#clever password passages

[artcalledtheewhip]

State Fair Weaving Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls State fair weaving techno tune State fair weaving techno tune Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Techno tune weaving state fair Technology sound warping in State of affairs Arizona State fair weaving Techno tune It’s all desperate Mulligan’s a plus for those all down by one or more The hook was never bitten by the big mouth bass Your head was a given but from early upbringing, you still not belonging The party was for a person you never knew Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Just a get together Olympics of the minds And fishing tournaments Be fore’ tha golf balls Techno tune weaving state fair Technology sound warping in State of affairs in through A-Z State fair weaving Techno tune It’s all desperate You’re acting so Desperate StateFairWeaving Look closer into state!? Probably not! The bass is a simple added The bass is a simple added The bass is a simple added It begins with B It begins with b It first began as a a A plus A Then same as Then sparked a minus A You reading like a puppet I haven’t gotten to C State Fair Weaving A Whip it goes That junkyard gave flavors The teachings and beyond young mind beholds LetSpin Taught Us In the shipping containers After we walked in For a few hours We held under while all yonder still under last praying ponders and left here until at least their seconds Always eating for more Shouldn’t all Christians be thin For doing so much My family didn’t Church If I was to look at a week I could sum it down In a DLC content thee adventurer and dame have their own scruples Stop trying to read ahead It’s not a Ponzie scheme You blimey idiot I’m here selling For state fair reasons I only know of a few stories Purchase a product and I’ll let you know more “Take it easy” “You as well” Quotes from I don’t, never knew their names She was innocent, he was innocent They both the same in the beginnings of the story that artcalledwords, artcalledtattoo bewilderment artcalledwind or even such artcallednaturalviews, so this fits into artcalledwhip Play along to call With reasons and such’s, what could I know! I just was weaving 18 string for how ever you want me along Good Bye my love I’m hurting you to leave early The whip State fair weaving Passwords for running Or to goes

The whip to ass

How many times?

#wordsbymm #art with pulse #vent #so it lands on self #mmybsdrow #west #art called #all #mommy #mum #mummy #ma #made #mama #i #my pulse aches #too #clever password passages #you could just leave to store #without theatrics #ya trick #below lower levels of cleverness #good morning maah

[thewarriorandtheking]

Once Upon a Time

This little story was inspired by the prompt from @writersmonth:

Prompt 25. Fairy Tale

I know it’s not August anymore, but it took me this long to get it where I wanted it (I just can’t write fast), and it turned out kind of cute. So I am posting it anyway...😎

This story features a very young Thorin Oakenshield...who must have led a very sheltered life as the future King of Erebor. 

*******************************************************

Once upon a time, there was a great city under a mountain, and in it there lived a prince. Now, he was a very special prince, and the king took great pains to keep him safe. He decreed that he should not venture out of the city, but always remain under the mountain where he could be well guarded. The palace was large and beautiful, with rooms beyond counting, and the city was grand and orderly, with wide streets and plazas and fountains and many people coming and going. The prince was very happy there and never bored. He had his brother and sister to keep him company, and was kept very busy by his tutors. A curious boy, he was always exploring the halls of the palace, the side streets, the mine tunnels that went on and on. Sometimes he heard men talk about the Wild, the land outside the city, but when he asked if he could go there he was always told ‘When you are older.’

One evening the prince was walking back from his weapons class, swinging his sword, when he saw a group of workmen come out of a door he had never seen open before. The prince waited until they were out of sight, then crept closer. It was a very ordinary sort of door, the type that led to a closet or a boring storage room. He touched it and it swung silently inward. The workers had not closed it properly! He could see a long, low tunnel leading up. The prince thought he had explored every part of the palace, but this was new. He quickly stepped inside, feeling for the latch in the dark. Spotting a still glowing torch on the floor, he waved it to get it blazing again.  

It was a small passage, just three men wide and a man and a half tall, the sides smooth and finished. He followed it a long way, it went up and up, sometimes very steeply, with several changes of direction. The prince began to wonder how long he had been walking, looked back the way he had come, and just at that moment the floor fell away in front of him. He grasped for something to break his fall as he tumbled down a short flight of stairs, then hit a door that gave way at his touch. Suddenly he was lying on something soft and damp, a dim silver light shining in his eyes. The air was sharp, he could smell damp earth and many other things he could not name. He lay still for a long moment, trying to comprehend where he was. It had to be the Wild, but it was stranger than he had ever imagined.

After a moment he sat up and saw a wall of smooth stone in front of him. The door had closed! This was very bad because doors that led to the Wild were invisible when closed. For some you needed a password, for others a key, but if you did not know exactly where the latch was you could never open it. The prince became very afraid. He was outside his city for the first time with no idea where he was! No one knew where he had gone, they might not find him for days. He felt like crying, but then he remembered that princes do not cry. Princes are strong, and decisive, and do not feel sorry for themselves.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” A low gravelly voice.

The prince looked around and saw a group of goblins materialize out of the shadows. They came up close around him, poked him with their swords.

“A Dwarfling!” One of the others sniffed. “Not much meat on it, but it will make a meal.”

“What’s it doing here?” Another asked. “Where’d it come from?”

Now you must know that goblins are cruel and wicked creatures. They live underground, the same as the prince’s people, and also mine and forge and can make clever things, but they are lazy and untidy in their ways. They have great love of gold and precious things, preferring to take them from others than to work at finding it themselves. The prince knew about goblins, all children were told the stories. He stayed silent, thinking furiously. He had his sword, but he could not defeat all of them. And if he tried to fight, they would kill him for sure. He had to think of another way to escape.

“It has fancy clothes,” another goblin said. “Maybe it has gold, too.”

“We can’t stop,” said goblin who had first spoken. “Tie it up and bring it along!”

The goblins tied his arms and legs, not very well, one of them slung the prince over his shoulder. They started down the mountain on a narrow path. You must remember, this was the first time the prince had been in the Wild and it was all very strange and new to him. This was the first time he had traveled under the open sky, heard the wind in the trees, seen the slopes of the mountain he had lived under all his life. He had heard about these things, but they were quite different in real life. The goblins seemed to be in a hurry, he saw the sky was turning grey and guessed the sun was soon to rise. The prince worked at his bonds, trying to loosen them, while he listened to their talk.

The goblins were from the Misty Mountains, where a great many of them lived. They were on their way to the Iron Hills on some errand and were not at all happy about it. They grumbled about having to go so far, and didn’t anticipate being well paid for their work. This gave the prince an idea.

“You will have gold, if you take me with you to the Iron Hills,” the prince told them. The goblin carrying him almost dropped him in surprise.

“I thought you gagged that thing!” Said the first goblin, who seemed to be the leader.

“You were the one in such a hurry,” grumbled the other. “Gold, you say?”

“Gold. Silver,” the prince said. “My father will pay a rich reward.”

“The only reward we will get is the loss of our heads,” replied the leader. “Which we will also lose if we are caught on this mountain. Now, gag the Dwarfling and let’s get moving!”

“I want to hear what it has to say,” said another goblin. “Might make this trip worth it.”

The prince looked at the goblins around him. He very much did not want to be eaten, and he had an idea how he might trick them. He could see he had their attention, now he had to come up with a story.

“My father is king in the Iron Hills,” he told them confidently. “I am a prisoner here, to force my father to keep an agreement and to pay tribute. By chance I found a tunnel that led here, but I have no way to get home.”  

The goblins looked at each other. “If your father would pay to get you back, what would the King Under the Mountain pay to keep you, I wonder?” The goblin leader asked.

The prince let his eyes go wide, shaking his head. “You must take me to the Iron Hills! I cannot go back there! My father will pay double!”

“I say we eat him,” said the goblin who had been carrying him.

“Not so fast,” said the leader. “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“The sword you took from me,” the prince replied confidently. It had been a gift from the King of the Iron Hills, it was in their style. “And this ring.” He offered them the ring he had received for his eighth birthday.

The leader drew out the sword they had taken from him, another grabbed his ring. They stood examining them closely and talking amongst themselves, their captive momentarily forgotten. The prince had already freed his hands, pretending he was still tied he worked at the ropes on his ankles. As he listened to the goblins arguing he saw two things: the sky was turning pink and there was a wide road of stone just a short distance below him. He was fairly certain he could get to the road before the goblins caught him, but which way should he run?    

The goblin’s voices had been getting louder, the leader wanted to take their captive to the King Under the Mountain, the goblin who had been carrying him was complaining they had nothing to eat for days, another wanted the ring. The prince took out his purse, which he still had because the goblins had been in too much of a hurry to search him. Inside were some gold coins and quite a few gems he had acquired by doing well in his lessons. The prince decided it was now or never. He tossed them into the circle of goblins and saw them go down in a heap, grabbing at the gems, punching and kicking at each other. Quick as he could he slid down the slope to the road, then hesitated. Where was his city?

A big black bird flew right by his head. “This way!” It called to him.

The prince ran after the bird, hearing the shrieks of the angry goblins. He didn’t dare look, just ran as fast as he could. Then he saw a flock of the black birds flying up the road towards him, and right at his pursuers. The prince looked back, the goblins were close behind, flailing at the cloud of black wings that surrounded them.

“Hurry, hurry!” The bird he was following came back and circled around. The prince put his head down and ran, his heart pounding in his chest. As you know, Dwarves are small, but also strong and fast. Over a short distance one can easily outrun a goblin, especially if there was a threat of being eaten.

As the sun was rising the prince ran out of the trees. There before him were the great gates of his city, sunlight just touching the top. They towered over the mountain vale, intricately carved, braziers lit, flanked by huge statues of his ancestors. The prince stopped and stared.

“Have you not seen it before?” Asked a voice at his feet. The prince looked down at the bird he had been following. He saw now it was a raven, wearing a necklace of fine golden rings.

“No. I have never been outside the gates. It’s beautiful,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder, there was no sign of the goblins. “Are we safe?”

“The sun is up,” said the bird, wagging its tail. “Now they will look only for somewhere to hide.”  

The prince could see the road he was on led to the gate. Feeling much relieved, he started walking. The raven kept pace beside him.

“Thank you for your help,” the prince said. He knew that Kings used ravens to send messages, but he had never spoken to one. He guessed by the necklace this was a special bird.  

“It is my honor, your highness,” the bird said. “Though you did most of it yourself.”

“I guess I did,” the prince smiled. He started to feel a bit proud of himself that he had escaped the goblins. “Who do I have to thank, noble bird?”

“I am Carc, chief of the King’s ravens,” the bird replied.

The prince told the raven all that had happened as they walked to the city gate. As he talked the prince began to realize how much trouble he was in. He was not supposed to be outside the city, he had lost his sword, and his ring. He wasn’t even sure how long he had been gone.  

“What is wrong, your highness?” Carc asked.

“I’m in such trouble,” the prince said. “I will be sent to my room for a month!”

“Why would your father do that? These goblins kidnapped you, hoping to hold you for ransom,” replied the bird, blinking his eyes. “If there is fault, it is on those who left the door open for the goblins to find.”

This made the prince laugh. “Clever bird! I name you Carc the Wise, and I will bring you whatever treat you desire!”

“My only desire is that we meet again, your highness,” said Carc, bowing low. “In better circumstances.”    

Upon his return to the palace, the prince did not get sent to his room after all. The story was already spreading through the city of how he had been kidnapped and cleverly made his escape. His father was especially proud, and told the story to everyone he met. The prince got to eat desert for breakfast, and his siblings were very jealous.  

Sometime later, he was able to sneak into his grandfather’s study to give Carc a juicy mouse. When the prince was older, Carc showed him the paths of the mountain, and taught him the ways of the Wild.

But that is another story.

#thorin oakenshield #thorin fanfic #writersmonth2021 #prompt25 #the young prince #fairy tale #the hobbit #erebor #fanfiction #writing challenge

[malecsecretsanta]

Merry Christmas ninwrites!

For @ninwrites. I was so thrilled to get you for Secret Santa this year as your Malec fics are some of the very first that I ever read when I fell into Shadowhunters way back in 2016. You gave me so many great prompts this year that I really struggled deciding what to write, especially because I know we share so many common interests! Part of me wanted to write a sweeping sci-fi, and another part of me wanted to write a clever procedural, and then I know how much you love superheroes and I also love superheroes, so that could've easily happened ...

But in the end, I decided to strip everything down and write a story about second chances. About seemingly unrequited yearning and human connection and liminal spaces and time unravelling backwards and friends-to-almost lovers-to-strangers until serendipity intervenes. Of course, I went drastically over the word limit but this happens every year so I am no longer surprised.

Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy this little microcosm of a story!

Tags: malec | rated: t | extended oneshot | human AU, roadtrip, friends-to-lovers-to-strangers-to-lovers, hurt/comfort, surrealism

Read on AO3

*****

saudade in the key of highways

saudade

/saʊˈdɑːdə/

noun

(especially with reference to songs or poetry) a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that to long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future.

"as we fall / into the common, suspended disbelief of love, you ask / will I still be / here tomorrow, next week, tonight you ask am I really here."

— Olga Broumas, Beginning with O; “Bitterness”

first chord

There is rhythm to this loneliness.1

The endless darkness. Passing headlights; the hum of the engine; the splutter of the heater fighting against the cold that claws and scratches at the windshield. The highway, deserted, is like a strange and eerie dream that travels on and on and never ends.

The rental car: new. Nondescript in its newness. Two hands on the wheel; the faded hum of the radio, a soft accompaniment to the bright beam of the headlights. The car has a cassette player, but no cassettes. It never has any cassettes.

There’s a gas station like a beacon in the distance: a faint glow of sodium yellow that slinks along the horizon but never draws closer, spilling light like fuel out across the open fields.

Alec prefers driving at night. There is never any need to ask for directions because he never passes anyone he could ask for directions; he might be the only car he’s seen in fifty miles.

The radio crackles, then laughs, ‘ we know it’s only November but nothing gets us in the mood for Christmas like -’  

Almost immediately, the signal drops, but the interluding white noise is familiar too. It fills the silence with unimportance, an invisible presence in the passenger seat who doesn’t require conversation or stops to stretch their legs, but is company enough for long drives across the country.

Moments on the road are filled like this: a hundred similar soundtracks for a hundred indistinct highways, their miles wearing down the tread on Alec’s tires and the lines of Alec’s palms, where he grips the steering wheel for hours without a break, in much the same way.

‘So if you’re listening at home, or you’re stuck on a late-night shift, or if you’re driving cross-country and need a pick-me-up, give us a ring and tell us about your favourite ever Christmas song!’ says the radio. ‘But to get us started, we have Marnie from Portland on line one -’

Alec punches the buttons on the radio until he finds a classic rock station. He taps the steering wheel, not to the beat of the song, but to dispel some of the restless energy that tingles in his fingertips.

A sign on the roadside passes him by at high speed; it tells him that he’s a hundred miles from nowhere in particular - but at the last intersection, a similar sign told him he was a hundred-and-one, and now he’s acutely aware of creeping ever closer to his destination.

It’s a destination he’s not sure he wants to reach. A destination he calls home.

There is rhythm to this loneliness . Alec is used to it: the anxious churning of his stomach, the longing for the road to continue beyond its end; the endless, perpetual, and pointless journey of back-and-forths.

One: drive across the width of the country. Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, again and again. A country of ochre-yellow wheat; plains and flatlands; tractors abandoned on the roadside.

Two: report to the local field office, where he’s given a desk too small for his long legs and a computer he doesn’t have a password to. Talk to the county sheriff who snaps at him, ‘ the FBI has no business out here, we can handle this on our own ,’ and then to the man who refuses to open his door wide enough for Alec to get a good look at his face, but whose eyes skip over Alec’s badge and land on the gun on his hip and he thinks the same thing as the sheriff.  

Three: avert his eyes from the body lying on the steel table in the morgue. Pretend that federal intervention was warranted, even though he knows this case is another crime of opportunity and the sheriff was right. The sheriff is always right. ‘ Waste of the FBI’s time, if you ask me. ’

Four: write up another field report that uses all the same words as the one before. Mail it back to Washington. Hopefully it will reach the Assistant Director before he does.

Then, five, begin the drive home.

Rinse. Repeat. Repeat again. Avoid his mother’s calls when he stops for the night at an interstate motel. Make excuses not to see his father when he’s in town. Pretend like he’s not bothered missing out on another promotion, because that would mean moving to a desk job and he likes being out in the field.

He likes driving. This is the mantra he repeats in his head rather than listening to the song on the radio.

There is rhythm to this loneliness .

The car’s engine rumbles on an empty stomach and Alec glances down at the fuel meter, ticking ever closer to the red with each passing and uncountable mile. The gas station in the distance begins to draw closer, finally allowing Alec to catch up, as its cluster of lights shift and reform into the familiar shape of civilisation.

Alec’s turn signal lights up the immediate stretch of highway with flashing orange and a click-click-click sound in the front seat of the car. There’s no-one behind him and no-one ahead of him, but he slows almost to a stop as he eases the car off the road and onto the crunch of hard-packed sand.

A single streetlamp overlooks the highway, casting a pool of unsettled yellow-white light across a phone booth that stands slanted upon the roadside. The gas station lingers a little further back: a small, stout building with a flat roof and a pile of browning-Christmas trees propped up out front. Its two gas pumps advertise diesel at a discounted price, but one of them appears to be out of order.

Beside the gas station, there is a diner; it’s old and clapped-out and almost empty at this time of night, but the bright light beaming through its windows in all directions is painful to look at. The movement of people inside is like a scene playing out in an old movie, stuck on repeat over and over again, the tape unable to skip forward. A repeated moment, and one which Alec has played his part in too many times to count.

Again, his stomach rumbles loudly and he guides the car to a stop before pulling up the handbrake.

He’s alone at the pumps. As he steps out of the car, the silence greets him; the wind falls and the road is swallowed up behind him by an encroaching night, compressing the universe into a single point. A single flicker in time.

Alec retrieves his service weapon from the glove box and clips it onto his belt, pats his chest for his badge tucked into his breast pocket, before drawing his overcoat tight around him. He won’t linger out here, not when it feels like something just out of sight is holding its breath and shifting in and out of bounds; he’s far too afraid of falling back into the passage of time.

Instead, he turns towards the diner; the bell above the door jingles the same as it always does. The TV in the corner is on mute but hums with static. The sound of plates clattering in the kitchen is enough to drown out his shoes on the chequered floor as the waitress looks up at him but doesn’t say hello.

Corner booths are best placed for people-watching and people-hiding and Alec, in his non-descript suit that matches his non-descript car, sinks onto the squeaky red-leather bench without being seen at all. He sighs heavily, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulder that has been bothering him for the last fifty miles.

There are scuffs on the leather and old coffee stains on the table, but he fishes his keys, wallet, and badge out of his pocket and tosses them on top of the menu; he already knows what he’s going to order and there’s no need to look. He’s been craving something greasy since he left Portland this morning, fuelled only by a cup of filter coffee from the machine in the motel lobby.  

Alec grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, a soft groan catching in his throat. In the same moment, the lights overhead seem to flicker, although not for long. Must be a short circuit. The waitress rubbing down the bar doesn’t look up, focused too intently on a coffee-ring stain that isn’t really there.

Diners late at night are strange places. Liminal places. Places of beginnings and endings and threshold moments and tangled journeys, forever caught in that feeling of arriving or departing - but the longer one lingers, the more reality begins to distort.

Alec is not alone in the diner, but the diner is alone in the night that laps and recedes against the windows that look out over the parking lot. Beyond, the gas station hums with a familiar argon sound, bright and electric and not-quite-right in the dark and, behind that, the edge of the highway outlines this displaced moment.

There is nothing else. Alec’s eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, and for all he knows of the endless fields of wheat that stretch out to the horizon, he cannot see them. The bell above the door chimes again and a young couple slips into the diner, their arms slung low around each other’s waists, giggling as they take up two stools against the bar. Three seats down from them, an old man in a trucker hat and a Chicago Bulls’ jersey is frowning at the TV above his head, trying to lip-read the late-night news anchor because there are no subtitles. In the far corner of the diner, a group of teenagers are tossing fries at each other and one of them makes a milkshake bullseye.

Alec doesn’t know why these people are here, in the middle of a late-night nowhere. He can’t remember the name of the last town he passed through, but it wasn’t more than a handful of houses and a couple of telephone poles kept upright by plywood and nails.

He glances back out at the parking lot, but his rental is the only car there. Strange.  

Strange, but not unexpected. He has learned not to question it, these fragments of unaligned reality, because soon enough he’ll be on his way again, a burger in his belly and bacon grease smeared across the corner of his mouth, and this diner will cease to exist as soon as he’s out of sight and over the ridge of the highway.

Perhaps it will appear again somewhere else. Perhaps he will come across this place again, another mile or two down the road, inhabited by a different group of late-night travellers who will watch him from the corners of their eyes but not say a word, because a lone man in a cheap suit is no more out of place here than they are at two in the morning.

The waitress brings over his burger and a side of fries, setting a mug down in front of him and filling it up with coffee from her pot. Alec nods at her in thanks and she blows a bubble of gum that pops across her mouth and sticks to her teeth, before she retreats behind the register and starts again on that stain.

Alec doesn’t waste any time tucking a napkin into his shirt collar. His tie is cheap and he doesn’t really care if he ruins it; there’s a spare in the bag in the trunk of his car anyway. He takes a large swig of coffee, and then a bite out of his burger, and ketchup and burger juice leak out through his fingers, splattering on the paper wrapper that covers his plate.

It tastes the same as it always does. His stomach growls loudly as he takes another bite and ketchup drips down his thumb.

Movement through the window catches his eye. He looks up and there, on the very edge of the light emanating from the gas station, is a man in the phonebooth next to the road. His back is to Alec but he’s gesturing wildly as he talks into the receiver, and the wind, now returned, billows through his long woollen coat.

A slice of tomato falls out of Alec’s burger with a distinct plop . He’s not sure why the man draws his attention, but Alec has long since learned to trust his gut - it’s an invaluable skill to have in the Bureau , his father would say. It will get you places. It will make people see you as someone they can trust to watch their back. You can’t buy that sort of loyalty, Alec.

The man is tall. He has dark hair and long legs and he grips the edge of the phonebooth with his free hand. He seems to be having a very intense conversation, unlike the hum of background noise that surrounds Alec now.

The man is an anomaly. He is not someone Alec has seen at a diner before - not a truant teenager or a trucker or a pair of lovers on a late-night tryst - and he doesn’t fit the narrative.

Alec wolfs down the rest of his burger, barely pausing for breath, and washes it down with a swig of coffee that burns slightly too hot. He leaves his fries untouched and throws down a twenty dollar bill, stuffing his badge and wallet into his pockets as he makes for the door.

The bell jingles a third time. Alec wipes the back of his hand across his mouth as he steps out into the cold, no doubt smearing ketchup across his chin. He knows his suit is creased and his shirt is rumpled from the drive, his hair upswept by the sudden gust of wind that threatens to knock him off his feet, and he can almost hear Jace laughing in his ear, alright, G-Man?

Alec passes by his car and heads straight for the phonebooth, but the closer he gets, the more he can hear of the man’s one-sided conversation.

“And there’s no way you can get a guy out here tonight?” the man is saying. “I can pay extra for the trouble. Uh-huh. Yes. Yes, it’s pretty urgent.”

Alec draws to a stop when the length of his shadow steps upon the backs of the man’s shoes. He shoves his hands into his pockets so as to appear as unthreatening as possible when the man inevitably turns around, but -

“I don’t see how a service can advertise itself as 24-hour and then not be available in an emergency,” the man says into the phone. He sounds stressed; there’s something about the cadence of his voice that rumbles through Alec’s chest and draws the hair on the back of his neck up on end. Something decades-old familiar. “The least you can do is give me the number for another rental service. A cab company. Something. Anything .”

The man turns away from the phonebooth, catching sight of Alec from the corner of his eye and holding up a finger as if to say hold on a minute , but he stops, whatever words on his tongue extinguished into roadside dust.

Alec’s eyes widen. He knows this man.

Fuck. He more than knows this man. He remembers the first time they met, the firm confidence of his handshake, the bright colours of his shirt, the way Alec thought, at the time, this man is going to change you .

It’s Magnus. Magnus Bane.

Alec never expected to see Magnus again. Not since -

Well, not since then .

“Magnus,” says Alec, like an exhale. And God , his mouth has not formed that name in years; he’s heard it, sometimes, inside his memories, but never beyond. “What are you -”

Magnus stares at him in disbelief, and Alec can hear the man on the other end of the phone line asking hey, are you still there? Hello? where Magnus holds the receiver away from his ear.

Something doesn’t make sense here, but Alec can���t put his finger on it. Not once has he met someone at a diner who he recognises. They’re all meant to be faceless people; people he could meet again a hundred times and still not recognise.

But Alec would recognise Magnus Bane with his eyes closed. It’s been years, and yet the feeling that floods his chest now, is -

An ache.

“Yes, sorry,” Magnus says suddenly, half-turning back to this phone call. His disbelief becomes a scowl. “No, it’s fine. I’ll call them myself. Thank you. Okay. Goodnight.”

The man on the other end of the line hangs up first and the dial tone echoes in the night for a moment, and then another, and then another.

Alec swallows thickly. He draws his hands out of his pockets and folds them behind his back, clenching his fingers in a tight grip where they can’t be seen.

Carefully, Magnus sets the phone down inside the phonebooth, and turns back to Alec, and then - he smiles.

