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hereforhalstead · 3 years

Text

Tell me that when you’re sober

*Gif not mine, credits to the owner*

• Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader 18+

• Requested: Yes:

“I fucking love you”

“Hang up and tell me when you’re sober”

• Warnings: Swearing - PURE FLUFF

• Summary: Jay isn’t happy with you bringing work home but leads to a confession he’s wanted to tell you for a long time.

• Words: 4215

• A/N :I slightly adapted this to fit it better and intended for this to be a short fluff but 4000 words later.. here we are😅Thanks so much for your request and hope you enjoy!

You groan and throw your pen down onto the table, this case was really getting the best of you and frustrating you to no end. You look up at the time to see ‘10.30’ flashing in the green light back at you. You run your fingers through your hair which was now borderline greasy with how much you had been absentmindedly running your hands through it as you’re deep in thought. Eyes burning from how much you had been straining them and a slight blister on your finger with how hard you’d been holding the pen as you cross examine the notes intently.

You didn’t realise how quiet the apartment was, the faintest noise from your neighbours TV and the cars rushing past on the street below was all you could make out. This wasn’t like you, you basked in the liveliness and thrived in busy environments, the ones where you barely have time to think so therefore don’t spend much time on the outcome. You picked the pen back up to click it on the papers that were spread out in a manic like fashion in front of you, it made sense to you but if someone else was to see they’d think you’d just picked up the lot and thrown them down in a huff.

You scan over the CCTV stills and traffic cam screenshots, as if you hadn’t been staring at them for god knows how many hours and by a much needed miracle something was going to jump out at you and you’d have your lightbulb moment. Instead, you’re greeted with the same dead end paths and pointless thoughts you’d been fighting relentlessly.

You hear the keys turn in the lock and normally you’d be out of your seat and over to him in a heartbeat, your feet hitting the floor as if you were a kid at Christmas on your way to see what Santa left under the tree but today wasn’t that kind of day. You tried to tell yourself it was just because you were tired and it wasn’t that you didn’t want to admit you’d had another night of little success after being warned about bringing the work home by Jay several times. He always loved to prove a point and you weren’t about to let him get another one over on you, you couldn’t handle those eyes boring down on you as he stands behind you to examine you work, even if it meant lying to him.

You jolt in your seat as you feel him rest his hands on your shoulders before dropping a kiss to the top of your head “why are you still working? How many times have I told you..” he trails off but you’re quick to cut him off with your best ‘I’m fine’ smile “Jay, I’m finally getting somewhere” you falsely admit and feel the pit of guilt instantly form in your stomach as his eyes light up, he probes his thumbs into your skin in a light massage “proud of you” he softly confesses as he continues kneeding your skin.

If you weren’t so determined to get this case tied up this easily would’ve lead somewhere else but you had your focused mind at work and nothing was going to change that. He remains standing over you as you scribble pointless notes onto your notepad, highlighting the odd name and photo as you go as if to convey you had some trail of thought but really you were just buying yourself time until he left your side.

A few minutes go by but to you it feels like hours, you hate what you’ve become in that you find yourself dreading seeing Jay when you bring your work home. Knowing he was right in what he says and that he only says it because he cares but you always wanted to prove yourself and especially to him. He managed to get you into Voight’s good books after pissing him off one too many times, you had a back bone and even though most of the time this was an admiral quality it sometimes backfired.

You and Voight disagreed regularly but you had now learnt how and when to bite your tongue for the best result in cases but there were times you just couldn’t. After coming to blows and being sent to ‘get some air and cool off’ Jay was quick to plead with Voight for your job back and luckily it worked and you were back in the department the next morning. This lead to you now feeling this internal debt had to be paid to your boyfriend to prove you deserved your place and it was worth him sticking his neck on the line.

The pair of you became increasingly serious, starting as partners with the occasional flirty comment or glance soon lead to the regular sting of jealousy or worry which was now the feeling of emptiness when you weren’t together. Some may say you moved on fast, having only been together just under a year and already basically living together. However, due to the uncertainty of your job you decided to not hesitate and wait for when everyone else said it was right and do what felt right for the pair of you. Even if this did mean earning raised brows from Jay when he comes home from a late night to see you hunched over a stack of paperwork that you’d bought home, god knows how many times you’d seen him do it but for some reason it was a different ball game when it came to you.

It pulled at your heart how caring he was, always keeping an eye out for you and sometimes even more for you than himself. As much as there’s endless amounts of perks for dating your partner it sure did come with its consequences and you learnt them faster than you were expecting. Jay throwing himself into danger because it meant protecting you, you leading on suspects on undercover missions to try and get them to confess to which Jay hated and heated debates on the best way to handle a case were just a handful to name a few.

But, despite all of those you truly wouldn’t have it any other way, as you see it as spending as much time with him as possible and being grateful to have him beside you and always in your corner no matter how he feels, he will always back and argue for you.

After Jay strolls into the bedroom to change into some comfier clothes you start to fold some of the papers to create a bit more space, the thought of waking up to this mess wasn’t the ideal situation as you’d find yourself working on them at the crack of dawn and hardly in the right frame of mind to work. That was Jay’s one rule that he never budged on ‘put it all away before you go to bed’, he had hammered this into your head hundreds of times that it became natural for you at this point.

Neatly shuffling the papers to stack them in a pile on the side, helped you to resist the temptation to take a peak at the late or early hours when you should be asleep. He caught you one time glancing at an open file at the dead of night and he was not happy to say the least so knew he had to put his foot down. He knew you were like him and would work until a case was done but unlike him, you rarely knew when to stop.

He would know when his vision starts to loose focus from staring at a screen for too long or he gets a headache from the scrunch between his brows as he examines some notes that it was time to call it a day whereas you, would pop a few painkillers and carry on.

You hear Jay’s phone ring from the other room, not really taking much notice as you continue to fold the papers and shuffle them in a pile but can’t ignore when he comes bounding out of the room over to you “Baby, Adam and Kim are down at Molly’s. You wanna go?” He asks and normally you struggle to turn down such an invite but tonight you just weren’t feeling it and it’s as if you not replying instantly already told Jay you didn’t want to go as his face falls “let me call you back” he mumbles into the phone before shoving it into his back pocket.

He continues in his strides over to you and crouches down in front of you, taking your hand in his as he places a light kiss to your palm “please don’t tell me you’re going to sit here and work and make me go to Molly’s alone?” He pleads, eyes in puppy dog form as by now he knows the best way to get to you.

You run your hand over his disheveled hair as he leans into your touch “I think I’m just gonna have a shower and head to bed” you lie through your teeth, knowing full well the second he steps out the door you’ll be back knee deep in your files with the added extra of knowing you won’t be interrupted by your concerned boyfriend.

He scans your face with a concerned look on his own, lightly running his thumb over your knuckles as he sighs “you promise me you’re not going to carry on working and that you’ll give yourself an early night?” He rightfully asks, you nod in response thinking to yourself that you can’t verbally promise as you were one to never break promises and especially when it came to Jay.

He reaches up to plant his lips on yours, lingering them for a few seconds before standing tall in front of you “give me a call if you want me come home”. He reaches to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear and you instantly regret not allowing yourself for be bundled into his arms as you crawl into his lap for the night but you knew you weren’t nearly as done with the case as you’d like and the only way you could continue was if he wasn’t there.

He heads into the kitchen to grab the coat he left on the counter but is back at your side within seconds, placing a glass of water on the table in alongside another kiss being left on the top of your head “make sure you drink that please baby” his voice slightly elevates in concern and you can’t contain the smile that spreads on your face at his worry for you.

“have a good time” you call out to him as he heads for the door “text me when you’re in bed and I want proof!” He yells over his shoulder and without looking you can see the smirk engraved onto his face “get out Halstead” you tease, earning a wink from your boyfriend as he exits the apartment to leave you again in total silence.

You pick up the glass of water he left and take a sip, struggling to think of the last time you hydrated yourself and thankful he knows when to think of these things for you. You lean back in your chair and cross your legs beneath you, slight hunch in your back from the pain of being in the chair for so long and now wishing you were still receiving the massage from Jay that you desperately craved. You shake your head to clear the the thoughts and pour yourself back into the notes. Re reading the interview script over and over again, eventually reaching for your phone to find the recording you’d sent yourself before you left the district to be able to listen back at home.

You chew the inside of your cheek at the sight of your lock screen, a photo you’d taken of Jay on vacation just after the pair of you became an item. His back was towards you and he didn’t even realise you snapped the photo of him looking out from the balcony window at the gorgeous beach front below, reminding yourself that everything you do is for him. As cringy as it sounds, you longed for his approval and praise as he was always so vocal about it, wrapping you in his arms after you finish a case report, sitting you between his legs as you work late on a report with the occasional kiss to your shoulder to remind you her was there or the way he just knows how’s to give you that look that says ‘you’ve got this’ was what kept you going.

You click play on the recording and sink back into your chair as it plays, leaning your notepad on your legs as you listen along. Laughing to yourself when Jay looses his temper or Voight makes a snarky comment to which they both laugh to made the listening all that much easier as it seemed to drag on for hours.

You checked the length of the audio on your phone and the combined clips had only been playing for just over an hour. With the faffing around when Jay came home and the breaks you took to replay certain parts, the time had soon passed. The clock now beaming down on you with the time flashing ‘12.45am’ made you toss your head back in frustration. You’d been round and round in circles, still getting no where and conscious of the fact Jay would be home soon.

You certainly didn’t want him to find you like this as you’d never hear the end of it, you have a stern word with yourself and play back Jay’s warning of packing everything away as you finally close the files you’d been staring at for far too long. You push them to one side and prop your head on your elbows on the the table, you finish the glass of water that had been sat at your side that was truly collecting dust at this point due to you forgetting about it. You glance down at your phone to see a text from Jay flash up on the screen

‘You in bed yet baby? Not seen any proof..’

You roll your eyes as you just know he’s been impatiently sat there waiting to hear from you ever since he left just a few hours earlier. You stare at the screen to debate whether it’s best to ignore it and pretend you’re already asleep or to lie to him again for the second time that night. You’re soon interrupted as his name lights up the screen, his toothy grin staring back at you from the contact photo he had set for himself after a night out reminding you how ‘you always make me smile so you deserve to see it when I call you’.

You hesitate to pick up but know he won’t stop until you answer, after having a few drinks the last thing you want is for him to bound home to you in a mood about how you didn’t answer his call. You sigh and slide the button to answer the call and can barely contain your laughter as you hear his drunken slurs on the other end of the line

‘You haven’t answered me you know?’ he moans, annoyance in his tone but also sounding like a child who hasn’t got their own way at the same time. You laugh to yourself but careful to not let him hear as this wouldn’t go down well “ was asleep” you hang your head in shame as you yet again lie.

‘Why are you lying to me? You were working weren’t you?’ He accuses and you’re stumped on how to reply, even without being with you he knows you better than anyone to which you always seem to forget. He huffs on the other end of the line after he doesn’t get a response, knowing he has you cornered. ‘Y/N please, just get to bed and I’ll be home shortly’.

“I’m just packing it away Jay, I only had a few more bits I wanted to do. I promise” you nibble on your fingertips in slight nervousness as he continues to groan down the phone.

‘What, like how you promised me you were gonna give yourself an early night you mean?’ He questions but you’re quick to reply “well actually, I never promised I just nodded” you chuckle to yourself, feeling clever with your response but Jay isn’t happy.

“Y/N I’m just looking out for you, I care about you too much to see you draining yourself over these things” he begins and before you can get a breath in he carries on his drunken rambles “I love you too fucking much to watch you not look after yourself, as much as I love to be the one who takes care of you I can’t be there all the time so I need to know you can put yourself first baby” you’re silent after his admission, unsure if he’s even aware of what he’s just spilled out

“Do you know what you just said?” You tease, trying to lighten the subject but the sigh on the other end tells you he was still in a mood.

“Yes Y/N, I said I love you too fucking much to watch you destroy yourself” he expresses in outrage but you were in too much of a shock to think of a clever reply “hang up and tell me that when you’re sober Jay”.

“I’ll be home soon” he cuts the conversation short before ending the call, you take a moment before placing your phone back on the table and you try to comprehend what just happened. He said I love you.

Fair enough it wasn’t in the way you had envisioned, him confessing his love for you as you lay wrapped within his arms or him accidentally spilling his admiration during a teasing session you often had but he still said it. Whether he meant or it was just a drunk slip up was another question. You couldn’t let yourself say it back in case he woke up tomorrow and didn’t remember, it would pain you to let the last piece of your guard down for him to take it all back the next morning and the whole thing becomes a distant memory.

You finish tidying away the papers, patting yourself on the back for the great job you’d done of making it look like you hadn’t spent hours on end sat at that table, it now gleaming the exact way it did this morning. You place the glass back onto the kitchen counter and trudge into the bedroom, thudding down onto the bed as you lay staring at the ceiling. Wrapping yourself in the comforter and attempting to close your eyes but nothing was enough to push down that anxious feeling in your stomach. This isn’t how you should be feeling after your boyfriend says I love you for the first time and even though you’d both wanted to say it for a while it still didn’t seem real. You didn’t deserve him, all the things he does for you and the way he takes care of you didn’t seem feasible in your mind that it would happen to someone like you.

Moments pass and you hear the front door shut, his attempts to be quiet made you laugh into the pillow as you hear him lightly walk across the hardwood floor. Bumping into the doorframe as he enters, grateful the comforter covering your face to avoid him seeing your amusement of his drunken self trying to be quiet and navigate his way to the bed. You stay laying on your side, hand tucked under the pillow beneath your head and the other resting on your stomach. You hear his belt unbuckle and watch hit the beside table as he gets himself undressed, tempted to turn over and help him but knowing he would still moan at you for being awake no matter what state he was in.

You force your eyes closed, keeping your head slightly buried into the pillow as you feel the bed dip beside you. Within seconds you feel the all too familiar comfort of his arm latching around you, pulling you into him in one swift motion as he tucks his head into the nape of your neck. Your heart flutters as you feel him place a kiss to your back before further pulling you into him, any chance of a gap between the pair of you was well and truly diminished.

You stay facing away from him, now far too comfortable to move and knowing he will be asleep within seconds, as long as he was by your side and you were wrapped tightly within the safety of his grasp he would sleep anywhere. You soon feel the light puffs of air to your skin as he falls into a sleep, the occasional nudge into your back as he gets himself comfortable but after a while he lays still to signal he was finally asleep.

You lay there trying to ignore your thoughts, cursing yourself for being such an over thinker as the one who had sent you into this spiral now laid passed out beside you, unbeknownst to the panic he set off inside you as he falls deeper into his slumber. You run your hand up and down his arm to sooth yourself to sleep, thinking to yourself of how you’re going to forget what happened and tomorrow will be a new day.

***

You awake to the sunlight peering through the window, annoyed at yourself for not closing the blinds before you went to bed as the rays shine in your eyes. You turn in Jay’s grasp and jolt in his arms as you’re met with him softly smiling back at you “morning” he groans, his normal groggy morning voice now made more intense with the slight hangover he would soon be facing. You drop your head to lay on his chest, pressing your lips to his skin as he runs his fingertips up and down your spine and resting his head on top of yours as you lay in a comfortable silence. “Good night?” You break the air, knowing he certainly wasn’t in the mood to be talkative but if you didn’t have some form of interaction from him you’d go insane.

“Wasn’t the same without my girl” he tightens his grip on your waist, a soft pinch of your skin as he teases “but she was at home working when she promised me she wouldn’t, clearly choosing work over her boyfriend” he huffs into the top of your head as you bury yourself further into his chest.

“don’t go there” you warn as he chuckles in response “choosing to look at old case notes than spending time with your boyfriend, that’s a tough one” he continues to ramble, you detach yourself from him and turn to face him with stern look “I said don’t go there”you warn but he pouts his bottom lip at you as he raises his brow. You narrow your eyes at him and he cracks his serious exterior, bringing his hand to the back of your head as he brings it to him to connect his lips to your temple “It’s a good job I love you” he mumbles into your skin, pressing his lips onto yours for a brief second before allowing himself to pull back and admire your expression of shock.

“You remembered?” You question, still nervous he wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about. “Of course I remember, you think I’d forget when I first tell my girlfriend I love her?” He tilts his head as he asks, you lean your head down onto him as he clears his throat “would help me if you said it back though, bit embarrassing if I’m the only one to say it” he jokes, grin encompassing his morning glow as he gloats “I love you too idiot” you roll your eyes at him, bringing your lips onto his for a chaste kiss. He brings his hand up your back and tousles it into your hair, keeping you in place as your lips intertwine before pulling back and running his eyes over the happiness beaming from your face “you have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say that”.

inbox and requests open🥰

#jay halstead x reader #one chicago #chicago pd #chicago pd imagine #jay halstead drabble #jay halstead imagine #jay halstead smut #jay halstead #one chicago x reader #jay halstead x you

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katytheinspiredworkaholic · 3 years

Note

✏, hotchreid, first kiss 🥺

You don’t just get a blurb honey, you get the whole damn night. I’ll eventually start writing blurbs and not full-length oneshots for these asks, but Cee (my love my family my favorite always) is who got me back into CM in the first place so yours was always going to be the long, fleshed out version. I love you so my dear.

((P.S. Yes I’m still working on the 200follower asks xD I’m so sorry life got in the way and I discovered hcs but I’m being responsible and finishing all of these now I promise!!!))

Personal plot bunny: Hotch invites Reid over to help with a research paper/with Jack and Reid gets to see his boss all domestic and soft, and in turn Spencer just kind of fits in his home seamlessly and Hotch kisses him as he leaves.

Word Count: 3107

It’s a perfectly ordinary day in late November when Hotch opens his apartment door to Reid standing there in the clothes he’d worn to work earlier that day. Satchel over his shoulder, wrapped in jacket and scarf, and giving him a small quirk of a smile in greeting -- still very obviously thrown off kilter that Hotch had invited him over in the first place.

When Reid said he’d lend him a hand on his most recent research paper, the younger agent had probably expected them to do it at the office. Interviews and research were all a big part of having a Behavioral Science subunit at the FBI, and published papers were a requirement from all BAU members to aid in this endeavor. Every team had to keep a steady output of resources and research studies going just to keep funding for the department afloat. He may be Unit Chief, but Hotch was no exception to these requirements, even with as much work as he has to put in on the regular.

Usually, he can do his research and piece together papers in between his daily paperwork. But this week Jess is sick with a stomach flu, and Jack hadn’t gotten to spend time with Hotch in what feels like a month. So the easiest solution was obviously to invite Reid to have dinner with them at his home, entertain him while he read over the drafted paper and helped Hotch out.

Obviously.

The only reasonable option, really.

“Thanks for coming, Reid,” Hotch greets back with a softened expression as he looks him up and down. “Did you even go home first?” The very first thing Hotch always does is change out of his suit when he gets home, shedding that armour as best he can to switch mindsets between Agent Hotchner of the FBI, and Aaron Hotchner the ever-stressed-out single dad. That evening donning worn jeans and a heather grey Henley to better accommodate himself within the space.

“Oh -- no, I didn’t see much point,” Reid shrugs, then motioning to his satchel which is now filled with books that weren’t there when he’d left the bull pen a couple hours before. “I stopped by the law library in Georgetown and found a few more references, just in case you were using the Favero citations instead of Weston and I don’t have all of those read yet -- or I didn’t. I do now. But I still brought them--”

Hotch smiles, a real smile -- small as it is, but no less fond of Reid going out of his way to help him. But before he can thank him again Jack’s socked feet come thundering down the hall behind him.

“Dr. Spencer! Dr. Spencer! Dr. Spencer!” And he’s slipping past Hotch, smooth and fluid as water, attaching himself to Reid’s legs and waist in a hug with a big smile that looks so much like Aaron’s own. When he’d been younger, only about three or four years old, Jack had been deathly scared of Doctor’s visits. It had been Reid’s idea to have Jack start calling him ‘Dr. Spencer’ to help alleviate some of that fear, associating the moniker with his non-threatening and familiar face. Reid had been much younger then, too, and that had helped the tactic work like a charm. Haley had been over the moon when his reverse psychology worked out so well.

“Jack! Woah, you got taller!” Reid’s whole demeanor changes. A little more animated, more comfortable, even -- and Hotch could remember a time when Reid hadn’t even wanted to hold a child for fear of the interaction. Now, he was always the first to talk to one if JJ didn’t beat him to it. “How’ve you been?” “Good!” Jack says excitedly, barreling over the small talk in ways only children can. “Dad says you’re going to help him with his homework, can you help me with mine too?!”

Reid smiles even wider and chances a glance at Hotch that he feels in his chest. “You bet, I love helping with homework.”

Jack just scrunches his nose up at him. “Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

“Homework isn’t fun.”

“Well, maybe you’ve been doing it wrong.”

“Let’s let Dr. Reid in from the hallway,” Hotch interrupts with a laugh, herding his son and the younger agent inside. “Jack, go get your homework and you can do it at the table,” Hotch says as he takes Reid’s coat and watches him kick off his shoes by the door. Mismatched socks prominent against the hardwood floors. Making himself at home, shedding some of the layers and getting comfortable in the space much like Aaron does every day after work. “Hope you like spaghetti. It won’t be as good as Rossi’s.”

“Who doesn’t love spaghetti,” Spencer grins with a soft laugh. “Rossi’s is almost too fancy for me, anyway.”

“A man of simple tastes,” Hotch teases him.

“I’m easily impressed.”

“Lucky me.”

It slips out, the low, comfortable banter, and Reid’s eyes are alight and Aaron feels himself smiling enough his dimples show, and he leads the way to the kitchen where dinner is already in the works on the stove. Filling the small condo with the smell of tomato sauce and garlic.

Jack and Reid set up at the kitchen bartop where they can watch Hotch finish cooking and stay within reach of conversation. It doesn’t take long for Hotch to finish making dinner, or for Jack to finish his homework spurred on by Reid’s strange enthusiasm for math problems. With how much time they spend talking about psychology and sociology (and sometimes even philosophy) Hotch always forgets one of Reid’s Ph.D.’s is in mathematics.

“Numbers just make sense,” he explains, when Hotch brings it up while drizzling olive oil on the drained pasta on the stove. “There’s always a right answer and the rest are wrong. It’s comforting, to an extent, but predictable -- that’s why I shifted focus from sciences to humanities. There’s no right or wrong answers in philosophy, it’s all argumentative. Always evolving. I prefer that, it’s no fun having all the answers.”

And coming from someone who does always have all the right answers, that must mean something profound to the younger man. One conversation outside the walls of the BAU and Hotch already feels like he understands Reid more than he has in a long time.

Dinner runs so smoothly it’s as if Reid is always there for it. Jack even finishes all of his food and helps with the dishes before Hotch has to ask him to. Making the two men exchange a glance and Hotch ask, “You charge by the hour?” and Reid laughs into his water glass in reply. They end up talking a bit about the paper Hotch has been working on, along with about a dozen other things Reid launches into in side tangents -- from the books he’d read during his brief visit to Georgetown that afternoon, to his most recent philosophical debate he had with his doctoral advisor about his thesis paper he’ll have to submit at the end of next month.

“Do you need time to piece it together? I didn’t know you were that close to your next Ph.D.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Reid waves him off. “I just need a weekend where we are actually in town and not on a case, and I’ll get it finished.”

“I’ve been working on this paper for the past six months,” Hotch all but balks in disbelief. “How can you write a Ph.D. dissertation in a weekend?”

“Well, I’m not the Unit Chief or a single parent,” Reid points out with a gentle grin, and Hotch feels one pulling at his own lips as well. “But it’s mostly written anyway, just all up here.” He points to his head, and Hotch bets he could recite the paper verbatim with what he writes up when he has the time.

“You could always write it on the jet,” Hotch says.

“I do,” Reid smirks, and Hotch can’t help but roll his eyes. “In my head, someone is usually taking up the table with a headstart on paperwork.”

“I think they can be talked into relinquishing some table top space,” Hotch says, until Reid gives him a look. “Oh, you mean me?”

