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regrettablewritings · 3 years

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Soulmate AU: The First Drawing You See From Your Soulmate is Tattooed on Your Skin

A detective having a tell would probably be considered inappropriate to most people. Detectives were supposed to read tells, not have them. But then again, Benoit had never been much for keeping up appearances. Besides, what was the harm in rubbing his thumb along his right wrist? It helped him focus; it helped him think.

Or at least, that was what he’d told himself. He wasn’t entirely lying, either, rather the larger whole of it all was more so that when he rubbed that spot on his skin, he felt calm. Composed. He liked to think that that was the feeling his soulmate had intended when they painted that image, whenever they made or would make it. Whatever it was. After all, it had plenty of blue in it.

He was pretty sure it was meant to be a pond or some kind of body of water; that might explain the blues and greens and maybe the bits of white that he could make out. And if he squinted his eyes a little, he could swear there were little flecks of gold. Goldfish, maybe? Honestly, he had no clue. Benoit wasn’t much for complaining or expressing a lack of gratefulness, but he couldn’t help but sometimes feel envious of those whose tattoos covered a larger part of their body. Not a massive amount, but at least just enough to be able to tell precisely what the heck their soulmate’s image was trying to portray. Clearly, the image was larger than what that patch of his skin could afford, and honest to God, he’d spent a good part of his life trying to make out what it was!

(The embarrassment of it all, he would sometimes muse deprecatingly: That the acclaimed “Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths” could solve the most absurd cases in the country, yet had spent most of his natural-born life completely stumped by what might as well have counted as a body part!)

And yet, Benoit could never stay frustrated about it; not when his thumb gently grazed against the image, imagining the smoothness of his skin ebbing into the aquatic swirls of the proposed water. But just for extra precaution, he saw no harm in distracting himself.

That afternoon’s distraction? A quick skim of the local paper, accompanied by a mug of hot tea. He tried not to think of how such a method revealed his age, instead snapping the paper open to a page discussing the local goings-on. It was the usual sort of content: The community theater’s spring production was seeking house crew members, a mom and pop-style restaurant was having an anniversary special . . . It was the same sort of thing Benoit had grown used to expecting.

But what his pale blue eyes landed on next didn’t make the rest pale by comparison -- it downright washed all else from existence: An art show.

Benoit considered himself a well-rounded person, but it was more so in an almost tongue in cheek sort of manner: As a detective, it was his job to be appropriately versed in an assortment of fields. However, a jack of all trades was never truly a master of none. Benoit’s experiences with art theft and forgeries had lent him a hand in only about as much observation as was necessary for the respective occurrences.

But . . . he knew those swirls. He knew that blue, those greens, that white -- he recognized how the gold was patterned! Sure, the cheap ink job of a colored newspaper picture might have dulled the quality ever so slightly but there was no mistake to be made: That painting was his. No . . . It was theirs!

You tried to make calming breaths without making your anxiety obvious. A nervous but otherwise acceptable smile twitched into place, fooling the guests as they wandered about the gallery. Or, at least, you certainly hoped it was fooling them; but it was probably all to be outdone by the fact that you’d been nursing the same champagne flute for the last half-hour.

Is this what “making it” feels like? you wondered. Because if it was . . . you weren’t too fond of it. You felt bad for not relishing this opportunity; the art world was highly competitive, and you were more than blessed to have had the chance to not only display your work in a showroom, but to have said room be dedicated entirely to your pieces. But in that blessing was also a curse: The curse of criticism, of weary eyes, of people both waiting to pounce on you with ribbings of how you lack the magnanimity of the classics or the free thinking of the contemporaries --

Shitshitshitsmile! You did as you were told -- both by your brain, and by your manager earlier when they walked you through how you were to compose yourself through this entire ordeal. Just smile, enunciate when spoken to, and let the potential schmoozing flow and oh god, that Karen-looking lady who definitely owns a house in Martha’s Vineyard for when she wants to get away from her husband for a day totally hated that piece you’d spent months working on, didn’t she?!

The thought made your stomach twist, your already awkward smile along with it. You inhaled sharply. You had to find something to distract yourself with.

You turned and faced the painting nearest to you. Some might call it vanity, but you were actually quite pleased with this particular piece. That, and its blueness gave you a sense of . . . serenity. You imagined the ripples washing over you and into you, the scent and sound of the painted environment gently caressing your nose and drowning out both the stench of perfume and pretentious chattering . . . And also, apparently, the sound of approaching footsteps.

You hadn’t realized anyone had joined your side until the rumble of a southern baritone carded through the water.

“It’s gorgeous. Isn’t it?”

You hadn’t meant to jump and appear so clumsy.

“Oh, sh -- ” You cut yourself short as you eyed the droplets of spilled, room temperature champagne. If your manager found out that you had cussed around a potential buyer, they would’ve mounted your head on the wall. Thankfully, however, the stranger didn’t appear at all fazed. If anything, the chuckle he responded with sounded genuinely amused.

“Oh, my dear girl, I’m terribly sorry!” he insisted, holding up his left hand. “I didn’t mean to scare you; I can imagine most anyone would be mighty transfixed over a piece like this.”

You gulped as you looked up at your unintentional scarer. His eyes were the same blue as the one that brought you calm just moments earlier, yet they had the almost opposite effect to you now. As you looked into them, you didn’t feel calm; not necessarily: Instead, you felt your heart beginning to ripple the pattern of the painting, your cheeks burning as bright as the gold swirling amongst the little waves. And yet you found yourself transfixed by them, only offered freedom when the older gentleman offered you a hint of a smile. A warm one.

Crap! Uh -- Answer his question! Think of something to say! your mind scrambled.

“Uh . . .” you stammered. The only way to save what atoms of confidence you still had left was to turn your eyes back to the painting. “I -- I should hope so.” Smooth. You tried to remember your calming breaths. You heard the man hum, shifting his position ever so slightly in your peripheral.

“What can you tell me about it?” he asked, revealing just how close to you he truly was. You could feel the warmth of his person and the richness of his voice vibrating into you. Or perhaps it was butterflies? Maybe both? Well, whatever it was, it almost made you stumble over your words. You’d spent the entire evening up to that point rehearsing stories of your inspirations, recounting whatever education you had to people who probably didn’t give a crap.

But this instance was different: Maybe it was foolishness sourced from a sudden and sophomoric attraction, but you almost wanted to believe that perhaps this man genuinely cared. That he was genuinely interested in what you as the actual artist had to say and not you as some painting mannequin made to recite lines over and over.

The excitement of such a possibility broke through your nerves . . . and, unfortunately, right out of your mouth.

“I just really wanted to paint a mermaid in a mall coin fountain,” you admitted. You wanted to kick yourself. Up until that point, you’d been rather proud of your nifty little idea. But when you said it out loud, you sounded ridiculous! You could barely hide the reactionary wince, much less how your breathing hitched and hiccuped with nervousness. Just as soon as it had come, the hope that perhaps this man was different disappeared, leaving you awaiting his ridicule.

A ridicule that never came. Instead, there was quiet between the both of you. Perhaps he was at a loss for words?

“Mm,” he hummed, making you tense with expectation. You glanced at him just enough to see him nod, his blue eyes still focused on the canvas before him. “Go on . . .”

You blinked. Was he . . . for real?

“I . . . What more is there to say?” you wondered. The entire night, nobody had really asked for more on your part. They usually just took whatever purple prose you gave them and left it at that. Your initial assumption was right after all: This gentleman was cut from a different cloth from the lot.

He pursed his lips and shrugged. “What inspired this?”

“Oh, uh . . . Well . . .” Was it worth telling him? Aw, hell: you’d already made a bit of a fool of yourself being honest, so what harm was there in doing it some more? “I did it because I never saw anything about a mermaid that lived in a mall fountain, collecting the coins people toss in there.”

You didn’t even have a chance to worry about his criticism before the man’s features broke into a smile. It wasn’t like the others’ more courteous grins; this one reached his eyes, making their icy coolness warm and welcoming. You hated the cheesiness of it all, but for a very split second you wished that you could be a mermaid in them.

He chuckled once again. “Can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything concerning a coin-hoarding mermaid myself, let alone a professional art piece.” It was small, but the assurance made you offer your own smile.

“Well . . . But then maybe I have . . .” At that, your heart dropped. There it was: The anticipated criticism. He thought you were a hack after all: Uninspired, boorish, unskilled, whatever word there was to describe a person who didn’t know how to use a fan brush properly if any.

The wound stung as one so sudden should: Heavily and down to your core. You wanted the floor to open up and eat you whole. Or better yet: You wanted to climb into your apparently uninspired painting and drown in the mall fountain. But none of those could be an option, and neither was the possibility of hiding in the bathroom or an empty corridor. Instead, you had to put on a brave face and do your best to get through the moment.

“Oh?” you uttered. Your throat pained from the threat of anxiety. “Where do you suppose? I’ll admit, I’m not much into contemporary art so I don’t know the what’s what of what if you catch my drift.” You tried to weakly smile at your sad attempt for a joke. God, this so wasn’t what “making it” felt like.

But the man didn’t offer a courteous hint of laughter. Nor did he offer you a verbal response. Instead, he turned to face you. You did the same, even though you really didn’t want to. But it was the polite and expected thing to do when being confronted. Damn politeness and courteousness.

You weren’t sure how to respond when the man began to make work of his right sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and beginning to roll the rest of it up. Your paranoia was unfortunately the first to respond due to your preexisting discomfort of the entire ordeal of an evening. You were just about prepared to scream, yelp, make any kind of distressed call -- only for it to trickle out into a gasp. An amazed exhale. The image the man presented to you on his wrist was small. Clearly, for it to be recognized for what it was, it needed a larger stretch of skin to belong to. But you knew what it was: You knew those swirls, the placements of those flecks of gold, those blues and greens surrounded by white.

For the umpteenth time that evening, your breathing changed. Only, you were pretty positive that none of your deep breathing would be necessary this time around; you would be more than happy to look at your painting on your soulmate’s skin for the rest of the night.

Epilogue:

“Mr. Blanc, please,” you insisted. “You’ve grown up with that thing on your arm, surely you’re bored with it by now. You can have your pick of the gallery. Hell, I’ll even make you something on request!”

Pickings hadn’t become slim, but the night had ended surprisingly successful. Well, surprising to you: You hadn’t expected anyone to buy anything of yours that evening, let alone six. You supposed that perhaps they just wanted to participate in the elitism brought on by owning newcomer art. Benoit, however, insisted that the buyers simply had functioning eyes. What a sweet-talker your soulmate was.

You watched as he shook his head stubbornly, eyes still fixated on the painting that adorned his wrist. He’d seen all the other remaining paintings, and even the ones that wound up selling by evening’s end. They were all gorgeous, he insisted, but . . .

“Benoit, if you will, Ms. (Y/N),” he corrected, apparently missing the irony. He gestured insistently at the composition. “And no. I . . . I truly would be quite satisfied with this one.” He heard you raspberry in defeat as you made your way back to his side, folding your arms in exasperation.

“Seriously, though,” you sighed. “Is a painting of a mermaid dwelling in, like, a fountain you can find nearby an Auntie Anne’s really . . .” You waved a hand as if searching for the right word. “. . . Befitting? Of a detective’s abode? I was thinking more of a bucolic piece or like a portrait of some kind or . . .” You trailed off, only to be met with an amused huff.

“Some detective I am,” Benoit muttered. He broke his gaze back to you and placed his hands on his hips. “Took me well over a damn decade or two to learn what it even was. And only because you told me!”

#benoit blanc x reader #benoit blanc #knives out imagine #knives out imagines #knives out x reader #regrettablewritings #for anyone wondering: I think Reader's tattoo would be of a flower. Or a random doodle.#something Benoit made while not thinking and they just so happened to glance at it

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serenityseventeen · 3 years

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Love & Letter: To The Thirteen Boys I've Loved Before

The Fourth Letter

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To: Wen Junhui

From: Y/N

Jun, how are you doing lately?

I'm always wondering that now that you're gone. I want to text you or call you but it'll be awkward since before you left, we decided to break up. I want to call and hear your voice, laugh at your jokes, I miss it all.

I'm sure it's better for the both of us that we cut off contact, but how can I forget you, my first boyfriend that I'm still in love with? I think you're the first person I've ever loved so deeply like this. I know that I'm in love with you.

During the little over half a year that we dated, I learned so many things about love. It was phenomenal, beautiful, and such a good feeling.

I'm always wondering, if we weren't teens in high school, if we were adults, would our relationship be different? Would we have ended differently? Because if we were adults, maybe you wouldn't have to leave back to China. Even now, I'm wondering, in the future, can we cross paths again? Give our love another chance?

But I know that by that time, we would be completely different people and maybe not even attracted to each other anymore. Who knows, you may find someone in China that you love better than me.

If you didn't have to go, maybe we could have had a longer relationship. Why must we have to be apart when we're so in love? You're my first boyfriend ever and I can't be more grateful to you. You were the best first boyfriend I could ever ask for.

This letter to you, it's not a confession, only a little bit. I just want to write this letter to remember you, my first boyfriend, and thank you now that it would be too awkward to do it over text or call.

You're my first boyfriend and when you came into my life, it felt like someone above heard my prayers. At that time when you slipped into my life, I'll confess that I was trying to fall out of love with someone else. Thanks to you, I was able to do that.

Should we both thank Mr. Koo for pairing us up for the 2-month project? I mean, thanks to him, I was able to fall in love with someone like you.

I remember how awkward it was for both of us introverts to speak with each other. You introduced yourself and I introduced myself and then we didn't talk for like five minutes. I still remember how heavily my heart pounded while waiting for you to speak. To this day, I don't know why you giggled first, but it was attractive and cute. Maybe I'm just so madly in love with you that I find your everything to be perfect and cute.

When we began talking to each other, I was surprised at how unique you were. Trust me, Junhui, you're nothing like anyone I've met before. Out of the guys I've ever met, you're the weirdest! But that's a good thing, because of that charm, I fell even harder for you. It's your charm, Jun.

It was just your way of thinking that was unique. You were able to come up with the most unique jokes I've ever heard and your humor always cracked me up as well. I still remember that first day when we were working on the project, you drew a small sun with a smiley face at the corner of my paper. It was so cute.

Soon, I realized that most of the time during class, we were just busy joking with each other and wasting time. You shared stories about your little brother and always made me laugh somehow. Each time I laughed because of you, my heart fluttered. Each time you laughed because of me, I would feel a rush of excitement and my heart would be pounding so fast.

When you started coming over to my house to work in hopes of getting more progress, that's when our relationship progressed. It was weird to have you around at my house because we just talked so much instead of getting work done. Sometimes, the responsibility would hit me and I would remind us to get to work, in which you would chuckle and reply, “Oh right, what are we doing, fooling around?”

Every time you said something along those lines, it made me smile because you were just so cute. I was slowly drowning myself into your charms. This unique personality of yours was drawing me in.

Aside from your dorkiness, when you get to work, you work hard. Sometimes I was distracted by how you looked when you were focused.

Thank you for asking me out that day at the bus stop. I was sending you home. I know I told you it was because I felt bad for leaving you alone and it really was because I felt bad, but it was also because I wanted to be around you longer.

When we reached the empty bus stop and you waited for the bus, you told me after some hesitation, abruptly, while chuckling softly, “I like you, Y/N. Should we date?”

At that time, my heart and mind were racing, that's why I replied stupidly to your confession and said “Isn't it too fast...?”

Gosh, I was so dumb! It wasn't fast at all and the pace was actually good. We took two weeks getting to know each other, it was about time that you asked me out, right? I mean, I liked you back then too, so I hope you don't think those dates we went on captured my heart because that's not the case at all! I've liked you before your confession.

However, thanks to my dumb reply, you took me on many dates. It was my first time going on dates like that with just one other person. A date like the ones in the movies.

The first date being at the carnival that was open in town. I had so much fun there! Plus, I still have that photo of us with the face paint in my photo gallery. I don't want to delete it because it holds so many memories. Maybe someday, I'll print our couple pictures and tape them on the back of this letter. Plus, the cat ears looked so cute on us.

For the first time, I felt like I was on a real date, and it was with you. I'm grateful that I was able to participate in so many different games with you. I still have the small duck you won for me. Those games are all a total scam but you still insisted and managed to win it for me. At that moment, I felt your sincerity at the bottom of my heart.

I also remember our date at the PC cafe. Gosh, you have the weirdest taste in games, you know that!? Usually, men like playing shooter games but you and I trained a cat to fly and had multiple races. The loser would then have to get a flick on the forehead, even though we both went easy on each other. That brought me a lot of joy too even though it was simple.

For our last date, before we started dating, I just want to confess, I lied about being able to stay out late. My dad didn't figure out I was with you though. I just really wanted to see the movie so I went to watch it with you. That was the location of our first kiss together.

After the movie, I was stretching my back outside the movie theatre. I don't know what you were looking at but if you were looking at me, I'm sorry I looked so ugly while stretching. It was almost 9 PM, two hours past the time I can stay out.

I can remember the scene clearly. I was just about to tie my hair while talking about the movie when you suddenly took my face with your cold hands and kissed me with your warm lips. Your hand on my warm neck was sending chills down my spine. I still didn't know how to kiss then and just going with the flow, I found myself enjoying kissing you a lot. My heart was racing and I remember how hard I clenched onto your khaki jacket. I'm giggling now thinking about it.

I did learn how to kiss better because of you though, Jun. After we started dating, sometimes when my dad left to get us some fruit, you would sneak some kisses onto my lips in the meanwhile instead of working. You're so playful too. Playful and sweet.

Sometimes, you don't know how much you mean to me, Jun. I mean, I'm still a bit upset that you didn't tell me you were moving back to China in the middle of summer break. However, I'm glad that you told me before you moved and just didn't disappear suddenly. Because you told me, I could love you with all of my teenage heart and give you all of me. I was able to convince my father to allow me to spend more hours with you, whether it was goofing around, working hard, or just kissing and hugging. Thank you for that, because I was able to prepare myself. I loved it whenever we were just sitting, our legs crisscrossed, and my arms around your neck with your hands clasped around my waist while we kissed sweetly.

I also love your hair, Jun. It was so soft and flowy that I could ruffle it all day. Your hand too, whenever they clasped with mine, I would always feel a sense of warmth.

When the move ticked closer, I was beginning to grow more nervous. I didn't want you to leave but I knew it wasn't your choice. Did you dread the day as well?

I wonder if we could have broken that long-distance relationship curse. We loved each other after all. I thought that I would be able to handle it as long as I could still hear your voice and text you. I thought long and hard about it, wondering if a breakup was necessary. But then, without even trying, I know that we will eventually drift apart. We're still teens and it's my first time having a boyfriend, how was I supposed to know what to do?

I remember the day before you left, you told me that you loved me and that you were sorry that all you could give me was memories. I'm still believing that every word you said was genuine.

You cared for me when I was sick. I remember how you rushed to check up on me after school when you heard that I was absent because I was sick. Most of the time I was sleeping but I can still remember how gently you caressed my hair and stroked my cheeks.

You showed me unconditional love, even when I was telling you that I wasn't proud of myself. You cheered me on with your bright personality.

I'm glad I said those words too. “I love you.”

Even though we may just seem like kids to others, I truly loved you, Junhui. The day when we broke up at the airport, I did not want you to see me cry. You always told me to cry if I wanted to but I didn't want you to see me cry.

When you said “Well, I guess that's it for us. Thank you, Y/N, for being mine for a while. I love you a lot and I'll always treasure the memories we made” as you left, waving and smiling painfully, I was going to cry, but I just smiled and waved after telling you that I loved you too and that this breakup was unfortunate.

When you stopped your suitcase and ran back to me one more time to hug me, I was about to burst into tears. You said your final goodbye and then went back to your suitcase. To be honest, I wanted to hold you longer. I didn't want you to leave, I wanted to hold you back so that you could stay with me.

After you left, I ran into my dad's car and cried.

I cried a lot and my dad didn't even do anything to stop me. He knew you were my first boyfriend and having to end my relationship with you so sadly made his heart ache too I bet. I'm glad my dad let me cry though. I think he understood what I was going through.

I miss you a lot, Jun. I still think about you a lot. Sometimes I look back on the place where we worked on our project and I can almost see the scenes of us sitting there, laughing, talking, hugging, cuddling, kissing. I was really sad after you left. I'm still getting over it. I'm still remembering when I wake up some days and realize that you're not here with me anymore and that you're in a different time zone, a different country, a different place.

A month has passed since you left. I have a month of summer left to spend to move on.

I hope you're having a good time, staying healthy, being happy where you belong. I will always remember you. I don't want to forget you, Junhui. You mean a lot to me.

I miss you, Jun. I'm thankful to you too.

I love you, Jun.

If only we fell in love at a different time, perhaps in the future when we are adults, capable of our emotions, capable of thinking, capable of our own lives, capable of loving. If you didn't have to move... If you didn't have to leave... I'm sure I'd still have you beside me. Yet, I can't even tell what the present holds, who am I to assume the future?

All I can do is reminisce now. I really miss you, Jun. I'll move on soon enough. Are you trying to move on too? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?

If only we were given more time.

Yours truly,

Y/N

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6/20/21 - 1:03 am

a/n: I listened to ‘Silent Boarding Gate’ while making this one because that song is so beautiful and just makes me feel like I'm reminiscing about a past love that is now gone. I almost cry every time. It's such a beautiful song, guys...

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winryofresembool · 3 years

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Things We Lost in the Fire, ch 23

aka Caleo uni au

Fic summary: Calypso starts studying at a new university, but to her annoyance her new flatmate is a loud mouthed mechanic who also likes to sneak his dog in whenever. But as she learns to know him better, she realizes they might have more in common than what she first thought. Eventually, even the darkest secrets come out…

Chapter summary: Halloween chapter, part 1.

A/N: This is the first part of possibly a long-ish Halloween 'arc' that is to come. I have to warn you that I only have 1 more chapter as a draft version and the said chapter is a mess and has caused me a lot of insecurities so... I'm not entirely sure how long it will take me to work through the issues that chapter has. I still hope I will have something to post next Friday! Please be patient with me, I promise I have every intention to continue and finish this story.

Thanks for all the lovely comments the previous chapter got! You guys are the best :) And keep them coming because that is literally the best reward I can get :)

Words: 3200+

Genre: romance & hurt/comfort

Warnings: none

previous chapter / AO3

...

“Hey Sunshine, you ready?” Leo asked her flatmate one November Friday as he was pulling his winter coat on in the hallway.

“In a minute!” Calypso yelled from her room. “Just… One final touch up!”

Leo checked his watch. “Okay, as long as it’s really a minute! You know Argo II isn’t waiting!”

“You do know that Argo II doesn’t have feelings, right? It’s a car,” his non-understanding flatmate argued.

“You better hope he didn’t hear that!” Leo protested. “He may just not turn on at all if you claim such things.”

“Oh my gods, Leo. Sometimes I wonder if you care about your machines more than people.”

Leo didn’t respond to that. To himself he mumbled. “At least I know how to fix them. And can’t hurt them.”

The flatmates were getting ready to leave for Jason and Piper’s late Halloween party. Most of the members of their friend group had been busy doing their own things on the real Halloween weekend but they had decided that they’d still want to have a small gathering at Jason and Piper’s house on a later date. Percy and Annabeth would be there, as well as Jason’s sister Thalia, her ‘friend’ Reyna, and Jason’s friend and a distant relative Nico. To Calypso Leo had told, that he had only met Nico a couple of times, because apparently Nico was a bit of a lonely soul and he wandered around the country doing who knows what. That fall, though, he had apparently met someone who had managed to keep him rooted to his home, so Leo suspected that there was a possibility that Nico really would show up this time.

Leo snapped out of his thoughts when Calypso’s door was pulled open, revealing the girl in her costume. His mouth opened involuntarily as he took her in. She was wearing a white chiton like dress with golden decorations around the neckline and accessories that matched the theme. Those included a golden headband and a belt, a bracelet made of real flowers, strappy leather sandals and since her own hair was short now, she had gotten a caramel colored wig that she had braided to one side, reminding Leo a lot of the hairstyle Calypso had had when she had moved in. She smiled at Leo shyly. “Well, what do you think?” She asked, lifting the hem of her dress slightly to show it off better.

“You’re… you’re…” Leo felt the words escape him again. With frustration he wondered how one person could do that to him. Leo Valdez never ran out of words.

“Calypso?” she tried to guess what he had wanted to say.

‘What?” He asked with confusion, unable to follow Calypso’s track of thoughts. In his mind he had answered her question ‘prettier than greek goddesses’ but he realized too late that she had meant that she was dressed up like the Calypso from the Greek mythology. “Oh, now I got it. Must have sniffed too much machine oil or something…Anyway, I see you have some self irony, dressing as your name sake.”

“That was kind of the point, Valdez. A girl named Calypso who studies Greek mythology? People comment on my name so often that I decided it’s time to make it clear that yes, I’m aware of that coincidence.”

“Ooh, the great revenge,” Leo chuckled. Suddenly he noticed that Calypso had turned more serious, her hands fiddling with her purse.

“Really, though, what do you think of this? I made this dress and these bracelets myself. And my mum gave me this before we moved here,” she pointed at her headband. “Apparently it’s something that’s been running in our family; my grandma wore it in her wedding picture and so on…”

“Oh… Well… that’s cool,” Leo said, mentally cursing the ‘error’ message on his brain. “You did a good job. I mean… I once saw a painting of Calypso in the Indianapolis Museum of Art and I think you look nothing like her… in a good way!”

“Aww, thank you.” Calypso seemed happily surprised about Leo’s comment, and he swore the expression made her even cuter. He also wondered if he should have a doctor check his heart because it seemed to do funny things in her presence...

“You’re welcome?” he replied stupidly.

“So, where is your costume?” Calypso asked curiously, apparently only now paying attention to the fact that he indeed wasn’t wearing one yet. “I thought you said we’re in a hurry.”