“Alexander Lightwood,” he says, with a shake of his head. His smile grows broad, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “God, what are the chances? Any other night, and I’d think this was a figment of my imagination, but with the way today’s been going, I-” He stops himself and takes a half-step forward. “I haven’t seen you since -”

“Since before Quantico,” Alec interrupts. He knows he’s staring but he can’t help it. “Ten years. Yeah.”

Ten years, three months, and twenty one days. Alec has been counting. If he looked down at his watch, he would know the amount of time that has passed to the minute, to the second, in fact, but he’s not about to admit to that.

He never expected to see Magnus again, and yet -

He hoped.  

“Ten years, really?” Magnus remarks, folding his arms across his chest. Alec follows the movement with his eyes. “Yes, I suppose it must be. 1985, wasn’t it? Christ, that makes me feel old.”

He looks Alec up and down, focusing on Alec’s dust-scuffed shoes, and then on the gun that sits snug on his hip. The corner of his mouth lifts, and his smile becomes a little more genuine.

“I see it’s Special Agent Lightwood now, though. Congratulations.”

“Alec’s still fine,” Alec says quickly. “I mean - you can still call me Alec. That’s fine.”

“Alec,” says Magnus, sounding it out. He’s always held Alec’s name with a special sort of care, but now, he says it like he’s saying it for the very first time. “Alexander.”

Alec doesn’t know what to say. He stares at Magnus, at the space between them that is too large for strangers who have just met, and which belongs only to two people who once knew each other well.

Serendipity laughs at Alec now; it sounds like the dull hum of neon light in a desert. It sounds like a hundred unanswered phone calls stretching back years.

“Alec -?”

“Sorry, this is - this is weird, I’m being weird,” Alec blurts. “I didn’t, uh - I really didn’t expect to see you, especially - especially here . I mean-” He squeezes his fingers tightly behind his back to stop himself from talking with his hands. “What, uh, what are you doing out here? I thought you still lived in L.A.?”

Magnus rolls his eyes. “Where to start?” he says softly, “I had some car trouble. The tire blew like a mile back and I swerved off the road and hit the fence. It won’t start now, which is something of a mild nuisance - because apparently we’re so deep in the ass-end of nowhere that I can’t get a mechanic to look at it until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest - but not as much of a nuisance as the meeting I will definitely miss if I’m stranded out here for the next God-forsaken twenty-four hours.”

Alec’s eyes flick to the highway, as if he might be able to see a mile into the distance and find the 1970 Dodge Challenger that Magnus had, far too many years ago and long-since sold for scrap, wrecked upon the roadside. It is, of course, too dark to see much of anything.

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to call a cab out here,” Magnus continues, his mouth drawn down into a frown. “And I’m far too old to be hitch-hiking. The thrill of climbing into a potential serial killer’s car lost its appeal some decades ago.” With a brush of his fingers, he flicks away hair from his temple and huffs. “I suppose if I started walking now, I might reach Salt Lake by, I don’t know, Friday morning at best.”

Alec’s eyes snap back to Magnus. “You’re heading East?” he asks, far too eagerly. “Are you coming home?”

Something minute pinches in Magnus’ expression at that word. Home . Alec doesn’t miss it.

Magnus shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and he looks away, but there’s nothing there to pretend to be looking at. “No, not quite. If I had the time to drop by and see everyone, I would, but - I’m due in Baltimore in four days for a meeting with our investors.” He smiles wryly to himself. “And I thought it would be, oh, I don’t know, meditative or something equally asinine to make the drive across the country myself, rather than fly. See the sights. Enjoy being off-grid. Which, in hindsight, was very, very stupid.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Magnus shrugs. “Wait, I suppose. There’s not much else I can do. My cell phone is out of battery and I used up the last of my change on the payphone, so it looks like I’m stuck here until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Alec says awkwardly.

“Yeah,” agrees Magnus.

In the glow of the gas station, reality trembles, hollowing out the shadows on Magnus’ face and flickering across the back of Alec’s knuckles. The motion of coming and going calls Alec back to the road and he glances back at his rental car.

It makes sense to offer Magnus a lift. Alec is heading in that direction, and he has an empty passenger seat and a working heater in the car, and a Bureau credit card in his back pocket.

It makes sense, and yet, he still hesitates.

“Well,” Magnus announces, “I don’t want to keep you. I might as well see what sort of coffee this place has on offer if I’m to be stuck here until tomorrow. I don’t suppose I could interest you in a drink before you go -”

“I’m actually on my way back to D.C.,” Alec says, thumbing over his shoulder at the car. He wets his lower lip with his tongue. “Baltimore’s not that far of a detour, so I, uh. I could give you a lift. If you want.”

“If I want?” Magnus repeats.

Alec swallows and nods. “If you want.”

Magnus’ face softens and he smiles at Alec. “Well, I’m not going to say no, am I? Although I don’t think I’m going to get my deposit back on my car.”

He looks over Alec’s shoulder at the rental. His expression changes, and if Alec were a kind stranger offering a ride to a man in trouble in the middle of the night, perhaps he wouldn’t notice.

But they’re not strangers, and in Magnus’ eyes, there is something Alec can’t quite place. It seems a little wistful. A little sad.

He says, “I would like that very much, Agent Lightwood.”

interlude

It’s 1985 and a man stands on the edge of the sidewalk, watching as a car turns right at the end of the street and disappears. He waits, half-expecting it to come back, circling around the block and pulling up beside him, the window already rolled down, but it doesn’t.

Ten years pass, and it doesn’t, and the man has to live with it.

Empty spaces and hands on the steering wheel and loneliness and want . In the end, that’s what everything boils down to.

I want you to come back. I want to see you again. I wanted you to stay.  

This is the rhythm Alec knows well, played out in the key of highways.

I want something I still don’t have a name for.

second chord

The soundtrack to night-driving is a composition of three things: the car heater as it puffs out warm air; the rental wheezing in the cold, coughing and spluttering with seasonal flu; and the deep stretch of silence.

Usually, Alec welcomes the silence.  

In the passenger seat, Magnus shrugs out of his overcoat and tosses it into the backseat, scrubbing his hands together in front of his mouth as he wills circulation back into his fingers. His shirt, open at the throat, looks thin and flimsy and hardly warm enough for a Midwest winter, but the soft shimmer of the satin is devoid of the harsh shadows that cut across Alec’s chest like the black line of a seatbelt.

Alec forces himself to look away. Keep your eyes on the road, he tells himself. And think of something to say before he thinks you’ve forgotten how to talk entirely. He fiddles with the dial on the radio until he finds the company of static, but it morphs all too quickly into Wham!’s Last Christmas .

Alec grumbles below his breath.

“Still a Grinch, I see,” Magnus says with a smirk. “Where’s your festive cheer?”

Alec returns both his hands to the wheel. “It’s too early for Christmas songs,” he replies, “Thanksgiving was literally three days ago and it’s not even December yet.”

“Are you saying the dulcet tones of George Michael don’t do it for you?”

“I prefer Mariah Carey,” Alec mutters. It makes Magnus laugh.

Alec glances at him from the corner of his eye as Magnus begins tapping his finger to the beat of the song against the door handle.

Alec, too, feels restless, but in a different way. He can’t stop looking, stealing glances at Magnus in the rearview mirror. Perhaps he is a trick of the light. Maybe Alec has been driving too long without a break and now he’s seeing people from his past who shouldn’t be here - but are.

Nothing that happens on the road is real, after all.

He digs his fingernail into the skin of his thumb and begins picking.

He’s lived this moment before; he knows he has. Him and Magnus alone in the front seat of a car and Alec’s tongue heavy in his mouth with all the things he doesn’t know how to say, and all the things he couldn’t say ten years ago, because he wasn’t brave enough then.

Hell, he’s hardly brave enough now. He wonders if Magnus remembers any of it.

The space between them is too large for small talk. Conversations that begin with All I Want For Christmas Is You is overrated though, now that you mention it , or so, how is your mother?, or even do you remember the last day we saw each other? are not enough to bridge the gap carved out by a decade of silence.

The thought stretches Alec so painfully thin. He picks at his thumbnail until it begins to sting, then winces, and draws it to his mouth to soothe it with his tongue.

“So,” Magnus begins, in the same instance. He’s still drumming his fingers to the beat of the radio, but now he’s slightly out of time. “What are you doing all the way out here in Idaho?”

Alec could laugh. “I was in Portland,” he says, “Local P.D. request FBI consultation on a case, so. Yeah. Turned out they didn’t need my help.”

“And they made you drive all the way out there?” Magnus asks, and Alec nods. “Sounds grim.” He stops tapping and runs his index finger across the dark polish on his thumb in thought. “Are you still living at home?”

Alec clenches his hands on the steering wheel. “No, I - I moved,” he says. “Uh, not long after I graduated the Academy, actually, but only to D.C.”

“Ah,” Magnus remarks. He pauses for a moment long enough to become awkward. “Still close enough to see your mom on the weekends, though.”

Alec nods again. Close enough , yes , but he doesn’t say it out loud. Close enough for New England ghosts to haunt every intersection between the city and his parents’ big white house in the country whenever he makes the drive upstate.

In ten years, he’s barely moved fifty miles, and Magnus -

Well. The same cannot be said for Magnus.  

Magnus clears his throat, louder than the hum of the radio. “And your parents?” he asks. “Isabelle?” He scans the horizon, fixed on the markings in the road disappearing beneath the wheels of the car. “How are they? Well, I hope?”

“Same as always,” Alec shrugs. “Overbearing. Dad’s retired now, and Iz moved to New York for work last year. Max is in college, so mom’s started questioning him about his life choices instead of mine.”

“Only took thirty-five years,” Magnus chuckles. “How is your mom? Are you seeing them for the holidays?”

Alec makes a noise that amounts to yeah, something like that .

What he doesn’t say is this: his parents’ marriage has been strained a while now - not as many years as Magnus has been gone, but close enough - and Alec is thirty years too old to be used as ammunition, or worse, a bartering tool in a messy ending. The divorce is only a matter of time now.

If only the road continued on forever, he would not have to go back home for the holidays. He wouldn’t have to sit through another Christmas of icy silences and thinly-veiled insults and his mother trying to butter him up while his father does the same to Isabelle. He wouldn’t have to lie awake in his childhood bedroom and listen to his parents screaming at each other downstairs, all the while wishing for the tap-tap-tap of pebbles thrown against his window, begging for it to be open.

A lot has changed since Magnus last saw him, and Alec didn’t have to move across the country for that.

A lot has changed since Alec stood on the sidewalk and watched Magnus’ car turn the corner at the end of the street for the very last time and not come back.

A semi-truck appears in the distance: first, as a pin-prick of light, and then as two beams of headlights striking the highway and the growl of its engine. The whole car rumbles and Alec grips tight to the steering wheel as the headlights blind him and shapes dance across his eyes. The light bleaches through Magnus’ dark hair and streaks across the skin visible beneath the open collar of his shirt; he holds his hand over his brow and winces.

The truck is thunder: a brief jolt and a flash, and then it’s gone, an aftershock of red light disappearing in the rearview mirror.

For a while, there is only silence. A mile, maybe more. Long past the truck vanishing from view, its light fading into the dark; and it’s the sort of silence that is thick and heavy and awkward.

At the five mile mark, Magnus inhales and turns in his seat to look at Alec.

“So, the FBI,” he says, like he has an obligation to fill the quiet, because letting it stew is somehow worse. “What’s that like? Maryse must be proud.”

“Yeah,” Alec mumbles. “She is.”

“It suits you, you know? Alec Lightwood, Special Agent. Not that I didn’t always know that it would.”

Alec’s mouth twitches, a smile in another lifetime. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Magnus gestures with his hand. There are rings on his fingers that fail to catch the thin and distant light, but his fingers, long and slender, draw focus.

“You’re smart. Logical. Far too severe for your own good, which I imagine serves you well in law enforcement. You’ve always had a keen sense of justice,” he explains. His voice softens. “You know I’ve always thought that about you.”

Alec swallows thickly. “Magnus, you don’t have to -”

“And besides,” Magnus interrupts. “I always knew you’d look good in a suit.”

Alec looks down at himself. “What, even a suit off the rack?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything.”

Shakily, Alec laughs under his breath, but he relaxes his hands on the wheel and his knuckles fade from white back to pink. He lets the tense line in his shoulders fall flat.

“I don’t really have anyone to give me advice on what I should be wearing anymore,” he admits. “Or what colour ties match my -”

“Complexion?”

“Yeah. That.”

“Green. It’s dark green,” Magnus says. He smiles to himself, amused by something far back in time. “Do you remember that time when-”

“Yes,” Alec says. Yes, of course I remember. I haven’t forgotten a single thing . “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I still have that tie, the one you picked out for me that Christmas.”

“And the pocket square? They were a matching set -”

“Still the only pocket square I own,” says Alec.  

Magnus chuckles to himself, swiping his thumb across his lower lip in thought. The nostalgia becomes him; his expression softens with the memory of something fond.

The same cannot be said for Alec.

If only pocket squares could be metaphors for other things. For years gone by and silences that were once not this awkward and filled with jilted conversation. Or for a place once frequented but now abandoned; or a past that Alec still calls his now .

Alec is too clumsy at this; he doesn’t know how to step back into a space once occupied with ease, making smalltalk and laughing about Christmases in 1979 as if they were yesterday and they haven’t gone ten years without talking.

He’s not like Magnus; he couldn’t drop everything and leave it all behind. He didn’t get to move on. He had nowhere to go, trapped in this endless back-and-forth of travelling, always returning to the very same place once departed.  

interlude

On a postcard never sent:

What is worse: the separation, or the place where we will meet again, afterwards, that looks and feels like nowhere and is no longer familiar?

I miss you. I am afraid that I will no longer know you when I see you again.

third chord

Two motel room doors. Two identical rooms with identical twin beds and box-set TVs with only five channels and VCRs that don’t really work. Two sets of keys, although the weight of the fob in Alec’s hand feels more like brass than cheap white plastic.

He’s been here before: a shared dorm room, long, long ago. And then, after that, two houses on the same suburban street, sharing the same zip code. And then, finally, two cities, half a world apart.

He and Magnus, half a lifetime spent apart.

Alec did not notice the growing distance until it was too late; in hindsight, he’s not sure if that hurts more or less, to be blindsided by a farawayness he never saw coming. But here, now, there’s five-and-a-half feet of space between his shoulder and Magnus’, standing in front of their respective motel room doors, and happenstance has crossed their lines again.

Alec looks down at the key in his hand and then back up.

Beside him, Magnus casts a long and lonely shadow, thin and black as it stretches back into the dark. The wind ruffles his hair and plunders the pockets of his coat in an act of midnight robbery. The cold has chapped his lips already and he grumbles below his breath as he jams his key into the lock with frost-bitten fingers.

Alec doesn’t mean to be looking, but he is. He’s not sure he’s looked away since Magnus stepped out of that phone booth, as if slipping through a gap in time connecting two unrelated places that somehow ended up overlapped.

Magnus’ door clicks and he pushes it open with a soft, “aha!”, flipping on the light inside. The light tumbles out of the room - cheap, yellow, glaring - and Magnus bends down to grab his bag from his feet.

He pauses, then, in his open doorway.

“Well, then,” he says, looking at Alec with a half smile. “Until tomorrow, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” says Alec. He clenches the key in his palm until the metal digs into his fingers. If Magnus notices, he doesn’t let on. “Listen, Magnus. About what happened, when you left-”

“I’m glad, you know,” Magnus interrupts. “For whatever serendipitous force brought you to that gas station tonight. It’s good to see you. I mean it.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Alec replies. “I didn’t think - I didn’t think that day was going to be goodbye. I didn’t realise. If I’d known, Magnus ...”

“I didn’t either,” replies Magnus. His voice becomes softer. His eyes, too. Apologetic in a way that might take Alec years to unravel - or seconds. “But these things happen. You can’t stay stuck in one place forever, Agent Lightwood.”

Alec nods stiffly but says nothing.

Magnus offers him another smile, leaning heavily on his door frame.

“Alexander?” he asks, as if oblivious.

Alec squeezes the key tighter in his hand. “Yeah?”

A pause, then. Deliberate and weighted, and for a moment, Alec wonders if Magnus is going to answer the question that hasn’t been asked.

(Do you remember the day you left?)

(Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk. It’s in the past and we’re both different people now.)

But, instead:

“I’ll see you in the morning, Alec,” he says. “Goodnight. And thank you, again.”

The door closes and the light vanishes, and Alec is left suddenly in the darkness, gazing at the space once occupied. The night around him is cold. A whisper sets heavily upon his tongue but goes unspoken.

Everything always goes unspoken.

interlude

Somewhere between here and 1985, there is a man who doesn’t regret letting his feelings go unsaid. There is a man who moved on with his life; a man who doesn’t live in a moment years ago, with someone else’s hand playing idly in his hair.

There is a man who meets an old friend at a gas station in rural Idaho and it doesn’t hurt in a way he can’t ever explain.

Alec wishes that he knew him.

fourth chord

It’s always night, on the road.

As with endless highways and endless diners, other things begin to repeat themselves too. Alec prefers driving at night. It’s quiet; he can hear himself think; he can run red lights without being pulled over, without anybody in the world seeing him at all. He affords himself this one little thrill, the knowledge that the power to swerve off the road is clenched in his fists.

A fuel tanker passes the car on the opposite side of the highway, the sound of its exhaust like a fog horn parting thick cloud; for a moment, the low hum of the radio is wiped from existence. Alec eases the car over into the middle of the lane with the barest adjustment of the wheel, avoiding the spray of wet grit kicked up by the truck’s wheel arches. As the rumble fades, the melody of late-night jazz begins anew.

He glances sideways at Magnus in the passenger seat. His temple rests against the window and his eyes are closed but he’s not asleep; Alec can tell by the way he’s drawing his thumb in tiny concentric circles against his index finger again, as if deep in thought.

It was always a tell of his.

There is so much of him that hasn’t changed. So much of him that has crossed the threshold from Alec’s memory and fanned out into reality, and Alec is not quite sure where it all meets and blends together. Magnus is half a stranger and half a man ten years younger than he is now, with expensive clothes and the same aftershave and a twinkle in his eye and a strange, unspoken grief on his face whenever he thinks Alec isn’t looking.

But Alec is always looking.

There are memories in the footwell and on the dashboard and in the usually-unoccupied passenger seat of his rental car. Memories that Alec often revisits on other long and inconsequential journeys as a way to pass the time as the odometer climbs.

Magnus is always the main feature of those memories.

It’s 1978 and Alec is a junior in college and Magnus is stumbling into a lecture hall half-an-hour late with a thermos in his hand. He’s wearing the shortest shorts Alec has ever seen, and he’s slumping into the seat next to Alec, whispering in Alec’s ear that he’s so hungover he’s about to revisit Thanksgiving dinner.

Then, it’s 1981 and Magnus is trading secrets with Isabelle at a drive-in movie theater while Alec buys the popcorn; and he’s flattering Maryse’s cooking while leant across the kitchen island, chin in his hand; and he’s slamming the door to his and Alec’s shared dorm, before sneaking back in an hour later, only to find Alec waiting up for him with an apology at the ready.

It’s 1982 and he’s laughing. He’s giving Alec the grand tour of his mother’s home, three streets down from the house where Alec’s parents live. I can’t believe it took moving away to college for us to meet , he says to Alec. We’ve lived this close for so long and we didn’t even know.

It’s 1984 and he’s curling his hand over the back of Alec’s neck, feeling out the knobs in Alec’s spine. His breath is warm against Alec’s jaw as he whispers gentle words into Alec’s ear.

It’s 1985 and he’s packing up his car for the very last time.

Yesterday is tangled in Magnus’ hair. Memories twist time out of alignment and rearrange it into something, and someone, that Alec does not recognise. Ahead of them, in the distance, on the horizon, is a year from a decade ago.  

But here in the car, moonlight makes crosses on Magnus’ body. He is beautiful, still. Older, more refined, more improbable , but the composition of him is something that makes Alec’s heart ache as if he’s eighteen again and they’ve only just met.

The mole above his eyebrow is too familiar.

The lines around his eyes that appeared only after his mother passed. Alec remembers that summer well. He remembers listening to Magnus cry as he stood in Magnus’ kitchen doing the dishes that had been neglected for a week.

The map of his hands. A journey that Alec never took but longed for. Longed for and left to gather dust, like an atlas tucked away on the highest shelf of a bookcase.

In the dark, Magnus cracks open one eye, as if aware of being scrutinised. Alec turns his attention back to the road, but it is too late. He’s been caught.

“What is it?” Magnus asks, and his voice is smooth and rich and fills the car like music, even so shortly after waking. “Are we out of gas already?”

“No,” says Alec. “We’ll be fine for a while.”

“Hungry, then? We could stop for a late dinner. Or early breakfast. I’m not entirely sure what time it is, but I can always eat.”

Alec doesn’t reply, but he presses his mouth into a thin line.

Magnus’ eyes narrow. “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

Magnus scoffs. “You’ve always been many things, Alec, but able to lie to me is not one of them.” He laughs a little. “You think I’ve forgotten the look on your face when you’re trying not to spill your heart?”

No , Alec thinks. No, of course you haven’t. You should’ve, but you haven’t. You should’ve, because then at least one of us could say they moved on.

Alec exhales through his nose and flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances in the rearview mirror, but there’s nothing behind them for miles. Much like pocket squares, perhaps that is a metaphor too.

“You never called,” he says, trying to sound casual.

Immediately, Magnus tenses. He shifts in his seat and sits up a little straighter, angling himself to look at Alec.

“I did,” he says, “At the start. You never answered.”

“You were in L.A. The time zones -”

“Oh, come on,” Magnus laughs. “You could’ve called me, you had my number. I know you did, because I wrote it down for you and left it on your bedside table, the day I moved.”

Alec squeezes his eyes closed; for a brief moment of respite, the road ahead of him vanishes. He thinks about letting go of the wheel at 90 miles per hour - not because he wants to, but because the thought of picking up the phone and hearing Magnus’ voice on the other end was always something that felt like driving his car into a ditch.

It’s the fear of impact. It’s the old hurt of being abandoned. It’s the longing to have run after Magnus’ car and asked to go with him that day in 1985. It’s all such a blur. Alec cannot sift between it all.

Magnus sighs heavily, knocking his head back against the seat. He looks at Alec from the corner of his eye and studies him at length.

“Maybe we should stop,” he says slowly. “The next town, find a diner. Get some food.”

“It’s fine. I’d prefer to keep driving,” Alec says, “If we keep stopping, you won’t make your meeting in time.”

Magnus frowns.

You clearly want to talk about it , Alec imagines him saying. Evidently, there are things that went unsaid.  

Magnus says none of those things. His phone begins to ring and it shatters the strange tension in the front seat, splitting it like a sudden burst of lightning. Magnus twists around and reaches into the backseat, rummaging through his bag. He returns with a cellphone in his hand, pulling out the antenna and flipping it open.

He meets Alec’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he presses it to his ear.

“Magnus, speaking.”

Magnus listens to the voice on the other end of the line and taps his fingers on his knee. He makes a low noise of disapproval to whomever he’s speaking.

“Yes, yes, Raphael, I know,” he says. “My battery died and I didn’t have a chance to charge it - do you know how much payphones cost? Do I look like the sort of person who carries change in his pocket?” A brief pause. “Don’t answer that.”

Alec reaches for the dial on the radio, intending to turn the volume down, but Magnus’ free hand darts out and swats his fingers away.

He mouths the word no and returns to his phone call, but Alec’s hand remains outstretched.

There’s a tingle in his fingertips, a short spark of static that leapt from Magnus to him, and he stares down at his hand as if he’s been burned.

And it makes Alec realise, oh.

So you’re lonely -lonely.

“I’ll be in Baltimore in four days. I ran into an old friend who offered me a lift,” Magnus continues into his phone. He listens to the other speaker for a moment, glancing briefly at Alec’s hand and frowning. “You’re lucky I phoned you at all after all that car trouble. It was a courtesy only.”

The radio briefly breaks into static before the song resumes again. Magnus begins drumming his fingers on his leg, listening intently to his phone call. He uhms and ahs and says something about investors and capital and shareholders and begins talking numbers that are too big for Alec to really understand.

He opens up the glove box and pulls out an old diner napkin that Alec shoved in there three states ago, and scribbles down a note, but he has to tap his pen against his thigh for the ink to flow.

Alec curls his hand into a fist and rests it on his thigh, but the tingle doesn’t go away. He listens to Magnus talk - this whole other person that Alec doesn’t know, but who he was clearly always meant to be - but all he can think about is how long he has gone without being touched.

Do you know? he thinks. Do you know that the last person who touched me was you? Do you realise at all?

interlude

Driving is like running. The rhythm of the road; the splattering of rain against the windshield; the thrum of a heartbeat as the speedometer tips over ninety. Clear head. Relentless motion.

Forward, forward, forward, always and forever. Try to keep up. Don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t look back.

fifth chord

The diner is the first sign of civilisation that Alec has seen in over a hundred miles - and it is the same diner as it always is, an eminent glow on the 3AM horizon that creeps closer and closer like a spaceship hovering over the fields and drawing circles in the wheat and the barley.

It draws circles around Alec too, this singular moment in time. This microcosm that exists in the form of red leather seats and bright, fluorescent light, and the same empty parking lot and abandoned phonebooth on the highway verge. The waitress changes; sometimes, the group of teenagers in the booth at the back is an old couple embarking on a long trip south before they get too old to make the drive; and instead of a man at the bar watching the baseball, every few miles there will be an off-duty sheriff nursing a cup of diner coffee.

In the end, it’s all the same. A small pocket universe that Alec has crossed a thousand times in a thousand different rental cars.

