—”

He reaches out to him again, his hand seeking out Geralt’s arm, but Geralt snaps it away with a scowl and a gruff grumble so deep it could nearly be a growl.

Jaskier flinches away like he’s been burnt. “Right,” he says, “no touching. Got it. But, Geralt, is she really—”

“She’s fine.” Another lie. Or perhaps not: he truly doesn't know how she is.

“Right.”

Jaskier’s hands fiddle nervously with the leather strap of his lute, twisting it between his fingers - something Geralt is used to, now, when he’s feeling anxious.

Geralt had been worried he’d need to send Jaskier away - to scare him off, somehow, shout at him until he left him alone. But perhaps it’ll be easier than that: Jaskier won’t want to stay at his side when he’s acting like this, and better for it: he’s safer on his own, for once.

They approach the walls of the city together, and Geralt is ready for Jaskier to tell him he has some kind of bardic business in Vizima and he’ll see him, well, when he sees him - an easy enough excuse to spend as little time as possible attached to Geralt.

“So,” Jaskier says instead, clapping his hands together, “Where to?”

Geralt peers at him. “Don’t you have… business, here?”

Jaskier shrugs. “Not as such.”

Perhaps it will be harder to shake him than Geralt thinks.

“I’m looking for a mage.”

A quick scowl mars Jaskier’s handsome face. “A specific mage,” he says, quickly correcting the expression, “or did you just wake up with the urge?”

“Any mage.”

“Right then.” Jaskier places his hands on his hips and looks around, as if he has any idea where to find a mage in a city like this. “Uh…” He peers at Geralt. “How about a drink, first? I’ve been on the road for days, you know.”

Geralt weighs it up in his head. As far as he can tell, he should be safe - people should be safe from him - so long as no one touches his bare skin. But it’s still a risk. It would be safest, he knows, to stick to side streets, find a herbalist or an apothecary and start there - or head into the outskirts of the city, where the brothels and seedier taverns are, where people are more likely to speak freely about magic users and avoid witchers.

Yet…

It’s been months since he last saw Jaskier. If Geralt can’t find a mage, he’ll be forced to leave the city to continue the search, no doubt leaving Jaskier behind where the excitement and money and sex is. And if Geralt still can’t find a mage - well.

He doesn’t know how these kinds of curses work. He doesn’t know how long it will take to slow him, to break him down. It could be months or weeks or maybe even days before he finds himself on his back, like that deer, desperately gasping for final breaths that’ll never come.

Or, far more likely, he’ll become so enfeebled that something else will kill him first - a ghoul or a drowner or even just a pack of wild dogs.

If he can’t find a mage in the city, he’ll leave Jaskier in Vizima, and it may very well be the last time he sees him.

And - ah - that hurts. Geralt has long since accepted his inevitable death: he’s a witcher, after all, it’s what he was created to do. But the thought of leaving Jaskier behind is more bitter. He knows, in a roundabout way, that each time he sees him could be the last - Geralt’s life is dangerous, and Jaskier’s always falling into trouble, so breakably human. But this parting will be different.

“Fine,” he says, and if Jaskier is troubled by his hesitancy to respond he keeps it to himself. “But somewhere quiet. And you need to get dry.”

It’s a poor compromise, he knows - favouring his urge to stay with Jaskier over the desire to protect those around him. But he can’t quite bring himself to leave just yet.

~

Geralt had been wrong, when he assumed that it would be easy to keep out of people’s way.

It is easy to keep out of people’s way. It’s near impossible to keep out of Jaskier’s. He’s always there, always fluttering about, and even after a pint of tepid ale, a meagre lunch, and a quick dry off and change of clothes in the tavern’s cramped back room, he dogs Geralt’s heels as he attempts to find a mage in the bustling city.

He is, at least, steadfastly keeping his hands to himself. After those first two snaps - those biting words - Jaskier has quickly reigned in his flailing arms, his grabbing hands, keeping them drumming on the table or patting his knees or constantly twiddling his fingers together.

The day passes quickly - spurred along by a sense of long sought for purpose and Jaskier’s constant, trilling laughter. It’s easy for Geralt to forget why he’s here, the thing that even now is squeezing in his lungs, as Jaskier dances along beside him, never once stopping for breath.

By the time the sun sets Geralt is no closer to finding a mage. Somehow, spending the day in the city is more tiring than spending it walking down the bank of the Ismena, and he can begin to feel that now-familiar wheeze in his chest. He’s aware of Jaskier’s worried gaze on him when they finally stop, but he’s happy to ignore it.

Jaskier cannot know. Geralt’s not sure how he came to this decision - but now he’s made it, it feels like the right choice.

He cannot know.

They find a tiny inn at the edge of the city. The innkeep asks what they’ll be needing - one bed or two - and before Jaskier can reply Geralt cuts him off.

“Two,” he says, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

Geralt doesn’t know if he’s imagining the hurt that briefly passes across Jaskier’s face, but he can’t let himself linger on it. It’s better this way - safer for them both. There can be no shared beds, no warm baths, none of those little intimate touches he’s grown so used to over the past decade and a half.

He’ll miss them.

The last time they travelled together, Jaskier had attentively stitched a nasty gash on Geralt’s shoulder, rubbing ointment into his skin with his careful, calloused fingers. He’d washed the blood from Geralt’s hair and the monster ichor from his skin, rinsing the sticky black ooze from the cuts that marred Geralt’s back and arms. It had been the middle of summer, then, the air oppressively warm, and Jaskier had stripped to his waist before getting to work. The bath water had been too hot, and the steam had made his skin flushed and shiny with sweat, glistening in the low orange light of the candles and the last rays of the setting sun pouring through the windows.

Geralt thought that Jaskier’s hands had lingered on his skin for longer than usual that evening. It had been a hard fight, and they were both exhausted. Geralt had returned covered in blood - some his own, some not - and there’d been a moment for both of them when they hadn’t expected him to come back at all.

There’d been a tension, there. But it hadn’t been a new tension - rather, Geralt suspected, like the first distant rumble of thunder before a storm, or the second-to-last stone atop a cairn too close to tumbling. It had been building, and he’d been trying to ignore it. He wondered if Jaskier had felt it too.

Probably not. To Jaskier, it was probably just another evening - one of hundreds, all the same.

They parted ways three days later. Geralt had business in Rinde, and Jaskier in Oxenfurt, and for once their schedules had failed to align.

The gap between then and now is immeasurable. The night Geralt had returned, blood soaked and half dead, they’d slept twined around each other in the too-small bed. For once, Geralt hadn’t complained about the clinginess: he’d soaked in it.

He should have appreciated it more. He should have been appreciating it for those fifteen fucking years. And now - now it’s too late.

Two beds, several meters apart.

Jaskier doesn’t even complain. He dumps his bags on the one closest to the window, sits for just a moment and then is suddenly on his feet again.

“I should earn us some coin,” he says, his voice too bright, too springy, “if you’re looking for a mage. And I could do with the practise, lest I forget all my songs…” he licks his lips, and Geralt forces himself to look away. “There’s a tavern, just down the street. Do you, ah—”

If he could, Geralt would join him. He wants to see him play - wants to see him dance around the stage, commanding a captive audience like a gaudy peacock. But the press of people is too great a risk, the risk of passing this thing on. He doesn’t care for crowds at the best of times, and this: this is the worst of times.

Even without the inherent risk he poses just by existing, right now, he’s exhausted: he feels bone-tired, his legs aching, his chest tight even as he begins to carefully strip away his armour.

“No,” he says, then feels quickly guilty. “I… can’t. I need to…” he falters, “...to rest,” he settles on, mumbling the last word.

Jaskier - looks at him, really looks at him. There’s a line between his eyebrows, like he’s working something out, putting together a puzzle.

“Right,” he says, and while Geralt is expecting him to pry - to prod and dig and wheedle his way beneath Geralt’s stony exterior - he doesn’t. He just… nods, slinging his lute back over his shoulder. “I’ll see you later, then.”

He goes to leave, then hovers in the open doorway - halfway between the room and the corridor beyond. He pierces Geralt under that same, nervous gaze.