“You spread out everything to keep it organized in piles.”

“I’d share with you.”

“You told Rossi to use the couch last week when he wanted to answer emails,” Reid says with a barely contained laugh.

“Yeah, well, he’s not you,” Hotch admits before he can take it back, and Reid almost answers -- mouth open and everything -- when Jack comes back and is all but begging ‘Dr. Spencer’ to help him with his science fair project he hadn’t even decided on.

The rest of the evening ends up with the three holed up in Hotch’s office, Reid surrounded by Law books and reading material he hasn’t gotten to sift through before, Hotch with his drafted paper printed out for Reid’s ease of access, and Jack with his science textbook and a notebook already talking Reid’s ear off about a science project for the spring.

But once the time starts to tip into the later hours of the night, Hotch tells Jack to get ready for bed and say goodnight to Dr. Reid.

“Goodnight, Dr. Spencer. Thanks for your help,” Jack says politely, ingrained in him by his father and Reid smiles a little too bright and soft at the same time at how sweet it is he tries to be good for company.

“You know, Jack, you can just call me Spencer if you’d like,” he says, knowing that the older boy has already outgrown his fear of the doctor and the reverse psychology is no longer needed.

Jack looks a little confused for a moment. “Dad doesn’t.”

“Well, your dad can, too -- if he wants,” Reid says, looking to Hotch and they share a look he once again can feel in his chest. Watching the whole interaction with a carefully guarded expression, but it melts under Reid’s glance and he isn’t quite sure what is there anymore. But whatever it is, it makes Reid smile softly at him.

“Okay, goodnight Spencer,” Jack interrupts their moment, and hugs Reid around the neck from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. It jostles the younger man, and Hotch smiles wide and ducks his head down to hide it. But Reid hugs Hotch’s son back, and tells him goodnight, as well. “You’ll come back, right?”

“Of course, I’d love to,” Reid tells him, and -- satisfied -- Jack goes off to brush his teeth, leaving the two in a lull of heavy silence. “Sorry, I think I just invited myself over, some time.”

“You’re welcome anytime.” And he means that, knows Reid knows that as he looks at him a little more soundly than before. “Not just for work.” If that needed to be said.

And if Reid’s face flushes a little darker in the low lighting, Hotch doesn’t mention. No matter how much he can’t seem to look away.

Reid looks over his entire paper while Hotch tucks Jack into bed, and is already making notes on it at his desk when the man returns. The next hour rolls into two, and Hotch drags another chair in from the kitchen so they can share his desk and work through bullet points on the paper but… it was pretty much done, from the start. Even Reid’s edits didn’t take them long. After a while they dissolve into just talking, discussions and anecdotes and sitting maybe a little too close and laughing so much and so loud sometimes they have to quiet themselves so they don’t wake Jack down the hall.

It’s almost 10:30 by the time they resurface from each other, before Hotch realizes Reid probably needs to go home because they both have to be at work bright and early. But this was… this was the best night he’s had in a long, long time, and he wants to do it again. Soon. More than soon. More than once. He thinks about all of this as he follows Reid to the front door and helps him gather the rest of his things.

“We should do this again, sometime,” Hotch mentions, hands in his pockets and trying to be more cool about this than he feels.

“I’d like that, I had a lot of fun tonight,” Reid answers, standing up from tying his shoes and giving him that bright, wide smile he doesn’t always feel comfortable enough to allow. It never fails to stall Hotch in his tracks, staring a little too long at his mouth than he should be.

“What if, next time, it’s just us? And no Jack?” he continues, elaboration just in case Reid doesn’t grasp what he’s asking. Reid is watching him with this look as if he’s unsure he heard correctly, and Hotch is nothing if not patient.

“I’d… I’d be okay with that,” Reid answers, slowly as he weighs some unseen options and gauges Hotch’s facial expressions to the most minute detail.

“Good. How about Saturday?”

He can see the moment it all clicks into place.

“...Are you asking me on a date?” Reid asks, a little winded.

“If that’s alright with you,” Hotch says with a half smile. Once again sounding more confident than he should in the face of how Reid’s eyes start to dart around and he licks his lips nervously.

“I don’t know how -- how good I am with dates.” There’s a story behind that, and Hotch wants to know it, but he does his best to press Reid gently. Because… he’s been holding off asking the younger man for a long time, now, but after tonight he gets the feeling that he might not have needed to be so hesitant, after all.

“Oh?”

“Just -- the ritual of it all always throws me off. Dressing up and going out, and making conversation over dinner while trying to eat and maintain the other’s attention, and then keeping it all going if you manage to do that I just don’t always do so well one-on-one and --”

“Reid.” He pauses, then -- “Spencer.” And that stalls his stream of thought to words, catching Spencer’s attention and snagging it in the best way. “...we just did all of that. And it was great.” Hotch knows his own expression has softened around the edges over the course of the night, smiles easier to hold, eyes more expressive, and Spencer takes in every change and nuance with a well-practice eye and is… very obviously stunned by what he finds. “So -- I’d like to do it again. Saturday?”

Shocked, eyes a little wide, breath lost to the wind, Spencer waits a beat too long to answer. Enough to make Hotch nervous, before he answers in a sound that could have been a whisper if it had been quieter. A slight crack to it that betrays his emotion.

“Okay.”

Hotch gets a turn to be stunned, because he thought this had been about to take a very different turn. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“--Okay.”

Intelligent men that they were, that was the extent of the conversation, and then Reid is smiling that bright, sunshine laced smile and Hotch is trying to contain his own and -- Reid still needs to go home. So, biting his lip, Reid turns as if to leave -- is just about out the door when he stops and turns back so quick he almost runs into Hotch on the threshold.

“So… technically, that means this was our first date, then. Right?” he looks so goddamn hopeful, and like he has something further to add, that Hotch smiles outright and this time doesn’t bother hiding it.

“Technically, yes.” He supposes it was. And it really had been… a great night. Not a bad first date, at all.

Reid takes far too long trying to string together words after that. Keeps looking to Hotch then away to gather his thoughts, then back again as if in search of something; and it’s after about the third time that Hotch realizes what he’s getting at. What he’s trying to find a way to ask.

It hits him so silent and hard it about knocks the wind out of him.

Oh.

He can do that.

Hotch steps closer, about the same time Spencer opens his mouth like he’s finally figured out the right combination of words within the range of the English language to form a coherent sentence, and they all die on his tongue the moment Hotch guides him back with a hand on his hip. He’s done it before, gentle leading when Reid strays the wrong way or needs to be shifted in a crowded room on cases, and this time is just as easy and no different.

Except this time, Hotch isn’t maneuvering them to get past him. This time, he presses Spencer’s spine to the doorframe and leans in to capture his lips with his own. Right there, in the open doorway.

Hotch kisses him, and it’s perfect.

The gentle slide of lips is over before either know it, lasts longer than his racing heart can measure, and before Hotch can decide his next move Spencer tilts in closer and kisses him back, slow and methodical and Hotch feels that. Feels it the way he’s felt every moment they had and shared the whole night. His free hand finds that sharp jaw framed in messy curls getting longer all over again, and Spencer doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands beyond grasp at Hotch’s shirt at his sides and then --

Then Hotch pulls back enough that he can nudge his nose against Spencer’s carefully, a punctuation that ends the kiss soft and apologetic. Silently says that’s all they can do tonight. That there’s more, awaiting them, but that…

That had been one hell of a good first kiss.

“See you in the morning, Spencer.”

For once, Dr. Spencer Reid is speechless in an entirely new way, and he merely nods with lips still parted and a little darker from the kiss. From kissing him, and Hotch knows he stares more than he should, but that’s been a frequent occurrence lately. It’s just getting harder and harder to turn away, watch Reid -- Spencer -- smile at him in that quiet way only ever directed at him, and then walk away. But he lets it happen, feels every step even as he shuts the door behind him.

Because Hotch will see Spencer tomorrow.

And, one day, maybe he won’t have to watch him walk away at all.

#I'm so tired I can't even tell if this is good or not because OF COURSE these dorks would flirt over a damn research paper #tell me I'm wrong #also I'm a sucker for domestic hotchreid we all know this #but I hope you like this my dear I know it's hella long it just got away from me #Cee my love my light ilysm #asks #HotchReid #Heid #katyswriting #200followerasks

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chudleycanonficfest · 3 years

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I can't imagine my life without you

Day 13, Story #1 is by @cheesyficwriter

Title: I can’t imagine my life without you

Author: cheesyficwriter

Pairing: Ron/Hermione

Prompt: Song fic (lyric prompt), “Imagine” by Ben Platt

Rating: T

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of postpartum depression

I can’t imagine my life without you

It’s a day like no other, leaving Hermione wishing it could be over.

The transition back to work at the Ministry full-time after giving birth to little Rosie presents more challenges than anticipated. Each day, she chips a fraction away at her massive to-do list, endless amounts of paperwork and research for upcoming trials, leaving her only mildly satisfied with what she’s accomplished.

In reality, Hermione is aware that it’s in her nature to obsess over all aspects of her work that could go wrong. She always prides herself on her professionalism and now struggles with maintaining the work-life balance necessary for a new mum.

Most days, she arrives at the Ministry too tired to think straight. The hours are long, and as someone running on frequent nights with minimal sleep, it’s difficult for Hermione to be as productive as she used to be in the department.

Rosie is a fussy baby, and the hours not spent at work are spent fighting for ways to keep her calm — holding her, rocking, changing her nappy, feeding, entertaining. It’s unnatural for Hermione to feel like she has no clue what she’s doing, and that realization is frightening for a first-time parent.

Ron is a doting father, who seems to be having a much simpler time adjusting to the new addition to the family. He approaches parenting with natural ease. As soon as Ron picks Rosie up, she stops crying. If Ron walks into the room, a smile lights up their daughter’s face. He brings joy into her world, leaving Hermione with an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty if she is cut out for her new role as a mother.

Although Hermione tries to throw herself back into work to escape her struggles in her home life, the exhaustion takes a toll on her, resulting in far more emotional outbursts than deemed appropriate at work.

It isn’t easy to remain patient when challenges seem insurmountable, goals unattainable, and negative thoughts creep in to seep the joy out of her day.

As Hermione walks through the floo network to head home for the evening, she mentally prepares herself for the madness that she is certain she will walk into, if every other evening that same week is any indication.

For the first time in weeks, Hermione doesn’t arrive home to a crying baby. In fact, the stunning silence brings a wave of panic, prompting Hermione to withdraw her wand and call out,

“Ron?“

Soft, melodic music floats through the room, and Hermione begins walking towards the source as she listens for the lyrics.

Your eyes give life a new meaning

It’s like I found the North Lights

I never knew what I needed

Until I felt your hand holding mine

The sight Hermione uncovers has her at a standstill in the doorway of the kitchen.

There is a self-stirring saucepan on the stove and several knives chopping potatoes. The sink overflows with bubbles, piles of dirty dishes sticking out from underneath the suds.

Ron is there in the center of the room, cradling Rosie in his arms. He has a flannel thrown over his shoulder and a dummy in his hand as he bounces their cooing daughter.

A flat disc spirals on the gramophone in the corner of the room, the sound coming from it reverberating off the walls.

Yeah, you say I’m your hero

But you are the one that saved me

If I ever lost you

I’d fall to my knees

Hermione leans against the door frame, her heart swelling with great love for her little family. She watches as Ron twirls around the room with a squealing Rose, and he’s dancing with a rhythm that she didn’t know he possessed.

Covering her mouth with one hand, Hermione stifles a giggle, thinking back to a younger Ron and his clunky two left feet when they danced together at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. He was so nervous then — they both were — and she marvels at how far they’ve come.

Dancing is about letting go and being free. When nothing else works — as Hermione suspects is the case with Rosie, who has quite the set of lungs on her — turning on music seems to do the trick.

I can’t imagine my life without you

I can’t imagine one night without you

Seeing her family in the kitchen does wonders to lift Hermione’s mood, and it’s as if all of the stress and negativity just melt away. All she can see is her husband and daughter, and Hermione becomes conscious of the heart beating inside her chest in time with the steady rhythm of the music.

She’s torn between laughing, and crying, and bouncing along, and crying some more. Sometimes the best surprises can change the entire tone of a single day from the simplest of tasks.

In the Granger-Weasley household, dancing is their reset button.

If something happened, don’t know what I’d do

I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine my life without you

Ron has his back towards Hermione, slowly rocking Rosie from side to side with one hand while flourishing his wand towards the plates to start setting the supper table for three.

“What d'ya say, Rosie?” Ron murmurs before plopping a kiss on his daughter’s cheek. “Shall we tell your mum to stop gawking at us and come join us?”

Your eyes give life a new meaning

It’s like I found the North Lights

Oh, I never knew what I needed

Until I felt your hand holding mine

Hermione gasps as Ron pivots around, meeting her gaze with a lazy grin and a wink.

Rosie squirms in Ron’s arms, and she’s reaching towards her mother with glee.

With a shaky breath, Hermione walks forward to take hold of her daughter, who rests her little head on Hermione’s shoulder.

“She’s missed her mummy today,” Ron comments as he leans over Rose’s head of ginger hair to press a soft kiss to Hermione’s temple.

“Mmm.” Hermione’s eyelids droop to a close. “Is she the only one?“

“Not a chance, Granger.” Ron brushes a hand down her cheek, making her eyelids flutter open. He’s studying her like he has a window into her soul, and it’s as if all of the emotions she’s felt throughout the day are now on full display for him to see.

Ron always does have the impeccable ability to get her, particularly when she’s stressed beyond belief.

“Bad day, love?"

"Better now,” Hermione replies, burying her nose into the small patch of curls on Rose’s head, inhaling the sweet scent of fresh strawberries and warm milk. A smell that is so wonderfully baby.

Her baby.

Yeah, you say I’m your hero

But you are the one that saved me

If I ever lost you

I’d fall to my knees

When Hermione first arrived back at their cottage for the evening, all she wanted to do was fall underneath the covers and wallow. It could’ve been easy for her to fall into a looping pattern of self-pity.

Seeing her family provides a sense of calm in the natural ebb and flow of life. However big or small, bad days are only temporary.

Now, standing with the two most important people in her life, she’s filled with a sense of gratitude for their constant presence. Thanks to them, she knows what it means to be happy and to see the beauty in tough moments.

I can’t imagine my life without you

I can’t imagine one night without you

If something happened, don’t know what I’d do

I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine my life without you

“It’s okay, love.” Ron cradles her cheek with one hand, a gesture that he knows always calms her. “It’s okay to let it all go.”

He rests his forehead to hers, and they slowly start to sway together along to the gentle rhythm of the song playing in the background. Rose squeals from the space between her parents’ bodies, reminding them of her presence. Both Ron and Hermione chuckle, planting matching kisses on both sides of their daughter’s cheeks.

A wide grin spreads across Hermione’s face, and a familiar set of words filter into her thoughts: Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. Fond memories flashing through her mind of Professor Dumbledore — long white beard, spectacles, and all.

It’s easy to lose sight of what’s most important when drowning in negativity. Dancing provides an opportunity for her to slow her thoughts down and root herself in the present.

Her family is the source of light in her darkest times.

I can’t imagine my life without you

#chudleycanonficfest2021 #HP fest #hp canon pairings #canon fest romantic #submission #tw: mentions of postpartum depression #romione #ron weasley x hermione granger #hermione granger x ron weasley

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exmortia · 3 years

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Shadowgast soulmate ficlet: Found Familiars

Essek/Caleb soulmate AU where a wizard’s familiar manifests from a fragment of their soul, but if they have a soulmate, the familiar comes from their soulmate’s soul instead. Regular D&D familiar mechanics don’t apply here except for pocket dimension poofing and un-poofing. Rated T for someone almost dying.

Like every student at the Soltryce Academy, the time finally comes when Bren learns how to summon a familiar.

It’s a week-long elective course he wasn’t planning on taking yet, preferring to focus his current semester on the fundamentals of magic, but Eadwulf is the first of their friend group to enroll, and he walks into the dorms next week with a raven perched on his shoulder. It becomes a nearly permanent addition to his friend, large and jet-black, with a deceptively strong beak and eyes filled with confidence and intelligence. Eadwulf spends the next few days answering the same standard question from their peers and teachers - “no, it’s mine.”

Astrid borrows Eadwulf’s notes on the spell and summons her own familiar not long after, a razor-eyed falcon that never stops scanning their surroundings and quietly observing anyone within range. Bren is only a little disappointed when she says “it’s mine, I can tell.” He knows, like everyone else, that soulmates are rare.

Soon it’s his turn, and his friends are making good-natured jokes about what form his familiar will take. They’re hoping for another bird just for the irony of it. “Maybe an owl,” Astrid says with a smile. They make bets. Eadwulf puts ten silver on a songbird, and Astrid puts twenty on a bird of prey.

Bren performs the ritual that night in the privacy of his room. As the incense drifts into the air, he secretly hopes for a feline companion, like the one he knew in childhood. Something soft and warm, curled up in his lap and welcoming him back to his room after a long day of classes. He keeps his eyes closed until the spell completes.

When he looks down, there’s an unexpected shape on his desk, like a scarf dropped lengthwise into a pile. Then it begins to move, glinting with iridescent color in the candlelight as its body slides and shifts on itself, and then he recognizes the creature when a rounded head emerges, tongue flicking out to taste the air in his direction.

“A snake?” he whispers to himself, confused and disappointed. Where he’d hoped for fur (or even feathers in retrospect), he sees shiny black scales like an inkspill across his desk where the light doesn’t hit. There are no emotions in its tapered face and round, lidless eyes. When the initial shock wears off, he takes a moment to focus and reach for his connection with it, hoping that what he finds is a reflection of himself, just like what his friends have, but what greets him is a feeling so new and foreign that he can’t lie to himself anymore.

Bren dismisses the familiar in a moment of panicked shame. He spends the night agonizing over what he’ll say to his friends and what their reactions will be. “It’s not mine,” he whispers to himself, dreading the moment when he’ll say it to them in person tomorrow. “I don’t know whose it is, but it isn’t mine.”

“You have a soulmate,” Astrid will say with a small, tight smile, the words neutral on the surface, but there’s a guarded expression in her eyes. Bren can only nod in reply, feeling like he’s wronged her somehow, as Eadwulf inspects the coiled snake presented to them in Bren’s outstretched hands.

“I’m sure it will come in handy,” he declares, trying to soothe Bren’s worries the only way he knows how. Astrid agrees, and the tension passes as they walk to their first class of the day. Bren considers dismissing his familiar again, but then he looks longingly at the companions perched on his friends and carefully tucks the serpent into the neck of his shirt beneath his robe. Its cool weight settles across his shoulders, the movement a slow, shifting pressure that feels good in the summer heat and even better when he’s working through a difficult assignment later.

Bren doesn’t find out until a few weeks later that his familiar is dangerous. An altercation with another classmate leads to him being shoved against a wall, the other boy’s grip twisted into the front of his robe with one hand while the other pulls back for a swing at Bren’s face, and suddenly there’s a blur of motion and the boy is stumbling back with a pair of tiny red dots on his chin. He almost dies right there on the floor, lips blue and foaming at the mouth, before one of the professors is drawn to the shouting of gathered students. Bren is instructed, under threat of expulsion, to keep his familiar dismissed while in the presence of others.

Ten years ago and hundreds of miles away, Essek Thelyss stands in his laboratory, blinking incredulously at the small, furry creature that has manifested in front of him. The trouble with being a wizard of a long-lived race who can’t summon a familiar is that you don’t know whether your soulmate has already died or just hasn’t been born yet. Essek didn’t think he needed a familiar, particularly, but he’d gotten into the habit of trying the spell once every few years when he remembered, partly because it stung to be an accomplished wizard who couldn’t summon one, and also because he secretly hoped that his soulmate, the one chosen for him by The Weave itself, had not already departed this world.

He’d lost count of the attempts, but it was somewhere between twenty and twenty-three when the spell finally worked, much to his surprise. His new familiar, with its striped orange fur and long tail curled neatly around its legs, sat on his ritual table and looked back at him with eyes that glinted in the low, ambient light. ‘My soulmate is alive out there,’ Essek thought with a relief he would never admit to, reaching out to stroke the cat’s soft fur as it stretched and began exploring the table, then his workbench, and then anywhere it could possibly get into.

In his youth, Essek had hoped for a more suitable familiar - something that could blend in, yet contribute to his image as a formidable spellcaster, like a snake or a spider, but he’d grown accustomed to not having one. His new feline companion becomes a sort of household pet. It’s not physically affectionate beyond the occasional rub against his legs. Mostly, it prefers to sit elsewhere in the room and watch him work from a distance. When he trances, it patrolls the halls and kills any small, unfortunate animal that dares enter his home. He wonders about the sort of person his soulmate might be, to have their soul reflected in this mindful, intelligent, and often ruthless creature.

One night, a little over ten years after he first summoned his familiar, Essek returns from his work at the Lucid Bastion and begins going about his routine, only to find that his familiar is nowhere to be found. He wonders if something has happened to make it decorporealize, like accidentally toppling a heavy object onto itself (unlikely), or maybe it had gotten outside somehow and didn’t care to return yet (a common recurring event). His familiar had changed over the past few months, becoming even more standoffish and less receptive to physical touch than before, so Essek doesn’t worry about its absence until the following day, when his familiar is still nowhere to be found. Before using his components to repeat the summoning ritual, he decides to make a quick search of his tower, and there, crouched in the furthest corner beneath a display cabinet in an unused room, his familiar stares back at him with wide, unblinking eyes.

When Essek reaches for his companion, its sudden, piercing, feline scream sends him pitching backwards in shock, until he’s on the floor and his familiar has left behind a series of long scratch marks where it fled. Essek is shaken for the few moments he sits there, confused, and then later, deeply concerned for someone he’s never met before.

This state of mind becomes normal for Essek over the next eleven years. His familiar is a ghost, hiding and wedging itself under furniture and bursting from its hiding spot in a terrified, screaming bolt of fur and claws when Essek unknowingly gets too close. Sometimes he goes weeks without catching sight of it, but Essek finds himself too sentimental to dismiss his former companion. He fears for the source of his familiar’s soul fragment, whoever this person is, and whatever it was that must have happened to them to cause this.

Hundreds of miles away and a few months later, Bren, now Caleb, accepts a torn-off piece of stolen bread from his new goblin companion, and hundreds of miles away, Essek’s familiar creeps out from beneath the workbench in his lab and slinks out of the room, but not before making brief eye contact with Essek, who stares back in disbelief with a set of alchemical reagents forgotten in his hands.

A few weeks later, after being roughed up and chased out of town again, Caleb remembers his silent protector from his school days, and Nott watches with fascination as a black snake appears in Caleb’s hands with a snap of his fingers. Nott’s fascination turns to concern as he spends a long moment staring at it, drowning in the memory of those days at the academy before he and his friends caught Trent Ikithon’s eye. Later that evening, Nott asks to hold his familiar, and Caleb worries for a moment, but it allows itself to be handed over, and Nott must constantly adjust her grip as its body moves and slips between her fingers.

“I think he prefers his master,” she says kindly, and although Caleb hadn’t cared to gender his familiar, the pronoun rings true somehow. Caleb accepts the snake from her and tucks it back into the neck of his coat where its cool, comforting weight helps quiet his intrusive thoughts.

It takes a few more months before Essek can run his fingers through his familiar’s striped fur again. Progress has been slow, but steady, and Essek is relieved not just for his familiar, but for the unnamed soul attached to it.

Things eventually return to the way they were before, and then continue to change. His familiar becomes his shadow, dutifully following him into every room of his tower. Where before it would perch out of arm’s reach to watch him work, now it walks across the paperwork on his desk and jumps into his lap and demands attention, before it’ll curl up and allow him to keep working. It’s an adjustment compared to what he’s used to, but there’s a weight lifted from his shoulders when he thinks about his soulmate now. At least, most of the time. His familiar refuses to leave his home and still vanishes for hours when he gets visitors, even when they remain on his doorstep and converse with him briefly through the open door.