Perhaps the people in the diner do not exist outside of it. Perhaps they are like pictures on a TV screen that cease to be once the lights have gone off and the static has fizzled and died.

Perhaps they exist only because Alec and Magnus are passing through, creating the world around them as they go. The Midwest has that quality about it.

“I can’t remember the last time I ate diner food,” Magnus says as Alec holds the door open for him and the bell jingles above their heads. “L.A. is on a health kick right now. Everything is kale. Try ordering a steak at any restaurant within a half-mile of downtown and they’ll have the bouncer throw you out on the sidewalk with your drink still in your hand.”

“Not sure they know what kale is out here,” Alec murmurs, leading the way to a booth by the window. He slides onto the bench as Magnus slumps down across from him, dramatically throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “You’re probably safe here.”

Magnus cracks open one eye to look at Alec. Beneath the table, his toes nudge against Alec’s, and then he shifts so that their knees knock together too. He throws a grin at Alec and expects a volley.

Alec tucks a smile into the corner of his mouth and rolls his eyes. He feels fragile, but he’s always been good at acting like he’s not. He picks up the menu and pretends like he doesn’t already know it like the back of his hand.

The waitress approaches their table with a megawatt smile that only brightens when Magnus turns his focus on her, casting her in spotlight. She laughs, tucks her hair behind her ear, and asks where they’re from. Magnus says Los Angeles. The waitress tells him she has a dream of becoming a singer and moving out West, seeing Hollywood and all that .

Alec has never been, but there was a summer back when Alec was in college, where Isabelle decided to follow a boy to California, swept up in the promise of love and adventure and new opportunities. Jace and Alec had protested, their mother had expressly forbid it, but Izzy had gone anyway, and it had ended in heartbreak six months later, as these things always do.

“Everybody in L.A. is from somewhere else,” Izzy had told him, when she came home for Christmas and Alec picked her up at the airport, her life packed up into suitcases in tow. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’re drawn there because of all the - you know, all the sparkle. The glamour, Alec. But really, people there are just running away from somewhere else. Somewhere they don’t really want to be.”

“You don’t want to be here?” Alec had asked.

Izzy shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s more … you don’t realise what was good in the place you left until you’re somewhere else. But then you’re too far to phone, or it costs too much to get a plane ticket, or you just don’t want to give people back home the satisfaction of knowing that they were right.”

Back in the diner, the waitress scribbles down their order on her notepad, pours Alec a coffee, and then tells Magnus she’ll be right back with his seltzer water.

Alec can’t help himself. “Seltzer water,” he murmurs. “And you say you don’t fit in in Los Angeles.”

Magnus laughs. “I didn’t say that .”

The diner coffee is cheap and watery; the burger Alec gets has no bacon, but too many gherkins soaked in brine. The fries are soggy, left bathing in grease all evening, but the waitress brings them an extra portion at no extra charge, because she mistakes Magnus’ friendly conversation for flirtation. Her number is tucked on a napkin beneath the plate.

Magnus rolls his eyes as he shows Alec, but he’s too good a person to crumple it up and toss it to the side. Instead, he slides the napkin into the pocket of his jacket, a keepsake. A souvenir of someone else’s dreams for the future. In that sense, it almost seems precious.  

“What?” Magnus asks when he notices Alec staring. “What’s the matter?”

Alec turns his attention back to his food, pulling out a soggy gherkin from his burger and draping it across the edge of his plate. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?”

Alec’s eyes dart to the pocket of Magnus’ jacket and then away again.

“Alec,” Magnus gently scolds. His smile becomes sympathetic. “Just ask me what you want to ask.”

“Are you gonna call her?”

Magnus shrugs. “Probably not. But who knows. Sometimes the people you meet by accident re-enter your life further down the line and become important. I don’t know where her story might take her.”

“What about your story?”

“My story?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

Magnus leans forward across the table. “You know my story, Alec.”

A man lights a cigarette at the table two rows behind them; he draws smoke into his lungs and it escapes through his nose, a thin grey stream falling upwards, towards the tiled ceiling. Alec watches him tap the filter on the ashtray in the middle of his table and a clump of ash disintegrates from the lit end; it lands silently, like snow. Like dust on the highway.

Magnus follows Alec’s line of sight and turns in his seat, glancing over his shoulder at the man. When he looks back, he has one eyebrow raised expectantly.

The smell of cigarette smoke fills the diner - acrid, bitter, and faintly earthy. It takes Alec back to college, to sitting out on the back porch of Magnus’ mother’s house before Magnus sold it because he couldn’t bear to look at it any more. He can picture the pack of Morley's tucked beneath Magnus’ thigh. He can still remember the way the unlit cigarette bobbed between Magnus’ teeth as he told his secrets to both Alec and the dark.

“I quit, you know,” says Magnus, in the present. “They say it’s bad for you.”

“I always told you it was.”

Magnus smirks at him and leans forward again, his elbows resting on the table. He steals a limp fry from Alec’s plate and pops it into his mouth. “I listened, didn’t I?” He nods over his shoulder towards the cigarette-smoking man. “What do you think his story is?”

“Huh?”

“What do you think his story is? Why is he here, alone at a diner in the back-end of Wyoming, past midnight in the depths of November? Smoking a cigarette? He must have a story.”

Alec’s never really thought about it. He’s always imagined the inhabitants of the diner as a backdrop, not as characters in their own story.

He looks harder at the man now: he’s older than both Alec and Magnus, salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the back. Once handsome, perhaps, but the years have stretched out his face and made his jaw sag. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit, his shirt rumpled and his tie missing, the top button of his collar undone. He takes a deep puff of his cigarette, looks at it, and then extinguishes the lit end, grinding it into the ashtray.

“I don’t know,” Alec says slowly, looking back at Magnus. “Some sort of business trip?”

Magnus’ mouth lifts at the corners, drawing Alec in. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. You see how he’s fingertips aren’t yellow? He’s clearly not a smoker, but he’s stressed enough to do it now.” Magnus reaches across the table and taps his finger against Alec’s fourth knuckle on his left hand. “And he’s not wearing a wedding ring, although looks like he was until recently. You see the mark?”

Alec steals a glance at the man, and then shuffles forward on the bench, so that he might drop his voice low and conspiratorial.

“Divorced, then?” he proposes.

“Maybe,” Magnus grins, “Or cheating, and he’s about to go back home and face his wife and pretend like his fishing trip with the guys from the office didn’t turn up much success, so they’re going to try again next weekend. He’s probably never fished in his life.”

Alec laughs then, loud enough to draw some attention. The sound is foreign in his mouth and a flush surges up the back of his neck as he sinks lower in his seat, hunching his shoulders and biting down on his smile.

Magnus looks delighted; in his eyes, Alec sees the reflection of the fluorescent lights above their heads, laid out like stars.

“You just made all that up from looking at him?” Alec asks.

Magnus beams at him. He reaches out and touches Alec’s fourth knuckle again. “Why, of course,” he says, and then he nods his chin towards the sheriff sat alone at the bar, making smalltalk with the waitress. “Now, how about him?”

sixth chord

The sun rises over the endless Nebraskan fields in shards of light.

Alec adjusts the rearview mirror. He will remember this moment later in figments of pale winter blue, snow-hazed pink, and November sky through the passenger window as Magnus gazes out across the passing countryside: a blank canvas for a painter to fill with bodies.

The color changes depending on where Alec chooses to angle the reflection of the mirror. Slightly to the left, and Magnus’ hands are stained in a pale wavering indigo, a purple so rare that it is only ever seen in the fleeting hour between twilight and sunrise. Move the mirror to the right, and that colour becomes orange, then gold.

Magnus swipes his hand across the condensation forming on the inside of the window, smearing colour across the landscape, but the story he might paint is hidden from view. Alec knows the start and he knows the middle - the brushstrokes the ones Alec remembers, but it’s the details that differ now -  and it’s the end of the story that is vague and undefined in sepia.

Alec thinks about cigarettes again. He wants to ask Magnus who it was that finally got him to quit. Or when exactly he started drinking seltzer water instead of shitty beer from Walmart, or decided that listening to the dial tone while waiting for Alec to pick up the phone was too much.

‘Let’s start the morning right with some ‘old but gold’ ,’ announces the radio. ‘ We’re going back twelve years to 1983 with this first track …’

Magnus makes a nose of protest in the passenger seat. The indigo has already faded from his hands, moving on to become something else, something more.

Faithfully by Journey begins to play. Alec recognises the song; in much the same way that a breath of fresh air on a cold winter morning can take him back to another place and another time, the first note paints a picture in his memories.

“This song played at Isabelle’s quincea ñ era,” he remarks. “D’you remember?”

“I remember,” Magnus says, tipping his head back against the seat and staring up at the roof of the car. He closes his eyes and basks in the light of the early morning sun. His smile grows gold. “That was the summer she dragged us all to see them in concert, wasn’t it? Jace had me make a tape for her, for the party. She played it on repeat all night.” Magnus pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in. “I also remember asking you to dance to this.”

Alec remembers that too. “Dad didn’t like that. He was pissed.”

”I’m not surprised. He tolerated me, at best. He was clearly jealous.”

Alec huffs on a laugh. “Jealous? How’s that, exactly?”

“Mhm, jealous,” Magnus reminisces. “Specifically of when I spun you around and dropped you on your ass in the grass and you laughed like I’d never heard you laugh before.”

Alec’s neck grows warm, a flush curling around his throat. He pinches at the skin between his thumb and forefinger where his hands both rest on the wheel.

“I was drunk,” he says, like an excuse. “I don’t remember much after that.”

That’s a lie. He was drunk, but he remembers being sprawled out across the grass and staring at the sky and laughing, until Magnus dropped down beside him, his hands planted either side of Alec’s head as he bent over him, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. And he had laughed it off like it was nothing, pulling Alec back to his feet, but Alec spent the rest of the summer picking that feeling out of his teeth.

Magnus turns his head to gaze out the window again. The curve of his smile speaks of fondness, of a quieted sense of longing and looking back. He seems at peace.

“I was drunk too,” he says, after a beat, to the countryside.

And oh, Alec wants that. He covets that like he covets touch. To be able to look back and not feel all this … regret.

Isabelle’s fifteenth birthday was the first and only time they kissed. Magnus probably doesn’t even remember that night, not beyond the dancing, the beer, the spinning around and around in dizzying circles. There’s no way he would remember a kiss that wasn’t really a kiss.

Alec never once told him how he wanted to do it again.

That was the problem, in the end.

interlude

“You haven’t moved on?” says a man, once, in a bar. He’s tall and handsome, with curly blonde hair and large hands that Alec has imagined once or twice upon his chest, although it never makes his heart leap like it should.

His name is Andrew. He works in the building next door to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. They met at a coffee cart on the corner of the block, and this, now, is their third date.

Alec had thought it was going well.

“What?” says Alec, turning to look at Andrew, leant beside him at the bar. “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t moved on from whoever it is that you loved first,” says Andrew. He pulls his American Express from his wallet and passes it to the bartender to settle their tab, but they’ve only had one drink so far. “And you know, that’s okay. I get it. The first is always different, especially when it gets left unfinished. But I can’t see this working between us if you’re still in that place. You’re a good guy, Alec, but I deserve more than that.”

seventh chord

“Take the next left.”

Alec scowls at the road before turning to look at Magnus. He is bent over an atlas he found beneath the passenger seat - it’s not Alec’s and must’ve been left behind by whoever rented the car before him. The pages are dog-eared and coffee ring-stained, and Magnus’ finger is pressed against the thin line of the highway that divides Nebraska in two.

“What? Why? This is the quickest way.”

Magnus glances up, a look of mischief on his face. He grins at Alec.

“There’s something I want to see and we’ll be passing right by. Seems like a shame to miss it while we’re here.”

“What is it?”

Magnus’ tongue pokes out between his teeth as his smile broadens. He mimes locking his mouth with an invisible key, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

Alec huffs. “Magnus, we’re in Nebraska. All they have here is grass. And nothing. And more grass, and more nothing.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Magnus folds the atlas up and sets it on his lap. He pats it with his hands. “What’s so wrong with a little spontaneity?”

“Uh, the fact that you have to be in Baltimore in three days? For an important meeting?” Alec says, gesturing with his flat palm at the road ahead. “You know I’m still on the clock, right? This is Bureau time you want to waste.”

“It’ll be an hour’s detour. We can afford it.”

“ Magnus .”

Magnus just grins at him. It’s the same grin that used to get Alec into so much trouble back in college; it leans against his doorframe with arms folded and a come-hither look in its eyes, and Alec has never been able to say no. Not to Magnus.

Magnus laughs. “Wow, they really did shove that stick right on up your ass at Quantico, didn’t they?”

Alec glares at him, but Magnus reaches out and pats Alec on the forearm, gently curling his fingers around Alec’s wrist. His touch, unfairly, is warm.

“Come on. The turning’s coming up,” he says. “Time to make a decision, Agent Lightwood. You don’t always have to play by the rules. Live a little.”

Alec rolls his eyes, but flicks the turn signal and merges into the outside lane, slowing as the turning approaches. Magnus beams at him and his laughter is buoyant, delighted as he claps Alec on the shoulder. His hand lingers, fingers pressing into Alec’s shirt, thumb against Alec’s pulse point.

Alec takes the turning.

He takes the turning and he wishes, only once, that Magnus might tell him exactly what those rules are. For a situation like this, he wonders, when you’re in the front seat of a car on an endless highway with a man you haven’t seen in years and who, once upon a time, you would’ve followed anywhere.

Although, in the end, not everywhere.  

A sign on the roadside welcomes them to Alliance, Nebraska, but instead of houses and street lamps, it’s grass that stretches for miles in every flat direction, endless swathes of frostbitten green. The road, now, is dirt and dust, and in the distance, a single white building and a cluster of standing stones appear as a landmark on the horizon.

Alec slows the car, but as the stones come into focus, he realises they’re not stones at all.

“Are those … cars ?” Alec asks, squinting into the distance. He looks sharply at Magnus. “Magnus, what -?”

Magnus holds up the atlas, his finger pressed against a roadside attraction labelled Carhenge .

“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Alec says.

“Stonehenge replicated entirely out of cars, you mean?”

“Yes. That .”

“Well, it’s not as exciting as the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint , sure,” Magnus grins. “But when in Rome, Alexander. When in Rome.”

Alec pulls off the road, passing by the visitor’s sign that reads: Carhenge and Car Art Reserve. Welcome! The parking lot, little more than a field worn thin by tire treads, is scarred by muddy trenches that have frozen solid in the night and not yet thawed, and the rental’s suspension works hard to navigate them.

Alec huffs as he pulls up the handbrake and cuts the engine, but Magnus is already twisting in his seat to reach for his coat. He shoots Alec a cavalier grin as he opens the car door and tumbles out into the cold, and the blast of icy-cold air hits Alec square in the face.

Alec grimaces, but in front of the car, Magnus knocks his knuckles against the hood and gestures for Alec to follow him. Alec grumbles and pats himself down for his keys-wallet-ID-gun , before grabbing his own coat and shoving open the driver’s door.

The only other vehicle in the parking lot is a campervan, shiny and white and sparkling in the winter sunlight, either a midlife crisis or an early retirement investment. An older couple - a man and a woman - are standing in front of it, peering over a large DSLR camera. He’s in socks and sandals and she has binoculars looped around her neck, and if the weather was any warmer, Alec is sure they would both be in cargo shorts too.

“What attracts people to places like this?” Alec mutters, stuffing his hands into his pockets and turning up the collar of his overcoat as he hurries after Magnus. He hunches his shoulders, but the wind feels like it’s gusting through him, with nothing to stop or hinder it across the plains. “Why would you drive all the way out here to see … this ?”

“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey, Alexander,” Magnus teases, walking backwards so that he can face Alec. “Why do we do anything without purpose? Because it’s there, and because we can.”

Behind him, the large circle of cars stands out of the landscape, spray-painted grey to look even less like standing stones. Alec grits his teeth.

“It’s about those little moments that break up a long drive,” Magnus continues, nudging Alec’s arm. “Or making small and inconsequential memories that can be revisited whenever one needs something slightly absurd to fall back on. It’s something to do with another person, even if that person is insistent on being a grouch the entire time we’re here-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Alec grumbles. “Let’s just hurry up and look because it’s fucking freezing out here and I wanna get back in the car.”

Alec’s dress shoes sink straight into the mud as they traipse across the grass towards the circle of cars; the squelch-squelch-squelch of his feet is loud enough to be heard over the wind. Along the horizon, the sun is weeping yellow, low in the sky and sinking moment by moment towards sunset, and the shadows that stretch out lengthways from the stones-that-are-not-stones are long and warped.

Alec stops when his toes meet one such shadow and he looks up at the stack of cars towering over him. He tilts his head to the side, but it looks no better from an angle. Magnus steps away from him, meandering over towards an information sign.

“ ‘Carhenge is formed from vintage American automobiles, all covered with gray spray paint,’ ” he reads out. “‘ Built by Jim Reinders, it was dedicated at the June 1987 summer solstice in memory of his father. ’ Huh. How about that.”

“My dad would kill me,” Alec mutters.

“Oh, yes, mine too,” says Magnus. He bends down and squints at the smaller text on the sign. “‘ Carhenge consists of 39 automobiles arranged in a circle measuring about 96 feet in diameter.’ ”

“That seems excessive.”

“I think it’s strangely compelling, actually,” Magnus says. “There’s something about roadside Americana that has its own distinct charm. It’s a product of human eccentricities and I like that.”

“Oh yeah, and what are you seeing?” Alec says, gesturing with his hand. “Because all I see is a 15ft tall metal monstrosity.”

Magnus wanders back over to him, pressing up against Alec’s arm for the sake of warmth. He folds his arms across his chest, shoving his hands under his arms, and huffs out warm air that forms white clouds. He gazes up at the monolith above them.

“Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Alexander,” he says. He frowns then, studying the twisted shapes of metal and fibreglass as if they’re some extraordinary work of art kept behind velvet ropes and a glass case and only allowed to be looked upon for a fleeting moment, and not an old car barely spared from rusting. “Michelangelo despised the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and yet it’s one of the most impressive feats of Renaissance art that still exists.”

“ Magnus ,” Alec presses.

“Mhm?”

Alec pauses. He studies Magnus’ face in profile: the line of his nose, the sharp cut of his jaw, the purse of his lips as he contemplates some deeper meaning that passes Alec by. High in his cheeks, the cold paints his skin red.

Alec thinks he understands a little, then. Nobody really comes to Alliance, Nebraska to see thirty-nine vintage cars spray painted grey and stacked together like some prehistoric monument from halfway across the world. There are other things worth looking at.

Alec shrinks down into the collar of his coat. “Michelangelo is overrated anyway,” he grumbles.

interlude

Here is the creation of a new memory: the orange-gold of a sunset, the cold metal of a rental car against the back of Alec’s thighs, and the warmth of a cheap coffee in his hands, steam rising and obscuring the face. The sky, shifting into navy, into darkness, into the pitting of stars as the temperature plummets and each breath becomes a plume of smoke rising heavenward.

Here, sat together on the hood of the car, Magnus touches him. Not an accidental brush of the fingers or a friendly hand on the arm while driving, but instead, Magnus tips his head to the side, letting his temple rest on Alec’s shoulder.

Here, Magnus’ whispered name crosses Alec’s lips. A question posed to the night, painful and tender and purple like a bruise (‘ what are you doing? ’), but Magnus doesn’t reply. He hums and turns his head and presses his nose to Alec’s coat.

Alec’s doesn’t dare move. Magnus’ hair tickles his jaw, and Alec wants to turn his head and press his nose there and breathe him in, but he doesn’t. Ten years ago, maybe. But not now.

So, he looks up, and he exhales as the last fragments of the sun shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The night sky, in its infiniteness, mirrors the high plains of the Midwest: how endless, how deep, how black it all is, away from the city.

How less lonely it is with another body tucked against his shoulder. How much it hurts.

eighth chord

They find a cheap motel, afterwards, on the outskirts of the Alliance city limits. This time, there’s only one room left. One room with two twin beds made up in ugly floral sheets, and a TV without cable, and a minifridge, because that’s how it always is; how it’s meant to be; how it was, once, years ago.

Standing in the doorway of the room, Alec thinks back to their college dorm. He thinks about being eighteen and away from his parents’ home for the very first time - only one city over, but far enough, far enough to breathe - and Magnus crashing into that room, laden with boxes and a bright smile.

He thinks, aged eighteen, God, he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen .

He thinks, aged thirty-something, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.  

Magnus, in the present, slumps down on the bed furthest from the door with a heavy sigh and immediately toes off his shoes and flings off his coat. His suitcase is beside him on the bed, but Alec’s bag - Alec’s bag is still clenched tightly in his fingers.

He doesn’t move from the doorway. He can still feel Magnus’ head against his shoulder, Magnus’ weight against his side, and he’s not sure he’s taken a proper breath since; but then Magnus looks up and catches his eye and tilts his head as if to say, what next, Alexander?

He offers Alec a smile which Alec can’t return.

Alec swallows thickly and nudges the door closed with his hip. He pads over to the other bed, his feet sinking into the plush carpet and leaving tracks, and he sets his bag down on the very end of the mattress, and -

What next, Alexander?

There was never a what next . That’s the problem; it’s always been the problem. Alec, afraid to put a name to the feelings in his chest and step outside his comfort zone, and Magnus, unwilling to push him. This is the point they always reached: the touches, the glances, the wondering. The waiting for someone to do something. Around and around again, until Magnus couldn’t do it anymore.

This is always the point. The moment, repeated, just like the highway. Just like the diner.

Magnus exhales and cards a hand through his hair, combing it back against his head. He looks away from Alec, eyes drifting across the room until they settle on the cheap plywood door that leads to the ensuite.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announces, and then he’s up, grabbing a towel off the bed and disappearing into the bathroom.

The shutting of the bathroom door is too soft and too careful, and Alec sinks down onto the end of his bed and rests his head in his hands. He closes his eyes and focuses on the outline of his badge in his jacket pocket, digging into his chest. The weight of his service weapon on his hip. The scratchy linen of the bed, the stains on the ceiling, the fuzzy TV as it cycles back and forth through the few sparse channels, even though the remote is on the bedside table and out of Alec’s reach.

He tries not to listen to the sound of rushing water through the walls.  

He goes to shower, after. When Magnus emerges from the bathroom with wet hair and a freshly-scrubbed face, there are no words exchanged as Alec passes him by.

The bathroom is small and full of steam, windowless and ventless and hot like a sauna and that’s definitely a fire hazard. Alec peels out of his suit and tugs the tie from his collar. His undershirt goes next, and then his belt, which hits the floor with a heavy clank. He stares at himself in the mirror but the reflection that stares back at him is blurred by condensation, and Alec’s finger is drawn to it, if only to leave a mark.

He wonders what Magnus would say if Alec told him of how he would write Magnus’ name in the steam on his mirror in the days after he left, standing in front of it to watch until it faded.

And it faded every time, until Alec stopped doing it.

He steps out of his pants and underwear, a puddle of creased suiting on the floor, and climbs into the shower, turning the dial up as hot as it goes. He stands beneath the spray until it scalds his skin pink, and then, once done, sits on the edge of the tub with a towel wrapped around his waist and finds himself craving a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke, not really. He just needs something to do with his hands.

When he leaves the bathroom, the TV is quiet and the light is off. A faint, electric glow escapes the bottom of the curtains, the same blue colour as the NO VACANCIES sign that overlooks the parking lot outside.

Magnus has his back to the bathroom door, his hands tucked beneath the pillow where he rests his head. He’s not asleep yet; Alec can tell from his breathing, not yet slowed. He will be able to count every long second that Alec spends staring at him, watching the rise and fall of his body beneath the covers, and he will be able to hear the moment Alec sighs and turns and leaves, padding across the room to his own empty bed.

Alec has lost count of the number of times he’s rolled over in the dark of a shuttered room that smells of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke, and reached for something that’s never been there. That hasn’t been there for years.

His mattress dips in the middle with the weight of one body. The pillow scratches at his cheek. He sets his service weapon on the bedside table, within easy reach, but hides his badge within the pocket of his jacket, out of sight but not quite out of mind. This is how it always is.

He listens to the rustle of blankets from the other bed and wonders, briefly, if Magnus has turned to look at him in the dark. He wonders what Magnus’ expression might be, and if Magnus stares at him now with the same sort of regret that Alec fails to hide.  

He is still in love with Magnus. He never stopped being in love with Magnus. This, too, is still the same.

interlude

In a wealth of human experience, the worst, by far, is what if .

ninth chord

Magnus taps his fingers against the car door, beating out an inconsistent rhythm. Alec knows it’s not a love song, but it could be something similar - a song about lost chances or maybe second chances. Sometimes, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two.

‘ THE PEOPLE OF IOWA WELCOME YOU ,’ reads a passing road sign, and it catches Magnus’ attention for a moment long enough to falter his rhythm. ‘ FIELDS OF OPPORTUNITIES. ’

There is little else to distinguish the crossing of the state line: the fields still stretch in endless directions, swathed in a fog the colour of glass. They set off late from the motel this morning because Magnus overslept and then insisted on breakfast, and refused to ask for the cheque until he had seen Alec consume something other than filter coffee.

He had offered to drive too, but Alec remembers what his driving is like: one arm propped on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio, eyes barely on the road because, to Magnus, highways are straight lines from point A to point B and he has no time for speed traps or taking corners slowly or braking .

Alec, meanwhile, always has his hands at ten and two.

“Alexander, can I ask you something?”