“I can’t drive in mine, it’s difficult to see from under it,” Leo explained, returning to his room to get a huge sports bag where he had packed his creation a bit earlier. He had spent several days making it and he was kind of proud of the final result. Although, seeing Calypso now, for a moment he still wondered if he had made a mistake with his costume choice, but it was too late to change his mind now. “I’ll put it on when we get there.” He gestured towards the bag.

“Okay,” Calypso nodded while changing her shoes into more fall suitable ones. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you have come up with.”

“Good, because it will blow your mind,” Leo claimed.

“I will refrain from forming any opinions before I see it,” Calypso noted, putting her keys into her pocket. “Now, come on, mister Mysterious, I hear Argo II isn’t very patient.”

Leo secretly loved it when Calypso attempted to joke back, and he grinned at her as he held the door open so she could leave first.

“Let’s go then, Sunshine.”

…

The drive to Jason and Piper took about 20 minutes so Leo and Calypso had a lot of time to talk about whatever came to their minds. At first Calypso gave Leo pretty short answers and he got worried that something was wrong between them again, but eventually Leo got her curious about the guests at the party that she hadn’t met yet.

“The Hunters are traveling a lot because of their competitions so I haven’t met Thalia that often. She’s a little bit scary, though. She has this edgy look going on and I’ve heard she is super strong; she’d ninja throw me on the floor before I’d have time to say Festus if given a chance. I’m trying very hard not to give her any reasons to do that.”

“Ouch. She sounds like something else,” Calypso said.

“She is,” Leo confirmed, almost getting chills only thinking about her. “She can be nice if you get to her good side, though.”

“Is it just me or does someone have a crush?” Calypso asked teasingly.

“What? No!” Leo exclaimed, glancing at Calypso’s reaction briefly. “Alright, maybe I used to have but that was when I didn’t know what was the best for me. But that was a long time ago. Besides, she’s totally dating someone even though they won’t admit it.” ‘And I wish I was dating someone else as well’, he thought, but left that unsaid.

“Oh? Will I get to meet that person today?” Calypso asked with curiosity.

“I think you will. From what I know Reyna’s always with Thalia. They claim they are only best friends but Jason has told me that they are keeping a low profile because it’s forbidden inside their team to date their teammates.”

“That sounds like a basis for a tragic love story,” Calypso said while staring out of the window with a dreamy expression. “I don’t even know these people but as a hopeless romantic I hope they will find some solution.”

Leo thought Calypso was very cute when she talked like that “Yeah. I hope.”

“So, do you know this Reyna personally?” she asked then, distracting Leo from his thoughts.

“You could say that,” Leo answered, trying to focus on the road instead of the girl next to him. “The team visits Waystation regularly because Jo and Emmie used to coach them back in the day and as a fellow Spanish speaker Reyna has always paid special attention to me. I swear, sometimes she treats me like I was his little brother…”

“Aww, that’s kind of sweet in my opinion. What is this team you were talking about, though? Did you say Hunters?”

“Oh, yep. The Artemis’ Hunters, named after the Greek goddess Artemis, naturally. It’s an archery group… Hey, is everything alright?”

Leo couldn’t help but notice that Calypso had shifted uncomfortably on her seat and adjusted her seatbelt a bit looser around her shoulder when he had said the name.

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I just… used to know someone who was in the Hunters as well, so I was surprised they have some connections here, that’s all.” Calypso turned her head to stare out of the window, sending Leo signals that he should drop the topic. He decided to push it a little bit further, though.

“You did? But you said ‘was’. Is she not in it anymore?”

“No,” Calypso shook her head, but didn’t elaborate.

“OK.” Leo sighed. A few moments earlier Calypso had been smiling and teasing him about some old crush and now she was acting cold again. Clearly the Hunters were a painful topic for her, but Leo couldn’t figure out why. Had something happened to the person Calypso had known? And why did she have to be so secretive? Leo wanted so badly to be able to help her and understand her, but when she was not opening up, it was very hard to do anything about it.

“Any guesses about what my costume may be?” He decided to change the topic. That seemed to cheer his flatmate up a bit.

Calypso closed her eyes while thinking, a tiny smile forming on her face. “Hmmm, I imagine it’s probably something flashy. But knowing you it could also be your work coveralls and working boots. I know how much you love those, after all.”

“It’s flashy, alright,” Leo said, his grin returning back to his face. “I’ll give you another hint: it’s a character from one of my favorite TV shows or movies.”

“You have a lot of those,” Calypso reminded him. “Ooh, now I know!! You’re Dalek! That’s why you would have a hard time seeing from under the costume.”

“No,” Leo shook his head, “But now that you say that, that would’ve been cool! Why didn’t you give me that idea earlier?”

“Because you already had an awesome idea? Or that’s at least the impression I got,” Calypso reminded him.

“Well, yeah. I still like my current idea. Maybe next time I’ll make a Dalek.” Leo had a goofy smile on his face as he imagined building a Dalek costume from the scratch.

“Sounds like a plan. So, will you reveal to me what you will be this time?” Calypso asked.

“Nah, you’ll see soon. Good things are worth waiting for, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Calypso shrugged. “Although our opinions on what’s good tend to differ a bit based on our previous TV watching experiences.”

“Yeah, but that’s why it’s good we are flatmates. It’s good to broaden your horizons sometimes and learn about different things that other people like,” Leo pointed out.

“Maybe you’re right,” Calypso admitted. “But are you saying you have learned something from me? What could that be?”

“That olives taste bad? That sometimes Venusaur can be more useful than Charizard?”

“Not exactly what I was looking for, but I’ll take that.” Leo turned his head just enough to see a small smirk on Calypso’s face.

“I was just messing with you because I think you secretly like it,” Leo said with a grin. “But really, you have taught me a lot. That we shouldn’t let fears control the direction of our life. That Greek mythology is actually pretty fascinating even if tía Callida made it sound boring as hell, and we should all learn to understand different cultures better. And, you know? There’s no way we can know every single thing about someone else so we just need to learn to trust and give them a benefit of the doubt sometimes. And finally, I shouldn’t underestimate your Mario Kart skills.”

Calypso snorted at the last part. “Sometimes you do surprise me, Repair Boy. That was a good answer.”

“I can feel my reputation as the Bad Boy Supreme getting shattered to pieces. What about me, though? Have I taught you something?” Leo asked. If he was honest to himself, he didn’t want to know because what could he possibly teach to a smart girl like her?

“You taught me that chilis are evil and you should never eat them the way I did,” Calypso replied, and Leo was fully prepared for more teasing. But it never came.

“You have also shown me sometimes persistency can be a very good thing – otherwise we probably wouldn’t be friends now. We also shouldn’t judge a book by the cover – I’m just saying that when I first saw you I was kind of prejudiced… but since learning to know you better I realized I was wrong. And remember that time when Jo and Georgina were visiting us and you came home a bit late? Jo told me some stories about you before you arrived and that made me understand how far hard work can sometimes take us. You’ve come a long way… and while there are always things we can work on and improve, I think it’s important to be proud of the things we have already achieved, even when looking ahead.”

“Wow… those are some really nice things you just said there…” Leo stumbled to find the right words. Especially the last point had hit him hard because he had had a very hard time with his self esteem recently. He still didn’t know if he would be allowed to retake his lab test – and more importantly, if he was even capable of trying. That was just the tip of the iceberg; it definitely wouldn’t be the only time he would have to face his fear during his studies and later on in the work life, and he would eventually have to make the difficult decision whether it was worth going through. He did want to get over his fear, but with her own issues on her mind, he hadn’t wanted to ask her to help until the situation was better.

“Hey,” Calypso squeezed his knee gently and Leo was afraid he’d accidentally brake so fast they’d crash somewhere. Thankfully he managed to contain himself. “I know I nag and tease you sometimes, but I hope you know despite that I actually care about you and respect you for the things you do. I’m… glad you’re my flatmate.”

Leo was very thankful that it was dark in the car because he was positive that he was redder than a chili pepper. After swallowing hard, he managed to croak: “Yeah. Thanks. You’re pretty neat too.” “Pretty neat?” Calypso asked, cocking her eyebrow.

“Argh, sorry, you can’t expect a guy to be able to think straight after you tell them something like that!” Leo exclaimed. “But, uh, I mean, I think the same way. That it’s nice that you’re my flatmate.”

“Glad we have that established.” Calypso smiled at him. Again Leo wondered what it was about that smile that made his heart go crazy. He had had a couple of short term girlfriends before Calypso had moved in and even though he had liked them, there was something different about how Calypso made him feel. But now that Leo thought about it, he realized that for example Khione, his first girlfriend (who had turned out to be quite an ice queen in the end) had had a smile that had never quite reached her eyes and made him wonder what was truly going on in that head of hers. His second girlfriend, Echo, had been a sweet girl but something about her smile had said that she’d rather be free of relationship bonds. Leo thought that he had probably sensed that from pretty early on because it had been a smaller shock for him than his first break up. But Calypso’s smile? It made Leo want to see it over and over again, and instead of wanting something from him, it seemed to give him more energy. It made him feel restless, but in a positive way.

When Leo snapped out of his thoughts, he realized that Calypso was staring at him weirdly, as if he had been in his daze for a while.

“What?” he asked a bit nervously.

“You just completely missed my question,” Calypso stated, frowning a little.

Leo tried to shake his head to clear his mind a bit. “Sorry, I was just… remembering something. But what did you ask?”

“I asked if there’s any news from your professors about your studies. It’s been a while since you’ve said anything about that.”

Leo gulped. “Yeah. Right. Um, at the moment I’m continuing to attend the classes except the lab one. I guess I should ask the lab professor if he would still let me redo the test at some point. But the other problem is, I’m not sure if I can. You know, if I have it in me to get over my stupid fear.”

“It is not a stupid fear, Leo. You have your reasons. But I do believe that you can get over it. And I want to help you. We should start working on it soon, how about tomorrow or some time next week?”

“Tomorrow is fine to me.” Leo started tapping his fingers against the wheel, a sign of him feeling anxious about the topic. “I… really appreciate your help. Is there something I can do in return?”

“You already did!” Calypso said to his surprise.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Remember that flower shop you mentioned to me?” Calypso asked. “I guess I’ve been so busy this week that I forgot to mention this but it looks like I’m getting the job! The interview went well and the boss invited me to see how they make their flower arrangements and they even let me do this.” Calypso showed him her flower bracelet that had some small roses and several other flowers the names of which he didn’t know. “She will make her final decision on Monday but I might start working there already next week.”

“That’s awesome news! Congrats!” Leo said, genuinely happy for her.

“Thank you! And sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, it seems we have both been rather busy this week, I feel I’ve barely seen you…”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad I was useful for something! But look, that’s Jason and Piper’s place.” He nodded towards the building in front of them.

Leo looked from the corner of his eyes how Calypso would react to seeing the house. From what he knew Calypso hadn’t been there earlier; she and Piper had hung out more at their flat due to the closeness of the university. He wasn’t disappointed when he saw Calypso’s mouth open a bit.

“I know, pretty impressive.” Leo said.

“I have seen big houses before but this looks way nicer than the ones I know…” Calypso noted. Leo wanted to ask more about that but he knew that the friends were waiting so he decided to leave it for later. Once he had parked the car, some strange instinct told him to rest his hand on hers for a moment before he gestured to Calypso to step outside.

“After you.”

#caleo #leo valdez #calypso #heroes of olympus #percy jackson and the olympians #trials of apollo #my fics #caleo uni au

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groovybaybee · 4 years

Text

Greener - II

Greener - I

(4.2k)

cw: mentions of abuse (not this chapter and nothing too intense but better safe than sorry) also alcohol consumption

There are moments in life that conjure up intense emotion any time you think about them. Happy or sad, whenever your mind flicks through its rolodex of memories and lands on it, you feel that moment come to life. You brain must have logged every detail of that time and packed it away in the back of your brain for you to stumble upon later down the road. Your mind takes you back to that moment and brings your senses along with it. My mother always reaches for these moments in times of strife, dipping her hand into a lucky dip of ‘happy places’ and allowing the sensation to wash over her. Her favourite is a family holiday to Spain, sipping ice-cold drinks as we swung our legs in the chilly waters of the pool below us.

Not all the moments I remember are so positive, but I feel them just as strongly. Instead, I created my own ‘happy place’ to escape to whenever I felt overwhelmed.

I stand, waist-deep, in warm water. Waves lap around me, hugging and kissing my naked skin as I breathe gently under the moonlight. The sky above me is clear and an audience of stars shine down on me. I bare my soul to the universe and feel love and appreciation in return. The night sky watches over me as I let my eyes close, leaning my head back, chin high. My shoulders relax more than they ever have as a warm but refreshing breeze wraps around me, hugging me tightly. I hear trees rustle somewhere behind me, whispering sweet sentences to one another as the sand beneath my feet reaches my ankles, anchoring me securely to the world, grounding and protecting me from floating away.

I let my eyes open and I am back in my kitchen. No gentle breezes or salty air. Just my kitchen, with its colourful, mismatching crockery and photographs blu-tacked to the wall. However, there is a clear change in the room since the time I shut my eyes tightly, my chest feels looser, my throat no longer feels as though it is closing, and my breathing has slowed drastically.

Raising my phone from my side, I return to the source of my sudden panic.

A news article, forwarded from my manager, Jim, a simple ‘Didn’t know you were dating’ preceded the link to the website. Of course, he was joking, not realising the stress I was about to feel.

Quickly clicking the link, I remind myself to breathe deep and slow as I am redirected to a webpage.

BACK ON THE HORSE? HARRY STYLES SPOTTED GETTING CLOSE WITH MYSTERY WOMAN

Hunky heartthrob, Harry Styles, caught canoodling outside hot Los Angeles restaurant, Spago. Despite reportedly having only split with model ex-girlfriend, Camille Rowe, a mere two months ago, the pop sensation was witnessed cosying up to a new woman.

I am skim-reading at this point, desperate to get to the end with some shred of mental stability. My eyes land on the articles singular piece of ‘evidence’, a video taken from across the street. It begins with Harry and I talking and laughing outside the restaurant, follows us as we migrate closer to one another, my head thrown back in laughter before we are nearly pressed together. I had not realised quite how close we had gotten. The video ends when Harry and I are blocked from view, Harry’s car obstructing the camera’s line of sight. No one would be able to tell we did not kiss. My stomach squeezes uncomfortably as I read the video’s caption.

Keep it in your pants guys!

It is all a little dramatic. A small part of me wants to laugh at the way this has all been exaggerated and made into a big deal. That amusement fizzles as I continue to read the article, pausing after reading the final line.

All this has us wondering, has Harry really moved on so quickly?

Good question.

Quickly replying to my manager, I send the words ‘Blind date’, before glancing at the comments beneath the article.

Big mistake.

Despite the article not naming me directly, not something I am shocked or offended by as Harry is clearly the more famous of the two of us, the comment section of the webpage has not mirrored the same unawareness. Almost every comment mentions me by name, the majority questioning how we even know each other.

I allow myself to be sucked into the vortex of curiosity, taking in every opinion possible. Many of the replies to the news make it clear that they do not know who I am, and therefore that is reason enough for me to be nowhere near Harry. A lot of comments debate whether or not Harry has fully dealt with his breakup, suggesting that this was a PR move to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. I make the mistake of googling her.

Well I don’t think the jealousy tactic is likely to be effective.

She is stunning. A French model. Could I be more of a cliched parallel to her? I try not to compare the two of us, however, a few comments bring attention to the bloat of my stomach and it becomes very difficult not to feel vulnerable after that. It was a blind date. Harry and I were set up. That is the only reason he would ever look at me twice.

But he wants to see me again.

I cling to that thought and close the webpage on my phone, pocketing it and deciding fresh air is what I need. Stepping through the patio doors of my house, I peek out into the sunshine, letting the warm rays soak into me instantly. The small house is built on a hill, the garden demonstrating this the most as it is split into two grassy tiers. I walk up the concrete steps until I reach the patio furniture at the top. Sitting myself on one of the wooden chairs, I take a second to appreciate the view; the back of my house shaded by the incline of the hill which allows me to peer over the top of my roof and look out at the hills. As a kid, I had pictured living somewhere warm enough for palm trees, now I am able to watch them arc in the wind.

I did this, and this is far more important than a few words. I am alive, I am good, and I am kind.

Pressing my toes into the soft, cool grass beneath me, I slip my phone out of my pocket and compose a text.

Sat in my garden and I reckon the view would be fun to paint, fancy it?

The soft yellowy horizon gives me a sense of security as the evening creeps in. There is so much beauty in the world and I am glad I took the time to sit out here rather than obsessing over some meaningless gossip. It will all blow over and people will either forget about us or realise that we are not actually together. A small smirk tugs at my lips as I imagine pinning this on Lucy and using it as an excuse to get a free drink out of her.

My phone vibrates twice against the wooden table.

I love that idea. Tomorrow work? (I’ll bring wine) – Harry

I cannot help but grin at the small screen, quickly typing a reply.

4pm? Catch the last of the sun that way. Also you don’t have to keep signing off!

Only a few seconds after placing my phone back down on the table, I have to pick it back up to read his latest message.

Sounds perfect. It’s harder to stop than you’d think – Harry

Giggling at him, I lock my phone and set it down, excitement pooling in the bottom of my stomach. This time tomorrow Harry will be sat beside me, paint-covered and maybe a little bit tipsy. I make a quick mental note to go shopping for food to line our stomachs, not wanting to let him be exposed to my drunken self just yet.

I spend the next day getting my house presentable, or at least as tidy as possible despite the numerous large, brown boxes which clutter my living room. I also spend the day doing errands, shopping for food and drinks Harry might like (probably going a bit overboard and buying enough options for five people rather than two), and picking up some art supplies for the two of us.

Once home, I unpack the groceries, setting some of them out on plates and dishes, making an attempt at a charcuterie board I had seen on Pinterest the night before. Setting up the area we would be spending the most time in, I move the two small canvases I purchased earlier outside, along with paints and brushes and cups of water for rinsing. It seems a little bit amateur, but I do not have time to dwell as Harry texts me that he is just leaving his house and will be here in half an hour.

Dashing back inside, I take the speediest shower of my life just to freshen up and rinse the day away. Chastising myself for my lack of planning ahead, I smear on a touch of makeup and quickly style my hair. I am still pulling on a pair of dungarees, clipping the straps into place, when I open the front door.

“Hi,” I greet breathlessly.

Harry is already smiling when I meet his gaze, looking down at me with an infectious grin. I allow myself a second to drink him in. Obviously, he is dressed more casually than two days ago, dressed in a simple but figure-hugging black t-shirt, a golden chain peeking out from underneath. Alongside them, he is wearing a pair of brown, straight-leg corduroy trousers. He looks good. It should not surprise me, but it does anyway.

“Hi,” he offers brightly.

Stepping aside to let him enter, I try not to check him out, mentally telling myself that I am still not certain where he stands re us kissing each other’s faces off. Probably for the best to err on the side of caution.

Closing the door behind him, I walk us through the living room and to the adjoining kitchen, feeling a tad embarrassed by my decorating style. Splashes of colour litter the house, the walls are mostly covered in photographs, interesting drawings and potted plants.

“When did you move in?” Harry asks, noticing the stack of boxes. My heart pangs slightly at the question but I try not to let the dread within shine through.

“Few months now, I’m just terrible at unpacking,” It is not a total lie, so I do not feel totally bad about it. There is, however, a small part of me that resents not being completely honest with him about why a certain box remains closed and sealed. “I might have gone overboard with snacks, so please eat anything you want,” I tell him when we reach the kitchen and he sees the spread I had laid out.

Suddenly, it all feels like too much and heat prickles my cheeks in embarrassment as I watch Harry eye the full countertops. I had bought far too much and probably seem incredibly eager. Bread touched three types of meat, touched three types of cheese, touched olives, touched sundried tomatoes. There was another plate full of fruit, washed and sliced and displayed daintily in concentric circles. Then there was the bags of crisps, pretzels, biscuits, and chocolate buttons. This was enough for a family picnic, not a light grazing, and definitely too much for a second date. If that is even what I could call this.

“This is amazing,” Harry utters quietly, and I almost do not hear him, my internal monologue reprimanding me so severely it almost overpowers him. He turns back towards me, gazing at me softly, his face a beautiful light pink. “Feel bad for contributing so little now,” he says, a gentle teasing lilt to his voice which makes me smile, a breathy and grateful laugh falling from my lips.

“Trust me, your contribution is the most valuable,” I say, stretching up into a cupboard to grab two wine glasses.

We manage to carry a disproportionate amount of food outside, giggling as we stacked our arms high until I could barely see over the top of my pile. Once outside, we settle on the wooden chairs and Harry pours us each a glass of merlot.

“Matches your hair,” he muses, smirking as he hands the glass to me.

“Never heard that one before,” I tease, trying to ignore the voice in my head questioning if he thinks the colour is ugly.

Harry settles back in his chair, looking out across the hills and valleys before speaking again, “This was a good idea,”

“Yeah, the view is the main reason I bought the house to be honest,” I mumble into my wine glass.

There are a few moments of silence. It is not particularly uncomfortable, but I decide that we could use some music. I dash inside to grab a speaker and connect my phone to it.

“Can I leave it up to you?” I ask, holding out my unlocked phone for him to take, “I’m indecisive.”

He lets out a chuckle, muttering a soft, “Sure.”

Taking the phone from my hand, our fingers brush momentarily, and I have to remind myself that I am not in the middle of a romcom. I feel my cheeks redden at the interaction and quickly turn to my canvas. Placing the wooden end of my paintbrush in my mouth as I scan over the paints in between the two of us. The soft opening notes of The Chain begin to play, mingling with the warm breeze that swirls lightly around the garden.

“Listen to the wind blow,” I sing under my breath, unable to hold myself back.

From the corner of my eye, I see Harry picking up his own brush, dipping into a little bit of blue paint and brushing across his own canvas. I dip my brush back into the yellowy orange colour I had been mixing and paint the outline of my house. It is messy and a little childlike, but I am having a good time. Harry and I both begin to relax as we paint, singing along, and doing embarrassingly enthusiastic seated dance moves when the guitar solo plays.

“I love Fleetwood Mac so so much,” I admit gleefully, catching my breath as I giggle and take a sip of my wine.

“Me too,” Harry replies, a bright smile pairing with beautifully pinkened cheeks.

“What’s your favourite song?” I ask happily, popping a raspberry into my mouth.

Harry pauses for a moment, lowering his brush and giving the question some good thought. He makes it impossible not to admire him, watching as his brows furrow ever so slightly, lips puckering temporarily as his brain ticks over.

“I always come back to Songbird,” he tells me, looking up at me and nodding to himself. His eyes look so bright when they catch the light, reflecting into mine. I almost have to look away.

“It’s a beautiful song,” I admit softly, my voice quieter than either of us had expected, suddenly nervous again to be in his presence and having a conversation which means so much to me.

“What’s yours?” Harry asks, his gaze not wavering for even a second. He is undeniably intimidating, not even due to his status in the world, but simply being beside him feels as though I have won some sort of contest. There is something in his general being that makes me feel both small and powerful all at once. Simultaneously, I cannot believe that he is here in my garden when he could be anywhere else with anyone else, nor can I believe the way he is looking at me, observing me with such delicate looks that it appears he is afraid of scaring me away.

“Storms,” I blurt out. Taking a second to collect my thoughts, I explain, “Skies the Limit is my go-to, but Storms made me feel when I felt numb.”

Realising that I have most definitely overshared, I quickly dip my brush in the nearest colour and spread it across the top of my canvas, accidentally painting the sky pink.

“I think that’s really special,” Harry utters softly, his gaze still on me as I pretend to be focused on my painting and not the spectacular man beside me, or the way his eyes feel on the side of my face. “I want to make music like that, you know?” he says, turning back to the view ahead of us and finishing off his own skyline.

“I think you have,” I confess, feeling his eyes back on me in an instant. I force myself to turn to meet his gaze, urging some sense of bravery to course through my veins. When our eyes meet, he is looking at me like water in the desert, some sort of miracle before him that his brain does not fully believe. His mouth opens, pauses, then closes again. A second later, a smile pulls at his lips.

“I like your pink sky,” he tells me, grinning brightly, not breaking away to look at the canvas in front of me.

I laugh, “Started as a mistake but I think I prefer it like this,” I admit, pursing my lips as I take a long look at my painting.

“I like the way your mind works,” Harry says, smirking when I turn to him with knitted eyebrows, “I feel like you’re so bright and full of joy. Just walking through your house felt like I’ve known you years… I don’t know if that sounds mental.”

He looks at me cautiously, afraid he has revealed too much, and maybe he has, but I enjoy it more than I could even tell him. I like his perception of me. No matter what happens, how much he comes to learn and dislike about me, at this moment he likes me. And, oh boy, do I like him.

The thought of kissing him pops into my head, bold and illuminated in neon. I let it pass, determined not to ruin the moment. Instead, I look at him, and he looks right back. We share a brief period of peace, the sun on our faces with a light wind blowing between us.

“Oh!” We both exclaim enthusiastically as What Makes You Think You’re the One plays on the shuffle. Smirking at our joint reaction, we turn back to our paintings.

For the next hour or so we fully relax into our little world, grooving along as we paint. There is a real sense of calm throughout the space, even the birds in the trees seem to chirp softer, almost as though they were part of our garden party.

The only moment in which there is a break in the bubble of tranquillity is when Harry desperately reaches for a strawberry, stopping himself whenever his hand, covered in a rainbow of paints, gets close. Impossible to tear my eyes away, I watch him for a moment, a delicate smirk on my lips as he attempts to approach the task from a multitude of angles. He lets out a small sigh and I decide that it is my duty to intervene.

“Need a hand there?” I ask, failing to hold back a giggle as I pluck a strawberry from the plate with paint-free fingers.

“Thanks. Can you-- You could… Thanks,” Harry stammers while I hesitate as I raise the fruit to his face, temporarily feeling awkward about feeding a man I barely know.

I quickly get over myself and lift the berry to his lips, already somewhat parted. Taking the fruit into his mouth whole, his lips graze my fingertips ever so lightly. Our eyes lock the second it happens.