The day comes when a group of strangers walk into the Lucid Bastion. Even among the chaos that follows, Essek’s attention is drawn, inexplicably, to one of their group - a surprisingly well-spoken human with copper-colored hair and pink, freckled skin, covered in mud and Luxon knows what else.

Caleb, dressed in nothing but leather straps, had dismissed his snake familiar out of necessity back in Asarius. When the situation in the Bright Queen’s throne room eventually dies down, his attention is drawn to a figure sitting near the dias, imposing in equal measure to the other high-ranking drow around them, but something about this individual catches his attention and keeps it indefinitely.

Later, when he and the Nein are free to wander Rosohna, Caleb decides not to risk going about with his venomous, spring-coiled companion for now, just in case there’s a misunderstanding with the locals or the guards.

Essek has his work cut out for him, and these new people don’t stay strangers for long. Despite his frustration at their behavior (often disrespectful and almost always culturally inappropriate), he finds himself responding eagerly to their requests for help when needed. When he sees them, his attention is always drawn first to their wizard, Caleb Widogast, and when he teaches Caleb that first dunamantic spell, it’s a challenge to monitor Caleb’s attention to the correct page of Essek’s spellbook, rather than Caleb himself. Everything about this human man, from the way he murmurs to himself while he works, to how he wrings his hands together during tense conversations, to the purely unexpected talent and raw power in the spells he demonstrates, has captivated Essek over the time he’s spent with these newcomers.

Caleb quietly scolds himself whenever the Shadowhand catches him staring. He’s not accustomed to being around dark elves, and even after the novelty wears off, something about their assigned handler, his new and unexpectedly generous teacher in the dunamantic arts, is drawing his attention and thoughts like an arcane compulsion. Caleb carefully keeps this to himself, not wanting to jeopardize their tenuous position in Roshona or the Shadowhand’s willingness to share his knowledge.

Eventually, as the weeks pass and their relationship with Essek grows out of familiarity and Jester’s brute force method of making friends, the Nein are invited to the Shadowhand’s tower for breakfast and the promise of some collaborative spellwork.

Caleb is regrettably late to the event as he makes a detour to find spell supplies, not wanting to impose on their host any more than necessary. When he arrives, there’s an awkward, semi-private moment where Essek answers the door and greets him. Then he’s led further inside where the others are gathered around a large table, and there’s a weird sort of prickling in the back of his mind as he enters the room. Fjord and Beau are talking and leaning against the table while the others are seated in a small group on the opposite side, except for Jester who is kneeling on the floor and talking to someone or something in a high-pitched voice.

A moment later, Jester makes a sad sound and watches Essek’s familiar slip out from under her hands to go trotting across the floor towards its master, or so she thinks. The cat’s gait breaks into a run, and she gasps as Caleb suddenly falls to his knees, his expression that of a mother who’s been searching all day for their missing child as the cat jumps into his arms. Essek’s familiar must be super friendly with other wizards, she thinks, until she sees the startled look on their host’s face. ‘This is the first time in many years that my familiar has not hidden itself from visitors,’ she remembers him saying as they arrived at the tower, and then he coaxed the cat towards them after she asked if she could pet it, which it accepted with mild, friendly interest. Now Caleb is clutching at its orange striped fur as it rubs against his face over and over again, purring loud enough for everyone to hear, and she’s not sure, but it looks like he might be crying a little.

Caleb carefully stands with the cat cradled in one arm, its outstretched paws making biscuits in the air. He reaches out towards Essek, and there’s a small flash of arcane magic before Caleb’s serpentine familiar appears there, balanced in a tight knot of coils in his upturned hand. Essek stares at it, motionless, until the snake begins to move, its body quickly sliding away from its master and into the space between Essek and Caleb, apparently not caring if it falls before it’s caught.

Essek reaches out with both hands to meet the snake’s trajectory, and soon the familiar is wrapped around Essek’s forearm, coiled tightly in place like a permanent fixture. Essek lifts his arm and stares into its eyes, carefully running his fingers across the black, iridescent scales with a gentle reverence.

“He’s yours,” Caleb chokes out in joyful tears, knowing but not caring that his friends are watching with a combination of amusement and concerned looks. “I always wondered, but I never dared hope . . .” Caleb clears his throat as Essek stares at him, the drow’s expression hard to read. “He, uh, likes to be up high, around your neck, where he can, um . . . he’s v-venomous by the way. I had to learn that. From experience. But he is a good snake, a very good snake,” Caleb insists as more tears threaten to wet his face. In Caleb’s arms, his new familiar trills and then purrs louder, satisfied, when he bends down to nuzzle his face into its wonderful, beautiful orange fur.

Essek makes a quick decision not to ask about what happened to his feline familiar over that eleven-year period. Maybe later when they’re comfortable and alone. For now, he admires his snake companion, the subtle magical thread of connection between master and familiar already transitioned, painlessly, from old to new. He feels whole and complete, and not just from finding his true familiar. Essek’s affection is quiet and immeasurable as he meets Caleb’s overjoyed grin with his own soft smile.

“Thank you for this,” is all Essek can say without his voice breaking. Later, after Caleb’s friends have staged a friendly interrogation about what happened and what it means for two wizards to exchange familiars (and after he’s taken Caleb’s advice and tucked his new companion into the neck of his robe where it fits perfectly), he’ll take Caleb upstairs, his former familiar dutifully following its new master, and spend a few hours alone with his soulmate. At the end of trading stories about their lives and hardships and hopes for the future, he’ll hold the human’s face in his hands and take the first step towards sealing their bond with a kiss.

#shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek thelyss #critical role #critical role fanfiction #can't watch the new episode until later tonight so I wrote this instead #non-wizards could probably gain a familiar this way #I've got another ficlet idea too hmmm

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viia01 · 3 years

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A random thing I wrote that has no ending

Bruce hid a sigh as he listened to the third speaker of the night tell another terrible joke. He laughed with everyone else, too tired to do more. Ordinarily, he would lean into the opportunity to act the part of Brucie Wayne.

But he really wasn’t in the mood tonight.

The last mission with the Justice League had run overtime and Bruce was running on two hours of sleep. Ordinarily, lack of sleep wouldn’t slow Bruce down any, but for some reason he just wasn’t in the mood tonight.

Briefly, he wondered why he hadn’t allowed Alfred to make his excuses.

The presenter came back onto the stage, not so subtly wrestling the microphone away from the rambling, somewhat drunk speaker from Luthor’s company.

Bruce tuned out the speech about Wayne Enterprises’ contributions to the development of new jet propulsion technology. He had had very little to do with the development, only funded it, so most of the technical talk was going straight over his head.

“You look like you’re having fun.”

Bruce glanced to his right and saw that Hal Jordan had sat himself down in the chair behind Bruce. “Go away. We’re not supposed to know each other. People will talk.”

“Please, they’re too busy making eyes at the pretty boy you got up there singing Wayne Enterprises praises,” Hal scoffed. He was dressed in a well fitted tuxedo, though he had swapped the black jacket out for a forest green jacket decorated with elaborate rose designs.

There was a thump against the back of Bruce’s chair, and he looked down in confusion and saw that Hal had tipped his chair back on two legs, the back of it now resting against the back of Bruce’s. “Really? Are you five?”

Hal grinned at him lazily and leaned his head on Bruce’s shoulder. “No, but we’re both bored so I thought I’d entertain myself.”

“You were invited because of Ferris Air’s work with Wayne Enterprises, not to entertain yourself,” Bruce said, putting on a smile when he saw a few people looking over at him. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for Brucie Wayne to be distracted by a pretty face at an event, but Bruce didn’t have the energy or patience to put on the act tonight. “Go back to your table and Ms. Ferris.”

“See normally, I’d just put up with the crappy puns and eat all the food, but the food sucks. So now I’m not just bored, but also hungry,” Hal said, ignoring Bruce, head still resting on Bruce’s shoulder. “Is that your doing? Because if you paid them for this catering… you should get your money back.”

Bruce sighed again. “Hal…” he warned.

“Watery champagne and tiny canapes, Bruce!” Hal said teasingly, tilting his head to look at Bruce. There was a mischievous glint to his eyes.

Bruce looked at him, putting on another smile. Most people were still listening to the presenter talk about the new jet propulsions, but there were bound to be a few people watching them. “Go. Back. To. Your seat.”

Hal blinked at him a few times. “I really don’t want to. There’s an old couple there that keeps asking me if I want to ‘join them afterwards for drinks’,” he said with a grimace. “Somehow I don’t think they want drinks.”

Bruce was tired. And sore. And the last thing he wanted right now was to listen to Hal Jordan’s whining.

“And I’m getting the vibe that the rich-guys-masturbating-over-their-own-money scene isn’t exactly your speed either,” Hal continued blithely, still ignoring Bruce’s irritation. “What do you say we go and find somewhere that’s serving actual food?”

“I have responsibilities,” Bruce said immediately, clapping politely when the presenter introduced General Thomasson as the next speaker.

Hal tipped his head back further to look at the stage. “Oh shit, the big wigs are here,” he said dryly. “What do you say, Spooks? Wanna go find a burger joint?”

“No, now go back to your seat.”

Hal sighed dramatically. “You’re boring,” he said, letting his chair fall back onto all its feet with a muffled thump. He rose, the dim light playing over his face in a way that made his eyes look more amber than brown. “Guess it’s back to eating stale canapes.”

Bruce sighed as Hal walked away, ambling back to his table. In his ridiculous suit jacket, Hal looked very much the epitome of flashy West Coast flyboy and Bruce wasn’t the only one watching him.

Bruce shook thoughts of Hal Jordan away, focusing on the stage again.

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

Bruce ran through the notes he needed to hit in his speech. It was a fairly standard speech, talk about the minds behind the advances, explain the advancements as the video played, make a few jokes, and then close out by thanking everyone for coming.

For all of Bruce’s practice at playing the gregarious, fun loving Brucie Wayne, he actually didn’t enjoy it very much. It was exhausting, wearing the mask all the time and he was tired.

And hungry.

Hal had been right about the stale canapes.

“You did some really good work, Wayne,” General Thomasson said gruffly, clapping Bruce on the shoulder. “These planes will give us the edge over our enemies.”

“Anything for our troops,” Bruce said, mustering up a smile. “Can’t have them going without the best.”

The General chuckled. “And it’s only going to set the taxpayer back a couple billion, right?”

“Got to keep those stocks high,” Bruce countered jokingly. In reality, he and Lucius were already planning to wean Wayne Enterprises off the military contracts that sustained the R&D department and supplement it with investment into green energies and space exploration.

But the General didn’t need to know that just yet.

“Well, I need to go and prepare for this speech of mine,” Bruce said, even though he really didn’t. “Lots of technical speak tonight and I have to make sure I pronounce everything right.”

The General gave him a patronizing smile and wave. “Off you go, Wayne. We’ll talk business some other night.”

Bruce ducked behind a set of piled speakers and sound equipment. He pulled out his phone, to give himself a convenient cover of taking a phone call.

He took a moment to compose himself. All the small talk had taken a toll on his patience and his eyes stung with exhaustion. He knew he needed sleep and a good meal, considering how fuzzy and slow he was feeling. And the thought of going up onto that stage and enduring hours more so small talk and smiles-

“You make a big sale with the military brass?”

Bruce didn’t jump but he was surprised that he hadn’t noticed Hal’s appearance behind him. “What are you doing back here?” he asked.

Hal was holding a tray of canapes and his bowtie was untied and hanging around his neck. “Hiding from the creepy couple,” he said, offering the tray to Bruce. “You want one?”

“No. Go back to your seat,” Bruce said in exasperation. “How did you even get back here in the first place?”

Hal crunched on another canape and pulled a face. “My good looks and charm. Sure you don’t want a stale canape? It tastes like cardboard.”

“I don’t want a canape.”

Hal shrugged lazily. “So why are we hiding behind a bunch of sound equipment?” he asked through a mouthful of canape, looking at one of the speakers curiously.

“I’m not hiding, and you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I’m not supposed to be a lot of things,” Hal countered immediately. “And you’re totally hiding.”

“I am not hiding,” Bruce snapped, irritated by Hal’s very presence. He had hoped that tonight, Hal would just spend his time as far away from Bruce as possible, especially since they had had a blow out the mission before. “Go away.”

Instead of listening, Hal just arched an eyebrow at him, munching on his cardboard canapes. “You don’t want to go on that stage, huh?” he guessed.

Bruce waited for an insult or a joke at his expense.

But Hal just looked around the speakers, in the direction of the stage. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. We’ve had like ten different speakers and I remember nothing of what was said or who said it.”

“Maybe you should pay more attention, then,” Bruce replied. “And I enjoy honoring the men and women who worked hard on this latest breakthrough.”

“None of them are even here,” Hal pointed out blandly, shoving the canape tray behind one of the pieces of sound equipment. “You probably already gave them a billion dollars anyway.”

“If I gave everyone a billion dollars, I wouldn’t be a billionaire for very long,” Bruce couldn’t help but say in exasperation. He really wondered if Hal ever thought before he spoke or if he just made it up as he talked.

Hal swiped a tongue over his teeth, giving Bruce a funny look.

On stage, Bruce could hear the presenters winding up to his introduction. He steeled himself with a sigh, pulling Brucie Wayne back over himself.

Hal tilted his head and then smiled, cocky and self-assured. “I wasn’t kidding about that burger, by the way,” he said.

“What?” Bruce asked.

Hal held out a hand, palm up. “You wanna blow this popsicle shop, Spooks?” he asked, eyes glinting mischievously.

“Popsicle stand,” Bruce corrected, irritated.

“Whatever, Bruce Wayne,” Hal said, rolling his eyes.

There was a beat and Bruce could hear the presenters bantering with each other. It was nearly time for them to introduce him.

Bruce had responsibilities.

He had to give this speech and thank the team for their hard work. It was their accomplishment and the least Bruce could do was show up to thank them publicly.

He couldn’t just leave and galivant around like Hal seemed to think he could.

Hal arched an eyebrow at Bruce questioningly, hand still out. His eyes were alight with amusement, the same cocky self-assuredness that got on Bruce’s nerves.

Only now it seemed less annoying.

“Offer’s expiring,” Hal sang, eyes darting to the stage and back.

Bruce took his hand.

#batlantern #hal jordan #bruce wayne #halbruce

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mandos-lightningbeforethunder · 3 years

Text

Start Again - Chapter One (Din Djarin x Reader)

SUMMARY: Luke Skywalker wasn't the only one searching the galaxy for force-sensitive beings. And he was a hell of a lot nicer. You were sure of these visions. They told of a forgotten life and explained the cracks in your memories. Perhaps employing the lone Mandalorian may help you put the pieces together.

CHAPTER WARNINGS: brief mention of torture, discussion of memory loss

Author’s Note: First time posting on both tumblr and AO3 (fic is cross-posted). Feel free to reblog! Other chapters will be linked as the story progresses. Enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE - THE MEMORY

“Castin!”

A boy, no more than ten, turned at the voice of his mother calling him. He was jovial, playing in the riverbed. His clothes will be soaked if I don’t stop him, you thought.

“These men want to speak to you!” Perhaps that would get his attention.

Behind you, three men stood, watching the child as he bound toward his mother. The boy quickly hid behind your skirts, suddenly shy. Castin was almost to your chest now, yet in the presence of strangers, he still acted like a toddler. One of the men crouched to his level, offering a rock.

“Your mother tells me of your abilities,” one of the men hums out.

Castin nods. You watch as the man reaches into his pocket, pulling out a simple stone.

“Show me,” he requests. Castin looks to you, unsure. You nod, offering him a smile to encourage him. You had heard whispers around the galaxy, the Empire defeated and a young Jedi searching for more like him.

Holding the stone between his pointer finger and thumb, the man waits for Castin. His face contorted in concentration, Castin pulls the stone towards him into the palm of his outstretched hand.

The three men hum in admonishment. At such a young age and already showing promise, you hear one murmur. Castin smiles at you, practically beaming from excitement.

“We would like to speak to you about possible schooling if you wouldn’t mind?” The man rises from the ground, offering you a smile.

“Yes, of course. Castin can go back to playing, yes?” You ask, not wanting to bore your son. The man simply nods, turning to walk to your village. You walk just behind the man, passing his two colleagues before you hear the ignition of a saber.

The nightmare has been longer than others. However, the faces remain blank to you. The reminder of what was lost, just in front of you, and yet you hardly remember it. There are whispers about it, about your survival and broken memories.

Staring up at the ceiling of your hut, you closed your eyes to try and engrain the nightmare. Fold it into other nightmares and visions, hoping to fill in the blank spaces in your mind. It did little to help what was left of your memory, however. All you knew, is you had a lost life somewhere out there. The voice in that nightmare was your own.

Someone calls your name. Opening your eyes, you again see the ceiling of your hut and rise from your cot. The twin suns leak sunlight into your hut to signify that it was time for morning chores.

Another shout of your name.

“Just a moment!” You shout back, turning to the bowl next to your cot. You splash the water onto your face, rousing yourself. The creak of your door startles you from drying your face.

“Valara! What have I told you about sneaking up on her?” an elder woman, standing just outside your door, chastises.

“Sorry grandmother,” Valara says, before turning to you. She sees the look on your face and calmly shuts the door behind her. “Did you have another nightmare?”

You only nod, drying your hands before placing the cloth next to the bowl.

“You know there are remedies for that,” Valara suggests.

“I know,” you murmur, “but I’m not ready.”

“You choose to suffer?” She asks. You know she means well. She has been there through your worse ones.

“I had a son,” you turn to her, your eyes meeting hers for the first time this morning. “In this nightmare. I had a son. He couldn’t have been older than ten, I think. His face was a blur, but he was mine. I know that.”

Valara stares at you, her mouth slightly slack in shock. She blinks and is quickly set back in reality. She moves closer to you, placing her hands on your biceps as a means of comfort.

“Are you sure? Wait, no, I mean, I believe you. Your memory has been returning and it looks promising. I just,” she pauses, looking away from you before her eyes meet yours again, “I don’t want your conscious to confuse you with false memories. My grandmother told me your brain uses it to protect you.”

“I know what I saw, Valara,” you state in a firm tone. “It was me, my voice in that nightmare. Not something my conscious could just conjure up.”

Valara’s hands fall to her side, nodding at your words. You can see the gears turning in her head, she’s unsure of what to say.

“There are chores to do. Maybe that will take your mind off things before you have another session with my grandmother,” Valara states, turning away from you. She walks toward the door, before turning to look over her shoulder. She then leaves without another word.

You ponder her words. There were chores to complete. The same chores you had been doing since you first arrived in Valara’s village. You needed change. Something different than this village and its secrets. The constant sessions with Valara’s grandmother were only taking a toll on you. Your memory was improving and yet you felt as zero progress had been made.

Opening the door to your hut the twin suns quickly beat down on you. The winter season, a mere two weeks, had come and gone on Puvo. The grassland planet’s ecosystem only called for summer and spring seasons, with the occasional winter season that came every once in a millennium.

Valara was just ahead of you. Kneeling over the riverbed, she washed the dirt off the leaves of Puvo’s native plant. Known for its healing properties, villages like Valara’s sold the leaves in droves. It was shipped across the galaxy, reaching the far ends of the universe. Valara’s grandmother had used it when you had first arrived, bleeding with a shattered mind. Although the leaves healed the physical wounds, your mind remained in the state you had first arrived in.

You knew only your name and parts of your life before. You didn’t even remember the victory of the Rebels. Valara had to catch you up on the last six months, easing you into the current state of the universe. There was no war, none at Puvo at least, and the galaxy remained peaceful.

You kneel beside Valara, scooping a couple of leaves from her pile, and begin washing them in the flowing water.

“I want to leave,” you whisper to her. Her head jerks to look at yours.

“Leave?” she asks. “You know you can’t do that, not without my grandmother’s permission. Your head…it’s not in the right place for you to go out on your own.”

“I know. That’s why you’re going to help me,” You say, looking at her. Her face is contorted in confusion before the realization hits her.

“No,” she states, shaking her head. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Valara,” you start, “I can’t be here any longer. I know my mind isn’t where it needs to be but being stuck on this planet—” Valara splashes you, stopping your words.

“You’re asking me to sneak you off Puvo,” she reminds you. You nod and she sighs, looking away from you.

“I need change. Puvo and its people, you and your grandmother have treated me with nothing but kindness since I first arrived. Your grandmother helped me piece parts of my mind back together. But staying here could mean years before we make any more progress.” At this point, your tone comes off as pleading.

“Why so sudden? What did you see in that nightmare?” Valara asks, “You’ve been here for nearly a year now and we’ve just put together your earliest memories. Leaving Puvo could mean never recovering other memories. You know, pre-Empire memories.”

Right. The Empire no longer existed and instead, the New Republic stood in its place. A new era of peace.

“Valara. That nightmare…that’s more than I’ve ever seen before. The faces may have been a blur, but I know in my heart that I have a son out there. I don’t even know if he remembers me at this point, but I need to try and at least find him.”

Valara murmurs your name, placing a hand on yours. You take a deep breath.

“You came to us a year ago. Broken, bloody, babbling incoherent things. Grandmother didn’t think you’d survive the night. Stars, whoever or wherever you came from, they tortured you. Don’t you understand? You’re safer here. There’s a possibility if you have a son out there, the people that did those things to you…they don’t want you finding him.”

“Valara,” you say.

“Don’t, don’t ‘Valara’ me. You say it in that stupid voice of yours and suddenly I melt. Stop it.” She demands, glaring at you. You can see the conflict in her eyes. She means well, she wants to protect you and keep you safe from the people that harmed you.

“What if you came with me?” you offered, taking another leaf from her pile. She shakes her head, focusing instead on the task at hand.

“What if I took a communicator with me? Check-in with you every week or so?” This time, Valara pauses in her work. She looks at you again, placing the leaves down in the basket next to her.

“Those communicators are for transport crews only. They’ll notice when one is missing. And how do you expect to get out of here? The only ships that regularly arrive and depart are those janky old transport ships and they can barely fit a load of Puvion leaves.”

A bag of credits lands next to her basket and she looks up at you.

“Where did you get those?” She demands, snatching the bag and peering inside. You can see her counting the amount.

“I’ve earned them,” you say, taking the bag from her with gentle hands. “Turns out loading those janky old transport ships earn quite a bit of them.”

“Damn it,” Valara curses, but she smiles. She seems proud. “What are you planning on doing with those credits? Bribing your trip to another planet?”

“No. There’s an old watering hole a couple of kilometers from here. From what I’ve read, there’s a couple of travelers who come through and pick up any stragglers in exchange for information or…credits.”

“So, bribery,” Valara deduces. You give a sheepish smile as she rolls her eyes. “Where will you get the communicator?”

“You know that one transport crew? The one with that pilot who thinks he’s the shit?” Her eyes widening is a signal that she knows exactly who you’re talking about.

“Nope. I’ve heard enough. I’m not becoming an accessory to your crimes. You’re crazy.” Valara rises from the riverbed, brushing her hands on her pants. You quickly set aside your leaves and pocket the credits, rising to follow her.

“It’s not becoming an accessory. I just need a favor. His crew arrives tomorrow at the same time as the last. He won’t even notice it’s gone.”

Valara stops, pinching her nose in frustration. She seems to be going over your words, processing them and what they could mean.

“My grandmother is going to kill me…” she sighs. You grin, ready to celebrate but she stops you with her hand. “No, no, you’re getting the communicator yourself. I’m stalling for you, so my grandmother doesn’t wonder why you missed a session.”

You hug her and her surprise is visible. Affection is not lost of the native Puvion, but it’s rare coming from you.

“Thank you,” you say, and she rolls her eyes, returning the hug in a begrudging manner.

Read Chapter Two - The Journey here!