Alec reaches for the dial of the radio and turns it down; this time, Magnus doesn’t try to stop him.

“I’m not stopping at another Carhenge,” Alec says. “Once is enough.”

Magnus rolls his eyes and continues tapping his finger against the car door.

“No,” he says, “No, I’ve seen my fill, I think.”

“But?”

Magnus smiles a little. “What makes you think there’s a but?”

“Because you haven’t said a word since I told you there’s no way in Hell you’re driving,” Alec chuckles. “And you’ve been thinking about something. I can tell. You do this thing with your hand -” He mimics the rubbing of his thumb and forefinger together, and then the touching of his ear. “And then you touch your ear. You used to have that piercing, remember? You’d always fiddle with it when something was on your mind.”

Magnus tugs gently at his earlobe. “I didn’t think I was so easy to read.”

“You’re not,” Alec smiles, “I’ve just known you too long. Or, uh. Knew you too long.”

Magnus hums at that. He begins spinning one of his fingers around his forefinger.

“Do you think I’ve changed? Since then?”

Alec shrugs. He’s never been that good of a liar, not in front of Magnus. And Magnus knows that; he told Alec as much, two days ago  “A bit. It would be weird if you hadn’t.”

“Hm,” Magnus considers. “You’ve changed, you know. And it’s like the strangest sense of deja-vu, because I know I know you, and yet there are these little details, these little things that seem slightly off. That I don’t recognise and I don’t know where they came from.” Abruptly, he stops fiddling with his ring and curls his fingers into the palm of his hand. He smiles wryly to himself. “And why should I? You don’t stay the same person your whole life.”

“I don’t think I’ve changed,” Alec murmurs, chewing on his lip. “I’m pretty much the same person I was back then.”

Magnus shakes his head, his smile fading. “That’s not true. I can see it in your face. You laugh more. You roll your eyes at me. Tell me no. You didn’t used to do that and I would drag you into so much shit , Alec. God, I was such a bad influence on you back then.” He pauses then, and his expression sobers. “But then, sometimes, when I catch you looking at me now, you seem ...”

He trails off, searching for the words with a flick of his hand. Alec doesn’t know what he means.

“I seem like what?” he asks.

“You seem so sad .”

Alec laughs in disbelief. “Sad? What - Magnus - I’m not sad, what do I have to be sad about?”

Magnus runs his thumb over his lower lip in thought. “That’s what I wanted to ask. Last night, in that motel room, I wondered - well. I wanted to ask if you resented me, after I left.”

Alec’s hands clench on the wheel. “If I resented you?” he repeats carefully. “Magnus, I didn’t resent you. Where’s this come from? What - what sort of question is that?”

“A genuine one,” says Magnus. “Just humour me a little. I want to know.”

Alec’s heart thumps in his chest. He forces himself to stay focused on the road. “Why are you asking about this now?”

“Why not two days ago when I found you at that gas station, you mean?”

No , Alec thinks. Not then. Before. Ten years ago, maybe.

Why didn’t you ask me then?

“Yeah,” Alec lies. “Something like that.”

Magnus frowns. “Do you not want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Do you?”

Magnus hesitates. He presses his mouth into a flat line and with his clenched fists, he taps his knuckles against the glass of the passenger window. The beat is one-two three-four , like a pair of heartbeats.

“I want to make sure you know why I had to go,” he says, eventually. “You understand that, right?”

“Right,” says Alec, unconvincingly.

Magnus huffs and leans his head into his hand, rubbing at his temple. When he continues, his words are addressed to the horizon and the straight line that leads them there and disappears into a singular point in time and space.

“I know I hurt you, Alec,” he says. “And I think you’re still hurt, in a way, because you’re both the most obtuse person I’ve ever met and yet the only person who I was always able to - who I can always see . And ... can I be honest here?”

Alec nods, but says nothing.

“Right, well,” Magnus continues. “How do I explain this? It’s … it’s frustrating . Sometimes. The way you keep looking at me out the corner of your eye like it causes you suffering to do so but you can’t help yourself. The way you didn’t pick up any of my phone calls, back then. The way we just … the way we just ended. Snuffed out like a candle.”

“But you’re the one who left , Magnus,” Alec interjects. “You’re the one who - it wasn’t me. I didn’t decide that.”

“I didn’t want to be stuck there. I wanted a career, Alec, I wanted to see what else there is ,” Magnus says, gesturing with his free hand to the open road and empty Iowan landscape. He sounds weary. “And there is so much else, so much more than a nice house in a nice neighbourhood with a white-picket fence and a dog and two-point-five kids. I couldn’t wait around for you to - I didn’t want to live the life my mom lived. She never left that place, not once. The same four walls, the same dead-end Middle American town until the end of her days. And that ... that was too small for me.”

He talks about getting out the same way painters talk about muses, the same way a traveler searches for God in the landscape: something they had to see before they died. A holy calling.

He always has.

Perhaps Alec is the ghost lingering at those New England intersections that keeps Magnus far and away from home. Alec, too afraid to cross over the threshold of a highway, destined to haunt the same small town for the rest of his life.

Too afraid to wander so far from home that he might not be allowed back. Too afraid to say something that he can’t recant, even if it’s the truth.  

Alec chews on the inside of his cheek. “Didn’t you ever ... didn’t you ever think about that sort of life? With the house, and the yard, and the dog?” he begins. “Just a little? Just a bit?”

Magnus shakes his head. “I didn’t want that,” he murmurs. “It’s not me. You know that. And after my mother passed and I sold the house, I - God, sometimes I would sit on the front porch and watch all the cars go by, passing through that town like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even a blip on their map, and I would think the world moves on without you . It doesn’t care if you don’t catch up. It doesn’t care if you’re - if you’re waiting for someone to say something they never want to say.”

He glances at Alec as he says it, and Alec realises then that he knows.

Magnus knows. Perhaps he’s known a while; perhaps he’s known since they were young that Alec loves him but refuses to say it. It is Alec’s worst kept secret, after all.

“I had to get out, Alec,” Magnus continues. “Sometimes I thought, if I stayed, I’d suffocate.”

I was suffocating too , Alec thinks. A gay man in the early 80s didn’t get to breathe . That’s just how it was.

Magnus, of course, already knows that. Alec would only be preaching to the choir if he said it aloud.

Instead, he mumbles, “I wanted to say it.”

“What was that?”

“I wanted to say it,” Alec repeats. He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek and wishes he could squeeze his eyes closed for just a moment - but there’s the road. There’s always the road. “I just - I couldn’t. Not then. But I wanted to say it. The thing you were waiting for. From me.”

Magnus’ mouth falls open a fraction, as if, somehow, he is surprised by such a revelation. Alec feels Magnus’ stare boring into the side of his face and he fights every muscle in his body not to turn and look back, because he knows exactly what he’ll find in Magnus’ eyes and he’s not sure he can stomach it.

He has looked at Alec this way before. Hell, a thousand times before. He’s trying to understand Alec - why here and why now, why are you finally saying something after all these years of pulling me along at the other end of a string, leaving me hoping and desperate and in love with someone who couldn’t ever say it back - but Alec is not that complicated.

He’s just scared. Scared of change. Scared of veering off the side of the highway that he has driven all his life, even though a part of him wants to know what it feels like. A part of him longs for the impact because, at least then, it will all be over.

And Magnus -

Magnus has always been so difficult to pin down, so close to chewing through his own foot to get away (and Alec had always hoped he’d never quite manage it, so that he might stay with Alec, forever, in some selfish vision of the future). It’s inside of him, that need to wander and see the world and meet new people and learn from them and be better and be something . The need to throw the roadmap out the window at high speed.

“Was that -” Alec begins, but clears his throat again. “Was that not enough? For you to stay, I mean?”

Magnus’ expression softens. His shoulders slump and his hand falls away from his temple and his mouth curves upwards at the corner and he says nothing. In his eyes, however, Alec finds an answer.

Sometimes, you cannot wait to be loved at someone else’s pace. Sometimes, you deserve more than that. I deserved more than that.

And maybe -

And maybe I’m still waiting.

interlude

Another postcard, this time purchased from a roadside gas station and then left crumpled in the glove box of a rental car:

I loved you then. I love you now. I still don’t know how to say it.

tenth chord

The day Magnus left was a Sunday. The beginning of August, 1985. The sun was bright that morning, harsh on the roof of Magnus’ new car as he piled boxes and suitcases into the trunk.  

Alec had not understood what ending meant until he was standing on the sidewalk and watching Magnus pack up his life into ten square feet. He had not understood that some endings aren’t peaceful or satisfying or tie up all the loose threads of a story tangled by the writer; some endings are excoriations. They leave you raw and wounded.

The realisation, now, is that letting Magnus go a second time will be a worse experience than the first. This time, Alec already knows what it’s going to feel like.

In the rental car, the heater works hard to circulate warm air into the front seat. The windshield wipers battle against the thick blanket of fog that has rolled in across Lake Michigan and which obscures the signposts for Chicago from view. Frost covers rural Illinois in a comb of silver, not quite yet snow, but soon. Soon enough, the country will be white and glistening in the low sunlight as far as the eye can see.  

Magnus has his coat draped over him like a blanket, his arms backwards through the sleeves and his head resting against the window. He hasn’t slept, but he’s been quiet for a while now, watching the world pass by with little commentary, save for when a song to which he knows the words plays on the radio.

On the side of the road, timber-frame houses disappear in and out of existence, reappearing in various states of disrepair. A barn, an old farmhouse, a disused gas station, a tiny church built on stilts that extends out over a frozen lake on a wooden walkway.

Magnus makes a noise of interest as they pass it by, turning in his seat to look back at it as it vanishes into the fog.

“Did you see that?” he asks. These are the first words he’s said to Alec in nearly a hundred miles. “That church.”

Alec glances in the rearview mirror but, as always, they are the only car on the road and the fog swallows up the passing seconds behind them. He’s not sure how long they’ve been on this road without a turning, nothing but an undeviated line for miles, and sooner or later, the end of the road is going to take them by surprise.

Alec takes his foot off the gas and presses down on the brake instead, and the car lurches to a near-stop. Magnus jolts forward in his seat, his seat belt cutting into his chest and stopping his momentum. He turns to stare at Alec, but Alec throws his arm over the back of his seat, knocks the gearstick into reverse, and spins the car into a three-point U-turn.

Magnus sits up in his seat, his coat slipping down from his shoulders and onto the floor.

“Baltimore not on the cards anymore?” Magnus asks, as Alec turns the car around and begins driving back the way they came. “Alec, what’s going on?”

Alec leans forward over the steering wheel, squinting out into the fog. The shape of the gas station reforms out of white cloud, and then, beside it, the shimmer of the frozen lake and the small church that sits atop it. A place for prayer amidst the smell of petrol fumes and gasoline and road dust.

A traveller’s chapel , Alec notes. It seems apt.

The church is small and squat and built of dark, gnarled wood, falling apart at the seams. From a distance, it seems almost black, but the need to pull off the road possesses Alec and he pulls into the parking lot of the gas station, before locking the handbrake.

Once parked, he turns to look at Magnus, both hands still clenched on the wheel. The radio crackles with white noise, interspersed with the tune of a Christmas song that Alec doesn’t recognise. Magnus reaches out and turns the volume down.

There’s never really been a need for words.

Alec unclips his seatbelt first. He doesn’t pat himself down for keys-wallet-ID-gun . He grabs his coat from the backseat and leaps out into the cold, and doesn’t look back when he hears the passenger door slam and Magnus follow after him, albeit at a distance.  

What Alec finds is this: the wind is brittle and the walkway that leads out over the lake creaks and groans beneath Alec’s weight, but doesn’t make a noise for Magnus. On the highway behind them, a truck rumbles past, but the fog is so deep that Alec cannot see it, save for the glow of its headlights. There is a small placard nailed to the outside of the church that reads: Visit Your Roadside Chapel and a big red arrow points down at the doorway.

Alec reaches for the doorknob and gives it a twist. Behind him, he can feel Magnus watching him, arms folded across his chest to ward off the cold, in silence. He says nothing to Alec, no witty remark about the FBI’s predilection for breaking and entering, no tired smile, no weary remark about how he’s tired of waiting, which they both know means far more than it seems.

The door to the church is not locked and it opens with a fair shove, and out spills the smell of damp wood and dust and old smoke. Magnus coughs lightly, wafting his hand in front of his mouth, but Alec steps inside.

The church itself is small and cramped, barely wider than the span of Alec’s arms from wall to wall, and the cold sweeps through the gaps in the walls, carrying with it the earthy smell of burning. There are no church pews, but a padded piece of wood for kneeling in prayer sits beneath a floor-to-ceiling cross, and bible verses are scratched into the plywood walls in a messy hand. Empty beer cans and extinguished cigarettes litter the floor, and cobwebs are strung like garlands above Alec’s head, which he reaches up to swipe away.

A row of candles stand where the altar should be. Soot still clings to the wicks, as if freshly extinguished.

Alec steps forward and his feet crunch on dried leaves that have blown in through the door. He lifts his foot and looks down and finds a crumpled receipt stuck to the sole of his shoe, grey with running ink and dozens of footprints that have come before Alec’s. The date on the receipt is fifteen years ago. It was issued in Dallas, Texas.

This is a space of comings and goings. Of passing throughs. The afterimages of a thousand travellers linger here like memories and, carved into the cross above Alec’s head, he notices the words: what is more important to the traveller, the journey or the destination?

The silence sings, or maybe it hisses, like the wind rustling through the endless miles of wheatfields between here and where they’ve come from.

What is more important to the traveller, the fact that we got lost along the way, or that we made it back here, in the end, and met again?

Alec looks back over his shoulder, and Magnus is there, standing in the open doorway, waiting. His nose is red with the cold. The light behind him casts him in the pale yellow of a winter twilight. He is watching Alec with an expression that Alec doesn’t understand.

“Magnus?” Alec asks, low and gentle.

“Yes?” he replies.

“Do you have a lighter?”

Magnus’ mouth tips upwards at the corner. “I said I quit, remember?” he says, but he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a shiny, silver Zippo lighter, engraved with his initials. He places it in Alec’s outstretched hand, but his touch lingers against Alec’s wrist and the staccato of his pulse. “Here.”

Alec turns to the candles and flicks his thumb along the lighter. The flame is summoned into existence, its light dancing across Alec’s thumbnail as he lights the wick of the tallest candle.

He lights it for his mother, and then, once it catches, he lights another for Izzy, and then one for Jace and Max and his father. He recites the Catholic rotes his grandmother taught him beneath his breath, in Spanish, a whisper. Then, a prayer for Magnus, and for his mother too, wherever she might be.

And lastly, a prayer for himself, aged eighteen and away from home for the very first time. Aged twenty-three and in his graduation gown, Magus’ mortarboard on his head and Magnus’ arm around his shoulders, laughing in his ear. Aged ten years younger than he is now and standing on the sidewalk of his parents’ house, watching Magnus’ car pull away.

Magnus joins him at his side, his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him. An inch of space exists between their shoulders, but, even now, Alec can feel the warmth of him through his coat.

Alec has missed this. He will miss it again, he’s all too sure, but maybe it’s okay to have it only for a moment.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it has to be.

“Alexander?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant what I said yesterday,” Magnus says quietly. He tugs on the sleeve of Alec’s coat and turns Alec to face him. His eyes are bright - not wet, but earnest - and drop to Alec’s lips before returning upwards. “That it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. You know that, right?”

He squeezes Alec’s arm. He wants Alec to understand something that still remains out-of-focus.

“What do you mean?” Alec asks.

“I am sorry for the way we left things,” Magnus says, “And I’m sorry that it hurt more than I realised it would. I really am. But it doesn’t have to end the same way this time. You can change the way you remember it. Make it mean something, something fond that you can look back on. You can make it good, if you want.”  

Alec frowns. They’re a day away from Baltimore. In forty-eight hours, Alec will be back home in D.C., and in a week, Magnus will return to L.A. and the life he has built there, where he drinks seltzer water and no longer smokes and talks a mile-a-minute on an expensive cell phone about investments and equity and big-ticket numbers, and is loved by Alec at a distance.

It’s not like the highway extends into the sea. All roads eventually end, and this one must too, amounting to nothing more than four days in a nondescript rental car with Christmas music playing on the radio, but -

This doesn’t have to end the same way this time.

“Doesn’t it?” Alec asks, unable to help himself.

Magnus shakes his head and lets go of Alec’s arm. He takes a step forward and lifts the last unlit candle, holding its wick to the flame of another until it catches.

“No,” he says. “No, it doesn’t.”

interlude

Nothing that happens on the road is real. This is what Alec tells himself between diners and gas stations and faded markings down the centre of the highway.

I can love you now, while the engine’s still running. And you might love me too, while the engine’s still running. Sometimes I think that you do, when I look at you from the corner of my eye.

In the distance, Chicago rises from the fog, lit up in one thousand pin-pricks of light. It makes the world glow in the colour of cities and concrete and it feels a bit like a dream after so long passing through nowheres.

If we drive far enough, we might make it back to the place we once called ‘now’. If we drive fast enough, maybe that day will end differently and you’ll stay.

The speedometer tips over ninety and the countryside blurs into rooftops and stop lights and traffic backed up across the bridge that spans the highway. Streetlights line the side of the road and pass across the rental car in flashes of strobe and yellow.

“I don’t want you to stay there,” says Magnus, in one such patch of light. Sometimes, it’s like he can read Alec’s mind. “I want you to write a different ending, Alec. I want you to want it.”

eleventh chord

Chicago is behind them as they cross into Indiana with the stroke of midnight, a dull orange glow that seems too bright for the eyes after so many repeated nights driving in near blackness.

Their destination is getting closer, and Alec eyes each passing road sign that counts down the miles to Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, then Baltimore, then home with a heaviness in his heart that beats a slow rhythm.

It’s the rhythm that he knows - that lonely beat that matches the roll of the odometer on the dashboard - and yet it seems too fast now, accelerating towards an end point at which he has a choice to make.  

He tries to match it, that rhythm. He tries to strike a chord with the bouncing of his leg in the footwell, with the tapping of his fingers on the steering wheel. He glances across at the passenger seat to see if Magnus is looking back at him, but he’s not - he’s staring ahead through the windshield and holding himself unnaturally still.

Alec wants to slow down below the speed limit; put his foot on the brake; stall the car. Drive it off the side of the road and into a ditch and then shrug and say, guess we’re stranded for another night ‘til the tow-truck can get here . And maybe that’s dishonest - or too honest, because the thought of spending the night in the car together, crowded around the heater as if it’s a bonfire keeping them warm, does something strange to Alec’s insides - but the relentless momentum if the car is no longer a balm on his nerves.

He can’t help but think about what lies in wait at the end of the road. Another goodbye. A polite smile and a parting hug and some kind and empty and wistful words; longing and loneliness and more of the same heartbreak, made worse by the fact he knows, now, what they could’ve had, if things had ended differently the first time.

Alec doesn’t want to leave this car; he wants to keep Magnus here forever, the two of them trapped in this rocking motion of roads and highways, where Magnus tells him over and over again that it doesn’t have to end and Alec believes him.

Alec wants to keep driving off the very edge of the continent and into the Atlantic Ocean. He wants to arrive in Baltimore and say, take me with you . He thinks about grabbing Magnus’ hand when he steps out of the car, and saying, don’t leave me behind this time. Take me with you. Take me somewhere that isn’t here. I’ve had enough of coming and going back to the same place as before. You’re right about that. You’ve always been right about me.

Magnus shifts in the passenger seat, clearing his throat.

“We should probably find a motel. It’s getting late,” he says. He doesn’t need to say it, because Alec is already thinking it: tonight is the last night. Tomorrow, Alec will be in his own bed, and Magnus, in some fancy hotel room paid for on a corporate credit card. “We both need a good night’s sleep. For tomorrow.”

“Right,” Alec echoes. He clenches his jaw. “Tomorrow.”

The air in the car is thick and heavy, so Alec reaches for the radio to try and suffocate his own thoughts. He skips through the stations until he finds one that sticks, and then turns up the volume. The voice of a man quoting late-night scripture fills the front seat:

‘So, flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord for a pure heart.’

Magnus exhales through his nose and runs his palms up and down his legs, digging his fingers into his thighs. His eyes catch Alec’s in the rearview mirror.

A decision, then. Alec has seen this look before.

“I really think we need to find a motel,” Magnus says again, more forcibly this time. “Let’s check the map. Can you pull over?”

“Huh?” says Alec, “Just switch the light on, it’s okay. I don’t mind. Pick somewhere that sounds good and tell me which exit I need to take.”

“Alec,” Magnus insists. “Pull over.”

Alec looks at him, confused. “What? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Really. I just need you to stop driving, please.”

“Okay, uh. Okay. Hang on, I’ll just -” The turn signal flashes and Alec steers the car off the side of the highway and onto the grassy verge. The tires sink into the mud and the car jostles them from side to side until, finally, coming to a stand still.

Magnus unclips his seatbelt and reaches for the glove box, retrieving the atlas from inside. He spreads it out on the dashboard between them, running his fingers down the page until he finds where they are, and then flicks on the cabin light above their heads.

The car becomes an island, then. The sky is clear and the road behind them is almost empty, and the world outside is completely black and they are floating in an endless void. And all that exists is Magnus leaning across the gearstick and grabbing Alec’s hand and pressing his fingertip to a point on the map and saying, “there.”

“There?” asks Alec, looking up at Magnus’ face. His voice is a whisper now. “What’s there? A motel?”

“A motel,” Magnus agrees, shifting forward on his seat, closer to Alec. His grip on Alec’s wrist is vice-tight, his rings cold against Alec’s skin. “What do you think?”

Alec pauses. There is an unasked question here, hidden in the silence between words. It’s a proposition and Alec wants to get the answer right.

But Alec also wants to kiss him. He can smell Magnus’ cologne, the aftershave patted onto the slope of his jaw in the bathroom of a cheap motel that morning. He can feel the heat of him. He can feel the flutter of Magnus’ pulse where Magnus’ thumb is pressed insistently against his skin.

He wants to kiss him and muster the courage he could never find before, and he wants to say fuck it . Give him that moment of undoing, or redoing, or whatever the fuck it is that he wants the last few years to have meant.

He’s pretty sure that’s what Magnus wants too.

“Alexander?”

Kiss me now while the engine’s still running.

“I don’t want this to end.”

“I know you don’t,” says Magnus. “I don’t either.”

“No. No, Magnus, you don’t know. You don’t - you can’t ,” Alec insists. “You can’t know because I never said anything. That’s the whole point. I never said anything, even though we both knew how I felt. We both knew. And despite all that, we still didn’t do anything about it because in the end, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. I loved you and I think you loved me and it didn’t matter.”

He and Magnus exist in a not-time. This place isn’t real; Alec can speak to these feelings and not be beholden to them in the morning, or at the end of the road, or wherever it is that they’re heading. Not if he doesn’t want to.

But he does want. He wants more than one man with a body can bear.

I loved you then but it didn’t matter. But it matters now because I can say it. Because we have circled around and found each other again after all this time and that -

That has to mean something.

Magnus’ hand relaxes on Alec’s wrist; his fingertips brush across the back of Alec’s knuckles, across the roadmap between them on the console. It is tentative and questioning and even now, still says, you can drive away if you need to.

Alec inhales deeply. He shakes his head.

He meets Magnus’ eyes on purpose.

“I was afraid that the next time you walked into my life, I wouldn’t know how we fit together,” he whispers. “I was worried that something inside of me, inside of you, would’ve changed, because things always change after this long, but - it hasn’t.”

Beneath Alec’s palm, Washington lies hidden. In the dark, the paper rustles.

“You haven’t, Magnus. Not when it comes to me.”

interlude

The radio sings, ‘It will never be the same, baby.

We will always be the same, baby.’

twelfth chord

Alec’s hand shakes as he fumbles with the key in the motel room door.

Magnus stands a half step behind him, his breath forming white clouds that float and dissipate over Alec’s shoulder. The smell of his aftershave carries. There’s a deliberate space left between their bodies, greater than the distance that has existed between them in the car for the last four days.

It’s the furthest they’ve been apart since Alec approached that phone booth back in Idaho.

“Fuck,” Alec mutters, as the key sticks in the lock and refuses to turn. His palm is sweaty and anticipation licks up the side of his throat where the collar of his shirt is too tight. “Sorry, just give me a sec-”

Magnus leans over his shoulder and takes the key from him, sliding it into the lock with ease. The door clicks, and then swings open.

This motel room is just like all the rest: two beds, one TV, the oddly stained carpet. Thin plywood walls. A single light that plunges the whole room into that low-res yellow of cheap nighttime lodgings.

Alec places both their bags on one of the beds, exhales, and then, when he turns back, Magnus is standing against the closed door. His head is tilted back, his chin aloft, and his arms are folded across his chest, the sleeves of his coat tight around his arms.

His eyes are dark and molten. Where Alec is an unlit cigarette, he is the match.

And that’s enough. All things end and all endings are terrible in their own way, and Alec doesn’t know why he shouldn’t lean into the inevitable if it’s something he can’t avoid.

He abandons the bags and steps towards Magnus, grabs him by the lapels of his overcoat, and kisses him.

Immediately, Magnus opens his mouth to Alec; the sound he makes into the kiss has the hairs on the back of Alec’s neck standing on end. They stagger back against the door with a thud , and Magnus grabs at Alec’s coat, shoving it from his shoulders, then pulling Alec’s shirt out of his belt, his hands slipping beneath Alec’s undershirt so that he can feel skin.