Things start to move slowly. My hand lowers into my lap. Harry chews the fruit and swallows, his tongue poking out to catch a stray bead of juice that had escaped from his lips to the corner of his mouth.

No way are you letting yourself be turned on by this. So cliché.

Despite the mental chastisement, I find myself drawn to Harry. The need to feel his lips on my own is overwhelming me. Every second spent not knowing whether he is a good kisser feels like torture, my mind in agony.

It appears that he feels the same way, gaze hesitating over my parted lips, hopefully not focusing on my clear breathlessness. Our bodies seem to be migrating towards one another, some unknown gravitational pull guiding our chests together until out faces are almost touching. I feel his breath on my cheek and quickly I worry that mine does not smell as good.

Why did you eat that slice of manchego?

Surely, he won’t want to kiss me anymore. He must not have noticed yet. But he will, and I will be humiliated. Better to stop now, while for some reason he actually is not appalled by the thought of kissing you. Why does he want to kiss me anyway? He could kiss anyone he wanted. He could have anyone he wanted. It is probably the wine.

The wine has probably stained your teeth as well. God you’re a mess.

I stop dead in my tracks. Swiftly, I pull away from him. It is harder than I had expected, his cologne sucking me in so that it feels like I have to stop breathing in order to separate from him.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

I cannot look at him. Unable to face the reality of the situation and see his bemused, beautiful face. I would only want to kiss him if I did look up at him, so instead I fidget with the hem of my sleeve, nails picking away at the firm stitching.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, his voice is so quiet that it hurts my heart to hear him so small and dejected, especially since I was the cause.

We sit in silence for what feels like an eternity. I can feel his gaze on me, soft and apologetic, but I am still unable to bring myself to make eye contact.

“I’d be happy just being your friend,” I tell him.

It is a lie. Partially, anyway. Of course, I would love to be his friend, but I also want to kiss him all over and have heart-to-hearts in the early hours of the morning. I want to hear about his first kiss, find out his favourite sweets and his happy place. I wonder if he is there now, desperately trying to escape the awkward bubble of tension surrounding us.

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have assumed… I’m sorry.” Is all he says.

“No,” I pipe up, a well of guilt forming in my stomach as I regard his sunken features, “It’s not you...”

“It’s not you, it’s me?” Harry says with a quirk of a smile.

I let out a breathy chuckle and we finally meet each other’s eyes and understand. It’s all alright.

We keep painting. By the time the sun starts to set and the water for our brushes turns a murky grey, I have finished mine and sit teasing Harry as he adds the finishing touches to his own.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Harry counters with a grin as he adds a sweep of dark red to his canvas.

“Better be some painting,” I mutter into my wine glass.

“Okay!” Harry exclaims excitedly, “She’s done. Ready for the reveal?”

“Yes,” I laugh at his question, as if I have not been waiting to share for twenty minutes.

Harry had insisted that our final products should be a surprise for the other, so for the last hour we painted in secrecy, occasionally peering out from behind our canvases to try and sneak a peek at the other’s.

When we angle our paintings towards one another, the difference in our styles is clear. Mine is bright with exaggerated shapes, almost cartoonish. Meanwhile Harry’s painting is more true to life, a meta portrayal of the view, two little figures of him and me seen from behind at the bottom of the canvas.

“I love it,” I tell him, the picture bringing a grin to my face as I observed the tiny version of myself; a little blob of shoulders and messy hair.

“I’m calling it ‘Friendzone’.” he tells me, a wicked smirk on his lips.

“Hey!” I whine with a gently nudge to his arm, however, the bout of laughter he has elicited really weakens my protest.

Harry helps me clear up the garden before he leaves, carefully carrying his precious painting out with him. After bidding me a sweet goodnight, leaving no doubt in my mind that he had a nice time today, I finish cleaning up. As I am washing the two wine glasses, I peer over at my painting, smiling as I remembered Harry’s comments about my pink sky. Maybe being just his friend would be easy after all.

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rureikia · 4 years

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Chapter 4

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The start of high school was a very crucial milestone for me. Because not only did I have a crush on Kita, but I also got accepted to go to the same school like him too.

Inarizaki High.

When I saw the magical letter of confirmation, my heart blossomed by a large magnitude.

I was so agitated with the thought of having three more years with Kita Shinsuke I thought I was beginning to see stars... I mean, for a young girl whose heart was fully set in stone for a celestial being like him, how could you not be awfully excited? It meant three more years of opportunities that I'd definitely not let go to waste, three more years of seeing his face! All the scenarios occurring in my head, in hopes that one day, these would come true...

I specifically remember on the day the letter arrived on how I was sprinting around the house to show mom and dad.

At the time, my parents didn't know why I was that happy over getting accepted since I used to be pretty distasteful about studying. But they quickly shifted it aside and congratulated me nevertheless.

It was like the scream painting. I can still draw out their faces in my head. Mom and dad were startled as they never expected me to have gotten into one of the top high schools in the prefecture — they ended up jumping along with me regardless of their previous doubts!

So on the first day of school, I marched out of my house in my new uniform, and a satisfied grin widely spread across my face.

The basic philosophy was to try and pass all exams, but the true aim for me was to find Kita Shinsuke, then ultimately confess to him. Next, he'd accept my confession and we would date, he then proposes, we get married, start a family ehehehe... Ah, I mustn't carry on or else I'll get too thoughtful...

But I was really excited (excitement lasted one-week maximum). I wanted to get to school pronto and see all the new people that would be circling me all through the next years. And so my determination was at its top game by then.

Whilst dusting my skirt and straightening it out, I closed my front door, but kept hold of my door handle to wait.

After a minute or two, from the opposite side of my street, I also heard someone else's door open.

I let go of my door handle, appearing as if I just came out of my house too.

In an instant, I knew who it was, hence why I gasped apprehensively to myself and thrashed around to look, "Ah, Kita!! Good morning!"

He sees me, adjusts his bag strap, and walks away without considering my call.

"Kita!" I called out again, assuming he didn't hear me the first time, "Wait for me!"

I was nearly about to run and go get him because he was already walking from a significant reach away. But just then, my mother abruptly forced the front door open with an annoyed scowl face before I had even managed to escape.

"(Y/N)! Why are you yelling so much in the morning? You sound like a stupid person, the neighbors will complain because of your loud mouth!" Her hands were on her hips, and she spoke to me in much vex.

I flashed a swift glimpse at Kita.

Okay. He wasn't waiting for me.

Mom was still in the middle of scolding me, and I got impatient as she was suddenly like an obstacle I needed to overcome for me to catch up with fast-feet Kita Shinsuke.

"Yeah, yeah I'm in a hurry. Mom, let's talk later okay?" I replied in slight rashness.

"Excuse me? Why are you acting like that? If you are in such a hurry why are you still here? I don't understand!!" Mom grabbed my hand, throwing down 600 yen for lunch then shoved me away, "You forgot this too. Gosh... Who is this hopeless girl? I don't know her. Just leave now!"

Why must this old lady insult me so incredibly fast?

I halted to stare at the money in my palm and solemnly glanced back at her, "Wait, mom... This might not be enough for lunch..." I whined.

"Yes it is. Lunch is cheap there." She smacks my shoulder and I made another whine a tad louder at the impact, "Tsk, (Y/N) don't complain anymore. Just be grateful, have a good day, and go."

My shoulders grieved a bit but I went along with it, "OK thanks...Bye-bye..."

As soon as she closed the door on me, I left.

I tried my best to catch up with Kita who was walking by himself in the distance. And after seeing him in the same uniform as me, once again, I was unbearably excited to go approach him.

This was a period of time where I'd constantly be a hindrance to Kita. However, I didn't really take this into account until much much later.

Since I took interest in him during second-year middle school, that interest only developed from thereon. By the time it was third-year middle school, I full-blown liked him. And then at first-year high-school, it developed into something called puppy love.

Kita, he was rather laid-back about it. He didn't tell me to go away nor to stop talking to him — rather he would just let me do whatever whilst throwing cold logic at me whenever he feels the need to.

Well, I say that he's rather laid-back but in actuality, he'd try and evade me at times by ignoring the things I'd do. I was still childish and quite gullible, so I simply assumed he was bluffing to push me away and to hide his genuine feelings.

With that in mind, I remembered how back then I was wholly convinced that I could win him over in a jiffy. And this was entirely due to my mind being intoxicated from those all dramas, shoujo mangas, and anime's I watched in the past. Subsequently, I thought I owned a special power like no other, which was the power of love and commitment.

15-year-old me seriously believed that she would be able to do anything with the power of love deeply engraved in her soul. I basically believed I was the next generation's Sailor Moon...

For me to express my loyalty towards Kita, I revised everything needed for that entrance exam with extra diligence. And that was more than enough proof to show that the power of love really does work miracles. After all, because of my power, I was wearing the school's crest embedded on my blazer, the same one as whom I strived for.

"Kita good morning, hhh." I greeted breathily, speed-walking next to him.

He nods a response, "Morning."

I straightened my posture and smiled awkwardly at him by accident. Then I tried to strike up a conversation which was probably also accidentally awkward, "Kita don't you think this is such a coincidence? We will be going to the same school again this year. It's uh — it's a perfect match isn't it?"

He carries on walking forwards, without looking at me. "The entry requirements for Inarizaki must have lowered this year if that's the case."

I didn't know at the time, but this guy was totally degrading me here.

"Oh yes, that has happened. By a couple of points, it has lowered actually." I addressed with formality in my speech like some intellectual, "That means the God of fortune must be by my side, don't you think?"

Kita didn't reply and we walked in silence for a couple more seconds.

.......

"Uh......... Kita!" I called out.

The suddenness finally resulted in him shifting his head a little to peer at me.

"Kita, wait for a second."

Kita listened for once, stopping in his tracks, glancing back at me.

When we were teenagers, he would experience my resilient pestering daily. This was additionally a section of life where relationships and emotions are new to everyone, especially for kids that were around that age — high-schoolers.

I can distinctly pick out the uncountable amounts of times where I'd loiter outside my house early in the morning just before he comes out. And when I hear his door open from across the street I would act as if I just came out too — "Kita, you just got ready now? Oh, what a coincidence, so have I."

There's also the case that would happen in school. I'd pack up all my belongings and shove it in my bag before the teacher dismissed the class. This was so I could have enough time to leave and walk home with Kita, "Another coincidence! I'm going to leave school too!"

"..." Eventually, I took a deep breath and gripped onto my bag straps that were wrapped around my shoulders tightly, building up the fury in my chest. Then studying around carefully I made sure no one was present before I took a few side-steps closer to him.

I don't know why I was such a shameless little girl back then. I have to admit that it's not very good to reminisce about my past, it hurts my dignity a lot.

But with the expression as if I was going to complete a huge quest, I confessed to him.

"I like you," I said.

Kita stared at me blankly for a second, then furrowed his eyebrows and told me, "I don't."

"..."

With that, my life advice is: do not read too much manga.

After the rejection, he blatantly left it at that and continued walking to school as if he forgot about it. I, on the other hand, felt extremely embarrassed and tried to think of what to do. My rational decision was to run off towards a different path like a coward.

Just as I was about to bolt, I nervously called out to Kita for the last time that morning, "I-I guess I'll see you later okay Kita?!"

He didn't acknowledge it since he didn't look back, but neither did I. And so we both departed ways.

Obviously, me being older now, I understand how I was unmistakably not as discreet as I presumed to be. I have been told by many friends that even an elephant wearing a shocking pink dress can do a better job at being discreet than me.

So I know now. Teenage Kita already could tell that I liked him for a very long time even before that terrible confession of mine. But oddly, he chose to not bother spilling to others regarding it, I still don't know to this day why.

As a child I was impatient, that's why I chose to confess on the actual first day of high-school. And that impatience lingered on for a while. I'm sure that this flaw caused me to be a nuisance to Kita Shinsuke; so he probably disliked that part, which is another thing I didn't think about until much later.

Later on, when I arrived at school, I experienced the worst sort of depressiveness where I felt my whole environment turn into a darkening abyss.

Outside the 1st year hallways, I examined the posters where it would tell us what class we would be assigned in.

KITA SHINSUKE: CLASS 7

Okay, that's very good!

(L/N) (Y/N): CLASS 2

That... I hate...

And so I dragged myself to Class 2 where a certain someone saw my dismal brooding.

"(L/N) why do you look like that? You look so miserable on your first day already?!" An enthusiastic voice called me out.

I gloomily averted my gaze up. It was my old friend, Taro.

Taro also went to the same middle school as me. And we became friends over the liking towards graphic novels — it was actually because of that interest of his, he wasn't very popular with the girls haha.

"...I'm not sad. I'm devastated." I sighed out in a daze.

He was eating bread, and talked with food still in his mouth, "Why?"

"Because I was put in a different class to what I think I really deserve. Don't you think the class rank system is a bit unfair?"

Taro snorted contemptuously and shook his head at my idea, "No not at all, you just want to be in the same class as Kita."

"Not so," I argued.

"Is so." He argued back with his head held higher, "(L/N), I don't know why you think this is unfair, you very much deserve it."

I glared at him in disapproval.

Then he proceeds, using the bread in his hand to gesture at me, "Whilst Kita has an IQ of at least 200, yours is way below in the negatives. So you're incredibly lucky that you weren't put in your true class. Class zero."

"Huh...? Class zero doesn't exist... What are you even saying?"

"You get to be in the same class as this intelligent guy instead!" Taro uses a spare hand to pat his chest, "Isn't that great (L/N)?!"

My face rapidly scrunched up in displeasure at those words and actions, "Uwah... Calling yourself intelligent. If you think that I have an IQ below the negatives, you will be the same as me since we're in the same class. Who do you think you are?"

"I am someone that at least has enough common sense to find someone not way out of my league, that's who I think I am."

I briefly grinned at him in annoyance and retaliated with a reply, "Go back to sit on your seat, leave me alone now."

He stifled a quiet laugh and did what I said with an effortless shrug.

I wasn't expecting to be put in class 2 to be honest. I would never expect myself in class 7 either. But I just wanted to be in the same class as Kita in hopes that we'd be deskmates for the following three years.

But as shown, that never happened.

Instead, I had to rely on my individual skills to be around him as much as I could.

I went straight to bed after last night and woke up with the worst possible headache that one could imagine. The headache was so bad in fact that I was concerned whether I had a type of brain disease and wasn't going to survive.

And the throbbing pain only attacked me once I groggily opened my eyes to see the sunshine which wasn't a good idea since I felt dizzy. So I had to cover my face with my duvets to stop any more light from stinging me.

I'm currently in pain right now, but I was quite okay when I was asleep and felt nothing. In fact, I underwent a type of sleep that was so deep, it confused my dreams towards real-life circumstances, making me rather delirious.

I opened my eyes again, reluctantly tossing around to squint at the ceiling fan, and tried hard to recall what happened yesterday.

From what I can accurately remember... I went to a goukon with Sumiko, I met some new people, I ate at least twenty dishes, I drank, I saw a handsome worker, I saw Kita with that handsome worker, I got frightened and quickly hid outside, but suddenly he was outside too(?!?!) so I was forced to talk with him for a minute before I went back inside, I drank some more and incidentally got drunk, I then remembered that he took me home because of how drunk I was......... And then, we kissed.

Oh yes, we k-i-s-s-e-d. Me and my ex-boyfriend.

And I was thinking about the kiss so much apparently I was given a dream about it too.

It was a dream akin to where I was with Kita. An altered memory of that same kiss replaying over and over again for what felt like hours on end. In that dream, we may have used a bit too much mouth work and tongue which isn't very good... Makes me feel quite abashed... Then I woke up with my cheek muscles feeling sore which additionally, isn't very good.

I rubbed my eyes sluggishly when lifting my torso from my bed to regain proper consciousness. I noticed was still wearing my work attire from yesterday, except I looked tenfold scruffier.

Did I fight someone while I was in the zone? Honestly, I'm so tired I didn't care about the context. So I'll just go back to sleep...

...Well, that's what I wanted until I heard a voice sing to me inside my head.

"If you remember... Call me."

"you remember... Call me."

"remember... Call me."

"Call me."

(GASP)

As expected from an unintentional flirt like Kita, his words woke me up.

I frantically attempted to roll out of bed but ended up falling flat on my back with a loud, painful thump. At the impact, I groaned, staggering to my feet and grabbing my phone that was on the top of my neatly folded work blazer by my chair.

Once I accomplished to scamper around like a bug, I turned it on to scroll to Kita's contact information and stared intensely at his name.

Me: "..."

No, I couldn't do it. I clicked on my friend Taro's contact information instead to procrastinate. And to my surprise, he picked up abnormally fast.

......

"Hello, good morning~!" Taro said in English appearing a bit too happy for my liking.

"Hey, it's me..." my hoarse morning voice croaked with a tired sigh at the end.

"Oh... Jesus Christ. That doesn't sound too good... What is it (L/N)? You sound a little dead." He said, "Did something happen last night?"

I nodded my head vigorously as if he could see me, but regretted when it made me feel woozy. "Yeah kinda... — wait, how did you know that something was going on last night?"

"Instagram aha. Well, Sumiko mainly."

"Eh...? Sumiko? Something must've happened with you two then." I scoffed, "Okay, tell me yours first. Go on."

"Alright, I'll be brief 'cuz I want to hear your story. But to summarise, Sumiko-chan broke up with me and she wanted to prove that she can find someone very quickly." He begins to explain, "I then checked Instagram last night to see some of the posts from the goukon you two were at."

Ah, their romance is a little confusing I should mention. This is probably the fourth time they "broke-up" this month.

To others, this might seem a bit neglective and unhealthy, but I know the most that these two care for each other strongly. Last night, I noticed that she didn't even bother flirting with any of the men. Instead, she talked with the women throughout the majority of the event.

I switched my phone from one ear to another, "So I've heard from herself that the two of you have broken up again. What's it this time? Did she get angry over something silly?" I asked, "Is that why she accepted the goukon invitation?"

"Pfft, obviously. Of course Sumiko got angry over something silly." He laughs, "But... She didn't run off like that to seriously break off with me. You know how she is. Sumiko just tried to prove me wrong in something because of how prideful she can be. Sometimes, she even has the same competitive energy as you."

I breathed out a chuckle, feeling a little more calmed down, "Impossible. I'm nothing like her when it comes to that sort of stuff. I'm not as confident."

"No way. I think you guys are definitely similar in that aspect. I've been with the two of you since high-school, I think I know the best." He affirms, and I shake my head at his claiming words, "Anyways, back to you. What's up (L/N)? Why'd you call?"

He reminded me why I wanted to call. And all of a sudden, I became remarkably hesitant. I was so hesitant actually I almost bit my tongue when opening my mouth to speak.

"Uh — Taro... You remember Kita, r-right?"

"Mhm, of course, yeah. Your ex-boyfriend, Mr. Perfect."

"Well... Me and Kita met last night..."

"Eh?! —" His tone jumps by four octaves in surprise, then deepens, "— Uh, Okay...?"

"And I wasn't really expecting him to be there..." I trailed.

Taro paused and inhaled sharply before filling words between our silent space, "(L/N), you're kind of scaring me now..."

Don't worry, I'm scaring myself too.

I swallowed the nervous saliva that built up as I struggled to speak, "And kinda...We maybe uh — kissed."

......

"WHAT?!" He loudly exclaimed. His side of the audio turned distorted and my eardrums burst.

"A-Ah yeah hahahaha..."

"LAST NIGHT?! Are you sure?! How come I didn't see him in any of the goukon posts though? Did Sumiko invite him purposely just to mess with you?! That's pure evil!! I'll scold her for you when she gets home... Wait unless... Are you guys back together then?! After three years, I thought you two would never be together ever again! But what the heck (L/N), you and Kita really kissed? What the actual fu-"

I can't do this anymore.

I hung up. His voice is quite annoying to listen to with a hangover like this. I'll let Taro try to figure out everything himself.

I scrolled through my contacts once more and attempted to call Sumiko but was immediately left on voicemail to my disappointment. So now, the only remaining person I wanted to call left was... Kita Shinsuke...

For some reason, when my finger hovered over his name it felt like I was being punished with the death penalty. And to make matters more nerve-wracking, once I clicked on his contact information, my hand was shaking whilst I raised my phone to my ear.

It took another couple of seconds, but his phone started ringing. Hearing the ring made me so scared to the point I shuddered and started pacing around my room.

......

Kita picked up and spoke first, "Hello?"

"Ah." I jolted.

Oh god, why did I make this phone call? I should have practiced what to say at the very least.

His voice stayed nonchalant, "(Y/N), what is it?"

Okay, I think I got something.

I stopped and took a whole two seconds to build up the confidence needed for the next thing I'm about to say.

Then, after a big breath, I began my rambling; "Okay Kita, listen here. I am very unhappy with you right now. You kissed me last night while I was drunk and you did it without my permission, it's not good to do that to someone in that state! Kita why? What on earth were you thinking?! Your actions were very wrong, and you need to think thoroughly about what you did, and you shouldn't do that to me again. In fact, you shouldn't do that to anyone!! Consent is very important to people, and if I was drunk you should haven't taken advantage! You're rather lucky that I am a nice person and that—"

He cuts me off, "(Y/N). Don't yell. I can hear you even if you speak normally."

I shut my mouth at his scold straight away and quietened by a significant volume, "Oh... Was I being too loud? Sorry about that... But still, you shouldn't interrupt so suddenly, I am trying to tell you something important..."

"You shouldn't be loud nonetheless, you'll feel light-headed if you have a hangover."

I was going to ramble again, but I had to stop myself when I sensed something peculiar in my environment.

Something wasn't right.

For a brief moment, I pressed my phone to my chest and silently glanced around as if trying to wait for an event to occur. When I became even more suspicious, I put my phone back to my ear, "Hold on, say something."

Kita, "Like what?"

I could hear two voices. Both unquestionably belonging to my ex-boyfriend. And to make matters worse, I also smelled something bad coming from outside my room. Hence why I hastily sped out of my room like a professional athlete.

The reason I could hear two different Kitas was because I saw him in my kitchen from the open living room. I panicked and ran straight there.

So it seemed that he really was in my apartment, therefore I wasn't experiencing complete hysteria. And he was also cooking something too (not a good sign), the phone still to his ear.

The only thing was, it smelled like pretty bad burning.

Fumes were coming out of my kitchen and I couldn't believe the fire alarm hadn't buzzed off violently by now.

I hurriedly ran inside my kitchen, my first animalistic instinct was to turn the stove off. My second animalistic instinct was to hold back this huge urge to do something to Kita. I really wanted to throw an object at him, maybe my cushion or my lamp because of what I had just witnessed.

For a man that is known to be good at everything, he doesn't seem to know a single damn thing about the kitchen, does he?

"Kita Shinsuke! What do you think you're doing?!" I exclaimed, taking the wok he grasped by the handle. I swear if I woke up any later my apartment would have fallen into a crisp.

He turned to look at me with the most innocent expression on his face, "You're up earlier than usual." He said, ignoring what he just did, "You used to sleep until 11 on weekends."

In return, I ignored his statement and stared at my precious wok, seeing charred eggs that were now an indescribable dark matter.

I was using my index finger and thumb to carefully take it off, but it was stubbornly stuck to the material... It wasn't glamorous at all.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, this guy forgot to put oil and burned everything... Ahhhhhhhhhhh I'm going to have a mental breakdown now... My wok!!! He ruined this one-of-a-kind wok I ordered from Beijing!!

I crouched down and placed my wok on the kitchen's tiled floor. Then very aggressively, I was scratching the top of my head, showing my painful distress, "Kita, why did you try and make eggs without oil? I have taught you in the past that you must put oil when making stuff like this, did I not? And I don't understand why you're in my apartment either!"

"I couldn't find your oil, so I used water." He said with a perfectly straight face.

"..."

I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it since I had nothing to say. And at this moment I felt utterly incompetent. Hence why I was sitting down on my kitchen floor, wanting to collapse and go to sleep right on this spot.

I have come to understand that I cannot understand Kita Shinsuke.

He then continued, "Last night you told me that you didn't want me to leave. That's why I'm here."

I looked up at him with a frown, "No. You're lying."

"I'm not."

"How come I don't remember that and remember everything else?"

"Maybe you were drunk." Kita shrugs and cracks a teasingly small smile, "What do you remember then?"

That question was atrocious because I knew what he was hinting at. So I had to hold my voice down even though really wanted to wail aloud, "How... drunk was I?"

"Hm. Do you really not remember anything?" he asks, crouching down to pick up the messed up wok and rose back up.

I remembered the kiss, after that everything truly was a blur, I couldn't seem to recall anything. No matter how hard I try to think back, nothing comes into my mind. Therefore I needed to check myself again.

What happened? Is there anything different about me?

I'm still wearing my work attire, however, the blazer I had on last night was not on me anymore, it's neatly folded on my chair, which Kita must have done. I'm not wearing my stockings either and my blouse was untucked too...

Oh.

That's when electricity struck me.

I stood up with great suspense, wrapping my arms around my torso protectively, "You... —You didn't do anything to me, did you? I remember this kiss, but you haven't done anything after, right...?"

Kita's brows pinch in irritation and he pushes my forehead back with his index finger where I made a sound of struggle at the action.

"(Y/N) are you dim? What is going inside that small brain of yours?"

"A-Ah! I'm just asking out of worry..." I said slouching back, finally relaxing a bit, "You don't have to speak to me like that..."

Kita puts the wok in my sink whilst I slumped, gave up, and decided to go to put some water in my kettle to make tea. When doing so, I asked him another question.

"Were you here all night then?"

"Yeah." He replied.

Why?

"You should have woken me up," I chided, "I had a spare futon you could have used."

He shook his head modestly, "Your couch is comfortable too, so I was okay."

"I see."

"But what about you, did you sleep fine?"

I took a mug out of my cupboard and exhaled a little, "I slept fine as well. My head kinda hurts, but there's medicine in the bathroom, so I'll leave to go take that and wash myself up soon."