“Get some rest,” he says, too sincerely for Geralt’s liking. “You look like you need it.”

~

Jaskier returns late into the night. Geralt is roused from his deep, turbulent dreams by the bard’s gentle padding around the room - made somewhat less gentle when he attempts to place his lute against the wall and it slides to the floor with an echoing clunk.

Geralt is too tired to do more than shift a little under the thin sheet. Jaskier smells of ale and adrenaline and sweat. Geralt has been half-expecting him to return smelling of someone else - he’s been dreading that, in fact - but he just smells of Jaskier.

He pauses by the side of Geralt’s bed for a moment, and even with his eyes shut Geralt is aware that he’s being watched. He hopes Jaskier isn’t about to reach for him, preparing himself for an argument.

But Jaskier doesn’t try to touch him. He just hovers there, and Geralt can hear his heartbeat, smell the ale on his breath, the mustiness on his clothes. And then, finally, he moves away. Geralt listens as Jaskier undresses and slides beneath the covers of the other bed.

Geralt falls asleep before Jaskier does.

~

If there’s any single human on the continent who can wear through Geralt’s reserve - even when he’s fucking cursed - it’s Jaskier.

Jaskier does well. At first. He doesn’t try to touch Geralt at all: Not to reach out, like he often will, not to sling an arm over his shoulder or nudge their shoulders together as they walk side-by-side.

It’s not Jaskier’s fault that he forgets, Geralt thinks. He’d fallen into that easy companionship again, easing Jaskier into a false sense of security after that initial terseness. It’s almost like it always is. Almost.

It’s no surprise, then, that while they’re eating their evening meal after their first full day in the city that Jaskier makes a joke about something Geralt is barely even listening to, reaches out, and affably pats Geralt’s shoulder.

Geralt freezes. Jaskier freezes, too, for a completely different reason.

“Shit,” he says, “Touching. Right. Shit. Sorry, I—”

Geralt can’t say anything. He’s waiting for the world to end. But Jaskier is fine, and it’s just his skin, he reminds himself. Just his skin. Jaskier’s hand had brushed against his armour - thick leather armour layered over straps and buckles and all of that over a cotton undershirt.

“It’s fine,” he says, thanking the gods that Jaskier isn’t blessed with his attuned hearing - that he can’t hear how loud his heart suddenly feels.

And it is fine.

And then - it’s like a dam bursting. All it takes are those two words - a quiet concession - and Jaskier is back to his usual self. His ever-busy hands are back, winding their way across Geralt’s arms, slapping him on the back, patting him on his shoulder when something catches his eye or he has something devastatingly witty to say.

Geralt is wearing his gloves all the time, now, so the only part of him exposed is his face and head, and there’s no reason for Jaskier to reach out to touch his cheek, his jaw, his hair. The fear never really goes away - but he knows it’s fruitless, knows that Jaskier is safe, so long as he never touches Geralt’s skin.

He worries he isn’t being cautious enough. But when Jaskier loops a hand around his arm as they weave through the city, it’s impossible to make him let go.

~

Vizimia is the biggest city in Temeria. It should, by all rights, be bursting with mages and magic users. But Geralt is coming up short, again and again.

It’s been three days in the city - three days with Jaskier by his side in the daytime and off earning coin after sunset - and he’s no closer to finding a cure than when he first stepped through the gates.

The closest he gets is an alchemist, her tiny shop built into the wall of the city itself. She can tell something’s wrong with him immediately, and pushes herbs and tinctures on him - at a cost, of course. When he’s restocked - including several vials of a foul smelling green liquid she swears will ease the ache in his chest - she finally answers his questions.

“There was a sorceress, here, oh…” she tilts her head, “a few weeks ago. Gone now, of course.”

“Where did she go?”

The alchemist shrugs. “South. Towards Maribor.”

Geralt sighs. It’s helpful, but he can’t shake the feeling it’s too late now. Maribor could be three week’s walk away, given how his wheezing is getting harder to ignore and his body aches even after a few hours exploring the city. But the woman is giving him that expression that he’s learnt to recognise in peddlers and merchants and the occasional blacksmith. It’s not one he’s been given by a fucking alchemist before.

He reaches into his bag and pulls a fistful of coins from his purse, letting them tumble onto the table.

She smiles.

“There is one thing…”

“What?”

“There’s a town, other side of the lake, through the forest,” says the alchemist, thoughtfully. “Hethe. Two days walk, if you’re walking slowly. It’s small, but there’s a castle nearby, some elven ruin…” she waves a dismissive hand - elven ruins are commonplace in Vizima - “There was talk a few days back of strange goings-on. Noise and smoke and the like. The sorceress may have stopped there, for a time. Strong residual magic there, where the elves tilled the ground. Useful to a mage, I’d think.”

That sounds more hopeful.

“Did you catch her name?” He asks.

She raises her eyebrows at him. “I told you where she might have gone. I won’t tell you more than that.” She clucks to herself, shaking her head as she begins to tidy the shelves. “I like my limbs attached, thank you, master Witcher.”

He thanks her anyway, pays her handsomely for the supplies, and returns to the inn. The night is drawing in, now, and it’s likely too late to move on, but he can tell Jaskier what he’s learnt and make plans to set off with the dawn.

As it turns out, Jaskier is waiting for him in their room. Geralt had been expecting him to be absent - or at least readying himself for an impromptu concert in one of Vizima’s many taverns - but he’s reclining on his bed beneath the window, reading, when Geralt enters.

“Not performing tonight?” Geralt asks, as he carefully places his new supplies on the bed.

Jaskier looks up, and Geralt suddenly realises that the room is sweet-smelling - rose petals and chamomile. Some new oil, he suspects. There’s another scent, too, milder than the perfume, but there nonetheless - a citrusy tartness, fear but not fear, either. Something softer than that.

“Actually,” says Jaskier, placing the book down, “I thought we could eat together tonight.” He swings his legs off of the bed, “I should give my throat a rest, before I lose my voice. It’s tickling, already… and what good is a mute bard?” He smiles, wiggling his shoulders. “Besides, performing just isn’t the same without your grumpy face staring at me.”

This is a sentiment Geralt finds himself sharing. He’s missed hearing Jaskier sing - not that he wants to admit that. There’s a side to Jaskier that’s only really revealed when he’s performing, and Geralt enjoys seeing it - even if it comes packaged around pomp and overly dramatic acting. But it’s simply too great a risk: while he’s happy enough to let Jaskier touch him, he can’t cope with the constant risk of the crowd, always on guard.

“I always thought I was putting you off,” he says, eyebrows raised.

“Hah,” Jaskier laughs, eyes sparkling. “Is that why you’re always so intense? Trying to trip me up?” He grins. “It doesn’t work. You’re my muse, Geralt. It only makes sense that I perform better when you’re off in the corner scowling because you hate my singing so much…”

“I don’t hate your singing.”

It slips out, unbidden, and that grabs Jaskier’s attention. He turns, eyes wide, and that citrusy smell is suddenly intense. It mingles with the floral perfume, not unpleasantly. “...Oh?”

“I like your singing,” says Geralt, aware of how much he’s suddenly exposing himself - making himself vulnerable. “It’s the subjects that I find objectionable.”

He hopes Jaskier will cling to the criticism, not the praise - that he’ll puff up like an angry chicken, offended at the perceived slight. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

“How do you like my singing?”

Geralt hesitates. It’s too complicated a question, one that he can’t just answer. He likes Jaskier’s voice - it’s clear and powerful, and he has the uncanny ability to carry emotions in the lyrics that other bards lack. It’s not just that his voice is good - although it is, of course - it’s that he can do things with his voice that others can’t. Geralt isn’t well-versed in emotions after so many years of training himself to push them back, but Jaskier’s singing makes him think he can understand them a little better.

The bloviating and bravado he can do without, but there’s a few songs - very few, in fact - that are quieter and simpler and there’s something about watching Jaskier, perched on a stool or sat on a table or leant against a wall, his eyes down, his fingers moving slowly up and down the strings… it’s like he can see him, properly.