#the mandalorian #din djarin #din dijarin x reader #din dijarin fanfiction #din djarin x you #start again #the mandalorion spoilers #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x reader

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panharmonium · 3 years

Text

the edge of seventeen [fic]

summary: Daegal forgets his own birthday. Merlin has a conniption. Daegal has a crisis.

context for newcomers: This is the next installment in an ongoing AU that @once-and-future-gay and I have been playing around with, wherein both Will and Daegal survived into Season 5. The background for that AU can be found here, and the associated fics (plus one art post) are at the following links: be good / persistence / tournaments / daegal post-carpentry (art).

a/n: @once-and-future-gay, this was actually written for your birthday XD I started it that Tuesday intending for it to be a very short snippet that I could post the same day, but I quickly realized that it was turning into a bigger piece, and now, a week and a half later, it’s a 10k story. I apologize for how belated it is, but I hope you'll accept it as a birthday gift anyhow - I figured that if it were up to me, I’d rather have ‘more fic’ than ‘on-time fic,’ so - happy (belated) birthday to you, and here’s some more of this AU for you, featuring Daegal and a wide supporting cast! ✨

“Are you trying to slice that thing or just beat it to death?”

Will stared incredulously down the table at Daegal, who continued to hack at the seedpod held between his fingers even though his aggravated chopping did little more than squash the unyielding capsule down into the wood of the table. “It’s my knife,” Daegal muttered, stabbing at his botanical nemesis. “It’s dull.”

“So sharpen it.”

“I did,” Daegal replied. “It’s old. It doesn’t hold an edge.”

Will beckoned for the knife. Daegal scooted it down the table to him like an innkeeper sliding drinks down the length of the bar, even in defiance of Merlin’s exasperated, “Don’t - !” But Will caught the knife easily, handle-first, and gave it a disapproving once-over.

“Use mine,” he said, and slid one of his own blades down the table.

“Don’t - !” Merlin bit out again, then sighed and returned to the text he was copying after Daegal intercepted the blade without injury.

“Careful,” Will warned Daegal. “It’s - ”

Pop. Daegal startled out of his seat at the first enthusiastic slice of the knife, as the capsule burst and sent hundreds of tiny black seeds scattering in every direction, the dried granules rolling off the edge of the table and pouring onto the floor with a rain-like hiss.

Merlin sighed and rubbed his forehead. Will picked up his own half-finished carving again and gestured at Merlin’s face. “You’ve got a bit of ink on you, you know.”

Merlin shot him a flat look. “Have I?”

“Yeah. Just over your nose there.”

“Maybe it’s because you keep doing things that make me want to pull my hair out.”

Will gave Daegal a knowing grin across the table. Daegal, doing his best to contain the spilled seeds, couldn’t help feeling pleased, even if the smile he offered to Will in return was slightly sheepish.

“Do I?” Will asked Merlin, utterly unconcerned. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Stop giving him knives!” Merlin burst out, gesturing broadly at Daegal’s end of the table.

“He’s fine!” Will said. “He’s a big lad.”

“And he’s making a big mess.”

“I’ll clean it up,” Daegal assured Merlin, scooping the runaway seeds into uncooperative piles. “I didn’t think it would cut so well, is all.”

“You need better tools,” Will declared. “Merlin, the man works for you. Why haven’t you got him outfitted properly?”

Merlin opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, he was interrupted by a rap at the door. “It’s open,” he called, frowning. It was a bit late for visitors.

The door swung open, revealing Gwaine, who took only a single step into the physician’s chambers before pausing at the loud crunching sound under his boot. “Hallo,” he said curiously, lifting up his foot. “What’s all this, then?”

“Seeds,” Daegal supplied helpfully, at the same time as Merlin grumbled, “Never mind. Don’t come in; you’ll track it all over.”

Gwaine obliged, bowing at the waist in deference to Merlin’s directive. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I only came by to see if you lot fancied an excursion.”

“What sort?”

“The lads and I are off to see the sunrise. Thought you might like to join us.”

It was only after a moment’s confusion that Daegal realized Gwaine was talking about the tavern, in some sort of post-curfew, plausible deniability-laden way. Daegal wiped seeds from his palms and looked hopefully between Will and Merlin, not daring to believe that they would say yes. It wasn’t often Gwaine heard the word “no” from someone he’d propositioned, Daegal was willing to bet, but Daegal knew trying to drag Will and Merlin out of their nest two whole bells after curfew, especially when the weather had frosted all the windows, was an extremely optimistic maneuver, even for Gwaine.

Will, predictably, snorted, not even bothering to pretend he was interested. Merlin did a better job of feigning regret, holding up the heavy text he was copying as if it explained everything. “Can’t,” he said simply. “Sorry. Too much work. Too late. Too tired. Too cold.”

“Any other excuses?” Gwaine asked, the corners of his mouth twitching up.

“Pick whichever one you like best,” Merlin said, returning to scratch away at his manuscript. “I’m comfy in here.”

Gwaine gestured amicably at Daegal. “How about you, lad?”

Daegal’s eyes widened. Merlin always made tavern nights with Gwaine sound legendary, and the fact that Will groaned every time they came up in conversation made them even more intriguing, but Will, in a surprisingly swift intervention, interrupted before Daegal could even open his mouth.

“Not a chance,” he said, when Daegal tentatively started to rise from his chair. “Sit down.”

Gwaine did not seem offended, but simply leaned against the doorframe and grinned in that careless way of his. “Can’t the lad have a bit of fun?”

“Not with that lot. Not at this hour.”

“I’ll look after him.”

“You? By the time you’re done drinking you won’t know him from Bruta.”

Gwaine shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He pointed at Daegal. “Invitation stands, lad. Another time, maybe.”

Daegal nodded wistfully, and Gwaine bade them farewell, departing. Will, shaking his head, returned to his whittling, muttering, “Not ruddy likely.” He brushed wood shavings off his knees, adding to the mess on the floor. “Lunatic.”

“He’s a good lunatic,” Merlin said, absorbed in his copying.

“If you say so.”

“I could still go, maybe,” Daegal said. “I could look after myself.”

Will raised his eyebrows. “At the Rising Sun? After curfew? You’d wake up with your head in a snowbank.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would,” Will said, not budging. “Don’t go courting trouble. You’re too young for that crowd.”

Daegal scrunched up his nose. He knew that in a contest of stubbornness, Will would win by a mile, but still - “I’m not too young. I’m seventeen.”

Merlin’s head snapped up from his book, his copying abruptly forgotten. “You’re sixteen.”

“No,” Daegal said, bewildered by Merlin’s sudden bizarre intensity. “Seventeen.”

“Since when?”

“I had my birthday last month.”

“You what?”

Daegal, confused, looked between Merlin and Will, the latter of whom sighed. “Oh, lor.”

“What?” Daegal asked. “Have I - is that bad?”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Merlin demanded, ignoring Daegal’s question.

“I don’t know,” Daegal replied, taken aback. He hadn’t even thought of it at the time. What was there to think about? It was just another day. Sometimes he didn’t even remember his birthday had happened until it was already over. Once he hadn’t remembered until the last week in January, when he’d taken a courier job and been forced to lie about his age.

Merlin looked incensed. Will, by contrast, looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Right, then,” he said, getting up and tucking his carving into his pocket. “I’m off. You two have fun.”

Daegal had an absurd urge to beg Will to sit back down, because Merlin was starting to get a frankly loony look on his face and Daegal did not understand what was the matter. But Will just patted Daegal on the top of the head on his way out - tap tap - and let the door swing closed behind him.

Merlin, his hands on his hips, assessed Daegal with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry?” Daegal ventured, unsure what he was apologizing for.

Merlin pressed his lips together. “You and him,” he said, pointing to the door where Will had just exited, “you’re two of a kind, you know that?”

Daegal did not know. He had no idea what Merlin was talking about, in fact, and he was afraid to ask. He did not exactly want to apologize again, though, because that felt sort of like apologizing for being like Will (although why Merlin seemed to think this was the case was a mystery).

“Right,” Merlin said after a moment. “Not to worry. I’ll take care of it.”

Daegal hesitated. “Take care of what?”

Merlin sighed and shook his head, but did not answer. Daegal decided that perhaps it would be best if he did not needle Merlin with further questions right now. His mentor was acting very strange, and Daegal could not possibly imagine what had gotten him so worked up.

He would just have to ask Will about it later.

As it turned out, Daegal did not have a chance to ask Will about it later.

The next day, Will did not come by. The day after that, Merlin sent Daegal out to collect more dried seedpods to replace the ones Daegal had mangled, which took all afternoon and was exhausting enough for Daegal to go straight to his little chamber in the servants’ wing and flop into bed after supper.

The morning after that, he woke to find a smiling Elyan hovering barely two inches above his face.

Daegal stifled a gasp and only just barely stopped himself from whacking Elyan across the nose. He scrambled upright in the bed, his back pressed against the wall. “El - Sir Elyan! What - ”

“Good morning,” Elyan said, as if he could not possibly have been happier to have gotten almost-smacked in the face. “Merlin sent me down. Said it’s your birthday.”

Daegal goggled at him. “My what?”

“Your birthday,” Elyan repeated. “Isn’t it?”

Daegal shook his head, certain that he was still asleep. “No.”

“Merlin said you might say that.” Elyan whipped the covers off Daegal’s legs. “Up you get. It’s time for breakfast.”

Daegal shivered violently, his sleep clothes providing little protection against the cold. “I don’t normally - I’m supposed to go and help Gaius - ”

“Not today. You’ve been given the day off.”

Daegal stared. “What for?”

Elyan chuckled. “Still asleep in there, I see,” he remarked, tossing Daegal a shirt. “It’s your birthday. Haven’t I just said that?”

“It’s not, though,” Daegal said, feeling as if he were speaking a different language. “My birthday’s in November.”

“Not this year, it isn’t.” Elyan grinned. “Get dressed. We’ve got all sorts of things do today.”

When Elyan had said ‘all sorts of things,’ Daegal had not expected one of those things to be a full breakfast served in the King and Queen’s personal chambers, catered by the King and Queen’s personal serving staff, and attended by the King and Queen themselves.

“I didn’t know,” Daegal whispered frantically to Merlin, as Elyan ushered him inside the room. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? I would have worn something else!”

“You don’t have anything else,” Merlin shot back under his breath. “Relax. Arthur put his undershirt on back to front this morning; he’s hardly Sir Stylish.”

Daegal gave Merlin a panicked, pleading stare, but Merlin just plunked Daegal down in a seat and left to pour the drinks.

“We’ve been meaning to do this for ages,” the Queen told him, sitting down next to Elyan. “Merlin keeps you very busy, doesn’t he?”

Daegal’s mouth was too dry to formulate any sort of reply. Only a few short months ago this very same woman had been standing at Morgana’s elbow, plotting Arthur’s assassination, and at the time, Daegal had not even realized there was anything wrong with her. There was, after all, nothing hard to believe about a servant-turned-queen who’d gotten a taste for power and decided to keep climbing the ladder, and while Merlin had always been very adamant that Daegal would never have believed this of Gwen if he had ever met her previously, it was hard for Daegal to look at her and not remember how she had willingly embraced the woman who later tried to murder Merlin and threatened to do the same to Daegal, if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

Merlin, busy setting out the ewery on a sidetable, heard Gwen’s comment and spared Daegal the necessity of replying. “Arthur keeps me very busy,” he said, directing a pointed look at the king. “If you’d like me to arrange your subjects’ social schedules on top of my other duties, Sire, perhaps you ought to hire someone else to look after your washing.”

Arthur waved a hand. “Guinevere likes that funny thing you do with my socks.”

“Guinevere,” corrected the Queen , “thinks her husband is perfectly capable of rolling his own socks, thank you.” She smiled encouragingly at Daegal. “But enough about the laundry. We’d been meaning to have you round for a meal, to say thank you, and Merlin mentioned that it was your birthday, so we thought now would be the perfect time.”

Daegal barely even heard the bit about his birthday, instead fixated on what had come just before it. Thank him? What for? He had nearly gotten the king killed.

“Merlin tells us you’ve been helping Gaius?” Arthur prompted.

Daegal nodded.

“He’s a fine physician. If you’re pursuing a path in the healing arts, you couldn’t ask for a better teacher.”

“Is that something you’re interested in?” Guinevere asked, warm interest written across her face.

Daegal’s eyes darted helplessly to Merlin, who nodded encouragingly. Daegal cleared his throat. “Er - I think so. Maybe. Merlin says I’m picking it up quickly.”

“Well, you’ve already saved one life,” Arthur said with a grin, gesturing at himself, “so if that’s any indication of your capabilities, I expect you’ll do well.” He offered Daegal a platter of pastries. “Tell us about your studies.”

The meal continued on in much the same fashion, with Gwen and Arthur asking Daegal questions and Elyan occasionally putting in a comment or two of his own. Daegal did his best to answer honestly, even as he was plied with heaps of food, most of which was comprised of dishes he had never had the chance to try before and all of which flavors he was certain he would never be able to remember later, given how worked up he was. Arthur was gracious and charming throughout, very unlike the man who often featured in Merlin’s grumbling suppertime complaints. Elyan talked to Merlin as much as he did to either of the royal guests, which was probably a breach of some kind of protocol, though nobody seemed to mind. And the Queen - the Queen looked exactly the same as she had when Daegal had first met her, minus the cloak and surreptitious glances, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought nothing had changed.

Except -

There came one moment, towards the end of the meal, when Merlin put a goblet down in front of Gwen with a playful and very exaggerated “Your Majesty,” and Gwen jabbed his knee with a fork under the table where Arthur couldn’t see, all the while both of them keeping their eyes locked on each other as if daring the other one to laugh first, and it was then that Daegal knew with absolute certainty that this was not the same woman he had met that night in the woods.

“I hope you’ll accept this token of the Crown’s appreciation,” Arthur said to Daegal later, when they had finally finished their meal and risen from their chairs. “You’ve done this kingdom a tremendous service, and I’m indebted to you.” He passed Daegal a very official-looking bit of folded parchment stamped with the royal seal, which Daegal knew it would not be appropriate to open now. He took it and bowed the way Merlin had shown him.

“And there’s something from me, too,” said Guinevere. “Only it would have been a bit difficult to get it up the steps - Elyan will take you to see it instead. I think you’ll find it useful, given that you’re apprenticing to our physicians.”

Daegal could not possibly imagine what on earth could have been so unwieldy that she could not get it up the stairs, but he bowed to her as well. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you,” she said, in a more solemn voice. “For helping, when I couldn’t help myself.”

Daegal straightened, hesitant. Her eyes - it seemed ludicrous to Daegal, now, that he had not recognized the enchanted version of her for what it was. That hollow shell had had no soul.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” he blurted out. “I wish I could’ve done more.”

“You’ve done more than enough,” Arthur said, wrapping a steady arm around his wife’s shoulders. “For both of us. We owe you a great deal.”

Daegal bowed to both of them again, and Elyan escorted him to the door. “Oh, and Daegal?” Gwen added.

Daegal stumbled over his own feet trying to turn around. “Your Majesty?”

She smiled at him. “Happy birthday.”

“What did Arthur give you, then?” Elyan asked, once they were out in the street.

Daegal fingered the mystery envelope. He did not know, and honestly, his head was spinning too much for him to even think about puzzling out a jumble of words right now, especially when he was only just learning his letters to begin with.

“Can I have a look?” Elyan asked, and Daegal willingly handed him the parchment. Elyan slipped a finger under the seal and unfolded the document, parsing it with a speed Daegal had pretty much despaired of ever achieving for himself.

“Mm,” Elyan said. “Thought so. Typical kingly stuff.”

“What is it?”

“Land grant,” Elyan said, handing back the parchment, and then, as if this were nothing to worry about, he turned and ambled into the stables.

Daegal stared after him. “What?”

“Land grant,” Elyan repeated. “You know, like a knight’s fee. For services rendered to the Crown.” He wandered deeper down the central aisle of the stable, stalled horses on either side of him lifting their heads. “Come on. It’s through here.”

Stunned, Daegal followed him, his fingers clutching at the incomprehensible slip of parchment. “I can’t own land,” he protested. “I don’t own a second pair of shoes.”

“You do now. Or you can afford to, at least.” Elyan glanced back at Daegal. “Don’t worry, it’s a small plot. Just a little square out in the Sprawl.”

Outside the city walls, then. “I don’t - what am I supposed to do with it?”

“You could live there.”

“But - ” Daegal stared at Elyan’s back uncomprehendingly. “I live in the Citadel.”

“Rent it?”

Daegal’s head was going to explode. “Will says landlords are leeches,” he said faintly.

Elyan laughed. “Herb garden?” he suggested. “Merlin’s always sending you off to gods know where, searching for things you could grow yourself.”

Daegal hardly knew what to say to that, but Elyan stopped walking before Daegal could think of anything coherent. “Here we are,” Elyan announced, clapping a hand down on top of a stall door to his left.

A wave of misgiving flooded Daegal, temporarily wiping away the lingering shock of the land grant. “Are we riding somewhere?”

He had not considered this, and he did not want to admit that the only way he was going to be able to ride anywhere at all was on the back of someone else’s saddle. He had never had access to a horse himself, and had only had the opportunity to ride twice in the past - the first occasion had been extremely brief, and the second had ended in him being thrown, so he was not quite sure that it counted.

“Not today,” Elyan said. “Unless you count the training ring.”

“Sorry?”

“Merlin says you don’t know how to ride.”

“Yeah,” Daegal said. He could feel himself turning red. “I mean - no, I don’t know how. Not well. I don’t need to. I don’t have a horse.”

“Didn’t have a horse,” Elyan said, as if making a correction.

“What?”

Elyan gestured at the stall they were standing next to. “Couldn’t get her up the stairs.”

Daegal’s mouth popped open. The creature Elyan was pointing to was a dark bay with an irregular, splotchy white blaze down her muzzle, her smooth coat appearing nearly black in the dim light of the stables. She was stout and smoothly muscled, watching them with a calm, composed energy, and even as Daegal stared, she stretched her neck over the stall door and sniffed at Elyan’s hands, perhaps searching for any remnants of his recent breakfast.

“My sister,” Elyan said proudly, scratching the horse’s cheek, “is aces at presents.”

“She’s not for me,” Daegal croaked disbelievingly.

“Of course she is,” Elyan assured him. “She’s the same stock as Merlin’s. Steady temperament, friendly, not likely to spook. Not like Arthur’s beasts.”

A horse, Daegal thought numbly. A horse.

“I can’t take this,” he mumbled. “It’s too much.”

“Of course it’s not too much. You saved the king’s life.”

I almost killed him! Daegal wanted to shout, but Elyan would not understand.

“And you’ll need transportation, anyhow,” Elyan continued. “You can’t be jogging along behind Merlin on foot. Apprentices in the royal household have mounts, or they can’t do their work.”

Daegal bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t even know how to ride her.”

The horse cocked her ears in Daegal’s direction and swung her blocky head around to inspect him, her dark brown eyes sedate and trusting. “What do you think we’re here to practice?” Elyan asked cheerfully, retrieving a halter and lead rope from a hook on the wall. “Go on, say hello to her.”

Daegal’s hand came up of its own accord, hovering in the air below his new mount’s nose. She lipped at his fingers curiously. “Hello,” Daegal breathed.

He didn’t deserve her. He knew he didn’t.

But he was falling in love with her anyway.

It was a very windswept and breathless Daegal who climbed off his horse later that day and ran to greet Merlin at the fence.

Evening was coming on, and the temperature had sunk as quickly as the sun, but Daegal did not even notice the stiffness in his fingers or the tightness in his cheeks. He was too carried away with the elation of riding, and the dizzying knowledge that he now had the means to go anywhere he wanted, anytime, without begging for rides in the back of strangers’ wagons. Months ago he would have killed for this kind of ability to roam.

It was strange, now that he finally had the freedom to run away whenever he pleased, that he no longer felt he had anything to run away from.

“Having fun?” Merlin asked, elbows resting on the fence.

Daegal did not think fun was the right word. There was just no good way to explain that he felt like a menagerie bear whose shackles had slipped, or a noblewoman’s bird escaping out a cracked window. “It’s brilliant,” he said, settling for a completely inadequate adjective. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“And he’s good at it!” Elyan put in, walking Daegal’s horse over to the gate. “We’ve only been out here one day and he’s got her cantering already - I think this beast is talking to him.”

If Daegal’s cheeks had not been whipped rosy by the wind already, they were certainly turning pink now. “No,” he said to Merlin, “not - talking to me. Obviously not. Just - I sort of feel like I understand her, is all.”

Merlin did not seem to think this was strange at all, and produced a chunk of some sort of winter root vegetable from his coat, offering it to the horse. She snapped it up eagerly. “Animals talk,” Merlin said, shrugging. “It’s people as don’t know how to listen that get kicked in the nethers.”

He untied the gate for Elyan, who led the horse through it and started up the path back to the stables proper. “How was your day?” Merlin asked Daegal, as the three of them walked, Elyan leading the horse on one side, and Merlin and Daegal on the other.

Daegal had to think before answering. It had been, by a wide margin, the strangest day he had ever experienced in Camelot, starting with Elyan’s surprise appearance that morning and punctuated by a number of other unexpected visitors. Leon had arrived in the stables not long after Elyan and Daegal, bringing with him a collection of exquisitely embroidered tack (“Part of Her Majesty’s gift,” he’d explained), and then he’d spent the next hour walking Daegal through the various bits and pieces, guiding him through the process of putting them on his mount and taking them off again. Percival had dropped by with his own mount and accompanied Daegal on a slow ride outside the ring, along the edge of the woods - Elyan had ridden in the saddle behind Daegal, just to be safe, but he had not had to take the reins from Daegal once, and they had gone on a nice plodding walk around the frostbitten perimeter of what would be fairgrounds, come summer. Even Mordred had made a brief appearance, in his oddly intense way - apparently out for a ride of his own, watching Elyan and Daegal lungeing Daegal’s mount for a few minutes, before nodding to the both of them and continuing on his way, his own horse cresting the hill so smoothly that it appeared as if it were not touching the ground.

“It was strange,” Daegal decided.

Merlin walked along beside him, his boots crunching on the frostbitten grass. “Why?”

“I don’t know. All these people - ” Daegal paused, brushing a hand against his horse’s flank. “I don’t see why they’re taking an interest.”

“It’s your birthday,” Merlin replied. “People are supposed to make a fuss.”

Daegal was not sure about that. It had not ever been his experience in the past, at least. “It’s not really my birthday, though.”

“Only because I didn’t know about it.”

They continued walking, Daegal worrying at his lip. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said abruptly, after a minute.

“You’re not enjoying yourself?”

Daegal shook his head quickly. “I am.” Too much, he thought. His exhilaration at being taught how to ride had driven it from his mind for a while, but now -

Elyan waved to someone up ahead, interrupting Daegal’s thoughts. There in the stableyard was Gwaine, lounging against the edge of the open doors, dressed not in his crimson surcoat but in plain clothes, and tossing a small pouch from hand to hand.

“You’re early,” Merlin called to him. “We’ve still got to groom and water this creature.”

“I thought I was supposed to be in charge of the watering,” Gwaine replied, which seemed like a very odd thing to say. “Wasn’t that the plan?”

“I’m talking about the horse.”

Gwaine pushed himself off the wall, joining the little group as they entered the yard. “Our guest of honor,” he said, indicating Daegal. “This fellow’s been doing our job for us, Elyan. Saving the king is knight’s work, isn’t it?”

Elyan led the horse past Gwaine with a smirk. “How would you know? You’ve never done a bit of it.”

Gwaine shook his head, glancing at Daegal in a comradely way. “Why does everybody think I only took this job for the food?”

Daegal, who had only rarely interacted with Gwaine before, did not know what to answer, but Merlin saved him the trouble. “Because we know you,” he said, and then smiled when Gwaine gave him a crooked grin.

That was utter nonsense. Even Daegal knew that Gwaine had nearly died during Morgana’s occupation, specifically while fighting to keep a number of his fellow prisoners from starving - but Merlin and Gwaine were a bit like Merlin and Will in that way, at least to Daegal’s limited experience, wherein Gwaine did not always want people to see him for what he truly was, and Merlin always chose to see him anyway, if only from behind a mutually agreed-upon smokescreen of affectionate teasing.

