#it is not like i am the only pebble on the beach but still wanted to let you guys know | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thecameronchronicles · 1 year

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The Flirt

TW: Smut. Language. Dom!Topper. Public sex.

SUMMARY: Your best friend Topper makes his feelings for you well known.

WORD COUNT: 1800

REQUESTED

a-dorkier-book-keeper asked:

Could you pleaseee do something for bestfriend!Topper, where Topper gets jealous over Rafe flirting with you and decides to make it clear to you and his friend exactly who you belong to? Oh my GOSH Topper is just so hot lol

Thank you for allowing me to send in a request! I love your work!

Thanks 😊

*I FEEL LIKE IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG SINCE IVE GOTTEN A REQUEST FOR TOPPER SO ABSOLUTELY!

The Flirt

He had been forced to watch you this way for the last two hours. Not to mention the last collection of times you’d arrived at any Kook party to find Rafe using it as an excuse to test your interest in him. Even if it had been harmless flirtations, Topper’s eyes read into every action you made to his friend. Those actions he had fantasized as having been directed to him. Every last one. Everything from the innocuous laugh and illumination of your wide eyes to the more sultry traces made of your fingers across Rafe's impressive physique. It drove him to clench his jaw from across the party. Every former set of circumstances identical to this had amounted to this. But it would be the last time in which he would do so without acting on it.

"Oh Top, we were just talking about your last competition!" You teased, knowing he loathed discussing the placement he made in contrast to what he could have had. All because he had been distracted by you in that bathing suit, its color having recently become his favorite.

"If that's any way you guide your hips man, any girl is in for a massive disappointment." You believed you were close enough with Topper to laugh along with such jokes and only being forced to endure a look of annoyance and eventual dismissal. After all, you'd been friends long enough to not even think twice to take a second glance. But as you saw him nearly fuming now, you realized you had miscalculated your emotional proximity.

"Sorry man," Rafe teased before your arm was taken by Topper as he led you to the side of his estate. Ivy lined the corner of the house just enough to conceal you as he pushed you to the paneling making up its exterior.

"Top-" You were completely taken back by the rush made of his lips to yours. The pressure of his body constricted any attempt to breathe, bit that it was even possible by the way he pinned you beneath him. Once you reciprocated his kiss, he moved his hands from the rest beside his house to your hips, and higher still. He continued that climb until they fisted your loose beach waves constructed for this very event. The party.

"Someone could see us-"

"I hope so. Because I've wanted this so fucking long and it's about time I did something about it, don't you think?" You bit your bottom lip, slowly nodding as he turned you away from him.

"I am going to make it crystal fucking clear that you only need me." As your hand came behind you to try and wrap around his neck as a rest, he forced it stationary to the wall before you.

"You've had your fun getting everyone's attention. But now you have all mine. And youre gonna listen like a good girl unless you wanna be fucked like a bad one." You wiggled against him, instigating disobedience as he scoffed. A harsh grip through your hair bent you back to face him. His lips just teased your own as you were kept here, unable to kiss him.

"But first…you're gonna make it clear that you want me." He ran his dominant hand to your breast.

"Mmm…" He groaned as you moaned to his fondling. Reaching beneath your suit and to your nipple, he twisted the pebble hardened by him.

"You like this, hmm? Just imagine what these fingers are gonna do inside of you…"

"Please…" You pleaded. The visions you'd erected when alone had already been forgotten in contrast to this.

"I've always wanted to know what you sounded like when you came. And I intend to find out…just not yet." He withdrew his touch and turned you to him again.

"You sure you want this? Because once you come over my cock or on my face…even my fingers, it means you're mine."

"Yes, Topper…please…" He breathed out a short exhale of relief before sliding his hand over your stomach and into your shorts.

"Fuck…you this wet already?"

"I could've come just by you doing that to my chest…"

"You've gotta learn some self control because you're gonna be spent before I even fuck you…I wanna touch you everywhere I've always wanted…" His hand came to your jaw as you were forced to face him once more.

"Because you're mine and I'm just taking stock in what's mine " You bobbed your head in agreement as his fingers slipped inside of your panties. Your slick welcomed him, offering an ease path between your nether lips as he smirked in approval.

"You want it, don't you baby? You're so fucking soaked for me…"

"Dripping…" You corrected as his brows raised.

"And sweet…" He added once neglecting your core and sucking you off of his fingertips.

"Please, Topper." He tightened his grip to the back of your neck.

"I think we need to establish that all of this is for me…" He imprinted a firm slap to your ass.

"I think we need to make sure," His middle finger began to run around your opening, the thick digit bending precisely to your g-spot after only a moment's analysis.

"Topper!"

"Shit, you're already so close…"

"I've wanted you to touch me like this for so long…"

"I can tell. You're wet like a fucking virgin. And I know very well you're not because we sat for hours talking about how he didn't know how to touch you-"

Your moaning interrupted him as he would add a second finger.

"But I do, don't I?"

"Yes! Oh my god, yes!"

"Better than that pogue?"

"Better than anyone!"

"That's it baby, tell em for me…tell them how good my fingers feel…how badly you wanna ride them until you come…unless you don't want to-"

"No! I do! Please, Top! Fuuuuck!" You rode into his hand as he nodded.

"Oh God, you sound so good for me…you want it real bad…"

"I need it! I'm so close! Too, I'm gonna come!"

"Yes…you are…" He groaned into your ear as your eyes pulled into a roll. The force of an orgasm rushing towards you sent your body to shiver between his arms.

"But not yet." Before you could berate him, you were turned to face him again. His fingers pulled down the straps to your top, revealing your breasts entirely to him. His lips touched every inch of skin made newly visible to him as you voiced your approval in a combination of his name and your moans.

"I need you to touch me…I've never been this hard in my entire life…"

Your hand was quick to appease him but he took hold of your wrist.

"With your throat. All the way in the very back. Show me you’re willing to be uncomfortable for me…willing to cry…" Your eyes shot to the direction of the party set just beyond the corner.

"If they haven't heard you by now, babe, I think you're okay…besides, my cock's about to make you real quiet…." He saw the hesitance still spread over your expression.

"Are you not mine anymore?"

"I am!"

"Then show me how well you take my cock behind that pretty smile…that way I know how much you can take." You offered a narrowing of a vixen's stare before teasing his lips.

"I can take all of you." You believed you'd gotten the last word, a smile of victory wide across your face. A sudden pull of your hair corrected this.

"Prove it." You accepted the challenge by taking him to your reservation. The natural retching of your body was quickly denied by your furthering endeavors as he nodded.

The grip on the back of your head made you mobile to him, he pulled you to rest at the wall as he bowed over you.

"Fuck…you're so good…just like that ..shit…" He growled in sporadic breaths as he was reaching his orgasmic pinnacle embarrassingly swiftly. One more swipe of your tongue and you would be forced to swallow him. Because of that, he stopped you. Just long enough to make you look up at him.

"Look at me." He demanded as he caught the luminescence of the tears on your cheeks only enhancing your beauty.

"Stand up."

"But I'm not done." You began to lean to his cock again, only able to wrap your hand around his shaft before he lifted you effortlessly over him.

"My turn." He explained before sinking you down onto him. Years of sexual tension and thorough foreplay would subject you both to this unwavering pleasure. Slack jaws mirroring each other as he groaned to how you clenched around him.

"If you're quiet for even a second after I start fucking you, you'll finishing me off while doing so with your fingers…all while everyone wishes they were us…"

"Topper!"

"Scream for me, baby…God knows you want to." Your body arched immediately to the depth he took inside of you. Even if you wished to be silent, you simply couldn't. His hands to your breasts or ass, eating into your skin, had been too primal. The way he breathed against your perspiring but trembling figure was too erotic. And the way he guided you to rise and crash over his aching cock brought the same pleasure to you that granted him.

"Topper! I'm gonna come! I'm gonna fucking come!"

"For me?" He chuckled.

"Yes! For you!" You cried.

"Who?"

"TOPPER!!!!" You expelled yourself over him. His cock and thighs, drenched by you.

"Holy shit…"

"I'm sorry…your shorts-" he took his hand to your face.

"Look better stained with your cum…" You bit your bottom lip as he continued into you.

"Just a bit more, baby. I know you're sensitive…but your taking me so fucking well…shit! I'm not gonna last!"

"Come for me! Please!" Your nails embedded into his shoulders before you felt him tense and release himself inside of you. You were perfect for him. Breathless. Spent. His. The only three things he set out to achieve once pulling you away.

"Now go back to Rafe and show him you're mine." As he set you back to your feet, you couldn't hide your grin.

"What?"

"You know I'm not interested in Rafe, right?"

"I hope not now."

"I only ever wanted your attention, Top."

"Well you've got it. All of it."

TAGLIST: @hopebaker @iovdrew @penny4yourthoughts @magnificantmermaid @pickingviolets @lovedetlost @trikigirl271 @maybankslover @slut4starkey @slvtherinseeker @obxiskewl @bluesongbird @slut-era @ailee-celeste @camilynn @sweetestdesire @onmykneesforrafe @drews1love @phildunphyisadilf

MASTERLIST

TOPPER THORNTON MASTERLIST

#topper thornton x reader #topper thornton smut #topper thornton fanfiction #topperthornton #topper thornton #outerbanks #obx #outer banks #outer banks smut #obx fanfiction #obxsmut #outerbanks smut #outer banks fanfiction #austin north

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teacupcollector · 2 years

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Well-Being V. Belief (Bjorn Ironside x Reader)

Warning: Abuse of many forms and Self-Harm

A/N: Everyone is over the age of 18

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

A/N: I don’t know if I will make this a series, I made this for comfort of myself so I apologize if this upsets anyone.

I am not in this situation anymore

If you or anyone you know is experiencing something like this remember it is not weak to ask for help Abuse Hotline: 800-799-7233 Suicide Hotline: 988 Summary: Reaching out for help is not a bad thing and Bjorn is trying to help you understand that, but when rumors seep into the dark corners of his mind he says things he regrets, and now he only hopes it is not to late.

Another victory has fallen over Kattegat as both warriors and shield maidens alike depart from their boats. Many people rejoice at the reunion of their loved ones. Some who are not as fortunate cry out at their loss of lovers, friends, mothers, and fathers. You were hoping you were the “unfortunate” one, but you are disappointed when you see your father walking down the dock and toward you. Your eyes cast down as a feeling of dread enters your body. The next thing you know you feel two firm hands on your sides and you let out a shriek. You turn your head to the left to see a laughing blond.

“Bjorn!” You exclaim before glancing in your fathers direction only for him to stalk away.

“I was disappointed that I didn’t meet your eyes once we were ashore. I had to get your attention some how!” He says with a smile.

“My name would have been just fine Ironside.” Bjorn only chuckles.

“Has the God Bragi taken ahold of you and deem you a poet? You just rhymed” You roll your eyes if annoyance.

“What was your raid like?” You ask trying to change this idiotic subject.

Bjorn turns to face the direction of the mead hall and wraps an arm around your shoulder while turning you as well.

“Let me tell you! It was fantasti-” You cut him off by removing yourself from under his arm.

“You smell and need a ba-” Suddenly you are picked up bridal style.

“A bath you say!” He exclaims as he starts a light jog toward the beach.

“Bjorn! Don’t you dare! I hate it when you do thi-” The splash of water on your bottom is quickly turned into your entire body as Bjorn goes to about knee deep and plops down.

You let out another shriek as the cold waters of the fjord seep into your bones. You look up to see Bjorn belly laughing as he holds you close to him.

“This will never get old.” He says with a smile as you both sit.

He begins to let go but you quickly grip on to him, hoping that he assumes it is under the guise of not wanting to seep deeper into the water.

“Can we... Can we stay like this for a moment longer?” You ask tucking your head into his shoulder.

“Of course...” He says with a slight smile before moving the arm that was under your legs to around your waist tugging you impossibly close to him always keeping his hands in the most respectful places.

You and Bjorn had many moments like this. You hope that it doesn’t make him uncomfortable in any way because these moments were the only times you really felt truly safe.

After a minute or so Bjorn speaks up. “Do I still smell?”

“Hold on...” You say before pressing your nose to the side of his face. You take in a deep sniff near his ear which makes him duck out of the way to avoid the sound. “Yeah you still smell like a gutted fish!”

“A gutted fish! That’s a new one.” He says with a laugh as he plops you in the water.

“Hey!” You shout as you feel the pebbles of the fjord dig into your bottom.

You stands up quickly and flick his forehead.

“Hey!” He says rubbing his forehead as he stands up. “Why must you be so mean to me all the time?” He asks with a pout.

“Don’t be a baby. Now we need to get into dry clothes before freeze to death.” You say as you pick up your skirt and sludging your way out of the water.

Bjorn follows behind toward your house. “You don’t have to walk me home...” You say.