“You have a good voice.”

It’s a poor description of the way Jaskier’s singing actually makes him feel, but it’s the best he can do - certainly the best he can do without incriminating himself. But Jaskier lights up, and the smile that cracks his mouth is so bright and genuine that it makes Geralt’s chest squeeze in a way that has nothing to do with the curse.

“Well,” he says, cheerily. “I’ll have to perform for you later. I’m sure my vocal cords can cope with one more song.”

~

The tavern Jaskier leads him to is more of an eatery than a drinking spot. It’s out of the way, built between two larger buildings with creeping roses embedded into the crumbling brickwork. Geralt realises, with another one of those squeezes, that Jaskier has been listening to him - he’s watched his hesitancy over these past few days - and brought him somewhere quiet, somewhere without a lot of other people to avoid.

This also means, Geralt cannot help but notice, that this place must be expensive. He tries to mention this to Jaskier, but he waves him off with a laugh.

“People tip musicians well in Vizima,” he says.

Geralt is expecting a cold reception, but no one even looks up at him. The staff treat him cordially, the other patrons ignore him. This, he supposes, is the benefit of having cash to spare - although he can’t help but think that Jaskier’s money would be better spent on a pair of boots that actually keep the rain out.

It’s… nice. But he can’t help but feel this is the end of something. He tells Jaskier about the alchemist, about the sorceress, about the town on the other side of the lake. He doesn’t know if Jaskier will come with him or stay in the city. If he stays, maybe this is the end. Tomorrow Geralt will leave, seeking out a cure that might not exist. This could be the last night they spend together.

There’s a finality to that that sits poorly in his stomach.

Perhaps Jaskier can sense his odd mood, his sullen silences meaning more, now, than they once did. He still doesn’t pry, but moves the conversation swiftly along to more uplifting topics - to old adventures and foolish gambles and shared moments, and beneath the small table Geralt can feel their knees knocking together, Jaskier’s foot sliding between his own.

The food is good, but he barely tastes it - the ale is better, and flows easily. By the time they leave, stumbling into the dark, they’re both well into their cups. He’s not forgotten the cloud that looms over him - that looms above them both - but it’s easier to ignore it when his head feels light and Jaskier laughs at his side, deliberately bumping into him.

He wishes he could pull his gloves off and touch him. Jaskier’s face is flushed - he wants to feel how warm his cheeks are. His hair is a wild mess, as it always is when he’s drinking, and Geralt wants to run his hands through it, feel how soft he knows it is. He wants to take his hand and grip his fingers and slide their digits together and—

It’s an impossibility, even without the creeping curse that’s hibernating beneath his skin.

They make their way back to the inn, to the tiny room. He’s completely forgotten Jaskier’s promise of a personal performance until he’s pulling the lute from its case and tuning the strings. Jaskier peers up, and spots Geralt staring.

“Did you still want—”

“Yeah.”

He swallows as he loops the strap over his neck. “I’ve got a new one,” he says, quietly, “But I’m still fine tuning it.” He settles his fingers over the strings. “So be nice.”

“I’m always nice.”

That elicits a laugh - short and sweet - and then Jaskier begins.

It’s another ballad, that much is immediately clear: one of the softer, slower tunes that Geralt favours over the bawdy drinking songs or the overblown retellings of his own life. It’s a love song, an unrequited love song, about wanting and needing and loving and all those things that Jaskier seems so good at. It’s sad, too - not like so many of his ballads which mourn love’s loss while celebrating the having of it - but empty and grasping and reaching for something that doesn’t exist.

He understands, for once, what Jaskier is singing about. He understands it so much it hurts.

Geralt is so entranced, so taken with the soft words and plucked strings, that he doesn’t even realise that the tart, citrus smell he’d noticed that evening has grown until Jaskier stops singing, laying the lute across his lap, and it suddenly fills the room.

“What do you think?” He asks, a little breathless. “Is it any good?”

It’s - Geralt doesn’t have the words. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s… it’s beautiful.”

Jaskier smiles - but the motion doesn’t quite reach his eyes. His fingers dab on the strings, his teeth worry his bottom lip.

“What did you think of the lyrics?” Jaskier says, looking away - looking down. “I’m, ah, I’m a little concerned they’re a tad trite. They’re a bit…” he looks up, finally. “A bit obvious, I fear.”

Geralt isn’t sure what he means. He understood them, at least - but where he’s impressed, an expert may find them overly sentimental.

“I can’t say,” he says, truthfully. “But I understood them. Maybe that means they are too obvious,” he adds, with a self-deprecating laugh.

Jaskier is not laughing. “You understood?”

Geralt nods, wondering why Jaskier is suddenly so serious.

“Oh.” It’s more of a sigh than a word - a gentle breath out. And then Jaskier finally moves the lute, placing it onto the bed, and he stands, and he crosses the space between their beds, and his eyes are wide and his heart stuttering and—

He sits next to Geralt. Their knees brush. Jaskier places his hand on his shoulder, moving him, and Geralt complies - he will always comply - and then with a soft, unsure noise Jaskier is leaning in and his breath - fuck - his breath is on Geralt’s lips and he realises, suddenly, what’s happening.

Geralt springs back like a startled animal, like he’s been struck by lightning, like he’s been burnt, and Jaskier freezes.

“No—” he says, and, gods, not like this— “I can’t—”

Jaskier’s soft expression drops for just a second. Just a single second of pain, of hurt, of sudden, well-placed heartbreak. And then he’s back, back to his unreadable calmness.

“Right,” he says, “Shit, I, ah…” He swallows, shifting back across the bed, right to the edge. “Sorry. Sorry, I just… the beer, and...” he laughs, but the sound is wrong, fake and broken at the edges. “I should…” he loses his thought, his hands balling in the thin sheets of Geralt’s bed, “fuck.”

He forces another laugh. He’s smiling - a stiff, constrained expression that’s somehow worse than the pain that had flickered across his face before - but Geralt can hear his heart thundering, can smell the adrenaline and the fear and the hurt coming off of him in waves, like a wounded animal.

Like that deer in the forest. Killed with a single touch.

“It’s late,” Jaskier says, finally, speaking too quickly, voice stumbling over itself. “We should sleep. I should… I…”

Jaskier stands. The bed shifts as he does. He tucks the lute away back in its case, locking it closed with a horrible sort of finality. He kicks off his boots and then, without bothering to get undressed, he slides into his own bed, facing the wall, his back to Geralt.

Fuck.

It’s with equal silence that Geralt, too, undresses, crawls beneath his own sheets.

He curls beneath the blanket, listening to the sound of Jaskier pretending to sleep. They both lie in their respective beds, the distance between their bodies now a casm, both of them awake.

He should tell him. There’s - there’s so many things Geralt should tell him.

But he can’t. He can’t tell him about the curse, because Jaskier will be worried, because he’ll go after him. He can’t tell him that it’s going to kill him. He can’t tell Jaskier that - gods - he loves him - because what unimaginable tourture would that be?

If Jaskier doesn’t know, he’ll be better prepared to move on. It’s the most sensible thing for him to do - to accept the perceived rejection and leave. Geralt wouldn’t blame him if he did: to stay with Geralt will surely be too painful, now.

There’s a twist to that. Perhaps this will make it easier for Jaskier if Geralt can’t lift the curse after all. It will be easier to move on from the man who broke his heart than the man who still held it gently in his grip. Perhaps the mourning will sting less, now, if he mourns at all.

In the darkness, he can still feel the hot huff of Jaskier’s breath against his lips, the intoxicating warmth of his body so close to Geralt’s own.

“I can’t.” It had been all Geralt could say, with so much left unspoken. “I can’t. But gods, Jask, I want to.”

#the witcher #geraskier #geralt x jaskier #okay so its a real angst fest #this is VERY angsty #lots of death mention #lots of hurt and basically no comfort #but pt 2 does end happily i swear #also roach is fine #also yES its a self indulgent title shush

[commanderserwin]

erwin;;; the family man

↦ summary: erwin misses the birth of his first child,, sigh... & family??