“Well, let’s hurry it up,” Gwaine said, tossing his little bag in the air. “I’d like to get on with my bit.”

His bit?

Gwaine paused in front of the empty stall while Elyan gathered what they would need for a post-ride grooming. “I hear it’s your birthday,” Gwaine said to Daegal, and then before Daegal could explain that it wasn’t, exactly, Gwaine handed Daegal the little leather bag. “There’s for you, then.”

Daegal, surprised, loosened the cinched string at the top of the pouch and tipped the contents into his other hand. Out tumbled four dice, the smoothly-carved cubes clacking against one another as they fell into Daegal’s palm.

Daegal looked up at Gwaine, confused.

“I thought you could use them,” Gwaine said.

“For what?”

Gwaine grinned and exchanged a knowing look with Merlin. “My bit.”

Daegal stared at at the dice in his hand, then snapped his gaze up to Merlin, suddenly seized by a burst of excitement. “Are we - ”

Merlin held up a finger. “On three conditions,” he declared, obviously trying not to smile.

Daegal closed his fingers tightly around the dice, trying not to appear too eager.

“One: you’re going to untack and groom your mount. The stablehands will do that for you, when you ride out with our party, but she’s your responsibility. You have to know how to take care of her.”

Daegal had no objections to that. He already loved this horse better than anything he’d ever owned.

“Two: weak drinks only.”

We’ll see, Gwaine mouthed behind Merlin.

“Three - ” Merlin held up a third finger. “You leave when I leave. Will’s right about the after-curfew crowd. That’s a sort of trouble you don’t need.” He looked expectantly at Daegal. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Daegal nodded fervently. “Is it - who’s coming?”

“Everybody!” Elyan supplied happily, uncinching the horse’s girth. “You saved our king. We owe you a night out.”

Merlin, who had perhaps understood Daegal’s question better, said, “Everybody who likes drinks and dicing and general uproar.”

This statement prompted appreciative, anticipatory grins from Gwaine and Elyan, and Daegal refrained from asking any follow-up questions, having understood the answer perfectly well. He had been working with Merlin long enough to know that if there were one thing Will avoided more assiduously than King Arthur, it was large groups of loud people losing their heads over absolutely nothing.

“Let’s get started, then,” Gwaine said. “D’you think you can untack this beast and learn the rules to Hazard at the same time?”

Daegal stuffed the dice into his pocket and grasped the bridle’s noseband buckle. “I can try.”

Gwaine grinned wolfishly. “That’s just what I like to hear.”

They ended up staying a bit later than they’d intended.

By the time Merlin finally had the sense to bring the evening to a close, Daegal had turned the single half-penny he had started with into several silver pieces (“Alchemy!” Gwaine had proclaimed triumphantly, knocking his cup into Daegal’s so that some of the drink had sloshed over), and Daegal had become very popular with some of the tavern regulars, who were beyond tickled to see a seventeen year-old boy flatten strangers’ smug expectations of victory. Daegal had not won every time, of course, but he had gotten extremely lucky at several critical moments and had at the very end miraculously thrown his chance number twice, after the odds had already been declared heavily against him (and thus after the other players had upped their contribution to Daegal’s stake with the expectation that he would lose).

Merlin had pulled Daegal from the game after that, sitting him back down at the knights’ table, which was piled high with food and drink. “First lesson,” he’d said, offering Daegal a very watered-down ale, “and one you won’t learn from Gwaine - quit while you’re ahead.”

They had stayed for a long time after that, socializing and eating their fill, until Merlin had finally seemed to take notice of the time (or perhaps of the slightly seedy-looking characters who had started to wander in through the back entrance). Merlin, at that point, had prompted Daegal to gather his winnings, say his goodbyes, and make his exit, pursued by a chorus of enthusiastic farewells from the knights, none of whom showed any sign of abandoning their seats anytime soon.

Stepping out into the night air was like diving into a frozen moat. Daegal drew his cloak tighter around his torso as he and Merlin wound their way through the town. The Rising Sun’s interior had been as stiflingly hot as its namesake, overflowing with a press of bodies and thrumming with a constant cacophony of conversation, and even from the outside its closed shutters leaked driblets of light and noise, as if the building were bursting at the seams. The town, by contrast, was stone-silent and frigid, everybody shut up in their homes waiting for the weak light of morning.

“You did well,” Merlin said, as they approached the citadel. “You’re sure you’ve never played Hazard before?”

Daegal shook his head. His mother would never have let him, before, and after -

He pushed that thought away, watching his breath mist in front of his face. He’d never had enough money to gamble with after that, that was all.

“You weren’t helping me, were you?” Daegal asked Merlin.

“No, you got lucky.” Merlin chuckled. “The look on that fellow’s face...”

Daegal smiled faintly, remembering. Daegal had taken rather a lot of money from a beefy, belligerent fellow who had been bothering everybody all night, which had resulted in a vastly improved tavern experience for all when the man had stormed out in a rage, and which had also earned a round of free drinks for Daegal’s table. “He wasn’t too pleased, was he?”

“No, he wasn’t. Not quite the sort of evening he was expecting to have, I don’t think.”

They walked on, approaching the retracted drawbridge, and detoured to the parallel pedestrian crossing instead, passing through the smaller door to the bridge’s left and entering the courtyard, Merlin offering a hello to the familiar guards as they went.

“How does it feel to be older?” Merlin asked, as they crossed the darkened square.

Daegal shrugged. “I don’t know. The same, I suppose.”

But that wasn’t exactly true, Daegal thought, as they entered the base of the North Tower. Last year, things had been very different. A few months ago, he could never have dreamed of the sort of day he’d been having today. And now -

He hesitated at the bottom of the stair leading to the physician’s chambers. Merlin, oblivious to the fact that Daegal was not right behind him, kept climbing.

“Why are you doing all this?” Daegal asked. His voice sounded strange in his own ears, or maybe that was just a function of the echo in the hollow space, his words bouncing off the stone shell on either side of him.

Merlin turned around, surprised to see Daegal still standing at the bottom of the stairs. “All what?”

Daegal made an uncertain gesture. “This. All these things today...I don’t understand.”

“It’s your birthday,” Merlin said, as if that made any sense at all.

“It’s not, though,” Daegal said. “Even if it were, I don’t see - I mean, it doesn’t matter.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Who cares?”

Merlin stared levelly at Daegal. “I do,” he said.

A long silence ensued. Daegal could not possibly have formulated a reply to this even if he’d known what to say, but Merlin did not ask him to respond, instead descending a few steps and putting a hand on Daegal’s elbow, nudging him up the staircase. “Come on,” he said quietly. “It’s late.”

Daegal followed him without a word, stunned and silent, seven stories straight up.

“Isn’t it a bit past your bedtime, old man?” Merlin said, immediately upon opening the doors to the physician’s chambers.

Daegal, trailing behind, thought this was a very unusual way for Merlin to address Gaius, but as he peered around Merlin’s shoulder, he realized it was not Gaius to whom Merlin was speaking, but Will, who was sitting by the little hearthfire at the left of the room with his feet propped up on a stool.

“No,” Will replied, though he did look like he was ready to doze off. “It might be a bit past Arthur’s, though.”

Merlin swore and stopped dead in the doorway. “He sent somebody up?”

“Several somebodies.”

“What did you tell them?

Will waved an unconcerned hand. “I don’t remember.”

“Will - ”

“Isn’t he waiting for you to turn down his sheets or something?”

“Did you tell them I was at the tavern?”

Will smirked.

Merlin, cursing under his breath, took Daegal by the upper arms and maneuvered him into the room. “Drink some water. Kip on the patient cot - you’re up early collecting pots with Gaius tomorrow; you might as well sleep here.” He tore off his outerwear and dumped it on a table. “You,” he said to Will, “on the other hand, can go home, you ass.”

Will tipped his chair back, cupping a hand to his ear. “What’s that? ‘Have my bed, William’? All right, if you say so.”

Merlin flashed Will a rude gesture before tearing out of the room. Daegal caught the door before it could slam and closed it carefully, so as not to disturb Gaius, who was sleeping behind the screens that had been drawn around his corner.

Will rose from his seat with a yawn, stretching. “So you had your evening out at last.”

Daegal did not answer him, his mind still trapped back there in the stairwell with Merlin. I do, he heard again, as he struggled to untie his cloak. I do.

“Was it everything you thought it would be?”

Daegal managed to undo the knot, his fingers clumsy with cold. He pulled his cloak from his shoulders and folded it slowly, first in half, then in fours, and then laid it aside before doing the same with Merlin’s rumpled jacket, single-mindedly focused on his task.

“I hope you at least took something off Gwaine. Fellow’s too cocky for his own good.”

Daegal, out of things to fold, stared at his hands. Will came closer, scrutinizing Daegal in the low light. “How much did you have to drink?”

Daegal stuck his hands into his pockets, avoiding Will’s gaze. Not much, was the true answer, but he couldn’t find the words.

He fingered the coins in his pocket, the silver pieces cold and clinking against one another.

“Oi,” Will said, frowning. He tipped Daegal’s chin up to see his eyes. “You all right in there?”

Morgana had given Daegal a sack of coins just like this, once.

Daegal yanked his hands out of his pockets as if he had been burned, jerking back from Will’s fingers.

“This is wrong,” he blurted out.

Will blinked at him. “Sorry?”

“I can’t do this. It’s - I can’t. It’s not right.”

“What isn’t?”

“Everything! The birthday, the money, the tavern, the riding - ” Daegal's voice was rising, but he could not rein himself in. He had been trying to tell this to someone all day. “The horse, the land, breakfast - ”

Will stared at him, confounded. “Breakfast?”

Daegal struggled mightily not to holler in frustration. Will, of all people, ought to have understood, but it appeared he was committed to being just as obtuse as everyone else. “Yes! I don’t deserve it; it isn’t right - ”

Will’s eyebrows shot up. He did not give Daegal another chance to wake Gaius, but planted a hand on Daegal’s shoulder and spun him around, muttering, “Go,” in a low voice, pushing Daegal away from Gaius’s sleeping area in the direction of Merlin’s chambers. Daegal allowed himself to be marched up the little staircase, Will following, until they were both in Merlin’s room, the small chamber chilly and cloaked with shadows, lit only by a single hanging candle.

Closing the door, Will turned back to Daegal. “Start over,” he commanded.

Daegal whipped out Arthur’s envelope. “The King - he gave me a land grant.”

Will snatched the piece of parchment out of Daegal’s hand, scanning it briefly. “So?” he said, discarding the envelope onto Merlin’s desk. “He can afford it.”

“But it’s - ”

“Nothing he’ll miss.”

“But - ”

“But what?”

“The Queen - ”

“What about her?”

“She gave me a horse.”

Will shrugged. “And?”

“It’s too much! I can’t - ”

“Are you planning to thank her for it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to take care of it?”

“Of course!”

“Then what’s the trouble? She wanted you to have it.”

“She gave it to me for the wrong reasons!” Daegal exclaimed frustratedly. “She kept saying I helped her, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know she needed help. I thought she wanted the throne for herself - ”

“You stopped her killing her husband,” Will said, interrupting. “You saved his life.”

“I didn’t save him. I almost killed him. I’m the reason he needed help in the first place. But all of them are acting like - ” Daegal thought back to earlier that night, to Elyan, who had shown Daegal how to calculate Hazard odds in his head; to Leon, who had spoken to Daegal like one of the adults; to Percival, who had taught Daegal the less savory lyrics to the tavern’s favorite drinking songs; and to Gwaine, who had murmured advice in Daegal’s ear while Daegal cast his dice. “They kept saying I’d done their job for them. They - ”

A horrible, hollow feeling bloomed in Daegal’s chest, strangling his voice. He pulled the coins out of his pocket and dumped them onto Merlin’s desk, not wanting to carry that cold weight for another moment. “They don’t know me. They don’t know what I’m like.”

Will watched him closely, his eyes narrowing. “What are you like?”

Daegal shook his head and sank down onto Merlin’s bed, staring at the floor. He didn’t want to say it. He shouldn’t need to say it. Will already knew the whole story; Daegal shouldn’t have needed to retread all the ugly details.

Will folded his arms, leaning back against the top of Merlin’s desk. The single candle did very little to illuminate his set expression, but the moonlight in the window behind him threaded his silhouette with silver.

“I shouldn’t have said anything about my birthday,” Daegal murmured, his voice thick. “I should have just kept it quiet. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

Will frowned. “Who said that?”

“Merlin. When I didn’t mention my birthday - he said you were - well, he said we were two of a kind.”

Will shook his head. “I don’t hide my birthday.”

“I think you must,” Daegal said stubbornly, returning to his intense inspection of the floorboards. “Because I don’t even know when it is.”

“Neither do I.”

Daegal looked up, surprised. “What?”

“I don’t know when my birthday is.”

“Why - ”

Will lifted a finger repressively, and Daegal realized he was not going to be getting that part of the story tonight, or maybe ever. “It doesn’t matter,” Will said. “I don’t care. I don’t fancy it much, anyhow. It’s nothing to me. Merlin, though - ” He gestured at the room around them, at the mussed bedclothes and the stacked manuscripts and the sketched diagrams pasted to the walls. “He doesn’t like it when I say things like that. It bothers him. He’s got ideas about how these things are supposed to be done, and he thinks it’s wrong, not telling me happy birthday, even if I’d rather he just left it alone.”

Daegal had no trouble believing it, if Merlin’s reaction to Daegal’s skipped birthday were anything to go by. “But then - ” Daegal frowned. “He mustn’t know when your birthday is, either.”

“My birthday,” Will said, in a long-suffering way, “is whenever Merlin decides he wants it to be. He comes crawling into my cott at some godsforsaken hour of the morning on whatever personally convenient day he’s picked that year, and then he yanks me out of bed and feeds me too much food and drags me all over creation doing the sort of things he thinks I’ll like doing. I’ve been telling him to drop it for more years than you’ve been alive, but he never listens. It doesn’t matter how much I whinge about it. He never forgets. He can’t help himself. He thinks it’s important, telling people he’s happy they were born, even if they don’t think being born was such a fantastic thing themselves.”

Will gestured at Daegal. “If you’re going to be one of his people now, you’re going to have to get used to that. You don’t have to like it, but you’ve got to understand it. That’s who he is. That’s how he treats people. He won’t give you a pass on birthday fuss just because you don’t think you’re worth fussing over. He’s not built that way.”

Daegal heard Merlin’s words again, echoing against the frozen stones of the stairwell. Who cares? Daegal had asked.

I do.

He twisted his fingers together. Out in the physician’s chamber proper, Gaius was snoring.

“It’s not just Merlin, though,” Daegal said finally, in a soft voice. “Everybody - all of them are doing too much.”

“Too much how?”

“They keep thanking me. But the gifts are - I didn’t earn them. I don’t deserve them.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t need anyone to tell me; I know.” Daegal stared at Will, helpless to explain why Will’s inability to accept this simple truth made him feel so utterly lost at sea. “I don’t understand this. You’re the one who kept saying I did something wrong.”

“You did do something wrong,” Will replied, as if this entire line of discussion were so obvious that it did not need to be examined. “But you did something right, too.”

“I - ”

Will held up a hand. “Who was it nearly got themselves killed saving Pendragon’s gleaming hide? Who was it betrayed Morgana?”

“Me, but - ”

“Who was it came back to save Merlin’s life?”

“From something I did to him in the first place.”

“From something Morgana did to him,” Will corrected.

“I helped,” Daegal retorted. “You’re always saying - you said I need to take responsibility.”

“You do,” Will said. “For all your choices. Not just the shyte ones.” He gestured at the door, back towards the rest of the castle. “You saved two lives. You nearly got yourself killed doing it. That’s what they’re all thanking you for. It’s not about what you did for yourself; it’s what you did for everyone else, when you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to come back for Merlin. You didn’t have to follow him to Camelot. You could have just taken Morgana’s money and run.”

“I tried,” Daegal confessed, his mouth very dry. “I tried. I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?” Will said, as if he already knew the answer.

“I just - couldn’t.” Daegal remembered it with a nightmarish clarity, hesitating in the thickness of the undergrowth as the encroaching night muddled his vision, knowing that Merlin was suffocating at the bottom of a muddy ravine where no one would ever find his body. “I felt like something was going to swallow me. I would’ve rather died than felt like that all the time.”

“That’s because you know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Will said, as if he had been waiting for Daegal to say this all along. “And you chose right.”

“I chose wrong first.”

Will shook his head. “Lots of people choose wrong first. Doesn’t mean that what you choose next doesn’t matter.”

Daegal played with the hem of his sleeve, wrapping a fraying thread around his finger. Will pushed himself up from the desk and dragged Merlin’s chair over to a spot across from Daegal, then sat down. “Listen here,” he said. “I can’t say I’d be too pleased to get a load of gifts that I didn’t think I ought to have, either. But you can’t give them back, and you can’t convince people that you don’t deserve them, either.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’ve got to just smile, and say thank you, and do your best to be worthy of everyone’s gifts.”

Daegal absorbed this, nodding slowly. “I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” Will said. “And so does everyone else.” Will met Daegal’s gaze unflinchingly, his outline illuminated at the edges by the moon at his back. “Don’t you ever tell me that lot doesn’t know what you’re like. They know it better than you do.”

Daegal swallowed, not trusting himself to speak.

“Now then,” Will said, linking his hands behind the back of his chair and stretching out his arms. “This is rubbish timing, but you’ve got to start practicing sometime, so let’s just get it over with.” He withdrew a thin, utensil-sized package from his pocket, extending it to Daegal. “Don’t have a crisis, now.”

“Oh - no - ” Daegal moaned.

“Oi,” Will warned. “What’ve we just talked about?”

Daegal took the parcel.

“Smile and say thank you,” Will prompted, when Daegal did not say anything right away.

Daegal managed a wobbly smile, and an even wobblier thank you, which Will, to Daegal’s very great relief, chose not to comment upon.

Daegal untied the parcel. The cloth casing fell away, revealing a short and sturdy pocketknife encased in a plain leather sheath. Daegal picked it up and turned it over in his hands, knowing immediately that Will had carved the handle himself. It fit into Daegal’s hand as if it had been moulded from a plaster cast, and it was the only part of the knife sporting any decoration, inscribed as it was with an angular script that Daegal could not read in this light. Daegal removed the sheath and found that the blade had been sharpened to a dangerous edge, the point glinting in the moonlight.

“Elyan did that bit,” Will said. “It ought to hold an edge better than what you have now.”

“No more mashing seed pods,” Daegal murmured.

“Exactly.”

Daegal ran a finger over the symbols carved into the handle. He hadn’t learned all his letters yet, but he thought he ought to have been able to recognize a few of them, at least. “What’s this writing?”

“Oh, that,” Will said, as if he had almost forgotten. “It’s spelled.”

“Spelled?”

“Magicked. Against slips. To spare your fingers.” Will waggled his own fingers in the air, and Daegal had to laugh a little.

“Merlin?”

Will’s face took on a thoughtful look. “No, actually.” He pointed at the unfamiliar runes, his tone becoming more serious. “Mordred says that if you’re going to exploit his people for personal gain, then you’re going to learn something about the culture.”

Daegal froze. A chill ran through him. He had never even considered -

He gripped the inscribed handle with sweaty fingers, mortified. “He’s angry with me.”

“No,” Will said. “I don’t think so, at least. It’s hard to tell with that fellow.”

At Daegal’s dismayed look, Will added, “He offered to spell the thing himself, at least, so I can’t imagine he’s too upset with you. But he has every right to be, you realize that?”

Daegal nodded quickly.

“You’re going to go and see him,” Will said, his voice calm, but his tone brooking no argument. “And you’re going to apologize, and you’re going to listen to whatever it is he wants to tell you. You understand?”

“Yes,” Daegal said quickly. “I’ll do it.” He glanced at the door.

“Not now,” Will clarified. “Tomorrow. He might not be angry just yet, but he will be if you yank him out of bed a few hours before he’s supposed to be on patrol.”

Daegal’s shoulders sagged. Will was right, but Daegal could not stand the thought of waiting. Yet another guilt-monster was chewing a hole in his stomach, and he was starting to think those gnawing teeth would never let him sleep. He recalled, suddenly, with a fresh wave of horror, the outrage on Merlin’s face when Daegal’s falsified triskele had smeared away, how tightly Merlin’s fingers had dug into Daegal’s wrist.

Here was one more stupid thing Daegal had done. One more person he’d injured. One more wrongheaded decision.

His eyes drifted longingly towards the door again.

“No,” Will said, shaking his head. “You made that bed, now you lie in it for one night.”

Daegal sighed, and Will’s tone softened. “You’ll make it right in the morning,” he said.

Daegal traced one of the Druidic runes with a finger. He supposed that was the best he could do.

Will stood up and beckoned for Daegal to join him. “Listen,” he said, pushing Merlin’s chair back under the desk. “It’s late. I don’t want you up all night brooding over this, all right?”

“All right,” Daegal said, but he had a feeling he was in for yet another night of lying awake under a blanket of guilt he had woven for himself.

“And - not that this needs to be said, but let’s not tell anyone you’ve got a magic pocketknife, all right? Pendragon will think I’ve been messing about with enchantments behind his back, and he’ll have me booted out of this kingdom faster than you can say insufferable bastard.”

“But you don’t have - ”

“Yes, I do,” Will reminded Daegal, giving him a significant look. “And that’s exactly what you’re going to tell people, if anybody starts asking questions.” He opened Merlin’s door, ushering Daegal through it. “But let’s not give folk a reason to ask, all right? Otherwise the next person trying to kill the king might be me, because if Pendragon wants me out of this place he’s going to have to execute me and exile my corpse, no matter if I did sign a stupid promise ‘renouncing the practice of magic in all its forms,’ or whatever other rubbish that idiot asked me to agree to.”

Daegal followed Will across the main chamber, watching while Will pulled on his outerwear. “I’m guessing he never gave you a land grant, then?”

Will burst into laughter, leaning heavily on the door handle. He only remembered to clap a hand over his mouth when a slumbering Gaius snorted and rolled over. “Oh, lor,” he wheezed, trying to recover himself. “Don’t do that to me.”

Daegal smiled sheepishly. Will straightened up, his eyes creased with pure, undisciplined mirth. “You won’t let all those fancy presents go to your head, now, will you?”

“I won’t,” Daegal promised. “But - about Arthur’s gift, though. I don’t actually know what to do with a plot of land.”

“Neither does Arthur,” Will said, rolling his eyes. “But I do, and so does Merlin. We’ll work it out together, all right?”

“All right,” Daegal said, as Will unlatched the door. “Erm. Will - ”

“Yeah.”

Smile and say thank you. “Thank you,” Daegal said, trying on a smile for size, hoping it did not falter too much at the corners. “For the knife, and - everything else.”

Will regarded him in that way of his that was very off-putting when you did not want to be read like a book but somehow oddly useful when you were trying to communicate something unspoken. “You’re welcome,” Will said finally, surprising Daegal by reaching out and mussing his hair. “See? You’ve got the hang of things already.”

Will turned to go, but when he reached the top of the staircase he paused, glancing back. “And, listen - ” he said, his voice low enough not to wake Gaius, but somehow warm enough to push back the December chill. “Whether you like it or not - happy birthday, lad.”

Daegal sat tucked away in one of the window nooks, his cloak wrapped around him like a blanket and the glass casement leaching heat away from his side. Merlin was long since abed, and Gaius’s muffled snores filled the main chamber, a soft drone of sound behind the screens. Outside, the moon hung chubby and ovoid in the sky, like a pale seed on a black field of soil, like the bulbs Daegal would plant in his new garden, which was out there somewhere, nestled in the farming fields of the Sprawl.

He rubbed his thumb over the unfamiliar runes carved into the handle of his birthday blade. His sixteen year-old self would have thrown that knife away, just to be safe. There would have been no reason for him to believe that someone he’d injured would ever magick a gift for him just to be helpful, and sixteen year-old Daegal would have assumed that the spell “to spare his fingers” was in fact a curse to make sure they all fell off.