“I know but I want to.” He says and you sigh. “I will meet you in the hall Bjorn.” You say sternly and you see his face drop slightly.

He nods his head. “Yes of course. I’ll see you there.” He then turns toward the direction of his lodging and walks away.

The feast in the mead hall was as great as all the others. Meats of all sorts, along with veggies of all kinds that were available. Everyone was singing and dancing as the King Ragnar Lothbrok and his family sit taller then all else. As of right now you are sitting by the fire trying your best to keep your head down in hope to not be noticed by your father, but that was short lived. You feel him sit next to you and wrap an arm around you. He seems to be saying something but all you can do is focus on not making any noise as to not cause any disturbance to the feast in front of you. You feel his arm move away from your shoulders as he turns to speak to someone. You feel his hand begin to grip your thigh. You go to stand up and move away but his grip is strong and keeps you in place.

Bjorn looks on into the crowd hoping to see your eyes searching for him as well. The sight that he sees however upsets him. Your head is down and you are shaking, he looks into your lap to see the man beside you having his hand on your thigh. He looks to your clasped hands to see that your knuckles are turning white. By your body language he can tell that you are not a willing participant.

He is about to approach when a hand lands itself on his shoulder. He looks to the right of him to see his uncle Rollo. Rollo’s eyes follow the last place Bjorn was looking to.

“Her relationship with her father is normal at this point. They can’t seem to take their hands off each other.” Rollo says.

“Can you not see that she is not a willing participant? She needs help.” He says about to walk over only for the grip on his shoulder to stop him from moving further.

“It is normal Bjorn. You hear the rumors around those two, you shouldn’t delude yourself in her presence no matter how much you like her.”

Bjorn uses his right hand to grip his uncles shirt and press him against one of the wooden posts.

“You will not speak to her in such ways!” He hisses pressing his full arm into Rollos chest.

“I am just trying to avoid you from getting hurt Bjorn...” He says as he shoves Bjorns arm away. “I am looking out for you.” He says as we walks away.

Bjorn rolls his eyes. Yes he is aware of the rumors surrounding you but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to be your friend. He walks over to the table you sit at to which he meets your fathers eye. You father removes himself from you and turns back to his conversation.

You look up to see Bjorn and let out a sigh of relief as the hand on your thigh leaves you. You stand up to face Bjorn with a strained smile.

“Let us leave.” Bjorn says as he places a ginger hand on your back, in between your shoulder blades.

You allow him to guide you out as you feel many pairs of eyes on you.

You and Bjorn walk throughout Kattegat until you are at the docks.

“Are you okay?” Bjorn asks turning you toward him.

You only nod and you hear him sigh and open his arms. You enter his embrace and hide your face in his chest. You feel his head rest against yours as he tightens his hold on you. You had expressed to him before that compression aids you in lessoning your panic.

“You know you can talk to me about anything right?” He asks.

You nod but stay silent.

You feel Bjorn inhale as if he wants to say something but stays quiet.

“I’m sorry if I am a burden to you Bjorn. I bet you would much rather be in the hall enjoying food and drink.”

Bjorn lets go of you and take your head in his hands to which you flinch for a moment. Bjorn’s eyes fill with sorrow but continues his actions in saying.

“You have never been a burden to me. I enjoy your company more then anything else.” He says looking into your eyes.

You give a small smile and nod in thanks. You feel his thumbs caress the apples of your cheeks as he begins to lean in. You pull away from him however. This causes Bjorn to frown, but he lets go of you for your own comfort.

“I must be getting home...” You say looking down.

“Of course would you like m-” “No thank you...” You say as you look up at him.

You quickly jog off the dock towards your home.

Bjorn is filled with sadness and confusion as he sees you run away. He turns to the water front and lean against one of the posts. He was sure you felt the same. He curses to himself as he looks into the starry sky. He decides to go see the ‘Seer’ to maybe get some clarity.

He approaches the Seers hut and walks inside.

“Son of Ragnar... Why are you here?” He asks

Bjorn sits down. “I have something to ask...” “I know, but your question has yet to leave your mouth. Hurry up boy!” The Seer snaps.

“Um... Does... Does Y/N love me? Are our feelings mutual?” He asks and the Seer pauses.

“Love is all around the both of you.” “So it is mutual?” He asks excited.

“Possibly... Something stands in the way... Pray to Freyja... She will help bring clarity... Now leave. It is late.” The Seer snaps as he holds his palm out.

Bjorn takes his hand and runs his tongue along his palm before standing up to leave.

The next day Bjorn decides to visit you in your home. You came to him in a dream which must have been Freyja answering his question. He approaches your home with much excitement, but pauses at the window. The sight he sees makes him scowl. Why would Freyja send him such a dream only to be confronted with this. He decides to wait outside and allow you to have your moments.

You sniffle as you remove yourself from the bed and adjust your clothing. You decide to get started with your daily chores and step out of the house with a pale to collect water.

“So the rumors are true...” You hear the sound of Bjorn’s voice to the right of you.

“W-What?” You ask shakily.

“You play with my feelings all the time yet you decide to whore yourself with your own father.” You drop your pale.

“Y-You don’t know what you speak of!” You say as you march up to him.

You grab his hands in yours digging your nails into his hands to keep him still.

“You do-”

“I saw you allow him to kiss along your neck as his hands lay on your breasts!” Bjorn exclaims causing eyes to look in your direction.

“Bjorn please... You must understand!” You say desperately but he rips his hands out of your grasp.

“I should have listened to my Uncle. Your relationship is strange but you clearly seem to enjoy it! You like that h-” You cut him off with a slap before reach to his belt and snatching his knife and point it at him. He raises his hands in surrender as his eyes widen.

“Don’t speak of things you don’t know!” You shout as you back away a few steps before turning to run.

Bjorn is again filled with hurt and sadness. He can’t decide if his eyes were deceiving him. He was confused, why would he say words like that to you? Yes he was upset about the lack of mutual affection, and yes he had heard the rumors but has always waited for you to say something. Was he wrong? Did you truly not enjoy it? Did he just allow you to be violated like that? He was right outside where he could have helped you, but instead he sat as a bystander like everyone else casting judgment on a situation he knew nothing about. He wanted to burst into your house and gut your father from groin to armpit. He decides against it and goes to his father for advice.

As he walks into the hall he sees his father behind the leather curtain in the very back holding one of his children.

“Father?” He asks and Ragnar turns to him and smiles. “Come in my son.” He says as he opens the curtain for him.

“Why the sad face?” He asks with a smirk.

“Its about Y/N...” “I thought so. Tell me son.”

“I think I did something terrible...” Ragnar’s face drops for a moment. He turns to the Thralls and motions for them to take his children. “Take them for a walk.” He mumbles to them before guiding his son toward one of the chairs inside his bedroom.

“Son what did you do?” He asks concerned.

“I allowed her to be assaulted... I stood by and waited for it to be over. I heard her cry, but I was under the impression she enjoyed it...” Bjorn’s eyes begin to fill with tears.

Ragnars face morphs into one of anger, but stays silent.

“I allowed other peoples opinions of her enter my head. I called her a whore. I told her she enjoyed it. The reaction she gave showed the opposite. I feel terrible. I-” Ragnar cuts him off with a quick smack to the side of his head.

“You are truly an ignorant boy!” He growls. “Letting jealousy and belief come first over someone’s well-being is selfish!” He exclaims which causes Bjorn to finally let his tears fall.

“What happened afterwards!” Ragnar demands.

“She slapped me before grabbing my knife and running away.” Ragnar runs his hand fall over his face.

“She is very unstable right now. You must find her before she does something you both may regret.”

“But her fathe-” “I will deal with him now you must find her quickly.” Bjorn nods before standing up and rushing out of the hall to find you.

You had been running for a long while. Your shoes have been torn off a mile or so ago. Your feet are bleeding and sore. Your hand is cramping from clutching onto the handle of Bjorn’s knife so long. Finally you see a clearing and slow down to a full stop. The sunlight shines through the canopy as dots of gold hit the floor. You decide to sit in the center of it. You look down at the knife in your hand and twist it in your palm. You take a deep breath as you place the blade against the inside of your left wrist.

“Odin... Odin I hope you can hear me. I wish to give my life to you, Though I may not ever enter Valhalla, I hope you take my death as a worthy sacrifice... And I hope that one day B-Bjorn forgives me... I know I am at fault for all of this... I-”

“it isn’t your fault!” You hear a voice shout.

You turn around to see Bjorn entering the clearing.

“It isn’t your fau-” “It is!” You cut him off. “I-I allowed it to happen!”

“You didn’t! A father should never do that to their children. Yo-”

“But you agree with everyone else! You believe the rumors!” You cry as tears fall down your cheeks.

“I do-”

“You called me a whore! Like I had a choice for what I was going through!” You sob. “I didn’t... I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!” You lament as you press the knife into your wrist.

“DON’T!” Bjorn shouts. “Don’t do it please! You can’t!” He says as he starts rushing toward you but you hold your wrist up to show him that you are serious.

“I am telling you not to do this! You wil-” “There is no justice for me!” You shout.

“No one will believe me! My father is a great warrior they wouldn’t waste it on me!

“Y-You agreed with them... The only person in the entirety of Midgard I felt safe with...”

“My love please put the knife down!” Bjorn pleads.

“This knife is the only thing I have left of you! And it brings me comfort that you are here...” You say with a sniffle as you finally do what you intended.

“NO!” Bjorn immediately rushes to you as you decide to collapse to the ground. He takes off his shirt and begins to rip it into pieces. He wraps them around your wrists and holds pressure on them causing you to cry out.

“No, NO, keep those eyes open!” Bjorn shouts.

“I love you! You cannot leave me now!” He continues to beg.

Once he has them tightly faceted on your wrist he picks you up.

“I am going to get you to Floki! Helga should be home. She will help!” He shouts hoping you can hear him. He quickly takes off in the direction of Floki’s home.

A/N: If anyone wants a part two I might make one. Like I said this was for comfort for myself, so I wrote until I felt like I couldn’t anymore.

#vikings #tv show vikings #vikings floki #vikings x reader #bjorn ironside #bjorn ironside x reader #ragnar lothbrok #rollo lothbrok #angst #major angst #x reader #x sexually abused reader #x selfharm reader #future hurt/comfort #angst with a hopeful ending

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feverinfeveroutfic · 5 months

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kinktober all year, 2024

i’m so sorry, but-

it had to be done.

after the fiasco of kinktober 2023, and i had to regroup with blood and wine, i am continuing to lick my wounds from the humiliation. i mean, a genuinely kinky person was all around ignored during a kink-fest, like nothing about that makes any sense whatsoever. worse, i don’t even know why i was ignored; i mean, i have my theories but they’re all hard to confirm. i really don't understand why i was given such a cold shoulder this year when i dropped the first one shot.

it’s supposed to be a community and yet, i saw right away that it isn’t. “don’t ‘yuck’ someone’s ‘yum’” feels like a naïve joke at this point because all i could think leading up to the 18th when i pulled the plug was “gee, sorry i’m not good and sexy enough for you guys. i’m terribly sorry that this is torturous for you, there's literally nothing i can do about it so i'll see myself out before this is done so you don't have to be exposed to my bullshit for a while.”

god, my sexuality is just… it’s too much. it’s way too much and i feel trapped inside of it. i'm helpless to rid of it even as i genuinely hate it so much. i genuinely wish i didn't have a sexuality because it's useless. no one likes it or wants to know about it. i’m way too much. i'm too kinky and yet i'm not sexual enough. all dressed up with nowhere to go.

and yet, i can’t let them win. these totally unsexy, borderline gross, borderline sexist, pregnancy-loving scoundrels who inexplicably dominated this year couldn’t write a compelling story if it saved the world; they cannot continue to act like they're the only ones who can do it. there has to be a place for me; there just has to be. i may hate my sexuality more than anything and find it ugly and disgusting and i'm pretty sure it's the last thing you'll ever see before you die, but it’s like the inevitability of death: you can’t escape it. plus, after the last couple of months, i don’t really need some hundreds of people to kiss my ass to feel like the queen of kinktober: i don’t need fandom, and i don’t think i ever have needed it, either.

so, i give you kinktober all year.

now, just to make it easier on myself—mainly because i honestly have no clue how 2024 will play out (it could be the worst year of my life for all i know, especially if this year was anything to go by), but also because i have wips to write—these will be sent out on a weekly basis starting new year's day, giving us a grand total of 52 one shots. aside from the first one, i’ll keep the prompts a surprise just to keep my very personal preferences to myself, but i will give away titles, though. i'll also keep the participants under wraps until i post them for the same reason (you know alex will be in like... one or two, though).

yes, this is going on ao3 because i’ve been getting really, really tired of tumblr and really all social media lately. no, i don’t care if you join me or not because it’s a holistic thing that’s really just meant for myself; you can if you want, though. “i’m not like them, but i can pretend.”