↦ author’s note(s): purely self-indulgent again because i have no self control,,, also the thought of erwin absolutely going crazy and late lives in my mind rent free. also corny as shit so i will just walk away 🚶🏻‍♀️(nevermind the title bc i suck at those sigh)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

erwin is composed. 

collected. 

no, he isn’t pacing around his in his office room, his survey corps jacket discarded on the floor as he felt that it was too hot while the crisp autumn air seeps through his window. no, he isn’t nervous at all. no, he isn’t mumbling to himself, humming to calm himself down. no, he isn’t losing his damn mind. 

he stopped in his tracks when hanji appeared by his door, holding it wide open with a grin on her face. she pushed back her glasses, and screeched, “what are you doing?”

“what am i doing?”

“yes?!”

“yes?”

“why are you still here?”

“it’s my office?!”

“no, erwin!” hanji breathed, pointing to the door, “she’s giving birth!”

“oh, she’s giving birth,” erwin breathlessly repeated, taking another step. then he stopped. he whipped his head towards hanji who is still smiling widely as she shouted towards levi’s room. “she’s giving birth. shit!”

erwin isn’t one to curse but the moment he heard hanji say it again, he darted outside his office bumping into an annoyed levi who came outside of his office to find out what the huge commotion is all about. erwin heard hanji yell, ‘she’s giving birth!’ to where levi groaned a deep, ‘finally.’ as he closed his office door. 

erwin ran for his life. 

“she’s going to kill me,” erwin panted, as he saw the medical bay right at his left, “oh, she’s going to kill me. this isn’t the right time for me to be late.” 

breathing hard, he stumbled upon the medical bay’s doors, opening it widely as the nurses and the patients all quirked their brows at this commander, who almost broke the doors. he took a mental note to keep that in check if he actually broke it. erwin breathed deeply, calming himself but he got pushed by hanji. 

“she’s here!” hanji panting, tugging erwin’s sleeve towards a private room. she patted erwin’s shoulder with a serious face, “she’s going to kill you.” 

erwin huffed, fixing his clothes as he finally turned the knob on your hospital room. the first thing that hit him was the smell of the metallic blood, the hurried shuffles of the nurses, and the loud screeching cry of his kid. he laid his eyes on you, shushing his kid in your arms, as you patted its butt to calm their cries. he finally stood beside your bed, soothing your hair, and wiping the sweat off of your face as he placed a gentle kiss on your forehead. he looked down, and he saw you sobbing, shaking, while his kid also cried in your arms. 

you couldn’t help it. you were crying because it hurts so much. you were crying because you have finally seen your daughter, and to have her in your arms was overwhelming. and you were also crying because your damn husband wasn’t there to hold your hand when you pushed out your daughter. 

“don’t cry,” erwin shushed, wiping away your tears and brushing the cheek of your daughter with his calloused fingers. 

“where... where were you?” you cried, placing an arm over your eyes, because you were crying so hard. the nurses sympathetically looked once more and left the three of you alone. “hanji... hanji was here. where were you?”

“i was nervous!” erwin exclaimed, sitting across from your position on the hospital bed, “i was waiting! then, hanji knocked on my door, and told me-“

erwin felt his heart stung when you cried louder. 

“- that you were giving birth, and i ran so fast, and then here you are!” 

you cried again, holding out your arm and when he did, you pulled him to you, that he rapidly placed his hands on either side of your head. he finally got a look on his child, that sweet bundle of joy who is currently piercing his ears with their powerful cries, and he couldn’t be happier. he leaned in again, kissing you deeply, and then to his child. 

“what’s the name?”

“i haven’t named her yet,” you sniffled, calming down as erwin rubbed circles on your bare shoulder. he pinched your cheek in between his fingers, as he looked down again in surprise. “her?”

“yes,” you breathed, sitting up with the help from him. you rocked your daughter for a few seconds, until you gently placed her on erwin’s arms. you watched the look on your husband’s face perk up as he holds the little being around him. his hand is almost as big as her tiny body, and he playfully bopped her tiny nose. “watch her head.” 

erwin nodded, as he rocked his first daughter in his arms. oh, the first look is magnificent. he didn’t know that he could feel this, being so proud of his daughter as she wrapped her whole hand around erwin’s index finger. he shed a few tears, making him look up so that it’ll fall on the sides. he only cried a little more, when you placed a kiss on his eye, shushing him as your daughter calmed to sleep.

“what should we name her?” 

“luna,” erwin whispered against your temple, wherein you nodded.  

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“luna,” erwin called out, hurriedly walking around the house, picking up his daughter’s toys. he’s got to tell levi to stop buying her dolls, or else this whole house is going to turn into a giant doll house, “luna!” 

“coming!” luna’s quick and hurried steps that matched her father echoed in their room. she was holding a doll from levi’s and erwin sighed as she took another. “which do you think will she like better?”

erwin extended her arm to her daughter, his mind in rambles. he’s too busy thinking that he is going to miss the birth of his second child and that there are too many toys on floor scattered. he ushered her daughter forward, holding on to her tiny hand as he followed her father’s footsteps. “luna, we’re going to be late.” 

“mom’s going to kill you.”

erwin looked at her daughter, clutching the dolls on her arms, as she held on tightly to her father’s hand as he almost lifted her off of the ground to get on time for your second birth. “thank you, dear, for that reminder.” 

luna squealed, as her father ran towards the medical bay. erwin also laughed, chasing the high of running again like it was just happening all over again. which is truly the case. 

erwin dropped luna at levi’s arms, kissing her gently on top of her head and he pointed at levi, “please watch her,” and just when he was about to enter, he looked back, “stop buying her toys.” 

levi pursed his lips, as he bounced luna on his arms. he pointed his finger at the door where hanji just exited. erwin looked like all the color from his face drained, as hanji yet again patted his shoulder. then, hanji laughed. 

“remind me to tug along moblit so that he could draw your face,” hanji smirked, walking away towards levi and luna who is currently playing with levi’s bangs. “she’s in there. she’s just waiting.” 

erwin entered the room with a nervous peek, welcoming the smell of the metallic blood but he was met with your swollen belly and a thick sheen of sweat on face. 

you were standing over the bed, your hands turning white from gripping the railings so hard. the pain is excruciating, and when you heard the door open, you craned your head to look who it was. you chuckled deeply, wiping away your tears and sweat, as erwin placed his hand on your back. he gently kissed your temple, smiling to himself that he made it on time. he was also close to passing out when he heard you screamed the loudest as the contractions come and go.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

erwin smith. the commander of the survey corps.

that all disappears when he enters your home. his presence was overshadowed with the sight of luna and lucas running around, screaming who scratched who, babbling their qualms to their silent mother who was busily sipping a cup of tea while enjoying the book. he picked up the toys that he passed by, clutching it all in his hand, dropping them off of at the single pile near the fireplace. he took off his emerald bolo tie, as he ruffled his hair as well, giving you a kiss on the top of your head. he took a sip of your tea, wondering how you could drink a tea this cold. 

he rubbed the dark circles on your eyes that probably matched his, and he cleared his throat to catch the attention of his little rascals. 

luna and lucas stopped in their tracks, with lucas slapping his older sister on the arm one last time amidst the silence in the house. luna squinted her eyes at her brother, and then they all ran towards him, wrapping their arms around his body, pulling down to kiss him either cheek. erwin happily accepted their kisses, the weight of his job slowly decreasing off of his shoulders. 

“should we play a game?” erwin smiled, watching his kids ran around. they stopped to listen, smiling as widely.

“and there goes the big baby,” you grumbled, turning a page from your book. they became awfully quiet and you peeked through your book to what they are planning now. you squinted your eyes playfully at your children, and at erwin as he winked. you finally caught a glimpse of their eyes, slowly placing down your book and pushing away your teacup to the middle of the table. 

“no, no, no...” you repeated, laughing already as you stood from your sit. 

“who tickles mommy first will win a prize!” 

“erwin,” you threatened, failing to keep a straight face as you you used your chair as a simple barricade. “erwin, don’t you dare!” 