Something rattles around inside of Alec and maybe it’s his heart come loose at last. He kisses Magnus ever deeper for it; his chest aches; his heart aches. He should’ve kissed Magnus sooner, and yet it feels like this is the only moment in time and space where it’s meant to happen: some dingy motel in rural America where it’s just the two of them and Alec has made a choice where he refuses to let this separation be the same as the last.

They’ve never needed to speak. The span of time hasn’t changed the connection between them; Alec could be his twenty-three year old self; he could be his eighteen year old self; his self from five days ago, picking up the keys to a rental car in the backwoods of Oregon state - he would still be in love with Magnus, whether or not he has said it out loud.

Alec cups the sides of Magnus’ jaw and tilts his head back, deepening the kiss. Magnus’ tongue presses into his mouth, his hand flat against the small of Alec’s back, his fingers pressed against Alec’s spine. He pulls Alec closer until their bodies are flush.

And oh, it’s so easy for Alec to lose himself to the push and pull of it: the lick of Magnus’ tongue, the pliance of his mouth. His hands are so warm as they settle on the slope of Alec’s waist.

Alec feels like he’s standing in the middle of a highway, staring down the headlights of an oncoming truck, willing it to move first or be moved . His heart is pounding loudly in his chest. The light is so bright that he is blind to everything else.

Is this driving off the edge of the road or is this the impact?

The kiss leads to the bed. The bed leads to shucked clothes and kicked-off shoes and Alec tossing his badge and service weapon blindly onto the bedside table as Magnus kisses down his throat and the blood rushes to Alec’s head.

Magnus pins him back against the starchy motel pillows, one hand splayed on Alec’s chest - stay still, don’t move - while his other hand cups Alec’s hip and his thumb slips into the band of Alec’s underwear.

No. It is the destination.

Magnus runs his hands down the inside of Alec’s legs, his palms smoothing across Alec’s thighs. His eyes meet Alec’s as he presses his mouth against Alec’s knee.

Alec’s eyes fall closed.

He wants to say something about endings, to gasp, to whisper it. He wants to ask what happens next: if he is to leave Magnus on the side of the road in Baltimore tomorrow and never hear from him again; or if Magnus will fly back to Los Angeles in a week’s time and only look back on this moment as one of those pocket memories of his, something fond to warm him on colder nights.

Alec doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be an uncalled telephone number in Magnus’ diary again; he doesn’t want to stop here , with Magnus’ mouth slowly kissing up his inner thigh. He cannot let Magnus slip through his fingers a second time, so he reaches out and pulls Magnus towards him, up the length of his body, crushing his mouth against Magnus’ and swallowing Magnus’ untethered gasp. He kisses Magnus’ jaw, and then the side of Magnus’ neck, and then he presses his nose to Magnus’ shoulder and breathes him in.

He says nothing, but he has to screw tight his eyes to stop himself from doing something stupid, like letting a stray tear roll down his cheek and wet the pillow. Magnus wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, words whispered in Alec’s ear that he’s been waiting ten years to hear and which Magnus thinks must all be said in one night.

Alec is too old for messes of the heart like this, but maybe that’s the problem: how long they’ve delayed this particular end, to the point that neither of them know how to exist in a world after .

interlude

The final postcard never sent:

“The boy in the yellow shirt walks like there is all the room in the world. I am standing on the edge of what is an ending world.” 2

I read this in a book that Catarina leant me. I think it’s about us, or at least it’s about me, the first time I laid eyes on you.

Come to L.A.

thirteenth chord

Alec wakes up alone in the bed, his arm outstretched across the mattress, his hand palm-up to the ceiling. There is an ache in his legs, bruises scattered across his thighs like the shattered glass of a windshield spread across the road. The smell of sex hangs heavy both in the air and on his skin where sweat has dried and not been scrubbed away, and when he tries to speak, his voice is hoarse and raspy.

Beside him on the bed, the pillow is cooling - but not yet cold.

Disappointment curls in Alec’s gut, but in his head - well, that’s empty, devoid of the constant noise that has existed there for the past few days, if not years. He hasn’t noticed until now that it mimics the sound of a car engine, a forever rumble.

There is simplicity to the silence now. The carpet is cold when Alec’s feet hit the floor, a draught slicing beneath the bed. Magnus’ suitcase is gone from the other bed; his clothes gathered from the floor. The smell of his cologne has faded, replaced by the musty smell of floral bedsheets and mothballs and wallpaper that has absorbed the smoke of a hundred cigarettes.

The only evidence of Magnus being here is his absence.

His absence - and the way Alec’s mouth tingles when he brings his fingers up to touch his lower lip.

Alec brushes his teeth to the sound of the faucet running, water gushing down the drain. He splashes his face and dresses in the crumpled clothes from yesterday that still smell like the front seat of the rental car and shakes carpet fibres out of his overcoat where it still lies by the door.

Keys. Wallet. ID. Gun. He moves through the motions on autopilot, patting his pockets and then his chest as he mentally tallies up the parts of himself worth collecting - but then stops. Standing in the middle of the motel room with his bag in his hand, he turns to look at the unmade bed, the sheets kicked into a pile, a backdrop to a journey he has taken so many times before.

The difference, now, is in the details. It feels significant. It’s worth remembering.  

Crossing to the window, he throws open the curtains and sunlight streams into the room, flooding every dark corner. Alec squints against the light, raising his hand to his face to shield his eyes. A faint sheen of frost forms fractals on the outside of the glass and, beyond that, the roof of the rental car, the prelude to the first snow of winter.

Leant against the side of the car is Magnus.

Alec inhales deeply, his breath clouding upon the window. The cold draws down into his lungs - a sharp ache inside of him that he holds for a count - and then he exhales. Deflates. Sinks back into a rhythm that is both familiar and somehow different to the one he has known for so long, as if the world now beats in imperfect time.

Magnus is propped against the hood of the car with his eyes closed and his head tipped back to catch the sun, and he doesn’t stir when Alec shuts the motel room door behind him and the gravel of the parking lot crunches beneath his shoes. On the side of Magnus’ neck, there is a hickey bitten darkly into his skin. It’s the colour of rare indigo.

Alec doesn’t feel the need to avert his gaze now.

“Have you ever been on a roadtrip?” Magnus asks, opening his eyes when he feels Alec’s shadow cross his body.

Alec frowns at him as he bends down to grab Magnus’ suitcase, before tossing both their bags into the backseat. “Isn’t this a roadtrip?”

Magnus waves his hand aimlessly. “No, this is serendipity, Alexander. I’m talking about a comprehensive tour of all the worst diner coffee in the continental United States. Hiking in the Grand Canyon. Exploring the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest.” He looks at Alec and smiles a coy smile, pushing away from the car. “You know, in Indiana, they have the World’s Largest Ball of Paint? I’d like to see that sometime. All the best roadside Americana that the country has to offer.”

Alec rounds the car to the driver’s door, opens it, but doesn’t get in. He leans his arms on the roof of the car and Magnus, on the other side, turns to face him.

“But Baltimore,” says Alec.

Magnus’ smile softens. “But Baltimore,” he agrees, across the span of the roof. He glances at his watch. “Providing we don’t hit gridlock outside the city, I should be right on time for my meeting and Raphael won’t have the pleasure of removing my head from my shoulders. You always were excellent at keeping me punctual.”

Alec smiles quietly, ducking his head. “Yeah, well, one of us had to live in the real world.”

He climbs into the car and Magnus follows, folding himself into the passenger seat and draping his coat across his lap. He buckles himself in and then leans back to look at Alec as Alec slots the key into the ignition.

“What?” Alec asks. He reaches up to touch his neck, in the same place where the bruise forms on Magnus’ throat, but can’t find any tenderness. “Is there something on my face?”

“No,” Magnus says gently. “No, not at all. I was just thinking that sometimes the real world is rather overrated. In my experience, the longer one can put off returning to it, the better.”

Alec turns the key and the car splutters into life. The heater blows warm air into the front seat, condensing upon the windshield, and when Alec reaches out to direct the flow of air downwards, Magnus covers Alec’s hand with his.

It’s a reflection of the night before, but without the urgency.

Magnus curls his fingers around Alec’s hand and brushes his thumb over Alec’s knuckles. Then, he brings Alec’s hand up to his mouth and presses his lips to Alec’s fingers, his eyes falling closed and his eyelashes casting feathered shadows on his face.

Alec holds his breath. He waits for Magnus to say something, to say so let’s not go back to the real world yet because I’m happy here , but he doesn’t.

Happy is too vague a concept. Not that Alec isn’t happy here, in this particular not-real moment, but it’s a feeling that belongs to strange, liminal motels and repeated diners. It is hard to grasp, and harder still to fathom how it might slip into the spaces occupied by a life back in the city at the end of the road.

Magnus sets Alec’s hand down on the gearstick between them, and settles back into his seat, kicking his feet up on the dashboard. He tips his seat back and rests his head against the window as Alec puts the car into reverse.

The road is quiet but not deserted. Alec knows that they will meet traffic before too long, but, for a moment, he imagines the highway stretching beyond the horizon and continuing into the sky, winter-blue and endlessly deep, leading above and beyond the curve of the Earth.

There’s a very thin dusting of snow on the hard shoulder, and the sun, shockingly bright, refracts off it with a white glare. It’s the sort of daylight that possesses Alec, that fills him up and makes him feel separate from his body.

If Alec rolled down the window, that daylight would spill in and flood the car, crisp and cold and foreign. But here in the warmth, he unspools a story in his half-awake mind: him and Magnus and the unending road. If they stop moving, they’ll die. If they stop driving, they’ll die. There was a Keanu Reeves movie about that recently , Alec thinks. It probably didn’t end well.  

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

Alec glances sideways at Magnus. “What happened to quitting?”

“Oh, I did,” says Magnus. He produces an unopened pack of Morley’s from the folds of his coat and inspects it curiously. “But I got this from the motel reception this morning on a whim and it feels like a waste otherwise.”

Alec rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says, but he cracks open the driver’s window and the cold rushes in. The wind ruffles through his hair, funneled by the cuffs of his jacket up the length of his sleeves and into his coat. A shiver ripples down his spine and he grimaces.

Beside him, Magnus pulls a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and cups his hand around his lighter as he lights it, before holding it out to Alec.

“I haven’t smoked in years,” Alec says, but he takes the cigarette anyway and taps the lit end against the ashtray on the console. “You can’t laugh.”

Magnus lights a second cigarette, the clink of his lighter sharp, like metal. He draws in a deep breath, pulling smoke down into his lungs, and then exhales. The grey plume rises towards the roof, only to be sucked suddenly out of the open window.

Magnus coughs, clearing his throat, and takes the cigarette from his mouth, only to pull a face at it.

“Tastes like what I imagine licking the floor of that motel would be like,” he says, before stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray. He frowns at the packet in his hand, before throwing it into the glove box. “Let’s stop at the next gas station. I need something to wash that out of my mouth.”

“Okay,” says Alec, unable to stop himself from smiling. His cigarette warms his fingers. His stomach growls at the thought of cheap diner coffee and a greasy bacon burger for breakfast. He presses his foot down on the gas and shifts the engine up a gear.

A passing road sign reads: Baltimore, 405 km . About a five hour drive.

Alec will miss this rental car.

interlude

In the dark of a motel on the night before, Magnus’ eyes are almost black. Alec studies him from across the pillow, their noses nearly touching. Magnus’ hand, splayed on Alec’s ribs, draws gentle circles into Alec’s skin, while Alec’s ankle lies tangled with both of Magnus’ legs.

Magnus’ body is warm. It’s rhythm is familiar in the way that it matches Alec: how he moves, how he breathes, how the sound of his heartbeat disturbs the silence of the motel room.

If Magnus were to speak, he would say, ‘something is only beautiful because it does not last forever .’ But he does not speak, so Alec cannot say back, ‘ that’s not true. You’ve always been beautiful .’

Instead, he leans forward and he kisses Magnus and he earns a soft groan for his troubles as Magnus curves into him like the other side of a parenthesis, ‘til now unpaired.

Magnus’ hand slides upwards, cupping the back of Alec’s head. His thumb caresses the shell of Alec’s ear and the soft hair above it.

He pulls himself against Alec’s chest, his other hand trapped between them, pressed over Alec’s heart.

He kisses Alec back.

outro

The woman in the apartment above Alec’s has Christmas lights in her window: red and green flash in alternating patterns and Mariah Carey’s faint warble can be heard from the sidewalk as Alec gazes up at his building and allows himself to watch, if only for a moment.

His bag is heavy on his shoulder and his suit is stiff across his back; the thought of a shower is calling him home, but he wants to linger outside a little longer. The cold is sharp against his face and draws a red flush to his cheeks. His breath escapes him in white clouds, tumbling upwards. Baltimore lingers on his skin with the memory of a parting kiss.  

He is, now, alone.

On his doorstep, his neighbour has left him an early Christmas card; she has done the same for the last few years, concerned for the young man who lives alone and never has his family visit once December comes around. As Alec unlocks his front door, he slips his finger beneath the seal of the envelope and tears it open, and the message inside is the same as it always is, wishing him and his loved ones well for the holidays.

He places the card on the sideboard by the door as he toes off his shoes, and wanders into his living room, dumping his bag on the floor as he goes.

The stillness in his apartment is strange: the air is musty, the windows unopened for nearly two weeks now, and while there’s no dust on his coffee table yet, the scattered paperwork and unwashed coffee mug are somehow disturbed by his presence.

There are dishes in his kitchen sink and his bed is still unmade; the space is exactly as he left it, and returning to it feels a little like disembarking an airplane after a long journey spent cramped in one mindset, and now having to reacclimatise to solid ground.

Alec is not sure why he expected his apartment to be changed. Even in some small way, like the rotating characters at a diner, or the different coloured carpet at each roadside motel, or the occupancy of his passenger seat by a man he thought he’d never see again, he hoped for something new. Something welcomed but unrecognised, symbolic of a new start or, perhaps, a second chance.

Oh. Maybe he’s the one a little changed, then.

It’s not about the destination , after all , he tells himself, reaching for the remote to turn the TV on for background noise. It’s about the journey.

Briefly, he wonders if this happens every time: if each successive back-and-forth across America wears him down just a little, like the treads on car tires, and it’s only now that he has changed enough to notice that he no longer fits into the routine once occupied with ease. In his footsteps, he brings the liminality of the road into his own apartment, the threshold moment between one state of being and the next.

And Alec is okay with that.

He locks his service weapon in the safe on his desk. Loosens his tie. Pulls a bent postcard from Carhenge, Nebraska, a receipt from a gas station just outside of Baltimore, and a nearly-full pack of Morley’s from his jacket pocket and sets them all on the coffee table, before throwing his coat over the back of the couch to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow.

His suit jacket goes next - two days old and creased around the elbows - and then his belt, a heavy thunk on the floor, before he pads into the bathroom and turns on the shower so that the water might have time to heat up before he gets in.

He strips down to his underwear and wanders back out into his living room, and it’s then that he notices the red flashing light on his answering machine: a voicemail.

He hits the play button - ‘ you have three unread messages ,’ says the disembodied voice - and he pours himself a glass of water as he listens first to Jace ramble on about not coming home for the holidays, and then to his mother discuss her plans to visit her solicitor next week.

Alec empties his glass and sets it in the sink to be washed later. He heads back to the bathroom, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders, and the answering machine beeps to signify the final message.

‘ Alexander, it’s me. ’

Alec stops and turns to stare at his answering machine as if it might come alive in front of him.

‘ You’re probably not even back in D.C. yet, but - well ,’ says Magnus. ‘ I made it on time to the meeting, in case you’re interested. I’m never going to hear the end of it from Rafael, of course, and he’s never going to let me drive anywhere alone again, but it’s looking like we’ll be able to close a deal before Christmas. It sounds like I’m going to be back and forth between L.A. and Baltimore a lot next quarter.’  

In the background, Alec can hear the sound of people, of a bustling street, of taxi cabs blasting their horns as Magnus tries to hail one down.

‘ But I all that aside, this couldn’t wait and, I suppose, serendipity can only get you so far.’

Alec reaches for the handset, poised above the redial button, but then something in Magnus’ tone changes. In his words, Alec can hear the sound of his smile.

‘ How far is the drive from Los Angeles to Indiana?’ Magnus asks. ‘No, wait, how far is the drive from Baltimore to Indiana? I’ve been thinking a little more about the World’s Biggest Ball of Paint. Perhaps you’d like to see it with me.’

The beat of Alec’s heart shifts in its rhythm once again. He holds his breath. He imagines himself taking a step over that imaginary threshold.  

‘There are too many things I haven’t told you yet. ’

*****

“They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

#ninwrites #malecsanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

[nah-she-didnt]

PROMPT TRAINING TUESDAY

“Where are your clothes?”

This is a day late but thank you @authorsmberry​ for prompting us all! I’ll take any excuse for a Jily drabble

--

“Come on James, move your arse. If you get us caught I swear I will kill you.” 

“You wouldn’t! You love me!”

“Less and less by the second.”

Sirius wiped his dripping forehead on his sleeve and cursed himself inwardly. James had never been able to hold his liquor. He had even protested when Sirius suggested that they sneak out for a drink at The Hog’s Head. Now, Sirius had to drag his intoxicated friend up three flights of stairs from the statue of the one-eyed witch. Miraculously, they made it to The Fat Lady. 

“Eventful evening, gentlemen?” She eyed James suspiciously. He giggled.

“Not particularly,” Sirius huffed and hoisted James into a more-upright position. For such a skinny bloke he was surprisingly heavy, even if he was currently missing the weight of his shirt and trousers. “Could you just let us in, please? Password’s Gobbledygook.” 

She sighed, but swung open to admit them. Sirius dragged James across the threshold and threw him into the armchair in front of the fire. Thankfully, the only person in the common room was Remus. 

“Long night?” Remus asked bemusedly, still reading from his textbook.

“Seemingly eternal,” Sirius sighed and collapsed onto the couch next to Remus.

Remus finally looked up. “James, where are your clothes?” 

“On my body, of course!” James slapped his chest. His palm made a dull thwap against his bare skin.

“Try again,” Remus grinned. 

James looked down. “Bugger. Where’s my shirt got to?” 

“You took it off,” Sirius threw him a dirty look, “along with your trousers. Said you were ‘hot’ in the passage coming back from The Hog’s Head and you refused to get dressed again. You’re lucky I didn’t Imperius you right there. Can you imagine if we had been caught?” 

But James was no longer listening. He was staring over Sirius’ shoulder, a look of wonder plastered stupidly on his face. “Hello, Lily!” 

Lily descended the stairs into the common room slowly, taking in the scene before her. James, naked except for his boxers, sprawled in the chair, hiccuping slightly as he grinned at her. 

“Hullo…” she said slowly, looking at SIrius and Remus questioningly. “What’s wrong with him?” 

“Nothing,” said Sirius quickly, throwing a sharp look at James as if to tell him to shut up. “He’s fine.” 

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Really? Hey James,” she called out to him, “where are your clothes?” 

“Where are your clothes?” James beamed, clearly impressed with his clever comeback. 

Lily looked back to Sirius triumphantly. “You were saying?”

#prompts #drabble #jily drabble #authorsmberry #nina writes #i'm on a roll tonight

[lovelystarlings]

Chapter Seven - Peeves The Poltergeist

——————————————————————————

——————————————————————————

"You are not coming with us." Ron shouted, a look of horror on his face.

"D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all four of us, I'll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you, and Camille will back me up." The French girl nodded at Hermione's convincing words; she would definitely rat the boys out in order not to get in trouble.

"Oh, the audacity-" Ron spat, face red with embarrassment.

"Shut it, both of you!" Harry whispered; his face wiped clean of all emotions but fear. "I can hear something."

"Hello?" Camille called out quietly, her voice echoing throughout the empty corridor.

A small sniffle sounded in reply, the group moving forward slowly to look further into the corridor. It was a boy, Neville. He was curled up in a ball on the floor, tears staining his cheeks. He seemed asleep, jumping awake when Camille gently tapped his shoulder.

"Camille! Thank goodness you've found me! I've been out here for hours waiting for someone to walk past me! I forgot the password to get back to bed and the portrait wouldn't let me in!" The boy rushed out, grabbing Harry's outstretched hand, and pulled himself up and onto his feet.

"Keep it down, Neville. The password's 'Pig Snout', you should probably write that down so you don't forget. Not that it will help you now, the Fat Lady's gone somewhere. We're all locked out."

"Hey, how's your arm?" Camille asked.

"Fine," said Neville, showing them. "Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute, it was quite clever actually."

"That's great Neville!" Camille spoke, her hands examining his arm, not that she didn't trust Madame Pomfrey, she was just intrigued.

"Look, we have stuff to do, so I'm afraid we're going to have to go-"

"Don't leave me!" Neville shouted, clinging onto Camille's sleeve like a child would its mother, "The Bloody Baron's already been round twice and I don't want to make it a third!"

Sighing, Ron looked from Neville to the watch he wore loosely on his wrist. Throwing a glare to Hermione and Camille, who was still holding onto Neville tightly, he sighed. 

“If either of you two get us caught I will personally feed you to the giant squid myself!” Neville grasped onto Camille tighter, and Hermione moved herself closer to the French girl who was looking at Ron with disappointment.

“Just be quiet,” she hissed, gesturing for Harry and Ron to carry on walking, letting go of Neville and grabbing Hermione’s hand, leaning into her slowly and whispering. 

“If you want to go just say and I’ll leave with you, I’m kinda tired anyways.” Hermione smiled softly, shaking her head. “No it’s fine, I’m the one who wanted to come anyways.” The girl spoke softly, looking forward at the boys ahead. “Now let's go, before they’re too far away.”

The five Gryffindor’s made their way along the corridors, moonlight shining through the windows as they looked around carefully, wary of Filch and his cat, Mrs Norris. The halls of Hogwarts were beautiful, alike the exterior of the school. Paintings of other famous witches and wizards coated the walls, each having their own conversation with the painting next to them. 

Speeding up the staircase to the third floor, Camille locked eyes with the trophy room that they had arranged to meet in, no Malfoy or Crabbe in sight. The five bustled into the room, each looking around in wonder at the crystal trophy cases that surrounded them.  

“He’s late,” Ron whispered. “Maybe he’s chickened out.”

A noise in the next room caught Camille’s attention, her hand immediately reaching out for Hermione’s and her arm wrapping tighter around Neville, who was once again shaking with fear. 

The voice of Filch, the caretaker, echoed through the room, “Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner.” Camille cringed completely at the man’s way of speaking to his cat. 

The five began to edge toward the door as Filch got closer to the trophy room, Camille whispering quietly to the others while gesturing towards a long line of suits of armor. She could still hear the heavy steps of Filch behind them, and the heavy meowing of his cat as they itched closer to the group of Gryffindors. 

Turning around to check that everyone was together, Camille caught sight of Ron’s loose thread on his dressing gown that was trailing on the floor dangerously close to the suits of armor. She edged towards the ginger boy, her eyes locked on that bloody loose threat that could ruin their escape. “Ron,” she whispered aggressively, Ron not hearing her as he continued to walk with Harry. “Ron your dressing gown!” She whispered louder, however it was too late. Neville, the nervous boy he was, had jumped out of fright and startled Ron, who continued to trip over the loose thread and fall into the nearest coat of armor, causing a clanging and crashing that could awake the whole castle.

“Run!” Harry yelled as the five began to sprint down the hallway, ignoring the caretaker chasing after them. They ran around the doorpost and sped down the next corridor, Camille holding her wand in her hand firmly, still unsure of what could be lurking the halls of Hogwarts. Harry ripped through a tapestry, the others following him, finding themselves in a hidden passage. Camille breathed shakily as she looked around the dark hall, shivering as she caught sight of the many spiderwebs that surrounded them. 

Continuing to run, Camille found herself near the Charms classroom they had been in just hours earlier, miles from the trophy room. Camille leaned against the wall, catching her breath as Harry next to her. “I think we lost him,” he panted looking at the girl, her mouth curling into a smile as she wiped the sweat off of her forehead. 

“You think?” She said, Harry beginning to smile along with her, neither seeing the jealous glance Hermione was giving them. 

“What did I say,” Hermione breathed, her hands clutching her chest as she bent over next to Neville and Ron, the latter whose face was redder than his hair. 

“We need to get back to the common room,” Rom spoke aloud, “Like right now, before Filch catches up and we all end up in detention.”

“Draco tricked you,” Camille spoke, not missing the weird look she got from the rest at calling him his first name. As a child, she had always been told that to address people your own age properly is to address them by their first name, not their middle nor their last. And despite the blonde boy having already insulted many of her peers, Camille was not one to be rude to those she did not truly know. “He must have never planned to meet you, and Filch already knew someone was in the trophy one, Draco must have tipped him off.”

Hermione nodded along with the girl, clearly having thought the same thing. 

“Let’s just go. ” The boy uttered softly.

A slight noise came from the door, a rattling, as if someone was attempting to enter. A white blur shot through the door and out of the classroom in front of them. 

Peeves, the poltergeist that had been terrorising other first years on their first day floated in front of them, cackling in delight at catching them in the act. 

“Ohh, ickle firsties out after curfew. Ickle firsties wandering around at night, aren’t you naughty? Tut tut tut, you’ll get caught.” The ghost chuckled, circling the five as they looked around, afraid Filch would appear at any time. 

“Leave us alone Filch, please.” Camille whispered pleadingly, her hands fiddling with the end of her robe, having tucked her wand back in her pocket a few minutes ago. 

“I really should tell Flich, you know?” The poltergeist spoke smugly. 