"That's good."

There was a lot to process already, but I decided to push that away for now.

One of my main concerns however was what he said to me some moments ago.

Kita claims that I told him I didn't want him to leave, which is the reason why he stayed. And I began to question what I might have said to him exactly for him to do actually listen to that supposed request.

He was washing the wok he ruined as I was now heavily debating what to do by eyeing him every couple of seconds or so.

I felt quite conflicted. I hated to think about how Kita was utterly handsome during those stealthy glances I did.

His hair was messed up, his eyes were more doe than usual. He wasn't wearing his jacket or sweater from last night but was presently wearing his T-shirt and jeans... And we were both standing here. In my kitchen. Where I sensed no discomfort coming from his body language as mine was astonishingly rigid.

Still, despite my negative demeanor, I couldn't help but contemplate while making a cup of tea. This is where the inner-conflict comes into play.

I didn't know whether to hug him from behind like what you'd see in the movies. Or maybe secretly stand up on my tiptoes and deliver him a kiss on the cheek, or carry on watching his concentrated side profile while crying really big, salty tears.

In the end, I just called out his name, "Kita. Your tea is here."

He didn't answer verbally, but nods.

I tapped Kita's shoulder this time, "It'll get cold, drink fast."

To that, he takes a short glimpse at me then goes back to washing my traditional Chinese wok, "I'll clean this up first. It won't take long."

Hmm, perhaps he feels bad for the mess he made and is trying to make up for it.

"Okay," I said, "If it gets cold, you can just reheat. I'm going to wash up now."

He nods again in reassurance, and I give him one last glance before getting out of the kitchen to grab stuff for the bathroom.

[Previous] [Contents] [Soon...]

#kita shinsuke x reader #kita shinsuke x y/n #kita shinsuke x you #fanfiction update #kita shinsuke #kita shinsuke imagine #haikyuu

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twiwrite · 4 years

Photo

CHAPTER ONE; 711 DAYS.

This is a house of collections. Artwork, books, instruments, albums, sheetmusic, clothing, exotic plants -- the Cullens have collected a museums’ worth.

Words: 3.7K Warnings: you may develop a cavity after consuming this sugary shit.

CONTINUE READING ON; FANFICTION | A03

FULL PIECE BELOW THE CUT;

FORKS, WASHINGTON SEPTEMBER, 1950.

This is a house of collections. Artwork, books, instruments, albums, sheet music, clothing, exotic plants -- the Cullens have collected a museums’ worth.

In the past few days, I’ve made myself particularly familiar with the clothes. Oh, the clothes! They’ve got closet after closet of coats and shoes and dresses I could only ever dream of wearing -- more than a family of five could ever possibly need.

I’ve concluded that the closet right off the master bedroom is the most fantastic of them all. It’s about the size of the little house Jasper and I shared -- but with higher ceilings, and a nicer paint job.

Every shelf of the master closet is full, every hanger turned in the same direction. There’s every colour, and fabric, and style of clothing imaginable, and each piece is arranged with care and forethought; by season, then by routine. Hats up top. Outfits right below. Shoes on the bottom. Special occasion items are tucked in the back, and their ample jewellery collection is displayed on its own little table. It’s a room fit for royalty, and I’m desperately jealous.

I’d give anything to have a closet like this.

The first time I saw it, I couldn’t contain my excitement. It poured out of me so loud and so pure, that I was compared to a child on Christmas. In the time since, I’ve longed to spend a full day — maybe longer — lost within that fabric forest.

I’ve managed a quick peek every now and then, but each and every time, my plans to explore further are foiled by a Cullen, curious to find their newest housemate.

I see them coming, and I’m back to something less suspicious before anyone catches me in the midst of my foolish little games.

Today is different. I’ve got ample time to explore, totally unencumbered. No one is here except Jasper and I. The Cullens have left for a hunt, and we’ve been trusted to care for their big house of belongings in the meantime. And while I miss my new family -- which I truly do -- it’s nice to just be, without Edward in my head, or Rosalie nervously eyeing my every step. I’ve got room to breathe, if I wanted to.

Jasper and I had planned on using our day to venture towards town without the added pressure of prying tawny eyes, but late last night I saw that his mind had changed -- that he was no longer ready for such an important experiment -- and so today has become a day of adventure right here, in the safety of the big house. I don’t mind. We can try again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. We certainly have the time.

For Jasper, a day in means a day lost in Carlisle’s study, with his nose pressed to the page of a book. He’s happy in there. I can feel it radiating through the whole house, like a sweet cross-breeze, and so I leave him undisturbed. Besides -- when Jasper gets a book in his hands, or any good opportunity to learn, nothing will distract him, not even me. Not unless its got a racing pulse.

Luckily, there’s none of that here.

So, really, it’s just me and the belongings.

I take the opportunity to dig deep into Esme and Carlisle’s regal closet. I peek into garment bags and hat boxes, rifle through scarves and gloves and trays full of accessories, and take the time to scrutinize every single piece of clothing.

A few are so new you can still smell the store on them, others are old as me. Some of Carlisle’s suits might be older than that, still. Jasper’s age, at least, and so well-kept that any untrained eye would think they were fresh from the haberdashery.

The older pieces smell of their owners day to day -- for Esme, it’s a plethora of floral scents. Rosehip. Lavender. Peony. All of which she grows in abundance, in the garden tucked up against the house. Carlisle was harder to make out at first, but after spending a few hours lost in his belongings, I managed to place it. Castile soap and antiseptic. Iodine, I think. It’s strange, at first, almost too clean, but then I notice something underneath all that — something cold, and sort of sweet.

I bury my nose into one of his tweed jackets and inhale deeply. The powerful tangle of scents caught on Carlisle’s jacket waft over me and settle in, but I make the point to take another draw — even deeper this time — to try and distinguish each individual odour. First I make out the rich scent of vanillin that oozes from his study, and then it hits me — mint, from the plant sitting on the kitchen windowsill.

Below all that — rosehip, lavender, and peony, all embedded deep in the fabric of his jacket. I smile, and the tweed tickles my mouth. That’s Esme, lingering on. It makes sense — the two are never more than a foot apart. She’s left her mark on him in more ways than one.

Once I’m satisfied, I tuck Carlisle’s jacket back into place and move on to do the same with a particularly lovely sage green dress.

This one is brand new. It still smells of sweaty human hands and nondescript, chemical perfumes.

I keep on digging, and searching, and enjoying, and eventually I land at the table where Esme keeps her collection of trinkets and jewels. I look at them, all shiny and perfect, and I think how lucky she is to have such beautiful things.

I commit myself to just looking — that is, until I notice the glimmer of a pearl tucked beneath the edge of a satin headscarf.

I’ve always loved pearls.

Before I know it, the most pleasing peal-adorned hairpin is resting in my hands.

My heart doesn’t beat, but it does squeeze at the sight.

It feels familiar, like it’s already been mine. Maybe I’ve seen it before, in a vision, or a store, or at some point in the indistinguishable fog that was my human life. It’s small and simple and delicate, and I just know that it’s an antique, too -- maybe a family heirloom!

Oh, I love it. I really, truly love it.

It’d look so swell pinning back Esme’s caramel coloured waves, or tucked into one of Rosalie’s elaborately braided creations.

Me, on the other hand? With hair so spiky, and unyielding, and awful, I’ve always tried to draw attention away from it, not towards. I’ve never bothered with such precious things. Disappointed for the billionth time over the permanence of my choppy locks, I glance into the little mirror situated beside the jewellery tray and take a good, hard look at my boyish appearance.

Maybe if I twist that piece of hair just so, and stick the pin right there -- My vision goes out of focus, and I come to spinning in a room. I’m tucked against Jasper’s chest, feeling warm and good and happy. I can see the floor, and my feet, and the hem of a blue skirt.

Jasper touches something atop my head. “I like this,” he mutters, “it’s pretty. Reminds me of your skin, whenever I can get you out in the sun.”

I blink and I’m back in Esme’s closet.

He likes it.

I look to the mirror again, to check once more if I might find the right spot for such a pin, and in my reflection, just behind me, I spot something very familiar.

Something blue. Well!

That’s all the confirmation I need.

The grin that splits my face in two is an unstoppable force.

Visions like this are my favourite.

When I’m in-tune enough to catch a glimpse into my own future — one that confirms a question or leads me left or right — I know to listen. To pay close attention. If I catch all the details and follow all the clues, I’m more often than not led to a picture perfect moment. One that I would have otherwise missed, if left to nothing but luck.

It’s these self-fulfilling-prophecies that brought me to Jasper. They brought me here.

I tuck the pin into the pocket I’ve sewn into my dress -- I’ll have it back before Esme notices! -- and turn on my heel to march towards the most beautiful thing I’ve found yet.

A dress, pale-blue, and made of tulle, with a tea-length skirt and a ruched bodice. It’s magnificent!

The most tantalizing part? I already know that this particular dress would fit me just right. I’ve seen it!

Still, I hesitate to touch it. It’s not mine.

The same vision flashes before my eyes, like the future calling directly out to me, saying, I already told you, you must! So I must. Who am I to argue an inevitability? This particular future is set in stone. So --

I lurch forward and curl my fingers into the ample skirt, gasping out in utter delight when I do. This here is no common frock. This is a work of art. My simple, curtain-fabric dress seems almost disgraceful now. I want out of it, and into this. Esme won’t mind. I’m sure of it. She’s been so insistent that I use whatever I need, after all. And what Esme doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I make quick work of the change.

The inside of the blue dress is lined with silk. It slides deliciously over my marble skin, like butter melting in a warm pan. I take extra care with the line of buttons running up its back, snapping each one closed as delicately as my fingers will allow. I flatten out the skirt, careful not to pull, and float towards the full body mirror leaned in the far corner.

The dress’ shoulders hang off mine just right. Its bodice hugs my waist like it was tailored just for me. The skirt -- well, the tulle hits just past my knees, and tickles them every time I move. I look beautiful. I look happy and bright that I swear there’s colour in my cheeks.

I look like one of them. A human.

Not just any old human. One of the fantastic ones. Straight from sunny, golden Hollywood. Rita Hayworth. Ginger Rogers. Grace Kelly!

I admire myself for another second, but refuse to rest before my outfit is complete.

Somewhere in the mess of ugly dress I’d discarded on the floor, I find the pearl pin. I bring it with me back over to the mirror, and start fiddling away with my hair. I struggle for awhile, but just when I’m about to give up, my hair submits, and I find the perfect spot to showcase the singular shining pearl against my dark hair.

It even manages to hold down a particularly formidable cowlick in the process.

There.

Perfect.

I want to be content standing here in the closet, where Esme’s dress is out of harm’s way, but my heart aches to find that simple and tooth-achingly-sweet moment I saw minutes ago. I want to find Jasper.

So, armed with the courage only a perfect dress could give you, I venture out into the house.

I wander around in Esme’s blue dress, my head held high. I swoosh down the stairs and dance my way through every hall, with no need for music or party-goers with this magnificent, twirly thing to entertain me. I could go on all night, twisting, and turning, and gliding around.

My one-woman parade ends in the living room, right in front of my second favourite spot. Here are ceiling-high shelves, tirelessly cradling a collection of vinyl records that spans through genres and decades. There are singles, and extended plays, and soundtracks, all lovingly forced into each and every measly inch of storage space. And even that’s not enough to contain this particular collection — down at my feet are more piles, stacking up towards the hem of my dress.

Any second, the weight of it all is going to rip through the floor. I’ve never known a vampire to accumulate so many things. Then again -- I’ve never really known any vampire, except for Jasper. Maybe a penchant for collecting is normal among our kind, if given the chance. It makes sense. An endless life equates to endless things.

I drag my fingers along the spines of albums arranged at my height. I walk, collecting fresh dust on my fingertips, until I’m stopped by the hard corner of the cabinet positioned alongside their glorious collection.

Sitting on top is a brand spanking new record player.

I’ve had little radios of my own, and spent many hours tucked up beside jukebox in Finch’s diner, but I’ve never stayed in one place long enough to justify owning such an extravagance.

Such a thing shouldn’t just sit, collecting dust.

It takes a little investigation — and a little peering into the immediate future — but I eventually figure out how to bring the player to life. I settle on a record by an artist I’ve heard before, almost everywhere I go.

I set the needle down on the record, more gentle than I was with the buttons on my dress, and wait for the thing to crackle to life. Music follows soon after.

The hearty bass of a big band orchestra shakes dust of the speakers, and they go on flexing in time, like a beating heart.

I turn the music louder, hoping the steady beat might distract Jasper from his books.

While I wait, I close my eyes, and I let the joyous sound shake me, too. It brings me to life, starting in my fingers, until I’m moving head to toe.

I let go of everything else for a moment — I leave the future where it is, and my worries at the door, and I focus on how happy I am right now.

Eyes still closed, I wander out into the middle of the living room and spin myself around, hands outstretched to feel the edge of my skirt fly when I do. I spin again, and again, until something stops me.

I’m delightedly surprised -- something I’m not very often -- to find Jasper there, with a big stupid grin on his face. He catches my hand, effectively stopping me in place.

“How long have you been watching me?” I ask through a fit of giddy laughter. “Didn’t you see me coming?” He teases, staring me down with that feigned-serious look he wears so well.

I hum in response, not interested in explaining how deeply I’ve been enjoying the present. Jasper doesn’t quite get it yet, how big of a burden monitoring the future can be.

He chuckles and lifts his hand to spin me around. I follow his lead, just on time with the beat of the music, and turn until I’m facing him again. Then Jasper pulls me close, right up against his chest, and settles his free hand on my back, just between my shoulders. Each fingertip spreads a calm kind of happy through my being, growing larger and more dominant until all I can feel is what he is.

I understand more of how our powers work now, and how much proximity has to do with it. From afar, Jasper’s emotions might be palpable to me, if he works hard to project them and I work hard to tune him in. Up close, however, it’s all too easy to drown in him. It’s not my doing, and not his. It just is. It was overwhelming at first, feeling enough for two people, but now I’m not sure how I ever existed without this kind of fullness.

We stay quiet and sway for awhile, until Jasper decides to speak. I can feel the finality of his decision coming towards me in the form of a vision, but I push it off, eager to stay right here with him instead. “We should do this more often,” he says, before taking a step back to twirl me again. I tip myself back into his embrace, and nod fervently at his suggestion. “Any excuse, right?” I ask, turning my gaze towards our tightly clasped hands.

Jasper chuckles, and tightens his arm around my waist. “I don’t think we need an excuse,” he says confidently, like it’s obvious.

I shrug, and smile sweetly up at him. “Well — an opportunity, then.”

He nods, and laughs again.

From where I stand, I can see the floor, and my bare feet, and the baby blue hem of Esme’s dress. A familiar type of chill rolls up my spine. Here it comes.

Jasper’s hand lifts off my back and reaches up. He touches the pearl tucked into my hair, just as lovingly as I saw he would, and so I lift my eyes to him like I’m meant to do.

“I like this,” he mutters, “it’s pretty. Reminds me of your skin, whenever I can get you out in the sun.” I grin.

What’s next hasn’t been plotted out, but my mouth seems to find the words anyways. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s not much sun around here.”

He furrows his brows, like he’s seriously considering this new information. “Probably a good thing,” Jasper notes. He touches the little bobble one more time, and then brings his hand back to my waist. After a moment of deep thought, Jasper speaks again. “We’ll just have to make our own sunshine.”

Goodness, he’s great.

Overflowing with his joy and my own, I stretch up as high as I can, on the very tips of my toes, and press a hard kiss to his smiling mouth. Even then, he bends himself in half to reach me.

We melt into each other, a puddle of his emotions and mine. Jasper’s hand leaves my waist to cradle the side of my face and his touch spreads searing want against my cheek. I welcome everything he has to give me, and curl my fingers into the fabric of his shirt to say, yes, please, more.

I’ve always mourned my humanity, but God, I’m so grateful not to breathe. It means Jasper and I could go on like this indefinitely. Forever.

It’s exactly what I want, and Jasper knows that, but he slides back into the role of proper gentleman before his powers get the best of us and there’s no turning back.

He clears his throat.

I laugh.

My head lands on Jasper’s chest and I close my eyes. The music slows to a stop after a while, and the needle against the inner end of the record, where the grooves in the vinyl cease.

Neither of us bother to do anything about it. We stand there in silence, just holding each other, swaying back and forth to the click, click, click coming from the far end of the room. That’s music enough for us.

I feel Jasper shift. His head turns up and his shoulders lower.

Then, another voice shakes me out of Jasper’s arms. “Chronologically, by year. And then by preference, I guess.” Surprised twice in one day! I look past Jasper’s arm to see Edward leaning against the doorframe, smiling at us both with a good and proper grin.

Jasper lets me go and turns around, and I stand and watch as he attempts to match the man’s expression.

“-- since you were wondering,” Edward finishes. He stretches out his smile and stands up straight, then acknowledges me with a solid nod.

Jasper sighs out a nervous laugh. “I was,” he says, forcing his body into a straight line. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” he says of Edward’s gift.

“Sorry,” Edward says, unapologetically.

“It’s a wonderful collection,” I offer, snaking an arm low around Jasper’s waist. He relaxes, just a little, so I keep throwing calm his way.

Next into the room is Carlisle, followed closely by Rosalie and Emmett. Esme is tucked between them.

Esme!

The dress!

Before I can hide my crime behind Jasper’s body, I’m caught. “Alice!” She says, her red-painted lips pulling into a smile.

“Oh, Esme -- I’m sorry, I know you said I could borrow a dress or two, but this! --”

“You look absolutely lovely.”

Three surprises — now that’s absolutely unheard of. What a strange kind of day.

“Oh,” I say, hands flying up to fiddle with the bodice. I smile through my embarrassment and mumble a quiet thank you. “It’s yours,” Esme quickly assures. “It fits you like a glove.”

No words leave my mouth, but a wonky little gasp of air does.

Carlisle’s smile pulls wider across his face. He closes the distance between himself and his wife, and takes one hand out of his cardigan’s pocket to rest on Esme’s shoulder proudly. “I agree,” he simply states, “like it was made for you.”

“Oh, I could never!” I argue.

Rosalie looks up from Emmett, who’s sat himself down to pull off his muddy shoes, and she huffs a laugh at me. “You’re already wearing it,” she notes, with a surprising amount of sincerity amongst her usual bite.

Esme eyes Rosalie. “You absolutely can,” she insists, ignoring the blonde’s remark. “Please. What’s mine is yours. You’re part of the family now.”

I look down at the dress -- my dress -- and burst into a fit of giddy laughter. How can I say no to that? I look at the Cullens one by one -- Esme and Carlisle still embracing, Rosalie and Emmett poised just behind them, and Edward smiling that all-knowing-smile to their left -- and then land my gaze on sweet, dedicated Jasper.

This is my family.

For thirty years, I’ve been searching. I’ve been looking, and looking -- scanning through the future and digging to understand the past -- hoping to find some spot in space and time that suits me right.

For so long I searched alone, with nothing, and no one, and no idea where to go.

That changed when I saw a man, scarred and uncertain and spun of gold. It changed again, when I saw a family put together by choice, and by love.

I started on a path that would lead me across the country and back again, with nothing more than hope and a picture in my mind.

I’ve gained so much since then — pieces of myself, determination stronger than fear, a deep, life-affirming understanding of what it means to love, and be loved, unconditionally, with every inch of your deadened heart — but nothing will ever compare to the satisfaction that I feel right now.

I can stop. I can stop wanting, and waiting, and searching. I’m here. I’m finally here, exactly where I’m meant to be.

I’m home, and that is the best thing of all. THE END.

#jalice fic #twilight fic #jalice #alice x jasper #jalice one-shot #SURPRISE!#HERE'S A THING THAT I SHOULDN'T BE DOING BUT I AM!#I have so many ideas running around my head #little moments in the twilight universe that happen between these two nuggets #and I want to get them out #so welcome to all the time #AKA the collection of one shots you never asked for #not totally one shots but like #moments #i call them one shots bc it's going to be completely non linear #you'll get peaks into the past #into the span of jalice life in the midst of the ed/bella twi-through-bd shit #and looks into the ~future~#this is going to be updated SO IRREGULARLY #and im telling you now #but every now and then you'll find a lil something special that's been on my mind #a little hallmark moment if you will #not always this sweet but #OKAY HERE #all the time in the world #TAG:#att #chapter one

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bountifulberries · 4 years

Photo

Introducing...Aspen Whyte!

Aspen is for @toxoplasmajuice‘s Atkins MMBC!

Aspen is a trans guy (he/him) who, despite his appearance, is not a berry Sim. He used to be a ginger, but he was never quite this pale before--but all of that changed when his entire town suffered radiation poisoning when a nuclear reactor miles away exploded. Though most of the others had “normal” (but horrific) reactions to the exposure, like skin damage, tooth decay, and damage to their eyesight, Aspen’s health is essentially normal--he just, you know, gradually developed bleach-white skin and hair. The orange that’s left in is hair is the last that’s left to him of his old life. Aspen never had any siblings and only ever had contact with one of his moms, and she insisted on staying behind in their town to help some of the sicker and more elderly neighbors with their radiation-induced suffering. Aspen considered himself lucky that his health wasn’t majorly impacted and decided he didn’t want to risk that luck by continuing his exposure, so he’s been hitchhiking west for almost a year now. It’s hard to get people to be willing to pick you up when you’re white as a ghost (and when the really suspicious people start spreading rumors that there’s a rake [warning: rakes are creepy af] stalking the highway), but he’s managed to get this far. He doesn’t have a particular goal or end destination in mind--or else, he didn’t, until he found out about this BC. Why not?

CC: Hair, Top Surgery Scars

You can change his clothes if you want to if it makes sense in the story--like idk somebody finding something for him, but otherwise please keep them ripped. Also, if you’d like, you can at some point change his hair to all white (e.g. if it grows out longer and he gets a haircut that removes the remaining orange. He’s ready to embrace having totally white hair lol).

Download is private, I think?

Interview Questions under the cut!

In-Character

My name is Aspen Whyte. I’m 24 and trans, use he/him pronouns. Yes, my last name was Whyte before the explosion. I’m from Foundryville, PA, which I don’t expect anybody to know about. Yes, I am a long way from home, and yes it has taken me a looong time to get here. I’m an Aries, if that means anything to you.

I had half a mind to become a chef, before all of this. I know I’m 24 and should probably have figured some of that out already, but I dropped out of high school when I was 17 and didn’t get my GRE until I was 22. Community college doing nothing for a year, and then...well, boom. Hard to focus on your career when everyone around you is succumbing to radiation poisoning. Umm, but yeah, being a chef would be cool.

I’m a really good cook. I also have really great endurance--like, when I walk and run. I can go a long time without much pausing. And I’m pretty good at first aid, I can even give stitches. I haven’t had much time for hobbies since I’ve been on the road, but in all that time between dropping out and getting my GRE I actually became really good at embroidery and had a pretty successful Etsy shop. I shut it down after a few years because I got sick and tired of doing nothing but keeping up with orders, but I still like embroidery. It took me a long time to get good at it, so I hope I haven’t lost my touch.

I didn’t really date before my medical transition because I wasn’t really comfortable with myself. Not to say people didn’t want to date me, but I just wasn’t interested. So I really didn’t start dating until I was like, 19 I guess, and I haven’t had anything super long-term. One person actually was just using me to get free custom embroidery for him and his friends, can you believe that? Anyway, I’ve dated mostly guys, and probably wouldn’t date a woman, but who knows, you know?

I have been aimlessly wandering this country for like, a year. And yes, it is lonely and kind of boring. Like, I love my solitude, but damn, I also really miss people. So I like the idea of finding a partner, but I also really like the idea of being in a house with other people. I know I’m going to eat those words within like, a day, but I think my sanity needs me to be stuck with a consistent group for a while.

I’ve been picked up a few times for minor offenses. Vandalism, stealing stuff like basic food staples, disorderly conduct, public urination...it happens, when you don’t have a house or a car or an income or really anything consistent or reliable in your life. I’ve never hurt anybody.

My favorite book growing up was The Road. Ironic, right?

Ummm, I take vitamin D-supplements and require a lot of sunscreen. It’s not exactly a curse but it has literally always rained on my birthday (April 17) every year I’ve been alive, so that’s got to mean something, right?

Like I said, I left my mom, but I’ve always called her whenever I could manage to charge my phone. I don’t feel like I’m leaving much else behind--my town never really felt that important to me. Don’t tell my mom I said that, though. Her family has been there for years and she’s weirdly attached to it.

Buy some new goddamn clothes. I’ve kept most of my stuff pretty nice because, I don’t know, my clothes are an important part of my identity, but clearly I had to let some of them go to shit on the way here. So shopping for some nice new, not-falling-apart casual wear would be great. Oh, also, I’d really like to go on a sailboat. I never got to do that before all of this.

OOC Questions

Feel free to draw him :)

Hmm, he’s sarcastic and can get a little snippy. He uses a lot of rhetorical questions and emphasizes his words potentially too often. That was probably easy to see though lol

Aspen has been living that minimalist lifestyle for a while considering he did not have anywhere he actually lived, so he won’t have brought much with him--you could throw a backpack in the corner or something? However, I think he would quickly get sick of having bare, sterile-looking walls, so any of the outdoorsy paintings EA has would be a good fit for him. I couldn’t find any embroidery hoop CC that’s for Sims 3 :(

I will absolutely be around! You have me on like four social medias so you’re bound to get ahold of me somewhere lol

#aspen whyte #toxoplasmajuice #atkins mmbc #to be released #mine

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daisylincs · 4 years

Note

What about 14/23+54 for staticquake? Please and thank you. 😊

14 = Bodyguard AU, 23 = Performer AU and 54 = Secret Relationship.

Once again thank you to Grace for the wonderful prompt!! In fact, it was SO wonderful I got totally carried away, and wrote this monster of a bullet point-fic. I would say sorry, but I enjoyed myself far too much. Ah, well. I hope you like it, too!