“one...”

“erwin!”

erwin winked. 

“two...”

“luna!”

“three...”

“lucas!”

“go!” 

#AND SCENE #erwin smith #erwin x reader #erwin smith x reader #erwin smith imagine #erwin smith imagines #attack on titan #attack on titan imagines #attack on titan imagine #shingeki no kyoujin x reader #shingeki no kyoujin #shingeki no kyojin #snk imagines #aot imagines #aot #snk imagine

[mr-face-both-ways]

Stex Appreciation Month: CB!

Can’t trust anyone these days, remember I can face both ways!

Ah yes, my url’s namesake, i finally had time to finish and post something lol i’ll post the others soon

Questions answered under the cut! This is extra long because he is my Fave and im Biased 

Fave song: There’s Me hands down, the whole scene including That Was Unfair is just so good in establishing CB’s, Greaseball and Dinah’s characters so well, plus the melody is just*chef’s kiss* and the fact that its technically a villain song?? Love that, plus the parallels of him finding Dinah alone and upset and comforting and supporting her and lending her a hand up and sending her on her way after she’s cheered up, with post race 3 where he’s the reason Rusty’s alone and hurt on the floor, kicking him when he tries to get up (looking at you 1991 boot) and mocks and insults him, leaving him alone with his confidence broken as he leaves laughing. What an absolute bastard!! But when There’s Me is taken out, you don’t properly see his two sides, both the bad and good sides are important to his character! He’s a contrary dude but that’s just him! Plus the actual song has one of my fave melodies of the show, I can and do listen to the intro from the ost on repeat, plus that lil bit in the japan vid?? So cute?? And the contrasting styles to that and Wide Smile?? Amazing, love it

Fave actor: Once again my fave actor list is gonna be like 5 people lol, the great thing about C.B’s material is that his attitude and demeanour can change based on his inflection, movement etc so! Michael Staniforth is a given, his Wide Smile really demonstrates his range which imo not many others have been quite as good, plus what extremely little footage and photos there are of him he was extremely expressive and just fun to watch! I’ll also go with Peter Rees, Andrew Prosser, Hans Johansson, Oliver Rhoe Thornton (and what the heck let’s also go for early Kapa Kitchen and Daniel Ellison)

Fave ship: Ohh boy this is super self indulgent but CBGB honestly (has the fandom given it a nickname? Greaseboose?? idk) I love that in the older scripts him and GB high five (that us boot where cb does a lil jump to hit GB’s high five?? Adorable) and actually talk like friends?? Like Greaseball is a jerk to pretty much everyone and for him to be friendly with him is just sweet. Not to mention its Greaseball who tells his gang that CB’s a “mean machine”, is always calling out to CB in the races and a recent thing that clicked in my brain is that when CB says “what a race, what a team!” and GB’s like “shhh! ohhh you mean me and dinah?” like did he just think that CB was about to out that they were working together during the race to crash the other engines in front of Dinah so he shushed him, then realised he was talking about GB and Dinah?? then just the whole exchange after sabotaging Rusty?? Duet One Rock and Roll? That GB just lifts him up like its nothing then they just kinda sit on eachother?? Those two are in cahoots I tell you!! Plus to me i get the vibe that they’ve been working together for years?? I just love their dynamic haha (and CB’s the only one i think who calls him GB that’s so cute) oh and platonic CB/Dinah is top tier, I feel like Dinah’s a very emotionally honest person so CB would feel like he could actually trust her?? And thanks to the new megamix Canoose/Elektra can have one right, as a treat

Fave thing about him: His independence! All the other characters are very much driven by either winning the races or finding love (or both), and C.B. just...doesn’t care. What you “are” is a big deal in Stex, like the engines, coaches and freight all have their identities shaped by their titles, and that can influence how they feel about the above two subjects “nobody can do it like a steam train”, etc and looking at when C.B. does participate in the races him and his partner tend to take the lead so he is good at racing!! But he chooses not to in order to make his own fun (at the expense of pretty much everyone else). He also seems to have a level of self-awareness, take his verse in Freight for example, he knows that as a brakevan he has to essentially serve the freight train, perceptually at the back of the train. But instead he uses his “purpose” aka his brakes to not do what he’s been told and to disrupt the train, and gets away with it by presenting himself as the innocent helpful brakevan! He’s just doing his own thing, (poor Rusty but,,) good for him!! And of course I have to say again, his two sides, and the ambiguity of it?? Like is he good, bad?? He’s both and neither?? An absolute force of chaos, but it only really works when both sides are present. Plus he a cutie tehe

Random headcanon: I think he’s unnervingly observant, even moreso than Pearl, and has amazing peripheral vision. That and taking notice of things like vibrations on the rails he’s very good at telling whose around before they’ve fully come into vision. He’s always watching everything around him, and isn’t necessarily being creepy, he’s just trying to get as much info on the current situation as possible. I think he likes to have some control and be on top of things?? I also really like the ex-boxcar theory (I first saw this theory on the old bellesdomain forums, rip) and I think that maybe when he was converted it was very difficult for him, having to deal with people, and having the CB radio to control what he hears helps ground him and keep his thoughts less cluttered?? He might’ve also forgotten a lot of his boxcar days, so when he says “you know I’m to blame but you don’t know my name” maybe he doesn’t even remember his original name?? And never got a new one as just the Red Caboose, so he clung onto the CB radio to give himself a sense of identity when his previous identity was stripped from him?? IDK

Unpopular opinion: This wagon can hold so many spicy takes he’s not a murderer lol but at the same time i can see where people can think that considering the lyrics reference several real-life train crashes even if they don’t make sense for CB to be there which tbh I put down to Stilgoe going tehe railway incident reference! I think he’s travelled around a lot and done a lot of questionable things, and maybe he was responsible for those crashes in the stex universe?? or maybe he’s just lying?? he’s definitely responsible for some shit, but considering he crashes 5 (!!!) engines during that one race night and being publicly humiliated after race 4 he doesn’t get in trouble and besides, all those engines are back for light at the end of the tunnel, they’re fine lol. Another thing is that I haaaate how CB has like no agency anymore in the current version like everything he does is for money, he’s basically a henchman for the engines (and everyone knows what his deal is and he isn’t in train jail?? what??) and they got rid of the pre-race 4 bit “just for me, I’m in this just for me” (in that slightly twisted there’s me melody) and Electra desperately pleading “help me caboose, help me caboose” to just the generic “I’ll help you win” at the end and not really its own little bit anymore like he barely has his own motivations anymore, it actually makes me really sad :( it really just doesn’t feel like CB anymore, though his character has been really disjointed since like 2007 when they got rid of there’s me. He’s just kinda bland now, like before he instigated a lot of the conflict, now others tell him to do something and he does it. I could like him more if he had an ounce more depth, like why is he so motivated by money? Maybe go into that old vs new tech theme and bring up that now that there’s new tech that can do the job of a brakevan he’s now antiquated and has to go into crime to get by?? Idk just please give me something, I think CB’s always been a bit of a fan favourite because he had multiple layers to his personality but new boose just has a whole lotta nothing :/ 

Anyway let’s end on a positive note at least we got pride lighting and a solo in the megamix so that’s something I guess XD 

#stex appreciation month #starlight express #stex #cb the red caboose #stex cb #my art #musicals

[faejilly]

i am for you

this is entirely @janoda‘s fault. her and her tag essays. ANYWAYS. I have a weakness for epistolary fic, and also Alec & Magnus being adorkable, so here. Have some self-indulgent fluff. Part 1/? (AO3) (series tag)

One misdirected email leads to bonding over bookstores & bad fiction, sleep-deprivation, the introduction of the Lightwood-Garroway Family Hedge, and Magnus and Alec falling in love.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [R. Fell] subj: forgive me

Hello, you old stick in the mud.

Yes that is a perfectly acceptable way to open a letter, do shush.

And yes, email counts as a letter, just because you study ancient dead people more than living ones does not mean you should not admit to the existence of modern innovation.