But seventeen year-old Daegal was determined not to think like that anymore. He was not going to think the worst of everyone who tried to help him, and he was not going to throw away gifts, whether he thought he deserved them or not. He was going to smile, and say thank you, and do his best to be worthy of what he’d been given.

He leaned his forehead against the cold glass, looking down at the flickering lights on the city walls and the dark countryside beyond. The Sprawl’s rolling jumble of cottages and fields melted into a shadowy sea of forest, and far away, the looming bulk of the White Mountains towered over the skyline, the peaks’ black silhouettes only distinguishable at this hour by an absence of stars.

It was a very big world, Daegal thought, following the craggy outline of the range with his eyes. And he had made plenty of bad decisions blundering around within its borders, that was certain. But there was something beautiful about it still, even in the dead of winter.

And it was not nearly as bleak as it had appeared to be, this time last year.

Seventeen was going to be different, Daegal told himself. Like Merlin always said. It won’t always be like this. Things will be better. Daegal could make them better. He had chosen wrong first, but he could choose right next. He could choose right from now on. He had made a mistake, but he could make it right in the morning.

And tonight - tonight, it was still his birthday.

It isn’t, his sixteen year-old self snapped.

“It is,” Daegal said. “It’s my birthday.”

Who cares, the voice scoffed.

Daegal wrapped his fingers around his unearned mark of forgiveness, the grooves of the rune-etched handle imprinting themselves into his skin. “I do,” he said firmly, putting every ounce of conviction he had behind the words. “I do.”

His younger self shut its mouth.

Daegal smiled slightly. “Happy birthday to me,” he murmured, and was surprised to find that for the first time in a long time, he actually meant it.

Curled up against the window, he tucked his knife against his side and fixed his eyes on the horizon, settling in to wait for the sun.

#bbc merlin gen #fic #also fyi i know we haven't discussed the broader worldstate of this AU and you're welcome to change anything i chose to use here #but just for the purposes of this particular fic - lancelot did still die; but elyan did not #because i don't acknowledge writing decisions that had no narrative integrity 🙃#the once and future slowburn #verse: offcut joinery #the physician's apprentice #no kings no masters

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animanightmate · 3 years

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What do you do if you write something for a person but they dont acknowledge it? The person made it a point to requested something from you and then never commented that they either: liked it. Didnt like it or didnt read it or dont wanna read it etc…… do you keep writing? Quit writing it? Remove the connect between you and them- like mentions or tags or gifts? just being a little salty. ☹️ I worked hard for them and they doesnt care to respond at all- been several weeks now- plenty of time to say something. I want to tag another person (and remove the previous person) in it because they were a totally unexpected reader that really appreciated it and told me so. But I don’t want to offend the person who requested the work. what should I do?

Hey Anon, that does sound super-frustrating! If you've put a lot of work in for a particular request, it must feel like your effort is being disregarded.

I guess... if you've heard literally nothing about the piece from the person in question, you might want to check some stuff first:

Do they actually know you've written it? For them? It's possible they've either not seen the tag or tumblr/ AO3 hasn't notified them. I was tagged in something a couple of weeks ago and I only knew about it because someone mentioned it elsewhere - tumblr can definitely be Like That.

Have they been on the platform on which you've tagged them for other stuff, in the meantime? Maybe they're just having a break/ can't access the platform right now...

Are they busy/ sick/ overwhelmed at the moment? I had an unsolicited gift written for me once as an extension of a fic of mine and, even though the person concerned had commented on my fic to say they were planning this and asked was it all right to do, I freaked out for days. (I loved it and was immensely flattered but behold: freaking out!) I also know that, when my health is particularly poor, even though I keep meaning to get around to responding to people about various things, my executive function departs and then it's weeks since I "should" have said something, and it becomes even more embarrassing to respond after a gap...

Some more questions for you, as the writer:

Are you enjoying the story? If so, keep going, I reckon! Even if the original impetus has actually now gone, the gift to you of the tale remains.

If someone else is enjoying it (too), is that enough? Personally, I think you should definitely keep writing for their enjoyment. Whether you gift it to them as well/ instead is up to you.

How will you feel if you never finish writing it? To my mind, there's a lot to be said for Just Writing The Thing. It's a really important discipline to get into, for one. I've had creative commissions where I really haven't been feeling it, and the original patron has disappeared, but the sense of achievement in finishing the piece you set out to do, even if it's not your finest work, or the patron in question never looks at it once, is a very distinct one. And, from experience, the muscle memory of forging through like that will help get you through writer's block on things you really want to write in the future. (And oddly, some of those commissions have been the ones that have resonated the strongest with other people (while some of my personal favourites languish in the meh pile, as far as other audiences are concerned...).)

How important is that other person's opinion to you? In absolute honesty? How would you feel if they actually hated it? Or adored it? What would it change about your own feelings for the piece? It seems to me as though it has a life of its own now. What do you think?

Thank you, anon, for this exercise (if that doesn't sound too cold!) - I've never had an anonymous query before, for one thing, and, for another, responding has got me thinking about my own practice and motivations (and pieces I've left languishing lately). I hope this has been in some way helpful to you, and I guess I'd have one more piece of advice on which to part: if you haven't already, maybe just ask them what they think. If it's that important to you, it sounds like checking in with them would be the way to go. If it isn't, well, there's your answer, I suppose! 😊

#anon #anonymous #anon ask #writing advice #not being able to get answers to coaching questions is a weird experience!#writing tips #writing to commission #gifts #thanks anon!

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you-are-worth-the-wait · 3 years

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Hey there Love. This will be a work in progress post as I try to address most the things you talked/asked about.

Smile lines on your face? So are you smiling more? Hmm...hard to tell how often I smile. I think I do it out of necessity more than sincerity. Otherwise people may think that I want nothing to do with them. At least at home when no one really interacts with me I can just be “blah”.

Hot cocoa weather is almost pretty much here but I haven’t really had the time/chance to enjoy it. Can’t really see myself having that warm/cozy/fun feeling I would normally have associated when I’m just sitting here alone watch things to distract my mind more so than for the enjoyment and relaxation of it all. At times I feel like I’m just watching for the sake of watching just so time will eventually get to a time that I need to do something like go to the gym or go to sleep. I have just been drinking tea with French vanilla creamer.

Sitting on the couch right next to the Christmas tree. Just wondering what your tree looks like. Wonder how we would decorate it.

My job is a job. There is repetition that helps me get things so it becomes muscle memory but there are situations that arise that I’ve never encountered or only encounter not so often so I need to ask for help. They do charge nurse rotations but I’m still too new for that so I’m not in that rotation yet. I think this job will be okay in the long run. I’m just waiting for when the world goes back to “normal”, we increase our patient load, and I start to become as spiteful as all my other coworkers around me. They keep their spirits up but they have said how the job has changed and hardened them. Almost kinda like the jail setting where people said I was “nice and patient” but if I stay there long enough the place would change me. So I guess I’m just waiting for that point to where I start to see myself struggling and stressing like everyone around me. Guess it’s just a matter of time.

Pretty nurses. People told me about that phenomena when I joined this line of work. I guess it really just depends on where you work. You ever gonna introduce me to anyone? *ws* I guess they need to like me though and I don’t know if I’m a “you’ll get to like me through dates” kind of person. That’s just not an atmosphere/style that I’m comfortable in.

Your cooking getting any better? Lucky person who gets all those rewards. Me, no. I do things here and there but I do it mainly just to have something to eat. Lately I’ve just been eating saimin, fast food, and/or cereal. That’s all the capacity I have to interest me. My highlight is buying different kinds of cereal and just mixing it together. The latest one is the honey Frosted Flakes, special K with banana, and rice crispies. How badly did you cut up your finger? How did you do it? You need to be more careful Love. I know you try to teach me the proper ways to cut things but I don’t trust myself to cut things the way you showed me. I feel like I’m more prone to cut myself. So it’s almost like the choice of cutting things the “correct” way or the safe way which isn’t as proper/effective so I do go for the safe route.

Like I said, the women I find attractive are in different departments and don’t work in the same area as me. The only time I see them is randomly or if I make the effort to do so but if I do that, I’m out of place because there really isn’t a reason for me to be where they are for long extended periods of time. Sooo...yeah. There goes that theory of being by women here. At least where my desk is now I’ll have people around me. I think they are all in their 50’s and all and I’m not really attracted to them. They are nice as coworkers and resources for help but that’s about it. I can’t honestly see myself getting romantically involved with any of my future office mates which is okay. I just don’t know when/how I’ll expose myself to anyone that could possibly be a romantic prospect. Maybe if I worked in the main hospital on the floor. Guess it’s all up to tinder and my so called FWB...*shrugs*

Line dancing on the half hour? How kewl is that :) so did you learn anything about willie Nelson? Here’s what you can do. Follow up on whateve you know about him in his older years and find a video of him when he was younger. When we went to that county music hall of fame in Nashville, there was a video footage of willie Nelson when he was younger. It blew me and my brother away. It was pretty kewl.

I know that we kind of have our “baggage” when it comes to you and me and inheriting both our parents. Do you think you can handle mine as much I would have to handle yours? I mean, you already can tell that they accept you with open arms. You’ve seen that my relatives do as well and they all are pretty much like that. You won’t really find anyone who’s standoffish or judgmental. I know I had to hide you away for obvious reasons but I feel if we could just be ourselves, family on my side for you wouldn’t be a problem. Heck, even if it’s jokingly, my mom prolly “loves” you more than me :P :)

The people who are training me are really kewl. Filipinos. The main one training me is the one nurse who we absorbed for a time to help when the calls were too much. But then she went back to her own PACT and when I was transitioned into PACT, she offered to train me and I accepted. She’s got a lot of experience and does a lot of things by the book so I like the fact that she’s given me a good foundation. Almost like a “mom” figure. The other nurse in the room is my back up trainer when she isn’t there and she’s like the “sister”. Then the NP there is almost like a second “mom” figure but frantic in the sense she does a lot of things well but is getting older so the demands are piling up causing her to feel frenetic and overwhelmed. But they are so nice and friendly that I don’t want to leave that room. I’m tempted to ask my main manager that when someone retires, I want to move back into that room.

The sharing of snacks is just something that they did before and I “lucked” into. They have a table in the back that they have snacks/food they bring in to share and munch on during the day. So I’ve brought stuff too every now and then. I introduced them to li hing mui powder and I let them have some of my apples with it. They liked it. But now that I’m moving to another room, I’ve got to start all over. I said that maybe I’ll work there every Wednesday maybe but that may not be feasible since I’ll have my own phone line and all.

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Loud House Reviews: The Cow-Pie Kid and Saved by the Spell

Welcome back Loudiacs.. I .. don’t know what the fandom calls themselves. And given I dont’ know anyone personally in the fandom and the going into the tag is like living in a living nightmare.. it’s easier to keep workshopping a name till either someone tells me or I find one that sounds right. Loudites.. there we go that didn’t take long. Point is we’re back in The Loud House, In The Loud House for the first regular coverage, i.e. when I cover a show as It comes out of the season. And I was lucky enough to actually see the episode same day this time and with a promo that at least gives me images to work with, so yeah, i’m pretty pumped. And not just because I can cross this one off because SOMEBODY has a birthday tommorow.. no not me, that was last month.

There ya go. But yeah the show’s back. I’m excited, your excited, i’m scared because nick dosen’t give a clear schedule out ahead of time so i’m left wondering when one’s going to pop up and when to get it on my schedule now I have one... it’s a good time. Seriously though Nick needs to get their scheduling in order. So i’m happy to be back, your happy to have me here, but probably not happy to have spoilers so let’s take this under the cut and we can talk about cow pies, magic, and ... how this block is weirdly almost all lincoln episodes.

The Cow-Pie Kid: Yeah.. this was the only bit from cow pie kid I could find. Tons of stuff to mine from for saved by the spell. Nothing for that one. Weird. Anyways our story opens with Lynn’s baseball team, who we’ve met before.. and include friends who have played other sports with her and that guy she had a crush on for all of five minutes because the writers kinda forgot L is for Love happened for anyone but Luna and Luann.

Okay look MOST of the love intrests introduced there were not great and while Lincoln needs one NOW, at the time he really did not as the Ronnie Anne thing had not, and still has not, been properly resolved. Still vastly prefer him with Stella and her with Sid, i’m just saying closure would be nice. Look i’m getting off topic point is one besides Sam, who was great out of the gate and not just for being gay.. though that was a lot of it, and Benny, whose objectively a really sweet kid and damn likeable. Luaggie shippers feel free to boo me, I understand.. dosen’t change my mind or the fact Poly exists to fix that. I mean why not both I ask you. Besides them, we had Chazz, a loveable chubby guy who Leni was into and worked at clothing store and knew his fashion stuff. and was charmed by her romantic gesture. He just seemd sweet and it was implied via background stuff they were still dating.. but he hasnt’ shown up since despite her working AT the mall and that being her main arc for the last two seasons.

Just why? What’s wrong with the chubby fashion boy? Why? Did they decide they had too many romance arcs.. at exactly two? I get focusing on sam, because duh, and because that was awesome.. but you’ve had 2 full seasons since then and again Leni and him now work in the same location if not the same store, which in itself is a plot. I don’t ask much from you show.. well okay I do but let me clarify I don’t ask much from you that you could actually do: I know i’m never getting my a diffrent world style spinoff with lori and bobby. I know Zach is going nowhere and i’m just going to have to get over it, I will not, but I DO know you could include chaz and just won’t. So do that at least. I will put up with several more seasons of Zach if it means this adorable love story continues. It’s even easy enough to pick up this late: they are both stupid. Work with that. Gah... coach if you’d please.

Thanks coach. Okay so one tangent later we’re back to the episode. Point is her team is loosing even though Lynn’s the captain now, and while she’s perfectly encouraging it’s not winning games. Lynn is understandably dejected in the car not helped by the sports commentor guys from the game... commenting about it on the radio...

I mean.. I get sports can have dry spots and all that but who covers a middle school basketball team on the radio that isn’t the middle school radio station. I mean I genuinely can’t decide which is more sad... a radio personality doing a children’s baseball game on his own show, or having so much trouble getting one that he’s apperaing on the middle school radio show. And I COULD say it’s just a guest spot but he’s talking like he knows what’s going on intmatiley> Did his daughter ask him to? I mean I know radio’s fallen pretty far but I dind’t think it was that much in the basement. Do a podcast at least man.

Okay before I go on another Tangent point is Lynn feels it’s her fault as Captain.. which granted whoever the coach is should be .. but it genuinely looks like they don’t HAVE a coach. Maybe they had to sack him to pay for the newly refrubished av department? I dunno. Point is she feels bad and Lynn Sr vows to cheer her up.. before stopping for farm fresh eggs. Which.. yeah can’t blame him. He’s a cook, and Liam’s family likely has good prices. He can buy for both home and restraunt at once. I mean he has a van and only one occupant at the moment. Don’t judge him. But this little detour DOES help Lynn’s mood. Her problem is the team lacks a decent pitcher, since Lynn herself was banned for throwing one at a heckling goat. The Lawsuit is ongoing and that made me laugh a lot. But Lynn finds Happy Gilmore style that Liam.. has a really great arm. Granted instead of actuall balls it’s with cowpies because this series really loves a shit joke, hence the title and the new nickname for liam, the cow pie kid.. but compared to some of the series toilet humor it’s a lot less in your face. But with Liam being so good Lynn can’t help but sign him to the team and Liam being a sweetie pie is happy to agree. I have.. not hid even for a second how much I liked Liam or wanted him, and Stella, to show up outside of Lincoln episodes more often, or even get his own again. That day.. has come. Not only does LIam now have a roll entirely outside his friend group, but this episode’s about him and Lynn together.. not in that way.. yet. Someday.. Point is my boy is in the spotlight and I could not be happier. And thankfully.. Lynn’s at her best. What I feared would be an episode about her overtraining him and making him not enjoy the game, htat old chesnut instead.. she just genuinely helps mentor him. She’s tough but fair as she helps him get his aim right as he’s used to firing Cow Pie’s, so the weight distrbution is off. So she helps train him and .. it’s really cute honestly, with her genuinely helping him and showing a softer side and later realizing she had him thinking about it too hard and just having him not think.. and going by instinct naturally works for a carefree and easygoing guy like liam. Wouldn’t be suprised if he went ultra instinct eventually.. but that’s for another episode. They also have a pig pile together.. which sounds bad but is just pigs piling on liam and lynn gladly gets on top of the pigs and god that sounds worse. next scnee.

So Liam gets ahead and becomes the star pitcher for the zanarkand abes.. I mean the Royal Woods Kangaroos, and they just keep wining and wining and wining. Their like glomgold: all they do is win... but probably with less attempted corpse dancing. Problem is as we see during the montage Liam’s arm is slowly but surley getting cramped and while he wins hte next game.. his arm gives out from noodle arm. The good news is with rest, he can fix it, as her injury prone friend Paula, whose somehow allowed to play with crutches despite ALL the legal and moral issues that raises explains. but they don’t have days to rest it. So insane plans it is! So Lynn goes to her sisters for herlp..specifically lisa int he hopes her mad science can either fix his pain or turn him into the hulk. Neither happens.. yet. I mean LIam is so sweet if he IS a hulk, we won’t know yet. But the green door will.. it always knows. IT ALWAYS KNOWS. Lynn bemonas her luck.. before Lucy appears!

I JUST said last month when reviewing 11 louds a leapin that I missed the duo of her and lynn and lo and behold here we are. While we dno’t get much of the two fo them, it is still nice to see Lynn suprised by her scares and Lucy trying to use the dark arts to heal his pain.. which actually works. Lucy’s upgraded from wants to be a witch to full witch.

So yeah her dark magic works and now Liam is fine just fine as the championship game approaches. Until naturally it isn’t. While Lucy STOPPED the pain, she didn’t make anything better, just numbed it so Liam’s arm’s pretty bad and Lisa suggests there’s a 70 perfecnt chance he’ll wreck it if he does so.. and while Lynn is naturlaly, given one of her main traits is asshole, ready to risk that.. she realizes she can’t. Rusty is on her team following her orders.. and no matter how good a W feels.. she can’t trade in someone’s health for one. Honestly bettter than most sports managers ngl. So Paula subs in and misses, loosing them the game.. but Lynn. takes it in stride, having realized she can win next year and having finally realized what being the leader REALLY means. She can work on paula’s curve, give Liam a break, and win next time... which she’ll have because time dosen’t work normally in this show’s dimension and a solid timeline is just a pipedream, so she probably has another year of being 14 to redo this and has become aware of it. I’m scared and excited for what that means. Liam celebrates with a pig pile of two and we get a REALLY fucking cute shot of the two being happy and what not before a pig jumps on them still though.. yeah I ship it now. Liam taps into the space where I thought a black void of misery and douchebaggery was but ti turns out is in fact a heart, something few can do with Lynn and Lynn can protect him form bullies and is perfectly suited for his rough hewn farmboy styles. Point is their cut.e And so was this episode. IT was a really nice return to the series and it was again REALLY fucking great to see one of Lincoln’s firend,s and one of the GOOD ones at that, get a starring roll without him. HOpefully this keeps up and hopefully we see more of these two.

Saved by the Spell:

RUSTY SPOKES IS TRASH (Ring) I don’t have a saved by the spell font that’ll have to do. Point is he is but before we get to Rusty being Rusty, Lincoln is doing magic tricks at the table.

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Point is he’s excited to do it at the talent show. The next day his friends discuss doing something to make them look cool to everyone. WHich.. kids. i’ll level with you. You. are. NERDS. As a massive one in both size and nerdiness myself, there’s nothing wrong with that. 2/3 of you are lovely people. You’ll be fine. But you are geeks, and should be proud of that.. not so proud you evolve into an incel or it’s adjacent form of assholes mind you, but still proud of who you are. You are never going to be that cool by trying to appeal to everyone. Just be yourslef and the cool comes naturaly. Like kool aid, which is naturally made by milking the Kool Aid man. Be you.

But instead they decide to do a dance routine which.. let’s face it.. is probably just this spread across 6 people...

Point is maybe don’t do that. Also when Clyde does a dorky but endearing dance and says their going to shake their groove things, Rusty pipes in with “But cool”... and while sadly not as glorious as EVERYONE looking enitrely done with him like last time we saw this tool, Clyde clearly still does while the rest of hte Lincrew have no idea what the hell he’s on. I think their just.. numb to his stupidity and ego at this point. But when Lincoln shows off his magic they all hide him, fearing that magic.. is well for younger kids and this won’t play so well. Which isn’t an invalid fear: this is middle school and from personal experince, middle school can be hell.. and also one of hte best years of my life which shows the vast gulf between the two schools I was in but was also not the point. the point is kids can be cruel and maybe don’t do this. But lincoln gonna do it anyway because he has confidence.. and frankly given there was an ENTIRE episode about being yourself instead of putting on an asshole suit of armor to avoid being hurt, which Lynn finally took off again last episode, he’s right.. but the rest of them all feel THEIR ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU. and since they don’t know if he has latent psychic powers or not can’t risk him getting pigs blood dumped on him so they plan to find some way to trick him out of it.. Clyde of course gets his stomach in nots because he’s not good with schemes or lying ot his best friend, both of which this is and requires.

Also Stella’s in the lead, as she should be. And she helps as her positive attudie makes what their doing come off as it should: KINDA douchey, but not intentionally so, they just worry about hteir freind getting pummled.. possibly by his own sister but now sh’es possibly with Liam that’s probably not as much of a worry. Or Chandler but frankly he’s going to do that no matter what.. and is probably getting his ass kicked himself by older kids who won’t toldeate his bs, so your clear. But their fears while a bit unfounded are understandable and well inteitoned if misguided, as we don’t know LIncoln’s act at this point or how well it’d go over with a mostly tweenager crowd, who can be the best as we’ve seen in recent tv.. or aboslutel monsters.. same deal. You either get Luz or you get BOscha, the inbetween is rare.

So cue our usual setup of a bunch of attempts to do something in a row, but like I said while i’m not a fan of reptition if it’s done well enough it works and with it’s rather sizeable supporting cast , LIncoln and Friends episodes usdually do make it work. In this case it does as each of the sensational 6, lincoln and clyde asid,e try their hand at it. Liam, being the golden child, just has the most direct and obvious route: swipe his magic stuff.. and runs off without letting them talk it out but unlike Rusty in the next attempt, his plan was actually viable.. he just gets tangled up in the scarves and taps out. Rusty is next ....and his idea is to.. show lincoln his killer dance moves to convince him normally.

Yup pretty much that. And somehow out of the four plans, RUSTY’S is the only one that dosen’t bring up any serious moral quandries. I know i’m shocked too. He just thinks his moves will do it when no they won’t, please stop it hurts to watch and I can’t turn the fuck away. This is my job you redheaded kanker sore! Gah it thankfully ends and is unsurisingly unsuccesful.

Also unsuprisingly, i’ve been waiting since i got that image to use it on Rusty. And as a third dollop of unsuprise I did not have to force it in any way shape or form. Point is it’s Zach’s turn as during the last two he’s been pushing really hard to use some form of brainwashing on his friend.. yes .. really.

Thought Rusty would be the first loud house character to get that one but hey if the shoe fits. Seriously I thought rusty was the creep among them but at least you know.. altering someone’s throughts to suit your own isn’t his go to move. Being excetsivly cocky and coming on too strong is but still better to take THAT out of the Zach Morris playbook than “brainwash people into dooing whatever you say because tha’ts not creeptagious.” And unsurpsingly it does not work.. on Lincoln it woroks on Meyrl for some reason. Thankfully it dosen’t though just.. Zach needs no power epsiecally over the mind.

So UNSUPRSINGLY, Stella has the working plnan.. and also unsuprisingly the last three just did theres by running off, running off and shouting the loudest. Again somehow Rusty is NO LONGER the most obnoxious one of the group. Zach won that title this episode. He’s still the most pathetic.. but i’m the most done with Zach who adds nothing to the dynamic or the planet or anything and I wish would just go away. Your home planet needs you.