“Oh just go away,” Ron snapped, pushing past Peeves and continuing to walk. Camille sighed and brought her hand to her temple; she should’ve just stayed in bed. 

“Students out of bed!” The poltergeist yelled, his arms waving frantically. “Students out of bed and down the Charms corridor!” Camille and the others ducked under the ghost and ran into the nearest door; it was locked. 

“What are we meant to do now?” An exasperated Ron asked, his face-in Camille’s opinion-looking like he had eaten a sour lemon. “We’re done for! This is the end of our school lives as we know it!” 

Camille continued to pull at the door, her hands clamming up as they heard the footsteps of Filch edge closer. Hermione, seeing the girl’s panic, stepped in with her own wand raised. “Here,” she spoke gently, pulling the other girl away with her other hand. “Let me try.” Camille watched with wide eyes as her friend tapped the lock gently and whispered a quick unlocking spell.

The door unlocked and the Gryffindor’s bundled in the room, shut the door quickly and pressed up against it, attempting to listen through it. 

“Which way did they go, Peeves?” Camille could hear Filch ask through the door, her hand shaking as it grasped for someone else’s in search for comfort. 

“Manners don’t cost a thing my dear Filch.” The poltergeist chuckled. 

“Just tell me for Merlin's sake.” The caretaker shouted, his anger growing. 

“Say pleaseeeeee.” Camille felt a lump rise in her throat at the thought of peeves actually giving up where they were. She had never had a detention before, and did not want to get one in her first week at Hogwarts. She shivered as she felt someone breath heavily down her neck, distracting her from what was occurring outside the door. 

Turning around, she froze in her spot. She had sworn this was a classroom, it looked the exact same as the one she had been in earlier, except now she looked closer, she spotted something that had blended in the darkness. A giant three headed dog. She thought back to the lack of portraits she had seen as they ran into the classroom and realised they were on the third floor. The forbidden corridor of the third floor. 

“Harry,” she whispered sharply, tugging on his sleeve as the dog growled softly, its three heads looking at the five carefully, its mouth open as if it was as shocked as she was. 

Harry turned along with the girl, his eyes widening also as he stared at the humongous creature, debating running out to Filch rather than stay in that room. Reaching his hand out, the boy pushed the door open and ran, the others following suit; they too had noticed the dog. Eventually reaching the seventh floor, the five stopped in front of the Fat Lady painting, of which looked very disappointed in the group. 

“Where have you lot been? It’s almost midnight!” She spoke, shaking her head at the sweaty children. 

“Pig-snout,” Camille spoke quietly, just wanting to get into bed. “Pig-snout!”

The portrait swung open and the sweaty bunch piled in, Camille collapsing on the armchair next to Hermione who looked at her with a smile. “Well that was fun, wasn't it?”

“What do they think they’re doing?” Ron spoke from his place on the other sofa with Harry and Neville, “keeping an animal like that in the school? Safest school in Scotland my arse.”  

Hermione sighed at the three boys, “You really don’t use your eyes do you? No wonder you need glasses Harry. Didn't you see what it was standing on?” 

Camille rubbed her eyes and leaned her head onto Hermione’s shoulder.

“It was standing on a trapdoor,” the French girl spoke in a bored voice. “Now if we’re all done here, can I please go to bed.”

“Yes,” Hermione spoke, moving Camille’s head off of her shoulder and standing up. ““I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled. Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to bed.” 

The girl stormed off, Camille following in suit with a tired wave to the boys. 

#harry #harry potter #harry potter x reader #hermione #hermione granger #hermione granger x reader #fluff #hogwarts #veela #fleur delacour

[handbookaddenda]

Quotes

Grant: "We've found Catherine's line. Grapevines."

Catherine: "No one is to say that we crept up Hydra's back passage." Libra: "No one was going to say that." Grant: "80% of British humour is like this." Catherine: "And the other 20% is sarcasm!"

Grant: "Libra, would you like to wear my t-shirt? According to Fox, my nipples are less morally outrageous than yours."

Catherine, getting REALLY specific: "FUCKING SCORPION FWOOSH!"

GM: "It's like a really niche romance cover as the lithe blonde attempts to scale a half-naked Grant."

GM: "The door thinks 'ich leibe dich!', because it's a German door. You don't hear it though, because you're as psychic as a brick."

Emily: "If their password was Password1 we would NEVER guess because we're all too clever."

Libra: "This is definitely a tower of Harper-Ward situation."

Lanara on the subject of Emily, who is hopped-up on medically necessary stims: "Good lord. We've acquired a kender." Grant: "A murderous kender, no less!"

Emily: "You've got blood on you and I haven't! Well, I have, but it's mine, so it doesn't count!"

#AoS #agents of shield #tabletop rp #quotes #things my gaming group says

[drarryangels]

Slytherins

Notes: I originally had this as part of Not in Love (Letters), but it doesn’t fit there, so I’m posting this as it’s own work. 

<3

“Well, this is a disaster.”

“Harry, you need to keep your chin up, and keep moving forward. everything’s going to be fine,” Hermione sighed.

“Fine?” Harry let out a strangled laugh. “All eighth years having one common room does not sound fine to me!”

“Listen,” Hermione grabbed Harry by the shoulders and turned him to face her. “Don’t be ridiculous. We have to get over this old school drama. You know we do.”

“Hermione.”

“Harry. Stop it right now. You’re acting like a child,” Hermione stated.

“That is so unfair-” Harry started.

“Listen to yourself! You’re not a child anymore. None of us are! So we need to grow up, and stop squabbling, and act like civilized humans.” Hermione took a breath. “And yes, Harry, that means that you need to be polite about sharing a common room.”

“What about Malfoy?” Harry folded his arms over his chest.

“You’re allowed to hold your grudges, Harry. Just please don’t start something with him,” Hermione swiped a hand over her face.

“Start something?” Harry looked offended.

“Yes, start something,” Hermione said.

“Why aren’t you more upset about being in close proximity to him for a whole year?” Harry threw up his hands.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Because he sent me an apology letter over the summer and asked me to meet him.”

“You met with him over the summer?”

“I met with him, and we talked. You know, he really had it just as bad as you did, Harry,” Hermione said, patting his arm before turning away to lead them to a seat in the Great Hall.

“Just as bad as I- what? Hermione!”

Harry stumbled after Hermione, but she didn’t say another word about Draco Malfoy for the rest of the evening.

The next morning was rather uneventful. That is, if you don’t consider Hermione Granger sitting down at the Slytherin table an event.

And really, it wasn’t. Despite Harry’s offended gasp of shock, really no one made a fuss about her sitting there. Pansy Parkinson only glanced at her before scooting aside to give Hermione a place to sit.

“You’ve been in touch with more people than Malfoy this summer, Hermione,” Harry hissed as he slid in next to her at the Slytherin table.

“Is that a problem?” Parkinson leaned around Hermione to glare at Harry.

“I can speak for myself, thanks,” Hermione said, but smiled at Parkinson all the same.

“Seriously, Hermione, why?” Harry said, trying to block Parkinson from his view.

“Did you listen to me at all yesterday?” Hermione said exasperatedly before reaching for the eggs.

“Yo, Potter,” Blaise Zabini said, taking a seat across from Harry.

“Er, hi,” stammered Harry.

“No need to look like you’ve just seen the Bloody Baron,” Zabini smiled. “He doesn’t come around for breakfast.”

“Oh, er, that’s nice,” Harry looked down at his plate.

“Something caught in your throat, Potter?” Zabini asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Harry said shortly, stuffing food into his mouth.

“Hey, listen,” Zabini said. “Potter, pay attention. What’s your deal?”

Harry looked up with annoyance. “What’s my deal, Zabini? You bullied my friends for six years, and now you want to be all buddy buddy? I don’t think so.”

“Harry!” Hermione muttered under her breath warningly.

“Woah,” Zabini frowned. “Uh, I don’t think we’ve ever talked once since going to school here except for an excuse me in the corridors.”

Harry didn’t say anything.

“And for the record, I’ve never bullied you or your friends. Or anyone for that matter,” Zabini stated.

“No,” came another voice. “That would’ve been me.”

Harry looked up sharply to see the fair features of Draco Malfoy standing a couple feet away.

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Zabini chugged the rest of his pumpkin juice and strode off, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“Potter,” Malfoy said.

“What do you want, Malfoy?”

“Well, you are sitting in my spot. I figured it would be rude to not say hello,” Malfoy sighed, sitting down in Zabini’s recently vacated seat.

“This has been a wonderful breakfast,” Harry said, shoveling food into his mouth at random. “Hermione, I’ll see you later.”

“Be in the library,” Hermione said absently, looking over a book in her lap.

Harry rolled his eyes and stormed off from the table, going anywhere but staying in that seat. Why had he needed to sit next to Hermione? She could take care of herself, and he had other friends in Gryffindor. He didn’t need to go sit at the Slytherin table with her. Sure, he’d been a little curious about what it was like at that table, but it had been just as horrid as he had expected it be.

Stupid Slytherins.

The rest of the days classes passed fairly smoothly. Of course there were the endless fangirls prowling the hallways for the famous Harry Potter, but thanks to the secret passages of Hogwarts, Harry made it to the end of the day unscathed and exhausted.

Harry drudged up the stairs to the third floor, where the new dorms and common room for the eighth years were located.

“Victory,” Harry mumbled at the portrait while it swung open. Not the most witty password. McGonagall wasn’t nearly as clever with them as Dumbledore had been.

Surprisingly, the common room was well decorated and had a warm feeling emanating from it. The decor was neutral for the most part, but all four of the house banners were hung around the walls of the common room, and students of different houses were sprawled around the room.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Zabini’s voice made Harry jump. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine.” Harry paused and thought of what Hermione had said. “Sorry about this morning. It was unfair of me to say those things.”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Zabini shrugged. “But just so you know, Slytherin isn’t the evil house you think it is.”

“I-”

“You’re not the only one that thinks it. I just want to let you know that we’re kids. The same way you were a kid when you first got here. There are jerks in every house. And just because Voldemort was in Slytherin, doesn’t mean we’re all crazy sociopaths.”

Harry let out a surprised laugh. “I guess you’re right. I really am sorry. For thinking that all those years.”

Zabini smiled a little. “It’s like saying that just because Dumbledore was in Gryffindor, all Gryffindors are wizarding gods.”

Harry’s smile faded a little. “Yeah, well Dumbledore turned out to not be so wonderful in the end.”

Zabini lifted his hands in mock surrender. “You knew him best.”

Harry shrugged and looked down. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“No one really does when it comes to you,” Zabini clapped Harry on the back and walked off.

Harry stood in place, still staring at his feet. Someone had told him that looking at the ground will naturally ground you. But thinking of Pettigrew coming out of Gryffindor, supposedly good. Thinking of Blaise Zabini going his whole life feeling like people hated him because he was Slytherin. But mostly. Mostly thinking of Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s neverending twinkle. How perfect he was. Love. Love. He said. Love will save us all. It’s an unknown power. Thinking of how Dumbledore had built him up, thinking it was for the ultimate tear down. Raising a child for slaughter. Thinking of Dumbledore’s love and all the ways it had twisted Harry. Ripped him to be stitched in strange ways.

It was all making Harry dizzy.

“Potter?” A voice came through the haze distantly. “Potter, you don’t look well.”

“What?” Harry heard his voice like it had come out of someone else’s mouth.

He heard the voice cry out before he felt the floor slam into his knees.

“Potter?”

Harry rolled over onto his back and blinked. The world was smudgy, but no longer dizzy. And Draco Malfoy’s face was hanging over him.

He had a thin face. His whole body was thin; had always been like that. Harry remembered when his hair had been laser straight and gelled back. It wasn’t like that anymore. His hair hung in soft, loose waves, some curls edging around his ears. It was strange to see how he had changed.

Somehow more relaxed, but also more jagged.

Harry shook his head and moved to sit up slowly. Malfoy scooted back quickly, but reached out a hand to help Harry up as if on instinct. And on instinct, of course, Harry took his hand and let Malfoy help him.

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, swaying a little as he stood.

“Er, don’t mention it. Are you alright? I mean, you sort of just got all gray and then just fell over,” Malfoy said hurriedly.

“I’m fine,” Harry gave Malfoy a tight-lipped smile. “Thanks. I’m going to go head up to the dorms.”

Malfoy nodded and stepped back.

Harry waved off the concerned looks and comments as he walked towards the dorms. All the faces and voices sounded overly worried, but none of them had gotten up to help Harry. They had just watched. Probably waiting for the next big Potter mess up.

Later, when Harry was lying in bed, barely aware of his surroundings, he realized that Malfoy hadn’t asked him anything about why he had suddenly fallen over. He had just helped him up and backed away. If Hermione had been there, she would have leapt on him with questions. As it was, the bystanders in the common room had asked him intrusive questions as he walked away. Malfoy didn’t, though.

Harry was done thinking about Slytherins. There had been too many interactions with them today. Harry hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk to the rest of his friends. Plus, there was the whole ‘Slytherin isn’t evil’ thing to still think about.

What Zabini had said made sense. And it was true, and right. Harry really hadn’t given Slytherin even a glance since Ron had said that it was evil before they had even arrived at Hogwarts.

Maybe it was about time to give the Slytherins a chance.

Even Malfoy.

#drarry #draco malfoy #harry potter #hermione granger #pansy parkinson #blaise zabini #eighth year #angst #?? #slytherin #gryffindor #REPOSTING MY OWN WORK #my writing #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #i dont know what the heck it is without any context but here ya go #i didnt like it for not in love letters anymore so im taking it out #and giving it to you guys again #my fic #mine

[sigrun23]

Light in the Darkness - Chapter 10: The Letter

A huge thank you to @bounding-heart for editing this chapter! <3

AO3

ff.net

After Harry left with Draco and Scorpius, Albus finished his sandwich and went upstairs to his bedroom. He changed into his pyjamas and fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

When Albus woke up the next morning, he was fully rested. Despite traumatic events of the previous day, he hadn’t had any nightmares, in fact he hadn’t dreamt at all. Yawning, he reached for the watch on the bedside table and tapped its face twice. The clock quietly announced that it was nine o’clock.

Stretching and still yawning, Albus dressed in the most comfortable clothes and went to the bathroom to get ready for the new day. He returned to his room and went to the desk, reaching for his wand. Then he remembered that Mortimer had taken his wand, as well as his white cane. At least his parents had bought two or three canes in case he lost the first one but lost wand meant another trip to the Diagon Alley. Albus sighed. Another lost wand and this one hardly lasted a year. He liked it a lot, it was better matched than the previous one. He would miss it.

Fortunately, he didn’t need the cane to navigate the house. Using banister and walls for directions, Albus went downstairs and safely reached the kitchen.

“Albus!” Ginny said when he entered the room. “Good morning. Are you hungry? I've made scrambled eggs. Would you like some?”

“Yes, please. I'm starving,” Albus said, sitting at the table.

Ginny prepared the breakfast and sat down beside Albus. They were quiet for a while, Albus eating the scrambled eggs and toasts, Ginny sipping her coffee.

“How are you feeling?” Ginny finally asked, when Albus was finishing his meal. “Did you sleep well?”

“I’m fine. I was just tired and scared, nothing a good and long sleep can’t cure.”

“Mortimer- he didn’t hurt you?” Scorpius and Albus had told their parents everything that had happened yesterday but Albus suspected his mum thought he was hiding some things.

“Mum, I told you already. He only cast one spell on us, most probably Stupefy. He scared us and exhausted us mentally but he didn’t hurt us.”

“Still, I think you should go to St Mungo’s for a check-up.”

Albus rolled his eyes. “Mum, please, I don’t want to go to the hospital. All I need is a few days of rest and peace and I'll be ready to go back to school. I can go back to school, right?” Albus asked, uncertain.

“If you want to, yes, of course. Hogwarts is safe but I'm afraid you shouldn’t visit Hogsmeade until Mortimer is in custody.”

Albus nodded. He didn’t really have a desire to visit Hogsmeade any time soon.

“At least allow me to call Healer Austin. She'll come to our house and examine you. Is that okay?”

Albus sighed. “Okay, fine. Where’s Lily and James?”

“They’re back at Hogwarts. They know you’re safe so there was no reason for them to miss classes.”

They heard an Apparition crack coming from the front door. Ginny stood up so quickly that her chair fell down and ran out of the kitchen.

“Harry! Where have you been?! Did you catch Mortimer?”

“Hi, Ginny,” Harry said and Albus heard his parents kissing. “Did Albus wake up?”

“Yes, he’s in the kitchen.”

Albus heard his parents entering the kitchen and sitting at the table.

“How are you feeling, Albus?” Harry asked.

“I’m fine, really. Mum’s already asked me,” Albus said impatiently. “Dad, did you find him?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry. He was already gone when we arrived at the house.”

Albus hung his head in disappointment. He hadn’t really expected that Mortimer would stay in the house after their escape but still he had hoped.

A clink of porcelain and a smell suggested that Ginny put a cup of coffee in front of Harry.

“Thanks,” he said. He drank in silence for a while. “When we entered the house,” he started, “it was empty. I hoped we would find some trace, a clue, anything that could help us follow and catch him, but he’s clever. He left no traces. He must have left the house on foot because there was no Apparition mark in the house or nearby. He probably Disapparated in the city centre where his mark would be indistinguishable from other wizards’. He left nothing that may suggest where he lives or where he may go to. The neighbours saw nothing, they said that the family that lives in the house went for a holiday and were due to return in a week.”

“You found absolutely nothing?” Ginny asked.

“Well, we found three things. On the kitchen table lay two wands. Your wand, Albus, and Scorpius’s.” Harry put Albus’s wand on the table.

Albus took the wand and hid it in his pocket. ??? “I’m glad I don’t have to make another trip to Ollivanders.”

“And the third thing?” Ginny asked.

“It’s a note from Mortimer,” Harry said. “It lay on the desk in the room in which you were held. Mortimer must have left it there before your escape and in your haste, Scorpius didn’t notice it. Here, it’s a note for you, Albus. It’s in Braille,” Harry said and Albus felt something touching his hand.

He took it and discovered that it was a small piece of parchment. He ran his fingers slowly over the dots. The parchment held only a few sentences which left him in pure bewilderment. He read it carefully again to make sure he understood everything.

“Did you read it?” he asked his dad in a small voice.

“Yes, it has words written over the dots.”

“May I read it?” Ginny asked and Albus passed her the note. “Albus,” she read aloud. “I've learned everything I wanted. You and Scorpius are free to go. I will never bother you again, you are safe. Tell your father that he should stop searching for me as he will never find me. Edward Mortimer.”

Everyone was silent for a long while.

“That- that doesn’t make any sense,” Ginny finally said. “Why did he kidnap you if he let you go after a few hours? What was his reason? We thought he wanted a ransom or that he meant to harm you further and he- he just held you for a while, told you his story, asked you a few questions and then just set you free?”

Albus sat in silence, remembering his talk with Mortimer from the day before.

“That’s the reason he kidnapped me,” he said. “To ask me a few questions. He told me this when I asked him why he had kidnapped me. He said he needed to ask me a few things and that it was important for his research. He couldn’t do it back in August because he had to run away when Mr Parker came with his dog.”

“What were those questions?” asked Harry.

“They all came basically to one question: the choice between pain and death. That seemed the most crucial to him.”

“Did he tell you about the results of his so-called research?” asked Harry, saying the word ‘research’ with disgust.

“No, he said that he was almost sure his theory was right but that he needed few more cases to prove it.”

“So it means he’ll hurt people again. Did he make any mention, any suggestion where he may go next?”

“No, he was very careful. He only said that he had tortured people all around the world and that you would never find him.”

“We’ll see. I wouldn’t be so sure if I were him,” Harry said grimly. “I’ll rest for a bit and then I'm back at the Ministry. I will do everything in my power to find him.”

Harry hugged Albus and kissed Ginny, then left the kitchen. Albus finished his tea and went back to his bedroom. There he wrote a short letter to Scorpius, informing him of everything Harry had found in the house.

x x x

Four days later Albus returned to Hogwarts. While he was at home, Healer Austen visited him and evaluated his mental and physical state. She confirmed that Albus hadn’t been hit with the Cruciatus Curse. She also gave him a stronger analgesic potion for a couple of weeks, afraid that stress and traumatic events may induce pain attacks. Scorpius visited Albus two days after their escape. He was delighted to get his wand back and discussed with Albus at length the message left by Mortimer.

Harry Apparated to the gates outside Hogwarts with Albus. It was early evening. The withered grass was covered with frost, the November chill was felt in the air. With Albus holding his forearm, they walked slowly towards the castle, glowing with the light of many windows in the darkness.

The Entrance Hall was brightly lit. From the Great Hall came cheerful sounds and clattering of cutlery. Albus had already eaten at home so they turned towards the entrance to the dungeons. A flight of stairs and a few winding corridors later, they reached the bare stone wall which was the doorway to the Slytherin Common Room.

“What’s the password?” Harry asked his son.

“Dum spiro, spero,” Albus said and the solid wall disappeared, revealing a short passage.

There were just a few students in the common room; most were still in the Great Hall. Harry smiled and greeted them, then led Albus to his dormitory. Albus gave another password and they entered the room.

As was expected, only one person was in the bedroom. Upon seeing his friend, Scorpius leaped up from behind his desk. In the process he knocked down a heavy book he had been reading. A loud thud made Albus flinched slightly in fear.

“I’m sorry,” said Scorpius, smiling apologetically. “It’s just a book.” He picked it up and laid back on the desk. He walked to Albus and took his hand. Albus embraced him tightly and whispered something in his ear.

Scorpius laughed. “It’s been only two days! But I missed you too.” He kissed Albus’s cheek.

Harry smiled and went to Albus’s bed. He put his bag on it and started to pull out a few clothes Albus had brought from home.

“Your pyjamas are on the pillow,” Harry said.

Albus nodded.

“Which one is your wardrobe?” Harry asked.

“The one nearest the bed, the left side of it,” Albus said.

Harry opened the old wooden wardrobe, which was decorated with elaborate serpent patterns, and started to put Albus’s clothes in proper places, all organised according to colour.

“How are you feeling, Scorpius?” he asked.

“I’m perfect,” said Scorpius, sitting on his bed. “Dad dragged me to St Mungo’s the next day. They examined me thoroughly and said that everything was fine. Of course I was fine, but dad didn’t want to listen to me. He let me stay at home one day more but I had to return to Hogwarts on Monday’s evening. Did you find anything new about Mortimer?”

“Not yet,” said Harry, closing the wardrobe. “I have a team dedicated solely to his case and they work on it twenty-four hours a day. I also contacted the governments of other countries and asked if they had similar incidents. I also warned them that Mortimer may attack soon, if what he told you is true and he’s still looking for victims to conduct his so-called research.”

“Do you believe his note that Albus is safe?” Scorpius asked, looking in Albus’s direction.

Harry sighed. “I want to believe it. But I think it’s very probable that he’s done with Albus. He got what he wanted and then he let you go. But who knows what he’ll do in the future? He's insane.”

Scorpius nodded. “I hope you’ll catch him soon. He’s hurt too many people already.”

Harry went to Albus who was rummaging in his desk’s drawer. “I’ll be going. I want to say hi to James and Lily before I go back home.”

“Sure,” Albus said and embraced his dad. Harry smiled and held him tightly.

“If anything is wrong, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to inform us,” Harry whispered in Albus’s ear. “Write to us or go straight to Professor McGonagall, alright? Don't hide anything.”

Albus nodded. “I’ll be fine, dad. Don't worry.”

Harry kissed his forehead. “I know you will. Good luck with your classes. Bye, Scorpius.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Potter.”

Harry opened the door but before he went out, he looked at Scorpius. Silently he indicated him to follow.

Scorpius sprang from the bed. “I’ll be right back, Albus. I left my book in the common room.”

Harry went to the common room, followed closely by Scorpius. They stood in the dark corner, far from the few students in the room.

“Scorpius, I have a small request,” Harry whispered. Scorpius listened intently. “Could you keep a close eye on Albus? I know you always do, but could you be extra careful? I asked Albus to tell me when anything is wrong but I'm worried he might not do it. So, if you see anything strange or odd in his behaviour, if anything worries you, please, inform me immediately. Or insist Albus on doing that himself.”

“Of course, Mr Potter,” Scorpius said. “Is there anything I should especially pay attention to?”

“No, not at the moment. Albus had a meeting with Healer Austen and she said that he was fine. I haven’t noticed anything alarming in his behaviour either. But that kidnapping was a highly traumatic event and Ginny and I are worried that some symptoms of mental struggle may appear later. And we can’t keep Albus with ourselves to keep a watch on him. I already asked Headmistress and Madame Pomfrey to look after him but no one is closer to Albus than you.”

“I’ll do my best, Mr Potter.”

“Thank you, Scorpius. It eases my mind.” Harry put a hand on Scorpius’s shoulder. “Good luck in your classes.”

Scorpius smiled and bid him farewell. When Harry turned to leave the room, he saw a small boy, probably a first year, standing in front of him with a paper and a quill in his hand.

“Mr Potter?” he asked shyly. “Can I ask for an autograph?”

Harry smiled and took the quill from the boy’s hand.

x x x

November and December passed in a haze of classes, homework, tests and learning for upcoming O.W.L.s. Adding to that Braille lessons twice a week and prefect’s duties, Albus and Scorpius hardly had time for anything else. On a good note, Albus’s pain attacks became milder and less frequent and Healer Austin allowed him to slightly reduce the dose of the painkilling potion.

Harry worked hard on finding Edward Mortimer but didn’t make any progress. New cases emerged and he couldn’t spend as much time and resources on the Mortimer’s search as he would like, but still he spent every free minute on trying to catch his son’s torturer.