Also yes, obviously, I have bad news, you know me so well, however have we borne each other's company for so long?

Especially when you have such an appalling lack of sense as to allow me to borrow your copy of Marlowe's treatise on the White Book.

Oops?

It will not be wending its way back to you along with the references on the Grey and the Red. I know, it's not the same when it's not a whole set, I will make it up to you.

Somehow.

I promise.

And you know I keep my word.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: this is awkward

I want to apologize. I'm not whoever it was you were trying to write to, but there are way too many people I know who would start an email with a "forgive me" so I was about half-way through before I realized you weren't actually one of them.

So, uh. Sorry? I mean. Sorry, really, and you should probably double check your friend's email.

But. Not to be too creepy or intrusive, barging in on someone's accidentally public conversation, but I know a bookstore on Isaacs Dr, behind the campus liquor store, (the one with the red roof, not the one with the blue roof), that had a copy of the book you mentioned. If you wanted to find a replacement. It's called Fray & Garroway, and if you tell them it's for Alec they'll give you a 10% discount.

Assuming you're even in Alicante, which may be a bit of a jump, but you did send your note via a UIA email address.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: Charming, not awkward

I feel, my darling Alec, (if I may?), that it must have been Providence that sent my email astray. Do you believe in fate? I think I do, as of today.

There cannot be many people in Alicante who have even heard of Marlowe's delightfully obscure infatuation with the occult, much less know where to find a copy of a reprint of one of his books. Or be familiar enough to know a discount on that price-tag is not a trivial thing.

Not that I wouldn't have paid full price to redeem myself in my long-suffering (as he says) compatriot's eyes, but it is rather delightful to know that I did not have to, purely thanks to the kindness of a stranger.

Thank you.

You didn't have to reply at all, much less go out of your way to offer assistance. It's unusual to bump into such a giving soul these days. You have quite restored my faith in humanity.

-- M

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: you do have a way with words, don't you

M, is it? Are we embarking on a mystery correspondence? I feel I may have fallen into a bad spy movie, or perhaps a pulp detective novel. (I am certainly no 007 to have fallen into a good spy movie, after all.)

Do you have contacts scattered across Idris running secret errands for you? Clandestine meetings and secret back-alley exchanges?

(Please don't tell me if you don't, imagining a secret society dealing in strange matters of the occult is the most interesting thing to have happened to me all week, and the only interesting thing in at least a month that wasn't bordering on a disaster, and is quite probably the only thing that's going to keep me awake for the next two hours of my shift.)

You're welcome, but you don't have to thank me. I just answered an email. Definitely not worth the weight of the entire human race settling in-between us.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: but your words were so much more interesting than mine

There are a myriad number of people whose job it is to reply to my emails and yet they never manage it. You are exceptional, and I refuse to let you avoid my gratitude. I am thanking you, and you are just going to have to accept that that is the state of things.

Also I may have laughed out loud and scared my best friend when I read your email, so now you have to keep responding so I can prove you're a real person and we're having a real conversation and she doesn't think I'm crazy.

Well. Crazier than usual.

You are a real person aren't you? Who likes spy movies and old pulp paperbacks? (Can you recommend some of those detective stories?  I really loved your bookstore, it was very welcoming. Sunlit and dusty and well-organized shelves but piles in the corners just waiting to be explored and the most gorgeous tiny pieces of artwork hiding in all the small bits of wall where shelves wouldn't fit. Quite my new favorite place, I think I shall be back, especially if I have a shopping list as an excuse?)

Don't answer that real person question, I don't want to know if it's a no, anymore than you want to know that there are no covert societies, encoded messages, or secret passages anywhere in my life.

Though wait, of course you must be real, that lovely young redhead at the bookstore was positively delighted at the idea that Alec sent me, her whole face lit up with a smile.

Are you sure you're not already living the life of a secret agent? I feel I may have unwittingly been involved in some of your clandestine courier work already.

Though I suppose secret agents do not generally have shift work.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: not nearly as interesting as you are attach: ruleswip.docx attach: pulpfiction.docx

Oh hell, Clary was working? Were there charcoal stains on her fingers and a sketchbook on the counter? Was it an evil smile?

It was, wasn't it. I'm doomed, I'm going to have to avoid family dinner for at least a month.

I could distract her with your compliments, perhaps? Most of the artwork is hers. Some of it was her mother's. Either way she actually almost looks shy whenever someone says something nice about it.

Or I could ask her all about you.

I feel like that would be uncalled for, but I'm not sure why. Are we playing a game? Are there rules? Would that be cheating?

Unless you asked her about me, in which case it would be entirely fair, and also that was definitely an evil smile and oh my gosh I'm rambling in an email. I'm typing myself rambling, clearly the sleep-deprivation has reached epic proportions, I am so sorry.

And yet I'm going to send this as is, because I think perhaps that might be one of the rules.

Maybe I should make a list? Would that be weird? This entire email is weird, have I apologized already?

See attached: two lists. Feel free to delete them. Or edit and send them back. I feel I have no idea what I'm doing anymore, I may need some direction.

That's wow. I'm kind of pushy tonight, sorry.

This is what happens when you work second shift at the student support center. Which is usually about as difficult as did you try turning your laptop off and on again and let me unjam the printer with the occasional yes I do know how to format a bibliography, that's why I'm here. I am definitely as far from a secret agent man as it is humanly possible to be, and my brain has mostly leaked out my ears from boredom by the time I'm done.

(That was an attractive description, wasn't it. I'm sorry.)

But second shift was quiet enough when I was an undergrad I could manage to do extra studying, and now they're stuck with me, I guess. Or I'm stuck with them? I'm not entirely sure anymore. At least this is the last year.

But now I'm wondering, if you're not part of some secret coven of the occult, why The Book of the White?

Which is assuredly none of my business, feel free to ignore me.

If you've made it this far and still respond, I think I might start believing in miracles.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: still with the incredibly charming  attach: ruleswip2.docx attach: pulpscripts.docx

I don't believe anyone has ever compared me to a miracle before, I am quite over-wrought.

That sentence came out even more melodramatically than I intended, but that does not mean it isn't sincere. We haven't met, but I find I am quite pleased to think I have earned your good opinion, and your curiosity.

I have indeed taken a look at your rules, and marked it up with my virtual purple pen. (Not red, because it did not need correction so much as expansion. You have a very economical way with words once you switch to informational.) Also I counter your collection of ridiculously titled fiction (all of which I am looking forward to devouring) with some ridiculously styled plays. We did start this with Marlowe, after all.

I feel like it will be a great disappointment to tell you that I am doing regular boring class-related research; I do not think that crosses the bonds of this strange pseudo-anonymity we have, as you recognized the UIA email address, and thus know what an 05 extension means. (Though I still have no idea how my first email got routed to you. I am distressingly good at clicking the wrong thing, but that is a bit dramatic even for me. The servers must have had an aneurysm or something, the original recipient's an 08, on top of the entirely different set of initials.)

And no, I did not ask the redhead anything about you, I was oddly terrified that somehow she'd learn my entire life-story in the process. There was a very steely glint in her eyes when she rung me up.

But family dinner! I am entirely intrigued. Are you also a redhead, my mysterious benefactor? Cousin, brother, uncle?

I typed boyfriend in that list and erased it and typed it about three more times and then I looked up at our rules and realized you're right. I'm not sure if we've reached a coherent set of directions yet, but I don't wish to cheat either. I typed it, it stays.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: I may start blushing at any moment attach: ruleswip3.docx attach: bmovietime.docx

Oh fuck no, definitely not her boyfriend, I am very gay and also she's kind of my sister?

And wow, that's a way to come out to one's secret pen pal. I really have to stop responding to your emails at 2 in the morning, I am always vaguely horrified when I remember what I said the next day, and this is clearly not going to be the exception.

Though, since you keep responding anyways, clearly I should only respond at 2 in the morning? I may have to consider that one.

And no again, I am not a redhead, and the family dinner is a little complicated, (see the kind-of above) but I suppose I would be her step-brother once removed? That sounds entirely implausible doesn't it, it's quite obvious I just made that up.