But yeah Stella has the winning idea: pretending to be “Yodel Boy”, a student who was humilated at a talent show last year, proving sh’es not only a decent actress (I mean it’s obvious i’ts stella in a wig, padding and lederhosen, but points for the accent being okay and hey she’s in middle school), but also the smartest of them. Only one of those is a suprise. It works and Lincoln agrees.

So the night of the talent show they’ve caught him up to speed and prepare to celebrate, only for clyd eto open the wrong locker and reveal the yodel boy suit. WHy it was in there instead of at Stella’s house where this wouldn’t happen?

But yeah the cat’s out of the bag and lincoln leaves, depressed his friends think that little of him and lied to him. Which.. yeah completely fair. They tried talking to him, it did not work.. they shoudl’ve just left it at that. It would’ve SUCKED if he got bullied true, but it was his choice to go out there and take a risk and do what he loves. As someone whose constnatly self concious and had to fight to start writing like i’m doing now, I envy that kind of youthful confidence and thus wholly support him.

And finally.. so do his friends. Realizing they’ve been kinda crappy, they introduce lincoln instead and work as his assitants.. and.. it works. Stella gets sawn in half, Zach gets astounded by a card trick, and Liam wears a bunny outfit which is just.. precious. Good boy. Best boy. It’s a huge hit.. and we also get to seesome of the new background kids including one with pink hair who looks kinda nb. I’m just saying one of you should take a crack at them, they seem nice. But for now our heroes are haield as heroes, and the other 5 apologize to lincon and they do their now cemented and fucking adorable group hug. Happy ending to a pretty great episode, with decent gags, a good relatable plot, and Rusty being just the right amoutn of obnoxious. Good stuff. So that does it for this week. If you liked this review like or reblog it, check out my other work and come back later today for some duck content. and every week once the show returns. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#the loud house #lincoln loud #stella zhau #clyde mcbride #lynn loud jr #liam honeycutt #who finally has a last name!#FINALLY #zach gurdle #rusty spokes #lucy loud #lisa loud #saved by the spell #the cow pie kid #animation #reviews #nickelodeon

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chudleycanonficfest · 3 years

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Rewrite the Stars

Day 7, Post #1 is by @adenei

Title: Rewrite the Stars

Author: adenei

Pairing: Ron/Hermione (Romione)

Prompt: Songfic

Rating: PG

TW: Depiction of blood purity/discussion of prejudices against Muggleborns, Violence/Murder mentioned (but not graphic)

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*This fic is inspired not only by the song, but also Anne and Philip's relationship in the movie The Greatest Showman.*

Summary: AU In a world where there’s no Voldemort, but blood purity is strictly enforced, Ron and Hermione must navigate their budding relationship, and all the trials and tribulations that come with it.

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“Are you sure this is alright?” Hermione asks as she smooths the front of her dress, checking for wrinkles for the fifth time in as many minutes.

“Yes, it’s fine! You look beautiful,” Ron assures her.

He places a warm, comforting hand on the small of her back as they enter the grandiose ballroom where the Auror department is hosting their annual dinner. A handful of Aurors are honored for their achievements, but over the years, it’s turned into an event for the upper classes and Purebloods.

Hermione knows she doesn’t belong here, amongst the men and women whose wealth and social status put them leagues ahead of anyone else, and it’s rare to receive an invitation to such an event even as a Halfblood. But as a Muggleborn, Hermione braces herself for an onslaught of jeers and slurs. If Ron wasn’t being honored for his success on a case he’d worked six months to solve, she wouldn’t be here at all.

Ron has always encouraged Hermione to follow her dreams, even during their Hogwarts days. Though they were sorted into different houses, the two shared many Prefect rounds together. Being named Head Boy and Girl also brought them closer together, where they began seeing each other in secret . Neither had intended to break things off upon graduation, but when Hermione received rejection after rejection for potential jobs within the Ministry, she pushed him away too.

There was a time years ago when she hoped to be working within the Magical Law Department with dreams of making the magical world a more accepting place for every witch and wizard, no matter their blood status. But those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed dreams have long since dissipated. The rules are archaic, and there’s no chance of overturning something so set in stone until there’s a new Minister of Magic who would be open to the possibility.

So, for now, Hermione tends to a job that gives her equal satisfaction. She teaches young Muggleborn students in a special school that she founded with the help of Professor McGonagall. Hermione earned her certification to teach the primary levels at University after graduating from Hogwarts, and now works with Professor McGonagall to teach those students between the ages of five and eleven how to prepare for the world they’ll enter when they’re old enough to go to Hogwarts. This is in addition to all of the regular courses that Muggle England expects them to study.

The prep school is what reconnected the pair, when Ron was assigned to work the case of an eight-year-old that disappeared last year. It was determined that the child was abducted by Fenrir Greyback and turned into a werewolf. Ron found the boy’s body deep in the Forest of Dean, where it was determined that Fenrir became too bloodthirsty on that particular hunt.

Hermione was distraught over the outcome and took comfort in Ron, who was equally shaken by the case. As the weeks following the case progressed, Hermione found herself spending more and more time with Ron. Slowly but surely, they found their way back to each other and had only just rekindled their relationship a couple of months ago.

Since their relationship still feels so new to Hermione, they’ve kept things quiet. But she knows how important tonight is for Ron, and she wants to be there for him. To support him the same way he supports her. Hermione knows he will be by her side through it all, and has assured her that no one will make any comments.

Ron leads them around the room, exchanging pleasantries and mingling with people Hermione’s only heard stories about. Thus far, everyone she’s encountered has been polite. They are about to make their way to their table when a voice calls out to them.

“Ron! There you are, dear! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Hermione turns to see a plump woman with hair the same shade of red as Ron’s. A man follows in her wake who peers at them through half-moon spectacles with the same cerulean eyes that she’s so familiar with, only they’re attached to a different face. They’re much colder than the warmth Ron’s eyes emit, and that’s when the dread begins to expand from the pit in her stomach.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were both attending tonight,” Ron attempts to hide the surprise as he greets his parents.

“And miss the opportunity to see our son receive an award for his hard work? Don’t be silly,” his father responds with a wave of his hand.

Hermione has yet to meet Ron’s parents. A chill crawls up her spine as they talk to their son as if he is standing by himself. Suddenly, all of Ron’s promises become emptier than the desk of her former student.

“Er, right. Mum, Dad, I’d like you to meet someone.” Ron gestures toward Hermione.

She can see his mouth moving, but no sound comes out, at least not that she hears. The blood drains from her ears, causing momentary deafness as she stands under the scrutinizing stares of his parents. Hermione holds her head high as his mother admonishes his choice of a date. There’s no empathy for them whatsoever.

“...What will everyone think? You come from a certain class of people, and we need to uphold our status. At least go for a Halfblood, darling.”

Years of following the mantra ‘hold your head high, don’t let it bother you, stay in your lane’ have still not prepared Hermione to endure this moment. She is a strong-willed woman, she fights for what is right, and she refuses to stand here and take this woman’s judgmental words all because of the family she was born into.

This is the exact reason why Hermione insisted on keeping their relationship private. Her feet move on their own accord as Hermione tears herself away from Ron’s side and weaves in and out of the clumps of people. She manages to find the visitor’s entrance and exits to the bustling streets of London. Refusing to cry, she rushes along the cobblestone sidewalk and down a deserted alleyway.

Hermione forces herself to forget the sound of Ron’s voice calling after her as she disapparates away from the Ministry of Magic. She finds herself in her classroom, staring at all the empty desks in front of her. Desks of students who would be forced to meet the same unfair limitations that she lives day to day. She feels so helpless, not knowing what to do in an effort to make their lives easier.

Looking down at the elegant maroon ball gown she’s still wearing, she feels dirty. This isn’t the life she’s meant for, no matter how many assurances Ron can give her. She doesn’t belong in his world. Thank goodness she keeps an extra outfit in her coat closet, which she rushes toward before shedding the expensive formalwear from her body.

Once she’s changed, Hermione sits down at her desk, staring at the piles of papers left to be graded. Ron insisted she leave them there so they could spend their weekend together. A heartbreaking realization enters her mind as she thinks of his name.

We can’t be together. This is never going to work.

It’s as if he knows that she’s thinking of him as the floo lights up and he stumbles out. Ron sheds his dress robes, leaving him in his starched white dress shirt and pressed black trousers. She refuses to look up even though she can feel his gaze boring into her as he stands at the head of her desk.

“Hermione.”

She says nothing because what is there to say?

“They’re small-minded people. What do you care what they think?”*

He reaches for her hand, but she tugs it away as she sits back in her chair.

“It’s not just them, Ron. You haven’t lived this life. You don’t know what I’ve been up against. You’ll never know what it feels like to be looked at the way your parents looked at me tonight. The way they spoke down about me to my face. I can’t—I can’t be subjected to that. The way people will look at us because we’re together. I don’t deserve to feel that way.”

Hermione stands up and exits the classroom, stepping into the abandoned hallway. She can’t do this anymore— it’s too painful. She’s learned to pick and choose her battles. It’s better to let people like the Weasleys think they’ve won while she keeps fighting on her own.

You know I want you, it’s not a secret I try to hide.

I know you want me, so don’t keep saying our hands are tied.

You claim it’s not in the cards, that fate is pulling you miles away and out of reach from me,

But you’re here in my heart, so who can stop me if I decide that you’re my destiny?

“Hermione, don’t do this. Please. I don’t care what they think. I want you, and nothing else matters.”

She stops and only turns her head slightly to see him leaning out of the doorway, his hand gripping the door jamb as he calls after her.

What if we rewrite the stars, say you were made to be mine

Nothing could keep us apart, you’d be the one I was meant to find.

It’s up to you, it’s up to me, no one can say what we get to be

So why don’t we rewrite the stars, maybe the world could be ours tonight.

“Please, love, don’t let them dictate what our life looks like.”

The desperation in Ron’s voice is what makes Hermione turn all the way around to face him. She begins to walk a few paces toward him before the voices in her head get a hold of her. He’d become an outcast if she stayed with him. She can’t let him risk everything he’s gained by choosing her.

You think it’s easy? You think I don’t want to run to you?

But there are mountains, and there are doors that we can’t walk through.

I know you’re wondering why because we’re able to be just you and me within these walls

But when we go outside you’re gonna wake up and see that it was hopeless after all.

“You know it’s not that easy. We can’t just run away from everything so we can be happy. Your family would never forgive you, or me for that matter! Everyone will do everything in their power to tear us apart. It’s not worth it.”

“So, what? You’re saying we’re not worth it?”

No one can rewrite the stars. How can you say you’ll be mine?

Everything keeps us apart, and I’m not the one you were meant to find.

It’s not up to you, it’s not up to me, when everyone tells us what we can be.

How can we rewrite the stars? Say that the world can be ours tonight.

Hermione reaches out and clasps his hands with her own. “No, you’re not listening to me. You’re worth so much to me that I have to let you go.”

“But what if I don’t want to let go?”

All I want is to fly with you.

All I want is to fall with you.

So just give me all of you.

It feels impossible (It’s not impossible).

Is it impossible? (Say that it’s possible.)

“I don’t want to let go, either, Ron, but I have to. You mean too much to me.”

She knows it’s better to be hurt on her own terms than to let someone else hurt her instead. Ron will see reason eventually. He has to. Hermione wraps her arms around him, tighter than ever before, putting all her feelings into one single embrace, hoping that he can understand.

How do we rewrite the stars? Say you were made to be mine?

Nothing can keep us apart, cause you are the one I was meant to find.

It’s up to you and it’s up to me, no one can say what we get to be

And why don’t we rewrite the stars, changing the world to be ours…

There are many things she can change, but her blood status isn’t one. Above all else, she’s proud of being a Muggleborn, and she’ll keep teaching her students to be proud of their roots as well. She’ll keep her memories of Ron and how wonderful he is locked up tight as she finds a way to navigate this world without him. Hermione has made her decision as she kisses his cheek and lets go. Perhaps in another lifetime, they’ll be able to be together with nothing standing in their way.

You know I want you.

It’s not a secret I try to hide.

But I can’t have you.

We’re bound to break and our hands are tied.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice leaves the faintest echo among the abandoned halls. Before she loses her nerve, she turns on the spot and apparates away, leaving the hurt look that is etched on Ron’s face burned into her mind as she leaves him alone.

#chudleycanonficfest2021 #HP fest #hp canon pairings #canon fest romantic #submission #romione #ron x hermione #tw: blood purity #tw: prejudice #tw: violence (non graphic)#tw: murder (non graphic)

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zaynmirrors · 4 years

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Uncontrolled: Part 1 (B.B)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes + Younger!Reader.

Warnings: Anxiety, cussing, age gap.

A/N: I have a playlist I will be incorporating in this story. I had some help editing this and I’m so thankful for the help.

Chapter 1 I pull the door open, backpack slung over my shoulder to see Peter standing in front of me. “Jesus Peter,” I huff holding a hand over my heart.

“Mr. stark said-,“ He started to say before I held up a hand, cutting him off.

“Tony said to ’watch out for me’, not watch my every move” I sigh and walk past him down the hall with him following behind me like a puppy.

The usual buzzing feeling in my fingertips returned, and I rub them together trying to diffuse the lilac static illuminating from them.

“Will you stop!” Peter hissed. “Someone will see you!” I watch as he looks around worried we’d already been spotted.

I shrugged, “We’re fine.” Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I glance at the time, letting Peter know I didn’t care that I could be seen when in reality all of this is a big deal to me. Scary even.

The main reason Peter is even here is that Tony had suggested that it would be a great idea for him to take me out to the mall. A crowded cluserfuck of people and I for one didn’t do well with crowded places.

The surge I felt running through me was enough of an indicator that we needed to go to distract myself from my powers.

“Peter, can we go?” I asked looking my friend in the eyes. They softened for a moment and he nodded agreeing.

He ushered me out towards the car and I got into the passenger seat holding my backpack to my chest. A sigh of relief left my throat once I took in the relaxing sound of silence.

Peter looked at me with a small smile once he hopped into the car, “Well, you lasted about half an hour.”

I guess he had a point. That was something to be proud of, but it still didn’t get me anywhere closer to controlling my powers. I looked down at my hands as we drove back to the compound in silence. Static was no longer coming out from the ends of my fingers, which relaxed me further.

“How’d it go?” Tony asked looking hopeful as Peter and I returned from our shopping trip. I shook my head trying to walk past him and he immediately stopped me by gently grabbing my elbow.

“She was good for about thirty minutes, then she started to do that tick, sir,” Peter reported, looking directly at Tony.

I could’ve laughed. I guess you could call the static a tick, at least before any real damage is done. I was just done with all the trying and controlling. It’s clear that nothing is going to work. I will never be in control of myself.

Tony’s eyes softened and a small smile appears, “Hey, that’s progress.” I knew it was, but I was tired. I was tired of having to control something that didn’t want to be controlled. I was tired of having everyone watching me like I’m a ticking time bomb. I’m just tired of it all.

“I’m never going to be able to control it,” I tell him honestly looking him dead in the eyes like Peter did. Tony’s smile slightly faltered and he shook his head. “Let me surge out. It’s going to happen eventually. It’s better for everyone if we get it over with now instead of drawing it out.”

Surging was what Tony was afraid would happen if I went too out of control. It would most likely kill me at this point, but I was welcoming it.

Tony shook his head, “we’re not going to let you surge. You can control it.”

I looked at Peter who was nodding in agreement. Ever since this issue came up, they have been my biggest supporters, and I’m grateful for them, but they don’t understand what I’m going through. Peter strived once he recurved his powers and Tony made himself into what he is. I can’t do either of those things. Sometimes, I wish they would give up on me.

“If you say so,” I sigh, gently pulling my elbow from Tony’s hand. “If I can't-.”

“You will.” Tony took my hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze, “I promise.”

My demeanor melted a little, reminding me that sometimes I do need them.

I walked away from them, planning to go to my safe haven. I hadn’t made it ten feet before an arm wrapped around my shoulder, “Come on, let’s go.”

I lean into Peter’s touch, “Thanks.” He smiles down at me as he walks me to the gym doors before departing. With him being my best friend, he knows how I am with wanting to be alone when I’m at the gym. Also, I feel like I scare him when he sees me taking out my frustration. It’s not always a pretty sight.

I dropped my bag on the bench by the entrance, happy to see that it was completely empty from any lingering avengers. I go to change into more comfortable clothes and skip any warm-ups.

Standing in front of the hung punching bag, I get into my stance and start off with slow punches. My fist increases with speed with every passing second until I’m going as fast as I can. All my frustration surfaced and the huge bag was taking it like a champ. A few angry grunts come out every now and then the more I think about my powers and everything else that has gone wrong in my life.

I was so lost in thought I didn’t realize that my tick had started to surface until I had managed to send a shock through my body. “Shit,” I cursed aloud, my hands illuminated with bright lilac color. I couldn’t control it, and my panic and frustration were making it worse.

“Y/N?” I looked in the direction of the voice to see Bucky standing there with a concerned look on his face. Slowly, he walked into the room with his hands held up in surrender. My facial expression must be as bad as I felt if he thought he needed to show he wasn’t going to hurt me. I wasn’t scared of him hurting me, though. I was scared of me hurting him.

“(Y/N), it’s okay,” Bucky gently reassured me while taking ahold of my hand. Once his skin touched mine, I felt the raging electricity that was radiating through me dissipate. If he had felt a shock, he didn’t let it show. He just continued to look at me with a softness in his eyes.

Within seconds, the lilac color had faded completely. My heart was my only concern now with it beating at a spastic speed in my chest. We locked eyes and I couldn’t tell you how long I looked into his sea of blue eyes.

“Are you alright now?” He asked, gently letting go. I nodded still utterly confused about what had just happened.

Why was he able to diffuse me so easily with such a simple skin to skin contact? Not even Peter, my best friend, was able to do something like that. I barely knew this man who still stands in front of me, eyes full of concern.

“How did you do that?” I asked still keeping eye contact with the burly man.

His look changed from concern to confusion, “Do what?”

I shook my head and tried to dismiss him by walking past him and grabbing my bag. I wanted to get away so I could calm the spinning in my head before I managed to hurt him or myself.

He tried to catch up to me, but as I kept going he lost interest. Once I reached the safety of my room, I released the breath I didn’t realize I was holding in.

I made my way over to my bed and sat down with my feet hanging over the edge. “What the fuck just happened?” I asked myself aloud. That’s never happened before. No one has ever just touched me and made it stop. No one.

Hell, maybe it had something to do with his vibranium arm. That has to be it. There’s no other way to explain it. Maybe there’s something with the mechanisms in his arm that caused my powers to disappear, even if for a split second.

I spent hours racking my brain, trying to think of any possible explanation other than his arm, and I couldn’t. I don’t know the man that well, so any other explanation would be impossible.

“Miss L/N, Mr. Stark would like me to inform you that dinner is ready,” Friday says interrupting my thoughts. I stood up and thanked her as I fixed my hair quickly before heading to the kitchen.

Pepper placed plates on the table for everyone as Tony stood by the oven, watching the food intently that cooked on the stove.

“Y/N,” Pepper said excitedly as she caught sight of me. Her arms wrapped around me tightly and I smiled softly as I hugged her back.

“Hey pepper” I sighed happily. Pepper has been like a mom to me. and of course Tony has been like a dad, but Pepper has helped me in ways that Tony can’t. Mostly girly stuff that Tony doesn’t, or would want to, understand. She’s always been easy to talk to. I love them both so much, and sometimes, I can’t help but think that I’m a burden to them.

Tony walked over with a pot full of steaming sauce, while Pepper released me and went to grab the other pot of noodles. I sat down at the large table and took in the delicious spread that had my mouth watering.

I piled my plate full of spaghetti and salad that Pepper had set out, while we made conversation about our day. Our regular school and work chat. It started off as a normal conversation until I dumbly decided to bring up what happened in the gym.

“So something weird happened when I was in the gym earlier,” I told them casually, grabbing both Tony and Pepper’s attention. Tony looked at me as if saying to continue, “I lost control of my powers, which I know isn’t out of the ordinary, but then Bucky came to the “rescue” and my powers totally vanished after he touched me.”

Tony looked at me quizzically, “What do you mean vanished?”

I shrugged and answered, “He just touched my hand and it stopped.”

Tony still looked confused, “So you’re saying he just touched you and your powers dissipated.”

I nodded, “That’s exactly what I just said, so yes.” I came off a little snarky, but I understand why he was confused by this new information. Hell, it was hard for me to wrap my head around what had happened, too.

Tony stood up from the table and began pacing, hand scratching at his goatee in thought. He was trying to wrap his head around all of this just as I had previous hours ago.

I watched him pace for what felt like hours, Pepper trying to talk to him and him brushing her off with the wave of his hand. Pepper looked at me knowingly and I sent her an apologetic smile, which she dismissed with a small smile and a slight shake of her head.

“So you’re saying-“

I cut him off quickly. “Yes, he grabbed my hand and my powers stopped.”

He sighed, rubbing his face clearly still confused.

“I just figured maybe it had something to do with his arm,” I continued, attempting to help him in his long thought process.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it was,” he responded, but I could tell there was something he wasn’t telling me or didn’t want to. But I didn’t push him. “Go get washed up, kid. You’ve got class in the morning”

I bid them both a goodnight before retiring to my room where I changed into an oversized shirt, one that was probably stolen out of someone’s laundry and threw my hair up.

I glanced at myself in the mirror looking at the tired person in front of me. The dark circles under my eyes definitely told me that I was not sleeping well. Not that that wasn’t uncommon for people in this compound.

I quickly checked to see if I had any assignments due, which thankfully I didn’t, and I slipped under the covers. I moved around until I was comfortable and laid there staring at the ceiling of the dimly lit room before going to sleep, allowing the darkness to quickly invade my mind.

I jerked awake and immediately became aware of the raw feeling in my throat and the wetness on my cheeks. I rubbed my eyes and sniffled.

Looking down at my hands I noticed the lilac illuminating from my fingertips. I sighed, “Friday, call Peter.” I was sure it was three in the morning, but Peter would want me to call.

The line rang five times before I heard a groggy, “Hello?”

“Peter I had that dream again,” I said quietly. He went silent before sighing, almost as if sadly. Shuffling was heard, assuming he was sitting up knowing we were about to have a long phone call and he needed to prepare himself for it.

I pulled my legs to my chest, resting my chin on my knees watching the static run through my hands, “Have you told Mr. stark?” He asked with tiredness laced in his voice.

“What do you think, Peter?” I replied snarkily. It’s not like I was opposed to telling Tony. I just didn’t want to add any extra worrying to his already long list of problems.

“I think you should. You’ve been having this dream ever since Tony brought you back,” he explained. And he was right. Although, it wasn’t really a dream, more like a recurring memory.

I could still feel the straps holding me to the cold metal of the cot. The surging pulse of electricity running through my veins. The curious eyes of those watching me in the dark. I shuddered and tried to shake the memories from my head.

“Maybe. I just hate worrying him,” I reply with a sigh, running a hand through my hair.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I dismissed. There’s no need to involve Tony. He doesn’t have a machine that can control my dreams. So what’s the point of telling him something he can’t fix?

Peter sighed, “Whatever you say, y/n.” I knew he wanted what’s best for me. Both him and Tony do, but sometimes I just wish Tony had left me in that lab.

“Goodnight, Peter. Sorry, I woke you up,” I apologized, hanging up as he pleaded for me not to. I sat there staring at the light grey wall illuminated by the moonlight, my lamp, and the purple electricity shooting from my hands and I stayed in that exact position for the rest of the night.