“the wandering jew” (this one, i've already shared; it's my water kink)

“django tango”

“heroin”

“five minutes”

“corduroy”

“poison ivy”

“chillblains”

“he’s gotta have it”

“bats in the attic”

“midnight rambler”

“pebble beach”

“chiaroscuro”

“this kiss”

“disco volante”

“seashells”

“deer in the headlights”

“scarlet”

“walk with me”

“have a cigar”

“poison whiskey”

“i think i lost my headache”

“touch too much”

“pearly dew drops”

“still crazy after all these years”

“enjoy every sandwich”

“let’s talk about cars”

“twin flames”

“as serious as a heart attack”

“trial by fire”

“he didn’t”

“flannel”

“side street”

“be with me”

“heart and lungs”

“dodge the bambula”/“jackin’ it in san diego"

“the razor’s edge”

“she likes surprises”

“black coral”

“black nightshade”

“seduce and destroy”

“pick a number”

“all that glitters”

“…like clockwork”

“sabra cadabra”

“world of brass”

“every night i burn”

“one of these nights”

“aquamarine”

“the beast”

“dream with me”

“dionysus”

“time has come today”

#kinktober #kinktober masterlist #kinktober prompts #kinktober all year #testament #testament band #anthrax #anthrax band #anthrax fanfic #testament fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #writing #kink tag #kink tumblr #kink content #text

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amaranthinecanicular · 1 year

Text

calypso

The shore is rocky. Sapnap climbs and claws until the sea is behind him, and the rough stone beneath his hands turns to sand and sharp beach grass. Coughs up the bowl of his stomach, all sea water.

His arms are still steaming. When it clears, he stares down at volcanic rock in the jagged shape of a palm and five fingers. He doesn’t recognize his own hands.

Far above him, a lighthouse looms. He waits for the keeper to notice him. He waits for the lighthouse to flash and spin. He waits for anything.

He waits.

(Calypso: alone on his island.)

[my pinch hit gift to bee @edgarallanpoestan for the @mcytblrholidayexchange! i’ve been wanting to write this for so long, so thank you for letting me. and i am SO sorry it is a few days late, i got way too into it and this whole thing got. SO away from me]

[a gentle karlnapity horror, for the retelling of a gentle myth. alternatively read on ao3.]

chapter one.

He fights his way out of the water, legs hissing, then crackling. The waves wrench him back. He catches himself on his hands, submerged up to the elbow, and chokes on the rush of steam.

The shore is rocky. He climbs and claws until the sea is behind him, and the rough stone beneath his hands turns to sand and sharp beachgrass. Coughs up the bowl of his stomach, all sea water.

His arms are still steaming. When it clears, he stares down at volcanic rock in the jagged shape of a palm and five fingers. He doesn’t recognize his own hands.

Far above him, a lighthouse looms. He waits for the keeper to notice him. He waits for the lighthouse to flash and spin. He waits for anything.

He waits.

It’s a small island, with one lighthouse and one cottage and nothing else. About a mile long, or so Sapnap estimates, by the time it takes him to walk the length of it (twenty minutes). Three sides drop sharply into broken-teeth black rock. The last slopes into the sea more gently, like someone took a thumb to the end of the island and smeared it into the water. There’s a tiny beach on that side, more pebbled than sandy, dotted with scrubby tufts of beachgrass, and the rusted, long-drowned remains of traintracks that trail out of the water like a tongue.

The cottage is derelict, and gives him the impression of an old man’s rugged face, busted up and perpetually snarling from a life of unforgiving seas and barfights. Windows are smashed, and the door hangs wrong in its frame. The roof sags in like a furled brow.

The lighthouse is too sturdy for breakdown, so instead it just looms, watchful and dark.

It’s an unfriendly place. He’s not surprised it’s been abandoned. The sky is gray like iron and the ocean dark like wine, and the climate, already cool, turns lashing and frigid in the sea spray. It’s nothing like the oppressive heat and humidity of Sapnap’s childhood, but the rugged inhospitality is familiar, and welcome. He thrives in a challenge.

It’s hard to believe, but the cottage might be uglier on the inside than the outside. It’s just one drab rectangular room, with a coal-burning stove, a cluster of cabinets, and a small wooden table packed in on one side, and a soggy couch cramped up around a fireplace on the other. The fireplace might be cool if it weren’t dripping rainwater, which has clearly spent years soaking into the rug laid out in front of it. He can feel and hear the whistle of at least four different drafts. The ceiling droops and the floor warps and sags in places, concerningly soft. There’s a door set into the kitchen-side of the room that leads to a bedroom, equally sodden. The only other door leads to a rickety wooden path which itself leads to an outhouse, stood on stilts and drunkenly tilted. It is absolutely the most depressing thing about this whole island.

He steps back inside the cottage. Looks around. Cracks his neck.

“Fuck it,” he says, to no one. “Let’s go.”

His dad was always trying to instill him with good habits. Productive directions to channel his energy. Most of them were boring, so most of them didn’t take, but he’s retained bits and pieces. Cleaning, tidying, and organizing were examples of this: a practical life skill, his father said, like he was trying to sell him something, and a fun hobby!

Some of it’s easy. He may not be a carpenter, but he’s handy—fixing the flue and the set of the door in its frame are simple affairs. He can beat out the cushions and fabrics, sweep away the dust and muck, open what windows can be opened and air out the place properly. The damp is burrowed into the walls and the floorboards like a cancer. The scent of rot. Taking care of the bad wood itself is going to be intensive, but the solution to the musty stench of decay is fairly straightforward. Just kind of tedious.

A fun fact from his father: with enough controlled heat, you could burn almost anything clean. You could boil away impurities. You could kill viruses and spores. You could preserve wood against the elements—wind, water, rot, insects, even fire. Isn’t that cool?

I guess, Sapnap had said, and then dashed outside to burn some shit under the guise of “cleaning.”

Sapnap cramps himself into the newly non-dripping fireplace and cranks up the heat. Up and up and up until the air shivers and his body is glowing and his arms and legs crackle with red veins of magma. He’s careful not to burn the place down. Soon enough it’s more of an oven than a cottage, rolling with the kind of heat that would cook human flesh. He holds that for about three hours, folded like an accordion and twiddling his thumbs. When he pulls himself from the fireplace, all his joints cracking, the place smells nothing like mold and entirely like charring. He imagines anyone else would complain, and tells himself that’s another reason why it’s good that he’s alone.

And hey. No one was around to see him shoved embarrassingly into the fireplace. That’s good too.

Something he didn’t expect: there’s a cellar.

He finds it when he peels back the unsalvageable rug in front of the fireplace, beneath which lies a square hatch with rusted hinges. It opens onto a ladder that dips down into blackness. The smell billowing up at him is dusty, but not dank, and descending into it is like dipping down into a well of ink, or a drum of tar. Or a tomb.

He’s on the ladder for longer than he expects. He keeps waiting for his foot to meet solid ground, and keeps waiting, and keeps waiting, and suddenly the ground is there rushing up to meet him, a jarring surprise. The storm up above is muffled and far away. He sets both feet down and leaves one hand cautiously on the ladder, peering around with squinted eyes, but it’s no use. It’s dark and cool and he can’t see a thing. He imagines, briefly, an unseen hand grabbing his ankle. He imagines a hand grabbing for his ankle and passing through it, because suddenly it feels like he doesn’t have a body. Like he doesn’t exist at all.

He scoffs, and breathes a flame to life in his palm. Shadows jump back from him to reveal stone floors and empty shelves. No food, obviously. A big barrel of salt. A smaller barrel of what might have once been coffee grounds. A drum of coal. Some hurricane lanterns, without oil. Two canning jars half-filled with cloudy, indeterminate liquid. A coil of rope and a handful of blunt, waxy candle stubs, maybe half a day’s worth of burning left between them. Blanketing everything is a layer of dust so thick it eats sound, consumes and absorbs it. It gets under his skin, a little. He tries to stomp his way through the room, rattling and rustling with more force than he might have otherwise, coughing and sneezing, but nothing seems to penetrate the silence. It feels a little like he’s burning up all the air in the room. The flame curls in against his fingers, slowly suffocating against the weight of the dark.

Stupid. He rolls his eyes and shakes it off. The little golden light brightens under his coaxing. On the other side of the room there’s a cistern with pipes snaking up and out, likely collecting rainwater and lead poisoning that he’ll definitely not be drinking. And, of all things, a loom.

It’s an old school wooden thing, enormous and skeletal. He only recognizes the frame from his father’s lessons as a child. He has no idea how someone got it down here, or why. The hatch isn’t that big. And weaving doesn’t seem imperative to lighthouse keeping.

He runs his fingers over the well-preserved wood. It looks like a piano stripped down to bones.

“People need hobbies, I guess,” he mutters.

He doesn’t trust the cistern for shit, but there’s more than enough dinged up pots to sit outside and collect rain, which never seems to end. Water taken care of. Food next.

Farming is out—there is no workable soil on the island, only sand and stone and salt. There don’t seem to be any animals burrowed in secret, either, which he knows because he spent a few hours sniffing for them like a bloodhound. No birds, which seems unlikely, though he’s not sure how he’d catch one anyway. Maybe this is why the previous lighthousekeeper abandoned ship: they stopped getting food from the outside, and couldn’t hack providing for themself. If Sapnap were any less stubborn, he might come to the same conclusion. Luckily he is bullheaded as shit.

There’s shellfish in the sand, and clinging to the black rock. They’re easy to miss if you’re not looking. When he clambers down the craggy sides of the island to harvest them, his legs nearly disappear, the gradient of flesh to volcanic rock just below his knees vanishing against the ground like some sort of partial camouflage. Which, as far as camouflage goes, is completely useless, and luckily not needed for hunting molluscs. They’re ugly things, oblong and irregularly contoured, with pearly silver insides. Oysters, he thinks, while the ones in the sand are paler and broader. Scallops, maybe? Clams? He doesn’t know or care. What he cares about is how annoying it is to pry the oysters up from the rock. He thought it would be a simple twist and pull. It isn’t, because why would it be easy? Fuck him is why.

“Come on,” he grunts, drenched and scrabbling at the cluster of shiny black shells, “come on, you little bastards, come oh shit son of a bitch—”

He slips into the water no less than three times before he figures out that it’s less about pulling than it is about chiseling and chipping. Luckily his new hands are perfect for that. He probably takes more satisfaction than he should from cracking them open and slurping them down.

But better than clams and better than son of a bitch oysters: there’s fish. Small, at most four pounds but usually less. He finds that when the weather is miserable, but not so miserable that the sea bashes him against the shore, he can stand in the shallows and wait for the fish to come to him. Hunting is familiar, and patience is necessary. Eventually they swim back, weaving between his legs, only to be caught on the sharp spears of his fingers.

He’s never had much sympathy for animals. He should have; there’s no real reason he shouldn’t. His father had a little white hellhound that Sapnap grew up with, and he loved it, like all kids love their childhood pets. He was deeply attached to a goldfish once. But when it comes down to it, they’re just animals. If you’re starving you butcher it. If it’s rabid you put it down. A dog is just a dog.

With his basic survival bases covered, he develops a routine. He likes routine.

Wake up in the small hours, still dark. Light a lamp or a candle. Eat the last of yesterday’s fish. Warm up with some swordwork—he doesn’t have a sword, obviously, but the iron poker for the fire is basically useless when he’s got fireproof hands, so he melts it down and beats it into a blade, however crude. By the time he hikes down to the water to hunt for the rest of the day’s meals, dawn is dripping through the cloud cover. Molluscs when the weather is at its worst; fish when the weather is awful but bearable. That usually kills three or four hours, and then at least two more while he guts, cleans, salts and stores the catch. Crisp one up for lunch. Eat in silence. Break the silence by focusing on the storm and the sound of his chewing.

Spend an hour and a half patrolling the perimeter of the island. He doesn’t really think he’s going to find someone hiding among the rocks, no matter the shadows he sees out of the corners of his eyes, but things wash up on the shore sometimes. Seaglass. Bottle caps. Bits of driftwood, weathered and sanded. He stores the things he thinks he can use later in the cellar. The rest he either skips on the water or burns for fun.

Devote a few hours to whatever house project he’s working on at the time. Thatching the beaten roof with beachgrass. Replacing rotted floorboards with wood from one of the empty shelves in the cellar. Scrubbing down the horrible goddamn outhouse.

A third meal in silence. Lie awake in bed afterward, in the dark, listening to the wind shriek. Try not to let the shadows sink into the grooves of his skull. Try not to think. Try not to remember.

Clasp one hand to the other until he can forget that it’s his own. Let this fantasy soothe him. Sleep. Don’t dream.

Wake up in the small hours, still dark. Repeat.