Her step-dad married my mom.

That was much less complicated than I thought it was going to be, hmm. Clearly I have been over-thinking the family history every other time someone asked. Perhaps it's a lifetime of being over-sensitive. One of my brothers is adopted and we got a lot of oh dear you look nothing alike comments when we were little.

But now I realize how very one-sided our conversation has become, you know my name and that I have a family hedge rather than a tree, that you can find some of us at a bookstore, and that I have a rainbow flag sitting in the cup of pens and highlighters on my desk.

Also that I am much more familiar with b-movies than b-plays, so I feel I must switch media in our disaster lists of duelling recommendations yet again. I did manage to find that set by Bernhardt to read, however, and they were joyfully terrible, I hope someday I can see them on stage.

My sister is staring at me in shock from across town, I always rolled my eyes when she was in her musical theatre stage in middle school. (Different sister, not the redhead.)

Then again I rolled my eyes at everything at that point, it's difficult being nice when you're so far in the closet you can't even see the door. And look at me, over-sharing again. I don't.

This isn't something I do? But since that email you sent back thanking me, I have felt like I've known you forever, and can tell you anything. Is it because I don't have a face to put to the words, so I'm not worrying about what I look like to you? Is it just that such sincere and honest gratitude isn't something I've really seen before? Maybe you don't think people can just help just because, but I'm not sure I've ever seen someone just say thank you without a single caveat. You answered me with such grace, it made my heart ache.

I don't know. And here I am getting all philosophical, the joys of 2am confessions. I can't say I'm sorry though, because that wouldn't be true.

But I know next to nothing about you. And you did just compliment my curiosity, it's in the email chain, I could copy-paste it and prove my point, if I had to. (Never leave a paper trail if you don't want it to be used against you.)

Though I can make an educated guess, at the very least, that your long-suffering compatriot is Professor Fell? I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier, I knew he had a bunch of Marlowe in his collection. And his old email got routed to mine over the summer when I did a work-study with him and he didn't want to deal with any more of Dean Aldertree's questions.

Everyone else switched to his new extension when he got tenure. Except you. Providence does seem to be the answer here. I'm glad.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: the very thought makes me breathless attach: ruleswip4.docx attach: ChairmanMeowFavorites.docx

I am honored you trusted me, Alec. Is that short for Alexander, perhaps? Would you mind if I called you that? It seems to fit the poetic nature of this correspondence.

Ragnor and I have been friends for a very long time, even before we both ended up on opposite ends of campus. It is terribly tempting to go ask him for a description of his interns last summer, except for the fact that I'd be lucky if he remembered the color of your hair. He could probably recognize your writing style within three words, but asking someone else is not how this goes, is it?

You are giving me clandestine operation vibes again, darling. Paper trails. Who says things like that? Spies. In delightfully bad movies.

Oh, oh! Do you have a tuxedo with exploding cufflinks? I have always wanted to see such a thing.

And yes, I am avoiding your questions, and no, I am not entirely sure why.

Or I am, and it's vaguely embarrassing. I think I am afraid that as soon as you know my real name this will stop being some unexpected fairy tale I have landed in, and something will go wrong, and I'll never get another email from you, and that thought is more upsetting than it has any right to be. I trust you too, dramatically, inexplicably, and completely.

I have never wanted to delete anything as much as I want to delete that paragraph. But you sent me all your sincere 2am ramblings, so I must do the same.

You make me brave, my mysterious Alexander.

Our rules list is not so much rules as elaborate flirtation at this point, wouldn't you say? And we've made our way through books and plays and movies, so now have a list of the music I never admit to people I listen to when I'm home alone and dancing for the cat.

My name is Magnus, and I have no real family to speak of, so I am not at all sure what one means by a hedge but I must admit that I want to find out.

And also that I especially wish to see a tuxedo on you, which I am sure is entirely too forward of me and I am quite sure I have just scared you away and I have never been so nervous about clicking that damn send icon in my life.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: forget breathless, I think I've forgotten how to breathe entirely attach: music.docx

I don't think I have successfully flirted with anyone before in my entire life. I feel suspiciously like I might be having an attack of the vapors like the characters from an old romance novel.

Don't tell my sister I read old romance novels. Or that there are showtunes on my music list. She will never let me hear the end of it. And look at me, assuming you want to meet my sister. Did I mention breathing is not really a thing at the moment?

Your cat's name is Chairman Meow? That is the second-best thing I've heard in my life.

First is that this unexpected correspondence means as much to you as it does to me. Or maybe first is the idea of you calling me Alexander. No one does, never have, though I've had to repeatedly correct a few teachers over the years to keep it that way, but I like the idea of it coming from you. I like that very much.

To answer your sort-of question before I get to my actual question, because I am nervous enough I have started this email about five times already, law students talk about paper trails. Especially in their last year when they're trying desperately not to think too much about everything that could go wrong before graduation and how easy it is to fail the Bar.

And here we go. If you were brave I cannot be any less, can I?

It's not a tuxedo, but if you do want to meet the hedge (and me, hopefully more so) Clary's best friend Simon is a musician, and he has a gig this weekend at The Hunter's Moon, if you would like to come and find out...

I don't know, find out if this is a real off the computer screen as it is inside it, somewhere public where it'll be easy enough to make a strategic retreat if necessary.

Or, I think we're past easy retreats, but at least it'll be possible.

I hope we don't have to.

It will be an awful lot of the hedge though, if that's too much? We could try coffee or something first.

I mean, there's my brother and sister and step-sister and Simon and his girlfriend (who also works at the bookstore, we're a tangled disaster) and sometimes my friend Lydia because if I don't drag her out occasionally she's even more of a workaholic than I am. And it would be even worse if our cousin Aline was here, but she's visiting her girlfriend abroad.

They frequently are too much. Because they will, assuredly, every single one of them, make a comment on me inviting someone. Except maybe Lydia. She'll give you a look though. She's very good at those. So. Just. A warning? Hell, that paragraph looks terrifying and I know all of them already. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore, and if I had to talk instead of type I'm pretty sure I'd be stuttering. I kind of am, even here, aren't I?

I am 102% convinced I have just scared you away, but it's better to warn you than drop you in the middle of that. No one deserves that, and especially not someone I am very much looking forward to meeting.

And I really better hit send now or I'm going to give myself a heart-attack.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: breathing is overrated

I have, my entire life, always been the one who is too much for someone else. I think it only fair, at our first acquaintance, that you have the opportunity to be too much as well. I would be delighted to dive into the deep-end of whatever this is and start out by meeting your family. We've done everything else out of order, haven't we?

With the caveat that perhaps we meet outside rather than in the middle of your hedge? (Do they know you call them that? Can I call them that? That sounds delightful.) Just in case, as you said.

And to share note by note, and also so you can answer your delightful hedge's presumably nosy questions about who the dashing man you've invited along even is, I am finishing up the second year of my very first real professor job in the drama department.

Not that that is likely to be a surprise, considering Marlowe and Bernhardt.

Also the eyeliner tends to add to that conclusion for most people who have met me in person. I am so very much looking forward to adding you to that list. (Also I'm terrified. Is it alright to be terrified? Should I admit that? Probably not. Too late now!) What's your favorite color, Alexander? I think I shall need the fortitude of getting my nails done before I arrive.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: but I need to survive until Saturday

There's a bus-stop around the corner, on 5th? We can meet there at 8 on Saturday, and then decide if you're willing to come inside with me or not. (I have not ever called the family a hedge before I attempted to explain them to you, and most definitely not to their faces. I highly encourage you to do so, so that I can watch. Is that mean? That might be a little mean of me, I do apologize. Sort of.)

I don't think anyone's asked me my favorite color since I outgrew my moody teenage years and the only possible answer was black, with perhaps the occasional detour into grey. Would it be terribly out of line of me to admit that meeting you makes me think of the sunrise, and thus I am, at the moment, most especially fond of pink and gold?

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: if you keep saying things like that, I'm not going to survive either

I never knew heart-attacks were contagious, but oh I think you shared yours with me with that last line. You are painfully romantic, Alexander, I am in awe.