After two weeks of blessed peace and laziness of Christmas time, Albus and Scorpius reluctantly returned to Hogwarts. The first thing Scorpius noticed after entering the common room was a group of their classmates gathered in front of the notice board. He dragged Albus in their direction.

“What’s going on?” Scorpius asked Hayden.

“Hi Scorpius, Albus.” He nodded in greetings. “There’s a schedule of meetings with Professor Warmund regarding our career plans.”

“Great!” Scorpius said. He let go of Albus’s hand and pushed his way through the crowd of students to the board. He found their names and, smiling, returned to Albus.

“We have meetings on Wednesday next week. Nine and nine-thirty. You're right after me, even though the rest of students are listed alphabetically.”

“That’s nice of Warmund to list us together.”

“There’s a bunch of leaflets on the table with information about any career you like,” Hayden said, pointing towards the big table near the window.

Scorpius led Albus to the table. As Albus sat down, Scorpius noticed a stack of leaflets laying neatly apart from the scattered mess of the others.

“Look, these are in Braille,” Scorpius said with a smile, handing the leaflets to Albus.

“Brilliant!” Albus started to run his fingers over the dots. Scorpius sat down opposite him and looked at his boyfriend with pride. He couldn’t believe what a great progress Albus had done in reading Braille in just a few months.

“Are you still thinking about becoming a historian?” Albus asked, putting away the brochure about an Auror career.

“Yes, and every day I’m more and more sure that that’s what I’d really like to do. I was considering other options, a Healer for example, but history is my true passion and I’m the happiest reading about and researching the past. There are so many neglected parts of our history that I want to research further. I also want to popularise learning about history among people, especially young people, show them that it’s both interesting and important.”

“You have very ambitious plans,” Albus said. “And I know you’re going to fulfil them all. You're right that too many people ignore history and you’re the best person to convince them that it’s not boring. You convinced me.” Albus grinned.

“It wasn’t very hard,” Scorpius said. “And what about you? Have you talked with Mr Parry about your professional future?”

“Not yet. I forgot to ask him about it. But I'll talk with him tomorrow.” Albus sighed. “I really don’t know what I can do. I wanted to work with animals but now it’s rather impossible. Every job seems impossible now.”

“Hey, hey.” Scorpius stood up and sat next to Albus, taking his hand in his. “Don’t say that. I'm sure there’s plenty jobs you can still do. Mr Parry will help you find something. And you still have time to decide. Just continue subjects you like and are good at. You can choose a job later. You don’t even have to start working straight after Hogwarts.”

“I know. It’s just- I want to be like everyone else and it’s sometimes hard to accept that I can’t do a lot of things anymore.”

Scorpius stroked Albus’s hand in comfort. He didn’t know what to say. Any words would be pointless.

Albus sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to feel sorry for myself.”

“You have every right to feel that way,” Scorpius said vehemently. “You work so hard that I sometimes worry that you push yourself too hard. No one will hold it against you or think less of you if you can’t do something or need more time to do it. It’s marvellous how much you’ve already accomplished.”

Albus smiled shyly. “Thank you. But I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t helped me. Without you I'd be lost. Literally.”

“Remember that I'm always by your side. You can count on me.”

“I know.” Albus groped with his hand until he found Scorpius’s face and kissed him fiercely.

x x x

The next day Albus and Scorpius were sitting at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, eating breakfast. The day was sunny and shafts of sunlight were streaming through the tall windows. Their first lesson was Care of Magical Creatures and folded coats, caps and scarfs were lying beside them on the bench.

“Scorpius, could you pass me some toast?” Albus asked and moment later stifled a huge yawn.

“Sure.” Scorpius put a toast on his plate. “But what you truly need is a coffee.”

“You’re right. You can pour me some,” Albus said and held his cup in Scorpius’s direction.

He felt Scorpius pour the aromatic liquid into his mug. He raised it to his nose and inhaled heavy aroma before drinking. As he was putting the cup back on the table, he heard an unmistakeable rustle of owls’ wings. Moments later an owl landed on the table between him and Scorpius.

“Alsvin!” Scorpius exclaimed. “What have you got for me?”

Albus heard a sound of a ripping paper as Scorpius unpacked the parcel brought by his dad’s owl. Scorpius sighed.

“What is it?” Albus asked, stroking Alsvin’s soft feathers.

“A book,” Scorpius said in a resigned tone. “Transfiguration textbook. I haven’t even noticed yet that I forgot to take it.”

“You always forget something,” Albus laughed. “I wonder why I haven’t given you a Remembrall yet.”

Before Scorpius could retort, a second owl came to their table. It sat next to Albus and started to nibble his hand delicately.

“Something for me?” Albus asked and groped around until he found the owl and the letter tied around its leg. The moment he untied the letter, the owl spread its wings and flew away.

“It wasn’t Kirjava?” Their family owl always stayed with him for a while, letting him pet her feathers and feed her some treats.

“No, it was an unfamiliar owl,” Scorpius said.

Albus run his fingers over the envelope and found a line of dots in the middle. He read his name and his current location. There was no return address on the back of the envelope. With increased curiosity he opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. He run his fingers over dots on the first page and read:

Dear Albus,

Once again, I want to assure you that you’re safe and I promise I won’t harm you ever again. Before you throw away this letter in anger, allow me to inform you that I have finished my research and I want to share my conclusions with you. After everything I think this is the least you deserve.

Albus gasped. “It’s from Mortimer,” he whispered.

“What!?” Scorpius said and moved closer to Albus, presumably to look at the letter. “It’s written only in Braille. What does he say?”

“I only read the beginning. He says that he finished his research and want to share his conclusions with me.”

“Then read on. At last we’ll know why you survived the curse for so long.”

Albus nodded and started reading again.

As I explained on our last meeting, for many years I conducted research aim to discover why some people survive the Cruciatus Curse and don’t go insane even after very long exposure to the pain. You're one of the specials, as am I. During my research I found out that more people than I expected are in this group.

At first I thought it was Occlumency. I knew that it was the only known method that protects the mind. But I wasn’t an Occlumens. And many people that I tortured during my research weren’t Occlumens either. There were children, Muggles, who couldn’t know of Occlumency. So I ruled the Occlumency theory out and searched for something else.

I thought maybe it was love. Loving someone, being loved by someone, knowing that there are people waiting for you; maybe love is what keeps people sane. I started questioning those who survived the curse about their lives. I knew their answers were truthful, the need to avoid pain makes you honest. I found out that not everyone knew love. There were some people who were lonely, miserable, even evil, who didn’t have a family, friends, who didn’t love anyone. And still they survived. (By surviving I mean they didn’t go insane. Some of them went blind or deaf or paralysed, but they didn’t lose their minds.)

I got frustrated and angry that I couldn’t find any answer. At one point, I found a wretched beggar who had the most miserable life. He was completely alone, he lived on streets, ate from trash bins, didn’t have a leg and was sick. A death would be a mercy for him. And yet he survived the curse for seventeen minutes. After everything I said I would kill him. I don’t know why I wanted to kill him. I’d never killed anyone before. Maybe I thought it would be an act of mercy, maybe I was so frustrated and I wanted to vent it all out. And then he said something that changed my whole perspective.

He begged me not to kill him. When I asked him why, he simply said he wanted to live. Upon my questions of why he wanted to live if he had so little to live for, he said again that he just wanted to live, that he couldn’t explain why. Even when I presented him with the choice between quick death and pain, he chose pain. And life.

I left him and continued my research. But now, when I found someone who'd survived the curse, I gave them the choice. I also asked them about life, death, their reasons to live. With each person I began to understand the thing that protects the mind. It wasn’t Occlumency or magical power or love.

It was the will to live. You'll say that most people have the will to live. It appears in most of them it is too weak, too feeble and breaks under the enormous pain. Yet some of us have strong wills, resistant to almost anything. And I think it has to be a conscious choice. That during the torture comes the moment when you have to decide if you want to live, even if that means more pain, or if you’re just letting go. That’s the moment when most people choose the second option and lose their mind. From those that survived, not even one person chose death when I gave them the choice.

My theory proved right again and again and I believe I have a large enough number of cases to present my conclusions publicly. I intend to write a book about my research and publish it. I hope to initiate the worldwide debate.

When I started my research, I thought I would find a new way to survive the curse, other than the Occlumency. But I'm not sure if the will to live is something you can learn. It certainly changes during one's lifetime, it depends on our experiences, views, faith, people we meet and many other things. But it’s something you have or don’t have and before you’re put in a strenuous situation, you can’t be sure if your will to live is enough.

You're strong, Albus; be proud of it. You proved it not only by surviving the curse for much longer than most people but also by bravely living after you lost your sight. I wish you long and fulfilling life.

Edward Mortimer

Albus put down the letter. He didn’t know what to say or what to think. His thoughts were running madly in his head.

“Albus?” Scorpius whispered and put a hand on his forearm. “Are you okay? What does the letter say?”

“Not here,” Albus said at last and stood up, clutching the letter. He took his white cane and bag and left the Great Hall. Scorpius followed closely behind him.

“Where are we going?” he asked when they left the Great Hall.

“I need an empty classroom,” Albus said. “I’ll read the letter to you there.”

“Alright.” Scorpius took Albus’s hand and led him to the nearest classroom. He locked it with a spell so no one would disturb them.

Albus sat down at the nearest desk and put the letter in front of him. Scorpius joined him but waited patiently until Albus spoke:

“I’ll read the letter to you. Could you write it down in the meantime? I want to send it to my parents. There's probably a spell that can change Braille to a normal alphabet but I don’t know it.”

“Of course,” Scorpius said and rummaged in his bag to retrieve paper and quill.

“Please, just write it down now. Don't comment on anything. We'll talk about it when I finish reading.”

Albus started to slowly read the letter aloud. He heard Scorpius’s quill scratching on the paper as he quickly wrote down every word. Occasionally he gave a small gasp but refrain from saying anything. When Albus finished reading, they both were silent for a long time.

“The will to live. That's the thing that saved you,” Scorpius said at last. “That’s why Mortimer made you choose: death or pain.”

“Death or life. That was the ultimate choice. He needed to know how strong my will is and if it fits in his theory.”

“Honestly, if this theory is right, and it seems it is, then it is somewhat beautiful yet simple. You don’t need great magical power or Occlumency or some other technique to save your mind. It's just the will to live, which everyone has. It's similar to love, which saved your father from Voldemort.”

“But it appears most people don’t have strong enough will to survive the prolonged pain,” Albus reminded. “And it makes me angry that Mortimer destroyed so many lives to discover this principle. No magical research is worth sacrificing even one human life.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Scorpius agreed. “But Mortimer doesn’t have any moral objections. He puts knowledge above human life.”

“I wonder why so few people survive the curse. I thought most people have a strong will to live. It seems to me to be one of the most basic and primal features of human beings.”

“I think it is enough in normal circumstances. But the Cruciatus Curse is extreme. I felt it for a couple of seconds and I can’t imagine enduring it even for a few minutes, not to mention for fifteen minutes or more. I wonder if my will would be strong enough.”

Albus grasped Scorpius’s hand. “I’m sure it would.”

“I’d like to think so. But I don’t know. And I hope I’ll never find out.” Scorpius was silent for a while, then continued: “It makes me wonder- maybe everyone has a breaking point? Remember what Mortimer said? That he usually ended the curse when he saw that the victim survived more than fifteen minutes. Maybe if he continued long enough, everyone would eventually give in.”

“You’re probably right,” Albus said. “But it still perplexes me that so few people survive more than a few minutes.” Albus sighed.

“I’m so proud of you, Albus.” Scorpius stroked his cheek. “I can’t even put properly into words how much.”

“Thank you,” Albus said, feeling entirely inadequate of Scorpius’s high regard. “But I don’t think it is something I should be proud of. I agree with Mortimer that the strong will to live is something you either have or don’t have. You can’t learn it. Maybe it can be influenced and strengthen by certain things, like love, friendship, faith or hope. But remember that beggar? He had nothing and yet he wanted to live. He couldn’t explain why. I think it’s a congenital thing, like your height or skin colour. You can’t change that and thus it can’t be something to be overly proud of. You don’t have it because of your merits. Also that’s why people who didn’t survive the curse shouldn’t be considered weak or lesser. They’re just unlucky that they encountered Mortimer or any other evil wizard.”

“You made a very good point,” Scorpius said. “Very clever. But still, I’m proud of you. The way you face the consequences of the curse is remarkable and completely on your own merit. Of this, you should be proud.”

Albus smiled. Even if he wanted, he couldn’t argue with Scorpius on this.

“Do you think your dad will find Mortimer?” Scorpius asked.

“Honestly, I don’t think he will. Mortimer tortured people for several years and no one knew who did those crimes until recently. He's clever and cunning. Maybe he’s not as powerful as Aurors and he’ll probably lose in a duel, but he’s shrewd enough to avoid getting into one. The world is huge, so he’ll probably hide somewhere remote and write his damn book.”

“Hopefully it means he won’t torture any more people,” Scorpius said. “And what about you? If he’s not caught? You can’t spend your whole life in Hogwarts or at home.”

“I won’t. I must admit that I believe him when he says that he won’t harm me anymore. He doesn’t have a reason. He got what he wanted; he doesn’t need me anymore.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Albus stood up. “Could you make a copy of the normal alphabet version of the letter? I must send it to my parents.”

“Of course,” Scorpius said and a moment later Albus felt a subtle rush of magic as Scorpius copied the letter.

“Let’s go to the Owlery, then, “Albus said and took his bag and cane. “We’re going to be late for class, but I'll tell Professor Collingwood that I had an attack and you had to help me.”

As they were walking through the empty castle to the Owlery, Albus felt an overwhelming feeling of calmness and safety washing over him. Until today he hadn’t known how much he needed the answer to the question of why he'd survived. Now, when he had the answer and almost total surety that Mortimer wouldn’t attack him again, he was finally able to put those traumatic events behind him and start a new part of his life.

#light in the darkness #harry potter fanfiction #Albus Severus Potter #scorpius malfoy #Harry Potter #albus/scorpius #Blind Character #disabled character #Blindness #disability

[myluckzodiac-blog]

Blood type secret language: Analyze different blood type Gemini life passwords

Gemini（May 22th - Jun 21th）

O-type blood Gemini - optimistic extroverted Gemini

The O-type Gemini is talkative and extroverted, articulate, and dynamic, fully exerting the positive side of the Gemini personality, and is a very attractive figure in the crowd. They have the intelligence of Gemini, and they have the optimistic self-confidence of O-type people. They have strong observation ability and often see problems on the spot. O-type blood Gemini people tend to move quickly, respond responsively, do not like to idle, O-type blood-specific exuberant energy to fully match the characteristics of the twins like to be busy. They are very motivated, sociable, and convinced that things are artificial. They dare to make all kinds of attempts and dare to innovate. Even if they encounter setbacks in life or work, the O-type Gemini people will regard it as a rare hone in life, and the O-type Gemini people who are experienced in all aspects. , enthusiastic and generous, very willing to share their knowledge with others, will be very good friends and teachers.

O-type Gemini Gemini is a passionate lover. When they get along with their lover, they also like to communicate and express their inner thoughts. They can always be sensitive to what they need. They also hope that the other party can respond accordingly, and if they are not eager to get the expected return (perhaps just a small praise on the verbal), they will be very lost. For O Gemini, the most ideal love is love that can understand and support each other in spirit.

Friends: A/O/B type Gemini, A/O/B type Libra, A/O/B type Aquarius, A/O/B type Aries, A/O/B type Leo.

The easiest person to fall in love at first sight: A or AB Sagittarius.

Suitable for girls: B-type Gemini, O/B-type Libra, O/B-type Aquarius, O/B-type Aries, O/B-type Leo.

Suitable for boys: B-type Gemini, A/B Libra, A/B Aquarius, A/B Aries, A/B Leo.

The most discordant lover: AB type Virgo, AB type Pisces

Gemini of type A blood--the intellectual type of Gemini

Geminis with type A blood often don't look as lively and active as other blood-type Geminis, making it difficult for people to identify their Gemini constellation at a glance. Their written expressions tend to be better than their verbal expressions. The type A Gemini is a bit old-fashioned, full of book-like intellectuals, and sometimes a little melancholy. Type A blood people have a fixed stability instinct, which is somewhat in conflict with the nature of Gemini's favorite change.

The advantage of the Ge-type Gemini people is that the long-lasting spirit of type A blood, combined with the intelligence of Gemini nature, makes up for the inferiority of Gemini. In their field of interest, they can always study hard and think about the problem. The depth is also often better than other blood types of Gemini, if the direction of the effort is correct, it is able to make some achievements.

The type A blood Gemini people are not too shy about the expression of love or too bold, once they like a person, it is easy to think a lot, causing nervousness. It seems to be another lively projection of the heart. Sometimes they will be attracted by people who are mavericks and even a little arrogant, making people stunned. A twin's nature is a bit like a tragic love, to the twists and turns of the plot, just enough taste.

Friends: A/B/AB/O type Gemini, A/B/AB/O type Libra, A/B/AB/O type Aquarius, A/B/AB/O type Aries, A/B/AB /O type Leo.

The easiest person to fall in love at first sight: O/B/AB Sagittarius

Suitable for girls: O/AB/B Gemini, O/AB/B Libra, O/AB/B Aquarius, O/AB/B Aries, O/AB/B Leo.

Boys are suitable for lovers: AB/B Gemini, AB/B Libra, AB/B Aquarius, AB/B Aries, AB/B Leo.

The most discordant lover: Type A Virgo, Type A Pisces

Gemini of type B blood - dexterous Gemini

The Geminis of Type B blood are clever and flattering, and their faces are always filled with a gentle, relaxing smile. However, the unstable nature of type B blood enhances the variability of Gemini. They are changeable positions, often leaving people around them confused, but they are not intentional. Many changes occur for the Gezi people of type B blood. Said, it is really only the sudden thoughts in my mind. They are curious, good at accepting new things, and love to make new friends, so they can always maintain a young mind regardless of their age. The Gemini people of type B blood love freedom, they like unfettered life, and their vision is very broad. Their knowledge is wide, but they don't necessarily like to study in depth. The Gemini people of type B blood like what is faint, don't do it very deeply. The Gemini people of type B blood are actually sensuous. They seem to be optimistic. They are a little bit heartless. They often hurt autumn because of a leaf, and they feel the passage of life. The Gemini people of type B blood, because of the personality change, are afraid of dullness, even if they have a partner, they do not hinder them from admiring other outstanding opposite sex, and it is a little lover. But they are also limited to sputum, and will not exceed a certain limit, just as a seasoning for life, do not have to be very grand.

Friends: A/AB/O type Gemini, A/AB/O type Libra, A/AB/O type Aquarius, A/AB/O type Aries, A/AB/O type Leo.

The easiest person to fall in love at first sight: O/A/AB Sagittarius

Suitable for girls: AB/O Gemini, AB/O Libra, AB/O Aquarius, AB/O Aries, AB/O Leo.

Boys are suitable for lovers: O/A/AB Gemini, O/A/AB Libra, O/A/AB Aquarius, O/A/AB Aries, O/A/AB Leo.

The most discordant lover: Type B Virgo, Type B Pisces

Gemini of AB blood type - low-key peace of Gemini

The AB-type Geminis are low-key and gentle. They talk or laugh softly. If there is nothing special, people don't always feel too much about them. The AB-type Gemini people are more concerned about the views of others. They are good at observing and watching, and they always hope to be able to integrate into the surrounding environment, and to meet the needs of everyone, become a favorite of everyone, but not necessarily the dazzling protagonist. However, although the AB-type Gemini people are very gentle and courteous, and they are pleasing to the eye, they will like to keep a certain distance from others, and they don't like to be deeply understood. On them, the calm and rational side of Gemini is fully utilized. Even if someone encounters a very dislikable person or has a very unpleasant thing, the AB Gemini will not show dissatisfaction on the face, never It’s easy to get angry, but to treat it calmly. But sometimes, the AB-type Gemini people will also show some dual personality, so that Mr. is used to it, and the heart will also want to break through this bondage, there is the impulse of "now". But this kind of moment is usually more in front of the family or the closest relatives. The AB-type Gemini people, because of their strong calm and rational qualities, are slower to fall into a relationship of love. They will observe the long-lost observations before making a decision on whether to start. But once you start a love, the AB-type Gemini is still very loyal and dedicated.

Friends: A/AB/B type Gemini, A/AB/B type Libra, A/AB/B type Aquarius, A/AB/B type Aries, A/AB/B type Leo.

The easiest person to fall in love at first sight: O/A/B Sagittarius.

Suitable for girls: AB/B Gemini, AB/B Libra, AB/B Aquarius, AB/B Aries, AB/B Leo.

Boys are suitable for lovers: AB/A Gemini, AB/A Libra, AB/A Aquarius, AB/A Aries, AB/A Leo.

The most discordant lover: O-type Virgo, O-type Pisces

#gemini

[helenmaybewriting]

On Academic Precarity as Ongoing Anxiety

I’ve been given reason to think about making academic precarity visible lately. I’m applying for a big early-career grant but am outside the eligible period. I am fortunate that there is a way to seek an ‘exemption’ to the rules and ask to account for a period of time that meets certain requirements as a ‘career interruption’. For some this is children or carer responsibilities, for others it is illness. For some it is working in other sectors or not working for various reasons. For me, I am claiming a period in my life post-PhD where I worked sessionally in teaching roles at multiple universities and did not hold a research position. I need to collect and tabulate proof for this period. It must be made visible in very particular ways: a neat table that outlines the reason for career interruption, the time that can be claimed, the relevant dates. I’m asked to contain this messy, precarious, anxious time of my life in a neat grid.

The bureaucratic demands seem simple: account for it, tally it up. And don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful there is a way to recognise this interruption, disruption, abruption. However, I’ve encountered so many confused faces in trying to progress the process, as if accounting for sessional work is an aberration they’ve never come across. Sessional staff teach anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of students at Australian universities, yet my requests seemed alien to many.  

I have persisted in my accounting, feeling the anxiety of precarity rise again in my chest. Someone said to me it was nothing to be ashamed of. I replied: I’m not ashamed of it, I am exhausted by it.  

How long was the period of time from the award of my doctorate to getting an ongoing job? Already this request narrows the scope, as if precarity starts from award and not submission or before. I was already precarious when I finally wore the floppy hat. Yet here, the form asks for an accounting for this time—from award to ongoing job—in days, weeks and months. But my body remembers it as the blur of ill-defined time characterised by sounds that hiss and sigh in my memory: sessional, scramble, stress, yes and yes and yes and yes again because it is the week before semester and I don’t have enough hours to pay rent yet. Struggle, survival, collapse are words that hiss and sigh also. What is the FTE of a period that is experienced and remembered as the always-just-audible hum of the anxiety of precarity? Account for it. Give it form.

This is the period of my endless agreeability, of ‘yes I can take just the 8am and the 4pm tutorial that day’. The period of learning to be a chameleon, of ‘yes I can teach IR/development studies/anthropology of gender/sports sociology/peace studies/global governance’. The period of befriending the public transport app that helped me trace crazed patterns between universities and learning the locations of the best cafés where I could grab lunch as I swapped discipline hats and institutional languages so my students would believe my claimed authority.

This is the period of snatched time to try and write between tutorials while I could use an institution’s library access, because publication was the only way out of this but my schedule left no real time to do it. The period that included the semester with 280 essays to mark, of phone calls with incredulous university IT because I couldn’t remember which institutional password I needed to get in to this particular one of my seven email addresses, of making dinner plans with friends and asking if we could go to the cheap delicious Asian place where I could eat a whole meal rather than the nice restaurant where I’d eat an entrée as if I wasn’t actually hungry. This is the period of my always-availability accompanied by always-exhaustion; of recognising myself in articles about stress and burnout that I would read on the train between cramming in prep for the next tutorial. This is the period of my endless professional flexibility even as the stress of the precarity fixed the muscles in my shoulders in to (still) untangle-able knots.  This is the period of “non-research employment not concurrent with research employment”. Account for it. Note it down.

The neoliberal academy, that runs on this sessional labour, works in subtle and overt ways to erase it too. Sessional academics are expendable, replaceable, not ‘real’ staff, despite the institution’s dependence on their work. This year I’ve had to chase down five universities to get them to write letters outlining the periods I worked for them and confirming my work was teaching-only—confirming explicitly that they gave me no support for research during my employment. This is my ‘evidence’, codifying on various letterheads my experience of uncertain, sporadic labour. While several universities have been very helpful and quick, making this process a little smoother, others have not. Not through maliciousness, but through the grinding, churning practices of bureaucracy and the inefficiencies of systems not set up to serve people like me.

One university couldn’t find evidence of my working for them in 2013, telling me it was ‘such a long time ago’. One university only allowed me to request a HR job logged in to their intra-net, the woman on the phone for general enquiries when I called to explain the problem kept suggesting I use my current username. Several universities wrote letters detailing the 12 to 18-month period I apparently worked for them, the period in which I learned only now I remained in their system in some manner (even though my login access was cut off precisely at the end of semester). I’ve now had to supplement these letters with contracts I’ve kept to demonstrate it was only 13 weeks of hourly-work, not a year-long sessional contract. In my neat table, a list of ‘no’s fill a column titled “was the employment research related”. Account for it. Make it present.