Lincoln is an Ed Sheeran-level singer-songwriter who fell in with a bad group - but, kudos to him, managed to get away from them. Problem is, now he's in quite a lot of danger because of it.

But, being totally stubborn and unreasonable, and above all a musician, Lincoln flatly refuses to give up on his performances.

Mack, his manager, throws up his hands but knows there's no point in arguing (he has learned the hard way that it will get him. literally. nowhere.)

So he compromises: Lincoln gets to go on giving performances IF he agrees to have a bodyguard with him at all times.)

Lincoln hates the idea - "I'm not a baby, Mack, I can take care of myself, and also there's NO WAY I'm letting some musclebound goon ruin my shows by standing there glaring all the time."

Mack gets a little smirk on his face at this point that has Lincoln thinking, oh dear. "Don't worry," Mack says, "I know just what to do."

And Lincoln really doesn't like the look of that smirk - Mack only ever wears it when he has A Plan™.

But he figures, best not to complain now - he can always fire the musclebound goon tomorrow, and anyway the muse is a very flighty thing so he has way better things to be doing.

The next day, Lincoln goes into his office fully expecting to meet, well, a musclebound goon. Instead, he finds a pretty girl perched on his desk making notes on her phone.

At first, he thinks she's lost, and being way too nice for his own good, he tries to help her find where she's actually going.

Only… "Oh, no," she says with a cheerful smile, "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."

"No, no," he says, still nice because she's quite pretty, even if she is in totally the wrong place. "This is a private office, actually."

She hums her agreement - "nice decor, too."

Lincoln is getting kind of annoyed now, because pretty or no, she's wasting his time. "You don't understand," he says. "This is Lincoln Campbell's office. I'm supposed to be meeting my new bodyguard here."

The woman gives him a cheeky grin. "I know," she says. "Pleased to meet you."

Lincoln's jaw drops practically to the floor as he finally gets it. "Wait… you're my new bodyguard?"

"Daisy Johnson," she says with an exaggerated bow. "Graduated from May's academy with highest honours. I also have a degree in computer science, and by the way, your security system is crap."

And, much as he doesn't want to be, Lincoln is impressed. Really impressed. She's only been here, what, fifteen minutes, and she's already hacked his security system?

Also, a graduate of May's Academy? He knows next to nothing about the bodyguarding business, but… wow.

And as he quickly learns, she's every bit as stubborn as he is. More, probably. If he doesn't want protection, well then that's too bad for him, she's here whether he likes it or not.

After just one morning, he's already thinking that if he has to be stuck with a bodyguard following him around 24/7, he's glad it's Daisy.

Days pass, and they get more comfortable with each other, falling into a routine that's almost friendly. He sleeps in, she mocks him for it as she wakes him up with coffee. After breakfast, he goes to the piano, while she improves some tiny feature of their now incredibly sophisticated security system. If it's a show day, or if he's meeting fans, they'll head out to the car together. Daisy has made her routine bug sweep into a kind of game, being unbelievably dramatic about flinging open the doors and declaring them "clear!" before bowing him into the car.

During the drive, they chat about everything and anything (Daisy is hilarious, and her stories about the family she found at May's are the best. He feels like he knows Fitz and Jemma personally, and wants to smash their oblivious faces together as much as Daisy does.)

When they get back from whatever show or interview he finished (or after a morning of song-writing), they like to play board games together. Daisy is insanely good at battleships, but he always beats her at backgammon.

And Lincoln never, ever thought he'd say this, but he really likes his bodyguard. Impossible as it would have seemed to him a few weeks ago, she's become his friend.

(It helps that she's not some musclebound goon, after all.)

Which, great as it is, is also kind of a problem.

Daisy is the furthest thing from a musclebound goon… because she's really, really pretty.

And smart. And funny. And all-around just a great person. Honestly, could you even blame him for crushing on her?

Luckily, Daisy hasn't noticed. (He thinks.) And he intends to keep it that way - he is NOT willing to lose his friend over the shitshow that is gossip tabloids. He knows that if the press gets even a hint of something between them, it's tickets for them.

So, no, he's not willing to risk even thinking about his crush too much.

Too bad Daisy seems determined to make him think about it as much as possible.

"I'm bored," she informs him for the fiftieth time that afternoon.

"That's just because you're losing in backgammon," he points out, also for the fiftieth time.

She rolls her eyes. "No, I want to do something." Then her eyes light up with what can only be a really terrible idea. "I've got it! Come spar with me in the gym."

"No!" There's no way he's going to agree to spar with her - seeing her in workout clothes every morning makes it hard enough to stay in his self-imposed friendzone, he isn't going to go making it WORSE by doing something as physical as sparring with her.

"Pleeeeeaaaaaase?"

That's the thing about Daisy - once she has hold of an idea, she will not let it go. And she'll resort to any means to get him to agree, even the hugely unfair advantage of puppy eyes.

"Fine," he sighs, and the way her whole face lights up makes him think maybe it's worth going through the torture of a whole sparring session.

He reconsiders that as soon as he's actually there. Daisy in full-on sparring mode is a whole new kind of beautiful - eyes shining, grinning hugely between panting breaths, curls loose and tangled around her face. She looks so alive, and God, he has never been more smitten.

She kicks his ass.

Twice.

And on the third time she pins him, she huffs and goes, "I know you can do better than that."

"Sorry," he says, trying his best not to dwell on the fact that she is currently lying on top of him. "You're just really distracting."

Shiiiit, he thinks, cursing himself immediately. Why, why, why did he say that?

But Daisy's gaze simultaneously softens and turns mischievous. "Is that so?" she asks, leaning forwards so her curls are tickling his face.

He has to catch his breath, because when she's leaning over like this her lips are suddenly really close to his. And also, did she just flirt with him, a little?

He shifts his head a little, trying to ignore how this brings her lips even closer. "C'mon," he says. "You know you're really pretty."

She raises her eyebrows. "Is that all?"

"Of course not," he says. "You're smart, and kind, and funny, and badass. Daisy, you're… you're brilliant."

He doesn't know how the mood turned from playful to so sincere, but he does know he means every word.

And Daisy knows it too. Her eyes soften, and before he quite realises what's happening, she leans down and kisses him.

He kisses her back, of course he does. And when they break apart, he sees his own feeling of oh-God-what-did-we-just-do reflected in her eyes.

They look at each other for a long moment… and without having to say a word, they agree to leave the questions and worrying for later, and for now, let themselves just feel.

And, well, they do.

The next morning, Lincoln wakes up happier than he can remember being in a long time. Daisy is stretched out next to him, the sunlight painting her skin gold.

It has to be the first time in history he's up before she is, and all he can think is how beautiful she looks.

She wakes up, too, shooting him a sleepy smile that has his insides doing funny things, and for a few precious minutes they just bask in the warmth of the moment.

But all too soon, reality comes crashing back.

"I'm your bodyguard," Daisy says, scrambling out of bed with a look of dawning horror on her face. "This breaks every rule in the book, I can't do this."

"I'm so sorry," she adds quietly, giving him a stricken look as she's halfway out of his room. "You deserve so much better, I should never have done this."

"Okay, first of all, I was hardly an unwilling participant," he says, and her lips quirk up despite everything. "Second of all - I've been torturing myself for weeks trying to tell myself I'd get over it, but I really like you, Daisy. And I know better than anyone how impossible this seems - believe me, I've analysed every corner of it - but I can't let you go."

She looks like she might still walk away, but she hesitates just inside the door. "What do you want to do?" she asks quietly.

And it's crazy, and it's stupid, but he says it. Secret relationship.

Daisy stands in the doorway, biting her lip, but slowly, she starts to grin.

And that's how they start dating in secret.

The funny thing is, their lives don't even change all that much. They still share a coffee in the morning, chat in the car and play board games in the afternoon. They still make each other laugh like crazy and get along like a house on fire.

The only real difference is that he can kiss her whenever he feels like it, provided no-one's watching. That, he thinks, is the best difference he could ever have hoped for.

They just need to be very careful not to get caught kissing.

But after the first few weeks, caution turns into a kind of game - how far can we take this before someone'll be onto us?

They are almost caught SO many times, and it just gets funnier every time. (Daisy's latest excuse: she needed to inspect his bare chest to make sure he wasn't bugged. Joey's face… Luckily for them, Daisy leaned poker faces from the best.)

In short, life is great. He's got a job he loves with great people around him, and the best secret girlfriend anyone could wish for.

It's so great, in fact, that he kind of forgets Daisy is actually his bodyguard.

She doesn't forget, though. And she does her job.

Because at his latest concert, some freaky terrorists decide it's just the time to try and make a statement by murdering a popular performer.

Honestly, those poor terrorists. They never stood a chance against Daisy.

Everything would have been one hundred percent fine if he hadn't called out "Daisy!" and rushed off-stage when he heard the gunshots, suddenly remembering with a cold shock that his girlfriend was also his bodyguard and currently being shot at.

But unfortunately, he doesn't really stop to think. He rushes off stage, not giving a damn what anyone might think, to make sure she's all right.

And the thing is, she's fine. Until she sees him.

Then she freezes, for just a second, but it's enough for one of the terrorists to get in a shot.

He sees it all happen in slow motion - the blood seeping out and staining Daisy's bodysuit, Daisy herself swaying and collapsing to the floor. He hears the shot a second after it hits.

He runs over, his entire world suddenly panicky and terrified. Not Daisy, no, he can't lose her; oh, God, this is all his fault.

Somehow, Daisy manages to squeeze his hand. He understands the silent message for what it is - it's going to be okay.

Even when she's been shot, she's still so unbelievably strong. He squeezes her hand back and won't let go even when the paramedics come rushing into the building.

He keeps gripping her hand as they load her up onto a stretcher, not even caring about the reporters that swarm them as soon as they're outside.

The paparazzi can go fuck themselves. His girlfriend needs him right now, and that's more important than anything else.

The next few hours, where he's waiting tensely as Daisy is in the operating theatre, are some of the longest of his life.

At some point, four people (two men and two women) come rushing into the hospital, faces white and drawn. He's never seen them before, but he recognises them. May, Coulson, Fitz and Jemma. Daisy's family.

The intimidating one, May, takes one look at him and goes "Daisy's boyfriend?"

"Yeah," he says, so surprised he almost forgets his worry for a second, "how did you know?"

May snorts and tells him that he's about as subtle as a brick wall, oh, and Daisy tells her everything.

He smiles faintly at that. And the five of them - they don't know each other, but in those awful, uncertain hours, they form a bond, the kind that can only form in times of extreme stress when someone you all love is in danger.

When the tired-looking nurse finally comes out to tell them Daisy's going to be okay, they hug each other on the spot. And it should be awkward, but all any of them can think about is Daisy, so it's not. It just feels right.

They troop into her room, all five of them together, and a very dopey Daisy smiles weakly up at them. Lincoln immediately reaches for her hand, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles and lacing their fingers.

Daisy gives him a small, tired smile, but then her brow squinches in confusion. "Wait… we're supposed to be a secret couple."

Jemma coughs. "About that." And she shows them the latest gossip headlines: Lincoln holding Daisy's hand for dear life as they rush her to hospital.

"Oh, that's not good," Daisy says, frowning through the effects of her heavy sedatives.

This would have totally panicked Lincoln just a few days ago, but now… he almost lost her. The tabloids seem paltry and insignificant in comparison.

"How would you feel about going on a date when you're better?" he asks, because he thinks she and everyone else in the room needs some cheering up. "A proper date, not a secret meet-up in the closet."

Coulson raises his eyebrows, like, too much information. But Daisy grins. "I would love that," she says, just slightly slurred through all the drugs.

"Good," he says, and kisses her forehead. She's smiling as she drifts off.

Watching her, Lincoln thinks that their secret relationship was never meant to be. It was a lot of fun, sure, but it was never meant to last.

They were always going to end up being a real couple.

And honestly? He couldn't be happier.

The end.

#tropes mashup #bodyguard au #performer au #secret relationship #staticquake #bullet-point fic

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avelera · 4 years

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Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Late last night I finished “Circe” and admit I breezed through it in a couple days. It was a rare pleasure to read a book that captured my attention from beginning to end, something I’ve struggled with lately. I admire Miller a great deal, (indeed have written fanfiction in her style for my Steve/Bucky / Achilles/Patroclus reincarnation fusion fic “Sing, O Muse”) and looked forward to her take on another great figure of Greek mythology.

So, let’s get right to it:

Pros:

The story has a lot to recommend it. Miller’s prose is well-renowned for its poetry and eloquence. She paints a vivid picture of a fantastical Ancient Greece where gods walk the earth and a witch/demi-goddess like Circe has a rich internal life. In no particular order:

- The Gods - Authors often struggle with how to include the gods in retellings of the Iliad and Odyssey. Most try to simply ignore them and chalk their involvement up to superstition. Unfortunately, that attempt usually runs into the brick wall of Thetis, who is key to the story of the rage of her son Achilles, and who shows up on the beaches of Troy, where no normal woman could. Miller has always leaned into the existence of the gods rather than run from it in her reimaginings of Greek myth, and paints a fully fleshed world where they reside side by side with mortals. Her use of language elevates their appearance and evokes a Celtic Faerie Court of powerful, capricious and otherworldly beings who are both intoxicating and deeply dangerous to mortals. Miller’s prose jumps off the page whenever one of these beings takes the spotlight and is by far one of the most creative takes I’ve seen of characterizing the Ancient Greek Gods.

- Passion - It is clear in the very DNA of this story that Miller loves Greek Mythology. There is a tenderness with which the great heroes and tragic figures of those myths like Odysseus and Prometheus are presented, almost a yearning to be able to reach out and offer them comfort in their trials that is very apparent. There is awe in how Athena is depicted, for all that she serves as an antagonist. There is wonder in the descriptions of beings like Helios and Scylla. The prose shines from within when these figures appear with a sort of joy and sadness that is infectious to the reader. The sense of love for this time and these characters is inescapable.

- Emotion - Particularly with the more melancholy emotions like sadness, resignation, and helpless anger there is a profound and powerful thread running through the story. One deeply feels the appeal of characters like Glaukos pre-transformation, Daedalus, Odysseus and Telemachus. When Circe falls in love with these men, I don’t for a second wonder why. They are presented with heartbreaking beauty and appeal. Circe’s own moments of tragedy are also evocative, she is deeply impacted by the ugliness of the world in a way that evokes understanding and sympathy.

Cons:

I’m going to try my best in this section to not fall too much into the trap of “I would have done this differently” but... well, I’m not entirely sure I succeed.

- Agency - The problem of character agency has plagued Miller’s two forays into Classical myth retellings, and for me personally present the most frustrating aspect of her prose. Circe, one of the most terrifying and powerful women of Ancient Greek mythology, is almost never the driver of her own destiny in this book and I found this aspect of the story baffling and at times infuriating. The moment this realization of her passivity in her own tale hit me hardest, almost enough to stop reading, was when Pasiphae, a mythological figure known almost solely for sleeping with a cow and being the mother of the Minotaur, was somehow a more terrifying and ambitious witch than Circe, one of the great villainesses of Classical literature.

Pasiphae is presented as eagerly seeking out marriage with a powerful man, and while at first she is disappointed by her match to the mortal king Minos, she is comforted by the fact he is a son of Zeus and will one day be one of the great judges of the Underworld. The events that take place after this are all mostly off-screen, but upon reaching the kingdom of Crete and its capital city Knossos, we learn she took the court over within, ruling with terror and poison, and that even when she was laid low by the shame of sleeping with a sacred bull, she still managed to twist this event to her own benefit and indeed even orchestrated the situation, deliberately giving birth to one of the most terrifying monsters of all time on purpose, using the opportunity for a multi-part palace coup including shaming her sister Circe by forcing her to help birth the monster and clean up the fallout, securing Pasiphae’s place in history and her dominance over the court with almost no repercussions. If she suffered at all from the fact that these events lead to the death of her daughter, Ariadne, we never see it, or any other negative consequences for her actions or opportunities for remorse, because at this point in the tale, Circe is (for no real narrative reason) no longer sleeping with Hermes and is therefore no longer privy to what is going on in the world outside her island. Even once she is free of her exile, she never follows up with the fates of her siblings.

Upon reaching this part of the book, all I could wonder was why were we not reading the tale of Pasiphae? This terrifying witch who took a weak position as the wife to a “great man” and twisted it to make herself one of the most powerful women in the world? What a fascinating subversion of the typical view of this mythological figure that would have been!

Why Circe? Was a question I asked myself over and over. Surely if you wanted to tell the tale of such a passive character, there were plenty of other women in Greek mythology who would have been a better fit for the themes of the story that Miller eventually told? Why take Circe and make her a cringing good girl who always does what she’s told, whose one defiance in giving comfort to Prometheus as a little girl which as a flaw is basically “being too good” and “caring too much”. Her aid of Prometheus is barely defiance at all, yet is blown into massive significance as one of the defining moments of her life when she does literally nothing purposefully bad, or even purposeful at all, for huge stretches of her life after that? Her transformation of Glaukos is cringing and secretive and almost totally accidental. Her transformation of Scylla in revenge for stealing Glaukos’s affections is more sullen than wrathful. We’re told she has a talent for transformation that exceeds the power of the gods themselves, but no sooner does she achieve these incredible feats then she apparently needs to start over and learn witchcraft from scratch and never again works such a great spell until she’s turning herself mortal so she can die at the end once she achieves her white picket fence ending.

Where is Circe?! Where is the witch that became the subject of art and literature for millennia, one of the great female antagonists of Greek myth on par with terrifying villains like Medea? In the reimagining of this figure from her own perspective, we don’t find a great mythological figure but a tailor-made “perfect victim” - nothing bad is done by her on purpose. In fact, almost nothing she does is on purpose except to serve others in her life, like Glaukos, or Odysseus, or her son. Even her transformation of men into pigs is a result of her trying to help sailors who land on her island, only to be raped for her trouble and turn vengeful towards all other men after that. Well, until Odysseus apparently, when she gives up on transforming sailors after that, the most famous aspect of her character from mythology. Circe is given a prophecy for her fate at one point that is only that a man named Odysseus will come to her island, and that paltry prophecy turns out to be the sum total of the important events in her life as once again, she stands around in limbo until the actions of a man nudge her into actually doing something. Odysseus changes her life, not that this was hard, because she wasn’t doing anything before he came around.

Even Circe’s one great selfish act, the transformation of Scylla, brings her no joy and instead haunts her entire life like an albatross around her neck. Nothing she does is joyful, except perhaps glimmers early on as she embraces her skill with magic, and her love of the animals on her island which are presented as essentially house pets. One is left with the unshakeable sense that Circe has been re-imagined as spinster cat lady who has a couple nice little romantic flings over the years before having a kid on her own and eventually settling down with a nice husband to retire and die.

Which is fine. Perhaps it rubs me, personally, the wrong way because this is now the second iteration I’ve seen of powerful mythological women being used as modern feminist parables, only to be stripped of all their power to make these points. The other was “Penelope” by Margaret Atwood, in which Penelope is reimagined as a thinly veiled metaphor for a dissatisfied 50s housewife with a cheating husband. There’s barely any of her cleverness, her authority (for god’s sake, the woman was a queen) or her love of Odysseus, one of the great het romances of equals of ancient mythology, practically the only marriage of equals one can even point to, and it’s torn down to make a point about not liking your husband very much when he cheats on you to feel better about himself.

“Circe” at times feels autobiographical for the author (and of course this is speculation to a great extent), showing struggles with love and men, finding oneself, mourning beloved pets when they die, trying to escape the shadow of an emotionally abusive family, and learning to make decisions on one’s own in a patriarchal world. Which is fine, “Hamilton” by Lin Manuel Miranda is not perfectly historically accurate because at times it makes the choice to instead delve into autobiographical notes about Lin Manuel Miranda and his father, the experience of being a writer and the immigrant experience, the latter of which is hardly something the real Hamilton would have ever touted about himself but the strength of passion in telling that story elevates the text so it can be both about Alexander Hamilton and about Lin Manuel Miranda at the same time. There were moments in “Circe” where I was almost yelling at the page, just pick one! You can use the story of Circe to elevate a modern autobiography, to give certain aspects of life mythic proportions and tell the story of a woman who feels emotionally exiled eventually finding herself and finding love, but you have to go for it. To try to tell the story of Circe and tell a modern woman’s story at the same time is to do a disservice to both stories, where Circe is brought down into the dirt with other indecisive mortals, and the true pathos of a modern woman’s striving for agency in her life is outshone by the myth and wonder of Circe’s world.

My final note on agency, but “Song of Achilles” struggled with a very similar problem. Patroclus was reimagined as the passive, doting lover of Achilles. This allowed some really beautiful meditations on love and sacrifice, but it absolutely stripped Patroclus of many of his canonical qualities. The Patroclus of the Iliad did not shrink from battle or become a healer to avoid the war, he was a willing and joyous warrior as much as Achilles was. He begged Achilles for his armor in order to keep prosecuting the war and raise morale even if Achilles couldn’t fight.

With Patroclus, as with Circe, you have two aggressive figures who are reimagined as passive perfect victims, who spend the entire book working themselves up to the courage to make a handful of active decisions for themselves.

Going back to one of the Pros, which is the love felt on the page for these great figures like Odysseus and Prometheus, there are times when Patroclus and Circe both feel like the passive vessels for a self-insert adoration of these heroes. When Odysseus appears, I was struck by how overjoyed I was to see him. What a striking contrast Odysseus presented! Active, clever, tricky, beset by trials that he overcomes only to seek out more - contrast that with Circe who is none of those things except in glimpses. What a striking reminder of what a fantastic protagonist Odysseus is, how he is one of the greatest protagonists in almost 3,000 years of literature. Because he does things and he chooses things and he has unique qualities like his cleverness that help him overcome obstacles in fascinating ways that we still read about today.

Similarly with Patroclus being the passive narrator of Achilles’ life, we feel the reflected glow of Achilles desire and drive, we yearn for it, because almost none of that quality is present in the protagonist and narrator of the story Patroclus! I am reminded of “Nick” in the Great Gatsby and his passive viewing of events, and I’m reminded that Nick wasn’t even supposed to be a character, he was only meant to be a narrative voice until Fitzgerald’s editor stepped in and said he needed to be characterized. At times, Patroclus and Circe both skirt the line of being so passive in their own story that on some level, they feel like little more than a narrative lens through which we glimpse the true heroes from afar.

I held off until I finished the book before making a final judgement of Circe’s passivity, because at every step I kept expecting her to finally change and take charge of her own life. Early on, I thought her comforting of Prometheus would launch her into taking control of her own destiny, which would have been a fascinating inciting incident, mirroring humanity’s gift of fire. Then I thought Glaukos would. Then Scylla. Then her exile. Then Odysseus. Then her son. And at every point, she fades into the background after and goes back to doing what she’s told. The book ends with her finally making a decision and that decision is to settle down with a kind husband and eventually die. She stands up to her father, the Sun, to make this stand and it is a beautiful, melancholy ending of the story but by god, woman, it would have been a much more satisfying retirement for a character that burns and makes decisions and does things than a character who takes hundreds of years to screw up the courage to ask for a quiet retirement on her own terms.

“Circe” is beautifully written. It is a lovely, melancholy anthology about one woman’s encounters with the great figures of mythology, lovingly told, as she seeks to find herself and what she wants out of life. I do not feel my time was wasted.

But if I were to sit down as an editor with the author and point out the three things I’d like her to work on for her next story it would be this:

- Structure - the story meanders and stays glued to the scattered known events of Circe’s life. It has no internal rising and falling action. It is a series of short stories with Circe’s life loosely tying them all together. Like JK Rowling no longer understanding how to plot a story when it isn’t built around a typical school year, I speculate that Miller struggles with building a structured story without having a pre-laid track of mythical events to hang it off of, and I’m not sure she is able to sculpt a tale into having a structure outside of “slice of life” moments in those fictional biographies, beautifully told.

- Agency - characters need to want something. They need to seek out something, they need to do something. Even if they are buffeted about by the events in their lives, they should at least have a way they wish things were going instead and take some steps to making the future they want real. Passive characters who sulk their way through the events thrust upon them by more powerful, dynamic characters, may have beautiful, languorous commentary on the world but they are essentially narrators rather than protagonists at that point.

- Telling rather than showing - I know this advice is often misunderstood and badly implemented. Telling is actually clarifying and provides structure to showing. But there are huge stretches of the book that read like just a laundry list of the narrator telling us what happened next “And then, and then, and then” without couching these moments in a scene that we could feel. There are some absolutely gorgeous scenes but they feel scattered and indeed, anthological, for the exact reason that we get a handful of strongly depicted scenes in Circe’s life, strung together by her telling us rather than showing us what happened in between. The fact that none of it really builds towards any sort of climax or true reversal of her fortunes makes those moments of telling, which I forgave at first because I felt they were in service of getting us to the good part, a greater betrayal when it became clear that the only thing those stretches were getting us too was the next mini-event in her life when she met another character more driven than herself.

#circe

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cph-dreaming · 4 years

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Just another extract from An Epilogue

So many precious memories in the last few weeks, Emma thought. She wished she had the gift of David to paint them, or the gift of Robert to capture them with words. But like Hanna she was Papa’s girl. She would have to rely on her mind. And she had witnessed things she had never really been privy to before. In a group of siblings one rarely talked about one or the other being the favourite of their parents. It was forbidden ground. And in their family it wasn’t a thing, was it? They had all been loved by their fathers! But then again they all knew that David as the youngest was the darling. The only reason it had never turned into a strive between the siblings was that they all felt the way about David. He was, in Daddy’s words, the ‘Starman’ of them all, the talisman of their family. Maybe it was because he had been such a happy child. In nearly all of Emma’s childhood recollections David played a part, always with that joyous and innocent laugh of his, those sparkling green eyes, just like Daddy’s. One day during the weeks spent in their common purgatory she had asked David.

“Do you have a favourite memory from our childhood?”

David had walked over to one of the large framed photographs in the living room.

“This,” he said, pointing.

