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itsalwaysforyou · 2 months

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the black sky and all those lights

a silly little something i wrote for jalentines!!

When Mal opens the dormitory door, Jay is standing in the hallway in his workout gear, hair tied up in a bun. He’s already grinning in that way he does when he wins a fight. Mal rolls her eyes at him. Grabbing her bag, she says bye to Evie, and joins Jay in the corridor.

She scowls as they walk, her workout clothes tight on her skin. Jay had insisted they’d do things properly, and not in their usual leather.

The hallways are decorated for Valentine’s Day, making Auradon Prep even more gaudy and colourful as usual. Pink and red hearts plastered across the walls, boasting the abundance of love here in Auradon. Jay’s had a thousand notes in his locker. Mal’s had none. Every morning, she watches Jay approach his locker like he would a target on the Isle. Weight forward, shoulders squared; ready to fight if needs be. And the paper falls to the floor like blood, only sickly pastel. Scrawled glittery gel pen. Words confessing passionate love, or asking him on dates, or doodles of hearts. Jay smiles the whole time. Greets and winks at girls. Scrunches those notes up in a fist.

“Everywhere looks disgusting,” Mal says as they approach the sports hall. Heart-shaped bunting crests the doors.

Jay holds the door open for her. “It’s fun.”

“You would think that.”

The sports hall is mercifully free of décor. They drop their bags in the corner and begin to warm up, another stupid practice Jay insists on. His top rides up as he side-stretches. Isle rule: never show skin, especially to the enemy. Except, Jay loved to parade around in those stupid sleeveless vests. She’s yelled at him plenty of times about it—Are you insane? You’re a walking target. He would just grin and say, they’ll have to catch me first.

Jay laughs as he grabs the practice swords from their stands. “Here.”

He throws it, and Mal catches. The weight in her hand is familiar. Already, her pulse is thrumming faster, and maybe if she closes her eyes she’ll be back on the docks, with the wind ripping at her hair, and the salt stinging her nose, and half a dozen of Uma’s crew jeering over the clanging of swords.

Jay chucks her a mask too, before attaching one to his own face. The mesh turns her vision slightly hazy.

“Ready?” Jay asks.

Mal’s watched fencing practise a few times, mostly as an excuse not to do homework and instead watch her boys wipe the floor with all those prissy Auradon princes. Coach Jenkins appointed Jay captain of the team a few months ago, a role he takes more seriously than she’s ever seen him take anything.

“Rassembler! Salute! Lower the point. Masks down. En guarde!”

Mal lunges first, which Jay clearly anticipates, parrying her blow. He circles. Strikes. Mal blocks it. He’s quick. Reflexes honed to a sword’s point; learned by practise and theory. Mal lashes out again, just catching his free arm before he jerks away. She grins underneath her mask. Her breath comes quicker. Jay’s blade arcs down, hitting her chest. Mal swats his blade away. She hears him laugh. She growls. Strike. Parry. Strike. Block. Strike. Jay lands another hit. Their shoes squeak against the linoleum floor.

“Come on, Mal,” Jay teases.

Mal lunges like a cat on its prey. Jay’s blade grates against hers like steel against flint. Jay may be quick but Mal’s smaller, and she weaves her way through Jay’s blade until they both have the sword’s point angled at each other’s chests.

They’re both panting. Jay lowers his sword first. Takes off his mask.

“You came in clutch at the end,” he says.

Mal huffs, wiggling the mask off her face and wiping her forehead with a sleeve. “You actually get training.”

“And now I’m training you!”

His hair has loosened during the sparring, spilling out at the seams. He unties the bun; flips his hair down and shakes it out. In this late-afternoon light, his hair could be made of gold. Hair longer than Mal’s ever had.

He pulls his hair back into its bun, deft fingers making quick work. When he straightens back up again, his face is slightly flushed from the match.

And Mal looks at this boy she’s known most of her life; this face and these hands; a boy that has held her at the end of the world and the start of a new one. And she snatches back down her mask.

“Again,” she says, lifting up her sword.

She’s swinging before Jay’s even had the chance to pull his own mask back down. Her blade slices against his chest, and she hears the breath escape from his lungs.

“Fuck!’

Jay’s blocking her hits in no time. Mal grits her teeth. A boy who’s inhabited every place she’s ever been. The shadow along the street; a fixed point on the rooftops. Those long, quick fingers that know their way around bandage; around open flesh; around her own hands. Like a comet to Earth. Like an eclipse. Totally consuming.

And here, where the sun shines brighter than they could have ever dreamed, she is left blistering. Those girls that fawn over Jay, professing their love with the same ease that Mal can hold a dagger to a throat. Jay’s clicking tongue, and that low fry to his voice when he’s chatting someone up. Everything is always so easy to him. He can wrap anyone around his finger with a wink.

His blade slams into her stomach. Mal pants, the budding pain in her side clearing her head. Jay’s standing above her like some heavenly deity.

“Best of four?” he offers.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“C’mon. Let’s take a break.”

Jay drops his sword and grabs his water bottle from his bag. Mal joins him, still gripping her sword, gulping down her water like a man in a desert.

“We should do this again soon,” Jay says.

“Tomorrow?”

“It’s the Valentine’s Ball tomorrow.”

Mal snorts. “Yeah, and?”

“I was gonna go.”

His words are coming too slow; too considered. Like when he used to talk about his dad, or a particularly bad Barge Day. Rehearsed. A guard dog who’s smelled danger, prowling at the sidelines.

Mal presents her blade. “En guarde!” she shouts, and Jay ducks her swing before scrambling over to his own sword.

“Really, Mal? Another sneak attack?”

“I’m keeping you on your toes.”

They waltz around the sports hall, the blades clashing and slicing and singing.