Sometimes the wind sounds like moaning. Sometimes it sounds like screaming. Sometimes he’s sure it’s a person, and he roves around in the dark like a blind, sick dog, hunting for someone to fight or to rescue.

Most of the time it just sounds like wind.

Sapnap’s never been an overly anal person. Like, he’s neat enough—when things get too messy he cleans. But he’s comfortable in a certain level of chaos. Things feel warmer, more lived in that way. Still, he’s diligent about keeping up the cottage. It’s the only way to keep rot from creeping in and breaking everything down further. He beats out the sheets and cushions every week, dries up the damp that’s settled in the corners every day. He washes himself in the ocean with a scraping stone, and tumble dries his clothes between his hands. Sand and muck are regularly dragged into the cottage so he regularly sweeps them out. He doesn’t let dishes pile. It’s all a little more sterile than he’d prefer, but he’s proud of it.

He has this vague idea of writing letters to friends and family and inviting them to a house warming party. Which is ridiculous. He doesn’t intend to stay here.

But there’s an old lighthouse keeper’s journal that he could use for invitations. He imagines rolling them up into green glass bottles, which he doesn’t have because none have washed onto the beach, and chucking them into the sea, inexplicably arriving at the correct locations. He imagines sending one to his dad, who doesn’t live on the water. He imagines sending one to George, and setting up a spot for him to crash on the couch, as though George wouldn’t immediately claim the bed and kick Sapnap out into the living room. As though George would ever step out of his house to visit him. He imagines sending them to others, too, but he can’t quite picture their faces.

He keeps his room especially tidy in the event of a surprise visit from his father. Somehow it seems plausible that he might just show up on the doorstep, glass bottle invitation or no, with a basket of muffins balanced in the crook of his elbow. He was all about dropping in unannounced, before—

Well. Before.

A week passes, or a month, before Sapnap realizes he could be keeping track of the days. He considers the idea for all of thirty seconds before he discards it. He’s here now and will keep being here until he’s not. Carving tallies into the wall like some idiot slowly losing his mind won’t make the days any fewer. And he’s a week or a month behind anyway. Too late to start now.

There’s one more part of his daily routine. After dinner and before bed, he climbs down into the cellar and he weaves.

Or, like. He tries to. At first he didn’t try at all; weaving never interested him. His dad taught him when he was young—another good habit he tried to pass down. Sapnap whined and tantrumed like he always did, but his dad, usually a pushover, had insisted. He adopted his schoolteacher tone and rattled off something about culture and tradition and blah blah blah. Sapnap didn’t get the point. He still doesn’t. Demonic fireweaving is a dead art; what was once vital and necessary is now obsolete, driven to extinction by canny flame resistant enchantments, sturdy textiles produced more efficiently by modern piglin means, and access to overworld trading.

It’s tradition, his father had said, meeting Sapnap’s childhood skepticism with infinite patience. There’s value in knowing where you came from, and the people who came before you.

It takes too long, Sapnap complained.

There’s value in taking the time to do something well, his father said. Sometimes you need to slow down. Clear your mind. Center yourself.

Is there value in being a smelly assbutt? Sapnap said.

Language, said his dad, but laughed through it.

He walked Sapnap through it step by step, weaving one panel and then another, and another. It took forever. This is boring, Sapnap said, and it was, but mostly he’d said it because he was annoyed, and he was a shit kid with no empathy who wanted to hurt his father.

I’m sorry you feel that way, Bad said. If he was hurt he only smiled.

I don’t think this is boring. I think there’s value in spending this time with you.

Eventually they had several white rectangles of different sizes that Sapnap didn’t know what to do with. Then his dad stitched them together and like magic, he had a shirt. Light, soft, flame resistant. And when Sapnap clutched it to his chest and grumbled that weaving was still pointless, Bad only said, I don’t think it is. Now you have something to keep you warm when you visit your friends in the overworld, and I got to make something for my favorite little panda.

Later, at Sapnap’s request, Bad embroidered an orange flame onto the front. That shirt lasted Sapnap years and years.

Now he sits in front of the loom, unsure how to begin. Or maybe it’s less that he’s unsure how to begin and more unsure how to begin. The strange, daunting hurdle of starting, no matter how prepared you are. The frame is both bigger and smaller than he remembers. After his father’s lessons sunk into his brain he promptly got to work never using them again. Honestly he’s surprised he remembers as much as he does now.

The first thing his father did was tease out the yarn. The warp, he called it.

He lights a flame in his palm, clean and steady gold. What you want, his dad said, is incomplete combustion, and an even line of smoke. He produced a flame that burned magnesium-bright, which in turn produced a delicate, dove-white ribbon that unfurled toward the ceiling. Sapnap had been so bored when his father showed him, had wanted nothing more than to go out and jump in a geyser to see how high he could fly. Now he can’t help but marvel at the grace of his memories. How swiftly and nimbly Bad drew out the thread and fed it into the loom, as though it was easy, second nature.

It isn’t easy, and it sure as hell isn’t second nature. It takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to get his flame to do what he wants, but eventually, a thin line of smoke threads up from the edges, soft and gray. He catches it between his fingers. He’s already sweating.

Too eager. The smoke dissipates half a dozen times against the jagged ends of his fingers before he figures to stop pinching it and start winding it around his thumb instead, looping it over and over until he’s got less of a thumb at all and more of a bobbin. He’s panting, the skin at his temples tight with concentration. His own fatigue shocks him, but not nearly as much as the satisfaction does.

Sapnap shuts his eyes. Breathes deep. Steadies his hands.

He starts dressing the loom. Slowly, clumsily, and with great care.

By the time he finishes he’s the kind of exhausted that aches in his teeth and spine and the roots of his eyeballs. He has no idea what time it is, or how long he’s been working. He shears the weaving free with one swipe of a finger—his dad showed him how to remove the warp from the loom properly, how to tie off the ends, but all that can come later. For now he lays it flat in his palm and appraises his work.

The first thing he’s ever woven is a misshapen gray square, the weft pulled too tight in some places and too loose in others. It looks like shit. It’s not even a pretty gray, just a muddy, sooty not-quite-black and not-quite-brown like dirty water or smog. He grimaces. His dad would be ashamed.

No he wouldn’t. His dad would have been proud. So proud he’d have clutched the tiny square to his heart, cried a little, and then framed it. That’s what his father would have done.

He makes a lot of coasters. That’s what he’s calling the gray squares. So, so many coasters. Does he need that many coasters? No. He doesn’t even need one. But it makes him feel better to think of them as something with a name and a purpose, and somehow, despite himself, he enjoys making them. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm. Throw the shuttle. Feed the cloth. Switch the treadle. Throw the shuttle. His head gets quiet, but in a way that still feels grounded in his body. Distant and present at the same time. It’s nice.

It’s nicer when he starts finding actual uses for his coasters. They make for excellent insulation. He lines the thatched roof with it, and the windows with whistling air. Plugs up every draft he can find. When one soaks through with rain, he replaces it with another. Soon there’s little handmade squares sticking out of every nook and crevice. That’s cool, he decides. He likes that.

Sometimes, when he’s down there weaving, he hears the creak of footsteps up above. He used to creep up the ladder, limbs coiled and ready, but no one was ever there.

He lets it go, now. Doesn’t let it interrupt his work. It’s just the old house settling. He tells himself that.

The days are growing shorter, he thinks, but just as often he thinks they’re growing longer, so really what the fuck does he know. The temperature stays the same, as does the muted palette of the landscape. The rain never feels summer warm, but it never feels like ice, either. It’s just cold. Cold, and dreary, and colorless, and wet. He misses the sun. He misses the searing embrace of moistureless heat. He misses a lot of things.

But it’s loud. That he appreciates, if nothing else. If it’s going to be wet and cold all the time, he’d prefer a full-chested, go-big-or-go-home storm over a half-hearted drizzle, even if the drizzle allows him to get more done. If a storm were something he could tune with a dial, then the perfect volume would be quiet enough to allow him to be productive, and loud enough to drown unwanted thoughts, unwanted silences.

He just wishes the wind wouldn’t scream.

He doesn’t dream anymore. He’s not sure why that is. The last dream he had, or remembers having, was one where he died and the meat of his body kept waiting to break down but it never did, because he was so alone that not even the bugs wanted him. He woke up laughing. It was the most pathetic dream he’s ever had.

He thinks he’d take that now. He thinks he’d take anything but the seamlessness between sleeping and waking. The complete lack of feeling or memory or thought, the passing by of the world around you, unhurried, impassive, without your knowledge. He may as well not exist for hours. He may as well fall out of the world the moment his eyes fall shut and then reappear, spontaneously, six hours later, when his eyes snap open. He has no way of knowing that’s not what happened. No proof he existed at all in that time, not a single sensation to hang the weight of his being on, not even in dreams.

His weaving gets better. He thinks it gets better. His stitching is nearer, and he can weave colors into his smoke if he controls his breathing and burns the right flame. His panels get bigger and bigger until he’s making—blankets, he thinks. He drapes one over the musty couch. Uses another as a comforter in bed. A third he lays in front of the fire to cover the ugly water stain from the last rug. The rest he folds up and stores in the cellar, on the shelves he didn’t repurpose.

There are some he keeps under his bed. One that he wove with burnt-copper hints of green that he keeps on the bottom of the pile. Another with speckles of red on the edges like embers. The next one he weaves to match it, but with pinprick stars of pale blue. He fucks up the next blue one, but the fact that it’s so ugly makes him laugh, so he keeps it.

The one after that is perfect. It’s downy soft and the color of ash, but tilting it this way and that under the right light reveals a subtle, iridescent sheen of navy, like the hidden colors on the wings of a bird. He loves that one. He uses it a lot, even when he doesn’t need to.

The one he’s working on now is probably his best. It’s also probably the most frustrating—he keeps undoing it and restarting, because it’s so hard to maintain the right colors. As he’s weaving he lets the shade shift at will—green to purple to yellow to turquoise—which is fine. That’s right, even, that’s good. The problem is that it’s so easy for the colors to get muddled. All the other blankets are smoky, but this one needs to be bright.

He’s pretty sure that when he leaves the island, he can sell some of this stuff. He’s sure there are pretentious assholes out there who would pay out the nose for classic demonic fireweaving. He could probably make a killing.

He won’t sell these ones, though. These are gifts. He runs his fingers over them and thinks about people he doesn’t know.

He climbs the lighthouse only once. He thinks he sees someone up there.

Gripping his poker-turned-short-sword, he ascends a rattling iron staircase, round and round and up and up, until he gets dizzy. There are landings and there are windows, but not enough of either. Great stretches of shadow separate each watery square of light, playing tricks when he looks up or down, giving the illusion of no beginning and no end. Like he’ll be climbing these stairs forever.

He makes it to the top uninterrupted, and no one is there. The lens of the beacon is smashed. Sapnap circles it slowly, looking out, seeing what there is to see.

Which is nothing, of course. No buoys or mainland. No ships coming or going. No fish jumping. No gulls crying. Just choppy black ocean, all the way around, vast enough to swallow him whole if he looks too long.

The lighthouse is quiet, and empty, and hollow. He doesn’t know what he expected.

He stands up there for an hour, waiting for nothing at all.

That night, he runs out of candles. He only realizes that because the storm bares its teeth after sunset, beating at the walls and stealing into the cottage through cracks too fine to stopper with coasters. The candle on the kitchen windowsill goes out while he’s in the middle of dinner. He looks up with the fish halfway to his mouth and frowns at the waxy puddle left on the sill.

There’s barely any wick left, so he scrapes the mess away and heads to the cellar to find a replacement. There isn’t one. He could bring up a hurricane lantern, but he already uses those to illuminate the bedroom and the outhouse and the cellar with his weaving—

The solution comes to him in his father’s voice. He climbs back to the surface and retrieves one of the canning jars from the cabinets, washed out in his first cleaning spree and yet to find a use. It doesn’t feel exactly accurate to say his dad taught him this. After the hours and hours he’d devoted to teaching Sapnap to weave, this seemed more of a neat offhand trick. Sapnap lights a flame, snips a bit of smoke from it, nips the end of his tongue, and then slicks the thread in blood. A demon’s soul weave is inflammable; a demon’s blood is combustible. Put them together, his dad said, plus a bit of soul flame, and voila: a perpetually burning wick, no wax or oil required. At most it might need another drop of blood every now and again. He called the wick an elegant bit of demoncraft, if a bit macabre.

Sapnap punches a hole through the lid of the canning jar and feeds the wick through. Snaps a flame to life over his finger and lights it. He’s pretty pleased with his work: the new candle is brighter and sturdier than the last, unlikely to blow out under a stray breath or draft. The wind kicks up from a moan to a screech as though to test this, and the candle doesn’t stutter once. Maybe he could sell these too, when he gets back. They’re way less effort than fireweaving, anyway.