It was a photograph Daddy had taken just after they had moved to Denmark, when Papa had become Medical Engineer in one of the large pharmaceutical companies. The move to another country once again had been problematic to say the least. Emma wondered how they had actually managed as kids to survive constantly moving all around Europe. Maybe it was just because their fathers in the end had always been able to create a feeling of home around them, no matter where they were.

In the photograph the four children stood with their backs to the storming sea upon two large stones at the shore, the waves crashing around them. Robert, the oldest, stood furthest from the camera. He wasn’t looking at the lens but was focused on his younger siblings as if making sure they were alright and not slipping on the wet stones. In front of Robert were Emma and Hanna laughing, arm in arms, their heads leaning against each other. They had been so close once. Emma could still hear Daddy shouting ‘Allee, poseer!’ while Papa was giggling next to him.

Before them all, closest to the camera, stood David with his small arms stretched out in the air, a v-sign on both of his hands. He was not only smiling. His whole face, all of his fragile little body, was lit up by the all-encompassing laughter, Emma only remembered too well. Yes, that had been the David of her childhood.

“What changed?” Emma asked, afraid she was overstepping her welcome. But something had changed. She clearly recalled coming home for dinner one day few years after moving out and starting university, seeing the door to David’s room broken on its hinges, the bookshelf in his room smashed to pieces. It wasn’t something a boy of fifteen should be able to do. Turning to her fathers, before Papa could answer, Daddy looked at both of them with a stare that said ‘We don’t talk about this.’

“I don’t know,” David replied after a long pause. “Really, I have no idea. Whenever I think back at my childhood I see myself laughing and dancing with you guys, Papa and Daddy around me, and the only feeling that comes to me is a feeling of safety, of love.” David looked at her with something reminiscent of regret on his face.

“Then puberty hit. Slowly it was as if every happy feeling inside of me turned sour. I don’t know. It was as if someone had stolen one of Daddy’s paintings of our family and sucked all the colours out of it, turning it to a twisted black and white version of us all, of me.”

Emma had never realised how bad it had been. At that time she had been busy establishing her own life, studying, working, falling in love.

“All those emotions inside of me,” David continued, “I just had no idea how to deal with them. Everything was either or. Either I felt something to the fullest extreme or there was this total blackness inside of me. I couldn’t just be happy, I would be ecstatic. I couldn’t just be slightly annoyed, I would get so angry, so full of spite and hate. And whenever I felt sad there would be this inexplicable grief inside of me as if something had been taken from me, something that I had forever lost and would never be able to find again.”

David grabbed the coffee cup in front of him as if seeking some comfort from the warmth.

“And then the periods of total emptiness,” he said after a while. “I could spent hours holed up in my room, and whenever someone asked me what I had been up to I couldn’t remember. I had no idea. There was just blackness. And Papa would be so proud of me because he thought I had been studying for school.”

“But how did they react, de ouders?” Emma asked. “They must have seen what was going on.”

“You know Papa,” David said. “It wasn’t that he didn’t reach out. In his own way he did, you know, in his silent unobtrusive way. But honestly, that is far too easy to dodge as a teen. I know he worried, but he was also working so much at that time.”

“Yeah, it must have been around that time he became head of the neuropharmaceutical division.” Emma had been so proud of their Papa. “And Daddy?”

“I hurt him so much,” David answered looking up at the ceiling as if he with his stare could penetrate the floors and see the man lying upstairs. “Because I shut him out. He tried so hard to get through to me and I wouldn’t let him in. I couldn’t. And we always ended up yelling at each other, fighting all the time. And then Hanna would shout at me, and Daddy would shout at Hanna to leave me alone, always trying to protect me even when we were at our worst. Hanna would crash with Daddy, and Papa would seek to mend everything, you know, calmly, trying to stop us all from killing each other until he and Daddy collided.”

David stood up.

“I need something stronger! Do you want a beer?” Emma nodded. It might still be early afternoon, but with the state they both were in she didn’t really care. And with uncle Milan in the house it gave the two siblings some respite in their duties.

“The spring just before Hanna finished high school and moved out it was really bad.” David said coming back from the kitchen and handing Emma a beer. “ We got into our worst fight ever. I remember her screaming at me, that I was the reason Papa and Daddy was falling out. That I would be the cause of them braking up, that they never had time or energy for anyone but me. And I believed her, having heard the two of them talk alone for endless hours in the evenings. The guilt I felt was so crippling I even...”

“Starman.” Emma was lost for words.

“But that’s the thing! I was anything but Starman.” David’s words came rapidly now. “The Action Man had hit an all-time low! The thought of them splitting up because of me made me raze my room because I didn’t have the guts to do the same to myself. And then they decided to go on vacation separately, Papa and Hanna to Antwerp and Daddy and me to Berlin.”

“But that had nothing to do with you! Or with them splitting up!” The thought that her baby brother had carried that guilt with him for so many years on false premises gave Emma tears in her eyes. “David, godfuckingdammit, that was the summer Mama Ijzermans got really ill. You were all supposed to go to Berlin together but Papa had to go to Antwerp and Daddy wouldn’t let him go alone, so Hanna joined him. Daddy took you to Berlin to spare you from more pain!”

An alarm went off on Emma’s phone.

“I have to give Daddy his medicine,” she sighed.

“Fuck, I hate this shit!” David said walking to the kitchen to get another beer. Emma couldn’t have said it better.

#wtfock #wtfock fanfic #robbe x sander #emma ijzermans driesen #david ijzermans driesen

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feuilleszuyu · 5 years

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vintage love! ♡ | Kim Dahyun

a/n: HHHH I feel kinda bad for posting a Dahyun fic on Jae & Felix’s day but :((( I had just finished and I was: excited so,,,, enjoY

you were OBSESSED with other generations

name the time and you know all the details of the life style and the consequences of the historical events happening at that moment

it all started when you were a child because you only wanted tales from older times and play with your parents’ old toys >:(

and then you got older and you were in deep love with history

you literally dressed like you were straight out of a different decade every day—

you made most of your clothing, but some of them were findings from your grandma’s house or old belongings from your parents

specially grandma’s house because her side of the family seemed to want to keep all the memories they could from each time

paintings, pictures, clothing, diaries..... they had a LOT of those

but y/n’s dead relatives couldn’t have known all your preferences >:(

so you recreated some yourself sometimes

you also had to go every museum of every place you ever visited lol

and vintage stores were a big YES

and vintage caffes???

or vintage online shopping??????

omg HEAVEN

you had a lot of stuff now ya know

and as much as it hurt you...... you needed to get rid of some

AND TO STOP CONSTANTLY GETTING MORE FFS DUDE

anyways

so you decide to open a vintage store yourself because whY nOt

you knew a place not too far from your house that was on sale so!!! why not!!!!!

and so you did

it took you a lot of time to actually get the store ready but you did it!!!!!

and it was nOt liKe oThEr sTorEs so you had a recreation zone with some creations of your own o3o

it was being heaven for you getting to see so many people interested in your creations or old belongings

and even if you were sad they’d stop being yours.... you knew they had found great new owners who would treat them as good as you did

uNtiL

you see a new face enter the store one day

what happens is: everyone who visited your store was either from your neighborhood, friends, friends of friends or just someone from your old high school

you basically knew everyone who stepped a foot into your little store

but not this one girl??????

dang she was pretty

she had nice wavy blond hair, dark eyes and the cutest nose you’ve ever seen

she seemed to be around your age but you??? had??? no idea??? who she was???

she goes through the items of the store very carefully and sometimes you’d SWEAR she was looking at you

she walked so gracefully and you couldn’t stop staring even if you were trying your best to hide it

but then she lays her eyes on the “recreations: by me! :)” sign

and her eyes fill with curiosity

andohmygodhowcanonebesoprettyissheananimecharacterorsomething

she went through them as carefully as she did with the other section

she examined piece by piece and you couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassment that she was looking at them

“Excuse me? did you make these?”

oh god

you could get diabetes just by listening to that voice of how sweet it was

“Y-Yes! I did them all myself.... is there anything wrong with it?” you said as you left the counter and walked closer to her

“Actually..... the opposite! they’re pretty impressive!! I’ve seen a lot of similar items and it’s extremely accurate, someone could easily be fooled if I told them they are real” she let out a cute laugh and smiled at you

“Thank you!! it means a lot to me, I put a lot of effort into my work”

“I’m Dahyun by the way!”

“Y/N! So um,,,, are you from here? I don’t remember seeing you around”

“Actually... no, I’m just spending sometime here” she was still going around the store and observing attentively everything “I’m very lost in the city but someone was kind enough to let me know about this nice place!”

“I could help you”

DAMN Y/N WHERE DID THAT CONFIDENCE COME FROM??

“It’d be lovely!!!” her head got up in excitement to see you as she said that

you realize now she was quite short

“Great! We could go have coffee if you’re ok with it”

“actually I’m not ok with it”

you froze for a moment

“I prefer tea” she replied, this time softly letting you calm down

“tea is cool too, I just need to keep myself awake”

“I could help you with the staying awake part ;)”

IS THIS BITCH FLIRTING EYE—

you couldn’t help but blush I MEAN WHAT OTHER REACTION COULD YOU HAVE TO SUCH AN AUDACIOUS SENTENCE COMING FROM A CUTE GIRL!!!!!!!

her giggles filled the room as she noticed the red in your cheeks “When is the coffee meeting then? Do I need to wait ‘til you close?”

“I mean it’s my own store and it’s a pretty small business so I could just take a break right now”

“I can’t take you away from your job!! what if you find out and you fire yourself?? :(((“

“haha dw, my boss has a soft spot for me and would totally understand a small break for the sake of grabbing some coffee with a nice and pretty girl”

AH SHE THOUGHT SHE COULD JUST TEASE YOU AND NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN? A BITCH WAS WRONG

and it was her time to blush which made you proud

“if you say so....... I don’t mind”

and so you had the nicest afternoon with dahyun

you found out she was as obsessed with history as much as you were

she has worked in various museums and she was traveling around to see what she could find

and that’s how she trembled into your store

she found a nice apartment and it wasn’t even far from your own house!!!!!

how lucky could you be

you decided to exchange numbers but y’all didn’t rlly like texting

so you’d only call

but tbh it rlly wasn’t necessary because of the amount of time you spent together

she’d visit your store everyday and just stay around

waiting for you to end so you could go for a walk or have lunch

you’d be lying if you said your heart didn’t run out of your chest whenever you saw her

you see, when you first met, she was only a cute girl and that was already enough for you to be nervous around her

but now you knew her

and you knew how nice and funny she was

dahyun was the biggest crackhead ever I SWEAR

and loved teasing your >:(

but you’d tease back and her confident smirk would disappear for a blush to take place on her face

she rlly was the cutest :(((((((((

it kinda broke your heart to know that she was only there visiting the city :((((((((((

but!!!!! you wouldn’t let yourself be down!!!!!!

you needed to make every second with her as memorable as possible

“hey y/n”

“yes?”

“you haven’t come to my apartment yet, have you?”

“I mean..... not that I remember”

“stay over tonight”

wAIT IS SHE TEASING YOU AGAIN

the seriousness of her face says no

but it’s dahyun

can you rlly be sure???

“if you want to of course, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in anyway”

she looked more nervous now wow

“I’d love to” you gave her a wholehearted smile which made her smile

she was all bubbly and smiley for the rest of the day

her apartment was sorta small

just like her >:(

and it was cutely decorated with maps and vinyl discos and polaroids and paintings

and it had a big piano in a corner of the living room

it had 4 rooms: her room, the kitchen, the living room and obviously the bathroom

you‘d sleep in her bed and she’d sleep in a couch on the floor

you had noodles for dinner, spent sometime talking and it was time to go to sleep which :((( made you kinda sad

and you were nervous the whole time so sjdjdj

you couldn’t rlly sleep

your head was spinning around with thoughts

and most of them about dahyun

“hey........ are you still awake”

you were surprised dahyun was still awake

she seemed so peaceful hugged by her sheets

she barely moved even while asking the question

“I guess not........”

“I am” you replied

“did I wake you? you can go back to sleep if you want to! I don’t want to bother you!!”

“nah, not really, I can’t sleep”

“are not comfortable here?”

she seemed genuinely worried about you omg

“I am, I just..... have a too much going on”

dahyun got out of the couch she was laying in and sat in front of you on her bed

“do you need to talk? I’m here for you and I’m all hears!”

“I’m not sure either tbh”

she moved to the space that the bed still had next to you and laid her head on your shoulder

“You know that you can tell me anything right? I’d always love you”

at this point you couldn’t hear her words clearly anymore because of how strongly your heart was beating

she had never said she loved you

sure, you spent a lot of time together and you obviously loved her too

but having it said so clearly for you to hear

“I’m thinking of moving here, I didn’t really want to leave you and this place is very nice”

she made herself more comfortable, put her hands around your waist and hugged you like you were her plushie

“are you tired?”

you finally managed to say something

and you didn’t think you could do much more tbh

“kinda, but it’s hard to sleep having you next to me, my heart keeps going boom boom” she lets out a small giggle “does your heart do it too?”

“a lot more than I’d like to admit,”

“can I sleep with you? even if the bed isn’t that big.... i feel better next to you”

you wanted to say yes

but at this point, dahyun’s sleepiness got the best of her

and you found her sleeping, still holding you

she was such an angel

so peaceful

you let her there until next morning

and now you were really sure that you were indeed in love with kim dahyun

#kim dahyun #twice dahyun #twice #twice imagine #dahyun imagine #kim dahyun imagine #twice scenario #dahyun scenario #twice reaction #kpop #ggs #girlgroups

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immortaldream · 5 years

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Immortal III: Stealer of Souls (excerpt)

Immortal III: STEALER OF SOULS/ (excerpt)

October 7, 2014 at 3:52 PM

CHAPTER 10: The Playground

Sonya awoke with a start, pushing the dream away. Morning light filled the room, shinning down through the skylights.

The vampire was stretched out on the divan across from her. She wore alight blue gown that exquisitely accentuated her dark skin. Her manicured feet were bare. Annabelle smiled at her. “Well good morning. Did you sleep well?”

Sonya sat up, rubbing her eyes and stared at the older woman with a mixture of confusion and fear. You ain’t human! trembled on her lips. Instead she demanded: “Who are you?”

The older woman smiled. “I’m Annabelle…”

Sonya jumped to the floor. “I wanna go home! My Mama will be worried!” It was the plaintive cry of a child to be returned to her warm hearth.

Annabelle leisurely got to her feet. “Everything’s fine. Your mama don’t even know you’re gone. I’m sorry I brought you here like I did.But I had to. Your life’s in danger.”

There was weighted silence.

“How did I get here?”

“You know how, Sonya. You came through the mirror.”

Sonya shook her head vehemently. “Uh-uh. How did I get here?”

“Your mirror is a portal to other worlds.” The Indigo spread her hands expansively. “This house is one of them.”

“I’ve seen you before…in my dreams.”

Annabelle held her gaze. “Yes, I’m sure you have.”

“But,when that thing that came after me, it wasn’t a dream,” Sonya whispered. “You were there—you helped me! I remember! I felt you—I felt you come inside me!” She sat down heavily on the bed. “Why would anybody wanna hurt me…?” She jumped up again, her face wild. “He might hurt my family! I got to warn them!”

“He won’t hurt them,” the vampire said calmly. “He’s not interested in them. Only you.”

“My mom will be worried when she finds me gone!” Sonya shouted, near tears again. “I gotta go back!”

“Calm down honey… time has no meaning in this house,” Annabelle reassured her. “If you wanna leave, I’ll take you back. But when you go, you’ll re-enter your world at the same time you left.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Ever hear your mama talk about folks walking between the raindrops? Well you in-between the raindrops now. Time is standing still.”

Sonya breathed shallowly through her nose—not daring to move. Maybe if she didn’t move this nightmare would disappear. She’d be at home again: safely tucked into bed.

“You—you stopped time?”

“No, time doesn’t exist here. You could stay for a hundred years and never age a day.”

“You must think I’m crazy,” the girl scoffed, “or smoking rush one!”

Annabelle touched her shoulder. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Leaving the room they turned left, the woman led her past gleaming wooden walls, with sinuous carvings. At the end of the hallway, double doors stood open to reveal a gathering room filled with oil paintings of mermen, snakes with female torsos, and other fantastic creatures.

A fireplace centered the room; couches were arranged about the floor. A tall mirror stood to their right. Annabelle walked over to the mirror, touched her fingertips to glass, and Sonya’s bedroom appeared. Nothing had been touched.

“It’s a trick,” Sonya breathed, her eyes still on the mirror. “You’re tricking me.”

“You know I’m not,” Annabelle replied softly. “I’ll take you home whenever you get ready. But this is a beautiful, beautiful place if you give it a chance. Everybody’s been waiting to meet you. You gonna miss ‘em if you leave now.”

The girl chewed her bottom lip. She was curious. And besides this was the biggest house she’d ever seen! Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to stay a little while, I’m already here…“Everybody like who?”

Annabelle smiled. “You’ll see. Come on, let’s find you something to wear.”

She led Sonya back to her bedroom, opened the wardrobe cabinet and pulled clothing from it. Minutes later, the young woman emerged dressed in a white blouse and a skirt that hung low around her hips; her hair freshly combed.

As they came abreast of the staircase, another Indigo woman strolled from behind it. She was slender and muscular, with a long face,flashing eyes and brown sugar skin. Her thick hair was braided into an elaborate knot atop her head.

And she was totally nude. She paused in the corridor, gazing at Sonya with open curiosity; then flashed a smile. “You’re Sonya, aren’t you?”

Wordlessly,the girl nodded. “Well, I’m Selena. Nice to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you later.” Selena strode past her, her gait proud and confident, to the same door Sonya had tried escape through.

Annabelle’s face creased in annoyance. “Could you try wearing clothes sometimes?” she called.

Selena glanced back over her shoulder, her brown face unconcerned. “For what? When I spend my days like this!”She transformed into a black panther.

“Wow—just wow!”Sonya exclaimed, clapping her hands together like a delighted child,“Too cool!”

Growling,the panther dipped her head in the girl’s direction as if to say:“Thank you!” and turned green eyes to the door. It swung open to reveal a lush jungle. Selena leaped through the archway and the portal shut behind her.

Annabelle laughed at Sonya’s enchantment. “You’re too precious! Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving!”

“Well,let’s eat!”

They walked into an alcove—the castle seemed endless—just to the left of the door. It was furnished with a marble table,candles, and two chairs. Yet the wall to their right was made of glass. Beyond these transparent barriers, was a beach and foaming ocean.

Frolicking in the waves, were mermen and women of every color imaginable; with fishtails or scaled legs; some with slits for eyes and noses; others with human features, diving in and out of the water. Galloping up and down the sand, were two female centaurs.

Sonya gawked at the creatures, a goofy half smile on her face. “Are they real?”

“As real as you and me.”

“I wanna go out there,” breathed Sonya. “I wanna get a closer look.”

“Later…Cle-Menti!”

Cle-Menti blurred to her side. He was naked from the waist up; and clothed only in a pair of loose fitting brown trousers, and open toed sandals. His thick, kinky hair was molded about his wide face. His muscles were so well defined, they seemed carved into his chocolate-hued body.Without a doubt Cle-Menti was the darkest, most gorgeous man Sonya had ever seen.

Annabelle smiled up at him. “Good morning… Sonya, this is Cle-Menti…Would you please see if they have anything ready in the kitchen?”

His basso profundo voice filled the room. “I’ll take care of it.”He turned his attention to Sonya. “Did you sleep well, princess?”

She stared up at him. “Yeah…” Even to her own ears she sounded like a child.

“Good.I’ll be right back.”

Minutes later, he returned carrying a covered breakfast tray. The smell of eggs and apple turnovers filled the room. He smiled into her eyes,his teeth flashing against his dark skin, and placed the dishes in front of the women; along with glasses of melon juice.

Cle-Menti took Sonya’s hand. “I hope you enjoy your breakfast princess. I cooked it myself.” He pressed his thick lips to her fingers. She gawked up at him, unable to manage another word.

“She wants to go out after breakfast.” A sly smile played about Annabelle’s lips. “You mind taking her?”

“Of course not,” He said, never taking his eyes off Sonya’s face.“Just call me when you finish eating.”

The food was delicious—the eggs fluffy with just the right amount of cheese; the turnovers sweet and buttery. Sonya turned her chair to one side, so she could watch the creatures gamboling beyond the glass wall; her questions forgotten. By now, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the ocean and were tossing a ball back and forth to the mermaids.

Annabelle spooned eggs into her mouth, and then sipped from her glass of juice.“I supposed you’re wondering why I look like you. Think of me as an older sister. The same blood that flows through your veins flows through mine. We’re connected by an ancient family line.”

“We are Nosferatu: vampires.”

“There was a weighted silence.

“Last night you bit me,” Sonya said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

The vampire held her gaze. “I gave you some of my blood to make you stronger. I’ve been watching you for a while now.”

Sonya swallowed a mouthful of turnover. “Can you see me all the time? I mean, not just when I’m in my bedroom?”

“Oh yes… You’re different from other people. I guess you figured that one out by now. Well, there are other people out there who’re different, too; folks not as nice as me, Selena, and Cle-Menti. Folks who wanna control you—make you do things for them.”

Sonya thought of the dream. Of all the words she could use to describe Annabelle, “nice” wasn’t one of them. But she kept this to herself too.

“I’ve been protecting you, but I can’t watch over you all the time. You got to be taught how to take care of yourself. You’re family—my family—soi t’s my job to teach you.”

Are you taking care of yourself? Don’t trust her baby.It was Cassandra’s voice, heard as if from a distance. Sonya shivered.

“You cold?” the young woman shook her head. “Are you finished eating?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Annabelle pushed her chair back from the table, rose and walked back out into the hallway, Sonya followed. They stood before the door. “Don’t ever try to open this door or any of the doors in this by yourself.Understand?”

Sonya nodded impatiently, now in a hurry to be off. “Cle-Menti, she’s ready,” called Annabelle.

The words were barely out of her mouth, before he blurred alongside her.“You wish to go out princess?”

“Uh-huh,”Sonya stammered. Boy, I sound brain dead. But he is so fine!

He took her hand and they faced the door. “We wish to go to the beach,” he commanded. It swung open, to reveal golden sands and foaming turquoise waters; under an unbelievably bright orange-blue sky.

They strolled around the corner of the mansion, to find the two centaurs now racing each other up and down the sand; one Bronze, with green eyes, reddish-brown hair that curled about her shoulders, and a dark red mare’s hindquarters. The other was Amber with slanted, almond eyes, and black hair that flowed to her waist—a waist that ended in black horse’s body. Each wore silver brassiere scovering their torsos.

“CanI get a closer look?”

Cle-Menti smiled indulgently, “Of course!” He shouted in a booming voice that echoed along the beach: “This is Sonya and she’d like to play with you; but behave yourselves! None of you tricks—you hear?”

Sonya approached the centaurs slowly, twisting her hands in front of her like a child. “Hi…” she said softly.

They regarded her with open curiosity. “I’m Lui and this is Juliana,”the Amber centaur lisped. “Would you like a ride?”

“Oh yes!” Sonya breathed.

“Well,climb on my back then! We’re going to race!”

“And I’m going to win!” Juliana pronounced.

“Hold on tight!” Lui warned. She galloped down the beach—with Sonya holding on for dear life—then back again. The Indigo girl glanced over her shoulder, and glimpsed mermen and women looking on with great interest.

A crowd of aquatic folk had gathered near the ocean’s edge, and were bobbing up and down in the waves, smiling and pointing: waiting for their chance to play with this newcomer.

As Sonya slid off Lui’s back, she whispered: “You would make a lovely centaur! Wouldn’t you like to be one of us?”

Sonya frowned “Oh no!”

“And why not?” Juliana chipped in petulantly. “Are we not beautiful?”Beside her Lui pouted.

Sonya’s face split in a wide grin, flattered beyond measure that these magical equines wanted her to join their family. “You’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!”Mollified they smiled back.

“Well?”said Lui expectantly.

“I have a family,” Sonya explained. “If I stayed with you, they’d miss me.”

Fora moment Juliana and Lui seemed to seriously consider. “We could be your family,” Juliana offered, smiling openly as if this solved everything.

Sonya looked distressed. I don’t want to make them mad! “But I’d miss them too!” she stammered, “I love them!”

“What is… love?” asked Lui, looking confused.

Sonya’s jaw dropped. “You miss a person when they’re gone,” she groped for words, “you don’t ever want to be without them; and when they hurt, you hurt too.”

They listened intently. “Oh. . .!” said Juliana nodding; beside her Lui bobbed her head in agreement.

But it was obvious they still didn’t understand. Another small almost imperceptible shiver of fear coursed through Sonya. “Could we ride to the water?” she asked.

Available at: www.vjeffersandqveal.com

In audio at: http://tehotep.wixsite.com/immortaliiiaudiobook

#Afrofuturism BlackFantasy TimeTravel BlackVampires

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leo-lucid · 5 years

Text

Bewitching Which Monster Chapter 1: The Home

The road to my new home was bumpy and long. I looked out the window from my cab and watched the trees go by. I smiled a little as I saw the wind start to blow up the colorful leaves that were lying on the dirt road. They swirled around within the air and landed on the back on the ground behind us. Oh yeah, I could totally find myself living here and practicing my magic for a while.

"So, what brings you all the way down here? Young women tend to go off to the big cities, not small towns with nothing but forest for miles." My driver tried to make conversation. I settled back into my seat and looked at her through the mirror.

"I inherited the mansion up this road. My grandparents left it to me in their will and I have been looking for a more secluded place surrounded by nature. It may help me work more productively and it's peaceful up here. I have a greater chance of finding what I'm looking for here too." I explained.

The driver kept glancing back and forth between me and the road. "So, you're their granddaughter, Anise Devane. They talked about you fondly whenever we met in the town festivals. I'm so sorry about your grandparents. What are you looking for exactly?"