“We all agreed we weren’t going to go to the Ball,” Mal says, jabbing at Jay.

“We never agreed anything.”

Jay lands a blow. They are at the dockyard, with its rotting wooden pier and dead fish stench. The screeching of metal; the shouting; Mal’s heart hammering like the tide. Blood, and life. The roar in her ears. A dragon’s call. Body moving without a thought, as quick as a lightning strike. Not having to look behind her because she knows Jay is there.

“Exactly!” she says. “Why would we want to go to some stuffy Auradon ball?” Jay tries to say something but she ignores him. “Why would we care about Valentine’s Day? It’s corny, and over-commercialised, and a stupid excuse to make everything about love.”

Jay has her backed up against a wall. With no time to mount his mask, his lips are slightly parted, and his hair is escaping from his bun again. He looks just like he did on the Isle; none of his perfect prince act that fools Auradon. His sword hovers above her throat.

“Do you yield?” His voice is low.

Mal stares at him. Those eyes that have seen every part of her. All the blood; every smile; her pale skin in the dark Isle nights. The boy that has beheld her every action; weighed it all against his own understanding of the world, and decided that they slot together as easily as a bullet in a pistol.

“Who are you going with to the Ball?” Mal asks. She’s still clutching her sword. She could claim the upper hand, if she really wanted.

A grin creeps across Jay’s face. All those notes and heart-shaped lollipops. The giggling girls at his locker. He could pick any one of them. All of them so beautiful, in their sunset-coloured dresses. He could have anything he wanted.

“Well,” Jay says. “I was going to ask you.”

The sword’s point makes sure they keep their distance. Never too close. All touches so light; so fleeting, as if you could’ve mistaken them for a dream. As if you could’ve imagined the whole thing. All those nights in the hideout where the barrier of the body seemed thin, and the world became so small: just two kids who wouldn’t even dare knock knees.

So Mal shakes it all away with a laugh. “I’m not going to the Valentine’s Ball.”

Jay lowers his blade. Neither of them move. “Not even with me?”

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other girls who actually want to go with you.”

“I want to go with you.”

His words echo through the empty hall. His word is as steadfast as ever, the only opinion Mal will ever trust. Compass, anchor: Jay does it all.

Heralded here, Mal as real as the vast sky outside. Here, in his gaze, held aloft by trust where there shouldn’t be and compassion where there shouldn’t be and understanding where there shouldn’t be. A home for all her broken bones.

Mal’s lips unfurl into a smile. This ache in her chest. In her throat. Jay always being able to disarm her. Jay in every place she’s ever been. Jay as her shadow; her skin; her second self. A reflection in the mirror. The line of separation is nonexistent. Like the sun, like the moon: one cannot exist without the other.

#did this turn out way longer than i anticipated? absolutely #but i had a lot of fun writing it :) ive had to write a lot of things that Matter recently so it was nice to just. not have to try so hard #anyway anyway I LOVE THEM #i just think. mal being soooo annoyed that jay gets to play the carefree flirt #all these people that dont know him being 'in love' with him meanwhile mal can barely come to terms with her own feelings for him #and she communicates that through violence :)#and jay. jayyyyy. doesnt really want anything to do with these notes. like sure he likes the attention but he doesnt KNOW any of these girl #and they dont know him. and no one could know him like mal does :)#i also purposefully left the ending ambiguous teehee :) so i guess we'll never know what happened thumbs up emoji #descendants #jal #jay son of jafar #mal bertha #my fic #also i am not a fencer so everything i know is from the jay/lonnie right in d2 and google 👍 sorry to any fencers out there 👍#*fight

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wren-of-the-woods · 1 year

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Criminally Underused Bird Nicknames for Jaskier

I love "Lark" as much as the next Witcher fic reader, but there are so many more options we could explore! Here are a few:

Jay / Bluejay This one has excellent potential because 1) jays are incredibly beautiful, colorful, intelligent, and social and 2) their songs are terrible. (Examples here, here, and here.) As such, it'd be perfect for a fond-yet-teasing nickname for Jaskier. Plus, it sounds like the first letter of his name!

Magpie Magpies are corvids like jays, so they're similar in many ways. This one has the extra connotations of collecting shiny things for bonus fun teasing <3

Sparrow Sparrows have lovely songs! They tend not to be very colorful, but they're very cute and the name sounds endearing. I've seen this one used in fic occasionally and I like it!

Sanderling Sanderling is an adorable name for an adorable bird -- they're little sandpipers that run around on beaches! It works perfectly as a reference to Jaskier's role as the Sandpiper and I think it's really sweet.

Peep Peep is a general term for the smallest few species of sandpipers (they're hard to identify at the species level, so calling them peeps is most convenient). It's similar to Sanderling in that it references Jaskier's role as the Sandpiper and sounds adorable!

Bonus: Songbird I have seen this one used in a few fics and I love it every time! It's vague enough to let you imagine whichever bird you want while also sounding very sweet.

Extra options include, but are not limited to: warbler, finch/goldfinch, nightengale, robin, kinglet, titmouse, mockingbird, and starling.

#sanderling is my personal favorite #i'd love to see it catch on #jaskier #the witcher #twn #wren talks #also modifications on lark are fun! like skylark is a good name #but larks are brown and kinda hard to see and i thought jaskier might appreciate being named after some showier/more relevant birds #and also blood origin took it apparently #again no offense to the lark name! i love it a lot!#i just have very many other thoughts #also yes peep is a real thing people say and no i will never get tired of hearing someone refer to 'a flock of peeps'#it's adorable #anyway apologies for the nerdery i wrote this ages ago and only now rediscovered it in the mess that is my drafts #might reblog later with pictures #basically i desperately want to see sanderling and jay used as nicknames for jaskier and i haven't found the right fic to put them in yet

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