The wind screeches again, and Sapnap frowns. He likes a loud storm. He doesn’t like when it screams. It gets him thinking there’s a person on this island, as so many other shadows and whispers have, when he knows there’s not. There can’t be. He’s checked a thousand times. He’s alone here.

The house rattles around him when he tries to sleep. The wind is a banshee. He squeezes his eyes shut and clutches his own hand very hard.

The next day, he has a visitor.

In the morning the world is back to a bleak staticky rumble, but mellow enough in context to count as a good day. He eats two small filets of fish. Drinks some water from the full pot outside. Scrapes the bottom of the coffee barrel for a few grounds to crunch between his teeth, just to taste something different. Grabs his sword to run through his warm up exercises and then walks out to the beach, skin steaming gently in the rain. When he gets there he strips off his shirt and pants to tuck beneath a rock where they won’t blow away.

“Good morning!” says a voice, and Sapnap jumps out of his fucking skin.

There’s a little sailboat at the end of the beach. A little past the end of the beach, actually—not far enough to smash against the rocks but not close enough to pull in gently against the sand either. It’s exactly in between, beached like a whale, no holes in the hull as far as he can see but at least a couple decent scratches. A little ways from the boat, sitting on the beach proper, is a young man.

“Hey there,” he says, in the cheerful manner of one who has not just been shipwrecked on a remote island. If the dingy can be called a ship.

“Fuckin. Hey,” says Sapnap.

He’s got a wet mop of brown hair and a colorblock oilskin coat as ugly as sin. Sapnap stares at him, and remembers belatedly to scowl. Why didn’t he bring his sword? He should bring it everywhere. “Who the hell are you?”

“Rude,” says the young man, not sounding offended at all. “Going for an early morning skinny dip, huh? Aren’t you cold?”

Because he’s practically naked. Sapnap feels a sudden and uncharacteristic flush of self-consciousness, which is annoying, because before he got here he was never insecure about this sort of thing. He’s always been comfortable in his skin. George said he should have more shame, which was hypocrisy at its finest, while his dad said it was a good way to be. But he’s been alone so long now that he’s forgotten how it feels to be seen by big gray eyes when you weren’t expecting to be seen by big gray eyes.

It’s also annoying because who the hell does this guy think he is, okay, this is Sapnap’s shipwrecked island and this clown can fuck off and find his own.

He yanks his clothes from their hiding spot. The young man politely looks away as he redresses.

To the sky, he says, “That storm last night sure was something, huh? I thought I was going to drown out there until I saw your lighthouse. It really saved my bacon!”

Saved my bacon. “It’s not mine,” Sapnap says curtly. Fully clothed, he feels much more sure-footed, and crosses his arms over his chest.

The young man looks back at him. “What?”

“The lighthouse. It isn’t mine.”

He absorbs this. Cranes back to take another look at the lighthouse, and then farther back to look at the cottage, and then farther still to look at Sapnap, with new eyes. Suddenly he stands. It’s more fluid than Sapnap expected, strangely graceful. Graceful doesn’t fit him, all stacked with pokey, bony angles. The guy looks like a child’s drawing: a stick figure with clashing colors. He’s seriously all leg.

He says, “So the light I saw must’ve come from your house. I guess you really saved my bacon.”

Sapnap raises a brow. “No way you saw some two-bit candles through that storm.”

“Handsome and modest. And a hero! You’re like some kind of triple threat.” He bats his lashes. His grin is sweet and honeyed. “I’ll have to find some way to thank you.”

So the guy’s a freak. No other word for someone whose first instinct after washing up on a deserted island is to flirt about it.

Sapnap seriously considers leaving him there to get his sword, but then the stranger’s eyes go bright and round, and without another word he’s bent double in the belly of his boat. He emerges with his arms weighed down by a wooden crate. It looks waterlogged, but otherwise intact.

“How about I make you breakfast? I’ve got wine and salted beef.”

Sapnap almost does a lot of things. He almost tells the guy to piss off, and he almost ignores him and walks away, and he almost kills him to claim his shit for himself. In the back of his head a little voice that sounds like his father chides him; that last one would be rude. The same little voice disapproves of wine at ten in the morning, but Sapnap can’t be bothered to give a rat’s ass about that.

The stranger is beaming at him. Sapnap thinks looking directly into the sun would be less blinding.

And, well. It’s been forever since he’s eaten anything but fish and son of a bitch oysters.

“Come on,” he sighs, and turns to hike back to the cottage. The stranger whoops behind him, and then Sapnap hears the scuff of his feet in the sand.

“I’m Karl,” says the stranger, coming up beside him. His hair is drying into a sandy halo of curls. Sapnap tears his eyes away. “To answer your earlier question. Karl Jacobs.”

Tearing his eyes away doesn’t do much, turns out. He doesn’t need to look to know Karl is struggling because Karl doesn’t bother to hide it—he huffs and puffs, swatting aside the tallgrass without much success and kicking up great clouds of sand that sting the backs of Sapnap’s knees. He readjusts his crate every other second, the contents inside clinking and sloshing sadly. Sapnap ignores it for all of thirty seconds before it starts to get annoying. He rolls his eyes and snatches the crate, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

“Sapnap,” he says to Karl’s wondering eyes.

“You’re strong.” Karl fans a hand in front of his face. “I’m swooning.”

Sapnap rolls his eyes harder. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“Or something very, very right,” Karl counters. “Maybe I did die in that storm. Maybe this is heaven.”

Sapnap barks a laugh. He can’t help it. “This isn’t heaven.”

Karl goes quiet, which Sapnap appreciates. Then he switches tack, which Sapnap also appreciates, though not as much as the quiet. Still, it’s better than what they were talking about.

“Sapnap,” Karl says, “I like that name. It tastes good.”

Sapnap laughs again, but this time it feels genuine. “What the fuck?”

“You’ve never found a word that tastes good?” Karl asks, as though Sapnap is the weird one. “Wow, that’s kind of sad for you? Sapnap. Sapnap Sapnap Sapnap. Sadnap. Snapmap. Snapchat.”

Sapnap sticks a foot out and trips him. “Shut up, loser.”

Before they enter the cottage Sapnap shakes off as much sand as he can. “Like a dog,” Karl giggles. It’s this funny, tripping sound that reminds Sapnap of the spiral staircase in the lighthouse.

Karl shakes himself out too, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Buckets of sand rain down.

“I can’t believe you just called me a dog,” Sapnap muses. “Look at you. You’re like one of those mop dogs.”

“A Komondor?” Karl says, and then answers himself, “Komondor, I hardly know ’er!”

He grins shamelessly through his hair. It’s everywhere, Sapnap can’t even see his eyes.

“I—that’s—that was so stupid. That made no sense.” Sapnap splutters. “And isn’t that a bird?”

Karl hoots. “That’s a commodore, dingus. A Komondor is a sheepdog.”

“Komondor. That’s what I said.”

Karl sweeps his hair back off his forehead. “Sure it is.”

“Fuck off, Jacobs. Your jokes are dumb. I’m going to make myself breakfast and you can stay out here and starve.”

He ducks inside and closes the door on Karl’s indignant yelp. While he struggles with the latch, Sapnap sets the crate on the tiny table and pries it open: two bottles of wine and, miracle of miracles, dried jerky. It’s been cut into strips and spiced, a fragrant, savory scent wafting up even through the overwhelming tang of the sea. Sapnap’s mouth waters. He tears into it and closes his eyes with a moan.

When he opens them again, Karl is waggling his eyebrows.

“Shut up.”

“Hey man, I didn’t say anything.”

Sapnap only has one chair, which he offers to Karl. He’s got a few cups though, so he takes two down, uncorks a bottle with his teeth, and pours some wine. Karl accepts one with painted nails.

“Did you make this?” Sapnap asks, referring to the jerky.

“Yep. How is it?”

Sapnap slurps pointedly at his wine. Karl reels back, a hand pressed to his chest.

“You wound me this way? After I shared my meal with you out of the goodness of my heart?”

Sapnap smirks around the lip of his cup. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I see what you did there. And I heard that borderline pornographic moan, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“You would have had the same reaction if you’d eaten nothing but fish and clams for—” He doesn’t know how long. Maybe he should have kept track. “—as long as I have.”

Karl’s gaze turns critical. “You think you could do better?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap says, honestly.

“Okay then.” And he drops his chin in his hand. “Impress me.”

“What, now?”

“Unless you want to put me up until you can impress me at dinner, sure, now. Go for it, master chef.”

Sapnap grins. He thrives in a challenge.

He takes a few strips of jerky and clasps them tight. Soon the air is rippling around his closed fists, magma glowing in his wrists and the cracks of his knuckles. Karl ogles, and Sapnap abruptly recalls that he hasn’t spoken to another person in weeks-or-months. How the fuck do you conversation again?

“So.” Sapnap clears his throat. “What brings you out here?”

Jesus. Karl muscles back a smile and lets him have it. “I’m looking for someone.”

Sapnap waits for more, but Karl only smiles. Asks with a curious tilt to his eyebrows, “What about you? What are you doing in a lighthouse that isn’t yours?”

“Washed up here. Like you.”

He doesn’t offer anything else. Graciously, Karl doesn’t press. Instead he smoothly steers the conversation to the safer subject of cooking—does Sapnap like it, how long has he been doing it. He does, and a while. It surprises him to say. He’s been focused purely on the utilitarian while he’s been here; flavor, enjoyment have never entered the equation. But he does like cooking. His father’s a baker, but Sapnap enjoys the savory. His meals were something even George would grudgingly compliment.

After half an hour of trading recipes like they’re two normal people who aren’t marooned on a deserted island, Sapnap’s hands crack open. “It would be better if I’d had a few more hours,” he says, feeling gruff and oddly bashful.

Karl won’t hear a word of it. He plucks at the jerky, hot enough that he has to juggle it awkwardly between the tips of his fingers, before he takes a small bite. The meat tears away easily. His eyes pop open.

“Dude. If this is what you can do in under an hour, I’d kill to know what you could do with a day. Did I just watch you smoke this? In your hands?”

Sapnap grunts a yes, unsure what to do with the swelling pride beneath his breastbone. Karl beams.

“That’s amazing.”

They eat, and drink. When they’re done, Sapnap is left with the certainty that he should give Karl something in return, and the unfortunate truth of what little he has to offer. His preserved fish is purely for survival, blander even than Karl’s attempt at jerky. But what else is there? He runs through his stores in his mind. Stands up straight when it comes to him.

“Hey, hold on, I’m just gonna grab something.”

“Sure,” Karl says, easily, slouching into the little wooden chair like he means to bed down there. Sapnap crosses the cottage, pulls the hatch, drops into the cellar. Returns with one of his weaving projects. A shawl. No undertones of navy or purple, but the stitching is tight and even. He returns to find Karl, still at the table with eyes far away. He’s looking out the window. The set of his mouth soft and wistful. It’s more quiet, more still than he’s been in the brief time Sapnap’s known him.

“Here.” He holds out the shawl, and Karl turns to him, the wistfulness slipping back beneath the surface of his expression. “As thanks for the meal. Wrap it up under your coat. Should keep you warm in this shitty weather.”

Karl accepts it with a reverence that makes Sapnap feel embarrassed. His pretty fingernails stand out against the fabric, stroking gently. Sapnap has the absurd thought that he could be a hand model. “Did you make this?”

Another grunt.

“It’s beautiful. I’m serious, Sapnap. This is—wow.” He eyes rove over the shawl, and Sapnap startles to see that his irises match the shade of the yarn exactly. “Is this fireweaving?”

“Yeah.” Sapnap reassesses him. “You’re familiar with demoncraft?”

“Sure. I read a lot, and I’ve known a few demons in my time, friend and enemy both. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Sapnap doesn’t answer, asking instead, “And it doesn’t scare you?”

“No. Why? Did you think I’d think you were spooky? Because you’re not human?” His smile turns small and secret. “I’m not human. Not completely, anyway. Do you think I’m spooky?”

His lashes flutter when he blinks. The shadows they cast over his cheeks, there and gone again, look soft as smoke.

Sapnap shakes his head and pretends it’s not just an excuse to break eye contact. “I think you’re weird, is what I think. I’ve been here for a while, and without a doubt today has been—”

“The most interesting day of your life? Magical? A dream come true?”

“Sure. If this was a fever dream, and you were some manic pixie dream girl hallucination.”

“You calling me your dream girl?”

Sapnap huffs. “Man. You don’t quit, do you?”

Karl’s eyes glitter a lively blue. They weren’t blue a second ago. “My charm is a blessing and a curse, I’m afraid.”

“It’s something, alright.”

Karl hugs the shawl to his chest. Sapnap gathers the cups to wash.

“Thanks for this. Seriously,” Karl says to his back.

“Don’t mention it.” He glances back over his shoulder, but Karl’s not looking at him. He’s looking at his hands. “You’re staring.”