I returned my attention back to the trees. "A plot of land to grow herbs and plants. And to grow as a person myself." I answered as honestly as I could. I couldn't tell her that I was a witch and I was going to plant plants for my magical practices. We witches are a lot more free to practice than we were many years ago but it was still a little bit of a taboo topic to talk about with normal humans.

"Well, you'll definitely find peace and quiet up here. Welcome to Hazelview. Small town, small people and a whole lotta nature. You'll fit right in in no time." She chiperily described. "Here we are!"

I looked out the front windshield to see the small mansion my grandparents have left for me. The foliage was covering a majority of the grey shingles and the curtains in the window were drawn back. The steel gate would've looked menacing if it weren't for the flourishing vines wrapping all around the bars. I remembered this old house. So many memories. Even if the mansion was huge for one person alone and secluded in the woods, it still looked warm and welcoming.

The taxi driver pulled into the white gravel driveway and stopped the car. I got out and looked up at my new home. The driver opened the trunk and started to unload my luggage for me. "Here you go, sweetie. Hopefully, your moving truck will arrive before you run out of clothes to wear."

"Thank you so much. How much do I owe you?" I asked as I reached for my wallet in my back pocket.

"Nah, free of charge. You're one of us town folk now. If you ever need a lift, just give me a call. See ya later, neighbor." She declined, finished unloading the trunk and sped away before I could insist or even say thanks.

I grabbed my bags from the ground and began to drag them inside the house.I pushed the gate open with my shoulder and made my way to the large, oak door. I put my bag down on the porch and fished around my pocket for the key.

The door swung open slowly once I unlocked it, creating a loud squeaking noise. I made a mental note to fix that soon.

The house was a bit dusty and there was a lot of furniture that was left behind. The wood would need to be shined again and the walls would probably have to get a new coat of paint. The house was on the older side, dating back a good century or so. It's had a lot of work done since when it was first built. It was always known as the Devane house. Always have and always will be.

I went up one of the staircases that elegantly curved towards the wall. As I walked up, I could see all the old pictures that decorated the wall. There were old, antique pictures of my grandparents, the generations before them and the generations after. At the very top of the stairs I could see my moms at their wedding and a few more family photos including me.

I finished looking at the pictures and headed to one of the upstairs bedrooms. Upon opening the master bedroom, I noticed that the room was incredibly dusty. If I was going to sleep in the room for the night I would have to clean up a little and get some fresh air in.

I settled my luggage on the king sized bed and went to open the window. It took a bit of strength but I was eventually able to get it open. The room already started to feel a lot better. But if this one room was like this then the others must be in the same condition.

Instead of unpacking immediately and resting, I went downstairs to find the broom closet. I grabbed a clean rag and some polisher to start clearing away the dust. I traveled from room to room, opening windows and rubbing down the old furniture. To my surprise, a bunch of rooms were pretty decent. They weren't as dusty as I expected.

In fact, the bedrooms almost seemed recently lived in.

I shrugged it off, remembering that my grandparents would occasionally run a bed and breakfast out of their home for extra money. They must've cleaned the guest rooms last before they passed away. As my grandparents got older they began to sleep in smaller, separate beds. It would explain why the master bedroom was so bad.

I continued to make my way through the house, dusting and cleaning anything I could reach and opening windows to air out the house.

The house creaked slightly with each step and sometimes it did it by itself. I knew it was an old house but it almost sounded like someone else was living here still.

Again, it was probably just nothing. It didn't stop me from being a bit nervous though.

The entire house was mostly dust free and promised that I could rest easy tonight without suffocating. While I was cleaning the house I found my grandmother's Witch Room. She left a bunch of mason jars with herbs, plants that were slowly dying in their pots, and other materials scattered around like crystals and feathers and inks.

I went back to that room and looked through the scattered papers along the floors and shelves. They were all in Irish Gaelic with little English words scattered here and there. Old sketches flooded the papers as well.

I gathered them all up and stacked them on top of the wooden table. I promised myself to check them out later after I got settled into the house. It was getting late and I haven't eaten since the morning. I had to call my moms too to let them know I was safe.

Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I called up a pizza place to order something quick. I was told that my mushroom and bacon pizza will be ready and delivered in less than thirty minutes. After thanking the person who took my order, I sat down at the family dining table on the first floor to Facetime my moms.

It only took about two rings before they picked up. My mom's red, frizzy hair was in a sloppy bun and she was wearing a black tank top covered in dirt. She probably started cleaning the house as soon as I left. She tended to clean when she was stressed, nervous or worried.

Her cool, ocean blue eyes lit up through the screen as she saw that I was perfectly safe and managed to make it to the mansion. "Hi, Ani! Oh, Olivia! Honey, Anise is on the phone!"

I could hear my ma run towards mom, excited to finally see me after waiting for me to get here. Her face appeared next to mom's, almost pushing her out of view. Her walnut wood skin was covered in sweat and showed signs of being slightly sun-burnt. She was most likely working in the garden before I called. "Anise! Oh my gods you're alive!"

"Yeah, Ma. I didn't die on the way here. Thank you for worrying about me. Once I got here I cleaned up some of the dust and opened the windows to circulate the air." I joked and explained.

"My baby is growing up! I already miss seeing her freckles that are scattered across her nose and cute cheeks, Avery!" Ma exclaimed to Mom, talking about me like I wasn't listening.

Mom pushed her away so she could have some camera time. "Don't you think I'm gonna miss her asking me to help dye her hair dark purple? I miss our baby too, ya know! Anyways, Ani, make sure you call us whenever something goes wrong, okay? Your ma and I love you very much and we want to help you get used to living on your own."

"I'll send you some boxes of purple hair dye, herbs, books, and cookies every month, Ani. If you need anything else that you can't afford on your own just call us and we'll send it over." Ma continued, her smoky quartz eyes tearing up.

I gave a small giggle and smiled. "Got it, ma. I'll be fine. I'm nineteen for crying out loud! I can take care of myself so there's no need to worry."

Mom frowned. "Of course we're gonna worry! We're your moms!"

The doorbell suddenly rang and I hovered my finger over the hang up button. "My pizza is here. Gotta go! I'll call you guys when the moving truck and handyman gets here. Love you!"

"Love you too, sweetie! Enjoy your pizza." They said goodbye. I hung up and went to answer the door.

I paid for the pizza and tipped the delivery guy. As soon as they left I close the creaky door and headed to one of the living rooms to watch some television. My grandparents should've had Netflix on all of the televisions as an app since guests would've most likely requested some modern media.

Turning on the TV, I sat down on a dusty, pink rose couch and tried to enjoy my pizza and Earth documentary. Most people my age weren't really in to documentaries, but I personally found them fascinating. It was like reading a nonfiction book but much quicker and much more entertaining.

Due to me watching mainly documentaries, my brain is filled with all sorts of facts from science to history and anything in between. It definitely made high school a breeze for me. It also helped convince my moms to let me take online college classes instead of going to an actual college.

An hour later, the cities episode ended and my pizza was completely gone. I checked the time and saw that it was 7:00 pm. Like the responsible adult I was, I got up, cleaned my mess and went to get ready for bed.

I decided to inspect the master bathroom before stripping down and using it. It would've been terrible if I noticed mold or spiders while I was bathing. To my astonishment, the bathroom was perfectly polished and cleaned. The marble counter was clear and dust-free, the shower was sparkling as well as the freestanding, claw-foot tub and even the towels seemed fresh.

Perhaps my grandparents still preferred to use the master bathroom?

I grabbed my bath essentials and began to draw up a bath. While the tub filled up with warm water, I put some music on from my phone. The sound echoed through the massive bathroom, almost drowning out the sound of the running rush of water from the faucet.

With a little bit of bubbles, some candles and crystals and some rose petals that I packed with me, I was ready to relax.

I slid right in and adored the quiet time I was able to have. There weren't a lot of opportunities to relax like this back when I lived with my moms. But now I was able to take a bath like this whenever I wished.

Just as I poured some lavender shampoo into my hand, there was a loud creak and footsteps from outside the bathroom door.

My heart sped up, my breathing stopped and I froze. There was no way that that was just the wind or the house settling. Unless I was going crazy, that was a stranger.

I stopped the music on my phone and sat in the bath in silence. I wasn't a particularly brave person so taking the time to muster up some courage to see if there was an intruder was necessary for me. With a few deep breaths and a reassuring nod to myself, I got up and grabbed a towel to cover myself with and began to check out the noise.

I opened the door very slowly and peered out. It didn't seem like anyone was in the bedroom and there was no evidence that anything was tampered with. I opened the door wider and noticed something on the wooden floor in front of me.

Bending over, I picked it up and held it in my hands. It was brown fur.

It suddenly hit me. During the few times I visited my grandparents I noticed that a few stray cats would occasionally roam around the property. Most of the windows from when I opened them up were still open. One of the cats must've found their way in and began to explore the mansion.

It was possible that the cat stepped in a particularly creaking spot in the floor and scared itself, causing it to run away. I knew that I would get freaked out if I heard a foreign sound seemingly coming from nowhere.

Hopefully, the cat would find its way outside without me intervening. The last thing I would want is to scare the poor thing with my presence.

I shrugged and went back to my bath. I wasn't able to enjoy it like I first did but it was still kinda pleasant. My time bathing was over within several minutes and I drained the tub. The only thing I packed as pajamas was an over-sized shirt that said "Inconceivable!"

Within a few minutes, my teeth were brushed and my purple hair was let loose from being in a tight bun all day. I changed the sheets on my bed with fresh ones I found from a linen closet. I made sure that all the windows were closed and all of the doors were locked before getting into bed.

Man, I was so tired. It's been a long day and I still had a long list of things to do. The moving guys and handyman were supposed to show up sometime tomorrow, I had to do some grocery shopping and budgeting, clean some more of the mansion and more.

It was best to get some sleep and be ready for all of that in the morning.

I rolled on to my side to find a more comfortable sleeping position and shut my eyes. Before I could fall asleep, I could feel the bed dip from extra weight and a body hovering over me. I snapped my eyes open and looked up to see a strange man with deep red eyes and white fangs inches away from my face. I couldn't help but scream.

"AHH!"

#creative writing #novel #romance #be prepared for there are gonna be 9 more chapters. . .#writeblr #reverse harem

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jenanigans1207 · 5 years

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*bangs hands on table* SOUL MARKS SOUL MARKS SOUL MARKS (Your writing is really good!!!)

———–x

Not everyone had a soul mate, Lance knew. But he did. At least, his hand indicated such. The palm of his hand and fingers were jet black, as if he had dipped his hand in paint, intending to leave a trail of hand prints behind. When he was younger he loved the mark— a soul mark, as they called it. Now, however, that he was older, he was significantly less fond of it.

Supposedly his soulmate had a mark matching his, somewhere on their body. And when their two marks touched, they would cycle through a rainbow of colors. Young Lance used to spend hours fantasizing about what that would look like and how his soulmates face would light up before they shared true love’s kiss. He used to think about how he’d sweep them off their feet and live happily ever after. Older Lance, unfortunately, no longer had those fantasies. Because older Lance had fallen in love with someone who, as far as he could tell, didn’t have a soul mark. No soul mark meant that they weren’t for Lance, no matter how much Lance wanted them to be.

He had tried to comfort himself as much as he could, insisting that he would fall in love with his soulmate as soon as he met them, forgetting all about the boy who stole his heart. But the more Lance got to know that boy— the more he stared into those violet eyes or longed to run his fingers through the length of that mullet— the more he found himself wishing he’d never meet his soulmate. Because Keith might be wrong for him in every single way, even the universe could see that, it seemed, but Lance didn’t care. Because he wanted Keith and everything that came along with him.

He wanted the short temper, the built up walls and the curt answers. He wanted the days where Keith was cutting him with insults as easily as he cut a druid with his bayard. He wanted the days where Keith sulked around or pushed him away. He wanted them all. Because taking those days meant he also got the days where Keith laughed, or smiled at him. He got the days Keith stepped up to the plate, supporting him and encouraging him. It allowed him to have the days where it was no longer Lance and Keith, neck in neck but rather Lance and Keith, side by side, working as an undefeatable team. Taking Keith’s bad days meant getting his good ones, too. And, as far as Lance was concerned, one good day was worth a million bad days. Maybe more. Because even on his worst days, he was still Keith and oh god was Lance ever in love with Keith.

He remembered the way it had started— a little flutter in his chest whenever Keith would shoot him a pointed or exasperated look, and a slight tremble in his fingertips whenever Keith was close enough for him to touch. He remembered how quickly it progressed— he went from seeing Keith as a rival to seeking Keith out and wanting his company. And the night he had found himself outside Keith’s door, hand poised to knock, no real reason for being there other than the fact that he felt a sort of hollowness nestled in his chest where his heart was supposed to be, he knew he was done for. He’d tucked his hand back into his pocket and shuffled away as quickly as he could while still attempting to look casual, ignoring the way his heart was thundering erratically in his chest. That was the moment he knew he was in love with Keith.

He’d paced his room that entire night, wringing his hands together and wondering how he’d gotten himself in such a predicament. From then on, he’d taken every opportunity he could to casually check Keith out and see if he could find a soulmark anywhere on Keith’s body, but he never could. His arms were bare, what he could see of his legs were bare… it appeared to be a lost cause. When Keith had lifted the hem of his shirt after a long few hours of training, using the edge of it to wipe sweat off his forehead, Lance had even managed to scour his stomach and low back. Of course he’d found nothing, but he’d still enjoyed the view so it wasn’t a total loss.

From there, Lance had moved on to trying to casually touch Keith as much as he could. Brushing a hand across his shoulder blade, or bracing one on his leg as he leaned forward to grab something, trying desperately to see if his hand was changing colors after the contact. It never was. The logical side of him knew that he needed to give it up— to accept that Keith wasn’t his soulmate, or anybody else’s, by the look of it— and to try and just move on. But no matter how much logical sense it made, emotionally he wasn’t prepared to let go. So He didn’t. He clung tighter and tighter, knowing full well that someday it was going to break his heart.

A knock sounded on the door to his room, startling him out of his reverie. He shook his head, dropping his hand from in front of his face, where he’d been holding it to look at it. “Come in!”

The door slid open immediately, but nobody stepped inside. Instead, Pidge leaned forward slightly, just enough to pop her head through the doorway so she could see Lance. “You need to go talk to Keith.”

“What?”

“He’s down in the hangar and refusing to talk to any of us. We can all tell there’s something wrong but he won’t tell anyone what.” Pidge answered, already starting to lean back out of the doorway.

“So why are you calling me to help?” Lance asked, clenching his hand to hide his soul mark. Everyone had seen it, obviously, it was in too blatant of a spot to hide. Still, he didn’t like people looking at it because it made him think about it more, and thinking about it hurt. “He doesn’t want to see me, I’m sure.”

Pidge rolled her eyes with a sigh, “Lance, I don’t know how you don’t see it, but you’re the only one he talks to or listens to. You have to be the one to get him out of this.”

Lance tried to hide the way his heart swelled at her words, willing himself not to get too overwhelmed with emotion. He shrugged slightly at Pidge in lieu of a response and pushed through the doorway past her, heading to the hangar. He wanted to be the one Keith talked to and listened to, like she’d said, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up for that.

The doors to the hangar came into view and he paused just outside, taking a moment to take a deep, steadying breath. He closed his eyes as he smacked the button to open the doors, bracing himself. When he heard the doors slide all the way open, he opened his eyes and willed himself not to let his breath be stolen.

Keith was, indeed, standing in the hangar, hair disheveled in a way that looked almost purposeful. He had his jacket discarded on the ground off to the side and his boots tossed nearby. He was standing in just a pair of jeans— jeans— and a t shirt that looked one size smaller than the ones he normally wore. Or perhaps he really had gotten bigger during his time with the blades. Either way, the shirt clung to his body in a way Lance had never seen and he swallowed against a dry throat, trying to stop his eyes from tracing every sharp angle of Keith’s body.

In an attempt to ease some of his tension, Lance cleared his throat as he walked into the room. Keith glanced at him over his shoulder as he approached and Lance felt like he was about to be frozen on the spot. The way Keith’s messy hair fell into his face gave him a sort of rugged look that suited him perfectly. He looked like the kind of guy who was rough around the edges but soft for the one he loved and, honestly, that’s exactly how Lance always thought Keith would be. God he regretted that he’d never get to find out. The idea of Keith being soft to and for him was nearly enough to drive Lance insane with jealousy for the person who did get to see Keith that way.

“Keith, buddy, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Keith’s reply was quick, but his gaze never faltered from Lance.

Lance continued all the way into the room, walking directly up to Keith. Perhaps even a step or two too close to Keith, but he certainly wasn’t about to back away. “Buddy, I can feel you moping all the way on the other side of the castle. You can’t tell me nothing’s wrong.”

“I am not moping!”

Squinting, Lance tilted his head from side to side, inspecting Keith’s face. “Looks like a mope to me.”

With a roll of his eyes, Keith turned his back to Lance, crossing his arms over his chest. All it did was pull his shirt tighter across his shoulders and Lance had to close his eyes for a moment to keep his composure.

“Seriously, Keith, just talk to me. I’m supposed to be your right hand man.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Well yeah. I can’t call myself that if you’re constantly icing me out.” There was a small, teeny tiny, barely there, twinge of bitterness in Lance’s voice. Unfortunately for him, Keith heard it too. He could tell by the way Keith turned around again to face him, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

“Icing you out?” Keith dropped his arms from in front of his chest. “Lance you’re the only one here I talk to.”

“Hate to break it to you, buddy. But if this is what you call talking to someone, I’ve got something to tell you.” There was a shadow over Keith’s expression and Lance thought it looked like sadness.

He wanted to reach out and touch Keith, to tug Keith into him, wrapping his arms tight around him and just holding him, as if he could fight off all of Keith’s problems. He would if he could. He knew that if he were the one feeling the way Keith seemed to be feeling, that’s the reaction he’d want from Keith. Even though he knew he’d never get it, he thought about it sometimes. About what it’d feel like to be pressed against Keith, wrapped up in his arms. Or to have Keith pressed into him, clutching onto him as if their lives depended on it, face buried in his hair. The trembling was back in his fingers but this time it was from the effort required to hold himself back from reaching for Keith.

There was a long pause before Keith finally said, “Do you ever think the universe got it wrong?”

Yes, Lance wanted to say. He could feel the ache of it in his chest. I think that every day when I see you and realize that the universe didn’t make you my soulmate. He searched Keith’s face. I think that when I see you upset and realize that I’m not the one who can comfort you.

“What do you mean?” He said instead, swallowing down all the words he wanted to say. He’d thought about confessing so many times but he didn’t want it to end like that. He didn’t want it to go down in flames. He wanted it to fizzle out slowly, to let it drag on, burning beneath his skin for as long as possible— a constant reminder of the love he’d lost.

“I mean I’m not supposed to be here, like this. I’m not supposed to lead, I’m not supposed to feel the way I feel every single day! This—” he gestured vaguely to the space between the two of them, “ —isn’t supposed to be like this!”

The sort of brokenness that Lance could see in Keith’s eyes knocked down any and all barriers that he’d been restricted by before. He closed the remaining distance between them, reaching up for Keith and settling a hand onto his shoulder. “Keith, I—”

But anything he might have been about to say died on his tongue as he felt a slight heat spread across his palm and fingers. He looked down to where his hand rested on Keith’s shoulder. The bottom of his hand just reaching the top of Keith’s chest. He could see Keith follow his gaze, his lips slightly parted in wonder. Slowly Lance lifted his hand off of Keith, flipping it over so they could both see his palm…

…his palm that was normally black….

…his palm that was now cycling through colors. Red, purple, blue, yellow, on and on, color after color.

Without even thinking or hesitating, Lance slipped his fingers under the collar of Keith’s shirt and tugged it to the side, exposing his shoulder. Sure enough, there where Lance had never been able to see, was a hand print, rotating through all of the colors, one after the next. He glanced up to Keith’s face, unable to properly comprehend how he was feeling, only to find Keith staring steadfastly off to the side, his gaze down and cheeks flushed with a deep blush.

The moment seemed to stretch on forever in between them, enveloping them in their own little world. Lance glanced between his own rainbow hand and the rainbow hand print on Keith’s shoulder at least a hundred times before he was finally able to choke out, “Keith? I, uh… I think we’ve got something to talk about here.”

Finally, finally Keith let out a sigh and Lance could feel the tension drop from his shoulders. He still didn’t turn to look at Lance, but he replied, sounding defeated. “Look, I get it if this isn’t what you’ve wanted. I know you, you’ve probably had some fairy tale in your head for your whole life of some beautiful girl you’d sweep off her feet and then you two would—”

Lance couldn’t take it. Couldn’t listen to Keith talking like this wasn’t the best thing to ever happen to Lance. He reached up and gently grabbed a hold of Keith’s face, turning it until their gazes locked. Keith stopped talking, clearly trying his best to look composed. The moment Lance got a chance to really look at Keith’s eyes, all the shock disappeared and it was replaced with nothing short of pure elation.

“Keith, you idiot. Do you have any idea how hopelessly in love with you I’ve been all this time?”

There was a delicious moment where Keith looked too stunned to even reply. He reached a hand up unconsciously, pressing it against Lance’s chest. The contact seemed to ground him and he was able to let out a soft, “W-what?”

And just like that, the dam inside Lance broke. He tugged Keith forward gently, leaning down to capture his lips. Keith, surprisingly, responded in kind, his hand fisting in Lance’s shirt. It only lasted a minute, but it was the best minute of Lance’s life. As they pulled away, he guided Keith to him, slipping his arms around Keith’s shoulders and pressing him firmly against his chest. Part of Lance wanted to laugh, part wanted to cry tears of joy and the rest wanted to head to every corner of the galaxy and declare to every person he passed that Keith was his.

“I have been devastated for years at this point because I thought you had someone else as your soulmate and I desperately wished it were me,” He confessed quietly, his mouth right by Keith’s ear. He relished the way he got to feel Keith inhale at his words. “This is genuinely the happiest moment of my life.”

“But I’m—”

“Everything I’ve wanted and then some,” Lance finished for him, gently threading his fingers into Keith’s hair. He felt the last little bit of worry leave Keith and suddenly Keith was leaning into him, resting his full weight against Lance. Lance accepted it happily, feeling content and whole for the first time in a long time.

This was how he’d always wanted it to be and he couldn’t believe that it was actually happening. How often did the universe give someone exactly what they wanted? He was sure it was rare and he swore to never take this blessing for granted. He’d enjoy every single day he had with Keith, good or bad. He would be there for Keith every hour of every day, constantly seeking him out and showing him just how important he was. He’d spent years loving Keith already and he was fully prepared to spend years staying in love with him, choosing him and fighting for him day after day. He would never give this up.

“For the record,” Keith pulled away from Lance’s chest enough so that he could look into Lance’s eyes as he spoke, ensuring Lance could hear his words, “I’ve been in love with you since the day we had to climb that elevator shaft together.”

A level of contentedness Lance didn’t know he could feel bubbled up in his chest as he listened to Keith’s words. A smile overtook his lips and he didn’t even try to fight it. And as he leaned in to kiss Keith again, he settled his hand comfortably on Keith’s shoulder, feeling the warmth against his palm. He let the warmth spread up his arm and to the rest of his body, settling into the very depths of his soul, knowing that he was the luckiest man in the universe and that, no matter what happened, he’d always be happy with Keith by his side.

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nade2308 · 5 years

Text

I don’t wanna live to waste another day

A/N: It’s completed. Finally! And I am proud and happy to present you with my new fic.

First of all I’d like to thank @stanclub for arranging this challenge on Tumblr, and again as the first time I wrote a fic for one of their challenges, it was a pleasure and I can’t say my thanks enough times because I challenged myself again per se. I hope you like this.

Then thanks go to my partner in crime and lab rat, @82tweeder. If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be finished my story or posting for that matter. She was luckily able to go through the story today and she was of great help. Thank you babe. For cheering me and reading through it. It means a lot.

I’d also like to thank @lisamott9 that also cheered me on when I told her about this challenge and the fic. She had so many nice words to say about me and my writing that pushed me to move on from where I was on Tuesday and things just kind of picked themselves up yesterday and today. So, thank you girl, you know how much I appreciate your input. And now I can work on that other story we discussed (maybe I need a little bit of inspiration first, but I’m sure I can tackle that).

And last, thanks to delighted who was kind enough to suggest a few ideas as to where I can go with my story. Thank you hon for one of those suggestions made it in the fic and I was very happy to put it there.

And without further ado, let’s proceed with the story.

Title: I don’t wanna live to waste another day (from “Breaking Inside” by Shinedown).

Written for: @stanclub 2.5k followers writing challenge.

Prompt: Friends to lovers: I keep drawing you in my sketchbook because I’ve always found you to be beautiful and I’m longing to tell you how I feel, but one day you find it and you have questions. With Stucky.

Pairing: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Other characters: Sam Wilson (mentioned), Tony Stark (mentioned), Peggy Carter (mentioned), Sharon Carter (mentioned), Brock Rumlow (mentioned), Winifred Barnes (mentioned), George Barnes (mentioned), Rebecca Barnes (mentioned), Margaret, Annie, Bart and the other students in Steve’s art class.

It was on days like these that Bucky resented everything. It was almost a year since the event that turned his life upside down and it still haunted him. On days like these, he cleaned the place excessively, trying to come to terms with himself. Bad days were few and far these days, but still often that they worried Steve to no end.

Steve was Bucky's best friend since childhood, and honestly Bucky couldn't even remember when they met first, only that when he set his eyes on the little blond ball of fury, Bucky knew that it was the right decision to stand up for him.

Last night he had a nightmare that Steve was the one that suffered in the mass shooting instead of Bucky but he died on scene. Bucky woke up to Steve yelling his name and trying to wipe the tears off Bucky's face. Bucky sobbed uncontrollably once he realized it was just a bad dream and that Steve was next to him, alive and well.

Steve decided that Bucky needed a day off work so he rang Tony who, besides his eccentric and obnoxious self, was understanding enough that he let ‘Buckaroo’ as he liked to call Bucky, have that day off and get well again.