I am not sure I will ever not feel a residual anxiety, lodged in my throat, from this time. But having to tabulate it, to fit it in to neat boxes, to repeatedly note it was “non-research related employment not concurrent with research employment”, to calculate a patchwork of start and finish dates, to accumulate evidence of the precarity, has meant I can hear that hum again and taste the stress as bitterness on my tongue. The sounds, tastes, feelings can’t be accounted for in a 200 word ‘justification statement’ in this neat document, but I try and articulate the difficulty while sounding professional and capable; further contortions.

In this process of accounting, I’ve been asked to ‘remove duplicates’ in my record because, I am told, I can’t claim the same period twice. I’ve had to again make visible the hum and bitterness, by the act of explaining once again that I wasn’t trying to claim multiple jobs as separate time periods, but rather to give a full account of my employment as requested which included working multiple jobs, simultaneously. I can feel the act of putting it in to words working to bring the blurred time in to focus in hard edges and anxious spikes in my chest. This work did overlap, but it was not duplicates; this work was a complete list of my employment, yet still barely covered my half of our living expenses. Account for it. Point it out.

That period also holds bright memories. Memories of the yeasty smell of zaatar-top pizzas from our local shops in Melbourne, and the sweet taste of carafes of wine and gossip shared with one of my dearest girlfriends; of warm rooms in winter full of boardgames and laughter, and cut grass in lazy summer afternoons sprawled with friends across a backyard. It also forged friendships across shared experiences: the Friday morning early-career writing group that was a refuge and a delight, of peers who didn’t know they were mentors but for whom I will always be grateful, and unlooked-for generosity in offering office space or other necessities when someone had slightly more security than others.

Precarity and anxiety are not totalising but they are overwhelming. I am not shamed by them, but they are exhausting.

I feel, in writing it down that I am being required to make claims for legitimacy, to assert that I belong here. Precarity and anxiety run the risk of becoming the background hum and the overlooked bitter taste. The tactics of universities trick us in to thinking we are alone with this, but although the details may vary, the story is the same for many.

In writing this, I recognise that my form and experience of precarity is its own thing; that other people’s experiences will differ. I have a supportive partner. I don’t have children. My partner, however, started doing a PhD the year I finished mine. We had moved away from my established potential-employment networks for him to take up his PhD. My precarity was made more difficult through particular health challenges, and other personal circumstances. I write here from my own experience. I write with acknowledgement of my relative privileged position of having an ongoing job now, when so many clever driven precarious peers do not. I write with anxiety and trepidation about sharing these experiences. I write in apprehension that someone will tell me my experience isn’t as bad as I feel it to have been, that other people have it worse, that this is a rite of passage for all academics, that I should get over it. My anxiety about sharing proves the point about needing to share. The invisibility of this work, and how we write it into or out of our narratives, works to indivdiualise our experiences and isolate us.

I think in accounting for my interruption, my period of “non-research related employment not concurrent with research employment”, moving from the blur to the boxes forced me to describe the reality of that period, and that has been deeply discomforting. But writing this reflection, and naming the precarity and its attendant feelings, is a way of making visible these structures. It is a way of acknowledging that my survival of that period fundamentally depended on the support of others. I don’t have magical solutions, but after this rollercoaster of paperwork and bureaucracy count me in for the barricades if anyone is up for a revolution. Until then, know that while the institutions may not care—about precarity, burnout, stress, enduring anxiety—I do, and if you have a story similar to mine know I see you and I’m so glad you’re here. Account for it. Hold it to account.

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: Bugs Bunny Collection

There was a time when Looney Tunes were like one of the staples of cartoons. They acted as an inspiration to other illustrators and paved the way for many of the cartoons we know today. As such, it's easy to understand why they were used in so many video games back in the old times. Nowadays they are more or less relinquished for cash grabs like the new Space Jam movie, but in the past...wait no, they were still cash grabs! Crud! There go my debate points on nostalgia! Well, I guess I at least have a case in point: meet today's blind date, Bugs Bunny Collection.

As it would turn out, this is a Japanese game that combines the thrilling action of a game just called 'Bugs Bunny' and its sequel with a clearly obvious name, 'Crazy Castle II'.

Man, the thumbnails look like they were the TI-83 calculator versions of the games

Oh-ho! A double date! Well, I'm not sure if dating the same-ish game twice counts as a double or not, but who cares! Semantics! Let's start with 'Bugs Bunny'. It's vague enough to be about nearly anything! Does it have to do with anvils? Outsmarting hunters? Understanding correct Google Maps directions to Albuquerque? Only one way to find out!

ok it's hotel mario

In a nutshell, you collect carrots by navigating doors, stairs, and pipes, avoiding enemies and using sparse attacking powerups to defend yourself. Out of a nutshell...uhhh...that's really it. There's no clever additions to the levels to spice things up or anything. About the only changes you get in the game is the count of Looney-Tune-themed enemies that want to walk into you. And sometimes that number is a ridiculous slap in the face (and I ain't talking slapstick, Looney-Tunes-type of slap).

Cats...cats everywhere

You can't tell from screenshots, but the controls are horrid. If you start to move down a staircase, you MUST walk down to the bottom. This makes avoiding foes your main issue. You can try to fight some enemies, but attack powerups are rare and the random items you can push into or onto them to defeat them are usually put in dumb locations that really don't foster their use. Enemies will stand still or gravitate back and forth without changing strategies. That sounds manageable, but they will stand still atop a pipe you need to go up, or other times they will refuse to go down pipes, blocking you off from a carrot you need to finish the level. Oh, and one hit and you die. One level had me racing to get a specific carrot before an enemy went up a specific pipe, as he would be stuck forever up there on a 2-tile wide platform. The saving grace for most of the game is that you can, for whatever logical reason, enter a pipe at the same time as an enemy and navigate through without getting hurt. You'll be using the pipe invincibility to avoid a lot of enemies, so get used to watching slow pipe bulges a lot. (That sentence sounds so gross...)

I'm sure there's some lame pun about getting a hare clog in these pipes, but I am plumb out of good puns

So there are 80 levels of this boring, mind-numbing game with shoddy controls and crappy music. And I, like an absolute goon, sat through them all. Some were ridiculously hard, most were simple. Difficulty wasn't linear either, because of course it wasn't! The cherry on top, though, was the lackluster ending that captured my sentiments of this game perfectly:

Brings tears to my eye. And like I mean that I am crying because I want those 2 hours of my life back, dangit

Ugh. Anyway. Let's go to the next! Maybe the programmers learned from their mistakes and improved their formula for Cah-razy Castle part deux!

This one has a story and cutscenes! Far as I can tell, a big doofy-looking witch kidnapped a duplicate of Bugs in drag and locked her in a castle that really doesn't look particularly crazy to me. False advertising, man. Nothing wacky here, just like ring the doorbell and ask to see her gas meter, then find your femme self and bolt! Well, you WOULD, but the navigation of this castle is apparently bloody terrible.

This looks like a really intense DDR song

Luckily, the programming is a bit better this time for movement, and the graphics look a bit better. The core gameplay...well, it's exactly the same. Okay, you can now cross ropes, use a couple new tools to traverse the map, and utilize jump and warp pads to get around, but you still go in doors, avoid walking enemies, use pipes, and collect junk to finish levels. This time, it's keys instead of carrots (because this witch has like 200 different locks on her doors?). Attacking items are more plentiful now, too, and there are FAR fewer levels. So at least there are better experiences somewhere, right? So we good now?

This castle would never get past any house reseller's inspection with a plumbing layout like that

Of course not! Things are still repetitive. The programming is still clunky at times, like when controlling jump pads (which either launch you into space or gently set you 2 block above your position...on the same jump pad). Enemy AI is still atrocious. The icing on the stale, store-bought red velvet cake is the amazing glitch I somehow triggered that replaced the typical non-skippable 20-second clip of Bugs walking slowly to a door that plays after you beat a level with fragments of his head shooting into the sky like fireworks. Now, that would actually be an entertainment upgrade, but all fun halts since the game was caught in some infinite loop, essentially locking me on the end level screen.

I think I found more than 13 bugs here, fellas

So, I figured I'd earned a break after getting an acme-sized headache from these dumb games and just looked up the password to the last level. It wasn't too bad, actually kind of fun, but still had no new features. However! There was another level afterward, and it was a boss fight! You get to shoot arrows at Gruntilda,but man is she cheap. She's invincible most of the time and clips through walls faster'n Wile E. Coyote.

I feel like that's bad broom posture, but whatever. You look like the mayor from Nightmare Before Christmas.

After some rough-ups, I finally nailed her and got a much better ending than the first game. Though like I still don't know who this love interest is? Also, why are there 2 Cupids, and why do they aim like my teammates in Overwatch? It's cool, it looks like Bugs'll get to go on a date of his own after this one. Take her to Crazy White Castle or something.

I like to think Bugs is actually just doing some soul-trapping stare into the eyes of this poor female rabbit while doing some creepy heavy breathing and profuse sweating

Well dang. That was a big ol' adventure, one that I wish I purge from my mind. I'm actually one of the potentially few people who love collectathon-like games (which I guess this one counts as?), but like...please put the collecting in a decently coded and paced game. The lack of building game mechanics, poor controls, boring level design, and overall shoddiness makes me not want to go on a second date with Bugs here again. Although I know of at least one more Game Boy Looney Tunes game, so no escape here. The corporate overlords demand more money! And you should demand this Sprite of Passage for surviving through my whiny rant on a cruddy 90's portable video game!

someone get that catatonic cat a tonic

#BlindDateGaming gameboy bugsbunny looneytunes bugsbunnycollection crazycastle

[chamerionwrites]

@tobermoriansass replied to your post “I swear every time...”

Ahahahaaa god I have so many mixed feelings about this passage having delved into the research rabbit hole that is mi5 in northern ireland this past week. It’s…a seductive image but also I’m not sure le carre isn’t engaging in his own form of whitewashing. (Can’t spk for the US but. Well.)

Oh yeah, I think he’s definitely exaggerating for effect. Scrubbing the glamour off the pop cultural image of spies is sort of his shtick after all, and competence has a certain sort of glamour even when it’s nasty. It’d be silly (and dangerous) to take him too literally at his word when there’s ample historical evidence of intelligence agencies being downright deviously clever.

That said I still think of this passage every time I run across evidence of mind-boggling incompetence from people we tend to assume have a plan or at least some idea of what the hell they’re doing, even if what they’re doing is Bad (see also: paul manafort, actual shady international power broker, using “bond007″ as his password what the actual fuckity fuck i’m still not over this)

#I think it speaks to the way power tends to create its own mythology #that circular logic: 'the people in charge can't possibly have done something so stupid; if they were stupid they wouldn't be in charge' #and so has a certain ring of truth despite being...demonstrably untrue in many cases #spies #politics #ask box #my posts

[realrhythmskrp]

DISPATCH, 03/30/17: Kaleidoscope Records has officially released information about soloist, Heo Nayeon, also known as Yena, on Yena’s official website! Yena is a ‘91 liner and has been beloved by fans since her debut (with silverBEAT) in 2010 and her solo debut in 2014. Find out more about Yena below!

I, HEO NAYEON, have read and understand the terms and conditions as my position of SOLOIST and agree to honor the standards that are to be expected of me as an employee of KALEIDOSCOPE RECORDS.

OOC INFORMATION

Preferred name: Charlie

Pronouns: They/them

Timezone: GMT+2

Other muses: -

Password (for reservations only): -

Other information (notes to admins that are not for publishing): Triggers include sexual content, needles, syringes, excessive violence.

IC INFORMATION

Faceclaim: Bae Joohyun (Irene)

Name: Heo Nayeon

Stage name (if applicable): Yena

Idol concept: Nayeon has struggled with being comfortable with her concept since her debut with silverBEAT. A naturally shy and gentle person, the increasingly fierce and sexy concepts of their promoted songs made her uncomfortable. While she put on her best game face whenever in public, she always ran off set to grab her coat during filming. Debuting as a soloist with a gentle, warm concept was freeing for her, and she shone even brighter when comfortable in her own skin. She varies herself a bit, as to not bore her fans, but always falls back on those soothing power ballads.

Birth date and age: 1991.03.16, 26

Company name: Kaleidoscope Records

Group Name (if applicable): -

Group Position (if applicable): Soloist

Strengths: Nayeon is an amazing vocalist. Her strong, yet soft voice has been praised even in her pre-debut days, and her unique sound is what has set her apart from other singers. While she can’t claim to be as much of a powerhouse as some rookies, her years of experience let’s her express emotions like no other. Media has described her voice as ‘the rainbow after a storm’.

She’s also been praised for her acting, which is rather good for an idol actress, and her visuals. She’s been the face and spokesperson of many brands over the years, and her brand value is picking up once again after her departure from silberBEAT.

She’s also a quite bad dancer. While she has gotten much better since her debut, she still prioritizes her singing, meaning her movements can become a bit slow and half-assed during more difficult passages. It is something she was frequently criticized for while still a member of silverBEAT. As a soloist, she can get away with standing still a lot, or just walking around, but she has made it a personal goal to release one dance single per year, to prove that she can.

Weaknesses: Nayeon is the definition of a crybaby. She’s highly emotional and easily scared, which doesn’t really go too well with being in the public eye. There’s tons of clips of her jumping in fright because of confetti, glitter, balloons, and even bubbles. Add to that her tendency to break down crying when getting an award and you have the mess that often is Nayeon. Fortunately, she doesn’t have stage fright anymore, or it would be even worse.

Positive traits: Gentle, supportive, clever

Negative traits: Shy, emotional, indecisive

PERSONAL HISTORY

Nayeon hails from Busan, born and raised in South Korea. She’s only been outside the country’s borders for work and one or two vacations, and that’s the way she likes it. Travel makes her anxious and uncomfortable. Her parents are ordinary folks, working in the family restaurant. They’re not terribly close with their daughter, but not estranged either. She has two younger siblings, both boys, both studying in university. The older is planning to continue with the restaurant, and the younger wants to be a doctor. Nayeon is very proud of them both, but doesn’t speak a lot of them in public, as per their request. No one in her family wants to be in the limelight, and Nayeon respects that. She has struggled with the urge to hide for years. It has only been her stubborn streak and her love for music that has driven her forward.

The move to Seoul was one that almost broke her. She missed her parents, her siblings, her friends, her everything. Yet, she pushed on. She was scouted by BKB in her second year of high school, which was what lead to the move. Things got better, thankfully. She made friends with trainees and employees, and in 2010 she debuted with eight other girls in what would become one of the most famous KPOP groups of all time. They won awards left and right, performing overseas, everything she had ever dreamed of. However, that dream would come to an end.

Nayeon is a gentle, preferring to avoid any and all confrontations. This lead to her easily bending to the wills of other members, and not saying a word even if their words tore at her very being. That, coupled with a harsh schedule, little to no compensation, and feeling uncomfortable with the concepts they were steering towards, she finally made the call and bought out her contract in 2014. It was a dramatic, difficult period in her life. She would have bouts of anxiety attacks and break down in tears, whole body trembling, regretting what she had done. She never turned back though, no, she signed with Kaleidoscope Records and made her debut as an actress.

It was a decision she made to avoid hurting herself, but staying away from music had never been something she was capable of. Just a year later, she debuted as a soloist with a song that was all she never knew she wanted. Then, she was nominated for best female soloist that same year and could barely hold it together while performing on stage, even though she didn’t win. The next year she worked with not one, but two artists from BKB, one being a member of her former group. It was a step towards freedom for her, to stop hiding from her fears. Of course, this lead to her realizing the situation she’d left her former group in, triggering a downwards spiral of guilt. The melancholic song ‘Rain’ is to some her tears. Thankfully, she got better, and ‘11:11’ got her best female soloist of the year. A staff member had to help her onto the stage, that’s how much she was crying.

2017 is a new year for her. She has started to reach out to her former group members, offering her support and testimony if they wish to sue BKB. Also, she has picked up acting once again, and is very excited about it. The materials she has seen so far has looked promising, and the co-stars are top-notch. There’s still a lot to worry about for her, such as her status as perhaps the most famous employee of her label, and being nominated two years in a row. Thankfully, ‘Fine’ has already done very well. With her life solidifying, she has tentatively started stopping by the practice rooms to coach trainees and rookies with what insight she has after seven years in the industry.

#ryt:kal #ryt:soloist #ryt:accepted #rytnayeon

[hbirauorrzfm-blog]

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[drarryangels]

Pen Pals (Pt.2)

Pt.1

Notes: Still more to come, and I will be posting on ao3 as soon as I get the chance! <3

@slytherinhoebeforecoffee This wasn’t a prompt or anything you gave to me, but I hope you love it, and I hope you feel better soon. Giving your Slytherins a chance finally. <3

“Well, this is a disaster.”

“Harry, you need to keep your chin up, and keep moving forward. everything’s going to be fine,” Hermione sighed. 

“Fine?” Harry let out a strangled laugh. “All eighth years having one common room does not sound fine to me!”

“Listen,” Hermione grabbed Harry by the shoulders and turned him to face her. “Don’t be ridiculous. We have to get over this old school drama. You know we do.”

“Hermione.”

“Harry. Stop it right now. You’re acting like a child,” Hermione stated.

“That is so unfair-” Harry started.

“Listen to yourself! You’re not a child anymore. None of us are! So we need to grow up, and stop squabbling, and act like civilized humans.” Hermione took a breath. “And yes, Harry, that means that you need to be polite about sharing a common room.”

“What about Malfoy?” Harry folded his arms over his chest. 

“You’re allowed to hold your grudges, Harry. Just please don’t start something with him,” Hermione swiped a hand over her face. 

“Start something?” Harry looked offended. 

“Yes, start something,” Hermione said.

“Why aren’t you more upset about being in close proximity to him for a whole year?” Harry threw up his hands. 

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Because he sent me an apology letter over the summer and asked me to meet him.”

“You met with him over the summer?” 

“I met with him, and we talked. You know, he really had it just as bad as you did, Harry,” Hermione said, patting his arm before turning away to lead them to a seat in the Great Hall. 

“Just as bad as I- what? Hermione!”

Harry stumbled after Hermione, but she didn’t say another word about Draco Malfoy for the rest of the evening.

KEEP READING:

The next morning was rather uneventful. That is, if you don’t consider Hermione Granger sitting down at the Slytherin table an event.

And really, it wasn’t. Despite Harry’s offended gasp of shock, really no one made a fuss about her sitting there. Pansy Parkinson only glanced at her before scooting aside to give Hermione a place to sit. 

“You’ve been in touch with more people than Malfoy this summer, Hermione,” Harry hissed as he slid in next to her at the Slytherin table. 

“Is that a problem?” Parkinson leaned around Hermione to glare at Harry. 

“I can speak for myself, thanks,” Hermione said, but smiled at Parkinson all the same. 

“Seriously, Hermione, why?” Harry said, trying to block Parkinson from his view. 

“Did you listen to me at all yesterday?” Hermione said exasperatedly before reaching for the eggs. 

“Yo, Potter,” Blaise Zabini said, taking a seat across from Harry. 

“Er, hi,” stammered Harry. 

“No need to look like you’ve just seen the Bloody Baron,” Zabini smiled. “He doesn’t come around for breakfast.”

“Oh, er, that’s nice,” Harry looked down at his plate. 

“Something caught in your throat, Potter?” Zabini asked. 

“No, I’m fine,” Harry said shortly, stuffing food into his mouth. 

“Hey, listen,” Zabini said. “Potter, pay attention. What’s your deal?”

Harry looked up with annoyance. “What’s my deal, Zabini? You bullied my friends for six years, and now you want to be all buddy buddy? I don’t think so.”

“Harry!” Hermione muttered under her breath warningly. 

“Woah,” Zabini frowned. “Uh, I don’t think we’ve ever talked once since going to school here except for an excuse me in the corridors.”

Harry didn’t say anything.

“And for the record, I’ve never bullied you or your friends. Or anyone for that matter,” Zabini stated. 

“No,” came another voice. “That would’ve been me.”

Harry looked up sharply to see the fair features of Draco Malfoy standing a couple feet away. 

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Zabini chugged the rest of his pumpkin juice and strode off, slinging his bag over his shoulder. 

“Potter,” Malfoy said. 

“What do you want, Malfoy?”

“Well, you are sitting in my spot. I figured it would be rude to not say hello,” Malfoy sighed, sitting down in Zabini’s recently vacated seat. 

“This has been a wonderful breakfast,” Harry said, shoveling food into his mouth at random. “Hermione, I’ll see you later.”

“Be in the library,” Hermione said absently, looking over a book in her lap. 

Harry rolled his eyes and stormed off from the table, going anywhere but staying in that seat. Why had he needed to sit next to Hermione? She could take care of herself, and he had other friends in Gryffindor. He didn’t need to go sit at the Slytherin table with her. Sure, he’d been a little curious about what it was like at that table, but it had been just as horrid as he had expected it be.

Stupid Slytherins. 

The rest of the days classes passed fairly smoothly. Of course there were the endless fangirls prowling the hallways for the famous Harry Potter, but thanks to the secret passages of Hogwarts, Harry made it to the end of the day unscathed and exhausted.

Harry drudged up the stairs to the third floor, where the new dorms and common room for the eighth years were located.

“Victory,” Harry mumbled at the portrait while it swung open. Not the most witty password. McGonagall wasn’t nearly as clever with them as Dumbledore had been. 

Surprisingly, the common room was well decorated and had a warm feeling emanating from it. The decor was neutral for the most part, but all four of the house banners were hung around the walls of the common room, and students of different houses were sprawled around the room. 

“Nice, isn’t it?” Zabini’s voice made Harry jump. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine.” Harry paused and thought of what Hermione had said. “Sorry about this morning. It was unfair of me to say those things.”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Zabini shrugged. “But just so you know, Slytherin isn’t the evil house you think it is.”

“I-”

“You’re not the only one that thinks it. I just want to let you know that we’re kids. The same way you were a kid when you first got here. There are jerks in every house. And just because Voldemort was in Slytherin, doesn’t mean we’re all crazy sociopaths.”

Harry let out a surprised laugh. “I guess you’re right. I really am sorry. For thinking that all those years.”

Zabini smiled a little. “It’s like saying that just because Dumbledore was in Gryffindor, all Gryffindors are wizarding gods.”

Harry’s smile faded a little. “Yeah, well Dumbledore turned out to not be so wonderful in the end.”

Zabini lifted his hands in mock surrender. “You knew him best.”

Harry shrugged and looked down. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“No one really does when it comes to you,” Zabini clapped Harry on the back and walked off. 

Harry stood in place, still staring at his feet. Someone had told him that looking at the ground will naturally ground you. But thinking of Pettigrew coming out of Gryffindor, supposedly good. Thinking of Blaise Zabini going his whole life feeling like people hated him because he was Slytherin. But mostly. Mostly thinking of Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s neverending twinkle. How perfect he was. Love. Love. He said. Love will save us all. It’s an unknown power. Thinking of how Dumbledore had built him up, thinking it was for the ultimate tear down. Raising a child for slaughter. Thinking of Dumbledore’s love and all the ways it had twisted Harry. Ripped him to be stitched in strange ways. 

It was all making Harry dizzy. 

“Potter?” A voice came through the haze distantly. “Potter, you don’t look well.”

“What?” Harry heard his voice like it had come out of someone else’s mouth. 

He heard the voice cry out before he felt the floor slam into his knees. 

“Potter?”

Harry rolled over onto his back and blinked. The world was smudgy, but no longer dizzy. And Draco Malfoy’s face was hanging over him. 

He had a thin face. His whole body was thin; had always been like that. Harry remembered when his hair had been laser straight and gelled back. It wasn’t like that anymore. His hair hung in soft, loose curls, some waves curling around his ears. It was strange to see how he had changed. 

Somehow more relaxed, but also more jagged. 

Harry shook his head and moved to sit up slowly. Malfoy scooted back quickly, but reached out a hand to help Harry up as if on instinct. And on instinct, of course, Harry took his hand and let Malfoy help him. 

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, swaying a little as he stood. 

“Er, don’t mention it. Are you alright? I mean, you sort of just got all gray and then just fell over,” Malfoy said hurriedly. 

“I’m fine,” Harry gave Malfoy a tight-lipped smile. “Thanks. I’m going to go head up to the dorms.”

Malfoy nodded and stepped back. 

Harry waved off the concerned looks and comments as he walked towards the dorms. All the faces and voices sounded overly worried, but none of them had gotten up to help Harry. They had just watched. Probably waiting for the next big Potter mess up. 

Later, when Harry was lying in bed, barely aware of his surroundings, he realized that Malfoy hadn’t asked him anything about why he had suddenly fallen over. He had just helped him up and backed away. If Hermione had been there, she would have leapt on him with questions. As it was, the bystanders in the common room had asked him intrusive questions as he walked away. Malfoy didn’t, though. 

Harry was done thinking about Slytherins. There had been too many interactions with them today. Harry hadn’t even gotten the chance to talk to the rest of his friends today. Plus, there was the whole ‘Slytherin isn’t evil’ thing to still think about. 

What Zabini had said made sense. And it was true, and right. Harry really hadn’t given Slytherin even a glance since Ron had said that it was evil before they had even arrived at Hogwarts. 

Maybe it was about time to give the Slytherins a chance. 

Even Malfoy. 

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@haecceitism @drarryonmywaywardson @secretlycrazyhummingbird @satanrealblog @crash1012 @strictly-drarry @jhcseokk @theunicornsdidit @grangerneedsabreak 

#pen pals #prompt #part 2 #fanfic #fanfiction #drarry #harry and blaise brotp?? #not sure yet #draco malfoy #harry potter #hermione granger #pansy parkinson #blaise zabini #ron weasley #hogwarts #gryffindor #slytherin #angst #slow burn? #in progress #my fic #my writing #mine