Karl has the good grace to flush. “Sorry. It’s just, you’re the first demon I’ve seen with arms and legs like that.”

Washing the cups really just means rinsing them in rainwater from one of the pots. He flicks them dry and puts them back in the cabinet.

“Demons have a molten core,” he says. “Sometimes we can push that outward. Other times our emotions get the better of us and it pushes out on its own. When it cools naturally, our skin usually goes back to normal, but if it cools too fast you get…this.”

He wonders if the circumstances of how his arms and legs cooled too fast are obvious, but he appreciates that Karl doesn’t ask. Instead, when Sapnap turns back to him, he tips his chin towards Sapnap’s arms and says, “May I?”

Sapnap considers him. He thinks he’d back off if he said no. For some reason that’s why he says yes.

Karl takes one of Sapnap’s hands, drags it close to his face. His touch is curious and oddly gentle.

“Wow,” he breathes, and somehow his big bright eyes go bigger and brighter. “This is so cool. But also really weird? You’re kind of like a freak of nature?”

He says it so sweetly, so utterly without guile, that Sapnap knows in his heart he’s being a dick on purpose. And he laughs, charmed.

“You’re the freak of nature, Jacobs,” he says. “Now get the fuck off my island.”

Karl Jacobs gets the fuck off his island. Sapnap helps him push his boat back into the water and watches him go from the shore. He snorts at how Karl turns and waves whenever he isn’t steering, these big goofy pendulum swings of his arms. He waves back, albeit more reserved.

All the color in the world seems to drag behind the boat like a banner. And then it’s just Sapnap and the monochrome sea and sky, all varying shades of black and white and gray. He’d think the whole bizarre morning was a dream, if he still had those.

He resumes his daily routine. He’s a few hours behind so he throws himself into it. At some point it begins to rain, and it occurs to him, for the first time, that the storm may never end. Not in any meaningful way. This isn’t an earth-shattering thought. It’s not even particularly surprising; there are lots of places in the world where the weather is static. He thinks he’s known as much, in the back of his head, operating under the assumption that this is just the way of it: an island and a lighthouse and a storm, and Sapnap, weaving and working away, until eventually he leaves.

Which he will, some day. But the storm won’t. He thinks the storm will never end.

He’s wrong.

At first he thinks it’s the silence that woke him. The whitenoise of the sea is gone—every sound is gone. He stares at the dark of the ceiling and thinks that not existing would sound like this.

He sits up fast. The bed creaks, and the world exists again.

Outside the window the sky is a clear, velvet blanket, pinned in place with stars. The sea doesn’t exist. It’s just more sky.

He steps outside. Out on the beach, a mile away, a train is waiting on the night-sky water.

He goes back inside and picks up his sword. Walks a mile that feels much less. He can barely hear his own footsteps, the scuffing of rock on rock. He can barely hear his own breath. He huffs hard as he goes and he can still barely hear it.

Just at the sand he stops. The train waits a short walk into the water, a hundred glowing eyes reflected in the water and all of them watching him. Waiting.

A muscle in his jaw jumps. His mouth tastes like blood.

“No.” He says it through his teeth.

Nothing happens. Nothing moves. As if Sapnap doesn’t exist at all, as if his voice and his touch and his living are trapped somewhere and cannot affect the world around him.

A silhouette cuts into the frosted glass of the door at the end of the train. A man’s shadow. The door starts to open.

Sapnap turns around. Stalks back to his cottage and his bed. He sleeps. He doesn’t dream. He wakes in the small hours, still dark.

#dsmp fic #dream smp #sapnap #karl jacobs #karlnapity #quackity does not feature yet but don't worry he's waiting in the wings #badboyhalo #dadboyhalo #only mentioned but he is felt in this fic #ran's writing #ran’s writing #i really hope you enjoy bee! thank u for your patience!!

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wanderella-w · 1 year

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The Jurassic Coast (Day 46-47)

Friday I walked from just before Sidmouth to Beer, a not too long stretch (I think around 12km?) but it was quite a hilly one. Anyways, my efforts were rewarded with beautiful views over stone pebble beaches and the light-colored limestone cliffs of the Jurassic Coast, which had now replaced the red ones. Nearing the end, I also rewarded myself with a vanilla-clotted cream ice cream on Brancome Beach.

I got to Beer in time to catch the 14:00 bus to Axmister, where Roger would arrive on the train from London in the evening. I had a nice afternoon for myself to relax, shower, wash, charge the powerbank.. the usual stuff. Rogers train was a bit delayed so he only got there at 23:00, but it was okay - I had already gone to bed at 9 anyways because my rythm is a bit messed up so I had to set an alarm to let him in. In the morning we enjoyed a great English breakfast, yummy!

When being with Roger, it turns out I am the planner and Roger is even more 'laissez faire' than I thought I was. So in the morning we still hadn't decided if we would walk that day or not, and where we would sleep. However, we made a plan just before leaving the hotel. We took the bus to Seaton but there was not much to see or to do there except for going to the seaside. Therefore, after eating chips with vinegar and going to the supermarket, we walked on the coast path back to Beer, where I had left the path, and it turned out that Beer was a much prettier and cozy town! We had a beer in a nice pub called the Barrel of Beer, which of course had a pun relating to the villages name in their slogan. Roger tried a 'Bitter' and it was quite nice.

After that I still wanted to show Roger a nice viewpoint that I had passed on the day before, but at that moment it started raining and we were a bit lazy from doing nothing all day. So we decided to go to the Youth Hostel (again, one of the few on the path), where we would camp for a cheap price, while being allowed to use all the facilities like kitchen, lounge and bathrooms. The hostel was a beautiful old very English-looking house with grey stone walls and half round windows. We had a nice and early night on our perfectly flat patch, and Roger was glad to be reunited with his tent Bea. It was cozy to stay in it as we had already spent two holidays before in it :).

Here's Roger eating canned Custard. A lady in the kitchen told us you are supposed to eat it with Apple Pie or something else. Oh well, it was tasty!

In the supermarket and the village Beer, the mood was all set for the upcoming coronation op King Charles:

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niemernuet · 9 months

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Shameless crack for the tenth prompt of the off-season winter sports challenge. The subject is "apologies" and the inspiration comes from that one picture in Gino's photo dump.

You know which one.

Exactly.

Rating: M pairing: Ginodi, Justiel, Loïc/Zoé (all background) characters: Marco Odermatt, Gino Caviezel, Thomas Tumler, Loïc Meillard, Zoé Chastan, Justin Murisier, Daniel Yule length: 1'700 words

On one end of the call, the camera panned over sharp, snow-capped peaks rising behind a small lake high above the tree line, the water looking as cold as it probably was. The other end showed a small beach; the ground was coarse sand mingled with pebbles whetted into round spheres by the tides. High cliffs overgrown with weather-beaten bushes and shrubs protected the bay from the Mediterranean wind on both sides.

"Not bad," Loïc conceded from atop his mountain, and switched to the front camera again. He paused when Gino did the same. "Is it a good time?"

Gino's grin did not waver. His free hand lazily wandered up, and began to stroke Marco's hair who was sleeping with his head resting on Gino's bare chest. A soft breeze made their sunshade flutter, and shadows danced over their faces "No problem. He shouldn't be sleeping anyway, otherwise I won't get him out of the bar tonight."

Marco hummed in protest and without moving one muscle.

Loïc nodded knowingly. "See, that's where an older partner comes in handy. Mine never wants to stay out past ten."

"I can hear you!" Zoé yelled from somewhere out of frame, and a grin washed over Loïc's face.

"You're living dangerously," Gino laughed.

Loïc winked. "It's going to pay off later."

Amiable silence settled between the mountains and the sea.

"Come on, think!" Gino urged after a while.

Loïc pensively shook his head. "I am and I can't find anything," he said with a shrug.

"Don't lie! You always find something to nag about."

"I'm not lying!" Loïc exclaimed. "You are having a perfectly nice holiday."

"Not even our clothes?"

"Quite to the contrary, actually," Loïc said. "That picture of you three in shorts and linen shirts from last night? You looked downright sophisticated and tasteful. I wouldn't mind going out to dinner with you dressed like that."

"Oh god," Gino groaned, and Loïc burst out laughing.

"Accept it, you're getting old and boring."

"Never!"

Loïc rolled his eyes, and took a gulp from his water bottle. "I don't know why you're so upset. It's good to evolve, you know? Otherwise you'd still run around in your terrible Hilfiger-jackets."

"I love that one!" Gino threw in.

Loïc pretended to shudder. "Whatever. At least you're not showing it off anymore. That proves you've grown."

"I found another!" Zoé's voice suddenly piped up in the background, and Loïc's gaze drifted off.

Somewhere beyond the phone's field of vision, something heavy plopped into the lake. Or rather, over it.

"Three, four, five, six!" Zoé counted, and cheered. "Six times! I told you I could do it!"

"I only counted five," Loïc protested. "And that last one was a bit meagre."

"There were six rings!" Zoé objected, her voice suddenly very close to the phone. "But that's not what's important right now. I have a bone to pick with you, Mister! Are you still on the phone with Gino?"

"He is!" Gino said, and watched as Loïc's phone suddenly moved, and showed the blue sky.

"Sorry, Gino," Zoé's voice said. "Loïc will have to call you back."

"No problem," Gino laughed, even though nobody on the other side was still listening to him.

"You said I’m old!"

"But in a totally loving way!"

"Sure! And do you call that old too?"

"Put that back on, we're on a public hiking trail!" Loïc hissed as the camera suddenly juddered, and turned black.

Gino chuckled, and threw the phone on top of his beach bag. With a contended sigh, he settled back into the deck chair, and started to stroke circles in Marco's sun-warmed skin.

"That is the most insulting thing Loïc has ever said to us," Marco muttered against Gino's chest, his eyes still closed.

"Agree," Gino smiled.

"Tasteful? We cannot let him get away with that."

"No way no how!" With one swift movement, Gino's hand shot across, and swatted Thomi sleeping on the other deck chair. With a snort, he jolted awake.

"What?" he asked drowsily.

"We have to go shopping!" Gino said.

-----

The salesman, upon realising that his new customers might occupy his shop for quite some time, had retreated back to his chair next to the till, and was scrolling through his phone. Marco, meanwhile, examined the display with a look of pure focus.

"I'm not sure," Thomi threw in when Gino picked up a pair of swim shorts with tiny palm trees printed on. "I thought for sure he'd object to my pink shorts. Now that we know that he actually likes them, he might also like those."

Gino sighed, and put the shorts back. "You're right. This is so difficult."

"We need help!" Marco piped up, and turned away from the swim outfits. Quickly he pulled his phone out of his pocket, and dialled a number. They did not have to wait long until a familiar voice shouted out of the loudspeakers.

“What?”

“Hey, Justin,” Marco said. “Could you switch the camera on for a second? We need your help.”

They received a string of French swearwords first but after a few moments, Justin’s dirtied, sweaty face greeted them out of a bulky helmet.

“I hope there’s a reason why you’re making me take off my glove,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be at the beach?”

“We’re on our way,” Gino answered. “But we wanted some new swim shorts first and we can’t decide.”

“You’re our deciding vote,” Thomi added.

Justin frowned. In the background, loud engine noises roared past. Next to the big helmet they only saw a glimpse of a muddy race track somewhere deep in a forest.

“You’re three people,” Justin said. “You don’t need a deciding vote…”

“Please?” Marco asked, and smiled.

Justin rolled his eyes, and a soft grin appeared on his face. “Okay, okay. Show me what you got.”

“Thank you!” Marco said, and pressed a button on the phone. He slowly waved it over the display, taking in every corner of the shop.

“That’s a big selection…” Justin mused.

“We know,” Gino said. “But we trust that you will find the right one for us!”

Justin remained silent for a moment. “Maybe you should ask Loïc. He knows more about this kind of stuff.”

“No!” Marco exclaimed. “We can’t ask him!”

Justin frowned. “Why?”

“Because we don’t want something Loïc would choose,” Thomi explained. “We want the opposite, you know?”

“Something truly hideous,” Gino added.

Justin could not see their faces as the camera was still panned on the clothes but the three of them could see him, and his sudden frown.

“Excuse me?” he asked. “You called me because you think I’m going to choose the…ugliest thing?”

The expression on his face was difficult to read, and the others held their breath.

“You think my taste is shit?” Justin asked softly.

Gino, Marco and Thomi exchanged sheepish looks.

“Okay, maybe that was a bit…insensitive,” Thomi whispered.

“We’re sorry, Justin,” Marco said. “We didn’t mean to…”

He could not finish his sentence because Justin doubled over the handlebar of his bike with laughter, and needed a few moments before he could hold his phone straight again.

“This is the best thing ever!” he hiccupped. “I can’t wait to tell Daniel about this.”