Bucky fell asleep in Steve's embrace around 5 am and slept through the better part of the day. When he woke up, Steve was still there and only with Bucky insisting he go to class did Steve leave him alone.

Bucky cleaned the kitchen with such fierce determination that by the end of his cleaning spree there was not one thing that was out of the ordinary. He sighed.

Now what?

Bucky wished he didn't insist Steve going on with his life as normal today, because Bucky didn't dare admit to himself that he needed Steve at that moment. Plus if Steve was home, they'd probably binge watch one of those new TV shows on Netflix and eat pizza, and Bucky would drink cola while Steve would down a beer. It was probably just another excuse because Bucky was really hyped up on the new TV show they did on Ted Bundy. All of his friends teased him and acted like they were scared that Bucky would kill them in their sleep one day, because of his interest on serial killers. Steve blamed Bucky's propensity on catching the “Criminal Minds” fever back when they were still in high school. Now almost 10 years later, Bucky was still addicted to the show and it was one of his many escapes when things got rough. Bucky just liked to keep up to date with things.

With nothing else left to clean in the house, Bucky sat down on the couch and wrapped himself in his favorite blue fleece blanket. It was a gift from Steve for Christmas a few years back and it kept Bucky warm when he was cold and in all situations when Bucky was under the weather because of something else. Steve liked to call it the therapy blanket because Bucky often wrapped himself in it when one of his dates went bad.

Bucky counted the minutes till Steve was back home from his class. Despite his need for Steve, Bucky also knew that Steve lived for the 3 times a week he got to do what he actually loved the most, and that was teach people how to draw and paint and share the love for the art.

Steve was always enthusiastic about art. Ever since they were kids, Steve would always draw something for his mom or Bucky, left little doodles on the page margins in Bucky's notebooks, and when he was older he moved onto drawing and painting portraits. Bucky was the huge dork that still kept all his notebooks with Steve's doodles and drawings in it.

It was for a while that Steve hadn't drawn anything or if he did, Bucky didn’t see him doing it. Ever since Steve got the opportunity to teach art classes he seemed more engaged with his students and actually doing what he wanted to all these years, instead of working as a graphic designer in Tony's company, where Bucky also worked in as an engineer. That also meant he was busier than usual and probably didn't have much time for it. Bucky shouldn't have thought much on it but he missed Steve in his element.

Bucky was restless on the couch, nothing catching his eye long enough for him to calm down. He proceeded with cleaning his own room but even that didn't help. And then Bucky eyed Steve's bedroom.

And to those that knew Bucky, they also knew that once he set his eyes on something, it was hard to convince him not to do anything about it. The fact that they both had zero sense of personal space for the other was beyond question, although they both had things the other didn't know about.

Searching for a particular sketchbook that Bucky knew Steve kept on his desk next to the window, Bucky instead found another one of Steve’s sketchbooks that sat open on a particular page. Coming closer, Bucky could see the pencil that was discarded in a haste and the ugly line it left behind. He wondered what made Steve leave it like that and with a shocked gasp he realized Steve must have sketched when Bucky had his nightmare.

Instinctively Bucky picked the sketchbook and took it with him to the living room. Wrapping himself in the blanket again, he opened it on the first page.

And there it was: a drawing of him. Bucky.

Flipping through the rest of the pages, Bucky found numerous drawings of him in various states: Bucky smiling, Bucky laughing, Bucky sad, Bucky grumpy, you name it. Most of them were drawn while Bucky was sleeping on the couch, wrapped up like a burrito.

Bucky thought he should find it creepy, since he never thought Steve was drawing him specifically. Of course Steve did draw him once when he was younger, when he was perfecting his technique on portraits but Bucky thought that was about it.

What baffled Bucky the most was the love he could see bleeding on the pages. The softness of the moves with which Steve managed to capture him and how lifelike he looked. It had woken up something inside him that Bucky swore he'd keep buried for the rest of his days.

He was in love with Steve.

Bucky wasn’t sure when he fell for Steve. He came out as gay in high school and despite his great fear his parents would hate him or disown him, they were the total opposite of that. They accepted him and educated themselves on the topic.

After that his mom always wanted him to hook up with one of the sons of her friends and his father tried his best on giving him tips for how to woo his date (even though he wasn't sure those things would work same on men as on women). Becca was teasing him relentlessly and insisting that she'll be his best woman on his wedding with Steve, to which Bucky promptly choked on his coffee when it was brought up. She had no idea how much Bucky wanted that but when asked he always denied that there was something more between him and Steve. As far as Bucky knew, Steve loved him only as a friend. And Bucky couldn't risk his friendship with Steve with admitting his true feelings, and that he loved Steve with everything he got. That he felt unwanted whenever Steve had someone over, or that he was jealous whenever that someone kissed Steve. And the most embarrassing part of it all, what made Bucky feel disgusted and ashamed of himself was the numerous dates he had where he imagined Steve to be the one that fucked him hard or made slow love to him.

It was painful, but Bucky made do. He compromised with himself: it was better to have Steve as a best friend than not have Steve in his life at all. Bucky didn't want to confess his love to Steve so he'd be told Steve didn't love him back. Bucky was a realist and scared and no one could blame him for doing what he did all these years, and that was hiding how he truly felt for Steve. But it didn't hurt less when Steve told him he asked Peggy to be his girlfriend, nor when Steve started dating Peggy's cousin, Sharon, few months after Peggy and Steve split.

There was that one time when Bucky saw Steve flirting with Sam when they had their usual morning run. Steve was awkward and adorable and Sam put him out of his misery when he told Steve he already had a boyfriend. Bucky had to admit that meeting Sam was one of the good things that happened in his life because Sam helped him find a therapist when things got rough.

Seeing drawings of himself in Steve's sketchbook, Bucky wondered if it was possible for Steve to love him back? Was it possible for Steve to reciprocate on the love that destroyed Bucky slowly, but also kept him alive?

In hindsight, Bucky should have seen it years ago. It was everywhere and in every word Steve said and every thing Steve did. There was that one time when one of Bucky's coworkers outed him in front of the whole group and Bucky had to leave the company because of the harassment he received for his sexuality. Steve wanted to beat the living lights out of Reginald, but Bucky managed to prevent Steve from acting on his emotions.

From then on there were numerous situations where Steve acted protectively around Bucky, but Bucky chalked it up to friendship, because Steve was always like that with Bucky.

Steve couldn't have possibly felt the same for him, right?

Then there was Brock, Bucky's longest relationship up to date. They met shortly after Bucky started working in Stark Industries. They hit it off immediately and even though Bucky liked him enough to imagine a future with him, he knew Steve wasn't very supportive of their relationship. And with right, because Brock showed his true face once Bucky was involved in the mass shooting. Suddenly he wasn't good enough, he was too much to handle with his anxiety and nightmares, and then there was his left arm that lost almost 60% of mobility thanks to the bullet that caught Bucky in the shoulder. There was a whole list of issues that bothered Brock. Gone was the love and attention and promises.

Bucky could clearly remember Steve's reactions and how much he wanted to strangle Brock for what he did to Bucky. It took a while for Bucky to realize that Brock was wrong and that he wasn't a burden and it was okay to have PTSD and anxiety without having to be careful around people. Steve helped him in those tough days and it was then when they decided to share Steve's condo in Brooklyn. Steve was the perfect roommate and they knew each other for all their lives so the decision was mutual and what they both needed.

Looking at Steve's drawings again Bucky was reminded of all the times they nursed each other after a bad time in their lives, all the times they watched over the other when they were sick or a bad night. Because no matter what happened in their lives they always gravitated to each other. It was a given.

Bucky sighed, looking down at the sketchbook one more time before he closed it. He hugged it close to his chest and kept glancing at the clock on the wall and realized that Steve was due to come back from class any moment now. Bucky couldn't make himself return the sketchbook back to Steve's room. He was drained from his night and the realization he just had. It was best he waited for Steve so they could talk.

It was a can of worms he wasn't ready to open, but there was this determination that set itself in him and for once Bucky just wanted to get it all out, come hell or high waters. He'd deal with the consequences later.

Bucky sat himself comfortably on the couch and waited for Steve.

…

The familiar screech of the train tracks alerted Steve of the arrival of his metro line. Just one more thing and he'll be home and with Bucky. Steve beat himself over and over for leaving his best friend alone after a bad night, but Bucky insisted Steve go with his day normally. He shouldn't have listened to Bucky. It wasn't that he didn't trust Bucky with himself but Steve didn't want to leave him alone when he wasn't in his best mood.

Steve entered in the train and found a free seat. He pulled his headphones out of his pocket then put them in his ears and got lost in the moment for a bit. He just wanted time to go faster. It usually did when he was listening to music.

Steve's eyes wandered around the cart. An older couple was seated in the back with bunch of college kids. It made him smile because they reminded him of some of his art students. That in turn made him think of today's class.

…

(Flashback)

Steve sighed in frustration as the third attempt of drawing a simple fruit in class. He could feel his students’ eyes on him, and it made him even more nervous and prone on mistakes. Only the respect he had for his students stopped him from throwing the pencil out of the window.

“Are you okay Mr. Rogers?” Annie, one of the teenage girls in his class asked, seemingly worried.

And Steve didn't want to see that look on such a young face. He didn't like the fact that he caused someone else to worry about him, something about his best friend being always the worrywart. Steve hated the face Bucky always made when Steve was sick or did something stupid. Which was often.

Steve shook himself out of his thoughts, aware he zoned out.

“Yeah, uh, yeah… Just, I think it's not my day. I'm usually better at drawing a simple apple. Sorry.”

“No worries, Mr. Rogers. It happens.”

“I know, I know. Thank you for asking that, though. Don't think anyone else than Bucky has asked me that recently.” Steve replied without thinking.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Bart, a grumpy 30 years old asked from the back of the classroom.

Steve looked at him, baffled, but he schooled his face quickly. Bart was a good hearted person so Steve didn't take it in a bad way.

“Bucky is my best friend. We know each other since childhood. And we live together.”

There was a chorus of “oooooh” from the class and Steve blushed. He was used to people mistaking him and Bucky for a couple enough, but it never ceased to elicit a reaction from him.

“It's not like that.” Steve spluttered. “He is my best friend. We are roommates. Nothing more.”

“Who said you were?” Margaret, the only student that had hit the 70s mark, queried and winked at Steve.

“I assumed… uh, never mind.” Steve scratched his neck and stood awkwardly in front of his class.

Margaret grinned conspiratorially and Steve could see her and Annie talk to each other. Those two were a menace.

“What's Bucky like?” someone from the back said, Steve couldn't remember his name. Was it Pietro?

It took Steve by surprise that someone would ask about Bucky, but it was a welcomed distraction so he decided to answer.

“He's the greatest. Always there for me. The best friend anyone could ask for.”

Steve then proceeded to tell them all about his best friend, how they met, and the adventures of their everyday life. What Steve wasn't aware was the way he was practically glowing when he talked about Bucky as Margaret was so kind to notice and voice it out loud.

“You certainly sound like you are very fond of him, dear.” Margaret piped in.

Steve blushed again and he had to grin.

“For not being a couple, you blush a lot, Mr. Rogers.” Annie helpfully added.

As if that was Steve's cue to turn in a tomato, he turned a darker shade of pink.

…

Not just that he managed to be productive and teach his class something useful, but Steve was also effectively distracted from thinking about Bucky and the way he looked last night - like death warmed over. He was reluctant to leave him alone today, but Bucky insisted. And nothing could deter Bucky from getting his way with things - which was useful for when Steve got himself in trouble. Bucky was still in the back of his mind the whole day.

“So, that will be all for today.” Steve covered the sheet he was working on while turning around and addressing his class.

“Oh, but it's too early, Mr. Rogers.” one of the students whined.

“It's actually past the 90 minutes mark, Beth. Besides I have important matters to attend so if you don't mind…”

“It's Bucky, isn't it?” Margaret winked playfully.

“In a way. It's personal though, so I wouldn't want to share more info without his consent. But he had a bad night, and it took me a lot of convincing from him to appear today and not just cancel. So be happy I appeared at all.”

Margaret nodded at the explanation with a knowing glint in her eyes.

When the last of his students left the classroom Steve released a breath he didn't know he was holding. It was time to go home.

(End of flashback)

…

“Breaking inside” by Shakedown blasted in Steve's ears as he all but missed his stop. The song lyrics hit him right in the feels, the story behind the powerful text was hinting at his situation when Bucky was in question and for the first time in a while Steve didn't know how to bury the feelings back to where they were all this time.

Moving on autopilot the last three blocks that separated him from the subway to the condo he shared with Bucky, Steve turned in his head the moment he realized he was gone on Bucky forever.

They were in high school when Steve first realized he liked boys as much as girls. Or the exact moment that he started looking at Bucky with different eyes and suddenly he wasn't just his best friends. He tried quelling that feeling with dating Peggy and then her cousin Sharon, but that didn't help him at all. Steve liked Bucky still and he often caught himself thinking of spending time with Bucky while on dates with other people which wasn't fair for them. Hence why he always broke off things before feels got involved.

Steve still remembered Bucky's face when he flirted with Sam, like a man ready to have a heart attack. Steve chalked it up to Bucky being a jealous friend but looking at things in a new perspective, Steve asked himself, was it possible that Bucky felt the same for him?

There was something that shifted in the air but Steve chalked it up to the cold weather and the wind chill.

Then there was the shooting that changed Bucky's life and by default Steve's too. With Winnie and George being in Indiana, Bucky didn't want to impose on his sister and her family. Steve came up with the suggestion for them to start living together. It took him a while to convince Bucky, but when Steve suggested he either impose on Becca or come with him, Bucky caved in. In the last year Steve had to battle through days when Bucky didn't want to get out of bed and days where you couldn't contain him in one room because he was bored out of his mind. They visited Bucky's therapist together because Bucky was afraid that if he spoke about the event without Steve being present, something could happen to Steve.

Not many could understand Bucky and Steve would forever loathe the moment Bucky met Brock Rumlow and he became Bucky's boyfriend. That schmuck wasn't worth Bucky's love and time and he proved so by breaking up with Bucky shortly after he almost lost his life. Steve almost beat him up then, and only Bucky's pleading voice and the disheveled state he was in prevented Steve from sending Brock to the hospital. Bucky was too precious for Brock anyway. And in Steve's opinion if you love someone, you'll love them in any situation, and not only when they are healthy or working or something else entirely.

...

Passing by the bakery on the corner of the street, Steve saw Bucky's favorite plum tarts being displayed. Without much thought he entered and bought quite a few. He wanted to indulge Bucky, who could blame him?

He managed to wrangle his headphones in submission and put them away. He looked at the time and saw that it was just past 8 pm. He hoped Bucky was okay and that they'd have a nice night watching some movie on Netflix and literally chill.

Steve was careful in opening the door to his apartment because he didn't want to interrupt Bucky in case he was sleeping. And sure enough, Bucky was sprawled on the couch, covered in his favorite blanket, the one that he bought for Bucky for Christmas three years ago. The soft baby blue sweater that Bucky had put on was Steve’s and Steve felt warmth go through him at the sight. Bucky's hair was loose and splayed on the pillow. Overall Bucky looked so soft that Steve didn't want to wake him up at all. But then he saw the item Bucky held with one hand. It was one of his sketchbooks. That didn't surprise Steve because Bucky grounded himself often going through Steve's sketches. What made Steve release a surprised squeak was THE sketchbook that Bucky held in his hand. Specifically one he never wanted Bucky to find.

Steve drew ever since he could remember. It was just something that started as a hobby but it developed in a passion that moved steadily throughout his life and ended in Steve taking art school and later going to arts college which earned him a degree. Nowadays he worked as a graphic designer at Tony's company but secretly he still loved to draw. There was something about the paper and pencil combination that would never get old, Steve knew.

That didn’t bother him essentially, that Bucky would go through his sketchbook. But the one in question he kept hidden at all times for the reason that it was full of drawings from the person that was holding it now. It was part of series of sketchbooks Bucky gifted Steve for birthdays and Steve made a good use of them. But never showing the drawings to Bucky. Only the ones that everyone was allowed to see.

Steve didn't think Bucky would violate his privacy and search for that specific sketchbook but he needed answers before he said more that he should.

Bucky stirred on the bed and Steve had a split second to prepare himself before being assaulted by the softness in the pale blue eyes that looked at him.

Bucky was awake.

…

Bucky heard the soft click of the front door but he wasn't ready to open his eyes just yet. He just wanted to enjoy the warmth of his blanket, and how happy he was that Steve was home. He could hear Steve moving around until he stopped in front of the couch. He stood there for a while before squeaking and Bucky found it hard to pretend he was still sleeping when all he wanted was to laugh because Steve always claimed that he didn't squeak.

In the battle between Steve and his warm post-nap bubble, Steve won. Bucky opened his eyes and stared at Steve, assessing the look on Steve's face. It was a mix between soft, fond and panicked. For a moment Bucky wondered what happened to Steve but then he remembered the sketchbook in his lap.

Bucky blushed as he fumbled with the sketchbook and he shot upright in the couch, trying to detach himself of the blanket and make room for Steve.

Steve stood above him like someone slapped a bucket of hot water all over him. Or maybe a wet Golden Retriever puppy. Yep, that was it.

Bucky didn't realize he was grinning until Steve raised a questioning eyebrow and Bucky smiled fondly at him.

“It's just you look like an adorable puppy. Adorable Golden Retriever puppy. Wet puppy.”

Steve choked on his spit and looked incredulously at Bucky.

“I'm not a puppy.”

“Sure thing pal.”

An awkward silence stretched between them until Steve broke it.

“What are you doing with my sketchbook, Buck?”

Bucky's momentarily good mood evaporated in a second, a frown now on his face.

“I… I’m sorry. I was restless and didn't know what to do so I went to your room. I found this sketchbook on your desk. It was there and I took it. I wasn't snooping, I swear.”

Bucky was distressed and looked genuinely scared. That shook Steve out of his thoughts.

“Sorry… Sorry, Buck, it's just…” Steve took a deep breath. “Today was one of those days where nothing goes right.”

If possible, Bucky shrunk even more into the couch. Steve face palmed himself at the sight.

“Look, I screwed up. I remembered now that I left the sketchbook on my desk and it's not your fault, okay? Not your fault.”

Bucky nodded but didn't say anything. Steve sighed. It wasn't like he anticipated Bucky finding that sketchbook. And now…

Steve went to the kitchen and left the plum tarts on the counter. He washed his arms and then removed his coat and scarf. Going back to the living room he found Bucky sitting on the couch, knees drawn close to his chest and with an off look in his eyes.

“Are you okay, Buck?” Steve asked tentatively, sitting on the couch next to him.

Bucky looked at him with the look of a wounded animal and shook his head. Steve felt awful. He shouldn't have gone to class. He shouldn't have been harsh with Bucky about his sketches. He shouldn't-

“Steve- Stevie, it's okay. Just because I might not react in a certain way, doesn't make you guilty of something. Okay?”

Steve looked at his hands in his lap. He probably said all of that out loud.

“I want to ask you something. You may not answer if you don't want to but seeing those drawings you have of me in that sketchbook… made me think and well…” Bucky chuckled and put a strand of stray hair behind his ear, “I came to realize I might not have been good at hiding what I feel and wondered if you, um, if it's possible you feel the same as I?”

“What are you trying to say, Bucky?”

“The only time I remember you asked me to pose for you so you can draw me was when you were discovering and perfecting your technique. After that, I've seen thousands of your sketches, but not one of me. But I found your sketchbook today and I saw it almost filled with drawings from me. So, I have some questions.”

Steve didn't say anything, deciding he'd let Bucky say his mind first.

“I went through your drawings of me and… I've noticed that they are very realistic. What I'm saying, of course they are, they are drawn by you.” Bucky smiled and looked at Steve, “I could see the love and the affection, how you think of me and I guess I want to know… Is it possible- It's stupid.”

“What is it Buck? What's stupid?”

“It's stupid I got that only from a few drawings and…” Bucky threw his hands in the air and sighed in frustration.

“It's more than just few drawings, Bucky.”

Bucky could see Steve's cheeks pinked up and he wondered just how many drawings of himself were out there.

“I see. Okay, I'm just gonna go and say this… Why is it so tough? Oookay, there we go. I'm in love with you.”

Bucky waited for a reaction. And Steve took too long to say or even do something. Bucky took that as a sign that he screwed things up and he started getting up but a hand on his wrist stopped him.

“What makes you say that Buck?”

Bucky sat back down and looked at Steve. He wasn't yelled at and wasn't ordered to leave the apartment, yet, so that was a good thing, right? He just hoped he didn't ruin his friendship with Steve.

“It's in all you say. And do. And the drawings just helped me gather the courage to talk to you about it. I guess I just put my feelings in a box and locked them. Hoping they'd go away. But they didn't. They are real. I love you Steve. I'm in love with you.”

“Oh, Bucky… I love you so much. Loved you for so long. But I didn't think you could love me back. God, I got out of my mind with worry last year when you were hurt in that mass shooting. When I saw your face on national TV, the way you were frantically running to escape, something lodged deep inside my chest. It turns out I didn't have to worry and hold out on you for so long, but I was scared.”

“Our friendship is too precious for me. I didn't wanna lose it in case you didn't love me back. I don't think that there's anything more that will hurt me than not having you in my life, Steven Grant Rogers.”

“Is this a proposal, James Buchanan Barnes?”

Steve winked playfully and grinned, the gloomy mood from earlier dissipating and his old self back on track. Bucky appreciated Steve and his way of making every situation better. And lighter. That's one of the numerous things about Steve that Bucky absolutely loved.

“It might be. With the way we are living together and we know each other our whole lives, it will only take me putting a ring on your finger to make it official.”

“Such a romantic, Buck.”

“Says the resident sap.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Steve's skin drummed with excitement.

“Yes. Like you have to ask now.”

Bucky smiled and puckered his lips.

The first touch of Steve's lips on his was soft and tender. Bucky didn't expect fireworks to go off or to see stars behind his eyelids but it was easily the best kiss he got to this day. Something uniquely Steve and full of love. It made him tingle and curve his lips in a smile. Steve pecked him again before moving back. As if pulled by a magnet, Bucky chased Steve's lips. This time the kissing became more heated and soon enough Bucky's tongue asked for entrance in Steve's mouth. Steve opened up and kissed as hard and greedy as Bucky, their lips dancing a sweet melody of two souls coming together at last.

“We were idiots, huh?” Bucky asked when he pulled off Steve and leaned his head on Steve's shoulder.

“Damn right we were.” Steve kissed Bucky's temple. “And oblivious too.”

“True that.”

“Although I don't know anymore. Two of my students today kind of pinned me in a corner and think they saw right through me when I mentioned you.”

“You talking about me in class, Rogers?”

Steve ducked his head and was faced with Bucky's smile.

“I might have mentioned you. A little bit. In passing.”

“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.”

…

6 months later

Steve arrived a little bit early at the studio he held his classes in. Bucky was sitting in one of the chairs, looking at a catalogue with pictures of wedding cakes. He was engrossed in the content and it made Steve feel warmth pooling in his stomach at the sight of his now fiancé, being so at ease and looking like a soft teddy bear. Steve wanted to cuddle him.

He touched the ring that Bucky put on his finger a couple of weeks ago. The last 6 months were the best in Steve's life and in Bucky's too as he was reminded so of every day. Just waking up next to Bucky every morning was worth facing every obstacle life threw at him. And he was happy to see his students filter through the room and each take a seat.

Today he planned for them to practice their portrait skills and he had the excellent candidate in mind. Said candidate was grinning now, looking like the cat that ate the cream.

“Okay, everyone, thank you for coming today. As you know this is one of our last classes and I decided all of us to do something fun today. I gave it a lot of thought. And came to a conclusion when remembering something Bucky said.”

The familiar chorus of “ooooh's” made Steve stop with what he was saying. With the corner of his eye he could see Bucky was blushing.

“Back when I wanted to perfect my technique when drawing portraits, I asked my best friend to pose for me. He agreed and that was the only official time he knew I drew him.”

Steve grinned as he saw Margaret and Annie whisper between themselves as always.

“Those drawings that I kept away was what brought us together, to admit our feelings and we are here today because of them, or what Bucky likes to say, what I do best.”

“I thought that was him.” Margaret said and Steve had a split second before he had to tap Bucky on the back because he choked on his water.

Margaret had such a dirty mind sometimes. Steve should've known.

“Sooo, how about we have my fiancé be your model today?”

The whole room whooped and cheered.

“I take that as a yes? Okay, good. I won't be showing you anything today but let you capture this beautiful man all by yourselves. I did that 10 years ago.”

“It was 12 actually.” Bucky piped in as he got up and moved to the center of the room.

Steve waited for him there. For a moment he forgot he had a room full of students in front of him and leaned to kiss Bucky.

There was a loud sound of “yessss” behind them and Steve detached himself from Bucky. Bucky in turn chuckled and turned around.

“Hi, guys. I'm Bucky Barnes, the luckiest guy in the world. And apparently your lab rat today.”

That made the class erupt in laughter. Steve noticed it was tactful by Bucky to make them laugh so they relax.

“Model, Bucky. Model.”

“Yeah, yeah. So, where do you want me?”

Steve prevented any dirty thought to prevail at that question and smiled fondly at the love of his life.

“Right where you are Buck.”

Right next to me.

...

A/N 2: If you’ve come to the end of this story and you figured it out, congratulations. I was inspired for the characters of Margaret and Annie by Political Animals, a tv show Seb’s played in. Margaret as in Margaret Barrish (TJ’s grandma) and Annie (Doug’s fiancé and then wife). Hope you liked it. Leave a comment if you like. I love getting feedback and see what people thought about the story.

#stanclub2500 #Stucky #written for a challenge #getting together #friends to lovers #prompt #angst #fluff #they are both romantic saps that give each other shit about it #Artist Steve Rogers #Engineer Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #Modern Steve Rogers #Modern Bucky Barnes #boys in love #my fic #fan fic #my story

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