Part 2

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gaamagirl565 · 4 years

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Matters of the heart S2 Ep11

Matters of the heart Season 2 Episode 11 Only Shards {OPENING CREDITS} {Open to a ship docking at a pier as ocean waves splash up against it; a few sailors lay down the gangway off of the ship and some men begin unloading wooden crates off of the ship; Pan up to Isaiah looking at everything from the Quarterdeck} Isaiah: Wow… Captain: Welcome to the dark kingdom, my boy. Isaiah: The dark Kingdom? my grandfather used to talk about this place. Captain: used to be abandoned for a long time. only within the last decade or so did it start becoming a normal Kingdom again. Isaiah: it's truly amazing… {the captain drops a bag of supplies at Isaiah’s feet} Captain: I truly wish there was more I could do for you. that bag there should have enough supplies to last you a few days but it’s not much sorry. Isaiah: you've done plenty for me! you gave me new clothes, you let me stay on the ship until you reach your next port, you even let me work for a small amount of pay. Honestly what more can I ask for? Captain: I wish Corona was our next port so I could just take you home. You gave us quite the scare. you injured yourself pretty good. Isaiah: you've done more than enough for me. {Isaiah bends down and picks up the bag: showing his bandaged leg} Captain: at least let me tell you the lay of the land so you don't get yourself lost. Isaiah: well that could certainly be helpful. Captain: Right now we're in the Gorge that connects the main town of the dark Kingdom to the outside Forest Area. after the black rocks in the gorge disappeared it allowed ocean water to flow through here creating a new port and opening trade for the dark Kingdom. there should be a gondola to take you out of the Gorge. Isaiah: thank you sir but I think I'm going to explore the port a little bit and try to find a ship to Corona. hopefully, the captain will be as nice as you. Captain: let me tell you something my boy ships are always looking for help. as long as you work hard you shouldn't have a problem finding a way home. also, be careful about your wounds they're still healing. I know by now they're only a couple of cuts and bruises but even still that leg was really banged up… Isaiah: I promise I'll be careful. it was truly an honor to meet you captain and thank you for everything. Captain: the pleasure was all mine, Isaiah. tell your old man he did a good job raising such a fine young man. also if you ever need me or my crew just send for the captain of the SS. Salvator. {Isaiah salutes him; The captain laughs and salutes back; Isaiah walks off} Isaiah: Don't worry dad... I'm coming home. {cut to old Corona; Varian stands coldly with Zapada sobbing into his shoulder; around him are Lance, Adira, Akina, Rapunzel, an exhausted-looking Eugene, Lily and her Siblings, Catalina and Keira, and Nathaniel; they’re all wearing black and watching as a preacher blesses a headstone with Isaiah’s name on it} Nathaniel:...I can’t believe he’s gone... I keep thinking I'm going to hear his obnoxious laugh anytime now… Lily:...Isaiah… Cyrus: It’s alright lily...we’re all here for you. {Rapunzel walks up to Varian and places a hand on his shoulder} Rapunzel: Varian? you've hardly said anything, are you all right? Varian:... what's there to say? My son is dead... I Have Nothing Left to Lose. Zapada: Iubirea mea… {Varian walks away from the service} Zapada: Varian! Eugene: it’s alright, Zapada... I’ll handle it. {Eugene follows him}

Preacher: may this boy rest in peace, Amen… All:...amen… {Varian is on the edge of the river tossing stones in} Eugene:...Varian I- Varian: We didn't even have a body for the service… Eugene:... I know… Varian: we just... set up a headstone for him. that's all I have of him now. a stone with his name carved in it. Eugene: Varian… Varian: Haven't I suffered enough? but it just keeps piling on... I Fall In Love... I lose her...my family starts to become whole again... I lose my father... I become a leader, my wife is expecting our first child together, and I finally have a way to get rid of the cult for good...and then… {he throws the rock harshly into the water; Eugene flinches} Varian: my son is taken from me... the one thing I had left of Estelle. every time I looked in his eyes I saw his mother. it made every day a little more bearable because part of her was still here. and now he's gone. it's all gone… {there is a moment of silence between the two with nothing but the sounds of the countryside before Eugene walks over next to him} Eugene: ... I'm so sorry. Varian: it doesn't matter now… Eugene: ...one of the cult members was wounded... we captured him and he is currently waiting for us in the dungeon. {Varian looks up at him} Eugene: We might be able to get some answers out of him... maybe you'll get some closure. {Varian gets up and starts walking away} Eugene: Varian? Varian: I'll meet you at the dungeon later today... be there and be ready. Eugene:..uh..Okay!...ready for what? {cut back to the dark kingdom trading port; Isaiah is still walking around he finds another ship docked at the pier and runs up to a sailor by it} Isaiah: Umm... excuse me. {the sailor snores and Isaiah groans before taking a deep breath} Isaiah: EXCUSE ME!!! {The sailor yelps and falls over} Sailor: what ye’ going and doing that for!? Isaiah: look I've been walking around all day and I'm exhausted... I'm trying to find a ship that will take me to Corona I'm willing to work to stay on board. Sailor: Corona? Sorry, Lassie. But the next ship to Corona isn’t going te’ be here for another 3 weeks. Isaiah: What do you mean 3 weeks!? Sailor: I mean 3 weeks, lassie! The trade ship for Corona won’t be comin’ ere for 3 more weeks! Isaiah: What am I supposed to do for 3 weeks!? Sailor: I don’t know, lass...maybe some odd jobs around town...maybe an inn...ye’ seem like a resourceful kid. Isaiah: no I can’t wait 3 weeks I have to go home… Sailor: Corona is a 4 day trip on foot… Isaiah: i’ll...i’ll need a map...and provisions..plus I need to heal my injuries... Sailor: That’ll take coin. You need te’ work for that. As for te’ injuries...that’ll take time. Isaiah: then..i’ll need a place to stay for the time. Sailor: more coin, Lassie! Isaiah: You are literally no help! And stop calling me Lassie I’m a Laddie! {They stare at each other before the sailor starts walking off} Sailor: I think I’ll be needing a pint… Isaiah: HEY! G-Get back here! Sailor: Good grief, Laddie! What do ye’ want? Isaiah: You know you could be a little nicer! Sailor: I could be but I choose not te’ be... look this town isn't very accepting of newcomers and strangers. and if ye’ truly have te’ wait a while before setting off I suggest ye’ find a way to survive. this is the real world. There isn’t a mummy or daddy here te’ protect ye’. Figure it out, kid. {the sailor leaves and Isaiah walks away looking nervous; he looks around a bit before sighing and walking towards the gondola. He steps on and quietly rides his way up} Conductor: all departing! {Isaiah steps off and notices most head for the bridge connecting the kingdom to the outside forest. He looks from the bridge to the forest and starts walking for the forest. As he’s walking there his eyes flash in colour for a moment} Isaiah: AUGH! {he falls to the ground and grits his teeth waiting for his episode to pass; once it does he whimpers and curls in on himself; cut to the entrance of Corona’s dungeon where Varian is waiting} Eugene: You're here earlier than expected. Varian: let's get this over with. {Catalina and Keira walk up} Varian: And what are they doing here!? Catalina: moral support. Keira: I just want to get a good look at the guy who dared to touch a single blonde hair on that boy's head. Lance: that’s my girls... Rapunzel: They just want to help, Varian… Varian: ...fine… {Eugene walks over and unlocks the door to the dungeon; they all start walking down} Keira: so what do you think this guy is like? Catalina: anyone willing to hurt a kid is probably a piece of crap. Keira: he’s been running with this weird cult crew for a while I heard… Catalina: I don’t care who he ran with… the point is he was directly involved in Isaiah’s death. I’ll never forgive him for that… {Eugene opens the Cell door to reveal Noremoth tied to a pole in the middle of his cell with his shoulder bandaged} Catalina: *gasp* Noremoth: ...Catalina… {Catalina shakes her head slowly in shock} Noremoth: Cat...please let me explain! {Her lip quivers and she runs out of the cell in tears with Keira close behind her} Keira: Catalina, wait! Lance: Should I be concerned about that? Noremoth: it’s none of your concern… {Lance get close to him } Lance: oh I think it is… Eugene: Lance is Catalina’s father. Noremoth: * gulps*... you’re her father? Well then. Do what you must. Though do aim for the neck please that’s the quickest way. Varian: We're not going to kill you... yet. Rapunzel: Or in general! nobody's killing anybody! we just want to know some information. Noremoth: of course you do. Eugene: If you cooperate we’ll loosen your restraints.also I'm going to need to take your helmet and any weapons you may be carrying. Noremoth:... fine...W- wait a minute. why didn't you just pat me down for weapons when you threw me in the cell? Lance: We were a little more concerned with the fact that you were bleeding out. Noremoth: fair enough… {Eugene walks over and takes off his helmet and takes his weapons; he eyes the nordic necklace around his neck and lifts it up to look at it} Noremoth: Not that! {everyone jumps} Noremoth: please not that...it’s all I have left. It was given to me as a baby. The orphanage said I was dropped off with it...please...Y-your majesty. {Eugene lets go of it; Varian narrows his eyes} Eugene: don’t worry I’m not taking it. Noremoth: Thank you… Varian: enough of this…you’re going to answer our questions whether you like it or not, Noremoth. Noremoth: I never said I wasn’t, Varian. Lance: he knows you? You know him? Varian: He was the one that stole the blueprints to the device all those years ago. he's also larkspur's right-hand man. he's been a collective pain in my side ever since. Noremoth: I could say the same about you… {Varian puts his hand into his satchel} Varian: tell me Noremoth... do you know what it's like to lose people you've loved? people you swore to protect? Noremoth:... not really. never had anyone care about me in my opinion. Varian: Well then, let me enlighten you. you have to wake up every morning realizing that no matter how hard you tried they still died. and now I have one of those people responsible for the deaths of those that I loved in front of me right now. give me a good reason why I should show you any Mercy. Noremoth:... I can't think of one. Varian: no you can't, can you? Rapunzel: Varian… {Varian takes out a flask with a glowing yellow liquid inside} Rapunzel: *gasp* Varian: do you know what this stuff is? It's a chemical solution of my own design. it grows at an exponential rate and encases everything it touches... I wonder what would happen if I were to... inject it into someone. Eugene: VARIAN! Varian: you can tell us what we want to know... or you can possibly go through a long and agonizing death. your choice. {Everyone is silent but Noremoth blankly stares at Varian and then slouches against his restraints} Noremoth:...do it… Varian: what!? Noremoth: do it... honestly I don't know what you're waiting for. in your mind I killed your son even though I wasn't anywhere near him when he went over that cliff. none of that was supposed to happen. I tried to stop her... but it was already too late. her mind was made up. I've never held any real power in the decision-making. the fact that they all left me behind should prove how much I actually meant to them. I've never mattered to anyone so what's the point? {Noremoth looks up into Varian’s eyes} Noremoth:.. do it… {Varian trembles slightly before Eugene runs up and grabs his hand} Eugene: Don’t! Varian: Y-You heard him! He- Eugene: Varian, Your king commands you to stop! {Varian looks downward} Varian: ...My apologies, your majesty. {He starts to walk away out of the cell} Noremoth: for what it's worth... I'm very sorry for what happened to your son. please understand... it was never our intention. {Varian bites his lip and exits the cell; cut to the edge of the forest where Isaiah is stumbling weakly; thunder rumbles above him and rain starts to fall} Isaiah: No! AH! {he runs through the forest before happening on a cave; he looks around before going in and sitting down shivering; He whimpers and he sneezes before his eyes droop and he falls asleep} Juniper: Over here, papa! {She runs in the cave} Juniper: Mama told you it was going to rain! you never listen to us! I knew it was a bad night for hunting. {Hector walks in the cave dripping wet} Hector: it's never a bad night for hunting. Juniper: Papa, look! {she points to Isaiah} Hector:... it's probably a kid from town. Juniper: what's he doing out here? Hector: most likely the same as you and me... hunting.. maybe Gathering... who knows and who cares. he was probably waiting out the storm and fell asleep. {Juniper walks over and touches his forehead} Juniper: he's freezing! {She takes off her cloak and drapes it over him} Hector: W-What the- Juniper that is a premium fur cloak! Juniper: and I can make another! I swear Papa you’re such a misanthrope. Hector: And I swear I don't know where you get this sassy attitude of yours. Juniper: you had best be joking...brr… {Hector rolls his eyes} Hector: Alright enough of that... now get over here before you get sick. {Juniper runs over to where Hector is in the cave and sits next to him; Hector wraps his cloak around them both} Juniper: *yawn* do you really think he's going to be okay? {Hector looks over to the boy and cocks an eyebrow before looking back at his daughter} Hector: he’ll be fine… {Cut back to Old Corona and Varian looking up at the stars} Zapada: Varian? I’m heading to sleep… Varian: I’ll be there soon… Zapada: are you ok- Varian: I’m fine! {Zapada jumps slightly} Varian:..I...I’m fine..just go to bed, you need the rest. {Zapada closes the door; Varian looks back up at the sky} {begin song “never enough”} {VARIAN} Make one mistake and it paints you for life Try to move on from all the pain and the strife We pray that life is forgiving to all, young and old But the thing we seem to forget is that life is Cruel and cold And although my heart screams to just give up My head screams back that it is never enough The path before me is laid out And although it’s dark and bleak I won’t give it satisfaction It will not hear my mournful shriek. Every day just brings new pain As this grief continues to wrack my brain I keep wondering if I should just give up Of is it true that it’s never enough? It’s never enough. Never enough. {End song “Never enough”} {END CREDITS}

#tangled #TTS #RTA #matters of the heart #MotH #rapunzel’s tangled adventure #Rapunzel #Varian #Isaiah #Eugene Fitzherbert #kiera and catalina #tts hector #fanfic #zapada #tangled oc #tangled the series #tts oc #rta oc

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profitinaecho · 4 years

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So You Wanna Spin Ch 7

Driving back to Roswell that Friday evening to drop off the samples to be tested and pack for the next leg of their journey, Max notices after a while that Liz has stopped dancing in her seat and singing along to the pop songs she insisted on having on the radio. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, he sees that she has fallen asleep. She looks like an angel when she sleeps. The skin on her arms is covered in goosebumps from the blasting AC and Max flips her vents up to turn the air off of her since she is cold.

When he stops to get gas a little ways later, he pulls out the navy blanket he keeps in the cruiser for emergencies. Gently tucking her in, he smiles when her brown eyes flutter open at him briefly in confusion. Kissing her forehead, Max whispers, “Sleep, Liz. I’ll wake you before we get there.” She lets off a soft sigh and falls back asleep, feeling safe and surrounded by Max’s scent.

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Max pulls up to the station when they arrive and puts the cruiser in park. He snorts when he realizes Liz is drooling with her mouth wide open, deep in sleep. “Liz. Hey, Lizzy.” He whispers quietly at her, trying not to startle her.

“What? Huh? Max, why is Garth Brooks on the radio? It was MY turn.” Liz pouts, looking around in confusion when she realizes they are in front of the Roswell Police Department. “Oh! Max, how long has the SUV been turned off? My samples can’t get hot or we have to start all over!” Liz frantically unclicks her seatbelt and dives for the isolated cooler containing her labeled DNA samples they had collected to check on them.

Max smirks at her legs hanging across the console in the middle of the front seat while he tries not to stare at her ass while it wiggles as she tries to pull the styrofoam lid off to check on her samples. “I shut your vents off because you were cold and gave you a blanket. That’s why you’re hot. I didn’t let your samples get ruined, I swear.” Max smiles lopsidedly at her in the rearview mirror and holds his hands up in surrender.

“Oh. Ohhh.” Liz flushes, embarrassed at her overreaction. “I guess I’ll take these home with me so I know they stay refrigerated then mail them off in the morning to my lab.”

“Sounds like a plan. Feels weird being up here in my civvies.” Max shifts in his seat, feeling a bit underdressed even though he is off the clock. Sighing, he rounds the SUV to pull out Liz’s suitcase to help her to her car. His mother would never would never forgive him if he didn’t help a lady with her heavy things- especially one he wanted to court.

“Thank you for being a good partner, Max. I had as good a time as a woman can have collecting spit to solve murders.” Liz glances up at him walking next to her out of the corner of her eye, smiling shyly at him as she carries her DNA samples carefully. She gently places them in her passenger seat while Max picks up her overstuffed suitcase like it weighs nothing and places it in the back seat.

“The pleasure was all mine.” Max smiles so wide the corner of his eyes crinkle and he tips his head at her. Turning once he’s sure she’s safe and has buckled her seatbelt, he heads for his jeep to go to his house.

—————————

The next morning, Liz arrives at the post office when it opens to pack her samples in their cooler in a special refrigerated truck to the lab at the University of New Mexico where the Roswell PD sends it’s DNA samples. Graduate and PHD students will map the DNA in the samples while Max and Liz collect the samples in Las Cruces and El Paso. That way they will only have to wait one week after getting back instead of two. Then she will mail off the samples they collect in those towns while they are analyzing the data from the previous weeks.

When she gets home to pack, Liz finds herself packing cute little chiffon nightgowns with matching lace panties for the last leg of their trip. Just in case someone tall, dark, and handsome should see her in them. As an afterthought, she hurls in an extra disposable razor, condoms and a satin dress as well. She throws in her usual sensible work casual clothes, chaste pajama sets and extra panties and zips her suitcase shut.

She showers and gets ready for bed, glancing at Max’s Collective Soul Tshirt sitting in her dirty clothes pile. She fishes it out and pulls it on to sleep in. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him and she likes the way it smells like rain.

—————————

The next morning, Max picks her up in front of The Crashdown in his cruiser. Before Liz can just throw in her suitcase and go, the front door swings open and her father approaches Max.

“So, you’re my little nina’s partner, huh?” Arturo sizes Max up, who comes around the front of the SUV to help Liz with her luggage. Max firmly shakes Arturo’s hand and makes eye contact then turns to grab Liz’s suitcase before she can try to lift it herself.

“Yes, sir. That’s me.” Max hurls Liz’s suitcase up into the SUV then turns back to her father, leaning casually on the passenger door. “Liz, you’re missing a snack bag or something right? You usually have three things.”

“Oh dios mio! I helped with breakfast this morning and almost forgot the new cooler for our samples!” Liz runs back into the Crashdown as a blur of nervous energy and Max watches her riveted.

“If you hurt her, the buzzards won’t be able to find anything to eat, the pieces will be so small.” Arturo warns noticing how fascinated Max is with his daughter.

“That’s very understandable, sir.” Seeing Liz dart back out of the restaurant breathless and carrying her padded cooler filled with ice packs, Max heads to the drivers seat. “Ready to roll?”

“Yup. I call radio!” Liz bounces once.

“You always do. No Britney Spears it’s too early, ok?” Max looked behind him before merging into traffic while Liz wavesi goodbye to her father.

—————————

Max and Liz sit in the hotel bar after arriving in Las Cruces and dropping off their suitcases, watching couples dance to a local band. Max sips on an IPA beer and she sips on a glass of red wine.

A young good looking guy in a backwards baseball cap catches Liz’s eye and smiles. She saw him earlier at a loud table full of guys drinking beer by the pitcher. They were rowdy and hard not to notice but now it is just him and his blue eyes are placed squarely on Liz. She doesn’t think she encourages him, but the man comes over and takes her hand to ask her to dance.

Liz swears she hears Max growl across from her. She turns to look at Max and is surprised to see a murderous expression in his eyes. He’s never looked this formidable before with his shoulders straight back and his mouth in a snarl staring daggers at the man asking her to dance.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t dance.” Liz smiles awkwardly at the man, trying to pull her hand from the stranger's grasp.

“Aw, c’mon.” The man insists, tugging on Liz’s hand a little.

“She. Said. No.” Max leans forward, his voice so deep he’s practically growling at the other man.

The man scoffs, stumbling back into the table behind him and dropping Liz’s hand like it bit him. “If you change your mind, I’ll be right over there.”

“Ok. Buh Bye now.” Max waves jovially at his competitor as the man struggles to stay upright on his way back to his bar stool.

Liz chugs the rest of her glass of wine and is too embarrassed to look at Max after the display of testosterone she just witnessed. She sees his chair suddenly scoot out from her peripheral vision and glances up at him as he stands and comes around to her side of the table holding out his hand. She gingerly takes his and he lifts her up out of her chair with his. “Dance with me?” He asks gruffly, as if he had to ask, leading her out to the dance floor.

Liz is kind of glad he didn’t really wait for her to answer him because she would have overthought it. But nobody that knows them is here and Max definitely needs the other guy to know that she is off limits. Besides, now that he is drawing her in close and sliding his hands across her exposed lower back sending shivers in their wake, Liz can’t remember why she would want to be anywhere else in the world.

Max pulls her up against him so that their chests brush against eachother with Liz a couple extra inches taller in her black strappy heels. Max rests his forehead against hers and they sway back and forth as they become braver with their exploration of eachothers back’s with their hands. Surprising her, Max brushes his hand across Liz’s ass and pulls her in closer, erasing the last couple inches of space between them as their hips rock into eachother. Liz gasps at the sensation, surprised at how needy she sounds even to her own ears.

Max’s eyes catch hers and it’s like a flame drags across her, heating every inch of her body. “Max?” Liz groans in question. The lines are becoming so blurry. She doesn’t even remember why they were there to begin with. The music is slow and romantic with the type of rhythm they can’t help but mimic with their hips.

Liz takes a deep breath then drags her hands up his broad chest until she wraps them around his neck, looking wide eyed into his brown eyes. She can feel the ground shifting underneath them.

Max glides his hands gently up past her waist, smoothing the satin fabric down as he goes so he doesn’t accidentally expose too much skin in his exploration. He coasts past the edges of her bra and they both suck in a breath. He can’t stop touching her or get enough. Liz hasn’t ever been this close to a man without kissing him before. She tilts her chin up to him and he responds right away as though he was waiting for her cue, dropping his mouth so it hovers just above hers to be sure she isn’t going to change her mind. At her whispered, “Please” Max finally closes the distance between them. He tilts his head and deepens it, sweeping his tongue into her mouth once teasing her.

Liz bounces up onto her tiptoes and Max moans, his hands tightening around her to align them even further. If they were alone, his hands would be going under the slits in her dress and higher up. But since they are not, they show each other what they wish they could be doing to their entire bodies with their tongues. Suddenly, the song ends and all around them, people are clapping.

Max and Liz jump apart guiltily, like they’re two magnets that will just get pulled back together if they get too close together again. Liz looks around confused as to how she went from innocently sipping her wine to dry humping her partner in public. Max looks like a lion stalking a gazelle. Liz gulps.

He pulls his fingers through his dark hair, spiking it repeatedly before stalking back over to Liz, grabbing her hand and walking briskly towards the elevator.

“Where are we going?” Liz asks, even though there’s only one place they could possibly be going.

“To our room.” Max states, like it’s obvious. He jabs the button for the third floor where their adjoining room is then stands on the opposite wall of the elevator from her, tapping his lip nervously as the elevator slowly climbs upwards. When the door dings, Max is quickly out and Liz follows him down the brightly colored carpet to their room, confused.

Max quickly unlocks the door and swings it open, gesturing for Liz to go ahead of him. Their adjoining living area is dark and quiet but Liz views it from new sexy eyes. He could bend her over that pull out couch or prop her up against that side table if it got her up tall enough. They could even do it up against the sliding glass doors to their balcony or if she was quiet, against the balcony railing itself.

Max is looking around wildly as if he is thinking the same, but instead of pulling her into his arms and picking things back up where they started on the dance floor, he groans as if in pain. Throwing his hands up in the air and striding quickly to his bedroom door, Max calls over his shoulder, “You should go to bed, Liz.”

Bed?

BED?!

“What? Bed? Why?” Liz’s heart is pounding and she’s so confused.

“Because, Liz, you weren’t sure about this yesterday and I don’t want to take advantage of you. I want you to be sure you want this before we do that. Make sure you lock the door to your room tonight.” Max doesn’t give her time to argue before he leaves her gaping after him as he retreats. She hears the sound of his lock turn in the deadbolt and a thump thump thump like something is banging against the door in frustration.

Liz locks the door to her room like he asked, takes a cold shower and sleeps in pink sheep pjs that night since she has no one to show off her nighties to.

#rnm echo #ficlets? ficlets?#rnm fic #roswell nm #So You Wanna Spin the World Around

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