Gino cringed. “Maybe don’t?” he asked. “I don’t think he’d take it well, and we don’t need his…”

“No, I’m absolutely going to tell him,” Justin chuckled, and waved his free hand, still sticking in a glove, in front of the camera. “Okay, show me those swim trunks again!”

With a sigh, Marco turned back to the display.

“No, not those!” Justin snapped impatiently. “The other corner of the shop.”

“But there are no swim shorts there,” Marco said. “We need….”

“I’m going to tell you what you need!” Justin interrupted him. “That’s why you called me. Now walk over there, chop chop!”

-----

“Man, those things really wander in there when you take big steps,” Thomi griped, and shook his legs while pulling on his new swim suit.

The sun was setting spectacularly behind the harbour, sending golden rays over the shore, but neither Gino nor Marco had eyes for the beauty that unfolded all around their rental boat.

“Did he write back already?” Gino asked.

Marco shook his head. “He read it but he’s not typing,” he said with disappointment.

“Probably still looking for words,” Gino grinned, and sank down on the deck chair next to him. He propped his chin on his hand, and bent one leg but before he could attract Marco’s attention on his new outfit, his phone beeped.

“An answer?” he asked excitedly.

Marco frowned. “No, a message from Zoé…” He opened the message, and burst out laughing. Before Gino or Thomi could ask, he turned his phone around, and eagerly they read Zoé’s words and marvelled at the photo she had sent.

I hope you’re proud of yourself. He’s been peppering his hamburger for five minutes with the same thousand-yard-stare. I think this time you really broke him.

Thomi laughed. “Success!” he cheered.

Marco smiled at Gino, and leant over for a kiss. “All thanks to Justin.”

“And your genius,” Gino added.

Before Marco could answer, his phone lit up again. His smile fell like a stone when he saw what it was.

“A voice message from Daniel,” he hissed, and held his phone as if it could explode any second.

Thomi winced, and took a step back until he was leaning against the railing of the boat.

For a moment, they all stared at the gadget in Marco’s hand.

“How bad can it be?” Gino eventually asked. “We’re at least a thousand kilometres away from him, so…”

With an unsure look, Marco tentatively pushed the button, and they all listened as Daniel’s enraged voice boomed over the deck.

“Congratulations, idiots! You better hope I don’t see your perky asses anywhere when you come to Zermatt, unless of course you want a bunch of slalom skis up them! I only just managed to convince Justin to wear those nice slacks and the shirt I bought him, and you morons ruined everything! I hope a pack of seagulls attacks you!”

With bated breath they stared at the phone a while longer until they were sure that Daniel was finished.

“That could have been worse,” Marco said, and they all nodded.

#osws fandom challenge #rpf #sports rpf #alpine skiing #dumbassery #text #mine

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elfriede-airmid · 10 months

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The Sirens Are Calling

Trigger warnings: Death, suicide, sexism, men, stinky men.

The strong salty air fill my lungs, crystallizing in my throat as I exhale. I am encased in a world of rainbow fluorite, the border between sky and ocean barely visible with skirts of laced foam dancing across the surface. Waves crashing against the rough wooden boards of the ships, soaking it to the bone deep within its marrow. It pushes against us, cautioning us to go the other way and yet we continue. Our oars claw at the oceans flesh, forcing our way over her mighty depths. Thunderous sounds of hushing and crashing all around me with accents of men attempting to talk over it. They had a goal now, and they are sure to see it through. The captain holds strong at the back, commanding his men this way and that. In the background of this orchestra, I hear a thrumming of noise, like a swarm of bees. “Keep hold onto the boat, little nymph. We are passing between Aeaea and Scylla” Rasping, his voice rough from shouting over the ocean. Curiosity took over me: “What is this noise that the men are talking about?”

My head pressing to the right against his chest. He smelt awful like all the other men on the sea, but you get used to it.

“Can’t you hear them, little nymph? The songs of beauties just over on that island.”

A man ran up, joining the conversation: “Sirens! Beautiful and lovely sirens. Don’t you hear their song?”

“I still don’t hear it.”

…

Reaching the shore, rocks scraping on the bow. Men were reeling in excitement, ready to board the land. Talks of meeting the fair maidens and the fun times to be had were said by all. Passively observing at the edge. Turning my head to the cloud-shadowed land, seeing rich green grass and jagged teeth of volcanic rock. I feel uneasy, I realise the thrumming that I heard before was the siren song. It wasn’t a thrum now. As we rowed closer the thrumming transformed into the voices of women.

And it was not a song.

It was a warning.

A pleading.

And then as we board ashore, it morphs into an orchestral cacophony of terror.

They didn’t want us here. They were screaming for us to leave, tearing their throats to let out those screams.

Looking, I see over a hill, heads peeking out, the sirens watch as the sailors clamber up the rocky beach, digging up the once undisturbed pebbles as they move forward towards the women. And once they are on the green carpet, they pause, halting in their tracks in what seems to be uncertainty. I sit on the roughened boat, watching. All of a sudden, the men turn in frustration, in disgust, muttering amongst themselves. The orchestral screaming continues as the women run and tumble up the hill in desperation.

“They are monsters. How could they have fooled us.” The Captain panted in anguish, climbing back on board.

“Their faces contorted, and the hair of their body like feathers of a vulture. They were unproportioned, nothing like our dear Aphrodite”

In disbelief, I turn towards the women.

They did not look like monsters, and as they stood at the cliff, I saw their hair flow with the wind. They look like me, their skin like mine, with blemish that only adds to their skin, like carved vines on a statue. They are not even unproportioned; they were set as any one of us. No claws, no fangs or scales, nothing that screams out like a monster. They herd each other together and watch us from above, even from here I can see the tears that soak their long tresses and bejewel their skin.

And then, one by one, they plunge. Down the cliff, wind rushing to keep them up with its weak force as they collide with the rocks below. Their blood staining the dark green ocean, intoxicating it with red wine. The screams grew quieter with each fall as I watch in horror and grief. My chest contorting, my heart pounding and my head reeling at the horror behind me. I continued to face the cliff.

My stomach is laying against my pelvic floor and the bile dances in my chest. Stinging tears well in my eyes and spill over in a flood. I cannot breathe as if the fair maidens grabbed it on their fall.

And when all went silent, I jump from the boat.

Knees and hands colliding with the pebbled shore. Running, I feel the rich green grass cushion my feet as I follow them to the cliff. Chest heaving and tight from the exertion and emotions, I don’t even look down as I follow the fair maidens.

My sisters blood calls me as I join them in the mythic ocean, adding my blood and my essence to freedom of the vast sea.

#literature #fantasy story #fantasy writing #historical fantasy #sirens #tragic story #classical mythology #greek mythology #greek myth retellings #reinventing myths #feminist piece #a critique on men #all women are beautiful #original story #fantasy fiction

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grahamfolgersdeliciousnotebooks · 1 year

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The 10th and final chapter of my jmart roommate au is now up! Not gonna lie, I’m really fond of this chapter. Read from the beginning here, view the latest chapter on AO3 here, or read it below:

The man in the fog wasn’t sure where he was. He wasn’t quite sure who he was, either. He had a name, he was fairly certain of that – he could feel it in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue, but any time he tried to focus on it, it slipped away.

Someone was shouting in the distance. They sounded upset. He tried to make out the words they were shouting (or was it just one word, repeated over and over again?) but he could hardly hear them over the howling of the wind.

It was windy, wherever he was. And cold – he was numb from head to foot, and when he glanced at his hands, he saw that they were turning a sickly shade of blue. As he looked at them, they started to fade from view, growing more and more transparent until he could see straight through them, could see his feet and the rocky shore of the pebble beach and the fog snaking between his ankles.

That was… bad. Wasn’t it? It seemed like the sort of thing he ought to have been worried about, but it was hard to feel much of anything in this place. The more he faded, the less he cared, the less he worried, the less he felt. It was nice, really. That wasn’t true, though – to be nice, it would need to be something. What it was was not bad. His memories of the time before the fog were all a blur, but he was fairly certain not bad was a marked improvement.

The voice was getting closer. He could finally make out what it was saying.

“Martin! Martin!”

Martin. Was that his name? It certainly sounded familiar.

The fog was so thick that Martin didn’t see the person until they were just feet away. They stopped when they saw him, and their eyes locked onto his.

“Martin!” they repeated, softer this time.

“Jon?”

He wasn’t certain of his own name, but he knew Jon. He would have known Jon anywhere. There was something about Jon that was important, he knew that, but every time he tried to pin down what it was, the memory escaped him. Jon was… powerful? Was that it?

He didn’t look powerful. He looked small, and frightened, and exhausted. He didn’t take his eyes off Martin as he spoke.

“I– I’m here,” he said. “I came for you.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might be lost.”

“Are you real?”

“Yes! Yes, I-I am. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“No,” Martin said. “No, I don’t think so.”

Martin barely heard the words coming out of his mouth. They didn’t matter, really. Nothing did, in this place. Jon seemed to hear them, though. His face fell, and oh, Martin was upsetting him, Martin was ruining everything, just like he always did…

Jon’s words were growing fainter. When Martin glanced down at his hands, he found that they were gone.

“Obviously he’s done something.” He could still hear Jon’s voice, distantly. “Peter’s done something to mess with your–”

He blinked, and Jon was gone. He was alone once again.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there. Time had no meaning in that place. The only thing that really existed was the sound of the waves lapping against the shore, and the cold.

It was so very cold.

Jon was back. How long had Jon been back? He was speaking to him again, but the words slipped through his brain like water through a sieve, leaving nothing behind but the vague memory of having been spoken.

“Listen, I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer, and well– well, maybe it is. But we need you. I need you.”

“No, you don’t,” Martin found himself saying. “Not really. Everyone’s alone, but we all survive.”

“I don’t just want to survive!”

Jon was upset again. Martin had said the wrong thing, as usual.

“I’m sorry.”

He turned away, turned toward the endless expanse of fog that beckoned him home, but Jon set a hand on his cheek.

“Martin,” he said, voice strained and shaky. “Martin, look at me.”

Martin turned back to look. He took in all the component parts of Jon: dark eyes and salt-and-pepper hair and a face scattered with worm scars. He looked the way he always did, if a bit worse for wear.

But when he spoke again, his words were thrumming with Compulsion.

“Look at me, and tell me what you see.”

And Martin… Saw. He the strain and hope and worry in Jon’s eyes, saw the tension in his limbs as he reached out to anchor Martin to reality, saw the crease between his eyebrows that always appeared when he saw something he cared about in trouble – a friend or a houseplant or a bakeoff contestant who was putting too much sugar in their creme pat.

Martin Saw something that he very much wanted to call love.

“I see…” he murmured, while Jon watched him with those eyes, those lovely, tired, frightened eyes. “I see you, Jon. I see you.”

“Martin,” Jon breathed, and the fog had cleared enough for Martin to hear the relief in his voice. Martin collapsed forward, a wave of emotion crashing into him all at once, and Jon caught him in his arms and held him firmly.

“I… I was on my own,” Martin sobbed. “I was all on my own.”

“Not anymore,” Jon said, loosening his grip on Martin’s shoulders and pulling back to look at him. His eyes roved over Martin’s face, and whatever he saw, he must have found it reassuring, because the beginnings of a smile flickered at the corners of his lips.

“Come on. Let’s go home.”

Home. Martin wasn’t sure he had a home anymore, but he let Jon take him by the hand and lead him away from that cold, windswept beach, and he didn’t ask where they were going. He would have followed Jon anywhere. He would walk through the gates of Hell, he thought, if it meant he never had to let go of Jon’s hand.

***

The fog around them began to lift, bit by bit, and the pebble beach beneath their feet was slowly replaced with concrete. The wind died down, and the sound of waves gave way, eventually, to the sounds of London streets – running engines, and shouting tourists, and seagulls fighting each other for discarded chips.

Martin hardly noticed the changes. He was lost in thought.

The thing was, Jon didn’t love him. He knew that. That was one of the fundamental truths on which Martin’s world rested. It was something that Peter Lukas reminded him of often – never directly, he was just barely too subtle for that, but constantly, through reference and implication and unabashedly feigned sympathy. That moment was a lighthouse, guiding him back to the Lonely any time he strayed too far: He had told Jon he loved him, and Jon had run away.

Jon wasn’t running now.

He gripped Martin’s hand like a lifeline as they walked, and glanced back constantly to make sure that Martin was still there, that he hadn’t disappeared into the fog again.

Martin didn’t realize where they were going until they reached the building. It made sense, really. The apartment was, after all, the closest thing either of them had to a home.

They kept their hands linked as they walked through the empty hallways. When they reached the doorway, Jon began patting his pockets with his free hand.

“Hmm.” He turned to Martin. “You, erm. You don’t happen to have your key on you…?”

Martin shook his head.

“Not to worry,” Jon muttered softly, fishing a bobby pin out of his pocket. He looked down at their joined hands for a long moment, flicking his eyes between them and the doorknob as though weighing his options, before he reluctantly disentangled his hand from Martin’s.