But now I desperately need a change of conversational topic or I will fidget myself into a disaster by Saturday night, that's two whole days.

Why law school, if I may be both bold and boring and ask the obvious and impertinent?

I shall answer your return question, why the theatre? before you even have to ask. Or the short version, anyways. It gave me a world better than the one I was living in when I was young, and then it was just so very pretty that I never wanted to leave. Especially when I realized how many other people need that escape as well, and I could help them find it.

That got a bit more serious than I intended. That does keep happening to me, as soon as I start a message to you. I have never failed so entirely at being a light and sparkling and charming personality before. You're remarkable.

From: [email protected] [Alec L.] To: [email protected] [M. Bane] subj: you have rendered me almost entirely speechless

I am not at all remarkable but the fact that you think so has kept me smiling all day. At least three people asked if I was all right, Lydia asked what his name is, whoever he is, (I have not told her yet, but I did re-invite her to Simon's gig, and I think she's definitely decided to come now), and I didn't even mind having to fix the same printer error four times tonight.

And you are easily the most captivating person I have ever (almost?) met.

Most of the time when people ask why law school it's easy enough to fob them off with a shrug, to mention that my father's a lawyer and my mother's a forensic accountant so I sort of just grew into it. Lightwood family tradition. Or something.

But my father's really the reason I almost didn't go to law school at all, and I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's also a bit of a long story and may quite well ruin the conversation and if I scared you off now I think I might not recover any time soon.

Which is my way of saying hello there terror, nice you're visiting me, too.

I suppose the short version would be that, after Jace (the adopted brother) and my parents' truly disastrous divorce, I'd seen too many cases of terrible situations where no one had a real advocate. So I'm going into family law.

Hopefully. Assuming I don't have a panic attack and fail the Bar. Which is honestly what every other law student I know thinks is going to happen and clearly we can't all be that disastrous, but it's hard to keep that in mind some days.

Most days.

I can tell you the long story, if you'd like, but I have to admit I rather desperately want to kiss you before I say something too depressing and you no longer want to kiss me back. (And don't think I didn't notice you doing the exact same thing with your long story.)

And the 2am inability to think before I type is back. I did not miss you.

I am going to hit send now before I chicken out or die of mortification.

From: [email protected] [M. Bane] To: [email protected] [Alec L] subj: asdfjklgh (how's that for speechless?)

I may have just lost a half-an-hour staring blankly at my screen imagining Alexander kisses so. Priorites agreed upon! Until tonight it is.

#malec #malec fic #shadowhunters #alec lightwood #magnus bane #epistolary #modern email epistolary even #jilly writes #my sh fic #modern au #college au #i am for you

[goddamnitlady]

Me @ Me: ....How EXPENSIVE is Orochimaru’s coat in this AU?

Self-indulgent writing. This is a narrative description of my thought process while writing a scene and getting stuck on one detail that is on great influence on the world-building. When I am in the zone, I think fast. So to make sense of in a fun narrative format, I broke the process up into different voices with a different name-titles. This cost me an hour to write down in full length, so future-me to can easily read it back and smile.

WAR

Writer me: How EXPENSIVE is Orochimaru’s coat in this university professor AU roleplay? I’ll say €400. Student me: That’s too much. No one walks around in a €400 coat. What if a bird poos on you, or it gets scratched! Diva me: ...then you’ll be glad you’re wearing a coat. Please, darling. Make it haute couture. Roleplayer me: Excuse me, can I say something? 

Writer me: Girls! Attention! I need an answer. How much? €1400 then? I don’t know these prices. Cosplayer me: Neither do I.    ....I just can guess better than most people how it’s made. I could probably made a C-class rip-off lookalike. 

Writer me: YOU’RE A COSPLAYER. Come help me! How’s €2400 for a coat? Is that reasonable? Diva me: Haute Coutre means, high sewing. Literally the best designers, seamstesses and materials in the play, as well as enough time. Daywear like jackets can start at $10 thousand dollar. But gowns with embroidery and a lot of material can go up to 800-thousand hours. Why do I know this shit. Student me: Wtf how do those people make money. Roleplayer me:  ....Hey..... Diva me: They don’t. It’s one big promotional event to sell perfume and lipstick. Actresses are asked to wear a dress to a red carpet event, for the promotion of a brand, that’s all.  Writer me:  Cool stuff, not interested. How much does Orochimaru’s coat cost? Student me: How much can a professor pay? lmao. Writer me: He also dabbles in human experimentation, shush. I’ve decided he’s got money but I don’t know yet if it’s from legal corporate or black market transactions. Student me: Fair. Writer me: Only governments and state-backed individuals can acquire so much capital and expertise to create reliable environments for experimentation. Diva me: I wonder how much a coat would cost that has all te specks. 1) Comfort 2) stylish 3) laboratory-proof and 4)bulletproof 5)with ingrained pockets for wires and mechanics. Cosplayer me: I am glad you asked! WELL. If we go for a long-term sturdy material because let’s be honest, Orochimaru hardly changes his wardrobe. We would use long strips of supple high-quality leather. 4 meters, waterproof. It would then have an inside of labcoat-fabric. The choice for this lining is to protect the skin, even if spilled acid burns through the outer layer. There ought to be little seams as possible so no acid can come through. Tightly sewn. Writer me: Bulletproof? Student me: That’s nonsense. Then when he visits people the coat rack will topple over and create an awkward social situation. Writer me: Would be nice for surviving drive-by shootings though. Student me: Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re a writer, or a hypothetical murderer who puts it in narrative form. Writer me: Stop teasing. Cosplayer, continue! Cosplayer me: What will block bullets? A flack jacket, thin plates of metal, or chainmail? I don’t know this but I’ll go with thin metal plates so it’s still nice to move in. At most, the plates will change the trajectory of the bullet. I know nothing about guns don’t trust me. Cosplay me: For sewing, I am tempted to adhere the metal to the leather outside of the coat, because leather is sturdy. But that won’t be pretty because the outside of the coat will show bulky outlines. So I’m going for a third layer inside the coat, that will hold the metal plates in place, on the big parts of the body. Chest, area and especially the high collar. 

Roleplayer me: Hey... I want to say something?

Cosplayer me: Each plate would need its own pocket or hook. There ought to be come overlapping. Strips of 10 cm? I should consider the bending of the coat, and seating. Comfort is key. OH HEY actual bulletproof suits exist for people in the diamond industry who go to countries with unrest. That thing has eight layers of white white material between the outer layer and the inner lining. (No price on the website.) OK let’s go with that. Plus the 100 hours minimum that I would put into measuring and cutting and sewing. Thus my verdict is... Cosplayer me: ...-I have no idea how much it costs. 

Diva me: Come on. Boooo.  Writer me: SHUSH EVERYONE. I’m trying to say something!

Diva me: Did you just raise your voice at me?   Roleplayer me: Shush. I am talking! How about for ONCE he ISN’T a creep, but a normal professor who looks pretty and has an odd interest in topic X because he is worried about the world? 

Writer me:  ................................equally valid.

Roleplayer me: Can we go for ‘undecided’? Let’s see what the RP brings? Writer me: Okay, yes, sounds good. I will just write ‘expensive coat.’ All other versions of me:  Uuuugh. Writer me: I want him to be researching it because he has a bionic hand covered by synthetic human tissue, though. Roleplayer me: ....a NORMAL professor. 

Writer me: But I- Roleplayer me: Look at him! Look! Sasuke has this great odd effect on him that he can’t explain yet. That should be his greatest issue. And modelling. And books. Get your own AU. Gee.

Writer me: A new AU. One where Orochimaru made/makes himself immortal by using AI robotic technology alongside with still having human tissue. Yes, yes. So in a later stadium he can upload his mind to computers. (I should watch FF7:DoC) He should be capable of taking over any human as vessel. 

Student me: I hate it when she does the villain laugh. Diva me: It gives me the chills. Cosplayer me: I don’t know... I kinda like it.

#lady vs literature #ooc #lady look