He knelt beside the door and started working on the lock while Martin kept watch for the neighbors. After a few minutes, Jon let out a quiet Aha! of victory, and the door swung open.

The apartment looked different than he remembered it. There was a layer of dust on the floor, the tables, the windowsills, and the dim blue light coming in through the windows gave a melancholy air to the empty, silent rooms. Jon began flicking on lights in an attempt to dispel the gloom, but they only served to make the shadows more stark.

Martin trailed his fingertips over one of the windowsills, tracing thin lines in the dust. When he turned, he saw Jon watching him with an anxious expression.

Jon cleared his throat. “How– Are you– I mean, how are you–?” Before he could formulate a coherent question, his phone began to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at the screen.

“One second,” he murmured. “It’s Basira.”

Jon wandered into the kitchen while he spoke with Basira, and Martin couldn’t help but be grateful. Jon’s gaze had been kind but intense, and Martin couldn’t handle the scrutiny. He couldn’t handle much of anything at the moment.

He drifted through the apartment, dazed and numb. On the windowsill closest to the bookshelf he found the remains of his philodendrons. He’d cared for them assiduously, once. He’d monitored their leaves for any brown spots, bought plant food from the greenhouse down the street, spritzed their leaves with water when the humidity was low. He’d pruned them and fed them and named them after characters from his favorite books. Merry, he remembered, was the one in the green pot with sunflowers painted on the side, and Pippin was the one with more pink on its leaves.

It was hard to tell them apart, now. The leaves of both were shrivelled and brown, and when Martin reached out to touch one, the leaf crumbled between his fingertips. He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes.

Stupid. After everything he’d been through, all of the people he had lost, here he was crying over plants. It was ridiculous. But the fact remained that they had relied on him, and he had let them die.

Jon wandered back into the living room, still on the phone, and Martin let himself get distracted listening to his half of the conversation.

“…What about the hunters? Were they-? …And Daisy?” There was a long pause. Then Jon murmured, “I’m sorry.” Another pause, then he said, “R-right. Yes. We’re at Martin’s apartment. I can text you the address… Thank you.”

“Basira’s on her way,” Jon explained when he hung up the phone. Martin just nodded. He turned away and tried to discreetly wipe the tears from his eyes, but he didn’t think he hid his sadness well.

“Martin,” Jon said gently, so gently, as though a sudden noise might make Martin shatter like glass, “How are you feeling?”

How was he feeling? The only thing Martin could think to say in response was, “Cold.”

“Right. Of course,” Jon whispered, half to himself. He grabbed the blanket from the couch and threw it over Martin’s shoulders, then steered him into a seat at the kitchen table. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said, fiddling with the blankets one last time before he did to make sure they were still firmly wrapped around him. He worked quickly, diligently, but there was a clear and present anxiety behind all of his movements.

When the water was on the stove to boil, Jon took a seat at the table as well, pulling his chair around to be closer to Martin.

He set a hand on Martin’s, and flinched at the cold. “Oh,” he said, voice soft and surprised and mournful, “your hand.”

He wrapped Martin’s hand in both of his own and began gently massaging warmth back into it. Jon stared down at their hands as he worked, his face wrought with grave, single-minded focus, and Martin stared at Jon.

He looked tired. The dark circles under his eyes had gotten darker, and there was an odd tension in his posture, as though if he allowed himself to relax for even a moment, he’d pass out. Had he looked like this, the last time they’d spoken? He didn’t know. He hadn’t really seen Jon then; there had been too much fog in his head.

The blood began to flow back into Martin’s hand, and with it, he started to regain feeling. Jon’s hands, he found, were calloused and bony and rough with scar tissue, but still unfailingly gentle.

They sat like that for a long while before Jon broke the silence.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured suddenly, as though responding to something Martin had said, or perhaps his own train of thought. “I thought…”

Whatever Jon was going to say was interrupted when the kettle started whistling. Jon let go of Martin’s hand and stood up to prepare the tea, leaving Martin’s skin tingling in all the places he had touched it.

For a few minutes, the kitchen was filled with the familiar, reassuring sounds of water being poured, and boxes of tea being rummaged through, and spoon clanging against mug. When was the last time Martin had made tea? When was the last time someone had made tea for him?

Jon pressed the mug into Martin’s hand. “Here,” he murmured, “I think I remembered how you like it.”

It was too hot to drink, and with the state Martin’s hands were in – still so cold and so stiff – it was too hot even to hold, so he whispered his thanks and set it down on the table.

Beside him, Jon fidgeted nervously. “There’s something I ought to tell you,” he said. “And I know this isn’t a great time; I’m sure you’re not in the best headspace to hear this, after everything that’s happened, but, well… Well, it might change how you feel about– about me, and a-about our next steps. So I think it’s only right I tell you now.”

He took a deep, steadying breath. “I love you. I-I have for… quite awhile now, really, and I should have told you before, but I was scared, and… A-Anyway, I know you don’t feel the same way about me, anymore, and I‘ll do my best to move past these feelings and be the kind of friend that you need right now, but if you’d rather we go our separate ways, I’d… I’d understand. I just… I thought you deserved to hear it said.”

Martin’s breath caught in his throat. The foundation on which his world rested shattered into pieces, and he was left with only one thing to anchor himself.

Jon loved him.

“Jon…” he whispered, and Jon turned away.

“You don’t have to say anything…”

“Jon,” he repeated, more insistently. He cupped a hand around Jon’s cheek and turned him back to face him. Jon’s eyes widened, hope and uncertainty fighting in his expression. “I love you, too.”

Jon’s mouth fell open. For several long moments, his lips moved silently, as though struggling for words, before he finally asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Oh. Martin drew back, letting his hand fall from Jon’s cheek. He wanted to, he did, but… “I don’t think I can,” he said, shaking his head. “After everything, after the Lonely… I think it would be too much, too fast.” He was still half-numb, and the other half of him was on fire with a thousand sensations that he’d all but forgotten how to feel over the past few months, and he didn’t want to kiss Jon when there was still so much fog clinging to them both. The first time he kissed Jon, he wanted to really feel it.

“I understand,” Jon said, eyes brimming over with care and concern and love. “Would– W-Would a hug be alright?”

Martin nodded, because a hug was more than alright, and Jon wrapped his arms around him. Martin pressed him close to his chest, squeezing tight, as though he could press Jon into his rib cage and keep him next to his heart forever, and Jon clung to him just as fiercely.

“I love you,” Martin whispered. It was hard not to think of the last time they had done this, and everything that had happened after, but this time Jon tightened his grip and whispered back,

“I love you, too. God, Martin, I–” Whatever else he was going to say was lost as he buried his face in Martin’s neck, and Martin pulled him closer.

After a moment, he pulled back. “What did you mean, before?” Martin asked, the thought that had been gnawing at him finally coming to the surface. “Why did you say ‘I know you don’t feel the same way?’”

Jon chewed nervously on his lip. “In the Lonely, you said… you said, ‘I really loved you, you know.’ Past tense.”

“Oh, Jon…” Martin murmured. He didn’t remember saying it, he didn’t remember much of anything that had happened in the Lonely, but he didn’t doubt Jon’s memory. “I love you. Present tense, future tense… Any tense you want.”

Jon brushed away the tears in his eyes. “Present perfect?” he suggested with a watery laugh.

“I have loved you,” Martin said, casting his mind back to primary school grammar lessons, “for a very long time. And that isn’t going to change.”

Jon grabbed Martin’s hand and squeezed it, pressing more warmth into his cold skin. After a moment, he lifted it towards his lips, then paused, looking at Martin for permission.

“May I?”

“You may,” Martin whispered, breathless.

Jon brought Martin’s hand up to his lips and gently kissed the back of his palm. The kiss was brief and chaste but reverent, and it sent a thrill up Martin’s spine. Jon hesitated, then lifted his hand again and pressed a kiss to each of Martin’s knuckles in turn. Then he set Martin’s hand down on the table and gave it a quick, awkward pat.

I love you, Martin thought, and then it struck him all at once that he could say that. He had said it, and Jon had said it back, and he could say it again any time he wanted.

He didn’t, though. Instead, he grabbed Jon’s hand and raised it halfway to his lips.

“May I?”

Jon smiled. “You may.”

Martin repeated what Jon had done – one kiss to the back of his hand, then one to each of his knuckles – and Jon shivered at the contact. When he was done, they simply stared at each other, too giddy and besotted to think of anything to say. Martin felt almost drunk with the feeling, and judging by the expression on Jon’s face – awestruck and adoring and still a bit nervous – it seemed that he was feeling much the same.

He reached out and laid a hand on Martin’s forearm, turning it over and grazing his fingers lightly over the inside of his wrist.

“May I?” he asked again.

“You may.”

This time Jon lingered, taking his time, kissing Martin’s pulse point as though it were something truly precious, and Martin let his fingers reach out and tangle in Jon’s hair.

After that, Jon brushed his fingers against Martin’s cheek.

“May I?”

“You may.”

Jon kissed him on the cheek, quickly but with feeling, and when Jon drew back Martin could still feel the warmth of his lips burning against his skin.

It went on – Martin’s forehead, his nose, the corner of his jaw, just below his ear.

“May I?”

“You may.”

Martin responded in kind, reaching out to graze careful fingers over Jon’s temple, the center of his palm, the scar on his throat left by Daisy’s knife, what felt like a very long time ago.

“May I?”

“You may.”

They moved cautiously, hesitantly, as they explored every bit of exposed skin on each other’s bodies. Each kiss seemed to drive away more of the chill and the fog, warming Martin from within more effectively than the cup of tea that was currently growing cold, untouched, on the table beside him ever could have.

Eventually, he raised his fingers to Jon’s lips.

“May I?”

Jon studied his face. “Are you sure?”

Martin just nodded, too nervous to speak. Jon nodded as well, and leaned forward, lips parting, tilting his face up to meet Martin’s as Martin leaned down to kiss him.

Their lips had barely brushed when there was a knock at the door. They both jumped.

“That’ll be Basira,” Jon said, reluctantly pulling away. Martin stood up with him and followed him to the door.

Basira eyed them both carefully when she stepped inside, sizing them up. If she noticed the anxious way Martin hovered beside Jon, she said nothing. If she noticed the way Jon’s hand drifted out unconsciously to rest on Martin’s arm, she likewise didn’t comment on it.

She didn’t comment on the way they clung to each, as though one or both of them might disappear if even a foot of space opened up between them, or the way they pressed their chairs together when the three of them sat down at the kitchen table to discuss their next moves, or the fact that their hands were interlinked under the table. She focused on the task at hand.

“Daisy has safehouses all over the country,” she told them. “She hasn’t told me where all of them are, but I think this one should still be stocked.” She passed an envelope to Jon, who opened it and lanced inside. Over his shoulder, Martin could see an address and instructions written out in Daisy’s scrawling handwriting.

“Scotland?” Jon asked, glancing at the address.

“I doubt the cops will follow you there. I can’t say for certain, though, so don’t get sloppy. How much cash do you have on you?”

“£20, maybe?” Jon said hesitantly.

“£300,” Martin said, prompting strange looks from Jon and Basira. “Peter gave me spending money sometimes,” he explained.

“Right,” Basira said. “That should cover you for the trip. Once you reach the safehouse, there’ll be more cash in the safe — the combination’s in the envelope. Whatever you do, don’t use your credit cards.”

“I know,” Jon replied, a bit tetchily. “I do have some experience being wanted for murder.”

Martin could almost have sworn he saw Basira roll her eyes before she said. “The cops will be on their way here soon. How fast can you pack?”

The answer, it turned out, was very fast. There wasn’t much that Martin needed to take. He grabbed shampoo and a toothbrush from the bathroom before heading over to his closet and shoving some clothes in a bag.

The door to the bedroom creaked open, and when he turned, Jon was stood there, framed by the dim orange light of the hallway.

“Almost ready?” he asked.

Martin zipped his bag closed, and slung it over his shoulder. “Ready.”

He slipped his hand back into Jon’s as they walked back through the living room. They lingered on the doorstep, turning to take one last look around.

“I’m going to miss this place,” Jon murmured.

“Me, too.”

There were so many memories attached to the tiny flat. It was a place they’d laughed and argued and made each other tea, the place where Martin had mourned and Jon had recovered from about a hundred different injuries, a place that had felt safe in spite of everything.

It had been their home.

Still, Jon was clutching the envelope Basira had given them in one hand and Martin’s hand in the other, and there was a train leaving in half an hour that would take them to Manchester, and they could board a train from there that would take them to Inverness, and from there they could catch a bus to a small, out-of-the-way village where a safehouse was waiting for them.

It was time to find a new home.

#tma fanfic #tma fic #jonmartin #jonmartin fic #Scottish Safehouse fic #(sort of)

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